The Letter Keeper

by Charles Martin

  In short, Bones could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, however he wanted, wherever he wanted, and he asked no one’s permission. A pedestal that even Bones admitted tested the limits of absolute power and its effect on those who wielded it. But his challengers were few, and no one opposed him to his face. Why? Because of the long line of people behind him who owed him their life. It’s simply difficult to argue with a saved life. Especially if you put your own at risk in saving another. The problem Bones’s success created was that of a successor. Who would take up the mantle?

  I was oblivious to all this.

  For me, the question that nagged at me was what Bones had been doing on the banks of my island when he rescued me out of Jack’s bear-paw death grip. Why was he there? When I asked Bones, he simply shook his head and shrugged. As if the memory were painful. The issue unsolved.

  The address in the locker led me to a church in South Carolina. Bones had taken up lodging in the attached pastoral retreat that served priests from around the country, allowing them to rest, pray, walk in the woods, and restore their weary souls. In the year prior, Bones had recovered the governor’s niece, but the question of who had taken her remained a mystery. Someone was hiding at the top. A single clue surfaced in her retelling of the story. The clue was a name. Had it been Mark or Jim or Bill or Bob, it would have mattered not at all, but it wasn’t.

  The name was Genefrino.

  Bones brought me in to peel back the layers. Once I started digging, I learned quickly that power is not shared; there is always one person in charge, and he who has the money has the power. Most nights Bones and I would debrief either in his pastoral retreat or some prearranged diner. For my education on the sick and detestable world of human trafficking, it was immersion by fire. I soon found out Bones had forgotten more than I’d learn in a lifetime. St. Bernard of Clairvaux had once championed the doctrine of Christian humility, in which he stated we are all but dwarfs perched atop the shoulders of giants.

  Bones was my giant.

  Six months in and I’d followed the bread crumbs. Whispers from people afraid to talk. Mysteries from confidential conversations. All led me to the church’s largest single donor. He gave all the time. For everything. The orphanage. Boarding school. Homeless shelter. Building campaign. If there was a need, his wallet was open. Further, he was a hugger. An affable, touchy-feely teddy bear who filled his vast estate with a thousand eggs at Easter and loved nothing more than to button on the red suit at Christmas and bounce the kids on his knee. Make all their dreams come true. One “ho-ho-ho” at a time.

  But every time I got around this man, I had an uneasy feeling that his gift wasn’t so much an offering as a purchase. A down payment. The closer I got, and the more I played the naïve young priest unwise in the ways of business but eager to earn his trust, the more certain I became that he was trying to buy not only the absolution of his guilt but permission in the future.

  If there’s anything worse than sin in the past, it’s premeditated sin in the future. I left every interaction needing a shower.

  I guess you don’t need me to tell you that his name was Genefrino. “But my friends all call me Gene,” he said, smiling. “’Cept the kids. They call me ‘Uncle G.’” When he first introduced himself, he apologized for his name and said the only reason he didn’t change it was because his mother asked him not to before she died. It was her father’s name. And so on.

  How do you argue with a man who funds orphanages and schools and hospitals around the world? How do you argue with a man who spends his life’s talents and resources to place unfortunate and hand-picked children with wealthy families around the world? Many in Europe. Or how do you argue with a man who takes a green-eyed girl from a trash heap in Africa to a boarding school in Carolina where he pays for her tutors and medical bills? “Whatever she needs.”

  You can’t.

  Unless, of course, one of those little girls escapes from the hell into which he “placed” her only to spend her last few breaths telling her story to a nurse in a third-world country where the bodies of children are stacked up like cordwood en route to the furnace and the memory of them disappears though the chimney. It was Bones who found the nurse, though he never found the girl. Later that year, a teenager from Central America, a ninth grader in the boarding school, killed himself on the steps of the church. Followed weeks later by a second younger boy. No explanation was given.

  Something unspeakable was happening to these children. And Uncle G was inconsolable.

  Santa’s problem was that he had a thing for little girls. And more so for little boys. But the jolly old man was also smart. He owned an import-export company and traveled internationally in a fleet of personal jets. Given the bighearted teddy bear that he was, he would bring children in from other countries. Kids rescued from squalor, rejection, and abandonment who didn’t speak English. As the church’s ambassador, he’d give them a home in our orphanage—or, if they were able, a slot in our boarding school. He’d buy them clothes and toys, celebrate their birthday as the day they were “rescued,” and take them for spontaneous rides in his jet, where he’d set them in his lap and let them steer a few knots shy of the speed of sound. Then, when he’d sufficiently endeared himself, he would lead them by the hand into his basement theater, pop some popcorn, and tell them, “You’re so beautiful. You can do anything you dream.”

  You see where this is going, right?

  When he was finished with them, or when they grew strong enough and threatened to reveal his secrets, he “found” them homes around the world, whisking them off in the middle of the night and “placing” them via personal jet.

  Erasing the evidence.

  But while he could make kids disappear into thin air, there was one thing his billions could not erase: his own shame and guilt. So as his sin multiplied, so did his extraordinary benevolence. They were intrinsically connected. The devil with no soul was trying to buy his way out of hell.

  A couple months in, Bones asked me how I was doing and I shook my head. Afraid to be heard. “Evil has a face.” But Evil also had an Achilles’ heel. He liked to binge-watch reruns.

  Early in my employment, Gene had sought me out—as Bones had thought he would—and endeared himself to me in a gentle, uncle-in-law sort of way. At first, he just wanted to know how he could help. “If there’s ever anything I can do.” Soon, as he toiled alongside me serving food to the homeless in our shelter, he confided that he needed a man like me in his life, and that he much admired my devotion. My singular focus. Soon he was a weekly regular on my calendar, doling out more personal insight. Life lessons. Offering to introduce me to Senator So-and-So or some Fortune 500 executive. Asking me to accompany him on day excursions to Vail and Aspen to meet with investors, where he needed my spiritual wisdom.

  Soon, expensive dinners teetered on confession. Tears were frequent. He would put a hand on my shoulder or my arm and pledge transparency via false piety. “Ask me anything.”

  Three months later, he pulled me aside and asked through a quivering bottom lip and cracking voice if I would hear his confession. That the unspoken weight of it was crushing. That he finally felt he had found a man in his life with whom he could trust the details of his story without fear of judgment. “Would you please?”

  I didn’t want to hear it. Any of it. Ever. I knew the moment he opened his mouth, I’d want to hurt him. To push him in front of a moving truck. To exact revenge for those he’d abused and silenced. I also knew I could not lay a finger on him. Nor could my facial expressions betray my disgust. I had to listen, nod empathetically, and bury it.

  No matter what he said, I could not come across as overly eager to know what he hid in his basement. I needed to exhibit priestly understanding and pastoral empathy. To show I was not his judge. Nor his jury. His telling me was not a soul-wrenching purge. It was predatory. Could he trust me with the evil that he spawned?

  Feigning piety, I waffled, telling him he didn’t need me. “We�
��re Anglican. Not Catholic.” I put my hand on his shoulder and glanced at the stained-glass image of Jesus carrying His cross outside of town. One of twelve such depictions Gene had so selflessly commissioned. “Take it to Him yourself.” The touch was purposeful. Endearing. A page out of his playbook. Truth was, I needed not only to hear it but to record it. To post it on the internet and watch his world come crumbling down as he rotted in some prison for the rest of his natural life. My bigger problem, which Gene also knew, was that the confessional falls under protected speech. While there are exceptions, I had a feeling his words would flirt with the edge of that protection yet never cross it. Was he evil? Absolutely. Was he stupid? Not in the least bit. As evidenced by the fact that asking me to hear his confession had placed our relationship into the realm of protected speech. Of priest and confessor. Of absolver and penitent.

  A condition he was counting on.

  Given that I didn’t “play well with others,” I didn’t make or keep many friends. This character flaw made me ideal for Bones’s purposes—he needed an unflinching lone ranger—but it brought with it a chronic and endemic loneliness. Something I’d not yet learned to medicate. It also made me a poor judge of people who said they wanted to be my friend, which was interesting. I could spot evil in other people’s lives from a mile away. No question. But when it came to me, I was blind as a bat. Upon my arrival in South Carolina, I met a parishioner and business executive named Roger working out in the church gym.

  Roger was in his midtwenties and he traveled the world for a venture capital firm researching possible investments. He described himself as the boots-on-the-ground assessor. The one who got his hands dirty when his Ivy League bosses wouldn’t. He was connected twenty-four-seven to two cell phones and a satellite phone, and he reported to Wall Street at all hours of the day and night. But when home, he was quick to disconnect and turn with intention to his friendships—something he admitted he’d not done well most of his life.

  We were cut from the same cloth.

  When Marie visited on the weekends, Roger fit right in. From pizza to Ping-Pong, the three of us became inseparable. As my suspicions of Billionaire Santa grew, I revealed them to Roger. Roger listened, asked insightful questions, and even helped me guard against possibilities. One of his gifts was seeing what might be, and given his worldly experience, he knew human nature to an extent I did not. At least not yet.

  Although I’d learn a good bit about it soon enough.

  Those were difficult months. I could trust no one, I seldom saw Bones, and Marie worked all week and had taken a second job waiting tables on weekends, leaving me even further isolated. In this complicated and lonely soup, Roger became a welcome and trusted friend.

  The night Marie and I got engaged, Roger was working out of the country. When we called him, he immediately caught the next flight back and took us out for beer and wings. A true celebration.

  In a blink, what had been difficult became good. I was engaged to the love of my life, had formed and was developing my first real friendship in a long time, and had a job that I knew was making a difference, even if I could tell no one about it.

  I had found my place in this world. My raison d’être.

  Unfortunately, I was not the only one pretending to be someone I was not. And as I was soon to learn in the most painful lesson of my life, others were far better at it than I.

  In December, I attended Gene’s annual Christmas Eve party where, as his guests sang “Auld Lang Syne” and sipped eggnog by the fire, and the kids opened gifts with glee, he led me into his basement under the guise of a soulful admission of sin. The time had come. The truth of himself laid bare. Something he could carry no longer. Leaning heavily on a cane, which he’d begun using, giving the further impression that the weight was in fact too much to bear, he spoke with bowed head about how I was the first person he’d ever known with whom he felt able to share his dark secrets. The skeletons in his closet. Locking the soundproof door of his theater, he clicked Play. Too ashamed to look at his own in-home movies, he hid his face in the shadows. The video had been purposefully edited, keeping him well within the confines of what was legal. But what it suggested and what it left out said far more than the video itself.

  It was bait.

  This was the moment to which the last six months had led. Consummation. He clicked off the power, ashamed at the video’s contents, palmed away the tears, knelt alongside me, placed a heavy hand on my knee, and began babbling a tearful, hasty, and well-rehearsed confession.

  His performance was Broadway-worthy.

  As he vomited his penance into the air around me, I wondered how much innocence had been lost in that dungeon. How many souls had been severed in two by this preying man? Crushed by this evil sleight of hand? Why place a massage table in a theater when the house was ten thousand square feet? Contrary to the words coming out of his mouth, this predator didn’t want forgiveness. He wanted to turn me. An accomplice. He wanted the power he perceived in my collar. God’s approval. Interestingly, it was about here that he pledged his enormous wealth to God. “Every penny. And I have hundreds of millions, just waiting for . . .” He trailed off.

  The message was clear.

  Not only was he playing me, he was trying to buy me.

  I could take it no more. I was young, cocky, angry, and acted on emotion. Rough edges that later years would attempt to smooth. Unable to listen to one more word coming out of his mouth, I splintered his cane across his face, breaking many of the structural bones and forever relieving him of many of his teeth. With the assistance of substantial pain, I persuaded him to tell me the combination to his media vault, where I stuffed several hard drives into a backpack.

  Feeling good about myself and wanting to be rid of this sick maggot at my feet, I stepped over him en route to leaving the basement with enough evidence to put him away for a dozen lifetimes—which was when I heard smug laughter followed by the sensation of fire entering and exiting my body.

  Not my best day.

  Another tough lesson—evil people do not lack motivation when it comes to hiding their sins. In fact, there’s nothing they won’t do.

  I lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling as the carpet turned warm and red beneath me. I remember shaking my head and cussing my own stupidity as I wondered when he’d fire the next shot and turn out my lights. I also sensed a strange emotion I had not expected—that my death would not only hurt Bones but would let him down. Mission not accomplished. Waiting on the next lightning bolt, I heard a high-pitched squeal followed by what sounded like tearing ligaments, breaking bones, and the thud of a limp body falling onto the carpet. A second later, Bones appeared out of the corner of my eye, threw me over his shoulder, and carried me up and out of the house and into a hospital with a trauma unit. I have no idea where he came from, as I had no idea he was there. I was fading in and out when I heard him call Marie and tell her our wedding might get delayed.

  When she asked, “Why?” he responded with, “Bodies don’t react well to bullets.”

  Through twelve hours of surgery and ten units of blood, I flatlined twice and finally a third time before I stabilized. Once out of surgery, I was moved to the ICU, where I spent a month breathing through a tube, much of which I don’t remember. After three months in the hospital, they transferred me to a rehab wing, where I spent six months starting with the impossible assignment of lifting a two-pound dumbbell. In that time, Marie bathed me, cut my hair, maintained my meds schedule, massaged my muscles to fend off atrophy, and changed my bandages. She never left my side.

  Our wedding was delayed a year and a half.

  While I fought to live, Marie fought to understand. Who would shoot a priest? And more importantly, why? Which led to a bigger question: What was I actually doing? Bones had allowed me to tell Marie that my job as priest was actually cover, and that my true employer was an unnamed agency in the United States government. And while all of that was true, it was the half-truths to follow that did t
he most damage. Raised more suspicion than explained.

  I told Marie I’d been employed as an “investigator.” That’s all. My job was simply gathering intel. I was never to have anything to do with physically catching bad guys. That had been left to the professionals. When she pried as to specifics, I was little help. Given Bones’s warning, I knew better than to tell her the specifics of my work. Too dangerous. When she asked, I deflected. Unbeknownst to me, this avoidance produced in her a mistrust. And out of that grew a desire to talk to someone. Someone else.

  Fundamentally, Marie stared at my bullet-riddled body and asked herself, Can he be telling the truth?

  The evidence proved I was not. These were long months. I was little consolation, and Marie carried the lion’s share of the work.

  Eighteen months passed. The chapel was small, but that’s the way they made them back then. I stood at the altar, and the room was full of friends and family. Bones stood to my right, groomsmen and bridesmaids lined up in either direction, and Roger was just over my shoulder. My best man.

  When the music started, I blinked and she appeared. An angel flying too close to the ground. I remember seeing white and sunshine, and my knees nearly buckled. Roger caught me, bringing a laugh out of Bones and all the attendees. Then she took a step and I watched in slow motion. It was as if whatever world had been there before just faded, leaving only her. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful. She made it halfway down the aisle, and her maid of honor handed me a handkerchief. Evidently, I was crying. More laughter. She climbed the steps, and when she took my hand, hers was trembling. As was her lip.

  Marie was afraid. But for the life of me, I couldn’t track the source of the fear. Was it me? I didn’t think so. The thought of marriage and lifelong commitment? Not likely. Fear of the unknown? I didn’t think so.