by Gregg Loomis
The concierge at their Lido hotel had given them an astonished expression as the two wet, rumpled guests, still trailing wet prints from soaked shoes, trudged through his lobby. Obviously, the hotel’s boat driver had not made it back there yet.
“Signor Reilly?” he had asked.
“Your boat had engine trouble,” Lang said just as the elevator doors shut. “We had to swim for it.”
CHAPTER TWO
Law offices of Langford Reilly
Peachtree Center
227 Peachtree Street, Atlanta
Three days later
Lang Reilly tossed the last of the pink telephone-message slips into the trash and turned on his desktop computer. Sara had taken most of his e-mail but there was enough requiring his attention to keep him busy most of the morning: a notice of hearing on a motion to suppress evidence in the federal court here in Atlanta, a judge’s questions about a pretrial order he had filed in another case, a bond hearing in the local state court. He shook his head at the last. The client, one of the inventory of pro bono clients Lang kept, couldn’t afford a lawyer. He surely couldn’t pay the bondsman, no matter how low the bail. A total waste of time but one of the procedures the court required.
The phone on his desk buzzed. A quick glance showed the intercom between him and the outer office was the line being used.
“Yes ma’am?”
“The Reverend Bishop Groom is here.”
Sara’s voice bristled with resentment, no doubt at the bishop’s failure to make an appointment. A white-haired prototype of someone’s grandmother, Sara had served as surrogate mother and would-be social director before Gurt’s arrival. She still was secretary, accountant, office manager and a zealous guardian of his time. “Can you see him now?”
The question was for the visitor’s benefit. Sara knew exactly what Lang was doing at the moment.
“Send him in.”
The Reverend Bishop William Groom was, as far as Lang could tell, self-ordained. His nondenominational church in one of Atlanta’s bedroom communities had grown from a few hundred members to well over six thousand, necessitating no less than four services every Sunday and several during the week, plus a televangelical ministry on Sunday nights. More significantly, donations had shown a commensurate increase. Had a number of his parishioners not become disenchanted with both a lifestyle that could only be described as opulent and a more-than-priestly interest in a number of church members’ wives, he might have remained beneath the IRS’s radar indefinitely.
Currently, Lang was anticipating federal indictment of the good bishop for multiple counts of tax evasion, conspiracy to evade taxes, fraud, mail fraud and a laundry list of related offenses. It would seem Lang’s client had not only been dipping his pen into the company inkwell, his fingers had been in the church’s purse as well.
Groom came through the door, hand extended. “Thank you so much for seeing me without an appointment.”
Lang stood to shake hands. “Glad I was available.” He sat behind his desk, indicating one of two leather wing chairs separated by a small French commode. “What can I do for you?”
Groom was tall, over six feet, with a shock of silver hair he constantly swept aside, a gesture Lang had noted he did with dramatic flair at crucial points of his televised sermons. Still standing, he gazed upward. “First, let us pray.”
Lang always felt a little uncomfortable when his client spent a good two or three minutes invoking the Lord’s favor on whatever he happened to be doing at the moment as well as seeking heavenly retribution upon those who were persecuting him. Idly, Lang wondered if a brief prayer had been said preparatory to each seduction of one of his flock. It was certain the time spent communicating with the Almighty was duly noted and added to the time spent in legal counseling to be charged against a very generous retainer.
“Amen,” the bishop said, and sat down.
Lang looked across the desk expectantly.
“I’ve been thinking about this matter of the church vehicles. They say…” The man’s otherwise-angelic face contorted into an expression that looked like he tasted something extremely unpleasant whenever he referred to the prosecution. “They say I misused church funds to buy vehicles. Do you know, Mr. Reilly, that the Cathedral of the Holy Savior uses its vehicles, mostly buses, to bring to God’s house those who otherwise would be unable to attend services?”
Lang suppressed a sigh. He had been here before. “Does that include the Ferrari and the turbo Bentley?”
The bishop hunched his shoulders, a man deeply offended. “Someone in my position needs to display material wealth. Success is a sign of God’s favor, as I constantly preach. We are in very serious trouble, this country of ours, when the Philistines can persecute the faithful because they succeed.”
Another synonym for the prosecution. He was partially correct, though. The government moved with an uncharacteristically light hand when dealing with religious mountebanks, charlatans and others who saw the First Amendment as license to participate in otherwise-illegal activity. It was only when it became clear someone was using a church as a personal bank account to evade taxes, utilizing the mail to solicit funds that clearly went to private uses, or the church and its pastor became indistinguishable that criminal charges were brought.
Lang kept the observation to himself.
“And then there’s the matter of the church’s ownership of homes in the mountains and at the beach. Do you realize how many conferences and retreats the church elders have there every year?”
As far as Lang had been able to ascertain, there were no church elders, deacons or other persons charged with any office that related to financial decisions.
He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “Elders?”
“Why yes, of course. You certainly don’t think one person can run an organization the size of the Cathedral of the Holy Savior, do you?”
Lang reached for a pad with one hand and took a pen from a cup filled with them. “Just who are these elders?”
“Well, there’s Jamie Shaw…”
Lang put the pen down. “Your son-in-law.”
And so far, unindicted coconspiritor.
“And Lewis Reid.”
Nephew.
“And, of course, Lois.”
Wife.
Lang leaned back in his chair. “The government will contend since the elders are all family members, you don’t have to meet at million-dollar homes in resort areas. How many times a year do you, personally, use those facilities?”
“A man under as much pressure as I am deserves an occasional long weekend away some place.” He smiled. “Besides, I’ve composed some of my best sermons at the beach.”
“It might be a little better if the beach to which you refer wasn’t at Sag Harbor in Long Island’s Hamptons. That’s pretty high-octane real estate. And it doesn’t help that you arrive there in a private jet.”
“We simply charter the airplane.” Bishop Groom looked offended.
“Actually, if I recall, the church purchased a set number of hours on a Citation for the last four years.”
“Tending to a flock as large as mine requires transportation.”
Lang shook his head slowly. “You have members of your congregation in places other than metro Atlanta?”
“We are always looking to expand the word of the Lord.” The bishop slid forward, sitting on the edge of his chair. “Mr. Reilly, you sound as though you think I’m guilty as charged. That’s not the attitude I want in my defense counsel.”
Lang didn’t think his client was guilty; he knew it. That was not the question. The issue was whether the assistant United States attorney could convince a jury of it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Lang picked up the pen and walked it between his fingers. “Bishop, you didn’t hire me for my opinions, nor did you retain me to prove you innocent. Only not guilty. There’s a huge difference.”
The bishop thought this over for a moment. “Any chance of a deal?”
Lang shrugged. “There’s always a ‘deal.’ Whether you find it acceptable or not is the question. So far you haven’t authorized me to ask. Shall I?”
Groom gave this some thought also. “I’ll pray over it and let you know.” He stood, extending a hand. “I find things come easier to me if I take them to the Lord.”
“Let’s hope this is no exception,” Lang said dryly.
Lang stood at the door between the outer office and the building’s hallway and bank of elevators, watching his client’s departure.
“I hope you checked to make sure you still have your watch on your wrist,” Sara snorted from her desk.
Lang closed the door. “That’s no way to talk about a man who dropped a hundred big on us.”
Sara swiveled in her chair to face her computer monitor. “A million dollars wouldn’t make him any less of a thief, a liar and a. ..” Her expression indicated she was trying to think of an acceptable phrase to describe the man’s sexual exploits. Her strong disapproval of anything not condoned by the Southern Baptist Church restricted both her world-view and vocabulary.
She settled for adulterer.
“He may be all that but he sure had his fun while it lasted.”
Lang didn’t have to look at her to see her bite back a sharp reply.
“I’m about to improve the moral quality of my companions. I’m having lunch with Father Francis.”
As he shut the door to his office, he heard her mutter something like “It’ll do you good!”
Forty minutes later
The Capital City Club is the last remnant of what once was the heart of Atlanta’s business, financial and legal communities before flight farther north abandoned the central city streets to winos, beggars and the rare tourist unfortunate enough to lose their way between the Georgia Aquarium and the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District. Housed in downtown’s sole remaining private clubhouse, a veranda-fronted, tree-flanked, four-story anachronism, it squats between towering skyscrapers. Even though an epidemic of political correctness has made the club no longer the exclusive domain of white, Anglo-Saxon males, a near-life-size portrait of Robert E. Lee is the first thing a visitor sees upon entering the foyer.
Lang entered the dining room, glanced around and spotted Father Francis Narumba seated at a table with a view of Peachtree Street. A native of one of West Africa’s less desirable countries, the priest had been educated in an American college and seminary and assigned to one of Atlanta’s parishes with a rapidly growing African population. He had been Lang’s sister’s priest after she had inexplicably not only joined the Catholic Church but a congregation where English was a second language. Lang was not particularly religious but he and Francis had become fast friends in the years after her death.
Men in clerical collars were not uncommon guests at the downtown club, but they were more frequently seen exchanging them for golf shirts in the locker rooms of the club’s two courses outside the city limits.
Francis stood, the flash of a white smile splitting his face. “How was Venice? Incudi reddere.”
Francis, like Lang, was a victim of a liberal-arts education. Latin had been an obvious language choice for one planning to enter the priesthood. Lang had no explanation as to why he had chosen the dead tongue. The end result was that the two friends exchanged Latin aphorisms on a regular basis.
“I have indeed returned to the anvil,” Lang said, sitting and shaking out the linen napkin. “To start with, I just had a visit from the Reverend Bishop Groom. You’ve been reading about him in the paper?”
Francis wrinkled his nose as though it detected an open sewer. “I have indeed. The fact he has come to see you tells me he’s in the trouble that he richly deserves… How many of his parishioners claim he seduced them?”
Lang signaled to the waitress. “If seduction were a crime, we would be building high-rise jails instead of condos. It’s the fact he’s using his church as a tax dodge that has the U.S. attorney’s boxer shorts in a wad. Vectigalia nervi sunt rei publicae. ”
Francis took the menu proffered by the waitress. “Cicero was right: taxes are the sinews of the state. But I could forgive chiseling on taxes.”
“You’re in the forgiveness business, remember?”
Francis ignored him. “It’s using the church’s money for vacation homes, fancy cars, that sort of thing.”
“Obviously the Cathedral of the Holy Savior doesn’t require a vow of poverty,” Lang observed pointedly. “Divitiae virum faciunt.”
The waitress was hovering. Both men ordered large shrimp salads.
Francis watched her retreat toward the kitchen. “Riches may make the man, but think of the good that man could do if he shared some of them with people like those guys.” He nodded to the window where two shabbily dressed men were panhandling passersby.
“So they could buy a better brand of wine by the pint?”
Francis’s reply was a snort. “You can be quite difficult, you know.”
“Be thankful this is one of my better days. I can also be impossible.”
Francis shook his head. “OK. Moving past our disagreement on social and economic issues, I repeat: how was Venice?”
“You wouldn’t believe what happened.”
“Try me.”
Lang waited for their salads to be placed in front of them before beginning his adventures.
When he finished speaking, Francis was silent for a moment, thinking. “I read about the theft of the relics from Saint Mark’s in Venice. I should have known if there was trouble within a hundred miles, you’d be involved in it somehow.”
“Dessert, gentlemen? We have some freshly made peppermint ice-cream cake.” The waitress was hovering again.
Lang looked up. “My spiritual advisor here will no doubt take whatever you offer. He gets only bread and water in his monastic cell.”
Francis rolled his eyes. “And you?”
“As a normal human being whose natural aging process has produced a metabolism that manufactures a hundred calories for each one consumed…”
Francis looked up at the bewildered young woman. “He means, no thank you. As for me, yes indeed, I will have the peppermint ice-cream cake. And add a dollop of whipped cream, could you, please?”
A few minutes later, Lang watched Francis dig into a concoction that would have stilled the most demanding sweet tooth. “How is it I bust my ass working out and put on a pound if I even look at sweets and you never gain weight, yet you eat anything that isn’t nailed down? Can you pray off calories?”
“ ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.’ First Psalm. For you heretics, there isn’t a lot of hope.”
Lang sipped a cup of coffee as Francis used the edge of his fork to scrape the last of the confection from his plate. “You can have seconds, y’know.”
Francis looked up, not quite successful in hiding a smile. “I couldn’t do that to you.” He seemed to think a moment. “Back to that excitement in Venice. You know, there’s a good chance what was taken weren’t Saint Mark’s bones at all.”
Lang was debating if the extra caffeine in another cup of coffee would make him jumpy all afternoon. “Really? And whose bones might they be?”
Just then the waitress handed Lang the check for signature and member number. He scribbled both.
Lang gave his friend a look that said he knew his leg was being pulled. “OK, I’ll bite, even if I see another of those ‘who’s buried in Grant’s tomb’ jokes. Who’s buried in Saint Mark’s?”
Francis lifted his arm, checking his watch. “I’d tell you but you’d want an explanation, and I have a meeting with the bishop. Gurt was kind enough to invite me for dinner Friday night. I’ll explain then.”
Both men got up from the table, Francis reaching to shake Lang’s hand. “Thanks for the lunch. I’m a little embarrassed I can’t pick up my share of the tab here.”
Lang g
rinned. “Why? In all the time we’ve tossed a coin for the check, I don’t recall you ever losing. Sooner or later you will. This way, I’m spared the suspense of guessing when.”
Outside, wind was chasing trash down the sidewalk between canyon walls of glass and steel. Lang had left his overcoat at the office and was glad his walk back to work would be less than a block. Everyone else on the street seemed to share his hurry to get out of the wintry blast.
He stopped long enough to wave as Francis drove out of the parking lot in the parish’s aged Toyota, crossed Peachtree and disappeared down the ridge, the spine of which forms Atlanta’s most famous street. Turning back toward his office, he stopped. Across the street was one pedestrian who was in no hurry. His coat collar turned up concealing most of the face, the man seemed to be staring at Lang. Perhaps suddenly realizing he had been noticed, he hurried into the revolving door of a nearby hotel.
Lang’s first impulse was to follow. He took a couple of steps and stopped. Overactive imagination? Had the stranger been looking at him or simply taking in what meager sights the city had to offer? He looked around, spotting no one who showed any particular interest in him, not even a street bum. Still, ingrained paranoia wouldn’t let go, a paranoia that had saved his life more than once.
Once he was back in his office, Sara was waiting for him with another stack of messages. He soon forgot the man on the street.
Beijing Olympic Tower
267 Beisihuan Zhonglu
Haidian, Beijing
The day before
Less than a week after the end of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the space occupied in the new sixteen-story building by the committee that had organized and operated the games was vacated. The colorful posters and photographs of the athletes that had festooned the walls were replaced by officially sanctioned pictures of the holy trinity of Sun Yat-sen, Mao and Chou En-lai. China’s burgeoning bureaucracy, ever hungry for more room, now filled the building overlooking the Birdcage, the popular name for the unique Olympic stadium.
