Necropolis
Page 14
Walter started having highs and lows again, sometimes he was euphoric and then he’d plunge into a deep depression and wouldn’t come down from his tower for three or four days. Those were the years that biographies dismiss in a couple of lines, but as you know, life happens every day and we can’t always be on the crest of the wave, until we come to that chapter in which lives rush through a gorge that quickly leads to the void, sometimes to death and very rarely to happiness, in fact almost never.
Oh, my friends, my dear friends, maybe we need a little fresh air here, so let’s remember the story of that man who made himself wings with feathers stuck on with wax and started to fly, higher each time, and having seen the world so much from above cherished the fantasy of dominating it, because from up there it looked like something he could hold in his hands, a loose stone, a bottle top, and he dreamed of reaching the gods, he continued rising and rising, friends, and when he got to the top of the sky his wings went all to hell, the wax melted and down he plummeted, free fall without a net. Let this serve as an introduction to what follows, in metaphorical terms, even though the beginning of the end for the Ministry of Mercy was an unexpected visit, a man in suit and tie who came to the gate and asked, does the Reverend Walter de la Salle live here?
Jefferson looked him up and down curiously and said, meetings with parishioners are over for the day, and he turned away, but the guy stopped him and said, wait, that’s not why I’m here, come closer, and took out a shiny police badge, I’d like you to tell me your name, seeing as we’re here; Jefferson turned pale and said, my name’s Jefferson, I haven’t done anything. The officer adopted a forceful tone and said, cool it, nigger, I’m not saying you’ve done anything, I was only asking for your name, O.K.? and he said again, Jefferson Lafayette, I work here; O.K., Jefferson, we’re doing fine, the next thing I’m going to ask is even simpler, open the fucking door and call Reverend Walter right now! you think you can do that, nigger? Jefferson let him through and ran to the house.
The detective had come for information. They’d arrested a minor with six thousand dollars in bills buying crack on Meridien Island and when they questioned him he’d mentioned the Ministry. Then he’d retracted his statement and his parents were adamant that the boy was being rehabilitated thanks to the Ministry, but the whole thing sounded fishy. In the course of his investigation, the detective had heard a rumor that Walter hired minors for private parties. There was no actual accusation, but he wanted to take a look around and see if he could figure out how these rumors had started.
Tall stories, detective, said Walter on receiving him, you can’t imagine the number of people who envy my success; more than one jealous pastor would love to see my Ministry in ruins, but they won’t, detective, because the work we do doesn’t belong to me but to all the people who believe in it, and nobody will ever able to bring it down, do you understand me?
Absolutely, said the detective, that’s what I’m trying to avoid with this visit, I’ve seen your TV show and I’ll tell you something, my wife believes you’re the son of God, and she really believes it, is it true? I mean, are you really the son of God? Walter looked straight at him and replied: I’m a son of the God of those who believe in me, officer, will that do? No, replied the man, unfortunately not, I’d like to see your property, may I? it isn’t an inspection, only a visit. Go ahead, said Walter, we don’t have anything to hide.
They went to the communal rooms and the refectory, the kitchen and the garage. Then they came to my cabin and when he saw me the detective asked, is this one of your apostles? Nobody laughed at the joke and I showed him my papers. He took them to the window to look at them in the light and said: former inmate of Moundsville, eh? you’re certainly living in style now . . . He looked through the bookshelves, grabbed The Odyssey and said, very good book, yes sir, which of you has read it? He flipped through the pages, as if shuffling cards, and put it back in its place. He was looking for something, that was obvious. Returning to the garden, he looked up and said, what’s in that tower?
Jessica, alerted by Jefferson, had already cleaned the place.
My God, reverend, what luxury, he said when he saw the white leather couches, the LCD screen, the Jacuzzi with the piped music, the paintings with 3-D images of Christ. I didn’t know sons of God lived such a . . . He stopped to think of a word, but it didn’t come, so he said, do your followers know you live like this? Walter looked at him and said, do you think there’s something reprehensible or inappropriate about that? No, reverend, not in the eyes of the law, but I seem to remember Jesus saying something about the rich and the kingdom of the Lord, I don’t remember exactly, I’ll have to ask my wife.
You’ve surprised me, said the detective, as they went back down to the garden, to be honest, your wealth raises a lot of questions in my mind. They walked along the paved path to the street and Walter said, when I feel I need to know what those questions are I’ll call you, but for now give my very best regards to your wife. I don’t think you’re really interested in my questions, replied the detective, but if I were you I’d get a lawyer, I’d hate my wife to miss her favorite show, if you get my meaning, my visit is over, the Miami police department thanks you for your cooperation; then he left without shaking anyone’s hand.
That’s how things were, my friends, and of course I thought, shit, the hurricane is heading straight for the living room of our house, no doubt about it. The next night, when Walter came to my cabin, I said, what about that thing with the detective? but he dismissed it, it’s nothing, José, accusations by the envious, it’s that son of a bitch Malik McPercy of the Church of Juliana the Redeemer, because nobody goes to his prayer meetings, or the people at Crisostom Abogalene just around the corner, whose hall is always empty, and I said, that’s as may be, but you have to be careful about what you do, Walter, they have us in their sights and we mustn’t give them ammunition; but he said, if something happens I’ll know how to defend the Ministry and everyone, don’t worry, how’s our book going?
A few days later Walter asked me a strange question: do you have a bank account? I looked at him in surprise and said, of course not, why would I want something like that? I have everything I need right here, and he said, go with Jessica and open an account, I’ll give you instructions, don’t contradict me, I want you to be paid for the work you’ve done on the book, which is really excellent; Estiven has already had something and I want you to have the same as him, it’s only fair, don’t refuse, I won’t take no for an answer. I opened the account and Jessica put in two thousand dollars, but I said to her, I’ll never touch that money, never, and she replied, do whatever you like, it’s yours, I’m just following Walter’s suggestions.
I sent the book to a publishing house with a financial proposition, and three months later we received the galley proofs, which Walter and Estiven and I read out loud in my cabin. There were 987 pages, to which I decided to add a very brief history of the Ministry and a basic chronology of Walter’s life. Then came the question of the cover. My first suggestion, my friends, was a photograph of Walter during one of his services, showing him kneeling, bare-chested, and the congregation making the sign of the cross, but he said, no, José, I don’t want the book to be about me, I’m only an emissary, I communicate with something that’s already in the people, the nest where God resides; I know you mean well, but it can’t be a photograph of me. Miss Jessica suggested a photograph of the Chapel of Mercy the Living God and, with all the crosses in the vault lit up and looking really beautiful, but again he said no, we mustn’t ape the vanity of the church of Rome, and he opted for a photograph of a slum neighborhood with a group of black teenagers playing basketball, a Dodge Dart with flat tires, a drugstore on a corner, and three people sitting on the sidewalk in an expectant attitude; to one side of the picture a man in a sweater is talking to a woman who’s been beaten up, and in spite of the fact that the man has his back to us and is wearing a hood we sense that he’s somebody special and that he’s giving solace to the
woman, who’s only just stopped crying and is starting to give a timid smile in spite of her bruised cheeks and the dried blood on her nose. Her expression is what the cover is all about, my friends, and finally we came to the last subject, which was how to distribute it among the parishioners, whether or not we should charge them, because obviously the Ministry was buying twenty thousand copies from the publisher, which was why they’d agreed to publish it immediately.
Again Miss Jessica gave her opinion, saying, we have to charge something to cover our costs; if we give it away people won’t attach the same value to it, after all, they buy Bibles, don’t they? In the end it was decided to give it away free to those members who contributed more than five hundred dollars a month, and we all agreed. To everyone else, it would sell for thirteen dollars, and I won’t even tell you how much of a fuss it caused. The book had to be reprinted several times because we didn’t have enough copies, and Walter was reborn. Excellent reviews appeared in the Miami Herald and other local newspapers, he gave long interviews on radio and TV, and we reached a hundred thousand copies, which was incredible; I was prouder than I’d ever been in my life, it was as if that object of a thousand pages was a child that other people appreciated and read, and that gained widespread recognition, but that I’d modestly helped to create.
Every joy has its danger, my friends, believe me, because after this resounding success those who were against us now took our good fortune personally and brought out the heavy artillery; I don’t know what he’d been paid, but one of the black faggots who came to Walter’s parties started spilling the beans, describing those parties to a newspaper, without skipping anything: the lines of coke, the poppers, the whiskey, and of course the sex, and the problem was that the boy was a minor.
Soon the detective showed up again, this time with a search warrant and six of his colleagues, but we were able to get out of things thanks to the Italian lawyers. A large check is a great help, a small check is a small help, so we settled for half, O.K.? The boy’s mother withdrew her complaint and everybody went home happy, but the next month there were two more accusations, one of them with recordings and cell phone photographs where you could see everything. The family told the Sicilians they’d drop everything for two million dollars, but Walter wouldn’t agree, going into one of his trances, which I’d once thought were mystical but now didn’t know what the hell they were or where they came from, and saying, I’ll protect everyone, there’s nothing to fear. Three days later, the next accusations fell like a meteor shower. The parents of six boys asked for millions in compensation for the abuse to their minors, presenting sworn statements, photographs, and videos. There was nothing we could do about it and the scandal blew up in the press.
The police came to take Walter away. It was a massive operation, they closed the neighboring streets, a helicopter flew over the house, and of course there were TV crews outside to film the arrest live. Large numbers of police officers took shelter behind the wall and the one who seemed to be in charge took out a loud-hailer and said, Reverend Walter de la Salle, please come out with your hands up, along with everyone else in the house.
I was watching it all that from my cabin, thinking, what a ridiculous spectacle! it isn’t as if we’re murderers! I opened the door to go toward where the police were, but at that moment I heard a series of shots, and I cried out, don’t shoot, they’re coming out! Much to my surprise, dear friends, the shots were coming from the top of the tower and one of the police officers was writhing wounded on the asphalt.
I threw myself on the ground and closed my eyes, and my head turned into a swarm of questions, or rather dilemmas or aporias, shall I go to where Walter is, stand by his side and resist until they shoot us down? should I go out and try to negotiate with the police, act as a mediator? go back to my cabin until the commotion dies down? Another burst of shots distracted me, and in a second I saw destruction hovering over us. My vision had come back, my brothers, my listeners, the one I’d dreamed some time earlier: the image of a monk leading a group of hooded men through a destroyed city; rubble, dead bodies, twisted metal, ash in the air, tongues of fire.
I crawled back to the cabin, because by now it was impossible to get near the house. The shots were tearing up the tiled floor of the patio and making holes in the walls; there was a shower of glass, tiles, red stone. The firing was concentrated on the tower, where there was fierce resistance, and I thought, what fools, there’s no way they can win, they ought to come out; I was still thinking that when I saw one of the gates of the garden open. Jessica was waving a white flag and coming out with a group: Felicity, two gardeners, and a driver; then Jefferson came out, wounded in one arm, and finally the bodyguards, but Walter wasn’t among them. They were all handcuffed and bundled into a van, but as the police moved toward the house more shots came from the tower.
He wants to die, I thought, he wants them to kill him like Christ; the response from outside was a violent one, and a minute later the first floor was in flames, with tongues of fire coming out through the windows and rising toward the tower. A SWAT team got in the house and a tanker truck put out the fire. By now, the shooting had stopped. After a while they signaled that they’d searched everywhere, but hadn’t found him, so the alert continued; and now comes the strangest part, my friends, which is that after the search not a trace of Walter’s body was found, not a cell or a print, nothing at all. He’d vanished into thin air.
That was when I finally left my cabin, with my hands behind my head. Before they could throw me to the ground, the detective stopped them, and said, let him go, he can help us. He put his arm around my shoulders and said, now then, José, your name is José, isn’t it, now why don’t you tell me where the hell the secret passages and hiding places are in this house, I don’t want to have to pull it to pieces but that’s exactly what I’ll do if I don’t find him in, let’s say, an hour, do I make myself clear? Yes, detective, but believe me, I don’t know any passages or hiding places, this house was built long before the Ministry took it over.
They put me in the van with the others and sat me down next to Jessica. Where is he? I whispered, and she said in my ear, I don’t know, he ordered us to leave and said, I’ll stay here and pray to the Lord, you go, and that was the last I saw of him.
This happened twelve years ago, my dear friends. The police never found Walter, dead or alive, despite a thorough search that involved the blueprints of the complex, scanning devices, drills, and so on. All the furniture was carefully taken to pieces, but nothing was found. They questioned Jessica and me for weeks, but in the end they had to let us go; the bodyguards and Jefferson, on the other hand, they put back in prison.
So it was that one day Jessica and I met on Sylvester Road, soon after we were released, and I said, what do we do now? She replied that she wouldn’t do anything. I know Walter’s alive and will look for me, so I’ll wait for him. I looked her in the eyes and saw again the young woman from all those years earlier. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and walked away, saying: if he comes back, he’ll make sure we all get together again.
I didn’t know what to do or where to go, but then remembered the bank account, so I went to the branch to withdraw a few dollars and have a bite to eat while I cleared my mind. At the window a surprise was waiting for me: the balance was three million dollars! Walter, what a fucking bastard you are, what a piece of shit. I took out five thousand bills. A little way along the street there was a not too dirty hotel, the Stardust Inn. I went in and took a room. I asked for a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke, what could I hope for? I looked at the scars on my veins and thought, now would be the perfect time to do it, but maybe it’d be better to wait until morning. Besides, the sandwich was good. I took out the bills and laid them out on the bedspread, took my clothes off and filled the bathtub. I immersed myself in the water with the can of Coke and took a few sips. Outside, night was falling. Then I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
7.
THE MAN WHO GOT AWAY