issued a ticket and released. When Wayland was five, he moved with his mother to Livonia, a suburb near Detroit’s western border anchored by Michigan’s only Thoroughbred racetrack, since closed, and one of the first shopping malls in the United States, since demolished.
Breck graduated in 1966 from Livonia’s Franklin High, 1971 from Michigan State, 1975 from University of Detroit Law. A grainy copy of a photograph showed Breck in his cap and gown, unsmiling, in front of a stone clock tower.
“Typical lawyer, eh?” I said. “Not making money yet, not happy.”
“Maybe he’s just itchy in that robe.”
By the late 1970s, Breck’s name was showing up on state documents registering him as a principal- apparently the sole principal-in a firm called W. E. Breck Legal Associates, with an address in Livonia. Based on what Frenchy had unearthed, Breck did mostly routine domestic work-divorce, probate, minor tax issues, some workers’ compensation. His mother died in 1988. He divorced a wife of twelve years in 1990.
Joanie rapped the Page-down key seven or eight times. A series of blank pages flashed on the screen. “Here’s where it gets interesting.”
There followed a sequence of documents that had been copied and copied over again. As Joanie scrolled down, I saw what appeared to be many pages of legal filings, followed by two or three photocopies of newspaper clippings, followed by more legal filings, then clips, and so forth, until the pages went blank again.
All of the documents were dated in the 1990s.
Joanie backtracked to the beginning of the sequence. She sat back and folded her arms across her Rats jersey. “The guy was doing oppo research,” Joanie said.
“Opposition? Digging dirt on someone?”
“Not just anybody.” She leaned into the keyboard. “This really sucks, Gus.”
“You want-”
“Yeah.” She stood. “Take over.”
We traded seats. I began to tap through the documents on the screen. They were a collection of affidavits connected to various lawsuits filed in the circuit courts of Wayne and Oakland counties. The plaintiffs’ names were blacked out, but the case numbers varied, so I was able to count eight separate lawsuits. In each case, one of the defendants was the Archdiocese of Detroit.
My stomach tightened as the nature of the lawsuits became clear. Eight men, ranging in age from twenty- three to fifty-four, had accused priests at parishes in the archdiocese of sexually abusing them when they were young. Because the original complaints were not included, it was impossible to know the specifics of the charges.
For that, I was grateful.
“My God,” I said.
“Just like old times.”
In terse, clinical language, the affidavits delineated evidence that the accusers were mistaken, hypocritical, compromised, delusional, lying: “Mr. [NAME REDACTED] was terminated from his job as an assistant foreman at Detroit Diesel on February 4, 1993, because he had repeatedly shown up for work inebriated.” In these papers, the victims of abuse were now adulterers, debtors, wife beaters, gambling addicts, tax cheats: “Despite his protestations to the contrary, there is ample evidence that Mr. [NAME REDACTED] disregarded the plain truth in the pleadings related
to his ongoing divorce proceedings with [NAME REDACTED].”
Each affidavit was executed and signed by Wayland E. Breck, “Special Counsel,” on behalf of the law firm of Eagan, MacDonald amp; Browne.
“He wasn’t part of Eagan, MacDonald, was he?” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Joanie said. “Looks like he was just a contractor.”
“These are bad people, boy.”
The affidavits cited little if any supporting evidence for their assertions. Which made me think that the assertions were probably laced with falsehoods and half-truths while containing just enough verifiable fact-a tax document that could be interpreted in various ways, a statement from a jealous coworker, the testimony of an aggrieved wife-to put a scare into these men who already had been scared so badly as boys, to fling them back upon the dark certainty they had carried for most of their lives that whatever misfortune befell them was their fault and theirs alone.
As the archdiocese’s hired hatchet man, Breck had assembled affidavits that might give a man pause, especially a man laboring under a burden of guilt laid upon him in a rectory, a sacristy, a confessional. Maybe that man, that accuser, would withdraw lest he be forced to face his supposed flaws in public. Or maybe, at the very least, he would acquiesce in a mutual silence in return for money.
The photocopied newspaper clips that Frenchy had interspersed told this very story. Taken from the Times, the Free Press, the Birmingham Eccentric, the Northville Record, the articles, none more than six paragraphs long, told of how each of the men-all of them named in the stories-had agreed to settle with the archdiocese. The accusers declined to comment, in accordance with the terms of the settlements.
Other terms were not disclosed.
Joanie laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “What are you thinking?” she said.
“So the guy was your basic household lawyer for years, then in the 1990s he starts taking on these errands for Eagan, MacDonald.”
“For the archdiocese,” Joanie said.
I was trying to think about all of it, all at once: Mrs. B dead. Nilus. The murdered nun. Tatch’s camp. Breck. The digging. Tatch and my mother in jail. The piece of what appeared to be a map. The rosary. The archdiocese. Breck again.
Joanie clapped a hand on my thigh and leaned in close enough that I glimpsed pale freckles through the laces at the neck of her jersey.
“Wake up, Gus,” she said. “Why are you here? Why do you care about this guy? What does all this have to do with what happened to Phyllis Bontrager?”
“My mother knows something.”
“About these pedophile priests?”
“No.” I shifted my legs so that her hand came off my thigh. “About a nun who was killed in Starvation a long time ago.”
I told Joanie about Sister Cordelia and the man who had been accused of killing her, Breck’s grandfather. I told her about Nilus and his womanizing. I left the lockbox out of it.
“Is that why you asked about meeting with the archdiocese?”
“I wanted to know more about Nilus.”
“Good gut, then.”
“Maybe. Interesting that Eagan, MacDonald is their law firm.”
“Why?”
“The firm’s been quietly buying up land on a corner of the lake. It’s not prime land, it’s not even on the water, but all of a sudden everybody’s interested in it.”
“And you’re thinking…”
“I wonder if they’re buying it for the archdiocese.”
“Because…”
I hesitated, not sure I wanted to say it yet. “I don’t know. We can ask tomorrow.”
“You mean today.” She leaned back to look at the clock on her stove. “Holy cripes, it’s almost four- thirty.”
Through the blinds on her sole window I heard traffic stirring on the Chrysler Freeway. Her new look aside, Joanie was now the Joanie I remembered, shoving me toward conclusions, as she had when she was at the Pilot and we were looking into the past of a hockey coach. She unfolded herself and stood, the Rats jersey falling to her knees. “You know,” she said, “I don’t miss Starvation much. But I do miss you.”
“Sure, as long as you don’t have to work for me.”
“Time for bed, eh?”
I looked around the room. There was nothing but hard-backed chairs. No sofa, no armchair, not even a
