“The Catholic Church sells secrets told under the protection of the sacrament of confession to the mafia for money or favors. Oh! Catholicism is the perfect religion for criminals. It’s not so perfect for women though. Have you noticed? Women are a tough nut for Satan to crack I think. They’re not nearly as easy to corrupt as men. They’re twice as easy to fool, but not as easy to corrupt. Nuns are funny though. They’re one of the three ‘universal funnies’: nuns, farts, and Scottish accents. Think of a nun farting and then excusing herself in a Scottish accent. Then try and think of something funnier. You can’t do it.”
Philip waited for the laugh. It did not come.
“Aw, come on, detective. How can you…wait a second. I feel really stupid right now. You’re of Latin American descent. You’re Catholic, aren’t you? This is perfect! I compliment you on your knowledge of the bible. I know you’ve probably never seen the inside of one. This must be very difficult for you to hear.”
Not at all. The story of Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t faze me either.
“But you see it now. Don’t you, detective Gomez? You’ve been surrounded by it your whole life. You saw the disproportion of ritual to charity, of pageantry to humility. You saw the two faces of the leadership. You saw the Orwellian quality of Mass: ‘Stand up, sit down, kneel, cross yourself, eat this, and drink that.’ You found it all strange, didn’t you? But you couldn’t put your finger on why. You couldn’t find the one horrible thing that brought it all together in a way that made sense. Now you’ve met me, and it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Do you want an answer, or is the question rhetorical?”
Philip chuckled.
“Neither actually. I don’t expect you to answer honestly while we’re being recorded. With my help you’ve put it together. I can tell. You see now how the Devil works. He twists God’s words and uses them against Him. He pretends to advocate Godly things like family and gift giving when all he’s interested in is growing his congregation and building more temples.”
He was getting louder with every sentence.
“He dogmatically convinces his priests that salvation is attained through a lifestyle that drives them half-crazy and turns them into perverts. He facilitates sin. He sets up an infrastructure that elects its own members, and goes unquestioned by its congregation for fear of going to hell. And the key to the whole thing…is one guy in charge! One guy that answers to on one. No king, no nation, no one!”
For the first time since the tape started rolling, Lynch turned his head to check on Father Leo.
He was not there.
IT’S THAT BEAUTIFUL
It didn’t take much to find him. When Lynch pushed the door open to Frankie and Jimmy’s, the light from outside fell on the good priest. He was sitting at the bar staring forward with a full pint of ale in front of him. He’d put the money on the bar. Jimmy hadn’t taken it.
“Hey, Jimmy.”
“Hey, Sergeant. You on the clock?”
“I am, and I’ll have a Lager, thank you.”
There was an unoccupied stool next to Father Leo. It made a noise across the hardwood floor as Lynch pulled it back from the bar and hopped on. Tom Petty was playing on the jukebox. For a full minute, it was the only noise in the bar.
“She was an American Girl…”
Then Lynch spoke.
“You missed the best part.”
“Did I? What’s that?”
“Well, as far as I could follow, Philip believes himself to be a descendant of Judas Iscariot…”
Leo’s expression turned inquisitive but did not dignify the statement with a response.
“…I know. That’s what I thought. Judas had no kids, and he killed himself, but that’s the thing, see. Philip believes that Judas didn’t kill himself. The proof, he claims, is if he killed himself, no one would know what Jesus said to him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
“He also said that Judas was the only apostle that did what was asked of him, and the others were spiteful because of it. That’s how he got the bad rap. Then Philip went back into talking about how the apostles were dicks yadda yadda. Then his eyes glazed over and he started talking about a dream he had, or a vision or some such.”
Leo reached for his ale and took the first pull.
“I see. Is everyone going to be safe tomorrow? Did he tell you where the bomb is?”
“It wasn’t a bomb; it was a poisoning. The bomb was another thing.”
“A poisoning? That sounds complicated.”
“He was going to impersonate a priest and access the wine before Mass. The poison was fast-acting stuff. Cardinal Romero would have drunk first and keeled over immediately. Painting it positive, no one else would most likely have been hurt.
“If that didn’t work, he was going to take Communion during Mass, then add the poison and get Cardinal Romero to drink it somehow. He hadn’t completely formulated his backup plan. We got to him too soon.”
“That’s good.”
“Care to hear what he had in mind for the Pope?”
“The Pope was next? I don’t know…a grizzly bear?”
“He was going to kidnap him.”
“No shit.”
“He wasn’t about to make the Pope a martyr. He was going to kidnap him, set him up on a webcam, and make him confess ‘the truth’ to the world. Mind you, he has no idea how he was going to do it, but he knows exactly what he was planning on saying to the Pope once he got him alone.”
“Does he realize Pope Gregory doesn’t speak English?”
“He didn’t say anything about it. Probably not.”
Leo sighed.
“Well, as mislaid as it was, you’ve got to admire the man’s ambition. I wear roughly the same uniform as His Holiness and I’ve never even gotten close.”
“He wasn’t worried about that. He was counting on the Philly diocese to continue working upstream. You replaced a Bishop with an Archbishop; you were about to replace an Archbishop
