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?”