The Poisoned Pawn Page 14

  “My grandfather, he went to residential school,” Pike said. “My mother, too. But they never talked about it.”

  “We all want to forget, son. I’m so old now, I can’t even remember what I’m trying to forget sometimes.” The old man laughed. “You know, it’s a gift, hearing you use that word, mishomis. I love my grandchildren. I never hurt them. I had lots of children with different women, but they all got taken away. I wasn’t good to them. I used to drink heavy, trying to forget those priests and nuns. I was so angry; sometimes I took my anger out on them. I know now that was wrong. I got convicted of manslaughter once. I beat a man to death when I was drunk. I spent time in Stony Mountain Penitentiary. You know that place?”

  Pike nodded.

  “That’s where I found the old ways. Funny, eh? To find out who you are in jail. There are gangs in those jails, but the elders try to teach them a good path. About the medicine wheel, the four directions. Ekinamadiwin.” The teachings. “The things I’m telling you, they’re all we have left. Did I ever tell you the story of where we came from? The first beings the Great Manitou made were evil serpents. But they were destroyed in a big flood. So the Great Manitou created a new being, a man, and brought him a woman. That’s how we began. We multiplied, had big families. Do you know why those snakes couldn’t multiply?” He laughed, his face lighting up like a beacon. “Because they were adders, not multipliers.”

  There was something else the old man finally told Charlie Pike as Pike slowly pulled him in from the cold. Not the details—Pike knew he would never speak of them—but enough that he could guess.

  “One of my brothers died at that school when I was nine. They told me he ran away, that he fell through the ice. But I saw the bigger boys out back that same night. Behind the school, digging a grave.”

  Maybe that was why the old man told the stories, thought Pike. Four brothers, one who drowned. A mother who died in childbirth. Like Nanabozho and the story of winter.

  But the old man said a priest at the school told him to forget he ever had a brother who drowned. He was never to speak of him again.

  “That priest, he had an accent. He wasn’t all that old, maybe thirty. Maybe twenty-five. He was nice to me, put his arm around me when I cried. He gave me chocolate candy the day my brother died. I’d never tasted chocolate before. He told me I had to give up my Indian name or I’d go to hell. And that really scared me, that there could be a place even worse than that school.

  “He took me to the rectory that same night. He said we’d have a special meal, just him and me. And after that, I knew there wasn’t nowhere worse than that school. Whatever I did wrong that day, I still don’t know. But I was in hell already. That’s when I knew I’d never go home. I had two brothers still alive. I never spoke to either of them again. Too ashamed, I guess.”

  Charlie Pike finally knew why the old man used drugs. And the pain he tried so hard to forget. Someday, Pike promised himself, he’d find out what happened to the old man’s brother, and why a young student in a Catholic school wasn’t taken to a Catholic graveyard or sent home to his family for burial. How the child really died.

  “That priest’s name,” the old man said. “I never knew how to say his last name right, or how to spell it. But I’ll never forget his first name. We called him Father Ray, us children. Like a little ray of sunshine. Because at first we thought he was kind.”

  THIRTY - FIVE

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Inspector,” Corporal Yves Tremblay said to Ramirez after Charlie Pike left the room. “And if you tell anyone what I’ve said, I’ll deny this conversation took place.”

  Ramirez nodded. He was starting to feel more comfortable. This was familiar territory. Like being at home.

  “There is a commission of inquiry under way in Ireland at the moment. They’re investigating claims of sexual abuse at the Archdiocese of Dublin.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about it.” The one Chief O’Malley had mentioned.

  “We have reason to believe that this commission will report that the Catholic Church, at the highest levels, was not only aware of abuse by priests at the residential schools they managed, but covered it up for decades.”

  “This surprises you?” It didn’t surprise Ramirez; he would have expected it.

  “Not the cover-up itself, but how far it extends. When complaints were made, Church authorities persuaded the local police to let them deal with it. Then they forced secrecy on everyone involved and moved the offenders elsewhere. The Crimen sollicitationis was a secret Church decree that required everyone involved in a complaint about sexual advances by a priest to take an oath of silence. The victims, the priests assigned to investigate the complaints, all the witnesses. Or be excommunicated.”

  “I’m not sure that I understand how any of this applies to Rey Callendes.”

  “I’m getting there. Without someone willing to speak openly to us about the abuse they suffered, we can’t do a proper investigation. We can’t even get search warrants. It’s not Rey Callendes we’re after, it’s the higher-ups who covered up serious sexual and physical abuse for years. But the Vatican claims sovereign immunity. And it’s almost impossible to execute a search warrant against a church. Certainly not without reliable information.”

  “Ah, yes,” Ramirez said, “the sanctuary of the church has been a problem in my country as well.”

  Originally, fugitives from the law could take refuge in a church if they were innocent, but canonical law had long ago extended that right to include the guilty.

  “We know that the Catholic Church reassigned priests automatically,” said Tremblay, “as soon as they received complaints of sexual abuse involving children. They were sent all around the world. We’ve obtained access to an internal Church file that proves this was done to shield Church assets from lawsuits. Rey Callendes’s name is on documents in that file.”

  “How did you get it?” asked Ramirez.

  “It was leaked to us.”

  “I see,” Ramirez said. “A confidential source?”

  “I’d rather not say. But there is a strong Cuban connection. Our problem is that the Justice lawyers can’t use any of the documents in that file in either civil or criminal litigation without potentially revealing who gave it to us. But I can assure you, the information is highly credible. It establishes serious criminal conduct dating back to the 1960s. That’s the reason you’re here.”

  “I’m still not sure I understand.”

  “Here.” Tremblay handed him a thick file. “You will when you read this.”

  Ramirez flipped through the pages of internal correspondence between various priests, archbishops, and the Vatican. He was sickened by what he read.

  Dozens of allegations of sodomy, beatings, and the vicious rapes of young children. Confirmation of hundreds of cases of abuse in Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Brazil, Canada, Cuba. Revelations that would be devastating to the Catholic Church if made public.

  He found the document Tremblay had referred to.

  It was a report written when Padre Rey Callendes was in Cuba in 1992. It was in English, addressed to his superiors. “An eight-year-old boy has been injured in a sexual attack by another student,” it said. “The minor responsible has been transferred for re-education. The boy who was raped is in the Children’s Hospital in Havana with serious internal injuries. It is not known if he will survive.”

  Rubén Montenegro. No mention that Rodriguez Sanchez was the assailant. Or that Rey Callendes had abused Sanchez himself before moving on to a younger boy.

  Callendes wasn’t a Vatican envoy back then, thought Ramirez. He was a teacher at the Viñales boarding school. But maybe this was where his talent for diplomacy was first recognized by his superiors. The precise, almost clinical, description of the abuse, the rapid response. His fluency in a second language.

  Yves Tremblay sat drumming his fingers on the table. Ramirez closed the folder.

  “Let me guess. Rey Callendes was one of the pri
ests the Vatican sent to do the internal investigations whenever they received a complaint of child abuse.”

  Tremblay smiled tightly. “You’re quick, Inspector. We’ve been through thousands of documents disclosed to our government in the civil litigation and couldn’t find a connection before. But this proves the Holy See had a policy to deal with these cases. Rey Callendes helped the Vatican move personnel before they could be sued or criminally prosecuted.”

  “Let me ask you something, Corporal Tremblay. Where was Rey Callendes travelling from when he was stopped at the Ottawa airport? Was he entering Canada or leaving it? Where was he going?”

  Tremblay frowned. “He was on his way to Rome from Havana, with a brief stop here to change planes. He had arranged for a two-day layover in Geneva. You didn’t know?”

  Ramirez shook his head slowly. He had wrongly assumed that Callendes was returning to Havana at the time of his arrest. And that he had left Cuba after the Viñales school was closed in the late 1990s.

  We want him brought home, the minister had said. Callendes had either stayed in Cuba after the school’s closure or had returned for some reason. Either way, Geneva was hardly on the way to Rome.

  “The photographs on this laptop confirm what we’ve been told, Inspector Ramirez. But the more important information, from our perspective, is what’s contained in these documents.”

  “Won’t Callendes defend himself by saying that the photographs were gathered in the course of his investigations?”

  “He may, although that admission would expose the Church to liability. He’d have to admit that the Vatican knew about the abuse depicted in these photographs and did nothing to stop it or to report it to the proper authorities. But he could refuse to testify, given the consequences of speaking out.”

  Excommunication, thought Ramirez. Those were the likely consequences. More threatening to a Catholic than death, because it affected the next life, too.

  “Besides, he’s in poor health. Some kind of heart trouble. We want to use these documents in a different way, where we don’t need to rely on him at all. It could be years before all this is resolved. He could be dead by then.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “If we can say we got these documents from Cuban authorities—that is, from you—we can use them to get search warrants. Or at least threaten to. We knew you were investigating Rey Callendes, thanks to the contact made with us by your Ministry of the Interior. Frankly, it’s why Father Callendes was stopped at the airport in the first place. We want you to swear an affidavit suggesting you gave this file to us, instead of the other way around.”

  Ramirez sat back in his chair. So it wasn’t a request by the Canadian authorities that had precipitated his trip to Ottawa but a request initiated by the minister. The bigger picture was beginning to take shape. The outline, if not yet the details. “And you would use these threats of search warrants for what purpose?”

  “As Detective Pike may have told you, Canada is involved in a class action settlement involving thousands of abuse claims at Indian residential schools. The governments built the schools, but the churches supplied the personnel.”

  “He said the schools were church-run.”

  Tremblay nodded. “The majority of the claims involve the Catholic Church. The other parties—the United, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches, as well as the Government of Canada—agreed to a billion-dollar settlement about six months ago. But the Catholic Church has so far refused to pay its share. Negotiations are under way.”

  “And to encourage a successful resolution, you want me to swear a false statement.”

  Corporal Tremblay was prepared to doctor evidence; Charlie Pike had been a thief; Detective Ellis was a murderer. Perhaps all Canadian police were criminals, thought Ramirez. There could be more similarities between Canada and Cuba than he had realized. He reached into his jacket pocket for his cigar.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. This is a smoke-free building. If you want to smoke, you’ll have to go outside.”

  Ramirez put the cigar away, disappointed.

  “Our Justice Department is chomping at the bit on this one,” said Tremblay. “Think about it. No one needs to know where the information really came from. And now that you’ve read it, it’s not like you’d be lying. Well, not really.”

  “Let me make sure I understand your request clearly. You want me to attest that the Havana Major Crimes Unit provided this information to you, even though you gave it to me. Presumably, you want me to say that it came to our attention during our investigation into Father Callendes so that your courts will think that the information originated in Cuba instead of Canada. Is this correct?”

  “We all want the same thing, don’t we? We just have to be very careful,” Tremblay said. “We can’t lie under oath.”

  Ramirez somehow managed not to laugh. “Such evil deeds does religion prompt,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s a quotation from Lucretius.”

  The corporal looked confused. Once again, Ramirez missed Apiro. The pathologist would have laughed until he cried.

  “Nothing important,” said Ramirez. “Sometimes the only way to deal with atrocities is to joke about them.”

  There was irony in the Canadian policeman’s request. And in the half-truths the Minister of the Interior had told Ramirez about the job he was sent to do.

  Ramirez thought for a moment. “I think I can do this. But I need something from you in return.”

  “What?” asked Tremblay warily.

  “I have to bring Rey Callendes back to Cuba with me when I leave tomorrow night: my government insists on it. And if I’m going to claim that these documents were under my control, I need to have accurate copies of all of them. As well as the original laptop. Rey Callendes can’t be prosecuted in my country without it.”

  “That’s fair,” Tremblay nodded. “But you have to get me something in writing from your government that says he won’t be executed if we turn him over. If you do that, I can almost guarantee our Justice Department will agree. Believe me, the Canadian government is deeply conflicted about all of this. It has a strong base of Christian support that it doesn’t want to lose by going after a priest, but it has a tough law-and-order agenda as well. They’d much rather the priest be your problem. We have a new acting RCMP commissioner, and trust me, he wants Rey Callendes out of here, too. But we need this whole thing papered.”

  Papered. Ramirez took that to mean that Canadian officials wanted to be able to blame Cuba if their intelligence failed yet again. He didn’t see that as a problem. Everyone in Cuba blamed Cuban Intelligence, since it wasn’t always intelligent. Or intelligible, for that matter, given the ministry’s need to rely mostly on Russian and Chinese sources. The Chinese translation of the English phrase “wet floor,” for example, was “execution in progress,” which had caused at least one serious misunderstanding.

  “I understand your concern. I’m sure we can work things out. May I?”

  Ramirez opened the file of Vatican documents again and flipped through them until he came to the memorandum that mentioned Rey Callendes specifically.

  He brought his exit permit out of his pocket and looked at the signature more closely. He smiled to himself. The Minister of the Interior had been busy.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem, Corporal.”

  “Then I think we may have a deal. You can keep that file; it’s a copy. And remember, none of this ever happened. Do we understand each other?”

  “Completely,” said Ramirez, thinking how closely this discussion paralleled his conversation with the Minister of the Interior. Except, of course, for the ban on smoking.

  Framing the guilty. Rodriguez Sanchez would have approved.

  THIRTY - SIX

  “Twelve thousand children,” Inspector Ramirez said, shaking his head, as Charlie Pike drove him back to his hotel. It was late afternoon, but the sky was as dark as night. “It’s hard to believe. I can’t begin t
o imagine how much they suffered.”

  His head had reeled at the documentation of nuns and priests who put pins through children’s tongues to stop them from speaking their own languages. Who made them eat their own vomit and kneel for hours on concrete floors. And then sexually abused them on top of all that. His eyes had filled with tears at the statement of a little girl who said she knew whenever the priest wanted sex because he would open his desk drawer and bring out a roll of duct tape.

  He thought of his own daughter. He would kill anyone who did that to Estella. Or to his son. However old the assailant might be.

  “A lot of our people committed suicide because of what happened to them in those schools. We’re still losing them.”

  “They blamed themselves?” said Ramirez. “But they were small children. It wasn’t their fault.”

  Pike nodded. “Quite a few of them never went back to their reserves, because they couldn’t face their families. And when they grew up, they abused their own kids a lot of the time. Nobody knew how to be a parent after that. Their only adult role models were people who hurt them.”

  “What was the purpose of all of this? These were innocent children.”

  “To assimilate us, I guess. We weren’t seen as completely human, thanks to Charles Darwin. They started the residential schools back in the mid-1800s. But the last one didn’t close until the 1990s.”

  “My friend Hector Apiro is a doctor, but he takes issue with Darwin, too. He often jokes that if only the fittest survived, he wouldn’t last very long. He has a genetic defect that makes him very short. The way you speak of these schools, Detective Pike—I mean Charlie—it sounds personal. May I ask: did you go to one of these schools as well?”

  “I was sent to a day school. I was allowed to go home to sleep at night. But I remember a teacher who called me a ‘maudit sauvage’ just before she grabbed a big leather belt to whip me for picking up a toy. I didn’t even know what those words meant at the time, I just knew it was bad. Turns out it’s French for ‘damn savage.’ The school I was sent to was Jesuit-run. It was better than most. But that’s not saying a lot.”