Read Glitsky 02 - Guilt for Free Online Page A

(non-billable) with Dooher. Here, in private, the Archbishop wore tasseled black loafers, black slacks, a white dress shirt. Dooher, deeply molded – nearly imbedded – into the red leather chair, had his coat off, his tie loosened.
    'I don't know why these things always take me by surprise,' Flaherty was saying. 'I keep expecting better of my fellow man, and they keep letting me down. You'd think I'd learn.'
    Dooher nodded. 'The alternative, of course, is to expect nothing of your fellow man.'
    'I can't live like that. I can't help it. I believe that deep down, we're all made in the image of God, so our nature can't be bad. Am I wrong, Mark? I can't be wrong.'
    Dooher thought it best not to remind His Excellency that he had predicted exactly what would happen back in the early stages of the decision-making process over the current lawsuit. But he'd been over-ridden.
    'You're not all wrong, Jim. You've got to take it case by case.'
    Flaherty was standing by the open window, looking down over the schoolyard. He turned to his lawyer. 'As neat a turn away from philosophy and to the business at hand as one would expect.' He pulled a chair up. 'Okay, where are we today?'
    Reaching down for his props, though he didn't need them, Dooher pulled his briefcase from the floor, opened it, and extracted a yellow manila folder labeled
Felicia Diep.
    Mrs Diep had come to the United States in 1976 from Saigon, a young single mother with a substantial nest egg from her deceased husband in Vietnam. She'd settled in the lower Mission District of San Francisco, where she became a regular parishioner at St Michael's Parish and, not incidentally, a long-time paramour of its pastor, Father Peter Slocum.
    Over the course of the next twenty years, Mrs Diep gave Father Slocum something in the order of $50,000 for one thing and another, and all might have been well had not the good priest decided to take his promotion to Monsignor and move away from her, down the peninsula to Menlo Park.
    He had abandoned her and she wanted her money back, so she decided to go to a young lawyer in her community named Victor Trang.
    Trang wasn't in the medical field, but if he was, he would have qualified as an 'ambulance chaser'. Barely making a living in his first three years after graduating from one of the night schools that taught law, he took the case, hoping for no more than his fee of one third of the fifty grand Mrs Diep wanted.
    He sued the Archdiocese for fraud – Father Slocum wasn't celibate as promised, and he'd taken Mrs Diep's money under false pretenses, promising her over the years that he would eventually leave the priesthood and marry her.
    This was where Dooher got involved, and it hadn't been a big item on his plate. One of his associates took care of the preliminary motions in response to the lawsuit, then passed them up to him. He and Flaherty had determined that they would offer ten grand as a settlement and if Mrs Diep didn't accept it, they would go to court and take their chances.
    So in the middle of the previous week, Dooher had called Victor Trang, conveying the settlement offer. It was then he discovered that things had changed, and he'd arranged this meeting with Flaherty.
    The Archbishop's face did not exactly go pale, but he was rocked. He lifted his eyes from the folder. 'Three million dollars?'
    The lawyer nodded. 'Trang's got nothing else to do, Jim. The Church has deep pockets so he went looking.'
    Flaherty was trying to read and listen at the same time. 'Not very far, it seems.'
    'No.'
    'Slocum was sleeping with the daughter, too?'
    'Veronica, now nineteen. That's Trang's story. To say nothing of several other immigrants whose names he didn't provide. He may be bluffing.'
    Flaherty closed the folder abruptly. 'I know Slocum. It's possible Trang's not bluffing. This is nowhere near the first allegation.'
    This was not welcome news. Dooher leaned forward. 'If you knew some of this, why'd you make him a Monsignor?'
    A crooked