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recently named very colorful prelate of the Archdiocese of New York. The new pope had traveled to Miami in order to harvest the most conservative of conservatives and plant him on Fifth Avenue. After he’d been in residence for about a year, he was informed that someone had been helping himself to the contents of the collection plate to the tune of ten million dollars in twelve years.
    I consulted with Auerbach. He got together the software I’d need. He said, “At least it’s New York. You’ll get to see a play or something.”
    â€œAnything good on Broadway these days?”
    He gaped at me as if I were speaking Swahili.
    It’s hard to remember Auerbach doesn’t know everything.
    I went to New York and was welcomed by the cardinal with so much grace that I forgave my director and got the software going then and there. In two minutes I’d set up a vertical balance sheet and watched where it refused to remain vertical. Typical Ponzi scheme: Replace stolen old money with new money and then fake the balances. I said to the cardinal, “Have we got any priests or staff living the high life? A deacon with a house in the Caymans? Secretary with gambling debts? Mistress holed up at the Plaza? Bastard children squirreled away in the suburbs?”
    He smiled. “If we did, we wouldn’t have needed the FBI.” The smile faded. “I don’t like this any more than you do. Find him.”
    I apologized for being rude.
    He said, “I accept your apology. But I understand why you are annoyed, Agent. I have taken advantage of my position. I hope you will forgive me that.”
    Why not?
    Took me more than a week though. Two weeks. The cardinal’s bookkeeper, a very old priest, tiny and shy and kindly—so happy to help me—believed the Church in South America kept the peasants oppressed so the bishops could maintain their standing as the hemisphere’s nobility. So he’d set up a very tidy laundry and diverted a goodly number of contributions to Chilean revolutionaries.
    When all was said and done, the little bookkeeper was transferred to his new parish on a Hopi reservation in New Mexico, though I suggested jail. But cardinals are above the law. Their own law, preventing scandals, is paramount. He blessed me in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and held out his ring to be kissed.
    Then he said, “I hope that someday there may come a time when I can do a favor for you, Miss Rice.”
    I said, “Eminence, just keep praying for me. I’m sure I need it.”
    So now I got to remind my director of that mission. “You know how you insisted I go to New York awhile back? To do the favor for Cardinal de la Cruz?”
    â€œI certainly do. And you didn’t fail us.”
    â€œI have to spend a solid block of time in Texas.” I told him about my interest in Rona Leigh Glueck.
    â€œHow long a block?”
    â€œTen days, max.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “I guess there’s no worry of your stretching it out to two weeks, is there?”
    â€œNo, sir, there isn’t.”
    He leaned way back into his big comfortable leather director’s chair. “Poppy, it is not our job to find innocents on death row. Call that professor and his students out in Chicago—he’s springing guys left and right.”
    â€œBut it’s not his job either. Sir, it’s no one’s job. There is no regulatory commission to see that the condemned haven’t been victims of a corrupt system. I want a job like this because I have the equipment. The professor doesn’t. He only has chutzpah. It’s time for the authorities, for the law, to set an example and not leave it to volunteer do-gooders, God bless them all the same.”
    â€œThere is legislation—”
    â€œTen days, sir.”
    I plunked the letter on the desk, the one from Rona Leigh Glueck’s public defender with the piss-off message