Read the few pages. - Enjoy!
PREFACE
When I first set out to write Immaculate Deception, my intention was to deliver an action-packed page-turning thriller about counterfeiting crimes that involved the Roman Catholic Church. However, it was not until I started to delve deeper into background material about the Church’s nefarious activities that I realized their counterfeiting activities were merely the tip of the iceberg. The number of sex crimes that priests, even cardinals, had committed had reached epidemic proportions. As I continued to read on, I felt a chill running down my spine. It was the same malevolent feeling I used to get as an agent when I was investigating a major criminal case.
It was well-known fact that the Vatican was one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth. Yet with the current number of lawsuits related to sexual abuse and other forms of corruption, the coffers were now almost depleted. Total debt of bankrupted dioceses was already in the billions of dollars. How could a financially destitute Church continue to pay the court settlements for these lawsuits? They appeared to have found an easy solution. In the name of “sins or transgressions that could be forgiven,” they decided to simply sweep these crimes under the carpet.
By the year 2013, cover-ups and “rituals of forgiveness” had become standard operating procedure. The Vatican merely transferred abusive priests to other church properties without notifying the proper authorities they were housing bona fide sexual perverts still on the loose.
At a certain point I realized I needed to include details of this travesty in my novel. The work would be a blend of fiction and non-fiction that would include graphic descriptions of the Catholic Church’s sex rings, rituals, blackmailing activities and other abuses against innocent young boys, and girls as well. I would not hold back on the visuals or any of the lurid details. The reader needed to know exactly how these “priestly” sadomasochistic pleasures played out. I also needed to show the reader how members of the Catholic clergy were able to avoid court sentences that would have sent any non-Catholic to prison with potentially multiple felonies and in some cases, homicide as well.
Catholic, Protestants, Jews and Muslims are aware of these crimes. Notice I refer to these acts not as “sins” but as crimes. The difference between the two terms is noteworthy. A Catholic person who commits a sin goes to confession and is forgiven. Yet make no mistake about it: these are hard core crimes, linked to big money and big business.
I ask in this book just as I ask my fellow citizens of the world: why are these Catholic sinners/criminals not being punished for their illegal activities? Have the eyes of the world become blinded? The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Child (CRC) has finally forced the Vatican/Holy See to deal with its shoddy record on child abuse. It has given the Church until January 2014 to provide a detailed report, answering specific questions and providing confidential records regarding its handling of child abuse investigations. The new Pope appears to be in agreement with the U.N. and has expanded the Vatican's legal system to allow broader prosecution of sex crimes on Vatican grounds. On Vatican grounds. Has something important been deliberately omitted? What about prosecution of sex crimes on grounds worldwide? A priest with the Holy See’s diplomatic corps has told the Religion News Service that the U.N. is being manipulated by enemies of the church.
Ireland's Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, launched an unprecedented attack on the Vatican, accusing it of downplaying the rape and torture of Irish children by clerical sex abusers. Kenny said in parliament that the Cloyne report… had exposed the Vatican's attempt to frustrate the inquiry into child sex abuse. Kenny said the rape and torture of children had been downplayed or “managed” to uphold the institution's power and reputation.
With the whole world watching, Immaculate Deception delivers a climactic scene staged at the Vatican that builds to a wildly orgasmic struggle of good vs. evil that ultimately explodes in a graphically unforgettable coup de grace.
This novel is my passionate outcry against crimes that have continued to go unpunished. It is my hope that it will stir the same degree of passion in you so you will join with me in helping to bring sanity to the clergy and the courts that allow these illegal activities to continue. Our children are still being abused. This has to stop.
May God Be With You,
Donald Tucker, Phoenix AZ
Chapter One - Decisions
Saturday, February 13, 2010 – Larry’s Pool Hall - Chicago, Illinois
It was a typical Chicago “lake effects” day in mid-February. Blustery, raw, 24 degrees Fahrenheit with a sub-zero wind chill factor that cut to the bone. Yesterday’s heavy snow on less traveled streets had frozen into icy ridges, making driving on the side roads treacherous and unpredictable.
At least once a week U.S. Secret Service Agent Wes Charles got together to shoot some pool with Benny Portera, one of his informants.
Wes could think of other ways he’d rather spend a Saturday afternoon, but Benny couldn’t make it yesterday. His ’78 Lincoln clunker was in the shop and wouldn’t be ready until today, so Wes had to take whatever time he could get. Long ago he’d learned that sometimes, like most of the time, the job had to come first. Benny was Wes’s lucky penny. He always seemed to have the right connections.
The pool hall, “Larry’s,” was a drafty nondescript looking barn at the end of a street of foreclosures and empty lots. Half of the interior to the left of the bar and restaurant was partitioned off for rentals—a tattoo parlor, smoke shop, loan center, and pawn shop. It was the kind of place where losers and desperados, often the same species, hung out trying to make deals or meet the right joe to pull them out of their current crisis. Almost every customer was too focused on their problems to pay much attention to a faceless Secret Service agent who could easily pass for one of them.
Facelessness, like invisibility, was another of Wes’s arts that over time he’d perfected. He also had the color thing going for him; it helped that most blacks, Asians and Hispanics were look-alikes to the whites.
According to Benny Portera’s Italian birth certificate, his real name was Dario Taccini. Dark-haired, medium height and muscular with coarse features and a Mediterranean complexion, he had six different passports and residencies in several Middle East countries where he’d worked as a mercenary until 2008. Wes picked him up on counterfeiting charges linked to a Mafia money laundering scam. His connections were impressive.
“So this guy Masella, Tony Masella, is looking for a printer.” Benny picked up his cue stick.
And?” prodded Wes, rattling the ice cubes in his drink before downing the rest of it.
“You don’t think we could find one for him, do you?” Benny’s hand shook noticeably on the cue stick. Click!
Wes leaned forward, positioned his cue and aimed. Click-click-click!
“Do you?” Benny straightened, sucked in his breath and waited nervously for Wes’s response.
Wes moved around the pool table, said nothing and pretended to study the hit.
A printer to print counterfeit money! Tony Masella was one of the kingpins of the entire counterfeit operation that Wes and the Chicago USSS counterfeit squad had been trying to take down.
Like Benny, Masella was also Cosa Nostra. Apparently he was involved in a group that went several layers deep and extended to every Laundromat throughout the world. Mafia games like this one often started here in good old Chi, working with some interesting national banks that were partially owned by the Vatican.
Masella had almost been picked up before in connection with a Catholic charity organization that was passing counterfeit bills. According to the bank where customers had turned them in, the bills showed up in toy stores, supermarkets and clothing stores near Adams and Thomas streets. A month before, at a bank on West Chicago Avenue near Loyola University, some $100 bills had been turned in with the same serial numbers. They were produced on an ink jet printer whose encrypted yellow pixels tracked back to a printer purchased by Masella. After that incident apparently he’d smartened up and started to use other chumps to do his dirty work. He’d also learned that the counterfeiting had to be done on an offset printer where there was no way of tracking ownership.
Wes ordered another round of drinks for both of them and let Benny win the next two games while he weighed the odds of how the courts would look at a case like this.
If Wes was locating the printer and was indirectly in charge of the counterfeiting, it was certainly going to set off some alarms.
If it went to trial, and chances are it would, Wes knew it would be more than a “how”—how it was done. It would also be “who.” Who was sitting on the bench. Some of the courts had their own political agendas. If the media got involved—and because of the size of the case, of course they would—anything could happen.
Here’s what it looks like, Agent Charles. You print up the money for the sonofabitch and deliver it to him. As soon as he takes possession of it, you grab him.
“You printed the money, Agent Charles, and you handed it to him. Right? A setup with a printed invitation?”
Wrong!—but how else could he close in on the guy? How else could he bring down the whole fucking operation?
“It’s bigger than both of us, Wes, m’boy,” said the voice in his ear.
Masella must be desperate if he couldn’t find an offset counterfeit printer himself and he was asking one of his brothers for referrals. Masella trusted no one except himself. It was the kind of risk Masella didn’t usually take.
What the hell. He might as well do Benny a favor. Besides, he needed to keep him happy. Benny was proving to be a valuable informant. He’d already helped them get one counterfeiter behind bars.
“We can do it.” Wes laid down his cue stick.
Benny’s tan tee shirt had dark spots underneath the armpits and his forehead was beaded with sweat. He was usually pretty cool, but this was a big fish and there was too much in it for him to lose. Shit. If everything worked out, he had his own plan.
On the way out, Wes glanced over his shoulder as he always did when leaving a place, and caught a glimpse of a short bald-headed man with deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks and a large misshapen nose, directly behind him.
The man had a sinister look about him… where had he seen him before? Then he remembered. Adam Csonka was his name. He was a former priest with a colorful history. His clerical name used to be Father Bartholomew.
At the exit the man headed to the left, to the men’s room. Wes stepped inside to the hallway of video games and waited for Csonka to emerge. Before he drove away, just in case, Wes took a photo of his vehicle and captured the plate numbers.