Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

A few days later Walter asked me a strange question: do you have a bank account? I looked at him in surprise and said, of course not, why would I want something like that? I have everything I need right here, and he said, go with Jessica and open an account, I’ll give you instructions, don’t contradict me, I want you to be paid for the work you’ve done on the book, which is really excellent; Estiven has already had something and I want you to have the same as him, it’s only fair, don’t refuse, I won’t take no for an answer. I opened the account and Jessica put in two thousand dollars, but I said to her, I’ll never touch that money, never, and she replied, do whatever you like, it’s yours, I’m just following Walter’s suggestions.

I sent the book to a publishing house with a financial proposition, and three months later we received the galley proofs, which Walter and Estiven and I read out loud in my cabin. There were 987 pages, to which I decided to add a very brief history of the Ministry and a basic chronology of Walter’s life. Then came the question of the cover. My first suggestion, my friends, was a photograph of Walter during one of his services, showing him kneeling, bare-chested, and the congregation making the sign of the cross, but he said, no, José, I don’t want the book to be about me, I’m only an emissary, I communicate with something that’s already in the people, the nest where God resides; I know you mean well, but it can’t be a photograph of me. Miss Jessica suggested a photograph of the Chapel of Mercy the Living God and, with all the crosses in the vault lit up and looking really beautiful, but again he said no, we mustn’t ape the vanity of the church of Rome, and he opted for a photograph of a slum neighborhood with a group of black teenagers playing basketball, a Dodge Dart with flat tires, a drugstore on a corner, and three people sitting on the sidewalk in an expectant attitude; to one side of the picture a man in a sweater is talking to a woman who’s been beaten up, and in spite of the fact that the man has his back to us and is wearing a hood we sense that he’s somebody special and that he’s giving solace to the woman, who’s only just stopped crying and is starting to give a timid smile in spite of her bruised cheeks and the dried blood on her nose. Her expression is what the cover is all about, my friends, and finally we came to the last subject, which was how to distribute it among the parishioners, whether or not we should charge them, because obviously the Ministry was buying twenty thousand copies from the publisher, which was why they’d agreed to publish it immediately.

Again Miss Jessica gave her opinion, saying, we have to charge something to cover our costs; if we give it away people won’t attach the same value to it, after all, they buy Bibles, don’t they? In the end it was decided to give it away free to those members who contributed more than five hundred dollars a month, and we all agreed. To everyone else, it would sell for thirteen dollars, and I won’t even tell you how much of a fuss it caused. The book had to be reprinted several times because we didn’t have enough copies, and Walter was reborn. Excellent reviews appeared in the Miami Herald and other local newspapers, he gave long interviews on radio and TV, and we reached a hundred thousand copies, which was incredible; I was prouder than I’d ever been in my life, it was as if that object of a thousand pages was a child that other people appreciated and read, and that gained widespread recognition, but that I’d modestly helped to create.

Every joy has its danger, my friends, believe me, because after this resounding success those who were against us now took our good fortune personally and brought out the heavy artillery; I don’t know what he’d been paid, but one of the black faggots who came to Walter’s parties started spilling the beans, describing those parties to a newspaper, without skipping anything: the lines of coke, the poppers, the whiskey, and of course the sex, and the problem was that the boy was a minor.

Soon the detective showed up again, this time with a search warrant and six of his colleagues, but we were able to get out of things thanks to the Italian lawyers. A large check is a great help, a small check is a small help, so we settled for half, O.K.? The boy’s mother withdrew her complaint and everybody went home happy, but the next month there were two more accusations, one of them with recordings and cell phone photographs where you could see everything. The family told the Sicilians they’d drop everything for two million dollars, but Walter wouldn’t agree, going into one of his trances, which I’d once thought were mystical but now didn’t know what the hell they were or where they came from, and saying, I’ll protect everyone, there’s nothing to fear. Three days later, the next accusations fell like a meteor shower. The parents of six boys asked for millions in compensation for the abuse to their minors, presenting sworn statements, photographs, and videos. There was nothing we could do about it and the scandal blew up in the press.

The police came to take Walter away. It was a massive operation, they closed the neighboring streets, a helicopter flew over the house, and of course there were TV crews outside to film the arrest live. Large numbers of police officers took shelter behind the wall and the one who seemed to be in charge took out a loud-hailer and said, Reverend Walter de la Salle, please come out with your hands up, along with everyone else in the house.

I was watching it all that from my cabin, thinking, what a ridiculous spectacle! it isn’t as if we’re murderers! I opened the door to go toward where the police were, but at that moment I heard a series of shots, and I cried out, don’t shoot, they’re coming out! Much to my surprise, dear friends, the shots were coming from the top of the tower and one of the police officers was writhing wounded on the asphalt.

I threw myself on the ground and closed my eyes, and my head turned into a swarm of questions, or rather dilemmas or aporias, shall I go to where Walter is, stand by his side and resist until they shoot us down? should I go out and try to negotiate with the police, act as a mediator? go back to my cabin until the commotion dies down? Another burst of shots distracted me, and in a second I saw destruction hovering over us. My vision had come back, my brothers, my listeners, the one I’d dreamed some time earlier: the image of a monk leading a group of hooded men through a destroyed city; rubble, dead bodies, twisted metal, ash in the air, tongues of fire.

I crawled back to the cabin, because by now it was impossible to get near the house. The shots were tearing up the tiled floor of the patio and making holes in the walls; there was a shower of glass, tiles, red stone. The firing was concentrated on the tower, where there was fierce resistance, and I thought, what fools, there’s no way they can win, they ought to come out; I was still thinking that when I saw one of the gates of the garden open. Jessica was waving a white flag and coming out with a group: Felicity, two gardeners, and a driver; then Jefferson came out, wounded in one arm, and finally the bodyguards, but Walter wasn’t among them. They were all handcuffed and bundled into a van, but as the police moved toward the house more shots came from the tower.

He wants to die, I thought, he wants them to kill him like Christ; the response from outside was a violent one, and a minute later the first floor was in flames, with tongues of fire coming out through the windows and rising toward the tower. A SWAT team got in the house and a tanker truck put out the fire. By now, the shooting had stopped. After a while they signaled that they’d searched everywhere, but hadn’t found him, so the alert continued; and now comes the strangest part, my friends, which is that after the search not a trace of Walter’s body was found, not a cell or a print, nothing at all. He’d vanished into thin air.