What did you do wrong?” she asked for about the hundredth time on the night before he was to report to prison. This turned out to not be a very easy question to answer, even for the normally adroit, articulate Dyson. He had to admit that his wife’s Brooklyn characterization of the legal assault as a ‘shakedown’ was apt; what was clear was that the charges were politically motivated.
America was on shaky ground in 2009, threatened by a near-collapse of her banking system and debilitated by a war against terror on two fronts. A radical new Administration had swept into power, borne on the enthusiasm of young people fueled by social media–based promises of a peaceful, progressive new era.
In reality, a few opportunistic businessmen with a net worth north of a billion dollars had paid for the new President’s ascent from obscurity. The very last thing they wanted was another media voice in the United States raising questions about how this President had been elected, or what tactics his Party was using to stay in power.
Hence, the lawsuit. Though White’s lawyers had appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court, it declined to review the two counts that remained against him. A few days later, Dyson White entered the American underworld of a federal penitentiary.
Michelle moved into an apartment in nearby Dallas, and twice a week rose at dawn to visit her husband in his purgatory. She was immensely gratified when his four-year sentence was commuted to two years on the basis of his exemplary behavior, and the day he was released found them both on a corporate jet winging its way to Fiumicino airport outside Rome.
White wanted to go to Mass, he told his wife, at St. Peter’s Basilica.
But first he was going to Confession.
There was no line. Tourists were scarce in this part of St Peter’s; only the faithful were interested in the quaint old Sacrament. Michelle watched her husband emerge from the Baroque wooden confessional in the gloom and walk slowly over to the pew where she was saying her own penance.
She’d told the priest about her sins – her fury at the mistreatment of her husband, her temptation to follow her wealthy women friends’ taste for the occult, her secret wish that something terrible would happen to the vile prosecutor who had persecuted Dyson. But when her longtime friend, now deeply involved in New Age practices, suggested that an ‘accident’ might ‘be arranged’ if Michelle could be persuaded to work hard to visualize this, Michelle had been taken aback.
“Y-you’re kidding, right?” she had replied, nonplussed. “Y-you want me to put a hex on this guy -- kinda like my grandmother and the ‘evil eye’?”
Her friend had been condescending.
REGINA | 92