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“We were friends,” Wright said of Joe Smith. “I relied on him totally for his financial experience. I felt Joe was a hard worker and he did a good job.”

When Rotatori questioned him about payments to a computer consultant with money routed through Zgoznik’s company, Wright said, “I was not aware of that.” Did he know how the subcontractor was paid? “I never really inquired … I assumed the diocese was paying him directly.”21

Wright admitted to arranging a $60,000 loan for one of his secretaries, Maria “Mitzy” Milos in the late 1990s. He cleared it with Pilla: “We didn’t work out the specifics, but he told us to work it out.” Mitzy Milos’s loan was not on church ledgers; when she fell behind on payments, Wright paid the $50,000 balance from Cemeteries. Mitzy Milos repaid it through paycheck deductions.

Against the image of a benevolent boss, Wright was a cipher on questions of deep money. He had no recollection of Zgoznik’s contractual ties to the diocese; he did not remember signing the first $185,000 bonus check for Smith in 1996, when his salary was $70,000. When Smith assumed his job as Wright moved on to Cemeteries, in 2000, he knew Smith was earning $135,000. “He said that he was going to negotiate his salary with the canonical advisors,” said Wright. That much, he remembered.

On the fulcrum issue of why and how in 1996 Wright approved a total bonus of $270,000 for Smith not to seek private sector work, he was hazy.

ROTATORI: Did you not ask Anton Zgoznik to check with universities and hospitals and see what they were paying their chief executive officers?

WRIGHT: No. I don’t recall doing that. I just recall Anton saying Joe would be making twice as much out in the public.

Wright did allude to a twist of regret. He had met with another priest, his spiritual director, to discuss whether to tell Pilla about a $270,000 off-the-books bonus. That dialogue of entombed secrecy (his spiritual adviser had passed on) confirmed for the Georgetown law graduate that he could, in conscience, keep mum on how Joe Smith got his money. Despite that nebulous notion of guilt, Wright’s memory hole deposited the ethical burden onto Anton Zgoznik.

Bishop Pilla took the stand. The smooth, dulcet tones of a homilist yielded to terse answers as a witness. “I considered it a very close relationship,” he said of Smith. “He was of great assistance to me because I’m not a business person. I have no training in that.”

Bishop Pilla’s use of money, secret accounts, the foiled grab for the Dolan house, were off-limits for questioning. His motives and behavior were not on trial. In the prosecution script, Tony Pilla was a victim. What, asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Siegel, did the bishop think of that anonymous letter that spilled out the news of payments between Smith and Zgoznik?

“Shocked,” testified Pilla. “I had complete trust in Mr. Smith. He was a valued co-worker in whom I had great confidence and trust.”

Shocked, registered Charlie Feliciano of testimony that recalled for him the scene in Casablanca when the police chief in Humphrey Bogart’s nightclub orders a probe of backroom gambling, saying Round up the usual suspects! just as someone hands the chief his winnings. But Charlie Feliciano was not on the jury.

Pilla said he knew nothing of the Wright-Smith agreement for the off-the-books bonus of $270,000. Nor, testified the bishop, had he known that Wright allowed a longtime executive at Cemeteries, Tom Kelly now, to retire, draw a pension, and continue to work, billing the diocese as a subcontractor off payroll. Father Wright felt for Tom Kelly: his wife had Alzheimer’s; her care costs were skyrocketing. Still, when Rotatori asked Pilla if he had discussed Tom Kelly’s deal with Wright, the bishop had no memory.

The silence between Father Wright and Bishop Pilla on diocesan finances hovered like a monolith, damp in folds of fog.

Only after the scandal broke had Pilla discussed Smith’s bonus with Wright, “expressing my serious concern, that I was not informed or consulted, in a reprimanding way, and my disappointment,