F Paul Wilson - Novel 03

by Virgin (as Mary Elizabeth Murphy) (v2. 1)

  St. Joseph's parishioners will he instructed to attend services at St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery until their own church is reopened.

  The city has announced it will clear the area around St. Joseph's in order to allow Church investigative teams to do their work without interference.

  THE NEW YORK POST

  Emilio stood back and watched the police herd the Mary-hunters from the street in front of St. Joseph's. The hordes of the faithful were reluctant to go and protested vociferously. Some protested with more than their voices, crying they had driven thousands of miles to be healed and weren't about to be turned away now.

  But they were indeed turned away. And some of those who would not leave voluntarily were either dragged away or driven away in the backs of paddy wagons.

  By whatever means necessary, the entire block was cleared by nightfall. The church doors were locked and a police cordon was set up across each end of the street.

  Emilio shook his head in admiration. He didn't know how he had done it, but he saw the senador's hand in all this. There were still roadblocks before him, but the senador had cleared the major obstacle between Emilio and the relic.

  The rest was up to him.

  Already he had a plan.

  IN THE PACIFIC

  20° N, 128° W

  The storm continues to gain in size and strength as it races along its northeasterly course. It now stretches one hundred and fifty miles across as its cumulonimbus crown reaches to forty thousand feet.

  The spinning core of its heart increases its speed, and the entire storm moves with it. The swirling mass of violent weather is aimed toward northern Mexico.

  22

  Manhattan

  Decker honked and yelled and edged the D'Agostino's truck through the crowd until it nosed up against one of the light blue "Police Line" horses that blocked access to the street ahead. Beyond the barrier the pavement stretched dark and empty in front of St. Joseph's, illuminated in patches by the street lamps. An island of calm in a sea of frustrated Mary-hunters.

  "You know what to say?" Emilio said.

  Decker nodded. "Got it memorized."

  He jammed some gum into his mouth and slid out from behind the wheel as one of the cops approached.

  Emilio watched from his spot in the middle of the front seat. Molinari slouched to his right, trying to look casual with his elbow protruding from the open passenger window. Emilio was keeping a decidedly low profile at this point in their little mission. Decker and Mol sported extra facial hair, glasses, and nostril dilators to distort their appearances, but Emilio had gone to the greatest length to disguise himself. He'd added a thick black beard to augment his mustache, a shaggy wig, and a navy-blue knitted watch cap pulled low over his forehead, almost to his eyebrows. He was often caught in the background when the senador was photographed leaving his office or his car, and he didn't want the slightest risk of being identified later.

  "Street's closed, buddy," the cop said. "You gotta go down to—"

  "Gotta delivery here," Decker said, chewing noisily on the gum as he fished a slip of paper from his pocket. "The rect'ry."

  "Yeah? Nobody told me about that."

  "We deliver alla time, man. Youse guys maya shut down da choich, but dem priests still gotta eat, know'm sayin'?"

  As the cop stared at Decker, Emilio winced and closed his eyes. He heard Mol groan softly. Decker was laying it on thick. Maybe too thick.

  The cop pulled a flashlight from his belt. "Let's have a look at what you're deliverin'," he said. "You wouldn't be the first Mary-hunters tried to sneak by us tonight."

  Emilio nodded as Mol nudged him. They'd done this right. This was no fake D'Agostino's truck. This was the real thing. They'd hijacked it just as it left the store. The driver was bound, gagged and unconscious in the trunk of a car Mol had stolen this afternoon. The back of the panel truck was loaded with grocery bags, all scheduled for delivery elsewhere, but Emilio had changed the addresses on half a dozen bags; they now read "St. Joseph's rectory."

  Emilio heard the rear doors open, heard the rustle of paper as a few of the bags were inspected, then heard the door slam closed.

  Seconds later Decker was slipping back behind the wheel as the cop slid the barrier aside and waved them through.

  "'Choich?'" Mol said, leaning forward and staring at Decker. "'Choich?'"

  Decker shrugged, grinning. "What can I say? I'm a Method actor."

  Mol laughed and grabbed his crotch. "Method this!"

  Emilio let them blow off a little steam. They were in—past the guardhouse, so to speak—but they still had a long way to go.

  Decker gave a friendly wave to the cop standing on the sidewalk in front of the church as he drove past, then backed the truck into the alley on the far side of the rectory. Mol and Emilio got out, opened the rear of the trunk, grabbed some bags, and left the doors open as they approached the rectory's side door with loaded arms.

  A middle-aged woman opened the door.

  "A gift for Father Dan from one of his parishioners," Emilio said. "Is he in?"

  Emilio knew he was in—he'd confirmed that with a phone call thirty minutes ago.

  "Why, yes," the woman said. She let them into the foyer, then turned and called up the stairs behind her. "Father Dan! Someone here to see you!"

  By the time she turned back again, Mol had put his grocery bags down and had a pistol pointing at her face.

  "Not a word," he said, "or we'll shoot Father Dan. Understand?"

  Eyes wide, jaw trembling, utterly terrified, she nodded.

  "Anyone else in the house besides Father Dan?" Mol said.

  She shook her head.

  "Good." Mol smiled. "Now, let's find a nice little closet so we can lock you up where you won't get hurt."

  Emilio had his own automatic—a silenced Llama compact 9mm—ready and waiting for Father Dan when he came down the stairs.

  "Hello," the priest said. "What—"

  And then he saw the pistol.

  "Let's go to church, shall we, Father?" Emilio said.

  The young priest looked bewildered. "But there are police all over—"

  "The tunnel, Father Dan. We'll use the tunnel."

  The priest shook his head. "Tunnel? I don't know what you're—"

  Emilio jabbed the silencer tip against his ribs. "I'll shoot your housekeeper in the face."

  "All right!" Father Dan said, blanching. "All right. It's this way."

  "That's better," Emilio said, following close behind.

  Mol rejoined them then and gave Emilio a thumbs-up sign. The housekeeper was safely locked away. She'd keep quiet to protect her precious priest from being shot while the priest was leading them to the church in order to keep his housekeeper from being shot.

  Weren't guns wonderful?

  But repeated reminders never hurt. Emilio had worked this one out and memorized it: "No heroics, please, Father. We're not here to hurt anyone, but we're quite willing to do so without hesitation if the need arises. Remember that."

  Why are all these things happening, Mother?

  Carrie sat in the front pew, staring at the Virgin where she lay upon the altar.

  She could not get the sight of her father—now that he was dead, had died so horribly, it seemed all right to call him that—out of her head. The flames, the oily smoke, the smell, the obscene sizzle of burning human flesh, haunted her dreams and her waking hours, stealing her appetite, chasing her sleep. That had been no ordinary fire. Only the man had burned, nothing else.

  Did I do that, Mother? Did you? Or was that the work of Someone Else's hand?

  And now the church was closed, the sick and lame turned away, the building sealed, the street blocked off. What next? Tomorrow these aisles would be crowded with investigators from the Archdiocese and the Vatican, trailed by nosy, disrespectful bureaucrats from City Hall and Albany, from Washington and Israel, all poking, prodding, examining.

  They'll be interrogating me about how you got here. I won't
tell them a thing. It's not me I'm worried about, Mother. It's you. They'll treat you like a thing. An it. They may even decide you belong back in Israel. What'll I do then, Mother?

  Carrie felt tears begin to well in her eyes. She willed them away.

  There's a plan, isn't there, Mother. There has to be. I just have to have faith and—

  She heard a noise in the vestibule and turned. She smiled when she saw Dan leading two other strange-looking men up the aisle, but he did not return her smile. He looked pale and grim.

  And then she saw the pistols.

  "Dan?" she said, rising. "What's going on?"

  "I don't know." His voice was as tight as his features. "They came into the rectory and—"

  "What we want is very simple," the bigger, bearded one said. He stopped a dozen feet or so down the aisle from Carrie and let Dan continue toward her. He gestured toward the altar with his pistol. "We want the lady."

  Carrie was stunned for a few seconds, unable, unwilling to believe what she'd just heard.

  "Want her for what?" she managed to say.

  "No time for chatter, Sister. Here's how we'll do this. You two will carry her back through the tunnel to the rectory, and we'll take her from there. No tricks, no games, no heroics, and no one gets hurt." He gestured with his pistol at Dan. "You take the head and she'll take the feet. Let's move."

  "No!" Carrie said.

  The bearded man snapped his head back in surprise. Obviously he hadn't expected that.

  Neither had Carrie. The word had erupted from her with little or no forethought, propelled by fear, by anger, by outrage that anyone could even think of stealing the Virgin from the sanctuary of a church.

  She rose and faced him defiantly.

  "Get out of here."

  He stared at her for a heartbeat or two, then pointed his gun at Dan.

  "You cause me any trouble and I'll shoot your priest friend."

  "No, you won't. There's a cop outside that door. All I have to do is scream once and he'll be in here, and that will be the end of you. Get out now. I'll give you a chance to run, then I'm going to open the front doors and call the police inside."

  "I'm not kidding, lady," the big one said through his teeth. "Get up there and do what you're told."

  "Carrie, please," she heard Dan say from her left. "It's okay. They can't get past the cops with her anyway. So just do as he says."

  Dan might be right, but Carrie wasn't going to let these creeps get their filthy hands on the Virgin for even a few seconds.

  "Get out now or I scream."

  The shorter one looked about nervously, as if he wanted to take her up on the offer, but the bearded one stood firm. His eyes narrowed as he raised his pistol and aimed it at her chest. His voice was low and menacing.

  "No me jodas."

  He wouldn't dare, she thought. He's got to be bluffing.

  "All right," she said. "I gave you your chance."

  Still they didn't move, so she filled her lungs and—

  She saw the flash at the tip of the silencer, saw the pistol buck in his hand, heard a sound like phut!, felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her scream but she was punched backward and didn't seem to have any air to scream with. And then she was falling. Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an all-encompassing darkness. . . .

  Emilio stood frozen with his automatic still pointed at where she had been standing as he watched her fall and lay twitching on the marble floor, the red of her life soaking through the front of her habit and pooling around her.

  "Christ, Emilio!" Mol gasped beside him.

  "Carrie!" the priest cried, dropping to his knees beside her and gripping her limp shoulders. "Oh, God, Carrie!"

  I'm sorry, Emilio thought. I'm so sorry!

  And that shocked him. Because he'd killed before without the slightest shred of guilt. Anyone who threatened him or stood between him and what he wanted didn't deserve to live. It had always been that simple. But here, now, in this place, before that old woman's body on the altar, a new emotion, as unpleasant as it was unfamiliar, was seeping through him.

  Guilt.

  The priest looked up at him, tear-filled eyes wild, rage and grief distorting his features almost beyond recognition. With a low, animal-like growl he hurtled himself at Emilio.

  A bullet in the head would have been the simplest, most efficient response. But Emilio couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Not again, not here, with . . . her here. Instead he dodged aside and slammed the Llama's butt and trigger guard hard against the priest's skull, staggering him. Before the man could shake off the blow, Emilio hit him again, harder this time, knocking him to the floor where he lay still with a trickle of red oozing from his scalp.

  Mol had already started back down the center aisle.

  "Where are you going?"

  Mol turned and looked at her, fear in his eyes. "I—"

  "Shut up and stand still. Listen!"

  Emilio strained his ears through the silence. And as he'd hoped, it remained just that: silence. None of the noise in here had penetrated the heavy oak front doors; the cop outside had no idea there was anything going on inside.

  "All right," Emilio said, gesturing toward the altar. "Let's get moving."

  Mol hesitated, glanced once more at the front doors, then shrugged and hurried toward the altar. Emilio directed him toward the head of the body while he took the other end.

  But as he reached to take hold of the feet, he hesitated. He hadn't believed in this church-priest-God-religion bullshit since he'd been a little boy in Camino Verde and watched his older sister screw the neighborhood men in the back corner of their one-room shack. Any guilt he'd felt a moment ago had been a leftover from the times his grandmother would drag him off to church before he was big enough to tell her to go to hell. And yet ... a deep part of him was afraid to touch this mummified old woman, afraid a lightning bolt would crash through the ceiling of the church and fry him on the spot.

  "Bullshit!" he whispered and gripped the body's ankles.

  Nothing happened.

  Angry with himself for feeling relieved, he nodded to Mol, who had her by the shoulders, and together they lifted her off the altar.

  Surprisingly light. They each got a comfortable grip on her, then hurried down the center aisle, Emilio leading, carrying her feet first. Through the vestibule, down the steps into the locked-up soup kitchen in the cellar, through the tunnel, and back up into the rectory. All still quiet there. Decker would have been inside if anyone had come in. They eased the body out the side door, slipped her into the back atop the grocery bags, and locked the doors.

  Emilio climbed into the cab next to Decker and slapped the dashboard. "Let's go."

  "Any trouble?" Decker said as he nosed the truck into the street.

  "Not really," Emilio said.

  Mol snorted. "Like hell!"

  "What happened?" Decker said.

  "I'll tell you later," Emilio said. "Just drive."

  He wanted Decker cool and calm for the drive back past the police and through the crowd, but he needn't have worried. The police waved them by, and even made a path for them through the horde of Mary-hunters.

  Once they were free of the crowd and rolling toward the FDR Drive, Emilio allowed himself to breathe a little more easily. And he'd breathe even more easily when they ditched this rig and switched the body to the Avis panel truck he'd rented earlier. But he knew he wouldn't be able to relax fully until they had it aboard the senador's waiting jet and were airborne over LaGuardia.

  She is gone!

  Kesev violently elbowed his way through the crowd near St. Joseph's, leaving a trail of sore and angry Mary-hunters in his wake. Let them shout at him, wave their fists at him, he didn't care. He had to reach the church, had to know if his suspicion was true.

  During the past hour he had felt a dwindling of the Mother's presence, and then suddenly it was gone.

&nb
sp; Finally he reached the front of the crowd, but as he squeezed under the barricade, two blue-uniformed policemen, one white, one black, confronted him.

  "Back on the other side, buddy," the white one said.

  "You don't understand," Kesev told him. "She's gone. They've stolen her."

  He heard the crowd behind him begin to mutter and murmur with concern.

  "Now don't go starting trouble, mister," the black one said. "The lady's fine. We've been out here all night and nobody's been in or out of that church."

  "She's gone, I tell you!" Kesev turned to the crowd and shouted, "They've stolen the Mother right out from under your noses!"

  "You shut up!" the white policeman hissed in his ear.

  But Kesev wrenched free and began running toward the front of the church.

  "Come!" he shouted to the crowd. "Come see if I'm not telling you the truth!"

  That was all the crowd needed. With a roar they knocked over the police line horses and surged onto the street, engulfing any cop who tried to stop them.

  The lone policeman stationed in front of the church backed up to the front doors but decided to get out of the way as Kesev charged up the steps with the mob close behind him. A few good heaves from dozens of shoulders and the doors gave way and they flowed through the vestibule and into the nave.

  And stopped with cries of shock that rapidly dwindled, finally fading into horrified silence.

  The altar was bare. And near the end of the center aisle two figures huddled on the floor. Kesev recognized them immediately—the nun and the priest from the El Al plane back in July.

  The priest was kneeling in a pool of red, weeping, his deep, racking sobs reverberating through the church as blood from a scalp wound trickled down his forehead to mingle with his tears. In his arms lay the limp, blood-soaked form of the nun.

  Kesev, too, wept. But for another reason.

  CHUCK SCARBOROUGH: "This just in: the object in St. Joseph's church in Lower Manhattan, believed by many to be the remains of the Virgin Mary, has been stolen. Sister Carolyn Ferris, beloved by the thousands who have visited the church since the object first appeared there, was killed during the robbery, apparently while trying to prevent the theft. The devotees of the object, known as Mary-hunters, have gone on a rampage in the area around the church, demanding immediate capture of the killers and the return of what has come to be known as the Manhattan Madonna.