Pontiff (A Thriller)

by Richard Bowker

  The night air did little to sober—or cheer—him up. Kill the goddamn pope! People twisted things around in their stunted brains until almost anything made sense. Worshipping cows. Exterminating the Jews. Swallowing poisoned Kool-Aid. Jesus. Was it any wonder his ratings were through the roof?

  And the guy was apparently looking for his approval, and maybe even some advice. What do you think, Ed? High-powered rifle from a distance, or a handgun up close?

  Good questions, Bandini, or whatever the fuck your name is. Glad to have a chance to discuss this with someone of your mental prowess.

  McAllister struggled up the steps of the townhouse on Commonwealth Avenue, then made it to his top-floor condo. A gay couple lived on the second floor; they despised him. He took a long piss, then glanced at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked like hell. This is the guy you want passing judgment on your plot to off the pope?

  He went into the living room and sat at his desk. Christ, it was a mess. He took out the holy card the guy had given him with his phone number on it. There was a picture of Saint Francis of Assisi on the front; on the back was his prayer: "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace..."

  He threw the card into the mess. Then he fumbled through his Rolodex until he found Dave Leahy's number. Leahy was one of those guys McAllister found it impossible to figure out. He had thrown away a reasonable career because it was more important to spend his time protesting a situation he had no hope of changing. Now he pumped gas or something, abortions were still legal, and he claimed he'd never been happier. Pitiful.

  He dialed Leahy's number.

  His wife answered, a bitter little bitch who seemed to think McAllister was somehow personally responsible for her husband's wretched state. She greeted him icily, then went to get Leahy.

  A few moments later Leahy came on the line. "Hi Ed, what can I do for you?"

  "You know a guy named Bandini?"

  The briefest of pauses. "Bandini? Why no, that name isn't familiar."

  Leahy was too holy to be able to lie well. "Met him in a bar tonight," McAllister said. "He claims he's a buddy of yours from the movement."

  "It's a big movement, Ed. Maybe he does know me, and I just don't recognize the name."

  "Okay, fine, whatever. I suppose you don't know anything about this idiotic scheme of his, then."

  "Really, Ed, I—"

  "Right. Well, just on the off chance that you have some recovered memories of this guy and you figure out he really does exist, kindly put a leash on him or tie him to a tree before he does something extremely stupid. Are you clear on that?"

  "I guess so, Ed, but if you could be a bit more—"

  "No, I can't. Just do what I say. And give your wife a big kiss from me." McAllister hung up.

  There. Did that make him feel any better? Of course not.

  His condo was quiet. McAllister hated silence. When it was silent, he could hear himself thinking. He turned on the TV and ignored it. He was too tired to pour himself another drink.

  If they do manage to kill him here, or even make the attempt, he thought, someone's bound to blame me. The right-wing media stirring up hatred. There'd be a huge backlash. National soul-searching. Might even take me off the air.

  So fucking what? He could use a vacation.

  He was too tired and drunk to think. By the end of the day he hated thinking, hated opinions, hated people who had opinions. Maybe Leahy had the right idea. Pump gas, and stop thinking.

  Tonight that sounded like a very good way to live.

  He drifted off to sleep, as usual, in front of the endlessly talking TV.

  * * *

  Coulter stared up at McAllister's window and wept. All alone. Still no one to comfort him. You're stupid enough to think you can trust me. And you're stupid enough to think I care.

  God's Avenging Angel.

  So many Devils. So many people who had hurt him. So many people who had ignored his cries in the night.

  Was it really a sign from God, or had he just been naïve and thick-headed?

  And now he had to face Glanville, with the decision still unmade.

  "God help me," he whispered, but the tears did not stop.

  * * *

  Thursday at four o'clock. Glanville waited until Coulter was inside the confessional, and then he strode into the booth and slid back the screen. He could almost smell the fear and indecision on the other side. "I am extremely disappointed in you, Bandini," he began. "Don't you take this seriously? Do you think this is merely a joke?"

  "I—I don't understand."

  "You understand very well. I placed my trust in you, and the first thing you do is tell some talk-show host about the matter. The stupidity of it leaves me speechless."

  More fear, and confusion now. In the presence of the almighty Oz, who knows all and sees all. "I'm sorry," Coulter said. "I needed advice. I thought he—"

  "McAllister is a phony, and you're a fool. You've ruined the plan, and endangered yourself."

  "But he won't talk about it—I mean, on the radio or anything."

  Glanville ignored him. "Do you want to leave the country?"

  "What?"

  "I talked about it last time—another new identity, in a foreign country. Someplace where you might have a chance to survive your stupidity."

  "No, I mean, I want to help. I don't see why—"

  This was useless. It had been a bad idea to begin with, and arguing with Coulter wasn't going to salvage it. "It's over, Bandini," Glanville said softly. "It's over, Robert Coulter. I'm sorry—I really am. But this is bigger than you, and we have to move on." He slid the screen shut and left the confessional, hurrying out of the church in case Coulter got it in his head to follow him and argue his case.

  He didn't, though. Coulter was a pitiful little soul, despite all his cold-blooded killing. Glanville left the church by a side entrance and got into the car he had left there. Pitiful and doomed, he thought as he drove away. Glanville would do what he could to protect him, but he was very afraid that, by talking to that talk show host, Coulter had signed his own death warrant.

  * * *

  Coulter stayed where he was, trembling in the darkness.

  It's over.

  Out of the darkness, the Devil sneered at him.

  You. You come here.

  And the little boy cringed in the corner of the room, too frightened to move.

  You! his father shouted. Now!

  He started to cry, which only enraged his father more. His mother sat at the table, clutching her rosary beads, but making no move to help. He walked slowly towards his father.

  Why are you crying?

  The boy couldn't answer.

  Well, stop it!

  The boy couldn't stop.

  And then the first blow came, then another, and another. I... said... stop!

  The boy howled now. He had done nothing, nothing, but still the blows came.

  He lurched out of the darkness, onto the floor of the church.

  He made deals with God, promised to be better, to pray harder, but it was never enough. Still there was the all-encompassing anger, the rasped order, and then the blows, as if in atonement for some primal sin.

  He staggered to his feet and fled the church, panting.

  I mean, how idiotic do you have to be?

  He wiped away his tears, terrified that passersby would notice.

  And then God spoke to him, not through a hitchhiker, not through a billboard, but personally, on the sidewalk outside Blessed Sacrament Church. It was almost as if He had reached down and dried Coulter's tears.

  He knew what he had to do.

  He would show them. He would kill the pope, whether it was their plan or not. He would kill the pope and become a legend, whether they wanted him to or not. He would kill the pope, and save the world.

  He was still God's Avenging Angel, and he would have his vengeance.

  Chapter 8

  The first thing Sandra McKee did was get the statue out of her hou
se. She gave it to her mother, who of course treated it like a relic.

  The second thing she did was get an unlisted phone number.

  Mike didn't even try to convince her that something supernatural had occurred, didn't insist on getting the bloodstains analyzed; he just retreated even further inside himself. "I saw what I saw," was all he would say. "If there's a rational explanation, I don't know what it is."

  "There must be a rational explanation," she said. "You're not saying it's a miracle, are you? You're not joining up with my mother?"

  "I'm not doing anything," he replied. "And I'm not saying anything, except that I saw something that I can't explain."

  But she noticed him watching Erin in a different way now—not anything she could put her finger on, not anything she could complain about—but there was a kind of appraisal in his gaze that she found disheartening. He believed, and he was searching for signs that would confirm his belief.

  Sandra found herself doing the same thing. She tried to convince herself that she was simply confirming Erin's normality, but she knew it was more than that. She had no explanation for what had happened, either. She would have discounted it if it had merely been her mother and friends who had seen it. But Mike had seen it too, and he was not the kind of guy to succumb to hysteria, religious or otherwise.

  And Sandra herself, when she returned home that Sunday, expecting all the "miracle" nonsense to be done with, had seen the brownish stains streaking the statue. She couldn't prove the stains were blood, but she had no idea what else they might be, and no idea how they had gotten there, whatever they were. She thought about getting the statue tested, but she found the whole idea revolting.

  So she, too, watched. Erin seemed no different from before—just as sweet and lovable and, yes, damaged. The physical therapy was just as hard for her, the results were just as disappointing. She still wet herself sometimes. And there were no halos, no auras, no further miracles.

  Sandra also started thinking about Erin's past, searching for clues. So many people said she was "special"—was there anything to that, or was it just a bland compliment, without content or significance? She didn't know. There was no one to compare Erin with; she was just her little girl.

  Sandra didn't ask Mike if he was thinking the same thoughts. She didn't really want to know. He was doing all she could ask of him. Her mother wanted to bring more people—and statues—over, to have her pastor meet Erin, to set up a prayer service, and Mike turned down all her requests. And then the awful letter came in the mail from the tabloid, offering them ten thousand dollars for exclusive photos and interviews, and Mike simply threw it in the trash. She was afraid that if she pushed too hard, if they talked too much, something would change, and he would veer off in some direction that she didn't want to go. Their life was dangling by a thread, she felt, and the thread could snap at any moment.

  Sandra started spending a lot of time sitting on the deck at night, after Mike was asleep, smoking cigarettes and looking at the stars. It was so good to be alone, with no battles to fight. The universe seemed so big that her problems felt insignificant, at least for a while. "You don't care about a blood-stained statue, do you?" she asked the stars, and the stars were reassuringly silent.

  * * *

  And then came the morning when everything, and especially Sandra, changed once again. Mike had left for work, and Sandra was in the family room with Erin, reading the Globe and drinking her coffee. In the past it had been one of the most pleasant parts of the day, a time when she could feel close to her daughter without being weighed down by the responsibility of caring for her. Now too often phone calls and knocks on the door interrupted the idyll.

  This morning there were no interruptions, though. She was reading the comics when Erin said something. "Ope," it sounded like. "Ope."

  Hope? Erin rarely tried to say anything. Her sounds were never clear, and only a mother would try to understand them.

  Sandra put the paper down. "What is it, honey?"

  "Ope."

  Erin was raising an arm, trying to point. Sandra looked at her, struggling to decipher her message.

  She glanced around, still not understanding, and then abruptly the sound made sense. And at the same moment she understood how Mike must have felt, looking at that bleeding statue.

  Erin was pointing at the newspaper, lying on the coffee table in front of her. Pointing at a photograph of Pope John that accompanied an article about his visit to Boston. "Ope." Pope.

  Erin recognized the pope.

  "Yes, that's the pope, honey," Sandra said, as calmly as she could. "What about him? Can you say?"

  "Ope," Erin repeated. Except that Sandra could make out the initial consonant now, soft but audible. She was definitely saying pope. Sandra stared into her bright eyes, trying to make sense of it, struggling to figure out what could be going on in her brain. This went way beyond anything she had seen Erin accomplish since the accident.

  She wondered for a moment if it would be as obvious to someone else as it was to her. A single not very clear syllable. A vague gesture with her hand. But to Sandra it was as much a miracle as Tiffany O'Doul's acne clearing up, or the statue weeping tears of blood.

  It was more than a miracle. It was a message.

  "Pope John, honey," she said. "He's going to come to Boston, they say. We live near Boston. Do you understand?"

  Erin smiled.

  "Do you know the pope? Did you see him on TV? He's a new guy. Got to be an improvement over the last couple."

  Erin kept smiling while Sandra babbled. Sandra picked up the newspaper and they stared at the photo together. She hadn't really studied the pope before. He was old-looking, with grayish hair and a creased, weary face. It was still strange to see a black man wearing the white cassock of a pope, but she supposed people would get used to that. He didn't have that phony pious look a lot of priests had; he looked as though he had earned his holiness. Everyone said he'd had an extraordinary life.

  And then she seemed to recall something about him that she'd heard or read somewhere. She read through the article, and yes, there it was, mentioned again.

  He's the real thing, Sandra decided. He too had been touched by God. And hope bloomed like a flower inside her.

  Hope. Pope. Sandra looked at Erin, who was still staring at the photo. "It's real, isn't it?" she whispered. "Whatever is going on, it's real. And I've been so blind. Honey, we've got a lot of thinking to do."

  "Ope," Erin said happily.

  * * *

  "Do you believe in God, Mike?" Sandra asked her husband after he got home from work.

  Mike paused with his Coors Lite halfway to his lips.

  "It's not a trick question," Sandra said. "Really."

  He considered, obviously not convinced. "I'm not sure," he replied finally. "I don't know how you can prove it, one way or the other."

  "By miracles? Bleeding statues?"

  Mike shrugged. "Some things may look like miracles today, but science could have a simple explanation for them tomorrow. I don't know what the explanation could be for what I saw, but that doesn't mean there isn't one."

  "Maybe you just have to have faith."

  "Uh, this conversation itself is starting to sound fairly miraculous," Mike pointed out. "Since when does Sandra McKee talk about having faith?"

  "Since about nine o'clock this morning," she admitted. And she told him what had happened. "I know it doesn't sound like much, it's no lightning bolt out of the blue," she said afterward, "but it just made things jell for me. Things suddenly made sense."

  "I don't get it," Mike said. "What made sense?"

  "What's been happening. The other miracles. See, the pope is like Erin—they say he's healed people, too, when he was in prison, and then afterwards, people with AIDS and so forth. They mention it in the Globe here. The Church doesn't make a big deal about it—it probably embarrasses some people. So I think—please don't tell me I'm being ridiculous, because I'm not—I think God wants the pope t
o heal Erin. And I think Erin knows it."

  That caused Mike to put the beer can down and stare at her. She was prepared for that. She'd been preparing all day. "You haven't turned into, like, a Stepford Wife or something, have you?" he asked. "Really, you look just like the old Sandra. Maybe a little cuter."

  "Don't make fun," she said. "I know this sounds crazy. And it's hard for me to talk about. But I believe it. Something is happening. Can you imagine Erin—our Erin—recognizing a photograph of the pope? It's almost as if God is pushing us towards him—pushing us towards someone who works miracles."

  "What makes you think he can heal Erin?"

  "What makes you think he can't?"

  Mike shrugged. "If miracles happen, they don't happen to someone with Erin's problems. Skin diseases, sure. Tumors, maybe. Even AIDS, I suppose. Something with a mind-body connection, where belief can make a difference. Not massive brain trauma."

  "If a piece of plaster can weep tears of blood, why can't Erin be healed?" Sandra demanded.

  Mike was silent. It wasn't often that she could silence Mike with her logic. "So how are you planning to get the pope to heal her?" he asked finally, probing for another weakness. "It's not as if you can call up the Vatican and ask for an audience."

  "By the time he arrives in Boston, Erin is going to be so famous that he'll be asking to see her."

  "Famous?" Mike repeated suspiciously. "You mean—"

  "Yes," Sandra said. "Let them come. Let them all come. Erin won't mind. And I guarantee she will cure some of them. I guarantee there will be more miracles. Before very long the whole world will want to meet Erin McKee."

  "Let me see if I have this straight. You want to turn our lives totally upside down in the hope that Erin will become famous, so the pope will want to meet her and then heal her?"

  "Ope," Erin said suddenly from her wheelchair. Mike stared at her, and Sandra could see his eyes fill up with tears. He reached out and stroked Erin's hair. She smiled up at him.

  "That's what she said this morning?" he murmured.