by Declan Finn
Infernal Affairs
Saint Tommy, NYPD Book 3
Declan Finn
DEATH CULT
SAINT TOMMY, NYPD BOOK TWO
By Declan Finn
Published by Silver Empire
https://silverempire.org/
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover by Steve Beaulieu
Copyright © 2018, John Konecsni
All rights reserved.
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Martyr and Saint
2. Everybody Knows Your Name
3. SWATed
4. Picking Up the Pieces
5. Infernal Affairs
6. Doing the Stations
7. On the DL
8. Blue Mountain
9. Into Darkness
10. Bad Dog, No Cookie
11. Going to Warlock
12. Highway To Hell
13. Drag Me to … New Jersey?
14. Sympathy for the Bokor
15. Darkness Falls
16. License to Kill
17. The Case of the Dedicated DA
18. Escape from Great Neck
19. The Case of the Discarded Detective
20. Army of the Night
21. Castle Doctrine
22. Saints are Dead
23. Devil’s Advocate
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Declan Finn
Also from Silver Empire
Dedicated to Kathleen McGauran, who introduced me to new places to destroy in New Jersey.
Chapter 1
Martyr and Saint
A martyr is a title in the Catholic church for saints who died for their faith. It was a title I never expected to have.
As I sat in the front row, side seat of my church, Saint Gregory the Great, it occurred to me that the above title would be slapped upon my tombstone only as the bullets started to fly.
Father Jerome Delaney, the celebrant, was the first to be shot. The sharp crack of the rifle echoed through as he started to talk about how God was and is Love. He shuddered with the impact as the five bullets punched into his chest and fell back with the last bullet, which was impressive for a man as old as he had been. He was dead before he hit the floor.
My family and I were seated to the right of the altar as you faced the altar. We were less interested in being seen in the front and more interested in being in a position to drown out the guitarist on the other side of the altar from us with our singing. We weren’t good, but we were mildly in tune, unlike the guitar, or the cantor.
I was with Mariel, my wife, and Jeremy, my son. Mariel had long, wavy chestnut brown hair, round, deep-brown eyes, a pleasant heart-shaped face, and a healthy olive complexion. As Ben Franklin would say, we fit well together. Jeremy was eleven, energetic, and … very much an 11-year-old boy.
When the first shot went off, I dropped to one knee and reached for my handgun. My wife Mariel bent over to protect our unborn daughter. Our son Jeremy crouched so low he was nearly under the seats.
“Plan 22 C,” I said.
Both of them nodded. Ever since the serial killer had broken into our home, we had come up with a collection of contingency plans.
Plan C was always “run while I lay down cover fire.”
Before they could even get off the floor, I jumped onto the back of the chair in front of me. It tilted forward, and I jumped onto the next chair before it fell forward. I leaped to the small rail for climbing up on the altar -- it had been installed for those who couldn't do steps without holding onto something - and then took a giant leap to the center.
I went for the top of the altar for multiple reasons: first, visibility, and second, I wanted to be the biggest, clearest target. Thank God none of the paraphernalia for later in Mass was there yet.
The shooter was at the back of the church, rifle held high. Since the first shot, everyone in the church stood and ran. Few had ducked to cover-—along with those who had merely tripped those trying to run.
And half the church had run directly into the center aisle, in front of the shooters.
I dropped to one knee, gun up and ready. I grabbed the microphone from the altar and bellowed, “Freeze! Police!”
The rifle man turned and swung his muzzle up to aim for me.
Better than aiming at the congregation.
I aimed high and fired. The first bullet scraped along the barrel of the rifle, catching the ejector, and drilling into his shoulder. It turned him around before a round went off. He nearly decapitated a statue of the Virgin Mary. The second bullet struck up just right of center mass (his right, not mine). My third bullet missed by a hair, scoring him across the forehead.
The shooter’s rifle came down. He staggered back and grabbed his arm. He slumped up against the side of a pew, grabbed his rifle with his good hand, and raised the barrel to aim again.
I fired again, catching him in the breast, right beneath the clavicle. He leaned straight back this time and went down.
The only way to get to him would have been through the horde of church goers. I frowned, thought it over a moment, and prayed a little.
I pushed forward in a leap … that was aided by a little divine intervention. The levitation trick that I prayed for was just enough to leap from the altar to the front pew. I leaped from the back of the pew to the one behind it. I continued like that from one pew to another, looking like a parkour runner. I wasn’t thinking at the time, giving only a brief thought to how I would explain this if anyone had noticed–—God’s little parlor trick.
I leaped off once the crowd had petered out, landing in the aisle.
This also put me in direct line of sight of the shooter.
His muzzle came up a few inches and pulled the trigger.
It clicked.
The shooter looked as confused as I felt. I lunged forward and kicked the rifle away from him. The rifle had been damaged. My first bullet jammed the ejector, and the last spent casing did not eject.
The shooter was a walking cliché: socialist, hammer and sickle badge, Che Guevara shirt.
The shooter smiled at me and laughed. “Almost got you, you capitalist pig. You won’t be lucky next time.”
There was a burst of bullets from outside. My head shot up. The automatic gunfire was unlike the shooter I just dropped. I darted out of the back of the vestibule (away from the altar), then through the front door of the church.
Outside. The church was empty of people. Since I didn’t trust to locate the gunfire by sound alone (directionality of sound can be a pain in the butt), I turned right. Because there had been an active shooter in the church, and no one had appeared from the nearby police car parked near the entrance behind the altar side of the church.
I turned around the corner. Four men with M4 rifles were hosing down the three men crouched behind the patrol car. I charged the gunmen. They didn’t turn. I was within thirty feet of them when I opened fire. I emptied the magazine into two of the shooters.
The empty magazine ejected from the pistol as I came within arm’s reach of the remaining two shooters. I hammered my pistol behind the ear of the shooter on the le
ft. His head bounced off the rear windshield he was hiding behind. A second later, I crashed into the shooter on the right. I crushed the shooter between my shoulder and the side of an SUV. I drove my elbow into the shooter’s ear, and then pistol-whipped him. I went back and forth with my pistol, smacking it against the skull of each gunman in turn until they fell down.
I kicked aside the weapons, reloaded my pistol, then took two steps back, covering them. I called out, “Clear! NYPD! Plain clothes!”
Why didn’t they even consider sending in more than one guy to the church? I wondered. I immediately answered myself. Because I’m one guy going to Mass versus being ambushed by two armed cops. Duh.
Chapter 2
Everybody Knows Your Name
When my partner, Alex Packard, arrived, the party was already in full swing. The entire church had been sealed off, as had the surrounding block. This was especially fun when you consider that the road to one side of the church was the southbound service road for the Cross Island Expressway.
Alex strode in the front door of the church and up the stairs into the vestibule, now called the gathering space for reasons that surpassed all understanding. My family and I were on a bench in the corner, and he came right for us. He sat on the bench going at right angles to ours, leaned back, and smiled.
Alex was a slender, older man. He had an odd pot-belly in the middle of all of that skinny. It was probably from years of booze, but I wasn’t going to inquire too closely. I had never seen him take a drink. I only knew about his former drinking problem from a demon, who had been psyching him out at the time. His suit was gray and rumpled, just like he was. He was balding on top, with a graying mustache that Tom Selleck would have approved of. He carried a large paper bag.
“Really?” Alex asked. “Your wife is pregnant. You’re with your kid—hey, Jeremy—and you’re in church. Church, Tommy. Can’t you take even one day off?”
With my arm around Mariel’s shoulders, I gave him a half-shrug. “They find me. They always find me.”
Alex smirked. He shook his head. “No kidding.”
“I’m really not.” I explained the last words from the first gunman.
Alex winced. “No surprise.”
“Yeah!” Jeremy exclaimed excitedly. His voice dropped to a whisper that only mommy, daddy, and Uncle Alex could hear. “Because Daddy’s a superhero! They’re always going to find him.”
Isn’t that an encouraging thought? I pondered.
Alex merely smiled at Jeremy. “Kinda, Jerry.” He looked back to me. “I ran into Sarge on the way in. She handed me a nice little starter package for you.”
Alex raised the paper bag. He reached in and pulled out individual items, explaining each as he went along. Everything was in clear evidence bags, sealed with the red tape of the NYPD Crime Scene Unit. Father Delaney had already been wheeled out.
“They went through the shooter’s pockets,” Alex said as he went through the bag. “We had these.” The first item was a large evidence bag that even could have held the contents of Mariel’s purse. “Anti-psychotics by the truckload. I’m actually surprised he could walk upright.”
Alex placed it down on the bench next to him and grabbed the next bag. This one looked like the contents of his wallet. “Membership cards. He was a registered Demoncrat, as though we couldn’t tell from the Che T-shirt and that he was trying to shoot up a church.”
I smiled despite myself. Alex had taken to referring to anyone on the Left as a ‘Demoncrat’ ever since a demon-possessed serial killer who worked for the Women’s Health Corps tried to kill us—and after we discovered that the WHC itself was, in reality, a front for a Moloch-worshiping Death Cult. After a while, it did seem that evil had a particular political affiliation.
I had little problem with him saying it because he had genuine cause for a grudge. As most of New York City either voted Democrat or just didn’t vote, I was a touch more reluctant to brand all of them with the same demonic brush.
Then again, discussing much of the fallout from the WHC incident was another conversation.
“And,” Alex continued, “here’s the fun part.” He pulled out a smaller bag. This one clearly showed a large newspaper clipping. It was one photo—me, from nearly a year ago, during the incident with said demon. I didn’t know which headline it was under. It may have been the one who framed my arrest of the perp as Saint versus psycho or the one that claimed I framed an innocent abortionist because I was a Catholic.
“He really was there for you,” Alex explained. “Just you. We don’t have anything speaking to why.”
Mariel scoffed at that. “Maybe he was employed by LaBitch?” she asked, referring to the former head of the Women’s Health Corps that Mariel had personally pushed into a fire pit. “Or the Mayor? Or maybe he’s a dirty commie and just doesn’t like high-profile Catholics like Tommy?”
I frowned. I opened my mouth to dispute that … and gave up before I started. While I had spent most of my life trying to keep my head down and out of the public eye, the last year had been filled with enough various high-profile incidents that if I had caught the eye of some nut cases online, they would have had little trouble tracking my career.
“Lucky for me,” I said, “I moved after that article was published.” There were two reasons for that. One, the property damage caused the local village committee to drive us out of the private neighborhood. Two, the newspaper article that picture had been taken from had come complete with my home address. The newspaper had issued a non-apology, but the damage had been done, and we moved a little over eight months ago.
Unfortunately, someone had my home address and had had sent zombies to my house shortly thereafter.
“‘Lucky’ isn’t the term I’d use,” Alex said. He shrugged. “But that’s not my problem. My problem is they may hit me by accident.” He slid the evidence back into the bag. “For the record, the first shooter, the one in the church, is connected to very little, unless we think the entire Communist community is out to get Nolan.”
I chuckled. “In that case, time to arrest Columbia University.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Funny.”
I frowned. “No. Not really. Especially considering the number of people they murdered last century.”
Alex laughed. “Columbia or Communists?”
Mariel nudged me with the crown of her head. “Is there a difference?”
I looked to Alex. “When you say Communist …?”
“I mean that he’s a card-carrying commie. He has cards in his wallet for the party, for Anti-Fa.”
I winced. I had never had a personal encounter with them, but I had read enough to know I didn’t like them very much. For a group claiming to be “anti-fascist,” they were amazingly, well, fascist. Their tactics ranged from violence against people they disagreed with (which was anyone to the right of Mao and Stalin) to … even more violence against property. They had operated in Europe, beginning as anarchist Communists … because orderly Communism was bad, surely chaotic Communism would be even better? If you can’t take over a government-- or in the case of Russia keep one – maybe destroying it all would be progress? The European version of the moment hated Catholics … Quelle surprise.
“We know that it wasn’t an actual Anti-fa attack,” I said. “They tend to swarm. We would have had a few dozen raiding the church just to rip me apart. It might have even worked.”
Alex frowned. He was probably considering the various and sundry abilities I possess, running the odds of which would be the best option for going up against a riot. After putting down an entire prison riot by myself the previous year, surely a bunch of local thugs wouldn’t be a problem for me.
I wasn’t going to explain, yet again, that I wasn’t a superhero. While I exhibited some of the miraculous abilities usually attributed to saints, they weren’t something that I could take for granted—or even explain why they were given me. The powers came from God, not from me. I wasn’t a comic book superhero, no matter wh
at Alex or Jeremy insisted. Jeremy had a good excuse. He was ten.
At least, Jeremy knew better.
“Dad couldn’t do anything!” he exclaimed. “Too many witnesses. Do you want to bust his secret identity?”
Mariel and I smiled while Alex shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. Well, it would be hard to fit into a DD5 report. But that’s why I write them up when that happens.”
I said nothing, but said a silent thank you prayer to God that I hadn’t needed any of the fancier abilities that He had graced me with. While I still smelled out evil on a day-to-day basis, there had been no need to be in two places at once, levitate, drink poison, or heal deadly wounds. Considering the circumstances I was in, I would be perfectly happy if I never needed those abilities. Though to be honest, I was a little surprised that it had taken this long for a situation to arise again. I had gotten into so many firefights, I had a reputation. The calm between storms had been so long, I hadn’t been called “Wyatt Earp” in nearly a week.
So much for that going away.
“I’m told that the Bishop’s not too happy with the whole thing.”
I winced. That was something I didn’t want to deal with: Church politics. “Of course he’s not. He’s going to have to reconsecrate the church.” I sighed. “Can we leave now? Didn’t eat breakfast before we came.”
Alex shrugged. “I hear you. At least, there’s one good thing: you won’t be investigating what’s left. With any luck, this will be an isolated incident. The first shooter was just another in a long line of Demoncrat shooters.”