“Jesus wants me tonight, tonight’s when He’ll get me,” Father Lou said. “If not, not your decision, young man.”
Baladine laughed. He was making a smart–alecky comment back when I heard a worse sound than Baladine’s voice: a muffled outburst on the other side of the door. I couldn’t make out the words, but the cadence told me Mr. Contreras had woken up. He wanted to know what was going on, did Mitch have someone cornered on the other side? He was fiddling with the bolts.
In the instant that everyone’s attention slackened, Father Lou gave one of his captors a punch that knocked him over. I yelled at top volume to Mr. Contreras to leave the door alone and sped back down the hall to the basement stairs. I saw a red marker dancing on the floor, trying to find me. For one crazy moment I thought it was another sanctuary light. Then a gun spat fire at me as the red marker danced after me. Baladine had a laser sight. A death marker, not sanctuary. It terrified me so much that I hurled myself through the swinging door into the kitchen, Peppy running with me. In the light from the streetlamp I found the stairs and stumbled down them so fast I tripped over my feet and ended in a heap at the bottom. Behind me a shot echoed along the hallway. I prayed it hadn’t hit Father Lou. Or Mr. Contreras.
Peppy landed on top of me. We scrambled to our feet in a confused mess of dog and woman and moved as fast as possible toward the crypt. Behind me I could hear doors slamming as the pursuit looked for the exit I’d taken, and then I saw a flashlight finger on the stairwell. It gave me the view I needed of the basement. I was heading away from the crypt door. I righted myself, called Peppy to me, and managed to get us both inside. I slid the bolt home as another shot sounded.
My legs were shaking as I climbed back up the spiral stairs. Above me the church was still dark, but when I got to the top I could see a light bounce along one of the aisles. I waited behind the altar. I was trying to figure out from the sound what was going on, when I heard Baladine’s voice.
“Warshawski? I’ve got the priest and the old man. Come on out. Your life for theirs.”
“Don’t do it, doll.” Mr. Contreras was panting. “Don’t do it; run for help, I been around plenty long enough. Shouldn’t have opened the door, anyway.”
I slipped around the edge of the altarpiece, keeping low so that the altar itself shielded me from sight. I made my way to the old preaching tower and climbed up into it. From there I could see that the light in the aisle was coming from a flashlight. It was hard to see what lay behind it, but Father Lou and Mr. Contreras seemed to be attached to each other. One of Baladine’s thugs had a gun trained on them. I couldn’t hear or see Mitch.
“Your quarrel’s with me, Baladine,” I called. “Let the men go. When they’re safely inside the rectory, I’ll come out.”
The flashlight swung around in my direction. Baladine couldn’t see me, but he shone the light along the altar, the laser sight dancing behind it.
“Go open the front door to the church,” he finally said to his henchman. “Lemour can come in and earn his keep, since the priest knocked out Fergus. This place is too big to search alone. Don’t try anything, Warshawski: I’ll shoot your friends at the first wrong move you make.”
The underling went down the aisle and scrabbled with the heavy locks. I didn’t know what to do next. Peppy was crying to join me in my turret, and Baladine said irritably that he thought they’d shot the damned dog. The red laser sight moved around the sanctuary, trying to pick out a warm target, but the turret was between Peppy and him. He himself was shielded by one of the pillars, or I would have risked a shot at him.
“Aren’t there any lights in this damned place?” It was Lemour’s reedy voice coming in to the body of the church. “What do you need me for, boss? Hunt out the Warshki bitch? Turn on the lights and we’ll get her in no time. Drabek, go in the back and find the switches. I’ll cover the altar.”
Under cover of Lemour’s voice, I slipped out of the little turret. I had chosen it because I could shoot anyone who came close enough to me to attack it, but I realized it was a stupid hideout: all my friends would be dead while I defended myself, and then I’d run out of bullets and die as well. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled down the center aisle until I came to the pews. Making sure the safety was on, I stuck my gun in a jeans pocket and slithered along the floor toward Baladine. I wished I could have ordered Peppy to stay at the turret, but she was anxiously following me.
“I know you’re back there, Warshawski, I can hear you. Come out on the count of five or the first bullet goes into the old man.”
“It’s okay, cookie, don’t give up, I can take it, just don’t hold it against me that I let the guy in. You know there’s never been anyone like you in my life, all seventy–nine years, and I ain’t having you take a bullet just so I can see eighty.”
Baladine savagely ordered him to be quiet, but the old man was either beyond paying attention or deliberately trying to give me cover. He started recounting the first time he saw me, I was wearing a red top and cutoffs and going after a gangbanger, street punk, but nowhere near as bad as this bastard, pardon his French.
Baladine smacked him, I think with his pistol. When Mr. Contreras fell silent, Father Lou began to sing, in a loud, tuneless voice, a Latin chant. I risked getting to my feet and running toward Baladine. He had one hand on the flash, the other on the gun pointing at Mr. Contreras’s head. He was yelling at Father Lou to shut up or be killed when I got behind him and savagely chopped the back of his head.
He dropped the flashlight. His knees buckled, and I grabbed his right arm with all my might. He wrenched his arm free and his gun went off. A window shattered. Father Lou stuck out a foot and kicked the flashlight away, and I grappled with Baladine in the dark. Lemour shouted at the henchman to get the damned lights on, he was going to take care of Warshki once and for all.
Baladine was trying to twist his arm around to get a shot at me. I stayed behind him, pinning his left arm so he had only his gun hand free: if he wanted to fight he’d have to drop the gun. He jabbed backward with his gun arm. I stuck my knee in his back and pulled his left shoulder toward me. He dropped the gun, which went off again, and pulled me close to him, bending to flip me over his head. I held on and we landed on the floor together. I lost my grip in the fall and he straddled me, his hands locking around my throat. I brought a knee up to his groin. His hold slackened enough for me to get a breath and to try to pull my gun from my pocket.
In the dark next to me I heard a deep angry growl and felt a heavy furry body lean against me. Baladine gave a loud scream and let go of my neck. I wrenched away from him and bounced to my feet. I kicked out as hard as I could, not able to see him in the dark. I kicked high, wanting to miss the dog. My foot connected with bone. Baladine fell heavily against me. I backed away, ready to kick again, but he wasn’t moving. I must have knocked him out. I scrabbled under the pew and picked up the flashlight.
Mitch was lying across Baladine’s legs. Mitch, bleeding but alive. I couldn’t take time to figure out what had happened, how he’d bitten Baladine—I had Lemour and his partner to deal with. I shone the light briefly on Father Lou, but he and Mr. Contreras were handcuffed together, with their arms behind them. I couldn’t free them now.
Father Lou shouted a warning: Lemour had picked his way through the pews to my side. I hurled the flashlight into his face and ran back toward the altar.
A bullet whined and smashed into the altarpiece, and I smelled smoke. I ran behind the altarpiece. Lemour fired again, this time in front of me. Light flooded the building, and I was blinded. Lemour, running toward me, was blinded as well. He tripped across the open trapdoor and fell headlong down the spiral stairs. Glass splintered as he crashed to the bottom.
I braced myself, waiting for the henchman to come after me, when a fireman appeared behind the altar. I thought at first I was hallucinating, or that Baladine had dragooned the fire department along with the police, and lifted my gun.
“No need to shoot, you
ng lady,” the man said. “I’m here to put out the fire.”
47 For Those Who Also Serve
“The gunshots woke me and I saw the door to the church was open, so I snuck in. I heard everything but I didn’t know what to do, because BB was saying he had a cop to cover up for him. Then I thought, well, if the church was burning, the fire department would come, so I set fire to a newspaper in the kitchen and called 911 and told them the church was on fire. Then I was afraid I was really going to burn down the building. Is Mitch going to be okay? What did they say at the vet?”
We were sitting in the rectory kitchen, drinking more cambric tea as Father Lou and I tried to clean up the sodden mess the firemen had left behind.
“Robbie, you’re a hero. It was a brilliant idea, but next time you don’t have to set fire to the kitchen—they can’t tell downtown if the place is really burning up or not.” I laughed shakily. “Mitch is going to be okay. The vet said he took the bullet in his shoulder, not the heart, and even though he lost a lot of blood he should make it through.”
Peppy had stayed at the emergency vet to be a blood donor for her son. After the firemen finished putting out the kitchen fire, they’d gotten an ambulance for the wounded. Mr. Contreras and Baladine had both been carted off to County Hospital, although Mr. Contreras was protesting it was only a head injury, he’d survived worse than that at Anzio.
Detective Lemour was in the morgue. He’d broken his neck when he landed on the reliquary at the bottom of the stairs. The remaining two men from Carnifice Security had been carried off by a squadrol that the firemen had summoned. One of the officers driving the squadrol had been a student at St. Remigio’s six years ago. He was horrified at seeing his priest in handcuffs and was happy to accept Father Lou’s version of events: that Baladine had broken in with his two thugs, and that Lemour had died trying to rescue the priest.
“Saves trouble,” the priest said when the policeman had left. “Hard to get the cops to believe one of their own is bent. If Baladine denies the story when he recovers, he’ll have a lot of explaining to do, why Lemour was with him.”
The firemen helped me carry Mitch out to their own car. They gave Peppy and me a ride to the emergency vet and even stayed with me to bring me back to the church an hour later.
“Six o’clock,” Father Lou announced now. “Mass. Want to serve, young lady?”
I started to remind him I wasn’t even baptized, then saw his fierce look and shut my mouth. I followed him back down the hall to the church. Robbie trailed behind us. There was broken glass in the side aisle, and a piece of St. Veronica’s arm had been shot off the high altar, but the church looked remarkably placid in the daylight.
I went into the vestry with Father Lou and watched him robe. He told me what vessels to bring and just to do as he said and I’d be fine. I walked behind him to the Lady Chapel, where a half dozen women waited, teachers going to mass on the first morning of school.
Father Lou bowed to the altar and turned to the women. “I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the House of the Lord.”
48 Meet the Press
“This photograph is a close–up of a bruise on my abdomen. A forensic pathologist says he can identify at least the make and size of the boot that made it. There will be a trial, I’m suing the person who kicked me, and I’ll make an identification in court, so it doesn’t matter now whether he burns the boot or cleans it. The point is, I’m alive, and I can make the identification.”
The eleven people whose papers and broadcast stations had decided to send them to St. Remigio’s looked at each other with a kind of incredulity that said, is this what she dragged us out here for? I smiled at them, I hoped engagingly. When they had come into the school library where Morrell had set up the screen and the projector, they’d mobbed me, wanting answers to all kinds of questions, ranging from what I knew about Baladine’s injuries to where I’d been since getting out of Coolis. I promised they could ask me anything when I finished my presentation.
Murray Ryerson, looking both belligerent and sheepish, was the only one who hung back from the group swarming around me. He said he knew I couldn’t be dead, I was too much of a grandstander for that, then planted himself in a corner and made a big play of studying his own paper when I started speaking.
In the back of the room Father Lou sat with a couple of squarely built men whom the priest identified only as being from his parish council, there to help out if the need arose. Also in the back were Mr. Contreras with Mitch and Peppy, Lotty and Max, and Sal. Neither Mr. Contreras nor Mitch seemed any worse for their night in the church, although Mitch had a large bandage wrapped around his belly and shoulder. He was sitting up, grinning crazily at anyone who wanted to pet him. Morrell was off to one side, operating the projector.
It was a week after Baladine’s assault on the church. We had decided to go ahead with the show, because there were too many open–ended issues. Baladine was going to recover, and he was already trying to make a case that he had used some fancy equipment to scale the side of the church school, break in through the fourth–floor windows, and attack the priest simply in order to get his son back. I wanted my version in as many hands as possible.
“I’m starting with this picture because in a curious way it’s the crux of a difficult case involving Global Entertainment, Carnifice Security, and that perennial chestnut, Illinois politics. I’m alive, talking to you, but another young woman, who received what I believe are identical injuries, was not so fortunate. Nicola Aguinaldo died in the early hours of June seventeenth from a perforated intestine. Her body disappeared from the medical examiner’s office before an autopsy could be performed.”
We had made a still of Nicola smiling, from a frame of the home video where she’d been talking to Robbie. I explained who she was, using a slide with bullet points, how she’d landed in prison, and how I’d inadvertently found her.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know what became of her body: her grief–stricken mother was denied the chance to bury it. But my guess is that a political appointee of Jean–Claude Poilevy at the county morgue removed the body on Poilevy’s orders so that no one would be able to see what kind of boot kicked in Nicola Aguinaldo’s abdomen.”
I nodded at Morrell, who clicked up the slide of Hartigan standing over me with the stun gun. The audience gasped with shock.
“He was about six foot two, perhaps two hundred, two–twenty pounds. She wasn’t five feet tall and weighed maybe ninety pounds. She didn’t have too much of a chance against him. I managed to take this picture with a hidden camera seconds after I’d been shot with fifty thousand volts from a stun gun, right before I was kicked into insensibility.” I held up my right hand, which was in a kind of brace; I’d reinjured the fingers fighting Baladine. “Two of my fingers and five of the small bones in the back of my hand broke as I tried to protect my head.”
I heard another intake of horrified breath but continued with my presentation in a dry, academic voice. It was the only way I could speak without giving way to emotion. I went through the details of Nicola’s daughter’s death, what I’d been told by the women at Coolis about Nicola’s desperate grief and how she’d pounded on the guard’s chest when they laughed at her plea to be allowed to attend the baby’s funeral. I couldn’t look at Mr. Contreras; he was so upset that I knew my own composure would crack. I heard Peppy whining by his side with shared misery.
Morrell put up another slide. This one had a red flashing header reading Speculation! Speculation! We’d decided to use that to separate fact from guesswork. I told them I was guessing that Nicola was dumped on the Chicago streets in the same way I was.
“What takes some of the guesswork out of this is the fact that the guards changed my shirt before they took me out of Coolis. I was concussed, manacled, and running a high fever and not able to defend myself; they tore off my shirt and put on one that wouldn’t show the scorch marks from the stun gun.” I stopped for water, remembering Polsen touching the burne
d skin on my breasts. “They made a comment about not making the mistake they had before, where they had to change the victim’s shirt in Chicago, so they had clearly done this before. It’s just a guess that Nicola Aguinaldo was the person they’d done it to.
“Now here comes more speculation, and mighty interesting it is. The shirt they put on Aguinaldo had been made by Lucian Frenada. You may remember Mr. Frenada’s name: his dead body was found floating in Lake Michigan right before the Fourth of July. Everyone who isn’t brain–dead knows Frenada was a boyhood friend of Lacey Dowell, because Global has been trumpeting that information on television and in the Herald–Star for two months. They grew up together right here at St. Remigio’s.” I glanced at Murray. He was studying the floor.
Beth Blacksin from Channel 8 interrupted with a question about Lacey, and several other reporters jumped in. I ignored them and explained how Frenada had gone to Lacey and asked for a chance to make some of the Global Entertainment spin–off products.
“Money in movies isn’t just made on the screen. When your kid has to have that Captain Doberman T–shirt or those Space Beret action figures, the cash registers at Global are ringing. Mad Virgin shirts are very popular with young teens—they’re one of the first movie spin–off items to find a huge marketing success with teenage girls. Oversize denim jackets are another hot seller in Global’s Virginwear line.
“When Nicola Aguinaldo’s body was found, she was wearing one of the T–shirts that Lucian Frenada made as a demo for Teddy Trant at Global. You all remember the party at the Golden Glow back in June, when Frenada came and Lacey had him thrown out? He was demanding to know why Trant had stolen one of the shirts. Global didn’t want to work with him, but Frenada was highly suspicious that Trant might be going to copy some of his workmanship. Of course everyone thought Frenada was trying any tactic he could to get Lacey to influence Global into buying from him: why would a studio head, who could pick up a Mad Virgin T–shirt anytime he walked into his office, go to the trouble of stealing one from a small Humboldt Park entrepreneur?
Hard Time Page 39