Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  “Friend,” said Lynch. “We were out when I had a thought I should have had a couple days ago. I’m still thinking all this goes back to whatever Mrs Marslovak said in confession. But that only makes sense if someone knows what she said.”

  The priest put up his hands. “I didn’t say anything, and I’m not going to.”

  “I know. You wouldn’t have had time anyway. But somebody heard.”

  The priest’s mouth dropped open. “You mean–”

  “I mean I think somebody bugged your confessional, Father.”

  The priest pulled a ring of keys off a rack by the door. “We’ll go in through the basement. Light switches are down there.”

  Villanueva needed a few minutes to find the camera, longer than he expected. He was lying on his back, shining the penlight along the bottom of the pew, when he finally spotted it. Whoever had placed it had put it right up against one of the supports. Damn, it was small. Villanueva had never seen one so small. He slipped the pocket knife blade under the adhesive holding the unit and pried it loose. Villanueva pulled a small Ziploc bag out of his pants pocket, dropped the camera in, sealed the bag, and shoved it back into his pocket. The camera had been pointed at the set of doors with the priest’s name on the plate over the middle door.

  The confessionals took a while. He started with the priest’s booth, figuring if you had good pickup on the unit, you might get stuff from both the other booths. Checked under the chair, checked the molding around the doorjambs and around the little sliding screens into the other booths. Checked along the baseboards and the molding in the corners and the juncture between the walls and the ceiling. Nothing. Did the same in the booth on the right. Nothing again.

  Villanueva had gone through the entire third booth and was getting pissed off. If the camera was that small, then the bug was probably even smaller. Must have missed it. He’d have to start over in the priest’s booth. He checked his watch. 10.44. He’d already been inside for twenty-five minutes. Church was quiet, and he had no reason to expect company. But this whole job seemed queer from the start, and Villanueva wanted to get out, get home.

  He was about to leave the booth when something caught his eye, just a sliver of something sticking out from behind the molding on the right side of the sliding screen that opened into the priest’s booth. Could be a hair or even an antenna from a cockroach. Villanueva held the light in his mouth and carefully slid the knife blade up behind the molding. Bingo. Bug wasn’t much bigger than a fat grain of rice, couple wires leading out of it. He put it in the bag with the camera. 10.47.

  Lynch put his hand on Father Hughes’ shoulder just as the priest went to put his key into the lock in the basement door. Hughes looked back. Lynch put a finger to his lips and pointed up at the bypass wires rigged into the alarm at the top of the door. Lynch motioned the priest back toward the stairs.

  “I left my cell phone in the car,” Lynch whispered. “I need you to get back to the rectory as fast as you can. Call 911, tell them you have a break-in at the church. Tell them there is an officer on the scene who needs back-up. Go.”

  The priest scurried up the stairs and back up the narrow walk. Lynch edged along the wall and back to the door. He reached up under his jacket, sliding the Berretta 9mm out of the hip holster. Standing on the last step with his back flat against the wall of the church, Lynch reached down and slowly turned the doorknob and pulled. The door moved. It was open. For just an instant, in his peripheral vision, Lynch thought he saw light in the door’s window.

  Villanueva had just gotten back down the stairs to the basement when he saw the door move. Just a fraction, but it moved. Instantly, he shut off the penlight. His eyes took a second to adjust to the darkness, but Villanueva spent a lot of time in the dark. He was used to it. Slowly, he unzipped the right-hand pocket on the warm-ups and pulled out the .38.

  He saw part of a head slip into view through the door’s window, just for a second, then pull back. The head had come down into the top left corner of the window, so somebody was standing on the stairs, leaning down to peek in. Villanueva knew the person wouldn’t be able to see him inside in the dark. He edged over to the wall, made his way along the wall to the corner, then worked along that wall toward the door.

  Villanueva pictured the situation in his head. He had his back to the interior wall to the right of the door. Whoever was outside probably had his back to the exterior wall on the other side of the door. Difference being, Villanueva knew where the guy on the stairs was. That guy had no idea where Villanueva was.

  Villanueva ran through the possibilities in his mind. Could be the priest, janitor for the parish, somebody like that. Maybe the guy noticed the bypass on the alarm, maybe he noticed the door was unlocked. Either way, he’d probably be on his way back to the rectory, probably be calling the cops about now. But Villanueva didn’t think he’d take that peek back in the window. And if it was somebody like that, then they weren’t there now. Sooner he got the hell out the better.

  Could be the person saw the door a while ago, had already called the cops, now the cops were waiting for him. No. Cops would come in and get him, be on the bullhorn, have the whole place lit up.

  That left the chink bitch or someone working for her. She said she’d find him. Maybe this was her plan. Pop him right on the stairs, leave the bugs on him, set him up for the Marslovak shooting.

  Thing was, any way he looked at it, his situation wasn’t going to get better. The door was still open a fraction. He was just a step from it. Get the gun up, hit the door with his shoulder, come through ready to start shooting up the stairs. Hope he didn’t see anything. See anything, a shoe, a leg, start pulling the trigger. Best chance he had.

  Villanueva took a couple deep breaths, tried to relax some of the tension out, raised the gun, and slammed into the door.

  Lynch leaned down to take a peek in the window, pulled his head back instantly. Stupid move. Dark out here, but even darker in there. All he’d do looking through the glass was silhouette his head in the window, give the guy a shot at him. Lynch flattened back against the wall. Could have sworn he’d seen a light. Gone now. If somebody had just shut off a light in the basement, then he’d probably seen Lynch peek in the window. Guy might head back upstairs, try to get out another door. Lynch started sliding back up the stairs, keeping his eye on the basement door as he went up. Figured he could get down to the end of the walk, watch the basement stairs and the vestibule door, cover two exits anyway. Guy ran for it, Lynch would just have to trust he could run him down.

  Lynch was halfway up the stairs when the door slammed out, wanging against the cement at the back of the stairwell. A man in dark clothes flew into the cement well, arms extended, a loud crack and a muzzle flash as he fired into the stairs where Lynch had just been. The round hit the step below Lynch’s feet, throwing up cement chips. Lynch felt something cut into his right leg, just above the ankle. Lynch brought his gun up and fired, but the guy had kept moving left, across the stairwell, bringing his gun up higher, seeing Lynch further up the stairs. Lynch’s round punched into the steel door, sparks flying. Another round dug into the wall just in front and to the right of Lynch’s head, bits of cement stinging Lynch’s face, Lynch feeling some blood, his right eye clouding up. He heard another shot, but didn’t feel anything. Guy was running out of options down there, trying to back into the corner now, trying to get behind the door, trying to bring the gun right. Lynch started squeezing off rounds as fast as he could, aiming for the space between the door and the wall. The sound of the shots in the cement well punched into Lynch’s ears like nails, the strobing of the muzzle flash revealing the man in the dark tracksuit as he was slammed back into the wall, the graceless spasmodic jerking as Lynch’s rounds tore into him, one more flash as the man pulled his trigger again, the round ricocheting off the floor and whining up the stairs and into the night.

  Lynch felt the hammer in the Beretta click down on an empty chamber. Instinctively, he thumbed the clip release, the to
p note of his brass still tinkling off the cement as the empty clip clattered down the cement stairs. Lynch tore the spare clip from his belt, slapped it into the Beretta, pulled back the slide, and brought the gun back to bear on the target.

  The man was crumpled in the corner of the stairwell, a short-barreled revolver on the cement near his left leg. Lynch went down the stairs carefully, keeping the Beretta level, then flicked the revolver away from the man with his right foot. Lynch could smell blood, could see it beginning to spread around the man. The man’s hand moved a little, and he heard the man trying to say something. Lynch leaned down.

  “Fucking chink,” the man said, the words rasping and bubbling through the blood that spilled out of his mouth and down his chin. “Fucking chink.”

  Lynch sat on the gurney outside the rear of the ambulance. The EMTs had bandaged his leg where a bullet fragment had punched through his calf, wrapped a turban around his head and taped a piece of gauze over his right eye. Another bandage was on the right side of his neck. They’d cut his right pant leg open past the knee and stripped off the sock and shoe. The pant leg was soaked with blood. Lynch had also bled down the right side of his jacket and shirt. One of the EMTs gave him a blanket. Lynch draped it around his shoulders. Rain had stopped, but it was getting colder.

  “You’re gonna need to get some shit picked out of your face, get that leg wound cleaned out, get everything sutured up,” one of the EMTs told him. The guy peeled off his latex gloves and started packing up his material. “Somebody’s got to take a good look at the eye, too. I’m not messing with that. You should be OK. Face is gonna look like shit for a while.”

  “Hey,” Lynch said. “You should see the other guy.”

  “I did. His face looks fine.”

  Captain Starshak walked over. “He about ready to go?”

  “Yeah,” the EMT said. “Soon as you guys say, we’ll take him in.”

  “OK,” said Starshak. “Give us a second here.”

  The EMT walked around to the front of the unit.

  “How you feeling, John?”

  Lynch shrugged. “Like I got shot a couple times and mainlined some adrenaline.”

  “You’re a lucky son of a bitch, you know it? Looks like the guy got four rounds off from about six feet inside a cement box, and all you picked up were some fragments.”

  “Yeah. Remind me to grab some Lotto tickets on the way home.” Lynch gave a little grunt, shifted on the gurney. “The OPS guys happy?” Lynch had already given a quick statement to the office of professional standards investigators who looked into all officer-involved shootings. They had his gun.

  “Far as I know,” said Starshak. “Hard to see where they can have a problem. Priest backs up your story, crime scene matches up. They wondered a little did you have to shoot the guy so much. You put eight rounds into him between his belt and his collarbone.”

  “Yeah, well, he was shooting at me. I got a little excited.”

  “What I told em. Right before I told em to go fuck themselves. You know who you popped?”

  “Didn’t get a great look. Dark down there, and he was spitting up a lot of blood.”

  “Jose Villanueva.”

  “The second-story guy?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He’s doing churches now, boosting chalices? Seems a little low-rent for him.”

  “Wasn’t after the chalices. Had a baggie in his pocket with some hi-tech crap in it. Priest told me what you were thinking about the confessional being bugged. Looks like you were right.”

  “The electronics point anywhere?”

  “Sending them down to the tech weenies, see what they can make of them.” Starshak let out a long exhale, his breath clouding in the cold, damp air. “Fucking cold. You don’t figure he shot old lady Marslovak? Coming back to pick up his stuff?”

  Lynch shrugged. “Toss his place, I guess, see if you find a long gun. Be for-hire if it’s him, but I don’t remember him doing anything like this. And he would have had to learn to shoot somewhere. He ex-military?”

  “Slo-mo’s checking.”

  “More likely somebody hired him to clean up.”

  “You mean after they hire somebody else to pop the Marslovak woman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lotta hiring. Jose didn’t work cheap, either.”

  Lynch nodded. “He said something right before he died. Said ‘fucking chink.’ Said it a couple of times.”

  “So?”

  “So somebody says fucking chink in this town, who do you think of?”

  “Paddy Wang?”

  “Yeah. Did I tell you he turned up where I was eating a couple nights back? Picked up my tab, told me I gotta show up at the Connemara Ball this year.”

  “Think we should haul him in, shake him up a little?”

  “Shake up Paddy Wang? With what? A nuke? Nah. Let me think on it. I’ll figure some way to come at him.” Lynch saw Father Hughes and Liz Johnson standing across the street by the curb. Her face was red and her eyes looked puffy. She gave a little wave, uncertain. He waved back, smiled, which made his face hurt.

  “OK, Lynch, get yourself patched up. I’ll see what we can make of Villanueva. So that the blonde from McGinty’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think now that your face is all messed up she might be looking for a replacement?”

  Lynch flipped him off. Starshak smiled, clapped Lynch on the shoulder, and gestured to the EMTs. They came back, strapped Lynch to the gurney, and rolled it inside the unit. Lynch watched through the back window as the ambulance pulled out, the flashing lights washing through the rain-dampened branches of the trees and into the sky, staining everything red. Lynch was tired suddenly, and feeling empty. And cold.

  At Northwestern, the ER docs irrigated and sutured the wound on his leg, picked nine bullet and cement fragments out of his head and neck, and removed a shard of cement from his eye. It was almost 3am when they were done.

  “All right, detective. We’re going to have to keep an eye on that leg, make sure we don’t get an infection.” The doctor handed Lynch two bottles of pills. “The antibiotics should help. You’ve had some here. Take four when you wake up, then two every four hours until they’re gone. The other bottle is for pain. No more tonight. We’ve shot you up pretty good. You’re going to hurt in the morning, though. Same deal, two every four hours. Also, you need to keep that eye covered for at least three or four days. Any questions?”

  Lynch shook his head. He felt groggy. His leg was throbbing faintly. He couldn’t feel it clearly. It was more like a premonition. The side of his head was still numb from the local they’d injected before they went to work.

  “You got a ride home? Got somebody to stay with you tonight?”

  Lynch tried to focus. “One of the uniforms’ll get me home, I guess.”

  “OK,” the doctor said. “You’ve got some people waiting for you out front.”

  A nurse wheeled Lynch to the waiting area. Starshak and Bernstein were standing by the door. Johnson was sitting in a chair.

  “He gonna be OK, doc?” Starshak asked.

  “Lucky man,” said the doctor. “The fragment in his neck came real close to his carotid, and the eye could have been a lot worse.”

  Bernstein squatted down next to the chair. “How you feeling?”

  “How do I look?” Lynch asked.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Feel worse,” Lynch said.

  “You want me to get you home?” asked Bernstein.

  Johnson stood up. “I can get him home.”

  Bernstein looked at Johnson, then looked back at Lynch.

  “Yeah,” said Lynch. “Thanks anyway, Slo-mo, I got a ride.”

  The doctor walked over to Johnson. “Can you stay with him tonight?”

  Johnson looked at Lynch, he nodded. “Sure,” she said.

  The doc pulled her aside. “He’s a macho guy, isn’t going to ask for help. Keep him warm. Keep him quiet. Liquids are good �
�� orange juice, water. No booze. Food is fine in the morning. This probably hasn’t all hit him yet, but it will. Be there for him for that.”

  “I will,” she said.

  Johnson got Lynch home and stripped the ruined clothes off him. She found a big mixing bowl in the kitchen and filled it with warm water. She got a washcloth and some towels and soap from the bathroom. She laid the towels out on the big easy chair in the living room and helped Lynch into it. Then she carefully washed the blood and sweat from his body, drying him gently. She found an old Boston College sweatsuit in a closet and helped Lynch put it on. Then she slipped her arm under his and helped him walk back to the bed. She tucked him under the covers and pulled a chair up next to him.

  “Guess I ruined your date,” Lynch said.

  She shook her head. “I can wait on dessert.”

  “Good thing,” Lynch said. “Kitchen’s closed for repairs.”

  Johnson started to laugh, but cried instead. “I was so scared,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She nodded. Tried to speak, couldn’t.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  She kissed his hand again, held it to her. “You sleep,” she said. “I’ll be here. I’ll be right here.”

  Johnson slept in the chair, waking as Lynch tossed. Around 5.00, he bolted up in the bed, throwing off the blankets and lurching to his feet. His eyes were wide and panicked, and his face glistened with sweat. He swung his right arm wildly, then stumbled on his bad leg, banging into the wall near the door. He was shouting something, but the words were choked and garbled. He froze for a moment, his eyes seeming to clear, then staggered toward the door, panting, starting to retch.

  Johnson ran after him to the bathroom. Lynch was down on his knees, his forearms along the sides of the toilet seat, as he vomited violently into the bowl. Johnson knelt next to him, her arm across his back. He stopped, finally, collapsing against her, a string of mucus hanging from his chin. She wiped it from him with her hand and held him against her. She felt his head pressed against her breast. She felt him start to shake. She stroked his hair and held him to her tightly. Finally, the rigidity left him. His body slackened and he sank into her. Johnson sat on the tile floor with her back against the wall with Lynch curled like a child in front of her, his head on her lap, and he wept.