The Altar Girl: A Prequel

by Orest Stelmach

  I approached a massive quadrangle surrounded by a towering chain link fence with barbed wire. The gate was open. I counted five separate buildings inside the compound. One was a car detail shop. I couldn’t see what the others were. I was about to roll past it when I spotted a row of mailboxes with a series of numbers above them. One of them matched the one Mrs. Chimchak had given me.

  The warehouse was one of the buildings in the quadrangle and the gate was open.

  I wondered if someone was there right now.

  Butterflies swirled in my stomach. I drove through another bend and pulled into the parking lot for Lindo’s Bodywork. I parked behind a row of bigger cars waiting for repair to keep my vehicle out of street view.

  I retraced my path along Ledyard Street, hugging the chain link fences. When I got to within one lot of the gate to the quadrangle, I looked around. It was too risky to get any closer. I needed elevation to improve my line of sight.

  Rectangular buildings with smooth walls surrounded me. Not a foothold to be found. I glanced across the street. A metal shack housed Pawliczko’s Salvage. A rusty camper stood tall among a parking lot of decaying vans and cars. I darted across the street to the RV, a GMC Eleganza, with peeling white paint and sea foam trim. An uninspiring metal ladder offered me a boost to its roof.

  I scampered up the rungs each step faster than the previous. The ladder creaked, groaned, and swayed. When I got to the top I saw human figures across the street. I dropped to my stomach on the roof of the camper. My hands felt as though they’d fallen onto a sheet of used sandpaper. Rust, dirt, and grime surrounded me. Empty cans of Tecate beer formed a pyramid to my right. There had to be fifty of them, or more. A pair of metal beach chairs lay folded beside it. Apparently, the proprietors were salvaging cars at the expense of their livers.

  I focused my attention across the street. A door to a prefabricated metal warehouse was propped open by a giant cinderblock. A faint light inside the warehouse illuminated a white, unmarked delivery truck with its back to the loading dock. Donnie Angel’s van was parked beside it. I recognized it by the modified twin tailpipes and the memories they inspired. A German shepherd sat in front of the vehicles, tongue hanging out.

  I waited for more than fifteen minutes. Then a man came out of the warehouse and opened the door to the delivery truck. Two other men wheeled a crate out of the warehouse to the edge of the loading dock. Donnie Angel emerged from the warehouse on crutches. One of the men climbed into the truck and helped the other maneuver the crate inside.

  Another figure emerged from the warehouse. A dark beret and turned-up coat collar obscured the man’s head, while a bulky winter coat did the same to his physique. It was hard to measure height precisely from my distance and angle. Donnie Angel was six feet tall. That much I knew all too well. The strongest conclusion I could draw was that the man with the turned-up collar was about the same height, perhaps a bit taller. He was remarkable only in the way he moved. More like a mountain lion than a human being, bounding on his haunches with a profound confidence bordering on arrogance.

  The two men who’d loaded the cargo climbed into the delivery truck. The third assistant helped Donnie Angel into the back of the van. The German shepherd followed. The assistant closed the door behind them, circled around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. The man with the turned-up collar got into his own car, an older American sedan. One by one, they started their engines.

  I hurried down the stairs. I watched the vehicles turn toward the gate. As the headlights of the delivery truck swung in an arc toward me, I hid behind the RV. I waited for the second and the third pair of lights to shine, and when I heard the sound of the engines grow faint, I knew they’d driven off in the direction from which I’d arrived.

  I ran to my car, started the engine, and raced to the highway entrances on Airport Road. I came up on them so quickly I had to break to make sure I didn’t overtake them. The sedan was in the lead, the delivery truck in the middle, and Donnie Angel’s van brought up the rear. It was the van and its gaudy aftermarket tailpipes that I recognized, yet again. They took the ramp onto I-84 East and drove the speed limit in the far right lane.

  I followed the three vehicles into Avon, the tony suburb on Talcott Mountain west of Hartford. It took us an additional twenty minutes to get to their final destination. Two lefts off Route 44 at the top of the mountain left us in a heavily wooded area and off the beaten track. A gate made of cherry wood opened, and they pulled into a massive stone castle.

  I continued onward so as not to arouse suspicion, and parked three hundred yards away from the house. Gently pressing my doors shut, I high-stepped it over a guardrail along the curb and descended into the forest that abutted the property. Then I squatted down to my haunches and checked my watch. I needed to wait for rhodopsin to be released in my retina and improve my night vision. Another lesson learned long ago from Mrs. Chimchak during one of the excruciating summer PLAST camps I’d all but purged from my mind.

  Five minutes later I began to advance toward the main house through the vineyard. I cupped my hand over my nostrils so the steam fanned out. I hugged the tree line so that the mulch surrounding the trees muffled the sound of my footsteps. A cottage stood on the left, where I guessed they made the wine. A tennis court appeared on the right. I was halfway to the main house when a cat darted across my path, hissing and yowling at me for trespassing. Not a good sign, I thought. Even the cats were on guard for prowlers.

  A spotlight burst to life. It shone from my right beside the tennis court. I stayed low and sprinted left across two rows of vines. The spotlight followed in my wake but didn’t shine directly on me. I pressed my back against the far wall of the cottage facing the access road.

  A man approached. His footsteps grew louder. He was walking along the far wall. The pace was determined but not urgent. Diligent, but not panicked. This suggested he hadn’t seen me. Perhaps the buyer or Donnie Angel had sent one of his men to walk around the entire property to make sure they were alone. It would have been a worthwhile security measure.

  I looked around for a weapon of some kind in case I needed one. I found a rock the size of a baseball. I didn’t see any other option so I grabbed it. It felt ridiculous in my hand. I couldn’t imagine using it to hit a human being. I returned to my spot against the wall of the cottage. The man continued along a path between two columns of trees. He scanned the horizon to each side as he walked like a patrolman. When he got close enough for me to see his face, knots formed in my stomach.

  He was one of Donnie Angel’s men. He was one of the men who’d grabbed me, thrown me into the van, and kidnapped me a block away from my apartment.

  I pulled my head back, kept my back against the wall. I didn’t move or make a sound. I counted to twenty slowly, each second consistent with one step. My guess was it would take him ten to fifteen steps to walk past the cottage. The five additional steps were insurance. Once I counted to twenty, he would be safely past me and I could take a peek at him from behind.

  I finished counting, slid around the cottage to the opposite side, and stuck my head out to catch a glimpse of him.

  The man rounded the corner. We collided. Shock registered on his face.

  I smashed him in the forehead with the rock. I didn’t think. I simply hit him. Not as hard as I could. I pulled back at the last minute. A dull thud was followed by a muted groan.

  Blood trickled from his forehead. I stood there horrified, praying I hadn’t killed him. I checked his pulse. A strong heartbeat mollified my fears as did my memory of what he’d done to me. This man had kidnapped me.

  I was about to turn and head toward the house when I caught a glimpse of something stuck in his belt. The item was exposed because his waist-length jacket had hiked up a few inches when he’d fallen. It was a small black gun. I knew nothing about guns. I’d never even touched one. They scared the heck out of me. But I grabbed it anywa
y. When I reached for the grip, it was an out-of-body experience. I could see myself from afar. Mouth agape I wondered, is she really going to take that gun?

  It felt sleek and light and fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. More than that, it felt disturbingly good. It felt right. It weighed less than a pound, I guessed, and was about five inches long. The letters “M” and “P” were etched in the black matte barrel beside the words “Bodyguard 36.” The word “safe” was visible beneath a small button that was pushed up on the left side of the gun. Logic suggested the safety was engaged. The gun would not fire. I could not shoot myself by accident.

  To my utter shock, I slid the button down. The word “safe” disappeared beneath the button. Now I could shoot someone, or myself. My nerves stood on edge. I put the safety back on, but to my surprise, I didn’t drop the gun. I kept it. If I needed to ditch it for whatever reason, I could wipe my prints off and toss it into the woods.

  A combination of fear, dread, and empowerment possessed me. The feeling was as powerful as the one that had overtaken my senses after I’d cracked Donnie Angel’s tibia with the heel of my foot. I was not going to be intimidated. I was not going to be pushed around by anyone. I’d been a soldier in my mind as a girl scout, and I could be one now, too.

  I checked the man’s breathing and pulse again. His lungs filled and his heart beat regularly.

  I took off toward the main house, gun in hand.

  The van and the delivery truck were parked in a circular drive flanked by two separate three-car garages. It amazed me that someone would need six garages, but I decided that might be exactly the type of person who was interested in stolen art. The rear door of the truck was open as though the crate had been removed. Distant voices echoed from the back of the house. There was no sign of the German shepherd, Donnie Angel, or the mysterious man with the turned-up collar.

  I wound my way along a fence made of bushes that lined the far edge of the driveway. The back of the house opened up onto a veranda that led to an expansive pool area. A pair of double glass French doors was open. The voices grew louder as I approached. I snuck around the pool and edged up to the window.

  The two deliverymen stood beside an empty crate. An impossibly fit woman of indeterminable age sparkled with joy. Marko had told me that a woman had taken possession of the delivery he’d supervised. They had come back to the same client. The source of her adulation was a five-by-six-foot icon of a medieval knight in a colorful cloak spearing a dragon from atop his black stallion.

  A priceless relic, I thought.

  The man with the turned-up collar stood next to the proud owner with his back to me, still camouflaged by a coat and hat. I willed him to turn around. He didn’t. Instead, Donnie Angel hopped into the room on crutches. He nodded at one of his men to indicate he needed to speak with him. The nod was in my direction. They both started toward the window beside me and had a brief exchange before they came within earshot.

  I ducked down so they couldn’t see me.

  Their voices gradually rose as they came closer.

  “Where are the shovels?” Donnie Angel said.

  “I left them there,” his man said.

  “What if someone steals them?”

  The man chuckled. “No one’s going to be there this time of night.”

  “I hope not.”

  “What about Marko?” the man said.

  “He’s going to meet us there.”

  “You sure he’s going to show?”

  “I just got off the phone with him. He’s on his way now. He hasn’t gotten paid. He’s going to show.”

  I heard a sound behind me. It was the suppressed sound of a man in agony. Or was I imagining things? I heard it again. I caught a glimpse of a man stumbling toward the main house through the vineyard.

  It was the man I’d hit with the rock.

  “Donnie,” he said with a weak voice. “Donnie, she’s here.”

  I kept my head low, slipped around the corner away from the window above me, and raced around the other side of the pool toward the front gate.

  The German shepherd leapt from behind the van. I jumped to the side. The dog’s teeth came within inches of my leg but snapped backward before they could connect. A leash prevented him from stretching farther. He was tethered to a door handle of the van. He began barking furiously. I had a gun in my hand and I’d taken it to defend myself, but even at the moment it appeared I was going to get bitten, I hadn’t raised my arm. I could not imagine shooting an animal. Not unless it was rabid and charging me with saliva dripping from its mouth. Would I be able to pull the trigger at a human being if I had to?

  I sprinted out the driveway and down the access road. After a hundred yards my lungs were heaving. I slowed down to a jog, glanced over my shoulders, and saw no one behind me. I ran the rest of the way to my car, started it, and peeled out of the neighborhood. Once I’d driven a mile away along the same route we’d taken to get to the house, I diverted onto a side street, turned my car around, and parked by the curb. The side street dipped down into a valley allowing me a decent line of sight as any cars drove by. They would have to drive past me to get to the main artery, Route 44, which led to the highway. My biggest concern was that one of the neighbors might call the police because some stranger had parked beside his house.

  As soon as I killed the lights and the engine, I called Brasilia and asked for Marko. The woman who answered the phone told me he’d gotten sick and gone home for the evening. I knew it was a bogus excuse and that he had left to meet Donnie Angel, but I called him at home nonetheless. It was a futile attempt. I prayed that he would pick up so I could warn him that Donnie Angel had shovels, and shovels were used to dig holes, and those shovels had been left in a place where no one else went on a Saturday night. I prayed that my brother would pick up so I could warn him that the man who’d kidnapped me was going to kill him. He was going to kill my brother tonight.

  But I was too late. Marko didn’t pick up. He had no cell phone, of course, and there was no way to reach him.

  I sat and waited, wondering if I should call the police. I didn’t know where we were going nor was I absolutely certain a crime was going to be committed. At least not yet.

  Less than fifteen minutes later the sedan, van, and delivery truck drove past me on the road above. I counted to ten to let them get ahead of me, and then I pulled out and followed them. They took a different route this time, circling the mountain peak and looping around Simsbury, through Bloomfield and onto I-91 headed for Hartford. It was a longer but less taxing route on the driver. The road was less serpentine, the ascents and descents less steep.

  Eventually we merged onto I-91 headed south. I stayed ten car lengths back the entire time. When we approached Hartford, they got into the far left-hand lane for the entrance ramp to Route 2 headed east over the Connecticut River.

  Many Ukrainian-Americans now lived east of the river, but that hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, most folks lived in Hartford or the surrounding towns west of the river to stay close to the church and the Ukrainian National Home. When I was a child, we’d taken this road for one purpose and one purpose only. Given the conversation I’d overheard between Donnie Angel and his man, there was no doubt in my mind where we were going.

  My ex-husband was buried there, as was my father. It was a place where picks and shovels came in handy.

  We were headed for the cemetery.

  CHAPTER 31

  THE RIDE WAS interminable. The driver never surpassed the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit on Route 2. Meanwhile, I relived memories of tossing the first handful of dirt over my father’s grave, the unpredictable gush of tears as my abusive husband’s casket was lowered into the ground, and Father Yuri telling me both times that it was God’s will.

  The Ukrainian Cemetery of the Holy Ghost was built in an undeveloped forest thirty miles outside Hartford because
the land in Hebron was cheap. When I rounded the bend toward the entrance and saw that all three vehicles’ taillights had disappeared, I continued past the cemetery for a quarter of a mile. Then I pulled onto the edge of the woods and parked on the side of the road.

  I climbed a small embankment to even ground and hiked two hundred yards through the woods. The property appeared to be four acres in size with a thousand graves. The high ground on the northern side was filled, but there were still plenty of unfilled lots on the south side closer to the main road. The sedan was parked in the northwest corner of the cemetery by the groundskeeper’s hut. I’d been in that hut many times. It contained a storage shed and an office with cedar siding on the inside. I’d stood beside Father Yuri as his altar girl while he prepared for more funerals than I could remember over a five-year span. Maybe that’s why I associated the smell of cedar with tears, mourning, and closure.

  A light came on in the office. A shadow moved against the walls. It was the man with the turned-up collar. He was removing his hat and coat. I still couldn’t see his face or figure, only an amorphous black silhouette. The light in the office would prevent him from seeing out the window. There was no risk that he could see me. I guessed Donnie Angel and the other three men were in the shed or digging my brother’s grave, but I didn’t take it for granted.

  I weaved my way up a modest incline toward the hut, choosing the path with the highest tombstones, the ones that afforded me some cover. I hunched as I walked to minimize my exposure. My gun—yes, it was my gun now—felt cool and lethal in my hand. It gave me a sense of omnipotence. I’d been striving to become emotionally invulnerable, to cease to be affected by my relationships with my family. The gun imbued me with a different form of self-confidence. The kind that could get me killed or land me in prison for life if I wasn’t careful. I took some solace in knowing that I was still self-aware enough to understand that.