by Mark Wheaton
The pope, Luis mentally intoned, hoping it sounded to him like any old word. Instead, the image of Saint Peter’s keys on crimson slippers filled his mind.
“It’s no trouble, Your Eminence,” Luis replied quickly. “I had just returned from a home visit. What can I do for you?”
Why did I say that? Luis thought, beating himself up for trying to impress the archbishop with his diligence. He would’ve understood if I’d merely said I was in prayer.
“I have heard good things about you, Father,” the archbishop said. “Your pastor and I go back several years. While we don’t always see eye to eye, he is extremely adept at judging character.”
“I am humbled to hear it,” Luis said.
“He told me you were set to deliver your first homily this Sunday about Saint Peter Claver,” the archbishop continued. “A great man. A man of humanity who condemned the slave trades as wretched and inhuman even as other Jesuits turned a blind eye. Apparently baptized over a quarter of a million slaves while serving in Colombia. Nowhere near as controversial as the problematic Saint Serra y Ferrer. Did you know Claver called himself the Servant of the Ethiopians?”
“I didn’t know this,” Luis said, wondering why Whillans didn’t tell him he’d spoken to the archbishop.
The line went silent for a moment. Luis wondered if they’d been cut off. When he heard the archbishop draw in a slow breath, he knew the call wasn’t simply for a pre-sermon pep talk.
“Benedict Chang was a close friend of mine, Father Chavez, going back several years,” the archbishop said quietly. “A very good man beloved by his parishioners but also his community. His death is a terrible blow to the archdiocese, but also to those who benefited from his charitable works and deeds. He was a crusader for Christ.”
“Yes, Your Eminence,” Luis said when there was a pause.
“What compounds the tragedy are the accusations and rumors going around about the man after he can no longer defend himself. There was a time when the church turned its back on gossip it believed to be false or, worse, decided to sweep it under the rug. This is not something we can allow anymore. Too many people have been hurt. Too many lives destroyed. When I became archbishop, I had to strip my predecessor of all but his title, as he was one of the worst offenders when it came to aiding and abetting the accused and shrugging off the accusers. The church in America may not recover for generations.”
Luis suddenly understood where the archbishop was going with all this.
“Which is why someone coming along to use those accusations to tar an innocent adds tragedy to tragedy. There is no benefit of the doubt. The accusation was all it took for his congregation to turn their backs on his memory. Now, I’ve been told that someone sympathetic to our cause, someone who also doesn’t believe the rumors, has reached out to you from the district attorney’s office.”
An electrical charge burst through Luis’s nervous system. He’d stepped into an open snare without noticing. How much had Michael told the archbishop? It wasn’t as if he’d kept his past a secret from the archdiocese, but he doubted everyone knew.
And more than that, how might it affect his station in the eyes of the congregation if word somehow got to them?
No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.
“I just wanted to let you know that you have the full backing and support of the archdiocese as you assist the city with their investigation. Normally, this would be considered too weighty a concern for a novice priest, but as Pastor Whillans has indicated his confidence in you by elevating you to his assistant, I think we can safely follow his lead and trust you as our representative.”
If the archbishop had said this while sitting in the same room, or over the phone from the seat of the archdiocese at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Luis could’ve found a way to navigate around this. “Our” might mean the archdiocese or even just the archbishop and, say, Pastor Whillans. But that the call came at the exact moment when Luis was most in need of the Lord’s wisdom and that the archbishop was a few yards, if not a few steps, from the Holy Father himself imbued it with the full weight of the Holy See.
“Yes, Your Eminence,” Luis said, already overwhelmed.
“God bless you and aid you, Father Chavez,” the archbishop said. “Please keep me informed as your investigation progresses.”
Luis was about to respond when the line was cut off. He sat down in Erna’s chair and hung up the phone before turning off the lamp. Cast in darkness, he was finally surrounded by the silence and peace he’d chased all day.
But now he had no need. God had made his wishes clear as a bell.
All right, God. Let’s get started.
“Take the two pills in the pack right away, right when you get home with food. Dos. Con comida,” Susan explained, indicating the pills in the Z-Pak—well, at least its generic third cousin twice removed, albeit with the exact same active ingredients. “Then take the next five, one each day, with food. Una cada día. As I said, it’s just an upper-respiratory infection. Should knock it right out.”
Her patient, a seventysomething Guatemalan woman whom Susan knew had been sick for weeks and had to be cajoled into coming to the clinic by her two sons, nodded skeptically and pocketed the drugs. Susan had no idea if she planned to take them and made a mental note to call the eldest son the next morning and get him to make sure.
After the patient left, Susan checked her watch. It was already half past two. She’d been on shift for fourteen-plus hours. Well, except for the hour she’d spent eating lunch with Nan, who’d taken the bus over from USC, up around the corner at Barnsdall Art Park. Barnsdall had been a favorite spot of Father Chang’s, and they’d decided to go there to honor his memory with a lunch of his beloved pho. Though it was small enough to walk from one end to the other in five minutes, Chang had never tired of leading Susan and Nan through Hollyhock House, the Frank Lloyd Wright creation that stood in the center of the park, and pointing out obscure features and Wright’s architectural signature.
“He loved the view up here,” Nan had said. “He could see the whole city.”
Susan had agreed, though mostly she could see the rooftops of nearby Little Armenia. Still, it had been a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky to remind them of the previous night’s rain.
They’d spoken of so many things relating to Father Chang. How each of them had met him for the first time, how neither were particularly religious, which was why Chang had probably enjoyed spending his off-hours with them. They spoke of Chang’s relentless curiosity and thirst for knowledge. They tried to come up with subjects that might not have interested Father Chang in the slightest, and couldn’t come up with one.
“Watching paint dry,” Nan tried finally.
“No, he’d go off on some tangent about the subtle spectrum of colors the paint arced through as it released its water and took its final form,” Susan joked. “And by the end he’d have convinced us it was the most interesting thing ever.”
They laughed over this. They moved on to discuss the funeral, though Nan hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Susan didn’t bring up the fact that when she’d called St. Jerome’s, the parish pastor had said that no one from the church would be available to deliver the eulogy. As it had been so many times in life, it would be just the three of them at the grave, though one would stay behind.
The one thing they didn’t talk about was who killed him. Not the identity of the shooter himself. That part wasn’t important. Nor was the rumor going around that it had been linked to some kind of sex crime. No, what they really didn’t want to talk about was who Father Chang, on one of his endless crusades against injustice, had pissed off enough to want him dead.
“He always said he’d be martyred, but I think he did it like people who joke about their plane crashing,” Nan explained. “Say it enough times and it won’t happen.”
“I think you’re right,” Susan said dully. “He was too in
terested in whatever was going to come around next.”
After seeing Nan off on the bus back to campus, Susan considered going home. But that would mean thinking about things, obsessing about things, and that would do no one any good. So she returned to the innocuous square two-story East LA shopping plaza that housed her clinic to throw herself into work. The clinic itself was rather small, with only four examination rooms, a tiny waiting area, a medication-filled break room that doubled as a pharmacy, and then an office Susan shared with four other doctors. All four had like Susan trained overseas but hadn’t been accredited in the States yet due to immigration issues.
Susan didn’t mind. When she spoke to friends of hers who worked in licensed doctor’s offices and hospitals, the threat of malpractice and the bureaucratic nightmare that the HMO/PPO era had created made hers seem like a quaint neighborhood practice. Susan had gone into medicine at first because of parental pressure and expectation but then realized that she just genuinely liked helping people. One day, she hoped, she’d earn enough money to get away from Clover Gao, poach the best staffers, and set up a shop of her own.
But if the licensed practices did have anything up on the unlicensed ones, it was that they at least could operate out in the open, with signs on their doors. Susan had to walk up to what looked like an unmarked service exit with no handle and be buzzed in by a receptionist. Clover Gao was so afraid of being caught in a raid that she kept her office on the floor above the clinic, and even that was a single room in the back of a small tax preparer’s office. For the first three weeks on the job, Susan had walked into the kitchens of restaurants, supply rooms, and almost got herself locked in the back room of a kitchen appliance wholesaler by choosing the wrong unmarked door.
“I’m going to knock off,” Susan announced to the night receptionist as she gathered her things. “Be back around nine. Tell Clover, okay?”
The receptionist nodded. No sooner had Susan pushed through the outer door, however, than a harried-looking young woman hurried up to her in a panic.
“Dr. Auyong?”
“I’m off the clock,” Susan explained. “But there’ll be someone in there to help you.”
“My father’s a patient of yours. He saw you today?”
As that could be one of sixty to seventy people, Susan stared back blankly.
“César Carreño? I’m his daughter, Esmeralda. He was in for his hypertension medication.”
“Of course. Has he had an incident? If so, you’ll need to call 911.”
“Oh, no, no. His blood pressure is fine,” Esmeralda said. “But I think he’s coming down with the flu or something. He’s got a light fever, a sore throat. My son had it a few months ago, so I know the symptoms.”
“Then you should also know that it’s a virus and there’s not anything we could prescribe for him,” Susan said, trying to hide her exhaustion-born irritation.
“Isn’t there something?” Esmeralda pressed. “He’s in construction. He’s terrified of missing work, as they replace them so fast.”
Susan knew there was nothing, but she also knew that the young woman would persist until she was handed some kind of pill.
“Go in. Tell the receptionist you need two boxes of AnaPyr. It’s a prescription-strength ibuprofen. It’ll bring down the fever. Other than that you’re on your own.”
“Thank you so much, Doctor!” the woman enthused, and hurried past to the door.
“No problem,” Susan replied, so tired she worried she’d fall asleep on the drive home.
Luis dialed Michael’s number and waited. When the deputy DA finally answered, he sounded as if he had been pulled out of a deep sleep.
Guess that’s what the normal people are doing at two in the morning.
“Hello?” Michael said.
“Hope I’m not waking up your family,” Luis said.
“Nah, my wife’s still out with her girlfriends,” Michael replied. “You’re not exactly someone I expected to hear from again.”
“I heard from the archbishop,” Luis explained. “Nice play.”
“Thanks. I had to do something.”
“If I do this for you, I get the option to walk away at any time, particularly if it begins to interfere with my work at St. Augustine’s or St. John’s,” Luis said. “Is that acceptable?”
“Absolutely. Of course.”
“Also, I don’t want you calling me for updates. If I find something out, I’ll call you. Good?”
“Perfect,” Michael said. “What if I find something out?”
“Then you can tell me if and when I call. How long do I have before the letter gets made public?”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “It’s the kind of thing that leaks. And once it’s out there, you can’t put that genie back in the bottle.”
“Got it,” Luis said. “One more thing. You’ve been out to San Gabriel. There are dozens of lawyers out there. How come Yamazoe picks some barrio abogado like Caesar deGuzman?”
There was a pause. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll follow up. Thanks.”
Luis hung up and sank back onto his bed. What bothered him now wasn’t anything that Michael had said or the words of the archbishop. Rather, it was the feeling he’d received from God when he sat in prayer after the call. At first, there had just been a deep sense of foreboding like none he’d ever experienced. When the words finally came, they were simple and to the point.
This is only the beginning.
Michael put his cell back on the nightstand and stared up at the dark ceiling. He couldn’t figure Luis out. He’d known contacting the archbishop was drastic, but it had worked like a charm. He had his secret weapon back and, knowing Luis, the priest wouldn’t rest until he uncovered something, at least. Whether it was an unhappy truth about the late Father Chang or an actual motive mattered little. The case would be put to bed, and there’d be another feather in Michael’s cap to show for it.
But it was his own ready acceptance that troubled him. This had gone from a quick favor to using an untrained outsider to investigate a brutal murder. Was there any part of him, however small, that relished putting the priest in harm’s way?
One less person who would know his sins.
He quickly banished this thought. If Luis was somehow killed, his connection to Michael would be discovered, and only bad things could come of it. But that he’d even thought of it made him wonder just how corrupted his mind had become.
He glanced over to Helen’s side of the bed, seeing only the silhouette of her bare pillow. He saw less of her these days, as her real estate business was starting to take off. A high-profile client, she’d said. He was glad of it, as she deserved success. It alleviated the guilt he felt over cheating on her. She wasn’t pining for him; she was going out and doing things for her, which included blowing off steam with some of her friends at—what had she said tonight was? A nineties mash-up party at a dance club?
Whatever it was, he was happy if she was.
V
The five young men clad all in white—white hemp shirts and pants, white headbands, white sashes, and white straw sandals—crossed a narrow bridge made up of only two wooden planks and moved under an archway of swords. The Vanguard and the Incense Master, both in red silk gowns with red headbands, waited in front of the large statue of Guan Yu, the third-century general who helped establish the state of Shu Han. Smoke billowed from a cauldron, where a large fire burned.
“What abilities do you possess?” the Vanguard asked the first of the five initiates to the triad.
“Honor and loyalty to my brethren,” the young initiate replied, using formal Mandarin and bowing deeply in deference to the older man.
“And what shall happen to you if you dishonor your Hung brothers?”
“I shall be killed with knives!” he shot back.
There was little light in the banquet hall set up for the initiation ceremony, but Tony didn’t need to see to know exactly how the ritual would proceed. As he stood with the o
ther members of the triad—ranking members in red headbands, but all in suits instead of silk gowns—he thought back to his own initiation ceremony with pleasure. He’d been nothing before, a mere Blue Lantern, the lowest on the totem pole as far as the triad was concerned. Then everything changed.
“If the police were after your brothers and offered you gold for information, would you be loyal to your brothers or take the gold?” the Vanguard demanded.
“I would be loyal to my brothers!” the initiate cried.
This time the Vanguard answered by slapping him across the back with a flexibly bladed sword. The initiate didn’t flinch.
“Kneel,” the Vanguard ordered.
The first initiate knelt and raised his hands in front of him, palms together as if in prayer. The Incense Master came over and placed five lit sticks of incense between his fingers.
“The oaths,” the Vanguard said.
The initiate nodded as smoke rose around his head. Tony wondered if he’d managed to memorize all thirty-six oaths. It was hard to go first.
“I shall never betray my sworn brothers!” the initiate swore. “I shall not disclose the secrets of the Hung brethren! If I rob a sworn brother, I will be killed by knives!”
Tony’s eyes traveled to the last of the five initiates. Though he was sure the young man, Billy Daai, had memorized the oaths, arranging for him to go last so he could hear the others say them first just to be sure hadn’t been difficult. Billy was his godson after all, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for him, which of late had included securing Billy’s new job with one of the liquor distributors that delivered to his hotel.
Billy was a good boy and a quick study. He understood that learning about the products was as important as being able to anticipate the needs of both client and vendor. On nights he had off he moved across the city trendspotting in clubs and restaurants. He was handsome and lean with a gregarious nature he put to good use insinuating himself into any group or situation. He was always the first to know what was gaining popularity in the city and provided this information gratis to those for whom he served as a go-between. Even better, he used longer holidays to travel to New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and London to see and experience those scenes as well.