They Thirst

by Robert R. McCammon

  Cicero started to get up, but the priest moved forward with fists clenched, so Cicero stayed where he was. “Sellin’? I ain’t sellin’ nothin’!”

  “All right, suppose we let the police decide that, sí?”

  Cicero’s hand began the long creep back to his pocket. “Look, old white collar, you don’t want to mess with me, understand? I don’t want to hear no talk ‘bout cops. Now you’re gonna step aside and let me go on my way.”

  “Get up,” the priest said.

  Cicero rose slowly, and by the time he’d straightened, he had the blade hidden in the hand that dangled loosely behind him. “I said you’re gonna let me pass!” be said hoarsely. “Do what I tell you!”

  “I’ve been looking for you for a long time, ever since I knew Miguel and his wife were hooked on that trash. And you’ve been selling to Victor DiPietro and Bernardo Palamer, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.” Cicero grinned widely, and then the tongue of steel lapped at hot sunlight. “Move out of my way, man!”

  The priest looked at the blade but didn’t move. “Put that down or I’ll make you eat it.”

  “I ain’t never stuck no white collar before, but I will if you pushes me! And by God you’re pushin’ me right now! Ain’t nobody pushes Cicero Clinton, understand?”

  “Bastardo,” the priest said quietly. “I’ll stick that knife up your ass and send you running home to your momma.”

  “Huh?” Cicero said, stunned for a second by the priest’s language. That second of hesitation spelled his doom for, right in the middle of it, the priest’s fist came flying out of thin air and crashed against the side of Cicero’s head. As Cicero staggered back, he flailed out with the knife, but his wrist was suddenly caught in a crushing vise; he shrieked in pain and dropped the blade. Then another fist filled his vision, bloodily knocking a few teeth into his mouth. Cicero started to go down, but then the priest grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and was dragging him along the alley. On Machado Street, in full view of a number of people who had watched the whole thing from their windows, the priest picked up Cicero and jammed him down into a garbage can.

  “You ever come back to my streets,” the priest said, “I’ll have to get rough with you. Comprende?”

  “Yeth,” Cicero croaked, spitting out blood and bits of enamel. When he tried to struggle out of the can, black waves crashed over him and sent him spinning down to the bottom of the sea.

  “Hey! Father Silvera!” someone called out, and the priest turned. A small boy in blue jeans and scuffed white sneakers was running toward him. When the boy was near enough to see the arms and legs sticking out of the garbage can, he stopped and stared, open-mouthed.

  “Hello, Leon,” Father Silvera said. He rubbed the skinned knuckles of his right hand. “Why aren’t you in school today?”

  “Uh…I don’t know.” He stepped back as one of Cicero’s arms twitched. “I didn’t do my homework.”

  “That’s not an excuse.” Silvera looked at him sternly. “Your father let you stay home from school?”

  Leon shook his head. “I have to take care of my sister. Papa didn’t come home last night.”

  “He didn’t come home? Where did he go?”

  “Out.” The boy shrugged. “He said for me to stay home with Juanita, and he was going to play cards. That was last night.”

  “He didn’t go to work today?”

  Leon shook his head again, and Silvera’s shoulders sagged forward slightly; he’d helped Sandor LaPaz get that job at the garage, he’d even vouched for the good-for-nothing bastardo. Now Sandor had probably lost a week’s wages in a card game with the neighborhood hustlers, and he was drinking himself into a stupor in a bar. “Are you and Juanita okay?”

  “Sí, Father. We’re doing good.”

  “Did you eat anything for breakfast?”

  The boy shrugged. “Taco chips. But I gave Juanita a glass of milk.”

  “Your Papa left some money for you?”

  “A little bit in a drawer.” His face clouded over slightly. “He’s gonna come back home, isn’t he?”

  “Of course he will. He’s probably home right now. You’d better get back there yourself and keep an eye on Juanita. She’s too young to be left alone. Hurry now. I’ll be by later this afternoon.”

  Leon beamed and started to turn away, then suddenly he heard a soft moan that didn’t come from the man in the garbage can. When Leon looked back, he saw Father Silvera wiping sweat off his forehead with the palm of a trembling hand. “Father?” he asked. “You all right?”

  “Yes. Hurry on now. I’ll see you later. Go!”

  The boy scurried on away. He felt better now that Father Silvera was going to come by to see him. If the padre said things were going to be all right, then they would be. And Papa would be home, too, just like he said. Truly, he was a miracle man.

  Silvera was aware of the people watching him from their windows. Not now! he told himself. Please don’t let it happen now! When he let his hand hang by his side, it jumped and twitched with erratic spasms. He felt a boil of anger at the pit of his stomach, and suddenly he kicked over the garbage can, spilling Cicero out over the curb into the gutter. Cicero stirred and began to stagger to his feet. “Remember,” Silvera said. “Don’t come back around here. I’ll be looking for you.”

  Cicero struggled behind the wheel of the Imperial and started the engine. Then he spat blood toward Silvera and shouted, “I’ll get you, cocksucka!” Then the car roared away from the curb, leaving a blue haze of exhaust and scorched rubber.

  Silvera thrust his hands in his pockets and began to walk away from those watchful eyes. He’d made it around the corner when the bile came up volcanically from his stomach; he leaned over and threw up against a wall, and as he was heaving, he could feel both hands jittering in his pockets as if pulled by unseen strings. He took them out, leaned his back against the graffitied wall, and watched the fingers jerk, the veins twitching under the flesh. They seemed to belong to someone else because he had no control over them anymore, and he never knew when the spasms would start or stop. The spasms hadn’t yet begun their slow creep up his forearms, as the kind doctor at County General had told him they would. But it was just a matter of time. The death dance of the muscles, once begun, was irreversible.

  After a moment more he walked on, past more sunburned apartment buildings and more low, dusty houses jammed in between brick walls. The barrio seemed to go on forever, one narrow garbage-strewn street after another. The place smelled of rotting, stifled souls to Silvera, the reek of corpses that had died at the dead-ends in the huge, tangled maze of life. There is so much to do, he told himself as he walked. So much to do and so little time. He was going to have to find Miguel and Linda and get them off that hellish junk, but it would be hard. Once hooked, it was easier to drift in that limbo of heroin-induced dreams than to face the stark reality of life. Silvera knew; he had the needle track on the insides of both his elbows to show for two years of life on the edge of bestiality. So much to do and so little time. God help me, he thought. Please give me strength. And time. Please.

  At the end of the block, he could see the bell tower of his church pressed close between tenement buildings. The tower was painted white, and through the open shutters the large brass bell caught a shard of golden sunlight. Silvera had found that beautiful bell in the abandoned mission of a town called Borja, near the Mexican border. The town had been almost deserted, and it exuded a strange aura of old evil. One of the remaining residents had told Silvera that several years before a man who’d called himself Baal had come to the town and since then Borja had been tainted. Silvera had brought that bell back from the desert in a pickup truck over a hundred miles of winding, sun-scorched road. He’d rigged a hoist and with the help of a few neighborhood men had lifted the bell to the tower. He’d worked on it many weeks, polishing away the last of the corrosion, and now it sang—joyful and clear to beckon all to Sunday Mass or
announce Saturday weddings, quietly mournful tolling over a funeral procession—as a symbol of the Church of Our Sainted Mary. Not very long ago a crack had appeared at the very top of the bell and now was gradually snaking its way down to the rim. The bell’s destiny was clear, and yet it had so much more work to do. Silvera smiled when he thought of what Leon and several of the other children called it—Mary’s Voice.

  Father Silvera reached his church and climbed a few rickety, wooden steps to the front door. He was feeling better now; he’d stopped sweating, and his hands weren’t trembling nearly as much as they had been. It had been the strain of throwing that heroin dealer around that had done it. He knew better than to do things like that, but he was still a bullishly strong man, and in this case his temper had gotten the best of him.

  Inside, the church was almost claustrophobic with the wooden pews packed closely together, and a wine-red runner spread along the narrow aisle from front door to altar. Atop the altar stood a heavy brass crucifix, brightly polished, on an ornate base. Behind that altar with its chipped, ceramic statue of Mary cradling the Christ child in her arms was a large, oval, stained-glass window that split the light into a kaleidoscope of white, azure, violet, umber, and emerald green. In the window’s center was a representation of Jesus carrying a staff and behind him a green knoll dotted with sheep. On sunny days His eyes were circles of kind, warm, brown light; on cloudy days His gaze turned stormy, the light stern and grayish. It intrigued Silvera to watch those changes and reminded him that even Jesus Christ has His bad days.

  Silvera walked through the church to his living quarters, his steps sounding hollow on the wooden floor. It was a single room, painted white, with a thin-mattressed bed, a chest of drawers, a reading lamp, and a sink in the corner. There was a shelf of hard-cover books, most of them more political and sociological than theologic: Future Shock by Alvin Tofler, The Politics of Evil by James N. Virga, Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler. On another, lower shelf was a toaster and a hot plate, neither of which worked particularly well. The walls were decorated with crayon drawings given to him by some of the younger children in his parish—sailboats skimming a green ocean, stick figures waving from windows, rainbow-colored kites among the clouds. There was a ceramic crucifix hanging near the door, a bright travel poster that said See Mexico’s Wonders, and a framed painting of a fishing village featuring nets drying in the sun. It reminded him of the village he’d been born in, Puerto Grande on the Gulf of Mexico. Another door led into a tiny bathroom with a noisy toilet and a stuttering shower.

  He crossed the room, drew water from the sink into a drinking cup, and gingerly tasted it. Not so bad today, he thought. He drank it down gratefully, only spilling a few drops on his shirt because his hand wasn’t trembling quite so much. And then he listened; he thought he’d heard the front door open and close. Yes, there was the noise of footsteps now. He put the cup aside and hurried out.

  There was a young man standing at the altar, staring up at the stained-glass window. He wore a pale blue shirt and faded, tight-fitting denims. His eyes were dark and haunted, very tired-looking. Silvera stopped and looked at the young man, hardly recognizing him. “Rico?” he said quietly. “Is that Rico Esteban?”

  “Yes, Father,” Rico said. “It’s me.”

  “Good God, how you’ve grown!” The priest stepped forward and shook Rico’s hand in a firm, dry grasp. “The last time I saw you was…well, I hate to think how many years have passed! But you’re a man now, aren’t you?”

  Rico smiled and shrugged. He thought, Father, if you only knew…

  “So I’ve heard you’ve moved out of the barrio. You’re living on Sunset Boulevard?”

  “I’ve got an apartment on the Strip.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Where are you working?”

  “For myself,” Rico said, and when Silvera’s gaze sharpened, he added, “Doing this and that. I’m trying to start my own messenger service.”

  Silvera nodded. Of course, he knew that Rico was probably selling drugs or pimping, possibly both. Rico’s hands were too smooth, and he’d never had the education for a desk job, though as a child playing around this very church Rico had shown a healthy curiosity about life that Silvera hoped would blossom into a quest for real knowledge. A stab of sorrow and pity caught Silvera in the heart. The waste, he thought, the terrible waste.

  “I’m making out okay,” Rico said. He’d sensed what was going on in the priest’s head, behind those black, fathomless eyes.

  Silvera motioned toward the front pew. “Please, sit down.” Rico did, and Silvera sat beside him. “You look fine,” he said, which was a lie because Rico looked as drained as an empty bottle and much thinner than he ought to be. He wondered what Rico was selling, Cocaine? amphetamines? Angel dust? Surely not heroin. Rico was too smart to get involved with junk, and he probably recalled how the addicts had screamed from their windows when they’d injected themselves with a hit cut with baby powder or sugar. “It’s been too long,” Silvera said.

  “A long time since I’ve been inside here, yeah.” Rico looked around the church, his gaze coming to rest on the window. “I’d almost forgotten what it looked like in here. What surprises me is that your window hasn’t been broken yet.”

  “It’s been tried. I’ve been having some trouble with the Homicides.”

  “They’re a bunch of punks. You should call the cops on them.”

  “No. It’s neighborhood business and nothing that I can’t take care of. Your attitude about the police seems to have changed since you were running with the Cripplers.”

  “You’re wrong, Father. I still think the cops are good-for-nothing pigs, but you can’t handle the Homicides by yourself. They’ll cut your throat as fast as anybody else’s. Maybe faster.”

  Silvera nodded thoughtfully, searching the younger man’s eyes. A terrible bitterness seemed to be churning there, the look of a dog long deprived of food. And there was something else, too, something that lay much deeper and closer to Rico’s soul. Silvera saw just a quick flash of it, like dark, glimmering quicksilver, and recognized it as fear—an emotion he’d seen in his own mirror eyes a great deal recently. “You come to see me for a reason, Rico. How can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no.” He shrugged, looked at the stained-glass window, and seemed to have a hard time saying it. “Father, has Merida Santos come to see you in the last couple of days?”

  “Merida? No.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Rico said softly. “I thought she might’ve…you know, come here to talk to you. I’ve…I’ve made her pregnant, and now she’s gone. Even her crazy mother doesn’t know where she is, and I can’t sleep at night not knowing what’s happened to her—”

  “Slow down,” the priest said and gripped Rico’s shoulder. “Take it easy and tell me everything from the beginning.”

  Rico took a deep breath. “I picked her up at her building on Saturday night…”

  When Rico was finished, his hands were clasped tightly in his lap. “I called the cops this morning and talked to the missing persons guy. He said not to worry about it, that a lot of people disappeared for a couple of days at a time and then came back home. He said it’s called running away from home, so I knew then that he wasn’t taking me too seriously, you know? He said that if her mother wasn’t concerned, I shouldn’t be either. Good-for-nothin’ pig! I don’t know what to do, Father! I think…maybe something bad’s happened to her!”

  Silvera’s eyes were black and brooding. In this neighborhood, he knew, any of a dozen terrible things could’ve happened to Merida Santos—kidnapping, rape, murder…He refused to think about that. “Merida’s a good girl. I can’t imagine her running away from home. Still if you say she’s pregnant, she may be afraid to face her mother.”

  “Who wouldn’t be? She tried to chop me up with a butcher knife.”

  “That was yesterday afternoon?”

  Rico nodded.

  “Then maybe Merida’s come home si
nce then? Maybe she just stayed away from home overnight because she was afraid to tell her mother she was pregnant?”

  “Maybe. I thought about calling the missing persons cops again and saying I was Merida’s father or uncle, but you know what that bastardo told me? He said they were too busy to hunt down every little girl who decided to run away from the barrio. Busy doin’ what? Ain’t that a load of shit?” He stopped abruptly. “Oh. Sorry, Father.”

  “That’s all right. I agree. It is a load of shit. But why don’t we go see Mrs. Santos together? Maybe Merida’s come home by now, or Mrs. Santos might talk to me more freely than she would you.” Silvera rose to his feet.

  “I love her, Father,” Rico said as he stood up. “I want you to know that.”

  “That may be, Rico. But I don’t think you love her enough, do you?”

  Rico felt speared with guilt. Silvera’s eyes were like hard bits of black glass, reflecting the secrets of Rico’s soul back at him. He was shamed to silence.

  “All right,” Silvera said and clapped Rico softly on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  SIX

  “Here’s what we’ve got,” Sully Reece said as he laid a thick sheaf of white, blue-lined computer printout paper amid the general disarray on Palatazin’s desk. “The people down in Vehicle I.D. are going crazy, but they’re sending their computers back through the whole list of plate numbers again just in case it missed any the first time, which Taylor says is highly unlikely. As you can see, there are quite a few people in L.A. who drive a gray, white, or light blue Volks bearing a two, a seven, and a ‘T’ in some numerical combination.”

  “My God,” Palatazin said as he unfolded the list. “I never knew there were so many Volkswagens in the whole state!”

  “That’s every combination the computers could come up with.”

  Palatazin bit down on his pipe. “Of course, he could be driving with a stolen license plate.”

  “Don’t even think it, please. If that’s the case, then you can just about triple the number of plates listed on that printout. And if that chick was wrong about even one digit, then the whole thing’s screwed.”