by Joseph Flynn
Odo had been after him for years to begin a simple fitness program.
He’d replied that as long as he was able to play his guitar he was fit enough.
Now, having renewed his acquaintance with the Almighty by giving thanks, the magistrate turned to supplication.
Pruet prayed for strength, and for Mademoiselle Casale’s deliverance.
It wasn’t often that McGill lost his temper. The last time had been when Sweetie got shot, taking a bullet that should have been his. He might have beaten the teenage punk who had pulled the trigger to a pulp, if he hadn’t seen the terror in the eyes of the girl the shooter had taken hostage—terror directed at him after his first punch had lifted the punk off his feet and made his eyes roll back in his head.
There was no chance of him clocking Etienne Burel like that, but once McGill saw Pruet’s net snag Gabbi, saving her from the immediate prospect of drowning, saving him from having to put his dubious lifeguarding skills to the test, he intended to give The Undertaker the beating of his life. The pain and unsteadiness McGill had felt a moment ago had vanished. The adrenaline rush that came with seeing Gabbi splash into the Seine left him feeling like he’d been plugged into the city’s main power grid.
He had lost his own escrima sticks in his fall, but Odo’s were lying next to his body. He scooped them up and hopped over the inert Corsican. The Undertaker was preoccupied rubbing his battered leg when McGill tore into him. He hit the giant hard across the back of both of his hands. For any normal man, the blows would have been disabling, breaking several bones, causing blackout pain. With this monstrous bastard, though, McGill felt like he’d smacked his stick against the arm of a well-upholstered sofa.
The Undertaker was human enough to bellow in pain, but he kept his hands up, pulling them alongside his head. Then he began to advance on McGill, hate in his eyes, hobbling forward on his one functional leg like a boxer who didn’t mean to quit this side of the grave.
Determined sonofabitch, McGill thought. The old line Joe Louis had used to rebut Billy Conn popped into McGill’s head: “He can run, but he can’t hide.”
Thing was, McGill didn’t intend to run or hide. The sticks gave him a reach equal to the giant’s, and he was ten times quicker. McGill attacked The Undertaker’s elbows. When Burel howled and dropped his hands, McGill battered his wrists. The giant tried a clumsy swipe at McGill’s head and he ducked under it. He delivered a shot to the big bastard’s ribs, and…
He broke something. Not bone. Glass.
McGill danced back and saw a large stain appear across the side and front of The Undertaker’s jacket. He’d cracked open a bottle holding some — Jesus! He’d busted the giant’s bottle of stink juice. McGill had dabbed the inside of his mask with Old Spice Classic aftershave. The company’s ads said it smelled like freedom. At that moment, though, freedom was overwhelmed by the stench of the devil’s outhouse.
The olfactory assault drove McGill back, made him gag and cough.
He didn’t see how he was going to get within striking distance of The Undertaker now. But the big bastard didn’t have any problem with the way he smelled. It made him smile, and he came at McGill again, seeming to move better than before, as if the stink was to him what spinach was to Popeye.
And when it rained, it poured.
McGill heard Pruet’s strained voice call out.
“Whoever is down there, I beg you to hurry. I cannot hold on to mademoiselle much longer.” He repeated his plea in French.
Hearing the magistrate’s voice brought to McGill’s mind the only alternative means of attack he had available. He pulled Pruet’s lighter, formerly used for the magistrate’s pipe, from where he’d Velcroed it to his left arm. He flicked the cap open and was immediately chagrined that he hadn’t thought to test it before now. Didn’t know if it was charged with fluid. He said a one-word prayer, “Please,” and thumbed the ignition wheel.
A high, steady blue flame appeared immediately.
McGill didn’t know if The Undertaker’s stink juice was flammable but from the sudden look of fear that appeared in the giant’s eyes, he guessed that it was. The big SOB tried to turn and run, but McGill was too quick. He tossed the lighter and the flame kissed the stain.
The big man went up like a sheaf of hay. As he burned, he shrieked and hopped in place, looking to McGill’s eyes like a demon doing a jig. The torment of the flames kept The Undertaker from seeing the obvious solution to his problem.
Only because Pruet needed the bastard alive, McGill yelled, “La fleuve!”
The river. Good thing he’d been studying the language.
Still, The Undertaker hesitated, as if he were hoping for another alternative. Finding none, he hopped to the edge of the walkway and tumbled into the water.
McGill, who also wasn’t overly fond of water that rose above his chin, raced over to where Gabbi bobbed on the Seine. He lowered himself into the river while holding on to a boat stanchion. He immediately felt the pull of the current. But he was able to extend his right arm and grab a floating loop of net. Pruet let go of his hold, and McGill took care to neither dislodge nor asphyxiate Gabbi as he pulled her in.
Getting Gabbi and himself out of the Seine without losing hold of the stanchion required an effort the likes of which McGill could not recall. It left him panting as the two of them lay side by side on the walkway. He doubted he’d be making an appearance on the dance floor at Buckingham Palace. Catching his breath, he removed his mask, sat up, and disentangled Gabbi from the net. He pressed his fingers to her throat and found a pulse. He looked up at the bridge and saw Pruet staring expectantly at him. He gave his new friend a thumb’s up.
The magistrate beamed, then abruptly became anxious again.
“Les autres?” he called.
McGill looked to where Odo and Harbin lay unmoving beneath the bridge.
He could only shrug. Pruet took that as a sign he should call for help.
After the magistrate had departed, McGill noticed the blackened, steaming bulk of The Undertaker floating downstream, his face in the water. Just then a boat motored by, moving in the same direction as the giant’s body, crewed by his friends the gypsies.
One of them called out, “Shall we take that whale aboard for you?”
“S’il vous plait,” McGill said.
“We will add the charge to your bill.”
“Naturellement.”
McGill felt Gabbi take his hand. He looked and saw she had opened her eyes.
In a raspy voice, she asked, “Did we win?”
Thinking of Odo and Harbin, he answered, “Remains to be seen.”
Arlington, VA
50
Bishop O’Menehy looked at Sweetie across the rectory’s kitchen table.
“Do you really think they mean to kill me?” he asked.
Sweetie told him, “If they have the time, yes.”
The cleric put a hand over his eyes. It was always a sobering moment to learn someone wanted you dead, and might try to achieve that ambition. Sweetie had been threatened with death by thugs in Chicago when she’d been on the CPD; she’d been shot by a punk in Winnetka. Neither experience had been any fun. Both had caused her to rely more heavily in her faith.
Ego loco meus fide…
The bishop looked up and told her, “I wish I’d kept Father Lonnigan here a bit longer.”
The bishop had sent the rectory’s young cleric home to his parents in Maryland; he’d sent the housekeeper to visit her sister in Virginia Beach. The idea was to get the innocents out of harm’s way. Now, the bishop and Sweetie had the house to themselves.
Sweetie told O’Menehy, “Say a good act of contrition. God will understand if you can’t get in a confession with Father Lonnigan tonight.”
“You take your faith so lightly?” the bishop asked.
Sweetie said, “I take my faith seriously. I just wear it lightly.”
The bishop suspected heresy lay within that notion, but decided now was not the
time for debate. His point was confirmed when Sweetie’s cell phone beeped. She had a text message.
It was from Jim: Kinnard cleared. Bad guys bagged. Three friends hurt. I got bruised. Not badly. Keep me posted. Sweetie lowered her head and offered a small prayer of gratitude.
Jim also told her to expect a call from SAC Celsus Crogher.
“Something wrong?” the bishop asked.
Sweetie looked at him and smiled.
“Just the opposite. The good guys won a round. Makes me feel confident.”
“About our situation?”
“Yes.”
Sweetie’s cell intoned another call. Crogher.
“Please excuse me a minute, your excellency. I have to take this.”
The bishop looked uneasy at the prospect of being left alone.
“I should alert you if I see anything threatening?”
Sweetie nodded. “Duck under the table and give a yell.”
Margaret Sweeney took Crogher’s call in the rectory’s living room, sitting in a big overstuffed armchair. Made her feel like she’d be speaking ex cathedra. She knew who Celsus Crogher was, of course, had even seen him lurking on visits to the White House, but never had occasion to speak with him before.
“SAC Crogher,” the man announced himself.
“This is Margaret Sweeney.”
“Holmes told me you’d give me the man who shot Special Agent Ky,” Crogher said, getting right to the point.
“That man was taken into custody earlier this evening by the Arlington, Virginia police.”
“Damn.”
Sweetie got the unmistakable impression the fed had wanted to do the honors himself.
She said, “There was no way Jim could have known that would happen.”
“Yeah, if you say so.”
Sweetie knew that McGill didn’t worry about keeping SAC Crogher happy, but neither did he go out of his way to antagonize the man, if only to make things easier on Patti. So she told Crogher, “We’re still working on grabbing the people who hired the shooter, if you’re interested in that.”
“Hell, yes!” Crogher said.
Sweetie decided to chastise the man about his language another time. Right now, there was a more important point to be made.
“What we’re doing here isn’t your standard federal law enforcement exercise, Agent Crogher. You try to make it fit the mold, you’ll mess things up.”
Sweetie heard a grunt, and then Crogher said, “That’s your way of telling me I shouldn’t try to run things?”
“You might not even want to be present, if your career is what matters most to you.”
Crogher laughed. Not a pleasant sound.
“I almost blew my career out of the water with the president twelve hours ago. So what do you want me to do, follow your orders? Holmes’s orders?”
Crogher’s attitude brought out the Mother Superior in Sweetie’s nature.
“Agent Crogher, you should know that Jim McGill has no knowledge of or supervisory capacity in the matter at hand. If you’d like to be involved in tonight’s activities, where you might possibly be helpful, I’ll give you the information you need. But only if you promise me you’ll be able to work constructively with others.”
Sweetie had been tempted to say “play well,” but pulled back.
Crogher still got the message. He said flatly, “Yeah, I’ll be a team guy.”
“Fine,” Sweetie said.
She told him where he could find Deke, Welborn, and Francis Nguyen.
The bishop was pouring himself a cup of coffee and looking out a window to see if the forces of darkness were gathering nearby when Sweetie returned to the kitchen. Apparently, the devil’s minions were working another neighborhood at the moment. He turned to Sweetie.
“What if no one comes for me?” he asked.
“Odds are they won’t,” she told him.
Her words left O’Menehy nonplussed.
“Then what are we doing here? Why did I send Father Lonnigan and Miss Meehan away? Why are you armed?”
Sweetie had shown his Excellency that she was packing.
She said, “There is a chance some mugs might try to break down your door and shoot you, but it’s a small one.”
The bishop visibly relaxed; Sweetie didn’t want him to think he was in the clear.
“What’s far more likely, Your Excellency, is they’ll try to get you to come to them. That way they control the situation. They lure you somewhere they can get an easy shot at you and then get away clean.”
The bishop set his coffee cup on the countertop. He leaned back against it and supported himself with both hands.
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“I was a cop for a long time. That’s how these guys work. They never want a fair fight; they want the deck stacked in their favor.”
“Why would anyone … why would I accommodate them?”
Sweetie said, “Because they know how to stack the deck. They’re pretty good at coming up with compelling reasons.”
“I can’t imagine any reason that would compel me to sacrifice myself.”
Sweetie looked at O’Menehy. He had his back up. He was scared. And it bothered him greatly to see Sweetie knew just how the villains planned to manipulate him.
“You think there is a way to make me complicit in my own demise?” the bishop asked.
“I do,” Sweetie said.
The bishop set his jaw, seeking refuge in Irish stubbornness. But his resolve crumbled under the weight of Sweetie’s patient stare. She wasn’t trying to goad him. She simply knew the way things would be.
“What is it, damn all sinners to hell. What are they going to do?” O’Menehy demanded.
“As I mentioned to you before, Your Excellency, you’ve already been manipulated through a perversion of one of the sacraments. Guys like Horatio Bao and his people, when they find a weakness, they keep poking at it.”
The bishop still didn’t see what Sweetie was getting at.
So she said, “What’s the one sacrament that involves a cleric making a house call?”
Now the bishop understood. “The anointing of the sick and dying.”
Sweetie still thought of it as Extreme Unction, but at least they were on the same page.
“Bringing spiritual aid and comfort to those in pressing need,” she said. “Perfecting spiritual health, including the remission of sins if necessary. If you get a call to attend to one of your parishioners, with Father Lonnigan gone, would you really refuse to go?”
The anguish on the bishop’s face was stark.
To his credit, though, he said, “Of course not. If called, I must go.”
No sooner were his words spoken than the phone on the kitchen wall rang.
And a heartbeat after that, Sweetie had a terrific idea.
The Novak house, Arlington, VA
51
Like any successful predators, the Baos made a careful study of the game animals in their hunting range. Long before they launched their blackmail scheme against the Church, it was necessary to evaluate the character of not just the bishop of the diocese, but all the priests close to him. All it would take would be one fearless cleric to go to the local cops or, worse, the FBI to ruin the whole plan. The fallback for Horatio Bao was to have his people in prison kill the former pedophile priests who had been ready to “come forward with further tales of molestation,” but that still would leave a taint of suspicion on the Viet Kieu lawyer. The authorities might start looking into his other activities, and those investigations wouldn’t be stopped with a convenient death or two. If anything, further suspicious deaths would bring even harsher scrutiny.
Calanthe was the one who had suggested to her father that they investigate the lay people who provided clerical support in the diocese. She knew that secretaries and other functionaries often had a far greater understanding of their superiors’ doings than upper management ever would have guessed. It would be unforgivable, Callie said, to be undone b
y a flunky.
As a result of Callie’s precautionary measure, the Baos came to know Bishop O’Menehy’s personal secretary, Eva Novak. A childless middle-aged widow, devout in her faith, she had come to regard every Catholic in the diocese as a member of her extended family.
She helped work out payment plans for parents who fell behind on parochial school tuition; she advised travelers on the best times of year to hear His Holiness speak to audiences in St. Peter’s Square; she always accepted invitations to be a guest at baptisms and weddings. At wedding receptions, she would coax the band into playing at least one polka, and showed the people of other cultures, and an unsuspecting partner plucked from a handy table, how the dance should be done.
The only time she ever resisted the will of the faithful was when either the clergy or the laity tried to honor her service to the diocese. She told everyone it was blessing enough simply to be allowed to do her job. It was enough for her to serve the Lord and live life the way her mother, Agneta, had taught her.
When Agneta’s heart began to fail, offers of help came from every corner of the diocese, but medically there was nothing to be done for an ailing woman well into her nineties. Her body had given its all and soon it would know eternal rest. The offers were more a show of moral support for Eva than anything else.
But when Bishop O’Menehy asked Eva what he might do for her, his secretary asked that Father Francis Nguyen be allowed to say Agneta’s funeral mass. That was not only Eva’s wish, it was her mother’s as well.
The bishop could not deny such a heartfelt request from someone who had served the Church so selflessly, so joyously, and so long. From the bishop’s point of view, Eva and Agneta Novak were the people responsible for Francis Nguyen’s continued standing as a Catholic priest.
That the Church was at irreconcilable odds with one of its most inspirational clerics was a tragedy in Eva’s eyes. Almost as great as that of losing her mother. Maybe it was worse. Mom was as sure of salvation as anyone could be. Father Nguyen’s fate remained uncertain.