The Trinity

by David LaBounty

  “Quite right, quite right,” agrees the priest, staring at a corked bottle of wine on top of the fridge. He decides to take it down and open it up.

  Hinckley grabs a beer from the refrigerator. Rodgers is about to do the same, but Crowley stands in front of the refrigerator and wags his index finger in front of the thin man’s face.

  “No,” he says. “We can’t afford stray bullets. You have to be as sober as, well, a priest.” He laughs heartily, so heartily that his double chin starts to shake.

  Rodgers looks dejected, more hurt than angry. In an attempt to boost his morale and to make sure he stays a part of the team, Crowley becomes conciliatory.

  “Look, after it’s over, we can come back here and you can have all the beer you want. You can take a bath in it, for all I care, but for now, you of all people have to be clear headed and focused. Brad and I will just have one drink, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  One side of Das Rheingold is complete and Crowley hurries into the living room to flip the record before the needle works itself to the center of the disc and travels across the paper label in the middle. He returns to the kitchen as the scratchy preamble of the needle working its way to the music concludes and the bursting and heavy music again fills the house and the air outside.

  “No American composer could ever hope to compare,” Crowley says, nursing his glass of wine. Hinckley’s beer is long gone and he is tense and fidgety, as he wants another, needs another, the one beer not even lightening his mood in the least. But the priest said one, and he isn’t about to challenge Crowley. He lights a cigarette and leans against the kitchen counter, trying to ignore his craving.

  Rodgers is also smoking, sitting on the dirty kitchen floor, staring down between his knees, trying to figure a way out of this situation. He decides that after the shooting, he will ask the chaplain to send him home. He is elated at the thought of returning to Missouri. The memories come in waves: the sight, sound and smell of him driving his truck, listening to the radio, a girl—any girl—sitting next to him on the seat driving towards the sunset over the hilly roads on a late summer evening as the sun turns the sky orange after a good day of working in the fields.

  Crowley talks about race, about history, about the smiling gods of the North, about the closeness of their Valhalla, about the future, but neither young man really listens. Hinckley is too wrapped up in his craving for another beer, and Rodgers is trapped in a daydream of Missouri, chain-smoking all the while.

  A few hours pass. The clock strikes eight, and Crowley allows himself another glass of wine and Hinckley another beer. The priest offers Rodgers a beer, too, but Rodgers is indifferent. He refuses by pretending to be noble; he will wait until his task is complete.

  Another half hour passes and out of restlessness, they decide to go. Hinckley hands the note he has composed to the priest, who reads it while smiling broadly. Rodgers checks the gun, making sure it’s loaded. He puts the safety on before he tucks it into the front of his pants between the waistband and his undershirt.

  They are silent as they drive to Dundee. None of them are drunk. They are not familiar with one another sober, only inebriated or suffering from a collective hangover.

  After an eternity, they find themselves in Dundee. The city is not as empty as it was on that Saturday morning a week before; the sidewalks are crowded with couples lost in adoration and groups of young men and women banded together by age.

  This does not deter them. They drive in front of their chosen club several times and circle the city center, discussing their plans, recalling the previous week’s rehearsal.

  They decide that Rodgers will hide behind the same headstone and wait, no matter the minutes or the hours that elapse. Hinckley will wait in the alley behind the cemetery and cover Rodgers’s back. Father Crowley will park on the opposite street, in front of the same pub. They drive until the space becomes available, circling and circling the block until nearly an hour passes; the congested street shows no sign of lessening its density of cars or people. They decide that Crowley will circle the block and watch for the arrival of the young men in black, Hinckley on one corner and Rodgers on the other.

  Crowley drops Rodgers off in front of the nightclub, which looks less like a church in the evening than it did in the daytime. The music from inside can be heard from the sidewalk and all the way into the heart of the cemetery. Rodgers enters the cemetery unnoticed and takes his post behind the tallest of the headstones, a faded white marker bearing the name Rammage, born in 1822, passed away in 1873.

  Crowley drops Hinckley off at the end of the block. He stealthily walks down the narrow alley, where he assumes his position, turning his collar up to soften the cold wind, stuffing his gloveless hands into his pockets. There will be no smoking no matter how long he stands. There will be no evidence save the shell of the discharged bullet and the note, claiming responsibility and letting the people of Scotland know that they, this alliance of disparate souls, are fighting on their behalf.

  On his way to the alley, Hinckley tacks the note inside an envelope to the trunk of a large and ancient oak tree. Its branches cover the entire cemetery, the evidence of its leaves still on the hard and frozen ground. He places the note at eye level, ensuring that someone will see it. It is addressed to the Tayside Police.

  Crowley assumes his route of circumnavigating the block. He is not nervous at all; in fact, he is tapping his fingers to a tune, a silly children’s tune that he recalls from his youth. He doesn’t remember the words, just the melody, just the rhythm.

  He smiles broadly underneath his tam, and he feels as giddy and excited as the morning preceding his first communion.

  An hour passes slowly for Rodgers, who is watching the comings and goings from the club, people running up the steps, people staggering down. Not one black person so far, not even an American, as far as he can tell; the stature and the dress and the gait of most indicate that they are Scottish.

  “Fucking blokes, get out of the way,” he thinks to himself.

  The time goes even slower for Hinckley; he has nothing to divert himself, nothing to really concentrate on. He stands in the shadows on the edge of the graveyard, looking down the alley, and occasionally studies the silhouette of Rodgers’s thin and bent-over frame, his head appearing to cap the gravestone.

  His thoughts turn to football and the news he read in the recent Stars and Stripes and the USA Today. Nebraska losing in the Fiesta Bowl to Michigan, 27 to 23. He pictures his grandfather in Omaha wheezing in his armchair, cursing at the television, and it is one of the few times he has ever been homesick.

  Crowley drives, staring at the people, comfortable in his small car, the window slightly open with the night air refreshing his face, the coolness tempered by his automobile’s cabin heater set on high. He enjoys the scenery, the collection of pale faces walking underneath the streetlights on wide sidewalks in front of very old buildings with detailed architecture, carvings set in stone in every facade, done in a way he would never see in Houston, and especially not in rural Minnesota.

  Eventually, as the hour nears eleven and the night is starting to thin of pedestrians and cars, three young black men walk out of the club with what appear to be three Scottish girls. Lee recognizes the tallest of the three black American sailors. He is a petty officer third class, one of those communications types that he despises so much. He can’t recall the name, but he remembers the payday of November 15th, this same petty officer called him stupid through the windows into the disbursing office because he handed him a check belonging to an officer on the base with the same last name. Rodgers has always felt especially awkward when chastised even in the slightest, and he felt that all the people in line waiting for their checks were laughing at him because of his mistake. He fumbled around for the rest of that morning, passing out checks without looking anyone in the eye.

  So just as the sailor reaches the last step and stands alone on the sidewalk as the rest of his party trails behind, Lee fir
es what is supposed to be just one shot, but his recalled anger has him do it in four, firing the gun faster than the victim can react. The first shot strikes him in the shoulder, the second in the stomach, and the third and fourth in the face and in the forehead. The young man collapses on the sidewalk, the remains of his head splattered against the cement stairs. Rodgers can see the blood coursing from the body and spreading to the gutter. Everyone coming in and out of the club drops to the ground, their arms covering their heads. No one looks to see where the shots are coming from.

  Rodgers calmly walks away and finds an agitated Hinckley, who was only expecting to hear one shot. They walk in between the buildings and hurriedly out into the next street. Each young man walks to opposite ends of the block. The sound of sirens fills the air, joining the commotion and panic and screaming coming from the next block.

  Crowley has kept his window cracked open to listen for the gunshots. His glee turned to anger and later fear as he heard the gun continue its firing. He was almost afraid to pick Rodgers and Hinckley up; he was sure someone could see the flare of the gun as it was fired so many times. His anxiety subsides as he approaches Hinckley; no one is giving him a second look.

  He picks up Hinckley and says nothing as they traverse the block and see Rodgers waving his arms vigorously, drawing attention to himself, drawing looks from spectators in passing cars and those few pedestrians still on the sidewalk, exiting the pubs in drunken bemusement or melancholy.

  Crowley decides to drive on but changes his mind. He can’t risk Rodgers being caught. Crowley realizes it will be some time before they try something like this again. He will need to introduce a certain sort of discipline into this Trinity. He might have to replace Rodgers.

  Because of his indecision, Crowley has to slam on the brakes. His tires squeal as the car skids past Lee, who runs up to the car and flings the door open.

  He is out of breath as he takes his seat. “I shot that nigger good! If you could have only seen it, Father Crowley! I shot that nigger good!” He claps his hands loudly in a swiping fashion, the left hand going up while the right hand goes down. “Damn! I shot him good. I didn’t want to shoot nobody, but damn, I shot that nigger good! He was a real son-of-a-bitch, and I fixed his ass good.” Rodgers feels more powerful than he has in his entire life, and a vague memory enters his mind, a remote recollection of rabbit hunting as a young adolescent early one winter with just a dusting of snow on the ground. There is a small forest behind his house of poplar and pine. He shot a rabbit as he chased it through the woods, a younger rabbit, male and small. The first shot, in the leg, only mangled it, and the rabbit was still alive, running on its three remaining legs. Instead of killing it instantly, he continued to maim it, shooting off the legs one by one, and then the ears, and then the nose. He felt like a god as he controlled the rabbit’s remaining moments. With a powerful scream that echoed in the grove of trees, he shot the rabbit completely and the snow on the immediate ground turned to pink.

  That’s how he feels tonight—like a god. He thinks of Thor from Crowley’s speeches on Norse mythology. He feels like a giant, a great and mighty ancient giant, deciding who remains on this earth and who doesn’t.

  Crowley listens to Rodgers’s exuberance, and then chastises him. “Listen,” he says, his teeth starting to clench, “we agreed on one shot. No one can tell where one shot came from, but you decided to wake up the whole city of Dundee and draw them a sonic map with your gunfire. I still can’t understand why the police haven’t pulled up behind us, you idiotic child. We have come too far and are going to go further; we don’t need you to desecrate our sacred mission, to turn the hands of progress back any further than they’ve already fallen. I would be very careful, if I were you… You better hope no one saw you.” Crowley says this in a calculating matter, glancing at Rodgers inside the rearview mirror, waiting for his reaction.

  “Nobody saw nothin’.” Rodgers’s excited mood turns somber, and the joy and pride he felt just moments ago vanishes. “They was all too scared to look my way. They just ducked and covered their heads. I don’t think they knew where what was coming from. So I shot that nigger. I shot that nigger good.”

  They drive on to Crowley’s house in silence, the A92 black and only scarcely lit by a smattering of oncoming headlights. Crowley constantly looks in the rearview mirror, waiting for sirens to approach, but the receding landscape remains black and silent all the way to his farmhouse. He is satisfied that no one saw them take flight; no one saw Rodgers scramble out of the cemetery. If the note was placed where Hinckley said he put it, he knows the Tayside Police are reading it by now. He hopes there is a silent cheer from the heart of the white officer who reads the note.

  “Sweet Mary, mother of God,” says the freshest-faced of the two young constables who are the first to arrive at the steps of the club where the sailor lies dead, his blood reflecting the streetlights and the moonlight straining through the clouds.

  “Sweet fucking Mary, mother of God.” He vomits profusely into the gutter, taking care that his throw-up doesn’t taint the evidence; only his shoes and the cuffs of his trousers are spoiled. He continues to wretch amidst the confusion, the hysterical and shocked passersby who witnessed the brief carnage, and the sound of sirens coming from all directions asserting their gravity upon what had been a typical and cheerful Friday evening.

  The ambulance arrives as the constable wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve. The taste of the take-out curry from four hours previous is still with him, but now it is not so appetizing.

  The ambulance’s arrival is pointless. No one else is injured, and the young sailor is long past mortality. Still, they check his pulse and his breath before closing his eyes with rubber-gloved hands. The young constable tapes off the scene while his companion takes statements from witnesses. No one saw anything—no suspicious looking people, no shooter. It is quickly surmised that the victim is an American from the base in Lutherkirk.

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  No.

  “Did he have a go at it with some of the lads in the club?”

  Again, no. He had spent the evening with his friends drinking and dancing with the three local girls who are still hugging each other tightly on the sidewalk, the fog of their breath intermingling before it rises into the damp and cold and crystal night. They are interviewed. They are too intoxicated and upset to give any information, but what they say is still recorded by young police officers with damp notebooks.

  The inspectors arrive after a quarter of an hour, having been yanked from sleep or drink by frantic calls or pages. The one in charge, Chief Inspector Holliday, is a veteran of many Dundee crimes, but nothing like this. A Pakistani murdered the previous month, and now this. His instinct tells him the two are related.

  He is a very obese man, and his obesity is driving the department to retire him this coming spring, still at the tender age of forty-nine. He isn’t sure what he will do with his time or how he will supplement his pension, which won’t keep him in the comfort that he has grown accustomed to. He has dreamed of spending his twilight years on the lonely and peaceful Isle of Skye, miles away from the urban decay that has crept into Dundee. He envisions himself stretching out his pension living a simple life alone in a cottage on a treeless and windswept shore on a cliff overlooking the sea. He longs to spend his retirement days fishing and reading and drinking and maybe even find a nice shepherd’s daughter or widow with whom to pass the time. He could lose the weight and prolong his career and increase his pension; a loss of about three stone would make him more acceptable in the brass’s eyes, but he’s never been one for discipline. He’s more of a connoisseur of comfort, an aficionado of ample food and endless pints after the end of the working day or working night.

  On this night, he had been at his desk late, surrounded by cartons of Chinese take-out, writing a report about the Pakistani, leaving the case unsolved, chain smoking all the while. He received a hurried tap on the shoulder from someone in u
niform and drove the short distance across the city center to the scene, where he now stands in his dirty shirt and wrinkled tie underneath a fluorescent yellow police-issue raincoat. He is short of breath and wheezing as he studies the scene. He sees where the bullets ripped the body—an uncommon sight in a country where guns are a rarity and even the police patrol the streets unarmed.

  “An American?” he asks the nearest uniformed constable.

  “Yes, from up on the base.”

  Holliday nods and lights a cigarette from a white box. He offers them to the patrolmen, but they all refuse.

  Holliday studies the huddled Scottish girls and the shocked and confused friends of the dead American. His instinct tells him they have nothing to offer him, no information that could be relevant to this crime of intentional brutality. He stares at the club and down the sidewalk and then across the street. He rests his gaze on the cemetery.

  “He shot from there.” Holliday points to the darkened cemetery. “I want that taped off, too, and the grounds combed.” More uniformed officers arrive and they walk across the street with more yellow police tape and flashlights. It isn’t long before they shout and beckon Holliday over. He waddles across the street and sees the envelope tacked to the tree. He gingerly rips it down. He doesn’t open it there; he doesn’t want to risk the contents getting wet from this damp night. He drives back to the station and proceeds upstairs to the long and low office. He sits at his desk and carefully opens the envelope. He has long assumed that nothing can cause him alarm; he feels he has seen it all in the course of his twenty-plus years of police work, but his imagination could never take him to something like this, and the contents of the letter anger him. He takes it personally. Someone was murdered in his city, and on his watch.

  He reads:

  This is the beginning of a war. We are out to get rid of the lesser races, any non-white, they don’t belong in Scotland. We will continue until they have returned back to their native lands. Scotland is for the Scots, not for blacks or Asians or foreigners of any kind. The purge will continue unless our demands are met.