The Trafficker: A Michael Thomas Thriller

by Gavin Reese

  February 13, 9:03PM

  San Miguel Chapel. Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  Michael’s long day finally drew to a close. Dressed in the traditional black cassock that his prestigious assignment to the historic San Miguel Chapel demanded, he and Monsignor Eduardo Hernandez had just finished preparing the sacred vessels and items for tomorrow’s mass celebration. Michael followed his longtime mentor through the small sacristy and on to the rectory that housed the chapel’s clerical staff. Hernandez had lived in the small quarters for at least three decades, and he’d shared it with Father Pablo Armendariz until recently. Father Pablo was suffering from a prolonged hospitalization that created a temporary vacancy and allowed Michael’s reassignment there. The rectory was smaller than any place Michael had ever lived, and it reinforced his gratitude for his relationship with Hernandez. Two unfriendly men could easily become mortal enemies in such small quarters.

  Excited by their return, Michael’s dog, Ira, ran out of his room to greet them.

  Michael stopped in the minuscule kitchen and opened the fridge. “Can I buy you a beer, H?” Hernandez turned and looked at him in feigned disbelief, which reminded Michael how much the older cleric looked like Jerry Garcia. Don’t know if the former frontman ever went as a priest for Halloween, but that’s exactly how he would’ve looked.

  “You mean, ‘can I pass you one of your own beers?’” The aging mentor reached down and scratched Ira’s head. “You’re such a good boy, why don’t you teach your papa some manners?”

  Michael chuckled at his jest. “It’s my turn to buy groceries this week, so I’ll restock the lagers, too, and then you can drink my beers for a week. Is that a ‘yes?’”

  “Not sure why you need to ask,” Hernandez protested as he flopped on a rickety wooden chair in the rectory’s quaint living room. “My workday always ends at precisely beer-thirty.” Ira sat next to Hernandez before jumping up and putting his front paws on the monsignor’s lap. The heeler-collie mix wagged his tail and looked back at Michael as though bragging about getting attention from Hernandez.

  Michael smiled at the scene, retrieved two bottles of Belgian Trappist ale, and took them over to the living area that doubled as their dining room. “Want a glass?”

  “What do I look like, some kinda savage? Of course, I want a glass, this isn’t that cheap domestic stuff you drink.”

  Michael stepped back into the kitchen and rifled through the contents of its three drawers to find an opener. Ira watched him and curiously tilted his head while Hernandez petted the dog’s shoulders. “You have no idea what I drink anymore, H.”

  “Whose fault is that, Miguel? I’m not the one who had to run off to South America.”

  “I don’t remember the Church asking for my preferred parish. They sent me south as soon as they found out I could hablo. Where’s the opener?”

  “On the right.”

  Michael stared at the three vertical drawers. “They’re all on the right.”

  Hernandez leaned forward and looked at the drawers, so Ira left his lap and walked into the kitchen. He nudged Michael’s hand to beg for scratches. “Yeah, middle, just like I said,” Hernandez explained. “You ever thought about teaching martial arts again? I mean, if your ‘Catholic emergencies’ don’t interfere too often.”

  Michael ignored H’s probing antagonism, but he did want to teach Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes again. My life and schedule are too unpredictable right now. With the hidden opener in hand, he searched the bare cabinets for two clean glasses. “You should get a cleaning lady, H. You don’t have to live like this.”

  “It’s 2019. Why’s it gotta be a lady, Ward Cleaver? You some kinda misogynist?”

  Michael found a coffee cup and a juice glass, but everything else was dirty and strewn about the undersized kitchen sink and counter. “You really think you’re gonna find a dude that’s brave enough to touch your filth? Kinda disgusting.”

  “Yeah, well, Pablo’s been gone awhile. We had a good arrangement. I cooked and he cleaned.” Hernandez accepted the juice glass from Michael, but quizzically looked up at him. “I can’t have a big-boy glass?”

  “Not unless you wanna wash one. You’re welcome to the coffee cup if your ego demands it.”

  “Not when you say it like that. Now I’ve got no choice but to take the damned kiddie cup.” Hernandez poured a third of his beer into the glass and nearly overfilled it.

  Michael smiled as he sat down across from his beloved mentor. Ira climbed halfway up into his lap, wagged his tail, and smiled as he looked back and forth between the men. “You remember the last time I sat in here with you, drinking a beer at the end of the day?” Michael petted the dog’s head, which cast some of his long fine hair about the immediate area.

  Hernandez finished his small glass in one gulp, wiped beer foam from his mustache, and poured a refill. “June 15, 2008. You’d just graduated from the Archdiocese seminary. You came back to town just long enough to tell me about your assignment to Quito and help me with some stucco repair.” He drank most of the second glass. “You left two days later and didn’t come back for six years.”

  “That was a good day,” Michael offered. “Right up to the ‘leaving’ part, but that was bittersweet with all the opportunity that lay ahead of me then.” Did H take my departure personally? He’s gotta understand the needs of the Church better than anyone!

  “Still feel that way, about the clerical work, I mean?”

  Michael paused to consider his answer. Gotta keep the responses focused on the job that everyone’s supposed to believe I have. “Generally, I guess so.”

  “What about the moral difficulties we talked about when you came home from Bogotá?” Hernandez leaned back in the feeble chair, folded his hands over his prominent belly, and held eye contact with Michael. “You still struggling with vengeance and moral violence?”

  “Yes,” Michael offered, “but not to the same degree. It’s fair to say that I don’t have the same frustrations. Usually, anyway.” H has been passive-aggressively ribbing me for months about my new assignment. Might be time to trust him with what I’m really doing for the Church.

  “Does that mean that this new mystery assignment is helping you deal with that, or are you so far away from parishioners that you don’t have to confront your own demons?"

  His mentor examined him for a response, and Michael assumed he was about to be interrogated. He raised his coffee cup up and drank beer to give himself time to think. “Seems like a toss-up, but the demons are still there. I don’t have to see them as much.”

  “Hmm. So, what is it, exactly, that the archbishop has you doing these days?” Hernandez leaned back a little farther in the chair, which brought its front legs up off the floor.

  “Troubleshooting,” Michael offered the same answer he’d given his father three months ago. “Just, basic troubleshooting, wherever they need me.”

  Hernandez shook his head. “You’re gonna have to come up with a better line than that. There’s not enough church emergencies to justify your travel schedule.”

  Michael poured more beer into his coffee cup and tried to change the direction of their conversation. I’d selfishly like to have H as a confidant in this. I doubt he’d be too conflicted over what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it. If something really goes sideways one day, I’d like for someone to explain things to my parents. They shouldn’t have to rely on the news media for their last impression of me and the life I led. Definitely way outside John’s op-sec protocols though, but I can trust H with my life, my money, and my wife…if I had one. I doubt that even John trusts our bosses that much.

  “You know something, H, I never really thanked you for the influence you’ve had on my life. It’s only because of you and your sense of humor that I’ve been able to see God as a vibrant, emotional father who loves to laugh with us and rejoices in our successes. I still remember your April Fool’s Day sermon from when I was a kid, the one where you challenged us to imagine what God�
��s belly-laugh must sound like.”

  “Still one of my favorites. Is that why you think I’ll fall for things like ‘troubleshooter?’ I’m blessed and cursed with gallows humor, and you hope I’ll be an easy mark to believe whatever my beloved friend tells me?”

  “No, but it is why I need to talk to you about what’s actually troubling me."

  “I’ve been listening, watching, and reading people for almost six decades,” Hernandez explained. “I know when I’m being snowed by people I love. Don’t try to bullshit me, Michael.”

  “Not bullshitting you, H. I need your help.”

  Hernandez lowered the chair back onto the floor, finished his tiny glass of beer, and leaned forward toward Michael. “I’m all ears, Father.”

  Ira noticed their unusual tension and retreated to Michael’s room.

  Michael recognized H’s interrogation tactics and his sarcastic tone. I’ve underestimated the man’s ability to see through me. He leaned forward in his own chair to match H’s body language. Conveys sincerity and increases the chances he’ll believe me. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Michael crossed himself and Hernandez followed suit. “It’s been four days since my last confession.

  Michael considered how to present his relationship and interactions with Father Shawn Moore, the man he’d known as “Thomas” while they’d been at John’s clandestine training camp together. “I feel tremendous guilt over my part in a colleague’s current predicament. He’s suffering right now, and I think I contributed to that. I had a chance to help him at one point. I could have helped rein in his behavior and counsel him, but I chose instead to react emotionally and lashed out at him.”

  Hernandez inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. “What do you mean you ‘lashed out’ at him?”

  “I hit him.”

  Hernandez opened his eyes, and Michael saw shock spread across his face. “Like, punched him?”

  “Technically, it was a ‘reverse hammer fist,’ but, yeah. He’d been berating me and some other priests. Pretty personal attack, but it was only words. I could have reacted with kindness, turned the other cheek, but he just chose a bad day to do it. I turned around and hit him with everything I had.”

  “What happened?”

  The cavalcade of events that originated from that moment flashed through Michael’s memory. Can’t tell H everything, not yet. “I knocked him out, and he fell down before I could catch him. The other priests who were with us broke it up.”

  Hernandez didn’t bother trying to hide his dissatisfaction. “What did he say to get under your skin like that?”

  “It had been a particularly tough couple days for all of us, and I guess he just found my last nerve and jumped on it. A lot.”

  “How did you feel, in the moments after that happened?”

  Michael leaned back, exhaled, and looked off to the far wall. In his mind, he was back on the Mother Mary trail at John’s secret training camp. “I liken it to what you hear from jumpers, the survivors who tried to kill themselves by leaping off bridges. I reacted out of emotion and irrational anger, and the instant that my fist landed against his chin and I saw the immediate result, I absolutely regretted it. It didn’t change the effectiveness of the strategy or tactic, but I regretted it. Probably more accurate to say that I was sorry for its necessity, that everything else had failed to alter his behavior. Up to that point, I had tried a lot of different, positive, interventions to address his issues. We all had, and every one of them failed.”

  Hernandez scowled, leaned back, and crossed his arms. “That doesn’t sound like remorse for the action, for the assault against your brother. That sounds like you’re still blaming him for making you go through with the strike. Did I hear that right?”

  “The man was an emerging psychotic, H,” Michael offered to dodge the question. “After he fell, he healed up for a few hours and unscrambled his eggs. I feel guilty that none of us recognized his behavior for what it was in time to get him different help. I feel guilty that my strike could have accelerated his decline and cornered him into making a terrible decision, but I guess I don’t actually regret striking him. I feel remorse that I let him push me to confront him in that manner, that he failed to give me, and everyone else, another viable option to help him. Later that night, he snuck off and stabbed a pig. Tried to kill it, in fact. The animal was hurt badly enough it had to be put down.”

  “Wait. He tried to kill a pig after this? Who the hell is this guy?”

  Michael paused and held H’s eye contact for a long few seconds. “Father Shawn Moore.” He saw distant recognition on H’s face as his mentor mouthed the name over and over again, searching for its meaning. When he made the connection, H’s eyes widened and he again looked at Michael in shock.

  “From Omaha?”

  “One and the same.” Michael kept his focus on H and tried to decipher his response. Now he’s got a small piece of truth about what I’m involved in.

  Hernandez cocked his head and suspiciously gazed at Michael. “He’s in a clerical psych facility, right?”

  “That’s my understanding. I don’t have independent confirmation, except that an activist group is still trying to get him moved to a public hospital outside the Church’s control and influence.”

  “Is he really crazy?”

  The question hung in the air and Michael understood H’s intent. “Yes, he’s loonier than a shithouse coon, H.” Michael leaned forward again and kept focus on his mentor. “Criminally insane, yes, but he’s not a liar. As fantastic and impossible as his allegations sound, every one of them is, so far, true. The bad news for him is that he had no self-control, no inner moral compass. Not sure how he ever became a priest in the first place, but, left to his own devices, he’d have been a serial killer before the year was out.” Not that the rest of us are that far behind him, but we’re focused on worthy targets for worthy reasons.

  Hernandez watched Michael and nervously cleared his throat. “So, that’s what you’ve been doing.”

  “Until recently.”

  Hernandez left his arms crossed and leaned back a little farther, away from Michael. “What’re you doing now?”

  Michael clasped his hands and leaned still closer to his mentor, trying to show his vulnerability and need for understanding and acceptance. “I combat evil, H. I’m taking our eternal fight straight to the forces that work for the destruction and fall of mankind. So, going back to your earlier question, I do still struggle with vengeance and moral violence, but now it’s all related to concerns about how and when God chooses to use me in that fight. It doesn’t always work out like I plan.”

  Hernandez slowly nodded, his mouth agape at the revelation. “You are a real troubleshooter, then, huh?”

  Michael chuckled and nodded. “In a manner of speaking, but we try not to use firearms if there’s any other option available to us.”

  “So, whaddayou, wait, I don’t wanna know.” Hernandez shook his head several times. “Nope, I don’t wanna know.”

  Michael feared he might have overstepped his intent. “The important thing here, H, is that we’re giving evil its only real opportunity to meet God with a clean slate.”

  He scoffed. “So, you’re out reconciling evil, huh, absolving the devil’s minions of their sins?”

  “Yes,” Michael confirmed, “and then immediately sending them to meet God while they have a fighting chance of avoiding the eternal damnation their conduct deserves.”

  Emotion and color faded from the monsignor’s face. “You’re serious. You’re, actually, serious about this shit! Michael! What are you doing?!”

  “Everything that God puts before me.”

  “And all you have to confess is that you punched a maniac, and that might’ve made him go crazy faster?! You got a lot more than that to confess, if what you’re telling me is true!”

  “I’ve confessed to others along the way,” Michael explained. “It keeps my conscience clear and helps with our operational security, anyway. One
priest confesses what he knows and fears to me, and, if needed, I go back and confess anything I’ve done to him. That way, neither of us can break the Seal of the Confessional to reveal what we know.”

  Hernandez frantically crossed himself. “¡Ay, Dios mio! You’re actually serious!”

  “I am.” Michael didn’t expect H to take the news well, but he also didn’t expect the man to suffer a moral crisis over it. Might’ve misjudged this.

  “Why are you telling me this, Michael, why me? Why now? You know I can’t condone or endorse something like this, no matter how high it goes!”

  “Before you get too far into the weeds with this, I want you to consider something. The worst evils that walk among us, the pedophiles, the serial killers. What chance do they have to spend eternity in the warmth of God’s love? Their minds, their souls, they’re so broken that they re-offend the very second they’re able. I, and those like me, we can offer them one chance at eternal salvation, to meet their Father on good terms like the prodigal sons they could be. What I do, I do from a place of love and compassion, H. I wanna send them to live with God and to protect the lives and dignity of all their future victims. That’s all.”

  Hernandez sat upright and looked at Michael as though overcome with fear and uncertainty. “Am I to understand that this is what you’re doing now? That you’re out killing people at the direction of the Church? You can’t be serious! I mean, Michael, I don’t know that this is something I can keep to myself. You have to turn yourself in, and well before the cops are looking for you. All this about the Church directing you to kill can come into your defense, it’s gotta help establish your loss of reason and sanity.”