by Leif Wright
The idiot nervously looked for places to run. No one ever heard Miguel raise his voice. The fact that he was doing so now was really bad news.
Raul, noticing the idiot starting to look, put his hand on the idiot’s shoulder. The hand swallowed the shoulder whole.
“This isn’t Walmart,” Miguel said, cracking his neck to the left as he said it. “I can’t fire you, and I don’t want to kill you. You don’t want me to kill you, do you?”
The idiot shook his head.
“Then we have a problem. If I just let you walk away, I lose respect in the eyes of everyone else who works for me. Respect is all I have. I can’t afford to lose it. But if I kill you, no one understands why—they don’t get the message, and I need for them to get the message. So we have a big problem.”
Miguel smiled, and the blood ran from the idiot’s face.
“Raul here is going to cut off your cojones now. If you don’t act like a little coño, he won’t make you eat them. Do you understand?”
The idiot on the couch didn’t know how to respond. Was he serious? Surely not. Surely the huge Mexican on his right wasn’t really going to cut his balls off. That kind of shit only happened in movies, not in real life. No way. He smiled.
Raul, with a quickness that belied his size, stood, simultaneously grabbing both of the idiot’s arms and wrenching them around his back, flipping him over in the process. With the practiced efficiency of the former military police officer he was, he grabbed a zip tie and cinched together the idiot’s arms at the elbows, then using another, he cinched together the idiot’s wrists. Realization finally hitting the idiot, he started to scream. One quick hand around the throat from Raul put a stop to that.
“Shhh, chica,” Raul whispered into his ear. “If I have to gag you, I’ll make you eat them when I cut them off.”
Raul flipped him over, then quickly ripped his jeans off, pulling out a seven-inch chef’s knife with the other hand. The idiot’s eyes were wide, crazed, but he was staying silent for now, hoping beyond hope that this was a prank or a joke of some sort. Raul knew eventually he’d scream, but part of the punishment was making him keep silent as long as he could. No matter who the victim was, the same thing always happened—their dicks tried to climb back up into their bodies. It never failed to amuse Raul when Miguel started talking about shrinkage, because that’s exactly what happened when he was about to do his work.
This guy was no different. As his dick tried to disappear, Raul calmly pulled on a pair of blue rubber gloves. When he put another zip tie over the guy’s balls, he knew that’s when the screaming would start. It was involuntary. But the zip tie was necessary to keep the idiot from bleeding out. This one was no different. As soon as Raul had cinched up the zip tie to tourniquet tightness, the idiot started screaming.
Raul shoved a rag in the guy’s mouth, then, unceremoniously, he chopped the guy’s balls off with the chef’s knife. The muffled screams stopped for a moment, then began again with renewed vigor. They intensified when Raul held the severed balls up for him to see. Another quick hand around the throat silenced the screams long enough for Raul to pull the rag out and shove the balls in the guy’s mouth, replacing the rag.
Silently, a short, dark-haired woman scurried into the room carrying a stainless steel tray covered with a white cloth. Without saying anything, she opened a bottle from the tray, soaked some cotton balls in a dark yellow liquid, and rubbed them all over the cut on the man’s scrotum. Then, as Raul held him down, she pulled out a curved needle and thread and sutured the man’s wound, covering it with a bandage. Then she picked up her tray and left.
A guy with a large ear piercing poked his head in the door.
“Jefe, la policia is here. They want to talk to you.”
Miguel considered for a moment. He certainly didn’t want the cops coming up here and seeing a freshly castrated man being restrained. If they had a warrant, they would have busted in without asking. There were no drugs here, so there was nothing to give them probable cause—except, of course, the fresh gelding.
He stood up and poked the idiot in the temple with his finger.
“If he makes so much as a peep, put a knife through there,” he said to Raul, who nodded. Fucking cops. It was never a good scene when they came around, even when they weren’t arresting anyone. Miguel composed himself and made sure no blood had found its way across the room to him. The cops knew him; he had dealt with them plenty of times before. Still, it never hurt to do an inspection. No reason to give them probable cause when they didn’t already have it. Cops, he knew from experience, loved little accidents like that. Some guy calls the cops to investigate his missing go-cart, but when they get inside the house, they smell the weed he’s growing in the guest bedroom and they nail him for cultivation of illegal drugs instead of finding whoever stole the man’s go-cart. Miguel wouldn’t go down like that. They would have to do actual police work if they wanted to catch him. They weren’t just going to luck into it.
He looked at himself in the full-length mirror in the hall. No blood. Good.
He went down the stairs, where his amigo, a white guy named Zach, was standing in the doorway between the cops, a young guy in a uniform and a hot chica in a pants suit, and the inside.
“Zach, don’t be a pendejo,” Miguel said in his friendliest voice as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “Invite them in!”
Zach turned and invited Bain and Russell into the house. Miguel crossed the living room toward his favorite chair as Zach motioned the cops, neither of whom Miguel had ever seen, toward the couch.
“Miguel,” Miguel said as he stuck his hand out to them.
Bain was first to grab it. “Detective Bain,” she said, then pointed to Russell. “Officer Russell.”
Bain and Russell knew all about Miguel, thanks to friends on the Narcotics Task Force. He was a relatively small-time heroin and cocaine dealer who religiously stayed away from methamphetamine, which put him just on the periphery of the task force’s radar. They didn’t want him pushing drugs, but he wasn’t as high on their list as meth dealers, so they mostly left him alone.
Bain knew any dealer worth his snuff would be nervous with police around, and by all accounts, this one was smart, running his little gang more like a CEO than a drug lord. She sat on the couch when he motioned.
“We have something to talk to you about,” she said, looking around the room at the various people assembled there. “It doesn’t have anything to do with drugs.” She watched as his face revealed an inner struggle on whether and how to respond. He stayed silent. “But I think you’ll want everyone out of the room when we talk.”
He made a confused face. “I don’t have anything to hide from my friends,” he said. “You can say anything in front of them.”
“Okay,” she said, pulling the photo of Miguel as a little boy sitting on Santa’s lap. “We want to talk about this.”
“Everyone outside!” Miguel barked as his face contorted into a mask of either anger or horror. “NOW!”
The people hanging around the first floor of the house scrambled to find the exits closest to them.
“How the fuck did you get that?” he said once the floor had cleared, his thick accent disappearing for the briefest of seconds. “How the fuck?”
“We got this photo from the computer of the man who was hired to beat the shit out of the priest who molested you,” Bain said calmly. “It took us a while to identify you in it.”
“Keep your voice down,” he whispered urgently, looking around to be sure no one heard the thing in his life that embarrassed him more than any other. His accent had returned. “What you say is impossible. Nobody but me and that cocksucking priest ever knew what happened. Who could know to give that to someone?”
“We were kind of wondering that ourselves,” Bain said. “The man who was hired to do the job also committed a murder, so finding out who sent this picture is our top priority. Can you remember anything that might help?”
�
�It was so long ago. I never think about it,” he lied. “I’m not gay. I don’t know why he picked me.”
“No one thinks you’re gay,” Russell said. “Molesters fuck people up for the rest of their lives, and this asshole is going to prison for what he did to you.”
“Fuck that,” Miguel said. “I won’t testify. Nobody can know about this.”
“We don’t need you to testify,” Bain said. “He has agreed to plead guilty to molesting an unknown juvenile male. No one even knows we identified you as that male. We don’t need help nailing him. We need help nailing whoever knew to send this picture to the guy who beat him.”
Miguel rubbed his temples. “Nobody was even around,” he said. “Just Robby the retard, and I guarantee he’s not telling anyone. He’s a vegetable.”
Bain’s eyes widened. “Robby?” she said. “Robby was there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He was always there. The priests took care of him while his dad was at work. But you always forgot he was there because he just hung out in the corner and drooled. But he was a retard. He didn’t know anything that was going on. Hell, he’s probably dead now.”
“He’s alive,” Bain said. “And he started communicating through a computer about a year ago. He hasn’t said anything about you, but his father was also beaten by the same guy.”
“Robby the retard is talking? I thought he was just kind of brainless. You mean he knew what was going on around him? Holy shit.”
“I’m thinking maybe he’s getting back at people for what went on around him,” Bain said to the air. Then, realizing that she was thinking out loud, she composed herself. “Sorry. I think you helped us, Miguel. Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said, feeling surreal as Bain and Russell stood up to leave. “Anytime, I think.”
Without further discussion, she and Russell left. Miguel, forgetting the ball-less idiot upstairs, walked to his bedroom to make a phone call.
32
SEAN BRIEN’S CELL WAS IN ISOLATION FROM THE OTHER INMATES of the county jail, where he was awaiting arraignment. He had always assumed the rumors of inmates ganging up on people accused of crimes against children were hyperbole, but the deputies who put him here assured him it was true: in general population, his life expectancy was days, not years.
The church to which he had dedicated his entire life, upon hearing he had agreed to plead guilty, had already started excommunication proceedings against him, which he found interesting. The church had welcomed molesting priests with open arms—as long as they denied allegations that the church knew through the confessional to be true. As long as those priests were willing to lie to the public, they were quickly reassigned to a new diocese and the entire matter disappeared. Some of them had molested hundreds of children that the church knew about.
Brien had molested one. And had refused to lie about it, so the church was going to excommunicate him—forever condemning him to hell—not for molesting that poor little boy, but for refusing to lie about it.
It was confusing and disheartening. He understood his crime was horrific, and he was offering himself up to secular authorities so he could pay for it. Spiritually, he did his penance for it each day, without fail. And he had confessed the actual sin itself to his own confessor, Cardinal De Luca, years ago. The church had taken no action then, only doing something when the sin became public.
Jesus had given Saint Peter, the first pontiff, the keys to heaven, and as such, his numerous successors had also been handed down that authority, meaning if they kicked him out of the church, Sean Brien faced eternity without salvation. He had been dubious about the nature of the church’s power to affect salvation as long as he had been a priest, so in this ugly and lonely cell, it was tempting to cling to that doubt in the face of losing his own salvation.
But situational theology wasn’t his style. Instead, he clung to the doctrine he had learned and preached: salvation was to be found only through the one true church. And that terrified him, because he was sure he was about to lose his membership in that church.
He had tried praying, but the words just wouldn’t come. Nothing had changed for him except the relief that his years-held secret was finally out in the open. He was the same priest—the same bishop—that the church had trusted to guide the souls of thousands of people after it knew of his earlier sin. Nothing had changed—except now he could be completely honest. Yet here he stood, in jeopardy of losing his salvation over something the church had long known about—and covered up. Could such corruption truly be entrusted with the power of salvation and damnation?
In here, he had nothing but time to think about it. Losing entrance to heaven for refusing to lie about such a serious sin—it just didn’t make sense. He would have understood if the church had excommunicated him right after it had learned of his sin. But to do it only because those outside the church had learned of it, well, that was something secular organizations did, not an organization that was supposed to hold the keys of Saint Peter.
Would God really respect the decisions of such an organization? If he did, what kind of God was that? He had forever scarred that poor boy he had molested, and he would completely understand God rejecting him for that. But he had done the penance prescribed by his confessor, and according to the church, that had assuaged God’s anger over the sin itself. So why was he just now finding it so difficult to pray?
God had known what happened all along, but now that people knew, he felt like God had turned away.
Something caught the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, all he saw were the bars of his cell and the camera that watched to make sure he didn’t kill himself.
Wait. Was something different about the camera? Hadn’t there been a red light on there before?
He didn’t have time to figure it out. The door to his cell slid open and a huge deputy carrying a metal club walked in.
“Miguel Molinero sends his regards,” the deputy said.
And then Sean Brien found out what would become of him in the afterlife.
33
RUSSELL STARED AT JESSICA, NOT EVEN BOTHERING TRYING TO DO IT stealthily. She was stunning, even in mom clothes, with her hair not fixed, no makeup on, kids running around like little barbarians sacking a city.
Stunning.
All he could think about were the dirty deeds that she and Bain had done right here in this house. Maybe right here on this couch. Russell, who had won a few bar bets guessing bra sizes, was positive these were 34C. And from the wiggle and jiggle, didn’t need a bra—and currently were not encumbered by one under the thick white man’s undershirt that currently hid them from view. Yoga pants disguised as jeans completed the picture, barely obscuring a perfect ass connected to a shapely set of legs.
And her face bore a striking resemblance to a young Elle Macpherson, he thought. Or maybe that other one—Kathy Ireland. It was hard to keep them straight. Whoever her face looked like, this woman was the elusive perfect ten. Russell was speechless. And Bain was the luckiest bitch on the planet.
“I really don’t know,” Jessica told Bain. “I could ask the kids if they ever saw anything like that. I mean, they’re outside all the time.”
“That would help,” Bain said in her “I’m a serious cop” voice that always made Russell smile. “We believe she was connected in some way; we’re just trying to find out how.”
Jessica nodded. “Zeke! Hunter! Come here!”
Two boys, one a preteen, one probably in fourth grade, came rumbling into the living room. They each had a water gun, which they tried to hide behind their legs.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to hide your guns from the cops?” Russell asked, to which both boys responded with silence, solemn expressions, and wide eyes. “Let’s see those pieces, boys.”
Behind them Jessica’s face beamed into a perfect, white smile.
Both boys slowly displayed their water pistols as if to an execution squad.
“You got permits for these hand ca
nnons?” Both boys shook their heads. The youngest one looked as if he might cry. Russell smiled. “I’m just kidding. We like kids to have water guns, and those are great ones.”
The older boy, who must have taken after his father, smiled. The younger, who looked like his mother, still looked unsure.
“You guys aren’t in any trouble,” Russell said. “In fact, your mother says you are good boys. We’re here to ask you a question about the lady who used to live next door.”
“You mean Miss Grumpy?”
Russell, Bain, and Jessica all laughed.
“Yes, her,” Russell said. “We just need to know if she ever got any visits from anybody in a wheelchair.”
The older boy’s brow furrowed. “She never got any visits at all,” he said. “All I ever saw over there was her.”
“No,” the little boy said, still looking like he was in trouble. “No wheelchairs.”
“Thank you,” Russell said. “If you remember anything later, will you tell your mom?”
Both boys nodded and, as if an imaginary bell had sounded, they abruptly ran back to playing.
“Well, thank you, Ms. Vann,” Bain said, extending her hand. “If you or one of your boys remembers anything, will you contact us, please?”
“Of course,” she said, shaking Bain’s hand.
Russell tried to sneak one last memory-bank full-body look, but Jessica caught him. She smiled and winked. She stuck out her hand.
“Thank you, too, Sergeant Russell,” she said warmly, holding his gaze a beat too long. He took her hand, she squeezed. “You were great with my boys.”
When he and Bain got back into the car, he laughed. “Fuck you,” he said, mid-laugh. “Next time I get to fucking watch. You lucky bitch.”
Bain laughed. “Jealousy makes you all gawky,” she said, grinning. “If eye-fucking was a crime, you’d be in handcuffs right now.”