Brownstone

by Dean Kutzler

  Jack knelt on the porch and pulled out his wallet. He forced the wisecracks from his mind at his current posture and set to work. Flipping through the cards in the billfold, he chose an old Blockbuster rental card that he’d forgotten to toss. He carefully worked the edge of the card in between the lock and door jam and wiggled the handle while jabbing with the card with no success. Damn! Always worked for MacGyver. He stuffed the card in his jacket.

  Was anything ever easy?

  He left the porch and walked up to the church window on the right-hand side. Reaching towards the sill with his fingertips confirmed the window was too high by a few inches. He let go of the sill and pulled on his goatee, scanning the graveyard. He spotted an old wheelbarrow filled with dried clumps of weeds by the fence. It would have to do.

  He waited for a few pedestrians on Fulton Street to disappear, then darted across the graveyard. He grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow, his hand still screaming from the intruder’s kick, and carefully tipped it over, dumping the weeds on the ground as neatly as possible. He quickly wheeled the empty wheelbarrow over to the church, turned it upside down and positioned it below the window.

  He took off his coat, rolled the cotton fabric into a ball and stuffed it under his armpit. Looking around and checking once more for privacy, he stepped up onto the bottom of the wheelbarrow, holding the coat in place and shifted his weight up and down. Pivoting on his ankles without actually jumping, he planted the handles firmly into the ground with his heels until the wheelbarrow rested steady.

  He rocked back and forth on the rusted metal dome using his weight to test its stability. He nestled his coat in the corner of the sill and stepped further up alongside the window by balancing on the wheelbarrow’s feet until he was hip-level with the sill.

  Shucking his non-belief and praying to St. Paul that this church didn’t have an alarm, Jack held the coat in place on the pane below the lock. Silently counting to three, he used his left elbow and knocked the coat through the pane, sending it to the floor with a muffled thud. Warm incense blew past Jack’s nose, reminding him of that head shop he used to frequent at the mall during his Mary Jane days—the one too cheap to run the air conditioning.

  He snaked a hand through the empty frame and twisted the dusty, old claw hook, knocking off a dead fly with his fingers. With a grimace, he wiped his fingers on the seat of his pants, hoisted the window open and stepped one leg in, straddling the sill. He exhaled as he squatted forward and quickly squeezed the rest of his body under the window, pulling his leg through into a standing position. He held his breath, listening for signs of his discovery before he continued.

  Closing the window and reaching down to retrieve his coat, he marveled at the unbroken pane sitting on the office floor as he put his coat back on. Maybe there was something to be said about this miracle stuff he thought, picking the pane up by sharp edges and carefully positioning it back into the grooves of the empty square. Even the framework was undamaged. The nails had merely given a fraction of an inch when he knocked it through, allowing the glass to fall flat and unbroken.

  He carefully held the glass in place with one hand and pushed the frame and nails flush with the other, like it had never been touched. He wiped the fingerprints off with his sleeve and a smirk greeted him in the reflection. At least that covered the breaking part of breaking and entering.

  He turned from his reflection and tiptoed across the office to the door leading out into the hallway. Next to the door hung a framed certificate beside a lighter square on the wall where something else had once been hanging. Raising his phone like a flashlight over the signature, Jack saw it was signed by the bishop from the Vatican church. It was Father Alazar’s acceptance letter into the seminary, dated over twenty years ago. Jack cocked his head. It must take a long time to become a priest. At least he knew he was in Father Alazar’s office and a twist of the handle established that the locked door meant he’d left for the day.

  Where was Father Alazar?

  Jack didn’t need to double-check the phone message. Father Alazar had said to meet at the church, he was positive. Maybe he’s elsewhere about the church. But why lock the office door? He proceeded in stealth until he could check the building, not wanting any surprises.

  A loud click rang throughout the hallway and Jack’s hand tensed on the handle, cursing the lock under his breath. He slowly turned the doorknob to minimize the sound and cracked the door for a peek. No signs of movement, just still shadows. Once he was sure it was clear, he snuck into the dark hallway on soft feet in search of Father Alazar. Spotting another door across the dark hallway, curiosity got the best of him and he slowly tried the handle.

  Locked.

  His knuckles turned white on the handle as he realized whose office was behind this door. Releasing the handle, Jack turned from the office and looked past the empty shadows of the hallway and into the church. The place was desolate, literally not a soul in sight. That which brought comfort and faith during worshiping hours of the church hid among the secrets in the walls as he crept through the hallway.

  An uneasy feeling crept around his spine while he was walking underneath the organ that sat above, then down the aisle between the rows of empty pews. He made his way toward the front of the church and shadows danced like broken skeletons amongst the vigil prayer box. Flickering candlelight shone through tall reeds of incense sticks that sat haphazardly in the sandy snuffbox.

  He had to take a second look at the prayer box as the candle lights intermingled with the early morning sun filtering in through old milky windows that dominated the front of the church. It bathed the room in a dark surrealistic quality like an HDR photo gone wrong.

  Why were they still lit with the church closed?

  Jack stood in the shadow of Glory, the sculpture designed by Pierre L'Enfant. The artwork proudly stood high above the altar, depicting the Ten Commandments below the Hebrew word for God, shining down over the tablets from the billowing clouds and golden lightning of Mt. Sinai.

  The shadow stretching across the floor before him eerily resembled the dark shape of an angel, with a round disc-like halo surrounding the back of its head, like the old biblical paintings that dressed the walls of the Met.

  The room was nothing but a big square on the inside filled with pews and columns. The walkways above were visible from the ground floor and skirted around the room on either side until they met in the middle at the organ above the offices. Unless someone was ducking down below the walls or hiding behind the organ, he couldn’t see a soul.

  “Father Alazar?” His voice cut through the shadows like a bat and echoed past the organ.

  Where was the priest?

  The church was empty and Jack hadn’t seen any signs of a break-in or a struggle. His morality started weighing on his conscious. If he called the police and told them what he feared might have happened to the poor priest, he’d be facing withholding evidence charges along with breaking and entering, minus the breaking. A shake of his head confirmed he was in too deep to involve the police. But what if Alazar was in trouble? What was so important that he couldn’t wait a few more hours until daylight?

  Jack’s brow pinched as he weighed his options. He could leave now, undetected, and lock the door behind him, no one the wiser. But then he’d miss the opportunity to search Father Angeli’s office for himself. Or, he could risk getting caught and search out the office. But what if the priest had just stepped out for a moment, not expecting to be gone for very long and came back to find Jack breaking into Angeli’s office? How would he explain that? The priest’s message said to meet him at the church, not ‘break in if I’m not here.’

  Thoughts of judgment, morality and justice bounced through his head like a pinball machine as he walked back up the aisle between the pews, toward the office. His poor decisions had put his mother at risk, but Father Alazar had already been involved in this situation before Jack. He knew what the right thing to do was, but it wasn’t the best thing. The best thin
g for him to do would be to get in that office and have a look for himself. He never fully trusted Father Alazar from the start and the fact that he was a priest or seminarian didn’t validate in his mind the authenticity of his character. Another examination of biblical history would prove his thoughts worthy of concern.

  As he made his way down the aisle past the creepy shadow, the sun had risen enough to illuminate part of the church and, like a sign from above, the sun’s rays cut through the darkness of lies and cast themselves over George Washington’s pew.

  Remembering Father Alazar’s bizarre tale and watching the morning light slowly creep across the presidential pew, he decided to test his concerns.

  Why not add a federal crime to the growing list of offenses?

  He stepped over the wall surrounding the pew box and stood beside the national monument. Careful not to disturb anything, he laid on the floor and shimmied his way up underneath the seat, pulling out his phone.

  The light from the phone lit up the old wood. He felt like he was laying inside a coffin searching for a way out as he scanned the length of the board. Unless his eyes were fooling him, he didn’t see any hidden compartment. He remembered Father Alazar saying if you weren’t looking for it, you probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Well, he was looking and not noticing. Reluctant to disturb the monument more than he’d already had, he gently ran his hand over the wood, but felt no give, no notch. Nothing. He tried knocking with his knuckle all about the woodgrain, listening for a hollow sound. Still nothing. There was no hidden compartment.

  Perplexed by Father Alazar’s lie, but not surprised, Jack slid out from underneath the pew and stepped back over the wall with purpose in his stride.

  “Reliquary my ass,” he said with no regard for sacrilege.

  Now there was no question about checking that office. Why would Father Alazar concoct such an elaborate lie about the key? His brow lowered in response to the answers formulating in his head as he continued up the aisle and made his way under the church organ to the dead priest’s office.

  The door was just a standard old office door with the lumpy surface of being painted past its prime. There wasn’t a nameplate, but Jack knew it had to be Father Angeli’s office. He doubted the poor dead priest’s office was up in the chapel and he wasn’t getting caught searching up there anyway, so this had to be the right door. The card trick had failed to work on the entrance door, but this was only an office door. Less secure he hoped, fishing the obsolete video rental card from his jacket.

  The floorboard creaked under the weight of his knee as he leaned in and slid the card up and down the crack between the door and frame. He dried his sweaty palm on the seat of his pants and readied it on the handle while his other hand worked the card into the crack. With barely any give, the door popped in and thankfully swung open on well-oiled hinges.

  Standing up and stuffing the card back into his jacket, he entered the office and left the door open so he could hear out into the church if anyone came. The room was a little less humble than Father Alazar’s office, with a bigger desk, better chair and a lot less filing cabinets along the wall behind the desk. He took one of the two chairs in front of the desk reserved for guests, swung it around and propped it against the door to make sure it didn’t shut. Walking around the desk, he took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair and sank down into the cushy seat ready to get to work.

  The church didn’t open for service until ten o’clock and provided the staff didn’t arrive too early, he’d have roughly four hours, tops, to search the office. Unless his best guess was right and Father Alazar returned beforehand. If so, he’d just deal with it then. He was close enough to the graveyard exit. If he heard someone come in, he would just slip out as quietly as he could and sneak out the front gate which he assumed they’d leave open for parishioners, saving him the ordeal of getting back over the iron fencing. If they entered through the graveyard entrance, he was screwed like a light bulb.

  The most likely place for anything important would certainly be stored at Father Angeli’s fingertips within the desk files. He rolled the chair back a bit and tugged at both drawers on either side. Locked. Even the center drawer was locked. On the edge of the desk he spied the keyhole, which he assumed was for all the drawers. He’d come this far, no stopping now.

  He rolled back further in the chair with his fingers firmly planted underneath the middle drawer and braced his foot against the edge of the desk. He was just about to pull with all his might and force the drawer open, when he decided that he’d committed enough sacrilege for one day and let go of the desk and spun around in the chair.

  When the chair spun back towards the desk, Jack stuck his foot out and anchored the chair. He grabbed his goatee and carefully reviewed the items on the desk: blotter, desk calendar, tape dispenser, paperclips, stapler and a golden cross paperweight. That gave him an idea. Pulling out his phone, he tapped up the YouTube app and typed in ‘how to pick a desk lock’. After about six minutes of thug education, he was ready to give it a shot.

  He fished two large paperclips from a black mesh cup next to the desk blotter and grabbed the stapler on the other side. Unraveling the smaller inside-curl of one of the clips, he fashioned it into a straight line, leaving the larger curl intact. He then placed it on the edge of the desk with the straight end hanging about a quarter inch off the side, and pounded it with the stapler until it formed a tiny L shape.

  Then he removed the staples from the stapler to prevent damage and closed it back up. With careful precision, he wedged the tiny L shape of the paperclip between the stapler’s hammer and its striking plate and squeezed it tight until it bent the L shape of the paperclip into a small hook. It looked like a double fishhook with one big hook and one small hook. The young man in the YouTube video called this the tensioner.

  He only unraveled the small curl of the second paper clip into a straight line, leaving the bigger curl to serve as a handle. This part was actually called the pick.

  With pick and tensioner in hand, he set about picking the desk’s lock. He guided the small hook end of the tensioner into the keyhole until it stopped at the back of the lock. Holding the tensioner firmly in the keyhole, he then lifted it up to make room for the pick and gently twisted it to the right, like a key, and created tension on the lock’s tumbler. Holding pressure on the tensioner, with the pick in his other hand, he inserted it into the space he created below the tensioner until the pick also reached the back of the keyhole.

  In a downward motion, he gingerly raked the pick over the notches inside the lock that an actual key’s grooves would fit into until all the notches aligned and the pressure on the tensioner gave way, spinning the lock open.

  “Yes!” he hollered in triumph, and then quickly stifled his excitement. That was a lot easier than he’d thought.

  He returned the staples to the stapler and put both the mesh cup and stapler back exactly the way he’d found them on the desk. With the two tools, tensioner and pick, he reached around the chair until he found the opening in his jacket pocket, and stuffed them inside with the rental card.

  A dull thud followed by a faint hiss sounded somewhere out into the hallway and Jack quickly regretted triumphant outburst. Had someone entered the church? He sprang from the chair like a cat, barely catching it in time from swiveling into the desk and crept along the wall until he reached the office door.

  Slowly, he peered around the corner into the hallway, eyes fixed wide. With no one in sight, he quickly scaled the corridor under the organ until he could safely see into the church.

  Empty.

  Hands clenched at his sides, he readied himself to bolt at any further sounds. He waited a full five minutes in silence for safe measure, barely breathing when he remembered the pigeons he’d scared out from behind the St. Paul statute nesting in the rafters outside the church. They must have returned.

  Once he felt confident that it was only the birds, he turned and went back down the hallway, gl
ancing at his watch to keep track of the time, and sat back down behind the desk.

  He started with the right hand drawer first. Sliding it open until it clicked to a halt, he scanned the files. Nothing but forms and certificates for marriages, baptisms, and funeral services. He searched each hanging folder, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Reaching to the back, he pulled the hanging files forward and made sure nothing was hidden underneath. When he’d kept an office at the Gazette, before he freelanced from home, he used to hide his bottle of cactus sugar underneath the files because it was so damned expensive and everyone used to steal it when he wasn’t there. He hadn’t minded sharing, but the vultures would drain it dry and leave the empty bottle on his desk!

  The chair creaked as he closed the drawer with a soft clunk and swiveled to the left. More of the same paperwork filled this drawer and nothing hidden in the bottom, either.

  Bouncing from the springy seat, he spun the office chair around and pulled out the makeshift tools from his jacket hanging on the back of the chair. He had the same quick success unlocking the three filing cabinets behind the desk. Methodically working from left to right, he searched all the drawers in the same manner, going through each hanging file, examining every paper and checking the bottoms of the drawers. He found nothing but parishioner’s information, fund raising projects and the likes. Nothing out of the ordinary, just church-related material. His mind raced as he pulled at his goatee. He’d checked all the drawers in the office.

  What had the priest found and where was it?

  A thought rolled into his head like time elapsed photography. How could he be so ignorant? In the excitement of breaking in, it hadn’t occurred to him to first snoop through Father Alazar’s files.

  His eyes darted about the dead priest’s office. Where did he leave them? He’d need the lock picking tools, since there were a hell of a lot more cabinets in that office. He had to hurry. He spied his paperclip tools on top of the cabinet.