He’d drive to New York.
29.
10:14 A.M.
Father Mark had a lot on his mind as he laid down his copy of Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom to don his vestments. At six and a half feet tall, he had to crouch to see that his collarino and the white square of cloth at the base of his throat were properly placed. Weighing in at over three hundred pounds of muscle, his frame didn’t fit in the mirror. He had to turn and apprise himself and his cassock from various angles. Bent kneed, Mark squared himself in the mirror and forced a smile.
He’d woken up and presided over the 6:45 a.m. morning mass. As a kid, he’d been an altar boy and served that mass, albeit in a different parish. Attendance hadn’t been anything to write home about even then, and that was twenty years ago. This morning there’d been six old ladies in attendance with their rosary beads, listening to Mark do his thing. Monsignor himself served the 9 o’clock mass, freeing Mark up until it was time for confession. At half past ten he donned his vestments and walked from the rectory to the sacristy, where he waited for 10:45 to arrive and with it, the penitents.
The decline in confession attendance wasn’t what troubled Mark.
It was the new priest, Tad.
Tad had shown up two weeks ago, transferred to St. Ann’s without explanation, which could only mean one of a very limited number of things. Tad had either pissed off someone higher up in the hierarchy than he, or….Well, it all amounted to the same thing in the eyes of the Church. Mark suspected he knew Tad’s deal. Growing up in group homes, Mark recognized predators when he saw them. Tad had come in with little fanfare, occupying the room left vacant since Father McGuigan’s passing. The Monsignor wouldn’t speak ill of the man to Mark, but Mark could tell Monsignor wasn’t particularly happy to have the new priest around.
It was the altar boys Mark would need to talk to. Need to watch out for.
He squared his clerical collar in the mirror.
Kind of name was Tad for a priest anyway? Sounded like a tennis pro at a country club, or a character on a bad soap opera.
Satisfied all was in place, Mark exited the sacristy and crossed the chancel, passing the aumbry where the communion wine was stored, its altar, the choir stalls on either side. He stepped down into the nave, motes of daylight filtering down from the clerestory high up in the wall. The nave stretched before him, aisles on either side, held up by pillars with little arches. A handful of men and women, all elderly, sat or kneeled in the pews. Mark’s steps echoed through the nave.
Votive candles flickered on a platform before a statue of the Virgin Mother. St. Ann’s was going to switch to electric candles in the next few months. The smoke from the wax candles had done a number on the ceiling over the years.
He greeted them by their first names and they called him father, these men and women old enough to be his grandparents, great-grandparents. The same men and women had been coming to St. Ann’s for years and confessing their sins to whomever was in the confessional.
Mark squeezed himself into the center compartment of the confessional. Enclosed sections on either side of him had small screens in the adjoining walls.
Mrs. Daly was first. Forgive me father for I have sinned. She’d spoken ill of her sister-in-law to her brother. She’d cheated at Bingo over at the rec center last week. She’d given the cashier at the supermarket a hard time when the girl maybe hadn’t had it coming to her that bad.
Mark listened and when Mrs. Daly finished her litany of transgressions he absolved her.
Three Hail Mary’s and an Our Father.
He slid one mesh screen closed and another open.
It’s been a week since my last confession. Mr. Dominick. He’d had impure thoughts looking at a woman who wasn’t his wife. He’d been arguing with his son, the younger one, one that had walked out on his own family and didn’t seem to be able to hold down a job. Sins. They always started with the major ones and worked their way down to the smaller ones. Mark listened and as he listened he thought about the psychological effect of expiation, of unloading oneself on another.
Be nicer to your wife, Mr. Dominick. Four Our Fathers and the Apostle’s Creed.
Mark closed and opened screens.
Bless me father for I have sinned…
He recognized them by their voices, regulars at confession. Once in a while someone dropped in who hadn’t been by in some time, but even then it was usually a church regular. Lapsed Catholics, Mark knew, had a habit of finding their way home. Like they had some sort of spiritual radar inevitably leading them back.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Mrs. Quinn. God loves you. Now give me two Hail Mary’s.”
Lot of old women came to confession. Not as many old men. Mark opened the screen for the next penance.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”
The voice wasn’t one he would have expected to hear in this place.
“Boone?” He leaned forward, attempting unsuccessfully to peer through the screen.
“Hello, Mark.”
“Jesus—” Mark caught and crossed himself. “Where you been, B?”
“I need you to listen to me, Mark.”
“I’m listening to you.”
“Not as my friend. In your…official capacity.”
“I’m on duty, B.” An image of the Peanuts cartoon flashed through Mark’s mind. The doctor is in. He attempted to inject some levity into his voice. “Talk to me.”
“I’ve done…” The voice on the other side of the wall dead serious, cold. “…I’ve done a lot of bad things, Mark—Father, a lot of bad things. And, Father, I’m planning on doing a lot more bad things.”
“God gives us free will, Boone. I know you know what that means. We don’t have to act in any one way. If you’re feeling tempted—”
“That’s the thing. The bad things don’t bother me. If anything, I like them.”
“If you’re feeling tempted, you can steel yourself. Avoid the temptation.”
“It’s not temptation, Father. It’s—sometimes the bad things have got to be done.”
“Boone, seriously—where you been? No one has heard from you. You haven’t been going to the gym—”
“Mark, let me ask you: You ever hear of a guy calls himself Kane?”
“Kane? Like killed Abel?”
“Maybe, yeah.”
“No.”
“Maybe someone they call the Wrath of God?”
“No.”
“Somethin’ else, Mark.”
“Talk to me, B.”
“You do something for me?”
“Go ahead.”
“Protect my family, Father.”
Protect my family. Mark stared at the screen. Protect them from what, he wanted to ask but didn’t. “You got it.”
Sinners came to ask for forgiveness in penance, not for favors.
“B? In return,” Mark didn’t want his friend to go, “will you do something for me?” He waited for Boone to say more. When he didn’t, Mark asked, “Pray with me?” but again Boone didn’t speak. “B? Boone?”
It took the enormous, cassocked priest some maneuvering to free himself from the confines of the confessional booth. He stepped into a deserted nave and opened the door to the other side of the confessional.
It was bare save for the kneeler and the cross above the screen.
The priest looked about his church. The votive candles flickered on their platform. Light shone over the pews from the clerestory. And Christ looked down on him from His cross.
Mark heard one of the solid wooden doors to the street close in the vestibule.
What had Boone gotten himself into?
30.
1:15 P.M.
DeAndre Watkins didn’t come out of his apartment much unless it was to go to school. Wasn’t safe where he lived. Especially when momma was at work. Momma telling him and Terry to stay in the house when she wasn’t home, steer clear of the rude boys and those poor people. Those poor people, the way hi
s momma put it, referring to the fiends looking to score out in the quad. She didn’t mean their socio-economic status either. She meant their moral state.
And DeAndre usually listened to his momma, usually stayed in the apartment when she was at work. Usually sat on his bed with whatever it was he was reading, which these days was the second book in Jablonsky’s trilogy.
But his brother’s friend—that sloppy, fat Ronald—had eaten all their Chinese the other day, and that had stuck in DeAndre’s craw. Something stuck in your craw, meant it pissed you off. DeAndre had picked that up from one of the books he’d read. One of them white man’s books as Juan would put it. DeAndre was under no misconceptions that his brother hung with a bright bunch.
And so it was that DeAndre was returning home from the take-out Chinese place two blocks down. It’d been a half day at school, a staff development day for the teachers. The Chinese place was literally a hole in the wall, no place to sit, just a grate you slipped the menu you’d circled on under. You could see and hear them frying up your food back there, then they passed it out to you after you’d paid.
The quad was still jumping with activity: the biggest speakers DeAndre had ever seen putting out deafening bass; people dancing or standing around in groups, openly drinking and smoking weed; Conyers’ boys—a collection of sullen looking young men—standing around the perimeter, keeping watch; base heads standing in place, swaying side to side. Busta Nutz had come home to visit, was sharing the wealth.
Thing was, Busta would get to go home to Manhattan or Bubble Hill or wherever he lived, and DeAndre would be stuck here in the ghetto with his momma and Terry.
Luke was sitting by himself outside tower two, a spliff in his hand, didn’t look right.
DeAndre tucked the paper bag under his arm, hoping Luke wouldn’t notice him, but he did.
“Yo, shorty, come here.”
DeAndre couldn’t ignore him. He walked over to Luke, thankful that Yuri and Marquis weren’t anywhere to be seen. Especially Yuri.
“What up, Luke?” The older boy sitting there with his weed, his chain hanging out of his shirt. DeAndre wondered where a boy like Luke, lived in Moses like him, got the money for that kind of chain.
“You seen Dodd?”
“Who Dodd?”
“Where Torrell?”
“He around here somewhere.” DeAndre gestured to the party around them. “Think I seen him with Juan and Caprise before.”
“Lemme ask you,” Luke was eyeing DeAndre’s brown paper bag. “Who LeRoi Jones?”
“LeRoi Jones?” DeAndre Watkins was a well-read thirteen year old. “He a poet. Amiri Baraka.”
“Hey Luke.” A little girl DeAndre recognized from school walked up on them. “Where Yuri at?”
“He ain’t here.” Luke waved his hand at her, shooing her away, but she continued to stand there.
“Well, where he at then?”
DeAndre recognized her from the seventh grade, class under his.
“You see him here?” Luke sucked off his weed, spoke through a lungful. “No? I say already he ain’t here.” He exhaled. “Go on now, git.”
She walked away and DeAndre was thinking he’d do the same, but Luke was still talking to him and he couldn’t just leave. It’d be disrespectful and Luke might sic Yuri on him at a later date. Then be all nonchalant about it when he came over to hang with Terry. Luke a different guy then.
“What you reading there, shorty?”
DeAndre told him the name of the book and the author, but if Luke had ever heard of either he made no acknowledgement of it. Instead he started babbling, saying how he knew DeAndre liked fantasy, was into those sword and sorcery stories, that DeAndre wouldn’t believe what he’d seen earlier. Luke puffing off his weed, talking to DeAndre about headless niggas coming down apartment steps, DeAndre wondering what was in that weed Luke was smoking, thinking maybe it was laced with a little sherm or something.
Luke didn’t look good and Luke was talking to him more than he ever had before, although it was crazy talk, Luke rambling.
“You don’t believe a word I’m sayin,” Luke stopped and looked out at DeAndre through a cloud of smoke. “Do you?”
“Why you tellin’ me all this?”
Luke’s shoulders visibly dropped and he lowered his head. DeAndre was thinking he should take that as his cue to leave but he hesitated and it cost him. Luke looked up, right at the bag under DeAndre’s arm, said “Give me your Chinese food.”
DeAndre looked left and right. There were people all around, but still no sign or Marquis or Yuri. No sign of Terry or his boys either.
“Hand it over I said.”
DeAndre handed Luke the grease-stained paper bag.
And that was it, Luke had nothing more to say to him. DeAndre walked off, humiliated and hungry, silently cursing himself and his luck.
Luke lost no time digging into the Chinese food, spearing heaps of Lo Mein with the plastic fork that was in the bag, shoveling it into his mouth. The weed and the stress had left him famished. That little nigga DeAndre a punk, giving up his Chinese like that. Luke thinking it was the law of the jungle out here. If that lame little nigga was gonna trail the herd, a lion was gonna fall on his gazelle ass sooner or later.
The shit Luke had seen in the last couple days.
Crazy.
If Torell said anything to him…the fuck was Torrell going to say to him?
Luke’s head was down, his concentration on the white container in his hands, when a pair of sneakers stepped into his view. He remembered them from someplace. Addidas Harputs. Had to go out San Francisco to get them, or order them from out there. Luke raised his head, remembering where he knew them.
One of Busta’s men. Two others with him.
Busta’s man saying Busta wanted to talk to him, right now. Luke put his munchies and the Chinese aside, thinking Busta would listen to him, Busta would know what to do. That punk Dodd was nowhere to be found, probably wouldn’t help him if he could find him. But Busta, Busta been the one told him good job, complimented him on the way Luke and Dodd had walked into that lobby and deaded those fools. So what if Khan’s shit was playing non-stop on all the radios now?
Luke followed the three men through the crowd, some dirty looking motherfucker already taking over where he’d left off with the Chinese. Luke paid it no mind, picturing what was coming: Busta was going to send him back to that fat bitch’s apartment, back with a few of the boys. Yuri was done—Luke had seen the knife sticking out of his head, no nigga survived something like that—but maybe Marquis was alright, maybe Marquis was being held like captive or what not. Maybe Busta would send these niggas right here back with Luke, tell them go with him, say to Luke go get your boy.
Malik.
That was the man’s name with the Harputs. Luke remembered it because the man might be on the thin side but the look on his face, he looked like no joke. Mal meant bad in Spanish. Little momacita from tower six Luke had hit raw that one time taught him that.
They led Luke into building four, the one man staying back at the door. The apartment lobby was quiet, the party outside. Luke stepped into the rec room to find it empty. Where was Busta?
“You like to talk, huh?”
Luke turned to Malik. “What you mean—”
“We seen you with your little friends outside.” Malik tilted his head towards the man with him and Luke thought he looked familiar now. Nigga’d been standing out there when Luke had been hanging with Yuri and Marquis, the girls. “Talkin’ ‘bout shit you shouldn’t be talkin’ bout.”
“Nah, dawg—”
“You want to talk like a little bitch,” Malik reached out, taking Luke’s chain in his hand—Luke protested “It ain’t like”—snapping the chain off his neck, throwing it on the floor. “We’s treat you like a little bitch.”
“Wait! Wait! Busta know about this?”
“The fuck you think this about, bitch?”
The other man hit Luke, catching him unawares. H
is head jerked back and his legs gave out under him. Somehow he remembered to tuck his arms up against his sides, to cover his face with his hands, bring his knees to his chest. They were leaning down and punching him in the torso, Luke’s face pressed close to the rec room’s linoleum floor.
One of them hit him in the side and Luke felt it deep in his ribs. He looked out from behind his hands, saw the sneaker drawing back as the man readied to kick him again.
Kick him with the sneakers had come all the way from San Francisco.
31.
1:55 P.M.
He met Blind Melon in a park. The black man who always wore sunglasses was seated in the middle of a green wooden bench, waiting for him. Boone sat down on one end of the bench without a word.
“Mojo.”
“How do you always do that?” Boone had copped more meth off Damian and been smoking it every chance he got.
“Do what?”
“Always know it’s me?”
“You’re pretty hard to miss.” Blind Melon grinned. “Haven’t heard from you for awhile.”
“Yeah, Blin’.” Boone tapped his palm on his thigh.
“Been hearing plenty of other stuff though.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Like what?” Boone shifted his weight on the bench, restless.
“Like the vamps are getting ready to throw down again.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Bunch of them got hit over in a warehouse in the Bronx few weeks back. Another one got taken out Sunday, literally dragged out of his nest. You wouldn’t know nothing about any of that, would you?”
“Won’t lie to you, Blin’.” Boone slumped down a bit on the bench, his arms crossed over his chest, then immediately sat back up. “But I won’t talk ‘bout it neither.”
“Hope you don’t mind, but someone asked me they could come and talk to you, I told them sure.”
“Depends on who the someone is.”
I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) Page 17
