Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Cipriano had then cruised by the Cisneros place, but Robbie’s van was indeed gone. Loren told him to get out a LAWSAT alert to the New Mexico and Arizona state police, and also to start calling motels throughout the area, just in case Robbie & Co. checked in somewhere for a riotous weekend of spending their money away from inquisitive relatives. Since the Texans had left their car behind, Loren didn’t think they’d gone far.

  Loren figured they’d used the out-of-state car for the robbery itself, then planned to drive the strangers around in a vehicle driven by a local man.

  Strange to think of a little-bitty Chevy used as a getaway car, though.

  Loren doubted there was evidence enough for a warrant. Everything was purely circumstantial. If some state cop stopped them and bungled the search, the whole case could be lost.

  Dammit, anyway! he thought. Some local had betrayed the town, and done so right in the middle of the worst crisis Atocha had faced since the Apaches destroyed the original settlement.

  “You’re grinding your teeth again,” whispered Debra. Loren’s mind snapped back to the present.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “We have before us a week devoted to the Seven Deadly Sins, which are above all other sins,” said Pastor Rickey. “Why are these particular sins thought of as deadly? Why is gluttony a Deadly Sin and not, for example, simony?”

  “What’s simony?” whispered Katrina, more or less simultaneously with at least fifty other hushed voices. Katrina was Loren’s older daughter, seventeen and blond, something of a tomboy. Beneath a pale pink headscarf, she looked uncharacteristically demure.

  “Hush,” said Loren. Not that he knew the answer, anyway.

  “The selling of church offices,” said Jerry. Loren looked at him. Jerry blinked back in total innocence. “I don’t make this up,” he said.

  “The Deadly Sins,” Pastor Rickey went on, “are so called because indulgence in these sins leads without fail to further sin as a consequence. Gluttony, aside from overeating, also includes drunkenness and the use of drugs, and alcohol and drugs can lead to violence, to adultery, to anger, to theft.

  “And of the Deadly Sins, pride is considered primary, because pride was the sin of Lucifer and led to war in Heaven. So on the first day of the Days of Atonement, we consider pride.”

  Pastor Rickey was young, just over thirty, but he looked older. Balding and prematurely gray, with a lined, weathered horse face, Rickey had spent years in the Peace Corps and working in soup kitchens for the needy before going to Catton College in Pennsylvania and the ministry. He brought a kind of restraint and intellectuality to his sermons that Loren wasn’t certain he quite liked. The previous pastor, an old Pennsylvania Dutchman named Baumgarten, would have jumped up and down, waved his arms, poured sweat by the bucketful, and got to the subject of Hell long before this.

  Not that Loren particularly enjoyed the contemplation of Hell. But since the Reverend Samuel Catton had been taken on a tour of Hell and various other parts of the cosmos by the Master in Gray who had dictated the Authorized Revelations, the existence of the Land of Fire was a necessary part of the faith, and Loren sometimes wondered why Rickey never seemed to mention it.

  “The pride of Lucifer is one thing,” the pastor said. “We can all see it for what it is, and we can condemn it. But even if we had the inclination, none of us can raise an army against Heaven. The sin of pride nevertheless exists in our community, and it is this kind of pure domestic pride I propose to examine this morning.”

  Loren gnawed his lower lip and wondered how Cipriano was faring.

  “Pride is a particularly difficult sin to understand, because it is a perversion of something good,“ the pastor said, enriching the word perversion with his grand and rolling r’s. “Pride is a grace as well as a sin. “Grace was heavy on the r, too; the pastor was willing to invest glory as well as sin by his dialect. “Your soul naturally desires pride—pride in yourself, in your family, your community and country. But the sin of pride is pride carried beyond its natural limits. The sin of pride is pride carried to the point where it turns away from God!”

  Loren glanced up. A rare light was burning in Rickey’s eyes. Maybe the man had finally taken fire.

  “When you take proper pride in yourself, your community, and so on, that is because you recognize God in all these things.” Rickey waved an arm. “You are taking pride in the majesty of God’s creation! It is the reflection of God in which you take pride. Pride becomes an act of worship.

  “But when your pride becomes a sin, it is because you have ceased to recognize God in these things, in yourself and your country and so on, and have begun to see in them a reflection of yourself. Pride has ceased to be worship, and begun to be an exercise in ego.”

  This last thought rolled through Loren, leaving a surprised feeling behind. He had never thought about it this way. Pastor Baumgarten had never analyzed sins in this fashion, just relied mainly on Samuel Catton’s description of the personified Deadly Sins in the Supplementary Revelations, Pride with the diamond-encrusted gold and ivory neck brace that kept his chin aloft, Wrath with his hair aflame and his double-bitted axe that cut through friend and enemy alike, and so on.

  Maybe there was a point to this fellow, after all.

  “And when you see things only as bits of yourself, then you lose the sense of how they exist as their own unique and individual reflection of God. You start thinking of them as things you can toy with, to manipulate as you wish. You start thinking of your neighbors as people that you can save or condemn all on your own, instead of leaving that job up to God. You start thinking of your community as something you can arrange to your liking, and your country as something that exists to do your bidding throughout the world.

  “And that is where the sin of pride enters daily life. You think of things as objects to be rearranged— not for their own good, although that’s what you tell people, but in order to satisfy your own pride. You put yourself in debt in order to have a bigger car than your neighbor. That car has become an ornament to your pride. You break up with your girlfriend not because she isn’t a fine person, but because she isn’t pretty enough, or fashionable enough— she isn’t a good enough ornament for you. You break your daughter’s engagement, say, because her boyfriend doesn’t come with enough dollars, or in some other way isn’t good enough— not for her, but for you, because he wouldn’t be a fine enough ornament to have around you. Your community becomes something you rearrange to suit yourself, so you join civic improvement organizations or run for office or join committees, and all because the way your neighbors are running their lives isn’t good enough for you, you have to interfere and improve them.”

  Loren found himself becoming indignant. He turned to Debra and whispered. “Is he saying I’m not supposed to care about my neighbors and family?”

  “Hush.”

  “We’re supposed to care about our neighbors. That’s what being an Apostle is all about. It’s my job to care about my neighbors. They pay me for it.”

  Debra’s look was fierce. “You’re supposed to be humble when you do it, that’s what he’s saying.”

  “Try knocking down George Gileno with humility sometime.”

  “Everyone’s looking at us.”

  “I don’t think this college boy knows anything about the real world.”

  “The answer is God!” the college boy was saying. “We must trust in the wisdom and mercy of the Lord! We are fallen, and we must beg the Lord for understanding and for the knowledge of our own actions!”

  “What a wimp,” said Loren.

  Debra pinched him hard on the hand.

  Loren thought about the robbery for the rest of the service.

  When Loren came out of the church with his family, he saw that the Roberts family had left and taken their box with them. In their place was a huddle of young Apaches surrounding an older man in a flannel shirt, who was pointing from place to place on the plaza with a stick.

  Loren saw that e
very so often. He’d have to ask someday what it meant.

  Cipriano was standing by his patrol car parked in the church loading zone. Loren saw the deputy chief and at once his mind seemed to leap into high gear. He almost ran down the steps to Cipriano’s car, feeling an eagerness he could almost taste.

  “What’s up?”

  Cipriano smiled with his big yellow teeth. “I found them, jefe. They’re in El Pinto.”

  “El Pinto?” Loren gave it some thought and came up with little that made any sense. “Why El Pinto?” he asked. “It’s just a goddamn crossroads ghost town. That’s not where I’d go to spend my ill-gotten gains, that’s for sure.”

  “They’re in one of those cabins that Joaquín Fernandez owns up there. By that little trout pond.”

  “Huh. Thought he’d closed those cabins years ago.”

  “Guess he’ll still rent if he gets a customer.”

  Loren looked at his family, who were clustered on the sidewalk just out of earshot, waiting for him to finish his business. “Have you talked to the sheriff?” he asked. “We’ll need a liaison.”

  “He’s going himself.”

  Loren was startled. “Shorty?”

  “Election coming up, jefe. And the robbery was on his turf— technically, anyway.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “There’s still the problem of a warrant. We got no cause.”

  “Let me talk to Debra for a minute.”

  He stepped back to where his family was waiting for him. He could detect the well-concealed tension in Debra’s posture, see the way the girls kept exchanging glances. It was one of those moments, known to every cop, when duty called and the family became aware, at least on some level, of the possibility of violence, of injury. He’d never known a policeman’s family not to betray the strain in these little ways, even in a small town like Atocha.

  “Looks like we found the guys we were looking for,” he said.

  “Good,” said Debra.

  “Why don’t you take the car back home? Don’t hold lunch for me.”

  Debra looked up at him. Loren could see his reflection in her wraparounds. “Take your vest,” she said.

  Loren blinked. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  A sudden wave of pride almost took his breath away. Presumably it was the nonsinful kind, but if it was he didn’t much care. Debra was perfect. He’d never been more certain of his marriage, his place in the town.

  “I love you all,” he said. “But don’t worry. They’re just some lightweight scumbags.”

  Scumbags with a sawed-off. No one said the words, but the presence, the weight of the unseen weapon, seemed oppressive on Loren’s heart.

  Loren went to the trunk and opened it. The Department of Homeland Security had supplied personal armor for rural police departments, just in case terrorists decided to shoot up the mountains and the woods. Loren took out the black kevlar flak jacket with the laminated steel and ceramic inserts, the spare shotgun, and the blue helmet he was supposed to wear when directing traffic. Churchgoers looked at him curiously as he carried the gear to Cipriano’s cruiser and threw it all in the back. He got in the car.

  “Let’s go to the Sunshine,” Loren said. “Deal with that warrant problem.”

  Cipriano drove around three sides of the plaza and parked in front of the café. Loren got out and walked through the avocado-green door into the Sunshine. He gave a half-wave to Coover behind the counter and went to the pay phone by the men’s room door. A couple decades’ phone numbers were jotted on the yellow flowered wallpaper. Two Korean businessmen, not the ones he’d seen the day before, sat drinking coffee. A plastic jar of elk blood was on the table between them. Mark Byrne, dressed exactly as he had been yesterday, grinned at him over his cup of coffee. He hadn’t bothered to shave or comb his hair this morning.

  “Hey,” Coover said. “You can use the phone in my office.”

  “No problem,” Loren said. He put a coin in the telephone and dialed the police number.

  “Atocha Police Department.” Loren recognized Eloy Esposito’s voice.

  “How’s the neck, Eloy?”

  “They got me in some goddamn brace, Chief. Gotta wear it for a month at least. Even in bed.”

  “Stay on the desk, then.”

  “Buncha bullshit.”

  “How’s Buchinsky doing?”

  “Mild concussion. Doctor said he can’t work till Monday. Karen’s giving him a raft of shit about it. She keeps telling him about how she could get him a job driving truck in Albuquerque.”

  “Think she’ll ever get him to do it?”

  “She keeps at him long enough.”

  That was too bad, Loren thought. Buchinsky was a good officer. It was just a pity that all police wives couldn’t be like Debra.

  Eloy’s voice was cheerful. “So what do you need, Chief?”

  “You got me mixed up with someone else,” Loren said. “This is an anonymous call.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not the police chief. I’m an informant calling with a tip.”

  “You’re not the chief? This is a tip?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Will you listen for a minute, Eloy?”

  “If this is a tip, I’m supposed to get your name.”

  “Jesus Christ, Eloy!” Loren said. “How small-town can you get? It can’t be an anonymous tip if I give you my name, now, can it?”

  “I guess not.” Doubtfully.

  “Here’s the tip. The guys who held up the Copper Country are in El Pinto, in one of Joaquín Fernandez’s cabins. There are three of them, and they’re armed and dangerous. You got that?”

  “Armed and dangerous. Got it, Chief.”

  “I’m not the chief. But if I were you, I’d call the chief and tell him.”

  “Right. But I’m supposed to get your name and phone number.”

  Loren hung up, trying through his exasperation to decide whether having his head jammed into Doc Holliday’s bar had scrambled Eloy’s brains or whether the man was just having some kind of weird fun with him.

  He started heading for the door. Coover, misinterpreting his presence, already had a cup of coffee waiting for him on the counter.

  “Hey, Chief,” said Byrne, waving a cigarette at him. “I wanna report a suspicious character. There was a guy with a turban in here a while ago eating breakfast. Probably a terrorist.”

  Probably another blood-drinker, Loren thought. He looked at Byrne. “So where’s Sandoval? Gone to the library to look up some more facts he can embarrass people with?”

  “Naw. He’s gone west so we can get drunk.” Byrne puffed on his cigarette. “Great anonymous tip, by the way. Anyone asks, I’ll say I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Shut up,” Loren said.

  Loren stalked out through the green deco door, his good mood gone. Now he just wanted to get to El Pinto, break down the door of whatever cabin the robbers were in, and get it all over with.

  He got in Cipriano’s car. “Courthouse,” he said.

  Cipriano waited in the car while Loren went in to meet the sheriff outside Judge Denver’s Saturday morning district court session, an institution that existed primarily to process all the Friday drunks out of the jail to make room for Saturday night’s crowd.

  Eusebio Lazoya, the sheriff, was an elderly, somewhat frail man all of six feet four inches tall. He’d been known as “Shorty,” of course, all his life. He was a pillar of the local Democratic Party machine and had been sheriff for as long as Loren could remember.

  Shorty was a terrible police officer, with an appallingly bad memory for procedure— he had lost, tainted, or inadvertently damaged the evidence from several important investigations— and his attitude toward his work had been thoroughly summed up by his failure to arrive at the robbery scene the previous night. He’d quite early realized that he would never make a career as a crimebuster, and allowed his underlings, an
d sometimes Loren’s department, to handle the occasional puzzling investigation that came along.

  Nevertheless Loren had learned to respect him as an administrator and politician. Despite his early blunders, Shorty had been unopposed in the last three elections. Everyone knew him. His reelection posters just said SHORTY in big red letters; everyone knew who the signs meant to advertise. But despite his personal job security, the cuts in county services that followed the progressive closing of the Atocha pit had sliced his department in half, and now he leaned on the city police more than ever.

  Loren figured that Shorty was smelling news cameras, as the sheriff was dressed in the cream-colored western-cut suit that he only wore for public appearances, and had a broad-brimmed white Stetson perched on his wide, hairy ears. As Loren walked closer he saw that Shorty’s dignified little white mustache had been freshly waxed.

  “Hey, Loren,” Shorty said, grinning. “Qué paso, hombre?”

  Loren shook his hand. “I’d say we got a solution to the current crime wave.”

  “You got grounds for a warrant?”

  “Somebody just phoned in an anonymous tip.”

  Shorty gave a little laugh as dry as an alkaline wash. “I like them lucky little anonymous tips, cousin. Let’s get our warrant. Piedra movediza no cría lama.”

  Loren hesitated for a moment while he mentally translated. Moving rocks, he thought, right. He nodded. “Let’s stop gathering lama, then.”

  “Yeah. There’s a ball game on TV this afternoon I want to catch.”

  Loren and Shorty filed into the courtroom. The room was occupied primarily by the bruised warriors that Loren and his crew had hauled in the night before. Broad-shouldered George Gileno bulked huge in a wheelchair, almost blocking the aisle. Len