City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2)

by Mark Wheaton

  “A robbery?” Luis asked.

  “No. The shooter sat down and waited for the police to come.”

  Luis could conjure no one reason somebody would shoot a priest. Rather, he could come up with a thousand.

  “Well, we’ll have to be on our guard,” Whillans said. “But more than that, we’ll have to make sure our students and parishioners feel safe. I’ll write something up and let Erna circulate it. Will you tell the other priests?”

  “Yes, Father,” Luis said, guiding Whillans to the door of the admin wing. “Anything else right now? I need to grab a shower before morning Mass.”

  “Yes, in fact. Bridgette and I were talking about you last night,” Whillans said, referring to the laywoman with whom he’d maintained a noncelibate relationship for the past twenty years, something Luis was still conflicted about. “It’s the Feast of Saint Peter Claver this Sunday. I think—and she agreed with me—that it’s time you deliver the homily at Mass. Is that something you feel up to?”

  Luis was surprised. Since he’d become assistant pastor, Whillans had gradually increased his duties around the parish in order to help shield Whillans’s condition from inquiry. Luis had thrown himself into these and learned quite a bit, but the homily? So soon? He knew that the other priests at St. Augustine’s weren’t likely to begrudge him, but this would be putting a novice out in front of the congregation as well.

  “I think so,” Luis said, hoping he sounded steadier than he felt. “What’s the scripture?”

  “Up to you,” Whillans said. “But being Claver, maybe Jeremiah 25:5?”

  “‘Turn ye again now everyone from his evil way, and from the evil of your doing?’” Luis recited, feeling like he was back in faith formation class. “Mind reading a draft or two in advance?”

  “Not at all,” Whillans said. “One more thing. There was already a voice mail on the office phone this morning—Michael Story asking for you to give him a call. Any idea what it’s about?”

  Luis froze. Though some in the archdiocese knew of Luis’s involvement sorting out the Marshak human-trafficking case that summer, only Whillans knew the whole story. Including that the ambitious and possibly venal deputy DA, to whom Luis had fed his findings, was not a person Luis thought he’d hear from again.

  “No idea. Probably just some detail about the Marshak case.”

  “Of course,” Whillans replied. “Just wanted to make sure you got the message. Let me know if it’s anything else.”

  “I will, Father,” Luis lied.

  Dr. Suyin “Susan” Auyong stared at the headline in disbelief. Late for her morning shift at the clinic, she’d ignored the texts, e-mails, and voice mails from Nan that had her phone lit up like a pachinko machine when she’d woken from a less-than-four-hour nap following her last shift. It was her boss, the clinic’s—well, unlicensed clinic’s—chief administrator, Clover Gao, who’d brought the news story to her attention.

  “Isn’t this your friend?” she’d asked without feeling.

  Priest Shot Outside San Gabriel Parish.

  It wasn’t even on the front page, didn’t warrant more than a thousand words. Was that why she didn’t take the news as hard as Clover wanted her to? Or was it that she had so long expected to see a headline just like this that when the shoe finally dropped, she felt only numbness rather than anguish?

  “Yes, Father Chang,” Susan acknowledged to Clover. “He was very charitable. We met because he would occasionally bring his parishioners here when they were in need. If they couldn’t pay, he’d pay for them.”

  “Given the rumors I’m hearing about why he was killed, I think it best to say little of that association,” Clover said in her infuriatingly Clover-like way.

  “What rumors?” Susan asked.

  “I won’t spread gossip,” Clover said airily before heading away. “Mr. Carreño is waiting for his pills in Room Four. Could you take care of that?”

  Susan nodded as she sank back against the wall. She didn’t want to deal with Mr. Carreño or his pills. For that matter she didn’t want to do anything but go home, find whatever alcohol she might have lying around, and drink herself into a stupor.

  Poor, poor Father Benny.

  Then she remembered Nan. Dear God. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed a number.

  “I’m so, so, so sorry I didn’t call back,” she said when it was answered. “Wherever you are, just come to meet me. You can stay in my office all day if you’d like. It’s terrible, and I know you don’t want to face the world right now. But I just don’t want to think you’re there all by yourself.”

  There were a few sniffles in response, a muffled sob of someone who’d been crying for some time now, then a grunt of acceptance.

  “I’ll expect to see you soon then,” Susan said. “And I’ll find someone to cover for me so we can go somewhere to talk about this. He loved us both so, so very much. ‘We three vagabonds,’ he called us, remember? Strangers in a strange land who’d found each other.”

  “He was . . .” Nan began but couldn’t finish.

  “I know,” Susan said quietly. “I know.”

  As she hung up, still wondering how she would get through the next few hours, Clover poked her head out of her office.

  “Mr. Carreño. Room Four,” she said sternly.

  Susan nodded and headed to the supply closet, where a deliveryman was stocking the shelves with boxes of pharmaceuticals, the unlicensed clinic being an unlicensed pharmacy as well.

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “What’re you looking for?” the deliveryman, a pleasant-looking young man whose accent suggested he was also from Hong Kong, asked.

  “Um . . . Hasix,” Susan said, snapping back into work mode and pointing to one of the open boxes. “Thank you.”

  The deliveryman obliged, and Susan carried the box of pills down the hall. For all she cared she could be handing Mr. Carreño rattlesnake poison rather than his hypertension medication. She tried to comport herself before stepping into the examination room, but one thought kept playing itself over in her head. It wasn’t a question of who wanted Father Chang dead but who didn’t?

  “Is Christianity based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth?” Luis asked his students. “Or the interpretation and expansion on those by Paul the Apostle? That is what we’re going to tackle today.”

  Luis scanned the room. It was only the second week of classes, but he already had a sense of the group’s comfort level. They liked a little boat rocking, particularly when he said something that flew in the face of something they’d heard at Mass. Too far, however, and they got uncomfortable, as if fearing for their souls should they hear something outright blasphemous.

  “According to the historical record, James the Brother of Christ, also known as James the Just, may have been Jesus’s designated successor,” Luis continued. “But Paul, though he had never met Christ, had amassed a following based on his interpretation of so-called miraculous events authored by Jesus and what he claimed were Jesus’s own words to him from the afterlife. It’s hard enough having a conversation with a zealot. Now imagine if that zealot is countering your arguments with information he’s saying Jesus is giving him from heaven.”

  Sure enough, a few students shifted in their chairs, while others cleared their throats as their parents might’ve done in church having heard the same thing.

  “The study of the Gospels is a study in comparative literature,” Luis said. “Why in the Gospel of Mark, which was written first, is he the Son of God but in Matthew he’s described more like Moses, a teacher? Why in the Gospel of John are Christ’s last words ‘I am thirsty’ and ‘It is finished,’ whereas in Luke he says ‘Father, forgive them’ and ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’? If the Gospels had been written by the apostles, they might be a very different thing. But as they were written by men who’d never met Jesus and had to set down their history by parsing stories passed down from the original disciples, and often through Paul’s interp
retation, context is key. Did you know that Luke was converted by Paul? That Mark was one of Paul’s translators? There’s a reason so much of the New Testament is made up of Paul’s letters to groups of Christians. So again, is Christianity about Jesus? Or is it about Paul’s interpretation of Jesus?”

  In the back row he saw the first head bobbing downwards, sneaking a look at an iPhone.

  Ah well.

  Luis pressed on as best he could and even received a few interesting questions by the end. Just when he thought he would send them out on a high note for the rest of the day, someone raised their hand tentatively and asked if he’d known the slain priest in East LA. When he looked around the rest of the faces in the classroom, he realized it was all any of them had been thinking of.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “But I’m sure he was a good man. I’m just glad the man who did it has come forward and admitted it, as there’s now some hope for his immortal soul.”

  The answer was met with a few seconds of silence, before the bell, mercifully in Luis’s opinion, rang to signal the end of the period. Once the students had evacuated the classroom, Luis gathered his books to head back to the rectory for his break period.

  Instead, he found Michael Story leaning against the hallway wall, checking his cell phone. A small sticker identifying him as a visitor was stuck to his suit jacket’s left breast pocket.

  For a terrifying moment Luis imagined the deputy DA was here to tell him something about Miguel Higuera. But then Michael extended his hand and nodded, suggesting to Luis that he was here about something else entirely.

  “Father Chavez, I thought priests were meant to lead with ‘What the church believes is this,’ or ‘What we’re taught is that.’ You’re more like ‘Some people believe this,’ or ‘There are those in the church who believe that.’ You don’t think that confuses the issue?”

  Luis shrugged, not taking the bait. “I believe the way we strengthen our beliefs is by allowing them to be rigorously challenged from all sides at all times. What do you believe?”

  Michael grinned and extended his hand. “I believe it’s been too long.”

  However dubious he was that Michael Story cared how long it had been, Luis shook the proffered hand. He peered into the deputy DA’s eyes for any signs of remorse for past transgressions. He saw not a one.

  “What can I do for you?” Luis asked.

  “Can we go somewhere quiet?”

  Luis led Michael out of St. John’s and over to St. Augustine’s next door. They were an unlikely pair: one a former teenage hood who’d traded that life for a path to the priesthood after his brother’s murder; the other a onetime starry-eyed crusader for justice who had discovered, after joining the LA district attorney’s office, that his ethical resolve was more pliable than he might’ve thought.

  They reached a small courtyard, where there was a statue of Saint Francis alongside two benches. Luis sat on one and indicated for Michael to take the other. Michael remained standing.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” Michael said. “You’ve no doubt heard about the shooting last night in the San Gabriel Valley. Did you know Father Chang?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I didn’t either, so I looked into him today. Seems like a good man actually. Cared a lot about his parishioners and the community around the parish as well.”

  “So, the shooter gave a reason.”

  Michael eyed him with a look that suggested he felt Luis may have missed his true calling.

  “He did,” Michael said. “But in a letter to his lawyer he also admitted the killing was premeditated. He says Chang molested his daughter.”

  Luis’s face flushed hot. He knew he wasn’t supposed to judge others, but he couldn’t help the flash of anger and hate that coursed through his brain. The molestation scandals that had just about brought the church to its knees were such a raw wound, Luis winced at the possibility of another one.

  “Is the girl safe?” Luis asked.

  “We have no reason to believe not,” Michael said. “The confession states that she’s gone back to China. Just we can’t get any kind of confirmation on that. We get a lot of ‘yes’ from people we talk to, only to find out it means ‘Yes, I understand the question,’ not ‘Yes, I know where she is.’ It’s a cultural gap. Of course, we’d love to talk to her, but like you, her safety is our primary concern.”

  Luis could tell from Michael’s body language that this last bit was a lie. He didn’t care, though. The sooner he could get the deputy DA out of here, the better.

  “So, why are you here?”

  “We’re getting some red flags,” Michael admitted. “And given the recent scandals, including here in the LA archdiocese, we have to be right about this before the confession hits the press. No one wants to embarrass the archbishop, but no one wants to sweep something like this under the rug if it is true.”

  “What’re the red flags?”

  “It’s just all so convenient,” Michael said. “The daughter who doesn’t leave a trace. The confession arriving at the station a moment after the shooter was brought in. The accusation of sexual misconduct at a time when everyone is primed to automatically believe it’s true.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Luis asked, afraid he already knew.

  “No one at that church is going to talk to the cops,” Michael explained. “But they might talk to another priest. And you’re good at this. You have an instinct for knowing who the bad guys are and the background to understand what makes them tick.”

  This tossed-off allusion to Luis’s criminal past angered Luis even more. Michael didn’t seem to notice.

  “On top of that it’s your own church’s reputation on the line here. If anyone’s motivated to get in there and get people talking, it’s you. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as anyone. If it’s a case of a molested daughter and a revenge shooting like he says, I want the truth of that to come out. If it’s something else entirely and that’s a smoke screen, I want that truth to come out. With you, I can get that done.”

  Luis eyed Michael for a long moment before rising to his feet.

  “The answer’s no,” Luis said. “If you need someone to play mediator between you and Father Chang’s congregants, the best person to ask is the parish priest at St. Jerome’s or someone from the archdiocese. Not me.”

  “This is one of your brother priests,” Michael protested. “Don’t you even want to think about it?”

  Luis considered a raft of responses to this. Instead of choosing, he turned and returned to St. John’s.

  III

  “This is amazing,” Oscar de Icaza, small-time gangster and car chopper, enthused as he stared out the bay window overlooking Los Angeles. “You feel like the king of the city.”

  “It’s what they mean by ‘jetliner views,’” the listing agent, a middle-aged woman named Miranda, said. “You look down on everything as if you’re in a—”

  “Yeah, I figured that’s what it meant,” Oscar snarled, cutting the woman off midthought. “I’m not a five-year-old.”

  Miranda shot Oscar an aggrieved look, but when he offered no apology, she turned it on the third member of their party, Helen Story.

  “Should we look upstairs?” Helen offered, acting in her official capacity as Oscar’s realtor. “We haven’t seen the rooftop deck.”

  “Yeah, let’s see the deck,” Oscar snapped, turning from the window.

  He caught Miranda eyeing Helen with a strained look but didn’t care. Helen raised a placating hand and followed him to the steps. When Miranda moved to come up as well, Helen stopped her with a smile. The agent got the picture and hung back.

  “This is it!” Oscar announced once he reached the deck. “You can look back into the canyons, turn around and see all the way to Catalina, downtown, the beaches. This is dramatic. This is what he wants.”

  Helen smacked his arm.

  “Who were you trying to impress with that cock-of-the-walk routine down there
?” she asked.

  “You, obviously,” Oscar said, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her in for a kiss. “Is it working?”

  “No,” she said, scowling, then kissed him back. “Maybe a little bit, but we need Miranda.”

  “Oh, do we?” he asked.

  “Yes. She lives in this neighborhood. This is her territory. There’s never inventory up here, so you want to be that real estate investor she—”

  Oscar cut her off with another kiss. He loved this woman. Loved this woman. Every ambitious, California, daddy-pleasing, white-bread, sun-kissed cell. But every so often he needed to remind her that he was the man, something he doubted her deputy DA husband-in-name-only ever did. As she shifted to acknowledge his hard-on, but without any real invitation to do something about it, he stepped away.

  “Okay, so we make her happy,” Oscar agreed. “How do we do that?”

  “This house is way overpriced, but we go in at the asking price anyway,” Helen said. “If it gets competitive, I’ll confide in her what your top bid is and say I’ll drop my commission to make it work without suggesting she drop hers. That’s when I say ‘cash.’”

  “But won’t we lose money on the resale?” Oscar asked.

  “No, if you play it right you’ll break even. But then you’ve got someone like Miranda slipping you leads in hopes of making another cash commission.”

  Oscar smiled and put his arms around Helen’s waist. “How much time before she comes up here?” he asked, nodding to the rattan sofa on the far side of the deck.

  “You’re crazy,” Helen said, brushing his hand away, albeit without much force.

  “Come on,” he cajoled. “We’re about to pay three million dollars for this house. We should be able to use it once before handing the keys over to our new partner.”

  He slipped a hand under her shirt and felt her heart quicken. He knew the answer was still no but liked the effect he had on her body regardless.

  “You’re ridiculous,” Helen said, voice barely a whisper, as she pulled his hand away. “But behave yourself and maybe—maybe—I’ll come up with some reason why we have to come back and see the house on our own.”