The Absolver: Rome (Saint Michael Thriller Series Book 1)

by Gavin Reese

  “You’ve lived an incredible life already, Father, one that my father would say is destined for greater things, for national service in political office, for example. Does that hold any interest for you? Perhaps rising through the Church, becoming Pope Michael one day, or perhaps, President?”

  “Not interested in being a politician. I once read a story about Abraham Lincoln, who was President during our Civil War. A Protestant pastor offered a mealtime blessing and asked God to be on ‘our side’ during a battle that everyone thought would take place the next day. Lincoln, apparently, didn’t give the expected ‘Amen,’ so the pastor asked him about it later, trying to find out why the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of the Union Army, didn’t want God on their side in such a clearly defined war with evil. Lincoln explained that he didn’t ask God to be on his side, for he was fallible and might not always be just. Lincoln said he prayed instead that he always finds himself on God’s side. That’s the kind of men we need in political office, not dreamers and has-been cops like me.”

  Merci watched Michael for a long moment and appeared to gaze into his soul. “I understand that your President Lincoln was also a man of great humility, Father. You might have more in common with him than you appreciate.”

  TWO

  Tuesday, 8:32 AM. Three Weeks Ago.

  La Iglesia de San Francisco. Bogotá, Columbia.

  Inside his private, spartan living quarters, Michael quietly knelt on the stone floor with his eyes closed and his hands clasped just beneath his reverently bowed head. He’d established a personal practice of first allowing his thoughts and emotions to run amok before quietly coming to God in prayer. This had long enabled him to better organize and analyze them. At this hour on a weekday, few people demanded his attention, so, once he’d devoted time and effort to the aging building, Michael typically secluded himself and brought his hopes, concerns, and aspirations to God. The primary topic of his morning prayer sessions had been a recurring one in recent months: vengeance.

  Although grateful for the experience and lifelong brotherhoods he’d formed from his work as a patrol cop, Michael had grown to regret some aspects of that period of his life. He had once been able to take swift, immediate, and decisive action to aid crime victims. When someone reported they’d been harmed by another, Michael and his team could swoop in, detain the accused, investigate the allegations, and arrest and remove them from further immediate harm to the victim. No longer, he thought. My inability to provide long-term aid and guidance weighed heavily on me then. I didn’t know how good I had it until I became a priest and lost almost all ability to intervene. Now I’ve gotta keep more secrets than a mob lawyer.

  I traded in my Batman tool belt for the chance to exclusively offer my parishioners compassion, sympathy, and blind faith that God hears their prayers and will take up their vengeance in His own time and in His own way. No matter what gets reported to me through confessionals, I cannot break that seal and tell the authorities what’s happened. And, the victim can never expect to know or understand God’s timing or reasoning for whatever does, or doesn’t, happen. Oh, yeah, and ‘everything happens for a reason,’ which we mere mortals aren’t capable of understanding, either. It’s no wonder people are leaving organized religions in droves, they’re too rational and logic-oriented to accept the old arguments for blind faith.

  Maybe man is meant to enjoy a little retribution and vengeance now and then, like the righteous indignation and moral violence in the Bible. David didn’t pray for Goliath to examine the morality and justness of his actions, thereby forcing an intrinsic, mental schism. No, he picked up a damned rock and killed the man for fucking with David and his people! What’s changed in the modern era that we’re so afraid of just violence? Did the Church and the Holy See sign onto the U-N’s mantra of monopolizing all violence committed against its people? Michael paused, inhaled deeply, and tried to force his mind to be still. I’ll have to get knee replacements if I wait any longer to pray.

  God, dear Heavenly Father, please settle my mind and give me spiritual guidance on this. I’m having such trouble seeing how to continue to justify the Church teachings on revenge and justice when I can’t even reconcile them myself with Your Holy Scriptures.

  Michael heard a light knock on the door and opened his eyes, but didn’t rise from his knees. “Come in.” Monsignor Medina entered so immediately that Michael wasn’t sure his mentor had actually waited for him to respond. His concerned expression concerned Michael. The man’s virtually unflappable, something’s gotta really be wrong.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Michael, pardon me,” the man offered in Michael’s native English. “Jesus Salinas is here to see you. I explained you were busy and asked how I could help. He’s very distraught and only wants to talk to you. Can you make time for him now?”

  “That’s why you look so worried,” Michael asked as he sat back on his heels. “Wait, which Jesus Salinas? Montes or Escobedo?”

  “Escobedo, Montes won’t darken our door until Christmas Mass, you know that. It’s got something to do with Escobedo’s daughter.”

  “He told you that, but he won’t talk to you about it?”

  “I gathered as much from what he did say, but there’s only a few things that upset a man like he’s upset now.”

  “You’d have made a fine detective, Monsignor. Of course, I can make time for him now.” Michael stood as Medina glanced down at the floor in front of him and frowned. Following his mentor’s gaze, he realized the man had seen the thick foam kneepads he used for private prayer.

  “Ay Dios mio! What’s this,” his mentor asked with displeasure, almost betrayal, evident in his voice.

  “Kneepads. God did a lot of great work, but he didn’t design kneecaps to withstand much time on stone floors.”

  “Blasphemy,” the man facetiously surmised. “You’ll be lucky if they don’t excommunicate you for this.”

  “I’ve given ‘em plenty of reason over the years, Monsignor, I doubt a comfortable prayer position will do the trick at this point.”

  “We’ll see about that, just as soon as you see what Jesus needs from us.” The mentor’s tone reverted back to its normal, caring inflection as they left Michael’s private room and entered the hallway together. “Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help either of you.”

  Michael strode to the back of the church in search of his distraught parishioner, and soon found the man seated alone in a small side chapel. Fluent in Spanish, he spoke with the parishioner in his native tongue. “Sir, how can I help you today?”

  “Father Michael, I need your help,” Jesus responded in Spanish. “I need your guidance, your counsel, and God’s forgiveness.” He wiped tears away from his cheeks and dried them on his pants leg. “I wanna do something, something horrible, and I knew I’d better come here first.”

  “Would you like to speak in the booth, or someplace that’s more private than this chapel?”

  “If it’s alright with you, I’d prefer to stay in here. If anyone from the neighborhood sees me walking into the confessional booth in tears, they’ll think I’ve gone back to my old ways. I know I’m too proud, Father, but the old hens and roosters around here peck and squawk too much, I’m afraid. They’ll assume I’ve done something wrong again, and then my wife and mother will hear about it, and that’ll all happen before I can walk home from here.”

  “Sounds like that’s happened before.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve done things in my past to warrant such concern, Father, a long time ago, but I’m not that man anymore. I love my wife, and I’ve been faithful to her for a very long time. But, that’s not long enough for the memories in this neighborhood. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course, I can listen to anything you have to say, and here is fine as long as you understand it may not be as private.”

  “I have hate in my heart, Father,” the man barely got out before his lip quivered and tears again fell down his cheeks. “My
youngest daughter, Marta, she went out last night, for the first time since her husband died. I heard her tell my wife that she just wanted to dance and feel like a woman again, that it’d been so long since she felt like anything but a widow and a mother.”

  Jesus paused a moment, slowed and deepened his breathing, and stymied his emotions. “She went to a club not far from where we live, met a boy, well, I would have to admit a ‘man,’ if not for what he did. She told my wife, she sat in my kitchen this morning, in tears, Father, and told my wife about how this boy, this animal, drugged her and had his way with her. She woke up this morning on the street, Father, on the goddamned street, like a dog, and she knew what he did, what happened to her.”

  Michael leaned forward and placed a sympathetic hand on the man’s shoulder, which approached the cultural limits on physical compassion unrelated men could show one another here. “I’m very sorry, Jesus, for what’s happened to your baby girl. Take all the time you need, and I’ll help however I can.”

  “She knows who he is, Father, and, because she doesn’t know I heard everything she told my wife, I know who he is, too, and I wanna kill him. I do, I really, really do. I wanna make him hurt worse than he ever hurt anyone in his whole life, and I’d do it in a second if I thought it might take my baby’s pain away!”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, Jesus, you’re feeling the way any father, any parent, would. The fact that you came here, to talk to me, instead of going out there to look for him, that tells me everything I need to know about the purity of your heart.”

  “It’d be so easy, Father, so easy, so quick. He stays just up the alley from the dojo, the place where you go to help teach at night? I could’ve gone over there, done it, and been home before my wife even missed me. We might be poor, but I’m a very principled and resourceful man, Father. It would’ve been so, so easy…”

  “I’m grateful, Jesus, that you chose not to take this into your own hand. Romans 12:19 tells us that vengeance, judgment, it’s all best left up to God. He’ll answer for his sins, for the pain he caused your daughter, I know it for certain. We may not get to see it, or to even know when it happens, but, please, take this to heart. God will see to it that he answers for what he’s done, for the misery and suffering he leaves in his wake.”

  “I know, Father. I understand what the Bible says, and I know that’s what you have to say to keep me out of prison, but it still feels better knowing I made the right choice in coming here to talk to you.”

  Michael appreciated the man’s candor, despite his own dishonesty in counseling him. “Thank you, Jesus, for trusting me, and for giving me the honor of doing what I can to help you and your family through this incredibly difficult time.” Pausing, Michael worked to control his own emotions and personal thoughts on the subject of vengeance, even as outrage welled up inside him. “Just out of curiosity, and, maybe I’ve already forgotten, but, what did you say this animal’s name was, again?”

  THREE

  Tuesday, 11:47 AM. Three Weeks Ago.

  La Iglesia de San Francisco. Bogotá, Columbia.

  Michael had finally finished speaking with Jesus Salinas Escobedo and desperately needed his own spiritual guidance. Maybe even a confession. I’ve got the same raw, vengeful emotions welling up inside me that sent Jesus here in the first place! All we accomplished was transferring his rage onto me.

  He required only a few minutes to find that Monsignor Medina would be tied up on an errand outside the chapel for several hours. I could do it. Escobedo, being the girl’s father, he might not get away with it, but no one would suspect I had motive to target this specific animal. It’d be so much easier if he’d just give me the chance to defend myself, something to justify using force against him. The only hard part, if I could actually find him and get his attention, would be pretending that I wanted him to leave me alone. It’d be so hard to pretend I didn’t want to be victimized, that I wasn’t there to be robbed or assaulted in some way.

  Michael knew, rationally, that he couldn’t take matters into his own hands and deliberately hunt the man, despite what he’d done. Well, in all fairness to the accused, what he’s alleged to have done. That’s the missing part that most people leave out of the revenge business: you first need corroborating evidence to substantiate the allegation and prove the crime. With that in hand, though, I could make a very satisfying field trip into the barrio.

  With plans swirling inside his mind to take a deliberate and unsafe detour back home from his dojo that night, Michael decided his first course of action should be to call for help. Not the help he’d prefer in the form of backup and better weapons, but that from a reliable sounding board and devout moral compass. He purposefully strode back to the small office he shared with Monsignor Medina and retrieved his parent’s international calling card from the belly drawer of his small and simple desk. Michael pulled a chair over so that he could still see out into the chapel through the open office doorway. He needed to keep watch on his parishioners and avoid having one of them overhear his conversation. Never can be sure how people will react to learning that priests need counselors and guidance, too. Turns out we’re people, just like everyone else.

  He dialed a code from the back of the calling card, entered his parent’s home telephone number, and sat forward in the chair, his elbows on his knees and the desk phone’s receiver up to his ear. The call picked up on the second ring.

  “Harry’s Roadkill Café, home of The Hundred-and-One Uses for a Dead Cat Buffet.”

  “Hey, Pop, it’s Michael,” he chuckled. “You gotta cut that out or get your caller-I-D back! What if the bishop calls and you answer like that?”

  “There’s two kinds of people in the world, Michael. Those that have fun and those that hate them for it. Besides, Sam would laugh at that, he knows how to take a joke.”

  “Mom’s not home, is she?”

  “No, she’s out with your Aunt Jacqui. Good to hear from you, son! What can I do ya for? They got a statue built in your honor yet?”

  “No, I don’t think they’ve broken ground on the project yet, but I’ll keep you and mom posted.”

  “Thanks, I don’t wanna miss the unveiling, but you don’t sound so good. Everything alright down there?”

  “I need an ear, and you’re about the best man for the job.”

  “The well musta run pretty damned dry if that’s true. What’s troubling you, son?”

  Michael spent the next fifteen minutes running through a brief synopsis of what he’d learned that morning, excluding, of course, any victim or confessor identification that would have violated the Seal of the Confessional. His father listened intently and asked for minor clarification at only a few points. “So, that’s where I’m at, dad. All I managed to do this morning was to shift his helplessness and angst onto me, and I don’t know that I’ve got anything for him. I mean, how am I supposed to guide him? By just telling him over and over again that it’s all gonna be okay, and that God will make sure that this horrible wrong is somehow righted at some later time? Don’t worry about the details, though, because that’s not our concern. Oh, by the way, parishioner, here’s all these great, contradictory scriptures about when God’s favored people took matters into their own hands, and He blessed them for it. I don’t know how to reconcile that, pop, even for myself, and not go out after class tonight and help this dad go find his daughter’s assailant.”

  Michael heard his father sigh heavily across the line, and, in that, felt the heaviness he’d now succeeded in transferring to the man’s heart. “Well, son, you’re asking awfully tough questions that men of all faiths have wrestled with for eons. The bad news is that there’s no new information or guidance on it. All we got are the old ways, and anyone that says different’s trying to sell you something. Vengeance is not justice, so no matter how much lipstick you put on it, that pig won’t ever be a beauty queen. What you’re talking about, what your parishioner is talking about, is just that: vengeance. I’m sure you’re guiding him
the right way, regardless of your personal feelings, but that’s the only righteous answer. He needs to convince his daughter to go to the police before all the evidence is lost, all the things that Michael the Cop would have recommended, right? You called it right, before, and these are unsubstantiated allegations at this point, and anyone that wants to take up the reciprocity business had damned well better think twice about it. Mankind’s corruptible systems of justice are themselves flawed, and they fall well short of God’s perfect system of judgment, right? So, if it’s wrong in The People’s Court, you can rest assured it’s gonna be damned wrong in God’s Court. Have faith and know that God will work this out in His own time.”

  Michael sighed, disappointed that his father didn’t have the insight he wanted. There’s gotta be a reasonable middle ground here somewhere. “Thanks for listening, Pop. Things are a little different down here, so they probably won’t go to the cops. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll pray that it works out for them, Michael, and for you. Totally unrelated, but I’m making green chili and corned beef tonight, wanna stop over for supper?”

  Michael smiled at his father’s facetiousness. “I’ll charter the first plane outta here, but feel free to eat without me.”

  “The leftovers are always better, anyway. I’ll let your mother know you called. For five bucks, I’ll tell her you’re having the time of your life in the land of milk and honey. She worries, ya know.”

  Michael glanced up and saw several folks seated in pews around the chapel. Looks like they’re waiting for me. “Put it on my tab. Looks like I’ve got some folks waiting.”

  “We pray for you every day, son, and I’ll keep your concerns close to my heart.”