Vengeance(127)

Instead, a man got out of the driver’s side. He was short and squat and dressed in a suit. He was looking toward the church when a second man appeared in my line of sight, coming from beneath my window, presumably from the steps to the rectory. He was tall and lean and also dressed in a suit, with a fedora on his head. The tall man went to the car, where the short man whispered something to him. Beneath the light of the streetlamp in front of the house I could see their dark complexions. It occurred to me that while no one bought a Lincoln Town Car, people did rent them. At airports. When they were in town on business.

The men reached inside their suit coats, pulled out guns, and headed down the walkway toward the door to the rectory.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the phone, and dialed 911.

I cupped my hand over the phone and kept my voice at a whisper. “This is Father Nathan, from St. Valentine’s Church on Huyshope Avenue.”

“Yes, Father.” It was the same dispatcher as before. Muted voices barked in the background. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Two men with guns. They’re here. They’ve come for Maria and Manuel. The woman and the boy who are staying with me.”

A siren sounded on her end. “Please hold, Father.”

An unbearable number of seconds followed. I held my breath to try to hear what was going on outside, but the sound of my heartbeat filled my eardrums.

When the dispatcher finally picked up again, a combination of sirens, screaming, and static echoed from her end. “I’m sorry, Father. Are these the kids that have been bothering you all week?”

“No. They’re not kids. They’re two men with guns. They came in a Lincoln Town Car. They’re assassins. The woman who’s staying here — her husband was a prosecutor who was murdered in Mexico. They’re here for her. For her and her son.”

“Please calm down, Father. These men, are they in the house?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Officers will respond as soon as possible. Please keep the doors locked —” A knock on the front door.

I hung up the phone and limped down the stairs, cursing the creaks in my prosthetic leg. When I got to the foyer, I faced the door and held my breath.

Three more short knocks followed. It was a smart move, I thought. A church was a shelter for all. A priest’s first instinct was to open his door to anyone who needed assistance. Why break into a house when you can wangle an invitation?

It took the cops ten minutes to arrive the first time, twenty minutes the second time. It seemed, based on the background noise during the call with the dispatcher, that the natives were restless this evening. The odds the cops would arrive faster than the previous two times were zero.

I didn’t own a gun. The closest thing I had to a weapon was a butcher’s knife. But the idea of using it, the thought of sinking a blade into another human being’s flesh, was unimaginable under any circumstances.

Sweat streamed down my back and created an itch beneath my cassock but I didn’t dare scratch it. A minute passed. Still, I didn’t dare move, for fear of making any kind of noise. Perhaps I’d misread the situation. Perhaps they weren’t killers. Perhaps I could will them away with my thoughts.

Something clattered outside the living room.

I forced my feet to move, crept around the corner into the living room, and hid behind a curtain. A night-light cast a semicircle of light beside a red-velvet couch. Above the sofa, the window rattled gently. They were checking to see if a window was open. Why break a window if you can slide it open?

They were killers. They were here for Maria and Manuel.

These words should have motivated me. They should have summoned an adrenaline flow and spurred me to action. But they didn’t. Instead, I stood solemnly in place, resigned to my fate.

It simply wasn’t in me. Twenty-three years ago, a stranger had groped my girlfriend’s breasts as we filed out of a rock concert at the Civic Center. When we got outside, I broke his jaw with a single punch. Unbeknownst to me, he followed us to a bar in his monster truck, and when we parked, he drove his vehicle through the passenger door. Matilda died and I lost two limbs, all because I raised my hand to another man. I couldn’t do it again. Two decades of meditation and three million, six hundred, and sixty-six repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer had absorbed all my rage.

The glass broke inward with a muted crack. I remained behind the curtain, feet frozen in place, my vision wet and blurry. One of the men reached inside with a gloved hand, wiggled a shard of glass free, and removed it. After he repeated the process several times, a third of the window was gone. In sixty seconds, they would slip into the house.