Virgin (41 page)

The cop pulled
a flashlight from his belt. "Let's have a look at what you're deliverin',"
he said. "You wouldn't be the first Mary-hunters tried to sneak by us
tonight."

Emilio nodded
as Mol nudged him. They'd done this right. This was no fake D'Agostino's truck.
This was the real thing. They'd hijacked it just as it left the store. The
driver was bound, gagged and unconscious in the trunk of a car Mol had stolen
this afternoon. The back of the panel truck was loaded with grocery bags, all
scheduled for delivery elsewhere, but Emilio had changed the addresses on half
a dozen bags; they now read "St. Joseph's rectory."

Emilio heard
the rear doors open, heard the rustle of paper as a few of the bags were
inspected, then heard the door slam closed.

Seconds later
Decker was slipping back behind the wheel as the cop slid the barrier aside and
waved them through.

"'Choich?'"
Mol said, leaning forward and staring at Decker.
"'Choich?'"

Decker
shrugged, grinning. "What can I say? I'm a Method actor."

Mol laughed and
grabbed his crotch. "Method this!"

Emilio let them
blow off a little steam. They were in--past the guardhouse, so to speak--but they
still had a long way to go.

Decker gave a
friendly wave to the cop standing on the sidewalk in front of the church as he
drove past, then backed the truck into the alley on the far side of the
rectory. Mol and Emilio got out, opened the rear of the trunk, grabbed
some bags, and left the doors open as they approached the
rectory's side door with loaded arms.

A middle-aged
woman opened the door.

"A gift
for Father Dan from one of his parishioners," Emilio said. "Is he
in?"

Emilio knew he
was in--he'd confirmed that with a phone call thirty minutes ago.

"Why,
yes," the woman said. She let them into the foyer, then turned and called
up the stairs behind her. "Father Dan! Someone here to see you!"

By the time she turned back again, Mol had put his grocery bags
down and had a pistol pointing at her face.

"Not a
word," he said, "or we'll shoot Father Dan. Understand?"

Eyes wide, jaw
trembling, utterly terrified, she nodded.

"Anyone
else in the house besides Father Dan?" Mol said.

She shook her
head.

"Good."
Mol smiled. "Now, let's find a nice little closet so we can lock you up
where you won't get hurt."

Emilio had his own
automatic--a silenced Llama compact 9mm--ready and waiting for Father Dan when he
came down the stairs.

"Hello,"
the priest said. "What--"

And then he saw
the pistol.

"Let's go
to church, shall we, Father?" Emilio said.

The young priest
looked bewildered. "But there are police all over--"

"The
tunnel, Father Dan. We'll use the tunnel."

The priest
shook his head. "Tunnel? I don't know what you're--"

Emilio jabbed
the silencer tip against his ribs. "I'll shoot your housekeeper in the
face."

"All
right!" Father Dan said, blanching. "All right. It's this way."

"That's
better," Emilio said, following close behind.

Mol rejoined
them then and gave Emilio a thumbs-up sign. The housekeeper was safely locked
away. She'd keep
quiet to protect her precious
priest from being shot while the priest was leading them to the church in order
to keep his housekeeper from being shot.

Weren't guns
wonderful?

But repeated
reminders never hurt. Emilio had worked this one out and memorized it: "No
heroics, please, Father. We're not here to hurt anyone, but we're quite willing
to do so without hesitation if the need arises. Remember that."

Why are all
these things happening, Mother?

Carrie sat in
the front pew, staring at the Virgin where she lay upon the altar.

She could not
get the sight of her father--now that he was dead, had died so horribly, it
seemed all right to call him that--out of her head. The flames, the oily smoke,
the smell, the obscene sizzle of burning human flesh, haunted her dreams and
her waking hours, stealing her appetite, chasing her sleep. That had been no
ordinary fire. Only the man had burned, nothing else.

Did I do
that, Mother? Did you? Or was that the work of Someone Else's hand?

And now the
church was closed, the sick and lame turned away, the building sealed, the
street blocked off. What next? Tomorrow these aisles would be crowded with
investigators from the Archdiocese and the Vatican, trailed by nosy,
disrespectful bureaucrats from City Hall and Albany, from Washington and
Israel, all poking, prodding, examining.

They'll be
interrogating me about how you got here. I won't tell them a thing. It's not me
I'm worried about, Mother. It's you. They'll treat you like a thing. An
it.
They may even decide you belong back in Israel.
What'll I do then, Mother?

Carrie felt
tears begin to well in her eyes. She willed them away.

There's a
plan, isn't there, Mother. There has to be. I just have to have faith and
--

She heard a
noise in the vestibule and turned. She smiled when she saw Dan leading two
other strange-looking men
up the aisle, but he
did not return her smile. He looked pale and grim.

And then she saw the pistols.

"Dan?" she said, rising. "What's going
on?"

"I don't
know." His voice was as tight as his features. "They came into the
rectory and--"

"What we
want is very simple," the bigger, bearded one said. He stopped a dozen
feet or so down the aisle from Carrie and let Dan continue toward her. He
gestured toward the altar with his pistol. "We want the lady."

Carrie was
stunned for a few seconds, unable,
unwilling
to believe what she'd just
heard.

"Want her
for what?" she managed to say.

"No time
for chatter, Sister. Here's how we'll do this. You two will carry her back
through the tunnel to the rectory, and we'll take her from there. No tricks, no
games, no heroics, and no one gets hurt." He gestured with his pistol at
Dan. "You take the head and she'll take the feet. Let's move."

"No!"
Carrie said.

The bearded man
snapped his head back in surprise. Obviously he hadn't expected that.

Neither had
Carrie. The word had erupted from her with little or no forethought, propelled
by fear, by anger, by outrage that anyone could even
think
of stealing
the Virgin from the sanctuary of a church.

She rose and
faced him defiantly.

"Get out
of here."

He stared at
her for a heartbeat or two, then pointed his gun at Dan.

"You cause
me any trouble and I'll shoot your priest friend."

"No, you
won't. There's a cop outside that door. All I have to do is scream once and
he'll be in here, and that will be the end of you. Get out now. I'll give you a
chance to run, then I'm going to open the front doors and call the police
inside."

"I'm not
kidding, lady," the big one said through his teeth. "Get up there and
do what you're told."

"Carrie,
please," she heard Dan say from her left. "It's okay. They can't get
past the cops with her anyway. So just do as he says."

Dan might be
right, but Carrie wasn't going to let these creeps get their filthy hands on
the Virgin for even a few seconds.

"Get out
now or I scream."

The shorter one
looked about nervously, as if he wanted to take her up on the offer, but the
bearded one stood firm. His eyes narrowed as he raised his pistol and aimed it
at her chest. His voice was low and menacing.

"No me
jodas."

He wouldn't
dare, she thought. He's got to be bluffing.

"All
right," she said. "I gave you your chance."

Still they
didn't move, so she filled her lungs and--

She saw the
flash at the tip of the silencer, saw the pistol buck in his hand, heard a
sound like
phut!,
felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her
scream but she was punched backward and didn't seem to have any air to scream
with. And then she was falling. Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring
surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an all-encompassing
darkness. . . .

Emilio stood
frozen with his automatic still pointed at where she had been standing as he
watched her fall and lay twitching on the marble floor, the red of her life
soaking through the front of her habit and pooling around her.

"Christ,
Emilio!" Mol gasped beside him.

"Carrie!"
the priest cried, dropping to his knees beside her and gripping her limp
shoulders.
"Oh, God,
Carrie!"

I'm sorry,
Emilio thought. I'm so sorry!

And that shocked him. Because he'd killed before without the
slightest shred of guilt. Anyone who threatened him or stood between him and
what he wanted didn't deserve to live. It had always been that simple. But
here, now, in this place, before that old woman's body on the altar, a new
emotion, as unpleasant as
it was unfamiliar, was seeping through him.

Guilt.

The priest
looked up at him, tear-filled eyes wild, rage and grief distorting his features
almost beyond recognition. With a low, animal-like growl he hurtled himself at
Emilio.

A bullet in the head would have been the simplest, most
efficient response. But Emilio couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Not
again, not here, with . . .
her
here. Instead he dodged aside and
slammed the Llama's butt and trigger guard hard against the priest's skull,
staggering him. Before the man could shake off the blow, Emilio hit him again,
harder this time, knocking him to the floor where he lay still with a trickle
of red oozing from his scalp.

Mol had already
started back down the center aisle.

"Where are
you going?"

Mol turned and
looked at her, fear in his eyes. "I--"

"Shut up
and stand still. Listen!"

Emilio strained
his ears through the silence. And as he'd hoped, it remained just that:
silence. None of the noise in here had penetrated the heavy oak front doors;
the cop outside had no idea there was anything going on inside.

"All
right," Emilio said, gesturing toward the altar. "Let's get
moving."

Mol hesitated, glanced once more at the front doors, then shrugged
and hurried toward the altar. Emilio directed him toward the head of the body
while he took the other end.

But as he
reached to take hold of the feet, he hesitated. He hadn't believed in this
church-priest-God-religion bullshit since he'd been a little boy in Camino
Verde and watched his older sister screw the neighborhood men in the back
corner of their one-room shack. Any guilt he'd felt a moment ago had been a
leftover from the times his grandmother would drag him off to church before he
was big enough to tell her to go to hell. And yet ... a deep part of him was
afraid to touch this mummified old woman, afraid a lightning bolt would crash
through the ceiling of the church and fry him on the spot.

"Bullshit!"
he whispered and gripped the body's ankles.

Nothing
happened.

Angry with
himself for feeling relieved, he nodded to Mol, who had her by the shoulders,
and together they lifted her off the altar.

Surprisingly
light. They each got a comfortable grip on her, then hurried down the center
aisle, Emilio leading, carrying her feet first. Through the vestibule, down the
steps into the locked-up soup kitchen in the cellar, through the tunnel, and
back up into the rectory. All still quiet there.
Decker would
have been inside if anyone had come in. They eased the body out the side door,
slipped her into the back atop the grocery bags, and locked the doors.