I placed my hands on my lap, listening to him without expression.
"You get paid to take care of this shit, and nothing more." He took a manila envelope held together by a thick rubber band from inside his jacket pocket. "You're a tool. An employee, at best. If I hand you money and say to kiss my ass, you ask where and whether or not I want tongue." He slapped the envelope on the table in front of me. "Now you been paid, do your fucking job."
I shot him five times in the chest. The reports thundered down the corridors of the empty club. The snifter shattered in his hand as his body clenched around the new holes that I'd rudely punched through him. Smoke wisped from the perforated wool jacket just as it curled from his cigarette, somehow still miraculously clutched between the fingers of his other hand. He looked down incredulously at his condition.
"I've already been paid. And I am doing my job. Prick."
"Nguuuuhhhhhhh," Elvis said as he plopped back down onto the leather banquette. It was the smartest thing to come out of his mouth all night.
I picked up the envelope; put it in my own pocket. "Thanks for the tip." With the edge of the tablecloth, I wiped Carlos's prints off the gun and dropped it on the floor. I figured it was only right that I used his piece. It felt like justice that I did. "You never even tried to deny raping the girl, either. That plain ticked me off, just so you know."
And with that, Elvis shuddered once and left the building.
I went to take a leak before I took the drive back to Brooklyn. As I zipped myself up, I took a long stare into the mirror. I didn't look too bad, but I felt older than dust. The three white hairs at my left temple bugged me more than they should have.
Carlos was at an age that I couldn't remember being anymore. I was glad that I got him gone. He didn't need to--
BOOM!
Instinctively, I hit the deck, praying that the janitor had done a good job on the bathroom floor.
Silence.
My heart pounded as I stood, pulling my own gun as I pressed flat against the tile wall. With my free hand, I slowly opened the bathroom door. The club was just as I'd left it. Carlos's gun was still on the floor. Elvis had been considerate enough to stay dead. That meant there was another gun in play other than one in my hand.
"Jesus?" I yelled down the dark hallway.
Nothing
"Jesus, if you're here, give me a heads-up!" I wasn't worried about giving my presence or my position away to the shooter. If whoever it was headed up the corridor, I had him dead-bang.
Still nothing.
Then a pained wail, too high-pitched to be the meaty Dominican.
I pressed myself against the velvet-covered wall and moved slowly towards the cries, gun leading the way. In the dim light over the door, I could make out Jesus, flat on his back in a pool of blood, still clutching his huge revolver. A sizeable piece of his head was squashed in and had split over the ear, a spike of bone jutting out. I assumed that the piece of rebar that lay at his feet had done the job.
I picked up his gun. It must have looked impressive in Jesus' massive paws. Unfortunately for him, all that bulky muscle combined with a handgun too heavy for its own use enabled a high school kid to get the drop on him with a piece of iron.
Carlos was curled against the wall, his wrist tucked under his arm. Blood gushed from his ruined hand. Two of his fingers lay scattered next to Jesus. The shot I heard must have been the one pull of the trigger Jesus got off before his skull collapsed.
Guess Jesus wasn't as good as I'd given him credit for.
Carlos rocked back and forth in pain, not all of it physical. "I killed him. I killed him," he wept.
I knelt down next to him and placed my hand on his back, right between his bony shoulders. "You had to. He would have killed you," I whispered gently. The words were for God to hear as much as they were for him.
"I had to. He would have killed me. He would have killed me," he repeated between gasps. He said the words over and over as though trying to convince himself that they were true. He looked at me. His terrified eyes seeking further consolation in my face, my words.
I shot him once behind the ear. The red Yankees hat flipped off his head as the bullet passed through. Carlos sighed peacefully, then slumped to the carpet.
I put the gun back into Jesus' hand and walked out.
It had started to snow.
I let the heavy knob fall again on the oak door at St. Barbara's Church. I was freezing, the cold of the brass knocker penetrating my leather gloves, but knew Father Ken would eventually open up.
A scowling face under a Celtics hat peered through the door crack as I waved the half bottle. The scowl remained even as he asked, "What's this?" his Dublin lilt dripping with suspicion.
"Frapin. It's cognac." I knew he preferred a good Irish whiskey, but I used what was at hand.
"Any good?"
"Seven hundred dollars a bottle. Retail."
"Only about two hundred left, but I'll take it." He took the bottle from me and I followed him inside. The warm church air was heavy with the ghosts of old incense. The snow was melting into my hair, ice water dripping down my collar. I followed him into the sacristy where he pulled two Dixie cups from the dispenser next to the water cooler. "Will you be joining me?"
"No thanks."
"Still dry, eh?"
"Still dry." Little bit of a lie, but Father Ken didn't need to know that. I put the brakes on just short of drinking myself to death when I realized that the alcohol didn't make my thoughts any cleaner, my demons any quieter. It just got them drunk too. And they were mean drunks.
I still drank slightly more than my annual birthday scotch, but a Dixie cup full of French cognac in a church somehow felt like crossing a line.
Father Ken sighed at the injustice of having to drink alone. He poured himself a double and sipped it gently, rolling it around his tongue. "It's no Jameson's, but it'll do. How many?"
"Four."
Father Ken raised a bushy white eyebrow at me. "Busy night?"
"Bad night."
He opened a drawer and took out four tea candles. "You know where she is. You can let yourself out." He tucked the bottle under his arm and walked back to the dormitory.
I went into the church and made the sign as I passed the cross on my way to her statue.
St. Barbara. The Saint of Gunners.
She was the closest I could find, saint-wise for what I did.
I lit the first candle at St. Barbara's feet for Elvis. As a man, he wasn't worth the match, but his soul needed the candle. I prayed silently.
Underneath my prayer, a voice told me that I had to do what I did. The kid's life was over, one way or the other. There was no way he was going to get away from that point. The place was covered in his blood. His fingers were on the floor, for Christ's sake (sorry). I pushed away the voice and concentrated on who I was specifically praying for.
The second candle was for Jesus. The wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time, even though he was a bad man and a worse bodyguard. I prayed some more.
The voice came back. I'd saved the kid from an eternity in jail, it said. It said what life remained in him, the State would have ripped out by the time he breathed free air again, if ever.
It was better this way.
For him.
For his family.
It said.
It said.
The third candle was for Carlos. In my prayer, I apologized to him as a lump of guilt filled my throat. I prayed for his forgiveness. The voice told me that I didn't kill him for my own sake.
Because they'd catch him.
Because he'd seen my face.
Because he could then point his remaining fingers at me.
The voice said the words over and over as though trying to convince me that they were true. It said that my act, in the end, was a merciful act.
I lit the last candle for myself.
And prayed as hard as I could.
The Legendary Great Black Cloud of Ralphie O'Malley