"You drop me at the airport, then go on back to Port Arthur."
"That won't do." It was Skillet.
Chester shook his head. "I can't let you-"
"Ain't you to let."
"Skillet…"
"You catch your plane." The older man's voice was quiet and cold. "Geno and me, we'll turn on around, head west again. We'll check around San Antonio, see if we can find Lorena. Not, we'll see you in El Paso."
"I can't make it up to you."
"Nobody askin' that."
He slept in the terminal and caught the first flight to El Paso the next morning, touching down noonish, then a cab ride to the rectory of Santa Isabel. The pastor there was Father Declan Foley, but Chester knew him as Jolt. A boxer once, backwater champion before heading off to seminary.
A cluster of schoolgirls sat in the pews as Father Dec led them in confirmation class. Chester caught that haunting scent, beeswax, candle flame, hand-worn wood, a lingering whiff of incense, almost conjuring belief. Or the want of belief.
The priest glanced up as his visitor ambled forward. The girls followed suit, pigtails spinning. I must look a sight, Chester thought, jaw swollen and bruised, a zigzag cut across his dark-stubbled cheek.
"Father," he said, a nod of respect.
The priest told the girls to open their books, review the difference between actual and sanctifying grace, then led Chester back into the sacristy. He eyed his old friend with solemn disappointment.
"You look, as they say, like hell."
Chester tried to gather himself up, quit halfway. "Feel like I been there."
"You've still got time. What's this about?"
Chester laid it all out, something about being inside the church arousing an instinct toward candor, flipping off the switch to that part of his mind inclined toward deceit and other half measures. It was no small part.
Father Declan heard him out. Then: "The man's a killer."
"I'm with you there. I don't want no more trouble, though. Just Lorena."
"I find it hard to believe he cares about an accordion."
Chester laughed through his nose; it hurt. "Maybe he's planning a new career path."
"My point is, from the sound of things, he means to punish you."
"He's succeeded." Chester felt tired to the bone. This too, he supposed, was the church working on him. "I hope to make that point. If I can find him before he crosses over to Juárez."
"I can ask around."
"I'd be obliged. Old time's sake and all." Chester heard something small in his voice. Begging. "You know the people who know the people and so on."
"Have you bothered praying?"
The question seemed vaguely insulting. Chester tugged at his ear. "Wouldn't say as I have, no."
"Be a good time to start, from all appearances."
"Can't say I feel inclined."
"Try." The priest reached out, his touch surprisingly gentle for such a meaty hand. "Old time's sake and all."
Father Dec gave him an address for a hotel nearby where he could rest while calls were made, then led him out to the front-most pew. Chester knelt. When in Rome, he figured, the deceit sector of his brain flickering back to life.
"By the way," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the schoolgirls, 'just to settle my curiosity, what exactly is the difference between actual and sanctifying grace?"
The priest studied him a moment, something in his eye reminding Chester of the brawler he'd known before, glazed with sweat and blood, a smoky light hazing the ring, smell of cigars and sawdust, all those redneck cheers. "You know about all the women being killed across the border, right? Worst of it's right here, just over the line, Ciudad Juárez."
That didn't seem much of an answer. "Dec-"
"Not just women. Kids. Sooner or later, it's always the kids. They're shooting up rehab clinics too, nobody's sure why. Then there's the kidnap racket. Not just mayors and cops and business-people, now it's teachers, doctors, migrants, anybody. Know what your life's worth? Whatever your family can cobble together. If that. People have stopped praying to God. Why bother? They've turned to Santa Muerte. Saint Death."
The weariness returned. "Not sure what you're getting at exactly, Dec."
"I'm trying to focus your mind."
Chester had to bite back a laugh. Like having your granddad's button box stolen, finding a headless hooker at the back of your bus, and getting punked by somebody's goon squad doesn't focus your mind. "Fair enough."
"Put your problems in perspective."
"All right."
Gradually the priest's stare weakened. Something like a smile appeared. "Sanctifying grace," he said, "comes through the sacraments. Actual grace is a gift, to help in times of temptation."
He returned to the schoolgirls, who shortly resumed their mumbled recitations, a soft droning echo in the cool church. Chester clasped his hands and bowed his head. He tried. But the churchy nostalgia he'd felt before had a weaker signal now. Nothing much came. No gift in his time of temptation.
Father Dec would phone around, every soup kitchen, every clinic, every police station, the holy hotline, calling all sinners. Someone would remember the monkey-faced streetwalker who'd gone off with the Mexican lieutenant known for his deadly sideline. Someone would know where in town the man would sneak back to. He wondered if Father Dec would mention how the woman died, mention who the killer was, playing not on sympathy but on revenge. No, Chester thought, that's my realm, and he thought again of his granddad in the spring of '45, last days of the war, knifing a man, strangling another, smothering a third, whatever it took. And why? He pictured her, the bottomless glow of her wood, the warm tangy smell of her leather straps and bellows, the pearly gleam of her buttons. Remembered the moaning cry she made in his loving hands. No other like her in the world, never. If that wasn't love, what was? Worth suffering for, yes, worth dragging all across Italy to bring back home, worth killing for if it came to that. And it had. He suspected, very shortly, it would again.
He glanced up at the plaster Jesus nailed to the crucifix hung above the altar. If you were half of who they claim, he thought, none of this would be needed. Which pretty much concluded all the praying he could manage.
He rose from his knees, let the weariness rearrange itself in his body, then ambled on out, murmuring "Thank you" to his friend as he passed, smiling at the girls who glanced up at him in giggling puzzlement or mousy fear. Orphans, he guessed, remembering what Jolt had said about the killing, knowing there were thousands of kids like this in every border town, their parents out in the desert somewhere, long dead. Some of the girls were lovely, most trended toward plain, a few were decidedly nun material. One among that last group-he couldn't help himself, just the darkening track of his thoughts-reminded him of the Mexican's tramp girlfriend, La Monita.
He was halfway down the block, thinking supper might be in order, when his cell rang. A San Antonio number. He flipped the phone open. "Geno?"
A gunshot barked through the static on the line. A muffled keening sob-a gagged man screaming-then grunts, a gasp. Geno came on the line. "Please, Chester, it's just a box." The voice shaky, faint, a hiss. "Buy yourself a new one. P-p-please?" Chester could hear spittle pop against the mouthpiece. The fact that it was Geno meant Skillet was dead. You don't put the weak one on the line to make a point with the strong one. You kill the strong one so the weak one understands.