Mortal Lock (24 page)

“There is no such sin!” the priest said, sharply. “God teaches us that—”

“It was all a lie,” the man said, as calmly as if he were giving directions to a stranger. “I never secretly wanted any of those things. It was never inside me. I didn’t have some moral weakness. I was not a degenerate.

“It took me a whole lifetime to understand that. What that special man saw in me wasn’t that I wanted to … do those things. No, what he saw was weakness, the same way a predator always sees the easiest prey. A special man always sees a special weakness. And I had that. That weakness that makes me … 
made
me … think I had been chosen because the special man could see me for what I really was.

“I was supposed to be the sinner. And when the special man
left, the one who took his place, he proved that. He granted me forgiveness for what I had done. For my sins.

“See? That forgiveness meant that those things I did, they had to have been in me all along. The special man could see it. But I knew nobody else ever would if I did all the right things. And that’s what I did. All the right things.”

“You ask for forgiveness, yet you blaspheme with your very request,” the priest said, voice thickening with condemnation.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” the man said. “The only sin I committed was accepting the forgiveness. All those things I did, those right things, to prove I wasn’t what the special man said I was, I never would have done any of that if I hadn’t been forgiven, first.”

“You are very confused, my son. But it is not too—”

“This is my confession. You listen to me. When I took the blame, when I accepted forgiveness for what had been done to me, it was the same as forgiving the man who was the true sinner. That was my sin.”

“Forgiveness is never a—”

“Is that what they told you, every time you got discovered? Is that what they told you when they transferred you to another parish, where you could just pick a new target, and do it again? Is that what you really, truly believe? Is that your faith? That you can rape little boys, over and over and over again, and you will always be forgiven?”

“Who are—?”

“You know,” the man’s voice said.

How could his voice be coming from behind me?
was the priest’s last thought. And that thought lasted throughout his final test of faith.

for Grier

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“What difference?”

“Come on, pal. We’re gonna be working together next couple of weeks or so. Just two vets, riding around, seeing the country. That’s the story they gave us. So I gotta have
something
to call you by, just in case.”

“Case of what?”

“It’s one hell of a drive, all the way to L.A. Cops stop us, I should know what name’s on your ID, right?”

“I was hitching a ride.”

“In that suit? Not gonna fly. No reason to make things complicated, I gotta call you quick. Down the road, I mean.”

The short, compactly built man in the passenger seat of the big sedan said nothing for a few seconds. Finally, as if conceding the reasonableness of the driver’s request, said, “Mendil,” without turning his head.

“Mendil?” the thickset man behind the wheel said. “What kind of name is that?”

“Just a name.”

“There ain’t no such thing as ‘just a name,’ pal. Take me, for instance. I tell you my name is Seamus O’Reilly, you know I’m Irish, am I right?”

“No.”

“No What other kind of name
could
it be?”

“Fake.”

“Huh! Well, right you are at that one. But my mug’s a map of
Galway, as my mother used to say. Every chance she got, matter of fact.”

The passenger pulled the front of his felt fedora down over his eyes, as if to shield them from the sun.

The driver took the hint … for about ten minutes. “Seems funny, don’t it? The war’s been over for a couple of years, and here we are, driving all the way across the country right back to where it started.”

“The war didn’t start in L.A.”

“Christ, you must think I’m as thick as a paving stone! I just meant the West Coast. That’s where the Japs made their move. Fucking ambush, it was. After that, even a pansy like Roosevelt, he didn’t have no choice.”

The passenger snatched a pack of Lucky Strikes from the top of the dashboard.

Damn! I didn’t even see his hand move
, the driver thought to himself.

The passenger flicked his wrist. A single cigarette shot into his mouth. His thumb cracked, and a wooden match flared into life. He took a measured drag, carefully replaced the pack, and used the tap of a single finger to send it sliding across the dashboard.

“Nice to see these in a full pack again,” the driver said, pushing in the dashboard lighter.

Silence reigned for another twenty minutes. The miles slipped past as the big car gobbled long patches of concrete.

“They say, you go without smoking for a few weeks, you lose your taste for them. What a crock. Me, I didn’t have one for months. Fucking Japs. I still don’t know how I made it through that march. Walk or die, that’s what they kept saying. Walk or die. Far as I’m concerned, we should have bombed that whole island into the ocean.”

“Too valuable.”

“Yeah, I guess it was. The island, I mean. But those little yellow monkeys … I wish I’d killed a few more of them. Actually, a
lot
more. It feels better when you handle that kind of work yourself.”

“True enough.”

“You were there?”

“Europe.”

“So you didn’t see how they—”

“I saw how they fought.”

“How the hell could you see Japs fight in Europe?”

“Nisei brigades.”

“Oh, yeah. I heard about them. Crazy bastards, they were.”

“They had something to prove.”

“I guess so. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I do.”

“Yeah? How could that be?”

“I had something to prove, too.”

“You? The boss told me you did stuff, but he didn’t say what.”

The passenger leaned back in his seat, rolled down his window, snapped out the still-burning stub of his last cigarette, and closed the window again.

“I got a Dishonorable,” he said, after another minute of silence.

“For what?”

“Killing Nazis.”

“Huh? That was the whole point, am I right? I mean, that’s why they sent us over. Guys like me and you, we were
supposed
to kill the other guys.”

“They said I killed some Nazis after they surrendered.”

“How were you gonna do that? Once it was over …”

“It wasn’t over. What they said was, I gunned down a bunch of them while they had their hands in the air.”

“What the fuck? Who cares?”

“Eisenhower, I guess. Whoever was in charge.”

“Why’d you—”

“Camp guards,” the passenger said, as if that explained everything.

“How’d they even find out? There weren’t any generals on the frontlines, pal—that much I know for sure.”

“Somebody talked.”

“Ratted you out?”

“You could say that.”

“I’ll bet the louse got a medal for it, too.”

“Maybe posthumously.”

“What?”

“After his death.”

“He got killed over there, you mean?”

“After he testified.”

“You mean, like, right in the barracks?”

“Barracks? No. He was back home. In this clubhouse they had. Yorkville, you know where that is?”

“Way over on the East Side?”

“Yeah. He was supposed to make a speech or something; I’m not sure.”

“He got drilled right there?”

“Not just him. Whole place blew up.”

“Hey, I
heard
about that. It was on the front page and everything. That was some blast.”

“There’s been bigger.”

“Wait a minute! That guy, he wouldn’t happen to be …? Ah, what the hell was his name? He was going to run for city council, am I right?”

“Hendricks.”

“That’s the one! Supposed to be this big war hero. I heard he was a shoo-in. What the hell was he doing over in Yorkville?”

“That’s the district he was running in.”

“But that’s Germantown.”

“They get to vote there, too.”

“I guess that’s right. At least he was a white man. When we had
to pass through Chicago to change cars? One thing the boss was
clear
about—we stay outta the South Side. The niggers’re bunching up over there. Making their own plays. That’s what we get for letting them fight.”

“Yeah, that was a real privilege.”

“Come on, buddy, you know what I’m saying. I mean, teaching them all about … you know, guns and stuff.”

“You think they didn’t know before?”

“Down south, sure. But back home—the City, I’m saying—they never turned those guns in the wrong direction. Not until after the war, anyway.”

“Rifles for food, pistols for each other.”

“Yep! That’s it, exactly. But we send them over, we’re
telling
’em to shoot at white men. Probably never thought of it before.”

“You really believe that?”

“Huh?”

“The IRA never thought of shooting a Protestant?”

“Hey! You don’t know what you’re talking about, okay? The IRA, all they ever killed was—”

“Enemies.”

“That’s right, enemies!”

“Enemies come in all colors, yeah? That’s what camouflage is for.”

“I … Okay, I see what you’re saying.”

“Hitler and Hirohito, they kept everything down to one color. What do you think happens if they’d’ve won?”

“I guess they’d … Wait! They’d start in on each other, that’s what you’re saying?”

“You see any coloreds fighting alongside the Japs?”

“And you didn’t see any in your unit, either. Yeah, I get it.”

“Up to you?”

“What’s that’s supposed to mean?”

“You get it, you don’t get it, that’s your choice. It’s not a puzzle
you figure out. There’s no right answer to guess at—it’s just the way you look at things.”

The driver turned his head and stared at the man in the passenger seat for a long minute. Then he said, “You see that sign back there? Says we’re in Idaho.”

“Odometer show another four hundred?”

“Three sixty-eight.”

“Try and find a gas station. Better if we make the switch without stopping on the side of the road.”

“I know. Damn, this is one endless journey, you know? Why the boss has to send us all the way across country just to do this one job, I’ll never know.”

“What difference?”

“What difference? You’re joking, pal. We got to change drivers every few hundred miles, change cars every day or two, spend every night in some crumby motel, eat diner food, no stopping for even a little bit of fun.… And all for what?”

“You know.”

“Yeah, I know. But this job, it ain’t no big deal. Must be a hundred local boys who could handle it.”

“A hundred suspects.”

“
That’s
what you think this is all about?”

The passenger shrugged. As if acting in sync with his shoulders, dusk started its fade to black.

“This is more like it,” O’Reilly said. “Brand-new Buick. Rides like a cloud. Too bad we can’t take it the rest of the way.”

“Only a couple of more switches to go,” the passenger said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky again.”

“All the guineas want Cadillacs. Course, they can’t have one even if they save up the scratch—bosses wouldn’t like that. Freelancers
like you and me, we don’t got that problem. You know what I’m getting? Present for myself when this job is done?”

“No.”

“A Lincoln Continental. Now
that’s
the cream of the crop. Don’t see many of them. Something special. You drive a car like that, everybody pays attention.”

“That’s what you want?”

“Not while we’re working, for Christ’s sake. Hey! Maybe that’s the idea.”

The driver lit another of his endless smokes. “What’s the idea?”

“We cancel this guy in L.A., and we come back home. Doesn’t matter who the cops are looking for—it won’t be us. Yeah, now I get it. Airplanes, you got to buy a ticket. Even trains, buses, there’s people to deal with. But we go back just like we got out there, there’s nothing. We pay cash for gas, and we change cars all along the way. By the time we roll out of Cleveland, we’re driving a car with New York plates. Going home.”