Parishioner (10 page)

Ecks parked down the block from the nameless West Los Angeles minimall. The street was empty and his suit barely soiled. He had almost been murdered, struck down by a moving car, killed one man, and maybe another. There was a witness who knew his name, his address. He was three years out from the rat-infested harbor that had been his life but now he could see his past looming on the horizon—and there were sinister shadows moving along the shore.

Shirley’s Den was a pink stucco bunker hidden by buildings on all sides. It had a drab green door, no windows, and no external lights. Regulars knew to stand at the door and wait. Newcomers were met by a man whom Xavier knew only as Sentry. Sentry was a big brown man who asked strangers what they were doing on his property. He stayed in a side shack monitoring the door, opening it for regulars and their guests—shooing away the rest.

Sentry opened the door for Ecks and he walked through wondering what he should do next. He had money and a fake passport. He knew some Spanish and had connections in Cartagena, Colombia.

Shirley’s Den was a large room, bright and tinted green. There were fifteen triangular shiny red tables and a large gray-and-green marble bar. Jazz, always jazz—representing every decade and style—played on the lifelike-sounding speakers. That night it was Sidney Bechet barking out “Bechet’s Fantasy,” giving Louis Armstrong a run for his money, if not his genius.

There were maybe a dozen customers in twos and threes scattered about the emerald-and-scarlet room. Winter Johnson was sitting in a corner looking like a rich man’s dog left out in the cold for the first time in his pampered life.

“Hello, Ecks,” a woman said. She was half the way through her forty-first year, auburn haired, plain faced and yet somehow provocative.

Shirley Henn was from Montreal originally. At the age of seventeen she met a French Canadian named Robert, who spelled his name phonetically—Robair. Robair and Shirley spent six weeks touring the American South, robbing pawnshops, banks, convenience stores, and anyplace else that could stack two dollar bills together. They killed nine people.
They
did. Shirley had been initiated in weapons, liquor, and sex by her adoptive stepfather—Jacques “Jack” Henn. She fired as many shots as Robair did and was probably a bit more accurate.

Shirley loved Robair like moths loved flame. She clung to his skinny side and often shivered when he said her name. That six weeks felt as if it were an entire lifetime.

Shirley and Robair began to have differences when they invaded an upscale cabin in the Tennessee woods where a wealthy Houston family took their summer vacations. She didn’t mind when they shot the father or even when Robair forced the mother and teenage daughter to do a striptease before killing them. It was when Robair got into the family liquor cabinet and decided to take the four-year-old son in the backyard to use for target practice that Shirley spoke up.

“Don’t do that, Robert,” she’d said. Even then she realized, when calling him Robert, that the love affair had foundered.

They were standing on the back porch of the summer home. Arabella Marquette and her daughter, Fawn, lay naked and dead in the kitchen just behind them. The acned, twenty-one-year-old Robair gave Shirley a petulant frown as he simultaneously shot the little boy at his side.

Shirley raised her own pistol and shot her man in the center of his forehead. His lips formed a tight
O
. He didn’t lose his footing until he was already dead.

The weight of that condensed six-week lifetime settled on Shirley and she found in her heart that she could not deny one thing that she had done or that had been done to her.

“I sit in my home,” she said in an Expressions session that Xavier had attended, “and think about going back to Montreal and killing my stepfather. He’s old now and living in a retirement home. I’ve bought six tickets over the years. But every time I think about going I remember that look on Robair’s face when I shot him. He’d only talked big before he met me. He wanted to be evil but I was the one who allowed him to, who empowered him. And when I killed him there was no relief—not in me and not in the world we scarred.”

“Hey, Shirley,” Xavier said. “How you doin’, honey? Gettin’ any sleep?”

“I have a new barmaid,” Shirley said. “She’s not gay and neither am I.”

“Yeah? You don’t say.”

“But I told her about my sleep problems and she offered to lie in the bed with me, next to me. She’s a runaway and many times she goes out with her boyfriends. But on those nights she lies there by me I sleep like I did when I was child before my mother remarried.”

Xavier heard the words and the echoes they set off in the spree killer’s heart. He knew not to comment on her therapy and so said, “Thanks for lettin’ my friend in.”

“He looks scared.”

“He should.”

When Xavier pulled out the green straight-backed chair at Winter’s table the young man leaped to his feet.

“Just me,” Xavier said.

The words did not seem to have a calming effect on the youth, but he did sit down again.

“What we gonna do, Ecks?”

Xavier was a practiced killer but he rarely planned his crimes. He killed when he had to or when the opportunity arose and it seemed like the proper move.

At one time he would have probably killed Winter. It just made sense to tie up loose ends.

“That’s up to you, Win,” he said.

“Me?”

“Those men had guns, son. They would have killed us both and then burned the house down around our bodies. The way I see it, it was self-defense plain and simple. But the law could have different ideas. And I got a history, so they might not bring me down on this, but there are other warrants, in other places.”

“What about that man with the tire iron in his chest?”

“I used his phone to call the cops. They might get there in time to save him.”

Winter clasped his hands and then ripped them apart.

“What should I do?” he pleaded.

“If the guilt is too much for you, you can call the cops. Tell ’em that I made you come with me and that you waited to tell them because you were afraid I’d kill you. Give me a heads-up and I’ll be gone before they get to my door.”

“I can’t just turn you in like that, Ecks.”

“Maybe not, but if somebody saw your license plate or something, and the cops come up on you, then tell ’em that you drove me to my car, that I forced you. Don’t lie for me but for yourself, kid. Understand?”

“What was goin’ on in there?” Winter asked then.

“I’m on a job,” the Parishioner said. “I’m looking for three boys went missing twenty-three years ago.”

“You think that was them in the basement?”

“Maybe so. Maybe. I got a lead or two and so I’ll see. But right now you order a few
shots of cognac and drink ’em down. After that I’ll give you a ride home and you sleep on what you should do.”

After dropping an inebriated and distraught Winter Johnson at his apartment on Crest Drive, Xavier drove down to the beach using surface streets.

On the way he took out his cell phone and entered a number.

“Yeah?” a gravelly voice answered midway through the second ring.

“I need you to take my route for the rest of the week, Bud,” Xavier said.

“Starting when?”

“In the morning.”

“Okay,” the voice said. “You all right?”

“Canned peaches and sour cream.”

At the ocean he veered right, heading up the Pacific Coast Highway. A twenty-four-hour jazz station was playing early Thelonius Monk for no particular reason. The complex rhythms reminded the killer of his late-night Harlem apartment home after the beatings and turmoil subsided, when peace reigned in the living room and the record player cooed with trumpets, saxophones, and piano. His mother had cried herself to sleep by then and the old man was passed out, or nearly so. Xavier would sit in the doorway to the bedroom he shared with his brother and cousin, listening to the music and the silence.

It was a quarter to three in the morning and the road was fairly empty. His forearms no longer ached for violence.

Ecks is an ambidextrous mothahfuckah. He can kill a man with either hand
, mocha-colored Swan used to say about his friend.
He’s the Sugar Ray Robinson of the street
.