Sinner (16 page)

“Be careful, Johnny,” Kelly said. “This isn't why we are here.”

“You think?”

She glanced at him, hands spread, but otherwise seemingly unconcerned. “She's nothing but a high-school student with a grudge.”

“Is she? I don't know.”

“You see something I don't?”

“Don't I always?” Johnny said.

“Yes or no?”

“I see a scared girl who was put into our path. I like her. She has a strong backbone. She needs some discipline, but I think she has a good heart.”

Kelly faced Kat and studied her. They were obviously trying to distract her with all this nonsense. Kat took another step back, keeping the gun trained on the woman. “I just need your help,” she said. “I . . . You have to listen to me!”

“I think we can trust her,” Johnny said.

“Don't be foolish, Johnny!”

“They aren't after us—”

“You can't know that!” Kelly snapped.

“Stop it!” Kat shouted. “You think you can just talk nonsense and get me to drop my guard?”

“Please, Kat.” Johnny set the bottle on the kitchen table and stepped into the living room, hands elevated by his sides. “You're far too intelligent to think shooting one of us might encourage the judge to extend you any leniency. It's the kind of thing dopers and pimps might try because they have a few burned circuits between the ears. You, on the other hand, know very well that harming either one of us will only ensure that your sentence is upgraded from months to years. And not jail, either. State prison.”

He stopped by the couch in full view. “Am I wrong?”

“Then help me,” she said.

“I offered you help, but you didn't want it.”

“What are you talking about?” she cried. “You keep talking like that, but what did I do to make you hate me so much?”

“So you do want help in changing who you are?”

“What are you talking about? I am who I am! You can't tolerate who I am?”

“I can't tolerate your intolerance for Arabs, no. Or your hatred and fear of other people in general.”

Here she stood, pointing a gun at a blind priest who wasn't really a priest and who couldn't possibly be blind, discussing
tolerance
of all things! The absurdity of it was as maddening as the fact that she no longer felt compelled to pull off this stunt.

But there was no way out now.

“You want me to stop hating Arabs? Fine, I swear to stop hating the towel-heads that've taken over Las Vegas and forced my mother to work long nights just to put macaroni and cheese on our table. Good enough? I'm a changed woman.”

“You see? That's what I'm talking about. You want out of your predicament, but you don't want to change the person who got you into the predicament in the first place.”

“Listen to me, honey,” Kelly said. “If he's talking to you like this, you really should listen. Don't ask me why, but you've managed to get his attention. And trust me, it has nothing to do with the gun. He's faced far more than that toy in his days.”

“Don't try to confuse me,”Kat snapped. “I'm warning you . . .” But she stopped because even to her, her words sounded ridiculous.

“Kelly's talking about a time when I could make things do what they weren't supposed to do,” Johnny said. “But it was temporary, a kind of surge, as best we can figure out.”

“Don't let him fool you,” Kelly said. To Johnny, “You sure you want to do this?”

If their intent was to distract her, they were succeeding with ease, Kat thought. They showed no fear, no real concern even. She might as well be holding a noodle. Their only dilemma was this business about whether Johnny should take her into his confidence.

“I don't know, Kat . . .What do you think? Are you willing to trust me on this?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you know it's the right thing to do. And because you have no other reasonable option.”

“Okay. Fine. I'll trust you.”

“Then lower the gun.”

“Exactly!” she said. “You think I'm stupid?”

“No.Which is why you will lower the gun.”

Her stubbornness had hit a wall. And Kat's curiosity had grown larger than her anger. So she lowered her gun, knowing that she could always lift it again.

“Give it to Kelly.”

“That's not what you said.”

“I'm saying it now.”

Kelly held out her hand. Kat hesitated only a moment, then handed the weapon to her, relieved to be free from it. Kelly gathered up the automatic weapon and set both on the counter beside Johnny.

Kat felt weak in her knees, but she stood strong. Because that was what she'd always done. Stood strong.

“So who are you really, Father Johnny?”

“The real question, Kat, is who are you? If you can understand yourself, then you'll know where my journey started. Do you believe in God?”

“We already—”

“So then, I was once who you are today,” he said. “If you want to understand me, you have to understand yourself. Why don't you believe?”

“For starters? Because everyone runs around killing in God's name.”

“But that's a child's answer and you're already sixteen. You don't know much about religion, do you?”

“Should I?”

“Do you know the difference between Christianity and Islam?”

“Why are we talking about this? You're trying to get me to convert? There's a good reason why religion is not allowed in the schools. Because it brings out the kooks!”

“Please, humor me. The difference between Christianity and Islam?”

“How should I know? One prays in a mosque, one prays in a cathedral.”

“So you know nothing. To you God is simply an extension of foolish religion. And if religion had much to do with God, I might agree with you. If you want to accept my help, the first thing you'll need to do is set any notion you have of religion aside. Put everything you think you know about Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, all of it behind you. If you can do that, I may be able to help you.”

“What are you trying to do? Convert me?”

“You've demonstrated that you have no true moral compass. No fundamental beliefs that guide what is right or wrong in this world. How can you hope to recognize good and evil for what they truly are if you have no belief in a moral authority greater than yourself?”

“Spoken like a true blood—”

“No!” Johnny snapped, cutting her off. “Please don't use that word in this house.”

“Sorry. But you're saying that I'm going to jail because I don't believe in God.”

Kelly stepped up beside him. He absently took her hand and kissed it. “That's a bit simplistic, but yes. Because you haven't opened your eyes to see him. To love and be loved by him. ‘For him who has eyes to see, let him see.' Jesus said that.Would you like to have your eyes opened?”

She had never heard such a preposterous line of argument. She knew the gist of God, naturally. Big guy in the sky who made it all and forgot to tell his subjects not to rape, kill, and destroy. But Johnny was right: she hadn't searched out the meaning behind any of the world's major religions.

The only religion she was truly familiar with was one called tolerance. Now the false priest was asking her if she wanted her eyes opened.

“How do you propose to do that?”

“I have a shortcut.”

“Fine.”

Johnny walked casually to the fireplace, something you wouldn't find in most homes in Nevada these days. But it was an old house.Kelly picked up a pair of sunglasses that sat on the kitchen counter and slid them onto the bridge of her nose.

“You're absolutely sure about this, Johnny?” Kelly asked.

“No.”

He looked down at the floor, removed his own dark glasses, and stared straight down at the lenses.

Johnny lifted his head and stared at Kat with white eyes.

Not a speck of color, no retina, no pupil, just pure white eyes. The sight stopped her cold.

“You like?”

Like? She wasn't sure how she felt. He was blind after all.

“Can you see?”

“The question is, can you see? Really see?”

“Your . . .” Did she dare just blare it out? “Your eyes are white.”

“That's their natural color, yes. And I can't see the world the way you see the world. It's more like heat signatures and geometrical shapes. But the power in these eyes of mine has more to do with you than me. They can help you see things differently.”

On cue, his white eyes were gone, replaced by bright blue ones, as clear as sapphires.

Kat blinked, expecting them to change back, but they didn't. Johnny lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. An apple appeared in his palm.

“You like apples? If you try to eat this one, it will taste like air because it doesn't exist.”

Impossible.Kat stepped up and put her hands on the back of the couch. “I . . .” She didn't know what to say.

“An illusion,” Johnny said.“I can make you see what I want. I can either deceive you or let you see the truth.”

He tossed the apple into the air and caught it, but now it was a snake, writhing in his fist. He struck the snake against his other palm and it became a wooden cross. He snapped his fingers and the cross vanished.

“That's incredible.”

“No, it's commonplace. Half of what you think you know has been subjected to deception. You think you know so much about what matters: we all do. But we're blind to the real issue facing us.We've been sold a magic trick.”

She was watching him, not six feet from him, when he vanished. She caught her breath. Kelly stood by the kitchen table, watching her, smiling.

“What happened?”

Kelly shrugged.

Kat studied the space that Johnny had occupied just a moment ago. “Is he . . . I mean, is he there?”

Johnny reappeared. “Exactly! Just because you didn't see me didn't mean I
wasn't
here, any more than seeing the apple meant it
was
.”

The simplicity of Johnny's point struck Kat broadside, like a locomotive on full steam.

“For him who has eyes to see . . .” she said.

Johnny finished the quote.“Let him see.Are you ready to see the truth, Kat?”

“Ummm . . .”

“It could change everything, I warn you.”

“How do I know what it . . .What am I supposed to say to that? How could anyone say they don't want to see the truth?”

“You'd be surprised.” He smiled. “Just say yes, Kat. Please say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Hold on to the couch.”

She gripped the back of the couch, wondering what about the truth could possibly require her to hold on.

Johnny closed his blue eyes. When he opened them again they were white. But then they were black and then they weren't eyes at all.

They were a pool of darkness, drawing her deep, deep into hot black water, suffocating her. Pain ripped through her spine, and she heard her-self—the self gripping the couch—gasp.

And then scream.

She was in a black lake, unable to breathe, smothered by the shock of it all. And yet she was screaming.

Kat doubled over and sucked at the blackness.Vile bitterness seared and flooded her lungs. Entered her capillaries. Seeped into her bloodstream.

And she knew then that she'd breathed evil. Raw, unfiltered evil.

From her own soul.

She felt herself falling, here by the couch. She was shaking from head to foot, unable to close her eyes, staring into Johnny's black eyeballs.

Screaming. Screaming.

From the corner of her eye she saw Kelly's mouth yelling at Johnny to stop, stop, stop, but Kat couldn't hear Kelly over her own screams.

And Johnny did not stop.

Kat wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew that she was seeing herself as she really was. Nothing more, nothing less. Just the truth of Katrina Kivi.

This evil within herself washed her mind with unrelenting waves of horror.

The water turned blood red. She was still screaming by the couch, but it occurred to her that she didn't need to scream any longer. The horror still clawed at her mind, but the pain and bitterness was soothed by the water.

A baby before birth.

Her voice caught in her throat. She stared around at the red water, stunned by the absence of pain. The change was so great, so overwhelming that she wanted to cry. To sob like a baby, safe, just safe in the belly of the . . .

A distant cry came to her ears.

The cry swelled to a scream that was not hers. The water around her was screaming. Oh the anguish, the pain, the remorse, the horror in the wail flogged her mind.

She rolled tight into a ball and began to scream with it, crying her remorse, her terror. She wanted to be out of this red lake, breathing new life, reborn.

And then Johnny closed his eyes and Kat was back in the room, behind the couch, screaming at the top of her lungs, shaking violently, standing only because her fingers had latched on to the cushion and refused to let her collapse.

But now she was here, just here, and she relaxed her grip. She fell to the carpet like a bag of rocks.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MARSUVEES BLACK stopped on the street curb, cracked his knuckles, and looked first to his right, then to his left. Twenty-ninth Street was quiet, too quiet, terrifyingly quiet for his own considerable tastes. He'd long ago discovered that he liked hanging out with people, particularly when their necks were doing the hanging. The small church across the street, however, was not quiet. Seventy or more parishioners were inside the converted watering hole being faithful, most of them were colored folk.

These seventy-or-more colored folk were about to help him change the course of history.

He had nothing against colored folk, no he did not. No sir. He himself was a colored folk, really. White skin, but his trench coat was black, his boots were black, his hat was black. If he'd had a choice, he himself would have been black because from his experience, most black folk were smarter than the white trash he'd run across. Take Arabs, take Indians, take Mexicans, take Africans, take whites, throw them all in a bowl and the dumbest of the bunch always came out as white as a pancake.