Warshawski 09 - Hard Time (36 page)

“Think about it overnight,” Father Lou suggested. “Offer a special intention at mass in the morning. Do some manual labor in the crypt. Nothing like hard work to clear the mind.”

So Morrell and I spent the rest of the morning in the chamber underneath the altar, shifting old boxes of hymnals that Father Lou had decided the church would never use again, digging out the costumes the children wore in their Christmas pageant, and uncovering an actual reliquary that the Italians who built the church a hundred years ago had brought with them. This caused an explosion of nervous ribaldry from the boys working with us.

I hadn’t resolved matters by three, when Father Lou called a halt to our work so that the boys could attend the parish picnic. Nor did a nap while Morrell joined them in a baseball game in Humboldt Park bring any special vision. I still wanted to call Baladine and tell him I had his videotapes: something like a childhood taunt—come catch me if you can.

The problem remained where I would be when I issued the taunt. At the church I endangered Father Lou and his schoolchildren. In my own home there were Mr. Contreras and the other tenants. Tessa’s studio ruled out using my office. And he might be so berserk that he’d go after someone like Lotty out of sheer terrorism, even if I wasn’t near her.

All evening long, as Morrell and I worked on my presentation—preparing the photographs in order, figuring out what video sequences to show of Lemour in action against me, where to put Trant and Frenada with Baladine at his pool, discussing whether to use any of the Aguinaldo footage, typing up camera–ready copy in St. Remigio’s school computer lab—Morrell and I debated the question. At midnight, when Morrell left with the material—he was taking it to the Unblinking Eye in the morning for production—I was no nearer a solution.

I went to bed and fell into a restless sleep. It was only an hour later when Father Lou shook me awake. “Old man’s at the door with a kid and some dogs. Says he’s your neighbor.”

“My neighbor?” I pulled on my jeans and jammed my feet into my running shoes and sprinted down the hall, Father Lou following on his rolling boxer’s gait.

I looked through the peephole at the figures on the doorstep. Mr. Contreras. With Mitch, Peppy, and Robbie Baladine. My heart sank, but I told Father Lou it was, in fact, my neighbor.

“With the kid whose father had me arrested the last time he ran away to me.”

Father Lou unscraped the dead bolts and let them in. Mr. Contreras started speaking as the door opened. All I caught was, “Sorry, doll, but I didn’t want to use the phone in case they was tapping my line,” before the dogs overwhelmed me with their ecstatic greeting and Robbie, painfully thin and grubby, started apologizing: “I know you said to wait until I heard from you, but BB called.”

Father Lou shut the door. “Okay. Into the kitchen for tea, and let’s sort this out one voice at a time. These dogs housebroken?”

“Where’s the car?” I asked, before Father Lou pushed the dead bolts home.

“Sorry, doll, sorry, it’s out front, you want me to move it?”

“It needs to go away from here. It’s very identifiable, and if Baladine is scouring the city for me, he’ll find it.”

“Rectory garage,” Father Lou said. “Filled with old junk but room for the car. I’ll show—what’s your name?—Contreras the garage. You take the boy into the kitchen. Put on the kettle.”

Robbie and the dogs bounded down the hall with me to the kitchen. Robbie was trying hard not to flinch from Mitch, which seemed more heartbreaking than anything else about him.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Warshawski,” he whispered, “but they figured out you weren’t Aunt Claudia. They were going to lock me in the punishment barracks. I didn’t know when I’d ever get out. And I thought if BB did something else bad to you because you came to see me, I’d have to kill myself. So I ran away. But now I see he can put you in prison no matter what I do.”

“Sh, sh,
poverino.
It’s okay. You’re here, let’s deal with that. Tell me the story when Father Lou and Mr. Contreras get back; that way we’ll all get the same version and you’ll only have to tell it once.”

When the two men came in, the kettle was boiling. Father Lou made a large mug of cambric tea for Robbie and black tea with sugar for himself. I poured more hot milk into a mug for myself.

Mr. Contreras impatiently waved away refreshments. “He showed up about an hour ago, doll. He’s done in. I didn’t know what to do—like I say, I was afraid to use the phone—but I figured if they had any kind of watch on the place, it wasn’t good to leave him there. I guess I could have gone up to Morrell, but all I thought was, you’d be in real trouble now if that creep Baladine—sorry, son, I know he’s your old man—”

“Let’s have it from the beginning, and short,” Father Lou said. “Have to say mass in a few hours, don’t want to stay up all night.”

As short as any story involving Mr. Contreras could be, it boiled down to this: the camp commandant had summoned Robbie and questioned him about my visit. Robbie stuck to the story that I was his Aunt Claudia, his mother’s younger sister, but the commandant revealed he had talked both to BB and to the real Claudia Sunday night after the swim meet. All Robbie could do was insist that I was Aunt Claudia. The commandant said Robbie would be sent to the punishment block for a few days until Eleanor arrived in person to talk to the commandant.

“During reveille, while everyone stands at attention, I snuck off. It was only this morning, but it seems like it must’ve been a year ago. I ran in a ditch alongside the camp and got out the back way and hitched into Columbia. Then I used your money to get the bus to Chicago, but I didn’t know where to go except to your apartment. I’m awful sorry, Ms. Warshawski; if this means BB sends you back to jail for kidnapping, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

His eyes were dilating with fear and exhaustion. Father Lou cut off a hunk of bread and smeared it with butter.

“Eat that, son. Cross that bridge when you come to it, but if you stand up in court and tell your story like a man, no one will send her to prison. Time you were in bed. You’ve had too long a day. You can sleep in in the morning, but you go to school in the afternoon. What year you in? Seventh grade. Get you a uniform—have extras for kids too poor to buy ’em. Worry about everything else later.”

Father Lou looked a bit like Popeye, but his voice had the authoritative reassurance that children respond to. Robbie calmed down and followed me docilely to a bedroom near mine. I pulled clean sheets from a shelf and made up the narrow bed.

I heard a barking and yelping in the kitchen and ran back down the hall to find that Mitch had made himself into a hero: he’d emerged from the pantry with a rat in his mouth. Father Lou said in that case the dogs could stay the night. As an afterthought he offered Mr. Contreras a bed, too.

The priest stomped off to bed, leaving me to make up another bed for my neighbor. When he said good night, Mr. Contreras handed me a paper bag. “I been holding this for you since the day you was arrested, doll. I figure you might need it now.”

It was my Smith & Wesson, which had been in the handbag I’d flung to Mr. Contreras the day Lemour came to get me.

46 In the Church Militant

Mitch had caught another rat and was barking with joy. “That’s a good boy,” I mumbled. “Now be quiet and let me sleep.”

I put out a hand to pet him and woke up when I was stroking air and the barking hadn’t stopped. I pulled on my jeans again and picked up the Smith & Wesson.

I’d gotten used to finding my way through the rectory in the dark and went down the hall in the direction of Mitch’s voice. He and Peppy were trying to get into the church from the rectory passage. When they heard me they ran to me and pawed at my legs, trying to get me to open the door leading into the church.

Peppy, scratching on the door, only made impatient grunts in the back of her throat, but I couldn’t quiet Mitch enough to listen for sounds from the church. Finally, I clamped his muzzle shut with my left hand, but he thrashed so violently that I still couldn’t hear anything. I was trying to picture the geography of the buildings, wondering how to get around to the rear, when Father Lou materialized behind me.

“Think it’s your man in there?”

“I don’t know. You get many gangbangers breaking in at night?” I whispered back.

“Usually know better. Could call the cops, but it takes them an hour to show around here. Hold the dogs. I’m opening the door into the church, want to see what’s going on without animals running wild in the sanctuary.”

He undid the three massive locks to the church door and went inside. Mitch was whining and straining to be after him, and even Peppy was pulling on my arms in angry protest. I’d counted to a hundred, figuring I’d go to one–fifty before I plunged after the priest, when he slipped back through the passage.

“Think they’re coming in through the school. Fourth–floor windows don’t have bars—must’ve scaled the wall somehow. I’m going outside to holler them down.”

“No!” I let Mitch go. He scampered into the church and made a beeline for the door that connected the nave to the school. “If it is Baladine, he may have someone outside to pick off anyone who leaves the building. If he’s coming in through the school he’s probably hoping for a surprise attack, but it could still be a feint designed to draw us—me—outside.”

There wasn’t any light; I felt rather than saw the priest scowling. “Old coal passages connect church, school, rectory through the crypt. Keep them locked to stop the kids horsing around down there. I can come into the school behind him through the basement. Know my way in the dark, you don’t, you stay here. Don’t want any shooting in the church; do your best if they come in. Calling the cops on my way; hope they get here sometime before we’re all dead.”

By tacit consent we left Mr. Contreras asleep. Father Lou went down the hall to the kitchen, and I went into the church. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was still too early for any light to come in through the church’s dirty east windows. The red sanctuary lamp gave off the only light. I fumbled my way to the sanctuary, trying to orient myself by the lamp and by Mitch, who was barking sharply at the door to the school.

I bumped into Peppy and almost screamed. She wagged her tail against my legs. I clutched her collar and let her guide me. At the steps to the altar I could follow the altar rail toward the raised podium used for sermons on formal occasions.

When we finally reached Mitch he had gotten tired of his frenzied assault on the door and was lying on his haunches. I felt his raised hackles when I touched him, and he jerked his head impatiently away from my hand. The door was too thick for me to make out the sounds he was hearing on the other side. I took it for about five minutes, then retraced my way to the altar. A massive wood and marble carving rose behind it. When I worked my away around to the back, where the crypt entrance was, the altarpiece itself blocked most of the glow from the sanctuary lamp.

The trapdoor to the crypt was unlocked. I climbed stealthily down the narrow spiral stair, Peppy following me on uncertain feet. She mewed unhappily, and I hoisted her down after me one step at a time.

At the bottom I was in a well of such intense blackness that I had no way of orienting myself. I risked the switch at the foot of the spiral stairs. It showed me the passages that I’d overlooked when I was working down here this morning, one on the north to the rectory and another opposite that connected to the school. I flicked off the light and made my way through the south door to the school basement.

Clutching Peppy’s collar, I let her guide me again, until she found a staircase. We crept up, pausing after each step to listen. I heard the humming of machinery, but no human sounds. At the top I pushed open the door. Father Lou had come this way earlier and left it unlocked.

We were in the school kitchen; a streetlight made it possible to see the big stoves and refrigerators. I went through a swinging door into a hallway and suddenly could hear voices. Keeping my hand on Peppy, now more as a warning to her to be silent than because I needed her navigation, I moved toward the sound. Father Lou was outside the door that led from the school into the church.

“If you thought your son was with me you’d have knocked at the door like an honest man,” Father Lou was saying. “You’re breaking into a school. I don’t know what valuables you thought a poor school in a neighborhood like this has, but I have you red–handed, and the cops will take it from here.”

Baladine laughed. “A police detective is stationed outside. If the cops ever show up, he’ll tell them he’s got the situation under control. I’m sure there would be a lot of mourning in the neighborhood over your death, but wouldn’t you rather get out of my way than die defending that stupid Warshawski woman and my tiresome son?”

My stomach tightened at the sound of his voice, at the reckless superiority of it. At first I thought Baladine was alone, and I was willing to risk a shot, but as my ears and eyes adjusted I realized he had at least two other men with him. I could make out only their ghostly shapes, but Father Lou’s bald head reflected what light there was. He was the short ghost whose arms were perhaps pinned by two larger wraiths. Baladine was behind him. I lowered my gun; I couldn’t possibly get a clear shot.

“I know you got into the school building from inside the church, Padre,” Baladine said in the same patronizing voice, “because my man has the outside covered. So be a good fellow and let us into the church, and I promise you’ll be alive to say mass in the morning.”

“Jesus wants me tonight, tonight’s when He’ll get me,” Father Lou said. “If not, not your decision, young man.”

Baladine laughed. He was making a smart–alecky comment back when I heard a worse sound than Baladine’s voice: a muffled outburst on the other side of the door. I couldn’t make out the words, but the cadence told me Mr. Contreras had woken up. He wanted to know what was going on, did Mitch have someone cornered on the other side? He was fiddling with the bolts.

In the instant that everyone’s attention slackened, Father Lou gave one of his captors a punch that knocked him over. I yelled at top volume to Mr. Contreras to leave the door alone and sped back down the hall to the basement stairs. I saw a red marker dancing on the floor, trying to find me. For one crazy moment I thought it was another sanctuary light. Then a gun spat fire at me as the red marker danced after me. Baladine had a laser sight. A death marker, not sanctuary. It terrified me so much that I hurled myself through the swinging door into the kitchen, Peppy running with me. In the light from the streetlamp I found the stairs and stumbled down them so fast I tripped over my feet and ended in a heap at the bottom. Behind me a shot echoed along the hallway. I prayed it hadn’t hit Father Lou. Or Mr. Contreras.

Peppy landed on top of me. We scrambled to our feet in a confused mess of dog and woman and moved as fast as possible toward the crypt. Behind me I could hear doors slamming as the pursuit looked for the exit I’d taken, and then I saw a flashlight finger on the stairwell. It gave me the view I needed of the basement. I was heading away from the crypt door. I righted myself, called Peppy to me, and managed to get us both inside. I slid the bolt home as another shot sounded.

My legs were shaking as I climbed back up the spiral stairs. Above me the church was still dark, but when I got to the top I could see a light bounce along one of the aisles. I waited behind the altar. I was trying to figure out from the sound what was going on, when I heard Baladine’s voice.

“Warshawski? I’ve got the priest and the old man. Come on out. Your life for theirs.”

“Don’t do it, doll.” Mr. Contreras was panting. “Don’t do it; run for help, I been around plenty long enough. Shouldn’t have opened the door, anyway.”

I slipped around the edge of the altarpiece, keeping low so that the altar itself shielded me from sight. I made my way to the old preaching tower and climbed up into it. From there I could see that the light in the aisle was coming from a flashlight. It was hard to see what lay behind it, but Father Lou and Mr. Contreras seemed to be attached to each other. One of Baladine’s thugs had a gun trained on them. I couldn’t hear or see Mitch.

“Your quarrel’s with me, Baladine,” I called. “Let the men go. When they’re safely inside the rectory, I’ll come out.”

The flashlight swung around in my direction. Baladine couldn’t see me, but he shone the light along the altar, the laser sight dancing behind it.

“Go open the front door to the church,” he finally said to his henchman. “Lemour can come in and earn his keep, since the priest knocked out Fergus. This place is too big to search alone. Don’t try anything, Warshawski: I’ll shoot your friends at the first wrong move you make.”

The underling went down the aisle and scrabbled with the heavy locks. I didn’t know what to do next. Peppy was crying to join me in my turret, and Baladine said irritably that he thought they’d shot the damned dog. The red laser sight moved around the sanctuary, trying to pick out a warm target, but the turret was between Peppy and him. He himself was shielded by one of the pillars, or I would have risked a shot at him.

“Aren’t there any lights in this damned place?” It was Lemour’s reedy voice coming in to the body of the church. “What do you need me for, boss? Hunt out the Warshki bitch? Turn on the lights and we’ll get her in no time. Drabek, go in the back and find the switches. I’ll cover the altar.”

Under cover of Lemour’s voice, I slipped out of the little turret. I had chosen it because I could shoot anyone who came close enough to me to attack it, but I realized it was a stupid hideout: all my friends would be dead while I defended myself, and then I’d run out of bullets and die as well. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled down the center aisle until I came to the pews. Making sure the safety was on, I stuck my gun in a jeans pocket and slithered along the floor toward Baladine. I wished I could have ordered Peppy to stay at the turret, but she was anxiously following me.

“I know you’re back there, Warshawski, I can hear you. Come out on the count of five or the first bullet goes into the old man.”

“It’s okay, cookie, don’t give up, I can take it, just don’t hold it against me that I let the guy in. You know there’s never been anyone like you in my life, all seventy–nine years, and I ain’t having you take a bullet just so I can see eighty.”

Baladine savagely ordered him to be quiet, but the old man was either beyond paying attention or deliberately trying to give me cover. He started recounting the first time he saw me, I was wearing a red top and cutoffs and going after a gangbanger, street punk, but nowhere near as bad as this bastard, pardon his French.

Baladine smacked him, I think with his pistol. When Mr. Contreras fell silent, Father Lou began to sing, in a loud, tuneless voice, a Latin chant. I risked getting to my feet and running toward Baladine. He had one hand on the flash, the other on the gun pointing at Mr. Contreras’s head. He was yelling at Father Lou to shut up or be killed when I got behind him and savagely chopped the back of his head.

He dropped the flashlight. His knees buckled, and I grabbed his right arm with all my might. He wrenched his arm free and his gun went off. A window shattered. Father Lou stuck out a foot and kicked the flashlight away, and I grappled with Baladine in the dark. Lemour shouted at the henchman to get the damned lights on, he was going to take care of Warshki once and for all.

Baladine was trying to twist his arm around to get a shot at me. I stayed behind him, pinning his left arm so he had only his gun hand free: if he wanted to fight he’d have to drop the gun. He jabbed backward with his gun arm. I stuck my knee in his back and pulled his left shoulder toward me. He dropped the gun, which went off again, and pulled me close to him, bending to flip me over his head. I held on and we landed on the floor together. I lost my grip in the fall and he straddled me, his hands locking around my throat. I brought a knee up to his groin. His hold slackened enough for me to get a breath and to try to pull my gun from my pocket.

In the dark next to me I heard a deep angry growl and felt a heavy furry body lean against me. Baladine gave a loud scream and let go of my neck. I wrenched away from him and bounced to my feet. I kicked out as hard as I could, not able to see him in the dark. I kicked high, wanting to miss the dog. My foot connected with bone. Baladine fell heavily against me. I backed away, ready to kick again, but he wasn’t moving. I must have knocked him out. I scrabbled under the pew and picked up the flashlight.

Mitch was lying across Baladine’s legs. Mitch, bleeding but alive. I couldn’t take time to figure out what had happened, how he’d bitten Baladine—I had Lemour and his partner to deal with. I shone the light briefly on Father Lou, but he and Mr. Contreras were handcuffed together, with their arms behind them. I couldn’t free them now.

Father Lou shouted a warning: Lemour had picked his way through the pews to my side. I hurled the flashlight into his face and ran back toward the altar.

A bullet whined and smashed into the altarpiece, and I smelled smoke. I ran behind the altarpiece. Lemour fired again, this time in front of me. Light flooded the building, and I was blinded. Lemour, running toward me, was blinded as well. He tripped across the open trapdoor and fell headlong down the spiral stairs. Glass splintered as he crashed to the bottom.