Run (30 page)

I thought I had a plan. But it was just a script for a suicide.

I back off, the shotgun leveled at the door, and find the place I want, pick a pew, any pew, as if wood is going to matter with what they’re going to be throwing at me, and I settle in about fifty feet from the door, which gives me some cover and enough distance to make whatever the point man shoots a Hail Mary. I set the shotgun down in front of me and check the first of my Glocks. It’s been fired to lock-back, so I replace the magazine. I rack that pistol, stick it in my belt, and check the second one. It goes into the Bianchi holster at my back. Then I heft the shotgun. It’s the best goddamn defensive weapon going. But it’s only got eight rounds.

I wait and I wait, wondering if they’ve got fireworks or maybe tear gas to start the show, that would ruin my whole day, and when I’ve waited enough, I dry my hands on my pants and I aim the shotgun at that pair of doors and I count one, I count two, I count three, and that’s when the shooting starts again, but the shooting is outside, the shooting is out there in the narthex, the alcove, the lobby, whatever,
and holes are blowing inward, through the wall, through the double doors, heavy metal renovation that punches out fat chunks of plaster and wood. There are screams, too, the kind you don’t think men can make until you hear them. Screams and gunshots and more screams.

The doors burst open and it’s one of them, only one, and he’s running and falling, running and falling at the same time, and I stand and let go with the shotgun and he’s down and he’s dead.

I’m into the aisle. I bob and weave toward the narthex, expecting the doors to go wide again at any moment with a rush of bodies firing full auto. I’m almost there when the doors burst open but it’s the same routine, it’s one of them, only one, and this time it’s Prince Charming’s partner, Agent Smithee, the smiley-faced Fed, and he’s firing his handgun but not at me, he’s firing back at the doors, into the narthex, and by the time he stops and turns and looks at me, he knows he’s made a big mistake.

And he’s right, he’s made a very big mistake.

I blast the smile off his face and into forever.

And I don’t stop, I pump and keep blasting, and the next shot tears those doors apart and the pieces are still falling as I pump and fire and pump and fire until I click down on empty. I toss the shotgun aside, pull the first Glock.

What’s left of the doors swing, creak, swing, creak, shudder closed and into silence.

I kick through the broken doors and they collapse into pieces. What I find on the other side is not a narthex, it’s a slaughterhouse. Somebody’s spray-painted the place with blood. I count nine, ten, make that eleven bodies on the floor. All of them are dead, except for the one over there, in the corner, the one slumped with a bitter kind of smile on his face, a pistol in each hand and a couple bullet holes in his body.

The black one.

My old pal Jinx.

He drops the pistol from his left hand, then roundhouses the revolver in his right, tries to shovel it back into his shoulder holster, but he’s not looking and there’s so much blood on him that the pistol slides along the leather and falls clattering to the floor.

I come crashing to the hardwood next to him and I say to Jinx, I say to the guy:

Jesus Christ.

And he just says: Burdon Lane.

He looks at the bodies, looks at me, and he says:

I been a bad man.

From outside, at long last, comes the sound of sirens.

Saved by the bell? I don’t think so.

I think this is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. If it gets any better.

My knees are burning. My pants are torn, my knees scraped raw from falling to the floor. Only now, looking at Jinx, do I feel the burn, the blood.

Took them long enough, I say to him.

He just says: Huh?

The cops, I tell him.

He just says: Oh.

There’s a ragged mess of a wound zigzagging along his right leg, something else soaking his shirt. He’s wearing blood. Some of it’s even his own.

The doors, the wide wooden doors of the cathedral, are twenty feet away. It could be a mile. We’re not going out that way. At least not on our feet.

Beyond those doors there’s another sound, and it’s closer than the sirens. It’s the sound of men with guns, men who won’t give up and go home, men who are going to kill or be killed.

The men beyond the door. They’re coming. Oh, yeah, they’re coming.

How many? I say to him.

Didn’t have time to count, he says, out of breath. But you saw, they got a fuckin army out there.

His wet hands come alive, taking his Ruger from the floor. He works a speedloader out of his pants and reloads the .38. Then he lamps the bodies around us. He doesn’t see what he wants.

He looks at me, says what I’m thinking:

Where’s your friend CK?

He’s—I start to tell him that CK’s back there in the sanctuary. But he’s not. He’s not there.

Jinx looks at me and I don’t like this grin. It’s a new one, not the wolf, not the predator. It’s an empty grin, the one that says something very bad is about to happen.

Doctor D could of shot him dead, Jinx says. But no. You had to be the one, didn’t you?

Yeah, I told him. And you know what? I still do.

He’s all yours, Jinx says. I’m done with my shootin.

I want to tell him that I doubt it, but that’s when they pull the curtain on our little homecoming celebration. A salvo of high-powered rounds blows overhead and ventilates the wall behind us. It’s a turkey shoot, nothing tactical, they’re out there unloading anything and everything they’ve got.

I get my head down down down. The whole world rattles and the walls feel like they’re coming apart. There’s nothing to breathe but dust. And nothing to do but stay here and breathe it until the seconds that become hours become seconds again, and things go quiet. Except for the sirens. The sirens and the new but old sound, the sound of whirling wings.

They’re out of time, Jinx says. He hasn’t moved. He’s still sitting there, still holding his pistol, still grinning that empty grin.

Help is on the way, he says.

Yeah, I tell him.

So we wait, he says. Wait long enough and let the police do their job.

No, I tell him. No way. That’s not CK’s style. They’re gonna come,
and they’re gonna keep coming. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not gonna die in a church. Not today. So I don’t think we got a choice. We got to move.

Easier said than done, he says. He twists his right leg, shows me the wound. It’s a nasty one that says he’s not walking.

Hang on, I say to him. There’s an Uzi on the floor that one of the dead guys doesn’t need. Still cold. Hasn’t even been fired. I slap the butt of its magazine and hear the magazine catch lock. Pull back on the charging handle and push the selector forward to automatic. Get my head down, chin onto the floor. Crawl through the doorway to the sanctuary. Check overhead. No light switches, but farther along the wall there’s something better, the place where somebody’s idea of a fire code forced the parish to mount one of those generic
EXIT
signs. A silver cable snakes out of the sign and into a junction box, and that might work. I steady the Uzi, it’s not meant for marksmanship, and let go, subsonic hiccups sparking up that junction box, and there’s a scrunch of shattered metal and a flickerflash of light and then everything in the sanctuary goes dark.

I slither my way back and tell him: What do you think?

Hey, he says to me. Don’t know bout you, but I stopped thinkin round four this afternoon.

Yeah, I tell him. But what I’m thinking is we move.

I nod to the wound, the bad one, the one on his leg.

That’s got to hurt, I tell him.

Yeah, he says.

If we stay here much longer, we’re both dead.

Yeah, he says.

So, I tell him. I push my forearms into his armpits and get ready to lift. The way I see it, it doesn’t matter if I move you. Except it’s going to hurt even more.

Yeah, he says.

Okay. I tighten my hands into fists, bend my knees.

On three, I tell him. Okay? One, two—

That’s when I yank him up and Jinx doesn’t scream, doesn’t complain, doesn’t do a thing. He just leans into me and says:

What happened to three?

I swing his arm over my shoulders, take some weight on my back, and that’s what screams, pain doing a line dance across my left armpit, over my rib cage, down my spine. We’re side to side, like a cruel sack race, the three-legged man hobbling down the aisle for some healing. But we’re making time, out of that morgue and onto the altar, finally into the sacristy and through another door, and the door opens to a long hallway where the lights are still working. There are doors and more doors and a fire door at the far end, and I choose the second door on the left and we’re inside a small room.

I lean Jinx into the near wall and he does the rest, easing his way down to the floor. It’s this pillbox of an office. There’s a desk and a chair and a file cabinet and a crucifix on the wall and a picture of that dead pope, the pope before the last pope, that guy, and a little square window and maybe this is a priest’s office, and with that thought I stagger over to the desk and it’s locked but I kick the bottom drawer and it pops out a little, so I kick it again and drag the drawer open and inside there’s a pint of that holy water known as Dewar’s, and I say to Jinx, I say:

Hey.

He catches the bottle on the fly and looks at the label awhile before he unscrews the cap and takes a long hit. It gets him coughing, and a little scotch and a little blood leak from the corner of his mouth, but he’s about the happiest wounded guy I’ve ever seen. He screws the cap back and sends the bottle my way. I grab that thing and right about now I start to believe, really believe, that we’re alive.

The first taste of that scotch is like truth: It burns but it’s good. I let it linger on my tongue for a while, then I drink it down. But I’m not greedy. I toss the bottle back to Jinx and I settle back into the wall on my side of the room, slide my ass down, and take a load off. I tug at the magazine on the first of the Glocks; it’s latched.

More sirens.

I don’t fucking believe it, I tell him. Took them long enough but they’re here. Coming in like the U.S. Cavalry. Never thought I’d be happy to see the cops.

Jinx looks a long time at that bottle. Then:

Bout time we called it a day, he says, and he wants to laugh a little
but he can’t. He takes a quick pull of the scotch and now it’s my turn again. To take a drink and to talk.

Yeah, I tell him. It’s about time. But not yet.

The bottle comes to me. I take my drink, and the scotch is almost gone, so I save a little bit, for me or for him. It all depends. I wait for my stomach to warm and then I tell him:

I got to ask you something.

Yeah? he says.

Yeah, I tell him. See, something’s been bothering me for a while now, but I wanted to wait for the right time or maybe the right place. Or until I figured it out for myself. But that didn’t happen. So now, before little boy blue gets here, maybe you can help me out.

I hold that bottle of what’s left of the scotch out at arm’s length and I watch the glass bend the fluorescent light, make it blur and bloom, and I guess it’s time to say it, so I say it to Jinx, I say:

I want to know why you shot me. In the garage. In New York. Why you shot me in the back.

But that’s wrong. I know why he shot me, and I know why he shot me with a small-caliber pistol, and why he shot me only once and in just the right place, below the shoulder, above the kidney, away from the spine: To put me down but not out. So I try to say it again. I say:

What I want to know is what you were doing there. In the garage. And what you’re doing here. Now. Why you came back.

There’s a burst of gunfire, something automatic, and it’s answered by pistols and more pistols. Voices yelling. Voices in command. The cops are here, and they’re closing things down.

Jinx isn’t looking at me. His head rests back against the wall and it’s like he’s calm, suddenly calm. He’s staring at the ceiling, or something past the ceiling, the sky, the stars, a dream, I don’t know. But he’s somewhere else for a moment and then he’s back. That’s when he says:

We were following you.

Something about his voice, it’s wrong. It’s different. Changed somehow.

That can’t be right, though, because—

There’s another exchange of gunfire. Closer. In the distance, above us, chopping wind, the sound of helicopters. Incoming. It’s almost over.

You could of followed me to the hotel, I tell him. But then I realize what he said, what I missed: We?

It doesn’t take long. I hear a shot or two from the direction of the chapel, and then the sound of boots, and then the voices:

Clear. Clear. Clear.

The sound of a door being kicked in.

Go!

Boots on linoleum.

Clear!

Coming down the hallway.

Go!

Door to door.

Clear!

Until they’re right outside the office and I know they’ve got fingers on the triggers and they’re going to shoot first, probably shoot second and third, and then, maybe somewhere around fourth or fifth, they might think about asking questions. So it’s got to be smooth. Perfect.

Officer? I work for the right tone. Loud but not too loud. No threat. Compliant. I keep my Glock up, watching the shadow, the helmeted shadow, watching it thicken outside the door, and then the second shadow, hovering over and merging into the other one, and I say:

Here. In here. We’re friendlies. Let me say that again: We’re friendlies. And we’re surrendering. We have weapons but we’re giving them up, okay? So go slow. No más, okay? We give.

The first policeman swings in at a low crouch, service pistol out, very steady. Blue helmet, blue uniform, one of the District of Columbia’s finest.

Drop your weapons, Helmet tells us. Then:

Now.

I look at Jinx.

No problem, he says. He takes the Ruger from his lap and palms it onto the linoleum, pushes it toward the cop. Then he goes into the moose: Hands over his head, right hand clutching his left wrist. He’s wincing. It has to hurt. He’s trying to say something.