“There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.”
—JIM THOMPSON
“Forgive me, Father, for I’m about to sin.”
A suppressor muffles the sound of six consecutive rounds fired below the screen through the thin wooden partition separating saint from sinner in the confession booth.
As Father Paddy’s body slumps to the floor, the iconoclast slips out a back door.
Rounding the corner, she does a tactical scan to ensure there’s no one around. All clear.
She looks up to make sure the black sock she put over the security camera is still there. In place.
She removes the oversized trench coat and pulls off a short gray wig, mustache, and beard. She rolls them, along with her gun and suppressor, into the coat, and tucks everything into the briefcase. Before getting into the car she borrowed from Vito, she places the briefcase on the floor behind the driver’s seat.
As she pulls away from the curb, she smiles. I entered St. Barnabas as an old man. I left as a woman. Now if that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.
Thirty minutes later, she drives down a gravel road to The Scrap Heap. On the surface, to innocent passersby, it’s a wrecking yard where vehicles are brought, and their usable parts are salvaged and sold, while the unusable metal parts are sold to recycling companies. In reality, it’s a place where people and things who’ve outlived their usefulness pass through.
The tips of Toni’s nails, polished in “dagger pink,” tap the steering wheel through thin, nitrile gloves. Usually, it’s a fifteen-minute drive, but she takes a route devoid of street cams.
Two snarling Dobermans greet her through an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with triple concertina wire. The result is an extremely effective barrier.
Tapping the fence, Toni muses. This is the second barrier I’ve dealt with today—first, the screen in the confessional, now the chain-link fence. If I had a shrink, they’d probably conclude that I enjoy keeping barricades between the men I don’t like and me. She smiles. And they’d be right. I can always see them from the outside, where I stay safe and maintain control. They’re defenseless and easily manipulated on the inside.
A huge bald man in oil-stained coveralls steps out of the doorway of a small shack by the gate. He smiles. “Hey, Toni.”
“Hey, Vito. Did you wait as I asked?”
“I did. Just a sec. Let me get these guys.”
After shutting the dogs behind the door of the shack, Vito opens the gate.
Toni drives through, opens the back passenger door, and retrieves the briefcase.
Before they head into the central part of the yard, Vito closes and locks the gate.
Toni follows him to a waiting pile of wrecked cars. She hands him the open briefcase, peels off the nitrile gloves, and tosses them in, then tucks her hands into her back pockets. Such a waste. That was a sweet Smith M&P22 compact and .22LR suppressor.
After closing the briefcase and giving it a speculative weight check, Vito shrugs his massive shoulders and tosses it through the air into the top car’s open trunk. Then he climbs up a ladder into a rig next to the pile of cars and starts the engine. When he pushes a black-knobbed lever, the car crusher begins its descent, closing the top car’s trunk as it does.
Toni notices two words spray-painted on the side of the machine. “Big Bang.”
She looks up at Vito. His face is red, and his head is glistening with sweat. He wipes the moisture from his forehead with the front of his hairy arm.
He looks down at her, gives her a thumbs up and smiles.
When it’s all over, he climbs down. “How about dinner sometime?”
“I’d like that.” She mentally applauds herself for not finishing the sentence with idiota—Italian for idiot.
Nodding toward the pile of crushed cars, Vito holds out a hand.
Toni looks at his waiting palm. If his fingers were laced together, his hand would look like a baseball mitt.
“That’ll be five hundred bucks,” Vito says. “But when we go out, it’s on me.” He smiles.
“It’s a deal,” she says.
After paying Vito in cash, he unlocks the gate and opens it.
Toni thanks him again, then gets in her own car and drives away. Looking in the rearview mirror, she sees Vito. I’d rather die.
Clutching her glasses in one hand and a crumpled tissue in the other, Carol Stapleton, an elderly penitent, steps into the confession booth. She’s crying because she knows she has to tell the priest the hateful thoughts she’s entertained about her neighbor. She sits down, closes her eyes, and tries to compose herself as she waits for the priest’s usual greeting.
After tucking the tissue in her sleeve, her now-empty hand fingers the string of pearls at her neck. After a few minutes tick by in silence, she retrieves the tissue and blows her nose. Clearing her throat, she says, “Father MacCullough?”
When he doesn’t answer, she wipes her lenses with the hem of her cotton dress and puts her glasses on. That’s when she notices the splintered wood. What on earth?
She presses her wrinkled face to the small ornate screen in the partition that divides them. Red oozes down the wall where the priest should be seated. Her nose wrinkles at the faint coppery smell. Her forehead furrows. Is that blood?
Heart pounding, she pushes her ashen face forward a little more to look down. It’s hard to see, but it seems like Father MacCullough’s crumpled on the floor. Carol crosses herself.
Calling his name again, she steps out of her side of the booth and opens his.
Panic rips her chest, clawing to climb out of her mouth when she sees the bloodied, hole-pocked vestments. The door on the priest’s side of the confessional had been blocking the pool of blood Father MacCullough is laying face down in. Now unblocked, it slowly spreads, inching toward the tip of Carol’s black orthopedic shoe.
A primal scream pierces the sanctuary.