Brian Thomsen & Martin H. Greenberg (ed), page 5
Joel crawled into a dank, musty room the size of his cell back at the seminary filled with soiled cardboard boxes containing underwear, shoes and various other garments, all filthy, smelly, tattered. He found nothing suitable, but he had to wear something. He knelt and prayed for strength to his favorite saint, Saint Prisca, second-century virgin and martyr. Fortified with her saintly presence, he put on khaki pants cut off at the knees, a checked shirt with only one sleeve and two buttons and a pair of plastic beach sandals.
“Get out here,” Sister Agatha shouted from the other room.
The hall was filled with the kind of people he had seen on the streets—surly, sullen, soiled men and women, muttering, growling or staring emptily at the walls. Some of them were smoking cigarettes.
“I don’t believe we should allow smoking,” Joel said to Sister Agatha, who was now wearing an apron, and standing at the counter near a row of stainless steel pans heaped with what Joel supposed was food.
“Look, junior, maybe some day I’ll ask for your opinion, but that day isn’t today. My regular server got busted for dealing crack this morning, and that means it’s just you and me. So get ready to dish out the mashed potatoes.”
Sister Agatha pounded the counter with a wooden spoon and shouted, “Settle down. Let’s pray.” She placed her palms together and said, “Lord, we thank you for the gifts we are about to receive. Okay, come and get it.”
A line formed at the end of the counter.
“Wait a minute,” Joel said to Sister Agatha. “Shouldn’t we wait for the poor?”
“The what?”
“The Lord’s poor.”
Sister Agatha gestured at the hall. “Who the hell do you think these people are, junior?”
Something inside Joel that may have been his soul threw a tantrum. No no no no no. These are not the Lord’s poor. These are ghastly and stinky and awful… undesirables.”
“You gonna serve the spuds or you gonna stand there pullin’ yer pud?” The questioner was a bald dwarf with huge ears and a string of some kind hanging from his left nostril. He thrust a tin plate up at Joel. Joel took a scoop from a mound of white stuff in one of the pans, presumably mashed potatoes, filled it half way and carefully placed the potatoes on the dwarf’s plate.
“What the shit?” the dwarf shouted angrily, dipping his chubby hand into the mount and slapping mashed potatoes onto his plate.
“One more like that, Benny,” said Sister Agatha, “and you’re eighty-sixed for a week. You think I’m kidding, you try me.”
“You see what numbnuts gimme?” Benny whined. “You couldn’t feed a fuckin’ canary with that!”
“He’s new,” said Sister Agatha. “Wipe your nose.”
For the next hour, Joel served potatoes. It was boring and stupid work for a fellow with a good Catholic education, and not a single tin-plate holder so much as thanked him. These … creatures could not be the humble, grateful Lord’s poor.
Hours later, Sister Agatha locked the door behind the last diner, Benny, and, untying the apron, said to Joel, “You better eat. There’s some stew left.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyway. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. You’re no good to me if you drop dead from hunger.”
“I said I’m not—”
“Eat, dammit.”
Dammit?
Of course. It was clear to Joel now. “You’re not really a nun.”
“Yeah? How do you figure.”
“Your language. The way you hurried through the prayer. That filthy joke you made—”
Agatha strode to within inches of Joel and glared. “Listen to me. I have a hundred and three temperature, I have been on my feet for the last twenty hours, I have been told we’re getting no more funding from that hypocrite in the Cathedral, and I am not in the mood for criticism from a snotty twerp who couldn’t find his ass with a roadmap.” She stalked toward the stairs, whirled and said, “Find someplace to sleep. Be ready to work at six. Oh, and maybe you noticed I didn’t ask how you lost your stuff. Know why? Because I don’t care.”
She stomped up the stairs, and the lights went out. Joel crept to the room where he had found the clothing, lowered his eyes, knelt and prayed to Saint Prisca. Prayed hard, desperately seeking the sense that holy Prisca was bestowing her presence upon him.
“Give me wisdom and comfort, dear saint,” he implored aloud.
“Ain’t never gonna happen, pally.”
Had Blessed Prisca answered him? Finally? After years of beseeching? In bad grammar? Joel looked around the room, dark except for a wan glow coming through a single, dust-covered window.
“Saint Prisca?” he whispered.
“You ain’t got the word, pally? Them padres figured out what I could’a told ‘em, that there ain’t no Prisca and there ain’t never been no Prisca, on account of somebody made up them bullshit stories ‘bout her anna buncha saps like you b’lieved ‘em. ‘Second-century virgin an’ martyr.’ Inna rat’s ass.”
Joel’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness; he could, by squinting, discern a bulky shadow near the window, and he was pretty sure he was smelling cigar smoke, which was even fouler than cigarette smoke.
“Go on,” the shadow said. “Ast me who I am.”
“Who are you?” Joel asked, obediently.
“The boss. Big Al. Alphonse Capone. Yer grampa’s old man useta run with me in Brooklyn when we was punks. Yer grampa told you, ‘member?”
“Scarface,” Joel breathed.
“Watch yer mouth. The last sumbitch called me that’s still breathin’ the Chicago river.” The shadow barked a laugh. ” ‘Breathin’ the river …’ Thassa good one.” Another laugh, more a snort than a bark. “You got any other questions, spit ‘em out.”
“What do you want?”
“To set you straight. To begin with, this prayin’ to virgins and martyrs is a chump’s game, on account’a even if they existed, which a lotta them don’t, and some that do ain’t exactly virgins, what’re they gonna do for you? Not screw? Hell, you got that down pat already. If you had the brains of a pissant, you’d pray to somebody like me. Saint Al. I ain’t pretty as Teresa of Avila, though I gotta tell you I boffed a lotta toot-sies’d make her look like a mud fence, but I’m a can-do paisan. I mean, Tessy never made no twenny-seven mil, and them was the days when a million’d buy more’n three cigars anna used rubber. So yer havin’ grief with this Choo-choo jackoff, right? So ast me to do somethin’ for you.”
“I’d like my belongings back. Especially the rosaries.”
“Yeah, the white one with the glow inna dark cross yer gramma gave you when you made yer first holy communion—real class. I never had nothin’ that swell when I was a kid. Well, pally, Saint Al’s gonna deliver, an’ when I do, maybe you an’ me’ll make a little deal. That jake with you?”
“I guess so. But how will I know you kept your part of the bargain?”
No reply. Joel peered into the shadows and sniffed the air, seeking the stink of a cigar, but there was nothing but gloom and mildew.
Then his eyelids were bright and he was shaking— no, being shaken. He opened his eyes and was staring at Sister Agatha’s slab of a face, inches from his. “On your feet, you lazy sack!”
Joel realized that he had been sleeping and dreaming a strange dream about a Chicago criminal. He arose and followed Agatha into the hall, which was even drearier in the morning light.
“The bakery didn’t have any leftovers, so it’ll have to be oatmeal for breakfast,” Agatha said. “Start making some while I—”
“Making what?”
“Oatmeal.”
“I don’t know how.”
Agatha sighed. “All right, start a pot of coffee—”
“Coffee is a drug,” Joel said indignantly.
“We’ll risk a bust. Get busy.”
“It’s evil, and besides, I don’t know how.”
“Mop the floor.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Tell you what. I’ll get a postage stamp and you can write me a list of what you do know how to do.”
“Are you ridiculing me?”
Agatha grabbed two fistfuls of her sleet-colored hair and pulled. “Sit down and stay out of the way—can you manage that?”
“Certainly,” Joel replied with what he was sure was devastating dignity.
He sat on a folding chair and, for a while, watched the woman scurry around the kitchen area. After a few minutes, reality again ebbed and he was in the gray limbo; he found it comfortable. When he returned, suddenly and rudely, to the world, he was behind the counter, ladling creamy goo onto a tin plate, being called “numbnuts” by Benny, the dwarf.
“Hey, Twinkletoes, done any sunbathing lately?” The male officer he had met yesterday was next to Benny.
“What’s on your mind, Willy?” Agatha asked from the sink, where she was spraying water onto a plate.
“Your name’s Terwilliger, right?” the officer asked Joel, who nodded.
“The narks busted a crack house last night, found these.” said the officer. He had a suitcase in either hand and a third under his left arm. “Got your name on ‘em. Bulls say they ain’t evidence and that I could return ‘em to their owner, which is you.” He dropped the cases onto the linoleum.
“Was there a man named Choo-choo?” Joel asked.
“Was is right. His ass is cooling in the morgue. Dumb skel pulled a piece and the bulls put him down.”
“He’s dead?”
“That’s what usually happens when you take a load of nine mike-mike slugs in the chest.”
“That means he was shot with automatic pistols,” Agatha explained.
For the first time since he left the seminary, Joel smiled. “Good. He deserved it.”
The officer raised his brows and smirked. “Ain’t you s’posed to love your enemies?”
“Yes. But he wasn’t my enemy. He was bad! He stole my belongings.”
“Yeah, that’d make him public enemy number one, all right.” The officer touched a forefinger to his cap and walked away.
Joel turned to Agatha. “Could you help me carry my belongings?”
“I don’t know how.”
“I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”
“I’ll mention it in confession.”
Joel dragged the suitcases back to the clothing room, opened them and inspected the contents. Nothing was missing. He lifted the white rosary with the glow-in-the-dark cross, gazed at it reverently—and sniffed. Something in the air. Cigar smoke?
He spent the rest of the morning saying the sorrowful mysteries. Then Agatha entered, pulled his ear, which really hurt, and led him to the hall. He ladled stew until Agatha told the diners to go away. As he was carrying an empty pan to the sink, at Agatha’s command, he hit the coffee urn with his elbow and knocked it to the floor Agatha had just finished mopping, spilling a mixture of liquid and brown grit onto the linoleum. Agatha moaned and rapped his skull with a knuckle.
Lips trembling, eyes watering, Joel said, “You liked that!”
“I wouldn’t say ‘liked.’ I’d say, ‘deeply enjoyed.’ I’d say ‘got a whole lot of satisfaction.’ I’d say ‘never had so much fun in my life.’ “
“You’re not a nun!”
“You got me. I’m actually Satan’s little sister.”
Joel fled to the door. “I’m going out.”
“No,” Agatha said in a voice Joel did not recognize, holding up her long skirt and running from the counter to put a hand on his arm. “They’d chop you into dog meat. Just go say your rosary. I’ll handle the chores.”
That seemed like a good idea. Joel was upset; it seemed wrong, almost sacrilegious, for Agatha to have a good idea. But he remembered what his grandmother had once taught him—”The devil can quote scripture for his own purposes”—and was comforted.
He knelt among the boxes and heaps of clothing and, fingering the white beads, said the sorrowful mysteries, the joyful mysteries, and the glorious mysteries. The familiar prayer solidified into solid objects—no, not objects: angels, clean and shining and pure. They carried him to the limbo, no longer gray but now a gleaming place sculpted from golden clouds.
He felt a pain in his knees, and the clouds vanished. He was in the clothing room, kneeling in the rectangle of dirty light from the window, staring at a familiar clump of shadow.
“Did Saint Al deliver the goods or did Saint Al deliver the goods?” Al Capone blew out a jet of smoke that smelled, not like a cigar, but like the sulfur in Joel’s high school chemistry class. “Choo-choo’s breathin’ the Chicago river. He ain’t really, but it’s a great gag. Tickles me.”
“You’re real.”
“Helluva lot realer than Prisca, an’ you can take that straight to the bank. Anyway, whaddaya say, pally? You ready to play the game my way?”
“What game?”
“The game’a life… .” Al mumbled another word; it sounded like “numbnuts,” but Joel was sure he must have misheard it.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
“Not yet, you don’t, ‘cause you ain’t had no advantages. But you can learn. Lemme take it slow for you. Ast you a question. Who do you hate?”
“Nobody.”
“Yeah? What about this Agatha frail?”
“I don’t hate her. I just wish she’d burn in fiery torment for eternity.”
“She could keep Choo-choo company.”
“You could do that?” Joel asked, rising and rubbing his knees. “To Sister Agatha?”
“Naw. But you could, see? Lemme tell you a story. There was these two rats back in Chi town. They was actin’ like they was pals of mine, but they was really rats, see? So I invite ‘em to a real swell feed and just when they’re gettin’ ready to dig into the eats and I get behind ‘em with a bat and bam bam bam I smack their brains all over the tablecloth.”
“You killed them with a baseball bat?”
“They was astin’ for it, just like that Agatha frail! What I done was only right! Now, do yourself a favor. Take a gander behind that big box in the corner.”
Joel limped on stiff legs to a cardboard carton that had once contained a gas stove and pulled it away from the wall. In the dim glow from the window, he saw a baseball bat standing on its fat end.
“Go ‘head,” Al Capone said. “Pick it up.”
Joel’s fingers closed around the tape on the narrow end of the bat and he lifted it.
“Feel good?” Al Capone asked. “Now you gotta ast yourself if you wanna go on bein’ pushed around and if that frail in the next room don’t deserve what I give them rats back in Chi.”
“She does,” Joel said, righteousness swelling within him.
” ‘The Lord helps them what helps themselves,’” Al Capone said. “I done Choo-choo for you. The frail’s yours.”
Feeling like St. Louis, like Joan of Arc, even like the Archangel Michael himself—like all the mighty warriors of holiness throughout the ages—Joel shouldered his weapon and opened the door to the dining hall, dark except for light from the street lamps shining through the front windows. Sister Agatha was sitting at the table nearest the counter with her back to him, her head bowed, her shoulders slumped. He gripped the bat tighter and crept toward her. As he drew hear, he heard a snuffling sound. Was she weeping? Or perhaps just sleeping?
“Go on,” Al Capone said from everywhere at once. “Hit her.”
Joel raised the bat over his head.
“Go on!”
Trembling, filled with rage and loathing and frustration, Joel dropped the bat and whispered, “I don’t know how.”
* * *
MONEY WELL SPENT
by Janet Pack
“Isn’t this fun?” Theresa di Luna, known as Tesa Ato nearly everyone, snuggled her chin against her husband’s shoulder despite the cloying heat. “I just love old stuff, and New Orleans is famous for it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Marcello di Luna, called Marc, replied shortly. Unease on several counts wormed down his neck, tandem to sweat. First, he was dressed in off-the-rack short-sleeved shirt and cotton slacks bought by his wife, instead of his usual hand-tailored suits and shirts. He did not appreciate the indifferent fit since it did little for his stocky Italian-American frame. Second, he stood in an unknown place out in the open. Anything could happen. His three personal bodyguards were worried—he could tell by their restive postures and quick eye movements. Third, he was hot. The New Orleans temperature had pushed into the eighties by noon with equal amounts of humidity. Marc hated sweating except for exercise. And fourth, he stood in a graveyard looking at white crumbling stone encasing moldering bones with French names. Graveyards had bothered him since he was five, when Uncle Carlo had been gunned down by a rival family at Uncle Stephano’s funeral. Marc and his father Julio escaped with minor wounds, but only because two bodyguards sacrificed themselves.
Graveyards gave him big-time willies. This one was no exception.
Today his nerves were worse than usual. His hands trembled. Perhaps it was the residual stress from that business deal he’d closed before leaving Chicago. It had been necessary to snuff the lives of three midlevel managers who’d proved inefficient or untrustworthy. An easy job turned messy because one assassin had allowed his target enough breath to curse his murder’s instigator before he died. That made Marc more wary than ever. The last thing he’d done before leaving his office for this vacation was have his big multitalented personal assistant, Guido, permanently lose that assassin. No one would ever find the body. Marc had tied up all the loose ends quickly and quietly, traits for which he’d become famous in the Chicago “business.”
Decisive, tough, honest most of the time, determined to do things for the good of his company and his extended family. His reputation didn’t include his secret credence in hexes, charms, and curses. The thin voices of his victims, clamoring from beyond the pale, increased enough to dent the mental barrier he’d built against them. Grimacing, Marc shut them out and reinforced his defenses.
He’d never admitted this superstition about graveyards or ghosts to anyone, not even to Tesa. Di Luna considered it a personal weakness. He tried to shrug off the impression of something dire hanging above his head in the shimmering blue sky and pay attention to the guide’s historical harangue. Tesa had insisted on a tour of the above-ground St. Louis cemetery just beyond Rampart Street. He’d paid triple for the privilege of a private tour. What could happen?
