Читать книгу Whatever it takes - Paul Cleave - Страница 19

Fourteen

I can smell dust on the floor. I can hear the clock in Father Frank’s room ticking. I can hear the oxygen machine. The apple I was holding has come to a stop against the wall. I can see jigsaw puzzle pieces of dirt that have fallen out of the soles of somebody’s shoes — maybe out of the cowboy boots I’m staring at. One of those boots swings back, and then swings forward, and I barely manage to get my arm in front of my face to take the impact. I can’t stop the second one; it’s aimed at my stomach, and it punches the air out of me. I’m grabbed around my ankles and dragged outside. The boards of the porch are hot. Nails snag at my shirt and scratch at my back. My head, already spinning, bounces up and down. I’m pulled off the porch into the sun and my spine digs into the edge of the step before slamming into the shingle, my head getting the same result. Then shade as the person doing this crouches over me. My cellphone is ringing.

Conrad Haggerty’s face is full of anger, and something else too, a certain sense of smug satisfaction. “I always hoped you’d come back,” he says, spitting the words at me. “Every day I prayed for it, and now here you are.” He punches me in the side of the face, and there isn’t anything I can do, except bleed on his fist and hope one of his fingers breaks. I roll onto my side and push my hands into the ground and try to get onto my knees. Small stones dig into the palms of my hands. Conrad swings in a kick that I try to turn away from. His foot covers my eye and cheek and part of my nose. Maybe something breaks, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. He kicks me again and my teeth loosen and the impact puts me on my back again.

“I used to say to myself, Conrad, if you could do anything to that prick who hurt you, what would you do? Would you cut off his fingers?” he says, and he’s holding a knife in front of my face now. “And I’d say to myself, You know what, Conrad? I think that’s a good idea.”

He rolls me onto my stomach and zip ties my hands behind me, then drags me toward Father Frank’s car. He gets the trunk open, gets my head and shoulders into it, and then stops when somebody yells out at us. He lets me go and I fall back to the ground, my shoulder taking the impact.

A man is walking across the parking lot from the church. I blink rapidly until my vision sharpens. It hits me then that Father Frank may have a replacement. It’s probably who the second car in the parking lot belongs to. People still need to get married and still need to die and still need to confess and ask why God does this or that without reason, and this is the guy who’s getting all that asking.

“This ain’t any of your business, Father,” Conrad says.

“I may not know what’s going on here, son,” he says, “but I can certainly tell you that it is my business.”

My protector is wearing a black shirt with a white clerical collar. It’s hard to guess his age. Could be forty, could be fifty-five. He’s completely bald, and balances that baldness out with a beard that’s white in the front and black around the sides. He’s six foot and two-hundred-plus pounds. He looks like he could tie Conrad into a knot. His voice is deep and authoritative.

“Why don’t you piss off inside, Father, and mind yourself?”

“I could do that,” the priest says. “I could go in there and call the police. Maybe get you arrested, maybe have you spend a few nights in jail before getting charged with assault and spending even longer.”

“Phone them if you want, old man, there’s no way in hell they’re sending me to jail.”

“You sure about that? Whatever beating you’ve come to administer, well, you’ve administered it. Anything else you had in mind, you best let that go, then come back tomorrow and thank me for not taking the other option.”

“Which is . . .?”

“Which is me kicking your ass.”

Conrad isn’t sure how to respond. What he came to do clearly isn’t going to get done.

“Seriously, son, walk away before anything else has to happen. Or you spend tonight in a hospital. Choice is yours.”

Conrad sniffs as much phlegm as he can, then spits it out. It lands on my shoulder and makes my shirt one I no longer want to own. “This isn’t over,” he says. He glares at me, then at Father Kick Ass, then at me again. When he’s all out of glaring, he heads to the road without looking back.

Father Kick Ass helps me up. “You must be Noah Harper,” he says. He leans me up against the car. “I’m Father Barrett. Father Frank said you’d be coming by, though I can’t say I was expecting to meet you under these circumstances.”

“I wasn’t expecting to be under these circumstances,” I say.

“Is that you thanking me?”

“Sorry,” I say. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up.”

“It’s nothing a new shirt can’t fix.”

“We’ll see.”

My ribs hurt and my kidneys hurt, as does my chest and head. My shoulders are under strain from the zip tie. My feet are okay. I walk slowly on the only parts of my body that don’t ache, and I start to question if this is a con. Father Barrett uses a bully to beat people up, only to save them so he can patch them up inside his church and sell them the Catholic lifestyle. We step inside and it’s cold in here, but churches often are. It’s like the heat from hell can’t make it past the front door.

In his office there are diplomas on the wall and photographs of people in various degrees of smiling. There’s a photograph of Father Barrett as a much younger man with lots of hair standing in front of a much bigger church. The church has lots of windows compared to this one, and I wonder if he did something to be demoted and sent here. Maybe he beat the crap out of somebody in a parking lot. The office has modern furniture, a nice bookcase, a computer that looks like it just came out of the box. It looks like the office of an architect, not of a Catholic priest. He takes a pair of scissors from a desk drawer and snips the zip tie holding my wrists together. There’s a couch against the wall, and I sit down on it, and everything sways a little.

“Here,” he says, handing me a bottle of water from a small fridge in the corner. I swallow half of it in one go. Being face down in gravel is thirsty work. Then he hands me a first-aid kit from a drawer under his desk. His readiness adds another tick to the column that this is all a set-up to convert the unconvertible. He hands me a mirror. “I can help clean you up,” he says, “or you can do it.”

I grab the mirror. There’s blood trickling out of my nose. My bottom lip has been split. My face is puffy and there are scuff marks and scrapes, but it looks worse than it is. In a couple of days I’ll be as good as new.

“You got a bathroom?”

“Down the hall, first door on the right.”

I take the first-aid kit and head down the hall. I rinse the blood off my face and things look better but feel about the same. Most of the bleeding has stopped, and I apply some salves to stem the rest, my hands still shaking a little. It all hurts now, but it’s going to hurt even more tomorrow. Father Barrett hands me a fresh shirt through the doorway.

“You can keep it,” he says.

I get changed and ball up the old one and take it back to the office where he’s now sitting behind his desk. “Much better,” he says.

“I didn’t think priests were allowed to lie.”

“There’s always an exception to the rule,” he says. “I know that was Conrad Haggerty out there. I know what you did to him the night you found Alyssa Stone. You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“You want to at least tell me how long you’re back for?”

“Not long.”

“Long enough to find Alyssa? That is why you’re back, isn’t it?”

I lean against the doorframe. “What’s your take on it?”

“Can’t really say she seems the sort to run out on her uncle right when he needs her the most. But then again she’s only nineteen, and nineteen-year-olds are apt to do whatever they please without much thought for other people. Anyway, it’s a moot point,” he says. “I was here when Drew came to talk to him. Best as I can tell, she’s doing okay.”

“I heard the same thing,” I tell him.

“And yet you’re still here,” he says. “There some other reason you’re sticking around?” He laughs, then smiles. “I’m sorry. I heard how that sounded. It sounds like I’m trying to get rid of you, but I promise that’s not the case at all. I’m curious.” He pauses for a few seconds. “Tell me if I’m being too curious.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m used to it. I only came back to tell Father Frank what he’s already been told, and to drop his car off. Most likely I’ll be on my way later today.”

“You won’t stay?”

“No,” I tell him. I push myself off the doorframe.

“It’s a shame,” he says. “It’s difficult to put the past behind you when you’re always running from it.”

“Thanks for the shirt,” I tell him. “And thanks for saving me back there.”

He looks disappointed the conversation is over. We walk out to the parking lot. We shake hands. His grip is firm and he’s smiling at me and everything about this man makes me like him.

“I don’t know how he’s hanging on,” he says, nodding in the direction of the house. “Every day I think is going to be his final one. He told me how you saved Alyssa. He thanks God every day for you getting her back, but he’s conflicted over the way you did it.”

“Why is he here? Why isn’t he in hospital? Or in a hospice?”

“We’ve tried convincing him, but you know what he’s like — he’s stubborn. This is his church, his home. He’s lived here and he wants to die here, and he’ll be buried here, and he’s okay with that. Now here you are twelve years later, and it’s his turn to be saved. He’s suffering, God knows how he’s suffering. If you can convince Alyssa to come back here, he’ll finally be able to let go and find the peace he deserves.”