his lips, he hammered his fists into the priest’s midsection, two hard
punches.
Quickly stepping out from behind the lute-playing angel, I tried to
draw the Glock, but it caught on the lining of my jacket pocket.
As Father Tom doubled over from the two blows, Pinn locked his hands
and clubbed them against the back of the priest’s neck.
Father Tom dropped to the floor, and I finally ripped the pistol out of
my pocket.
Pinn kicked the priest in the ribs.
I raised the Glock, aimed at Pinn’s back, and engaged the laser
sighting. As the mortal red dot appeared between his shoulder blades,
I was about to say enough, but the mortician relented and stepped away
from the priest.
I kept my silence, but to Father Tom, Pinn said, “If You’re not part of
the solution, You’re part of the problem. If You can’t be part of the
future, then get the hell out of the way.”
That sounded like a parting line. I switched off the laser sighting
and retreated behind the angel ‘just as the undertaker turned away from
Father Tom. He didn’t see me.
To the singing of the chains, Jesse Pinn walked back the way he had
come, and the jittery sound seemed to issue not from overhead but from
within him, as though locusts were swarming in his blood.
His shadow repeatedly darted ahead of him and then leaped behind until
he passed beyond the arcing sword of light from the swinging fixture,
became one with the darkness, and rounded the corner into the other arm
of the L-shaped room.
I returned the Glock to my jacket pocket.
From the cover of the dysfunctional creche, I watched Father Tom
Eliot.
He was lying at the foot of the stairs, in the fetal position, curled
around his pain.
I considered going to him to determine if he was seriously hurt, and to
learn what I could about the circumstances that lay behind the
confrontation I had just witnessed, but I was reluctant to reveal
myself. I stayed where I was.
Any enemy of Jesse Pinn’s should be an ally of mine-but I could not be
certain of Father Tom’s goodwill. Although adversaries, the priest and
the mortician were players in some mysterious underworld of which I had
been utterly unaware until this very night, so each of them had more in
common with the other than with me. I could easily imagine that, at
the sight of me, Father Tom would scream for Jesse Pinn, and that the
undertaker would fly back, black suit flapping, with the inhuman
caterwaul vibrating between his thin lips.
Besides, Pinn and his crew evidently were holding the priest’s sister
somewhere. Possession of her gave them a lever and fulcrum with which
to move Father Tom, while I had no leverage whatsoever.
The chilling music of the torquing chains gradually faded, and the
sword of light described a steadily diminishing arc.
Without a protest, without even an involuntary groan, the priest drew
himself to his knees, gathered himself to his feet. He was not able to
stand fully erect. Hunched like an ape and no longer comic in any
aspect of face or body, with one hand on the railing, he began to pull
himself laboriously up the steep, creaking steps toward the church
above.
When at last he reached the top, he would switch off the lights, and I
would be left here below in a darkness that even St. Bernadette
herself, miracle worker of Lourdes, would find daunting.
Time to go.
Before retracing my path through the life-size figures of the creche, I
raised my eyes for the first time to the painted eyes of the
lute-playing angel in front of me-and thought I saw a blue to match my
own. I studied the rest of the lacquered-plaster features and,
although the light was weak, I was sure that this angel and I shared a
face.
This resemblance paralyzed me with confusion, and I struggled to
understand how this Christopher Snow angel could have been here waiting
for me. I have rarely seen my own face in brightness, but I know its
reflection from the mirrors of my dimly lit rooms, and this was a