Phoenix Noir (5 page)

“Sure it was. Tell me the story.”

And O’Toole did, just as he had told it to strengthen the faith of migrants stashed away in Buckeye, Phoenix, Glendale, even Scottsdale, eating take-out sandwiches, drowsing with the curtains drawn, waiting for the next stage of their journeys. They thought it emerged from deep theological study O’Toole had pursued in shadowed monasteries. In fact, he’d done most of his research online.

The True Cross, the Cross of Golgotha, on which Christ was nailed, disappeared for centuries after the Crucifixion. In AD 326, it was discovered by the mother of Constantine I, the Empress Helena, on a journey to Israel. In a place adjoining the tomb where Christ was buried, she found three ancient crosses in a cavern. A sick woman, placed on one of them, rallied.

“It restores health, then,” Walberto breathed with satisfaction.

“So it is said,” O’Toole agreed, and continued.

The True Cross was kept in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem until the year 614, when it was taken in a Persian raid. It became a prize in the wars between the Romans and Muslims, changing hands often. Still held by Muslims at the time of the Third Crusade, it disappeared. But bits of the cross that had come off were collected and returned to Europe. Some fragments were enclosed in altars, some placed in tiny golden reliquaries. But some had surfaced even earlier and were considered special for their size and mystic powers.

“Any relic larger than a toothpick is quite potent,” said O’Toole.

“And one as long as five or six inches …” Walberto whispered, like a child who knows a story by heart.

O’Toole completed the thought, “… would be a stunning find.”

Walberto remained entranced. He said, “Radegunda, Queen of the Franks, obtained from the Emperor Justin II, in 569, a remarkable relic of the True Cross.”

O’Toole was amazed. It was almost the exact wording of the
Catholic Encyclopedia
, a volume from which O’Toole could quote extensively, and had quoted to Walberto. The coyote, whose typical reading consisted of the ingredients lists from the backs of Campbell Soup cans, had remembered.

“Yes,” said O’Toole. “This was one of the relics catalogued in 1870 by the Parisian scholar Rohault de Fleury in his masterly
M
é
moire sur les instruments de la Passion.
”

Walberto tapped impatiently on the pew in front of him, his massive signet ring making a sound like a door-rapper. “And how did it get here, all the way from France, after all that time?”

“The provenance shows that,” rejoined O’Toole. “Stolen in France, carried to the new world, treasured for centuries in a monastery high in the Sierra Obscura in northern Mexico, then spirited away fifty years ago to the mission in Magadalena, then …”

“… brought to Phoenix two weeks ago by Jorge Canto, a muralist in that mission …”

“… to pay his passage across the border.”

“Jorge Canto, who now lies dead of seven wounds in his chest and back on a bed in Room 23 of the Painted Robin Motel in Buckeye,” Walberto concluded with some relish. “A crucifix on his forehead.” O’Toole could hear him tapping his head, as if trying to spring loose a thought. “What’s that prov thing?”

“Provenance,” said O’Toole. “The papers you stole from Canto last week and gave to me. That’s why I told you to get the relic. They prove it’s authentic.”

“Oh, sure.”

O’Toole was put off. “You don’t believe it?”

“Faith is very hard, Father. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“A man is easily tempted. You’ve heard of the seven deadly sins?”

O’Toole felt a surge of annoyance. Was this Dallas Cowboys fan really trying to instruct him on matters of faith?

“Yes,” said O’Toole. “The seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy, and pride.”

“Sure,” said Walberto. “
Luxuria, gula, avaritia, acedia, ira, invidia,
and
superbia
. In Colombia, the priest taught us in Latin.”

Jesus, this was too much.

“I know Latin,” O’Toole said heavily.

“Of course. But do you know there is an eighth deadly sin?”

O’Toole sighed.

Walberto’s laugh crackled. “The eighth deadly sin is over-confidence. I don’t know how to say it in Latin.”

Touché. It occurred to O’Toole that “Walberto” was a name of Germanic origin, meaning “one who remains in power.” The coyote had the upper hand now, and O’Toole had to get it back. “I can market the relic,” O’Toole said. “I have a buyer. I told you that. In San Francisco. One hundred thousand dollars.”

He half-turned to see if Walberto was now holding a weapon, but the coyote’s hands were empty, and he waved O’Toole back to the front. “One hundred thousand dollars,” said Walberto. “No, I think it’s worth more now. Here, see what you think. Don’t turn around again, just put your right hand out to the side, palm up.”

O’Toole did so, and felt a hard scrap thrust into his grip. His pulse hammering, he brought it up before his eyes. A sliver of pine wood, seven inches long at least, calcified by age. He could see places where other slivers had been torn away, and he looked back through the centuries, thinking of the remnant being passed from hand to hand, hidden under cloaks, enclosed in velvet and leather cases, being spilled rudely on a carpet by burglars, slipped into pockets foul with tobacco, held reverently up to the light of forgotten dawns, always on the move, its destiny to wind up here, in his hand.

Walberto’s voice was urgent. “Put your finger in the blood.”

There was a crusty black splotch—not large—near one tip of the large splinter. O’Toole tried it with a thumb, and the surface broke and wept red. Hastily, he wiped his thumb on his robe, his heart beating faster.

“The blood of Jorge Canto,” intoned Walberto, “shed by us for the forgiveness of sins. And, I think, for two hundred thousand dollars minimum.”

O’Toole turned the remnant over to hide the red spot, and noted older, darker stains on the wood. He thought of Christ’s hands, torn by the nails, and the spear that had slashed into his side, bringing forth blood and water. Could the blood of Golgotha really have survived all these centuries, locked in the fibers of the wood? His faith urged him toward that conclusion, but Walberto had a different interpretation.

“You’re beginning to see it now, aren’t you, Father? Plenty of dudes like Jorge have died for that relic. That’s what makes it valuable. The price went way up the second I slipped that knife through his ribs.”

The coyote paused, and O’Toole could not bring himself to reply. He felt a crawling sensation between his shoulder blades, and envisioned Walberto’s knife blade, plunging again and again through skin, scraping bone, exploding blood vessels, releasing scarlet geysers of life-juice. Silence fell as they knelt there in the sweaty heat, with the shadows of the church smothering them. Then, somewhere outside the church, O’Toole heard a light scraping sound.

“Shit!” whispered Walberto. “There’s somebody out there. Let’s take this into the sin-box. We don’t want to be seen together.”

A happenstance visitor? O’Toole didn’t believe it. He hadn’t heard a vehicle engine since Walberto had pulled up, and even the sound of moving feet—some hiker extending his distance over desolate territory—would have reached them in the dead quiet within the church walls. Most likely it was a wild dog or an actual coyote, some beast that could have made the approach without attracting notice.

“All right,” O’Toole whispered back. He rose quickly, his big legs twitching, and started for the priest’s side of the confessional.

Walberto took his arm. “Let me go in that side,” the smuggler whispered, grinning. “I always wanted to try out that priest’s seat. Besides, maybe you have a sin to confess.”

O’Toole felt tightness in his throat. His mind blanked. Dumbly, he nodded, thinking desperately about favorable possibilities. The pistol might not be easy to see. Out of caution, he had tilted a missal up against it when he’d placed it on the small shelf next to the priest’s seat.

He made his way to the penitent’s door on the confessional and creaked it open. It stuck a bit. Things in the church had never worked exactly right for O’Toole. He wondered about that. On the other side, he could hear Walberto bumping around, then settling down. O’Toole knelt on the hard bench, his face inches from the mesh that covered the square hole between them.

The coyote’s breath rippled the cloth. “Aren’t you going to say it, Father?”

“Say what?”

“What you’re supposed to say—
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned
.”

Despite his nervousness, O’Toole felt anger rising in his throat. “You’re not a priest.”

The coyote was unfazed. “And are you a priest, Father? For sure? You sure do some slick things for a man of the cloth.”

“A man has to live,” O’Toole replied.

“Yes, that can be a problem.” Walberto seemed to be shifting around in the enclosed space. One of his elbows thumped the thin wall between them. “But once a priest, always a priest, even if you’re an asshole, right?”

O’Toole thought about his sins. Miserably, he replied, “Yes.”

“This is supposed to be a confession,” Walberto said, his voice now cheerful. “Have you been guilty of the eighth deadly sin, overconfidence? I think so. You thought you’d get this relic from me easy. But you won’t. The price goes up when somebody dies. And it would go up crazy for a priest.”

O’Toole heard metal clanking on wood from the other side of the confessional. His mind raced. His fatness in the confined space locked him in, he’d never be able to shift and lunge through the door in time. He was like a doomed cow in a butcher’s chute, waiting for the electric knife to buzz and slash its carotid arteries away.

“Look,” said Walberto teasingly, “there’s a gun in here.”

O’Toole could see the round muzzle of the .357 poking at the mesh, could see Walberto mockingly pushing his own face into the cloth right next to it.

“There’s a gun in here too,” O’Toole said, sweeping the tiny Beretta M21A from under his robes and firing twice. Blood bubbled on the screen as the .22-caliber long-rifle bullets punched into the coyote’s forehead. The hard chunks of meat that had been Walberto clanked and vibrated against the confessional. Then there was silence.

O’Toole reholstered the pistol and put a hand to his chest. It took him some time to calm his pounding heart, some time to get his breath down into the range in which it no longer whistled and strained. He was sweating like a man in a steam bath. He tilted his head against the cool wood next to the penitent’s window, let his headache subside, and, eventually, composed himself.

At last his thoughts turned to the relic and to spiritual duties. There was one more thing he had to do for Walberto.

He crossed himself, compressed his hands, and leaned forward.

“Oh Lord,” O’Toole prayed, “be merciful to him, a sinner.”

DIRTY SCOTTSDALE

BY D
IANA
G
ABALDON
Desert Botanical Garden

I
t was high noon, and 110°. The cops were in shirtsleeves, the homeowner was wearing plaid bermuda shorts and a
wtf
? expression. The body floating facedown in the swimming pool was wearing a navy-blue wool suit, which was odder than the veil of blood hanging like shark bait in the water.

The girl by the pool was more appropriately dressed—if you could use that word to describe the triangles of turquoise fabric that covered her nominally private parts.

“The poor dope,” I said, shaking my head. “He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end he got himself a pool—only the price turned out to be a little high.”

The girl looked at me. She had a hot-pink towel clutched dramatically to her mouth, eyes wide above it. Turquoise eye shadow to match her suit, and a lot of waterproof mascara.

“Tom Kolodzi,” I said, with a jerk of the head toward the uniformed cops. “I’m with the police.” You notice I didn’t say I
was
the police. “You know the guy in the pool?”

Her eyes got wider, and she shook her head. I took out my notebook and flipped it open, turning to shield it from the cops.

“Your name?”

She blinked, and lowered the towel. Her mouth was blurred with red, and she looked like a little kid who’d been eating a popsicle, breast implants notwithstanding.

“Chloe Eastwood.”

“Any relation to Clint?” I smiled, friendly.

“Who?”

I should have flipped a coin and said,
Call it, friendo
. Instead, I asked, “Do you live here?”

She nodded like a bobble-head doll, her eyes going back to the body. “I just … I just came out to tan, and … there he was.”

“You called it in?”

She shook her head, blond ponytail swishing over baby-oiled shoulders.

“I screamed and Cooney came running out, and the yard guys and everybody.” She waved vaguely toward the house where three nervous-looking Mexicans were clustered. A Mexican woman too, with a blond boy of five or six clutching her leg. “I guess Cooney called.”

Her eyes went to the homeowner: Mr. Bermuda Shorts, shoulders hunched in aggression. One of the uniforms caught sight of me and opened his mouth to order me out. The two uniforms exchanged a quick look, though, then stared right through me before turning deliberately toward the pool.

I relaxed a little. I’d been doing a ride-along—you always want to get acquainted with the cops in a new place—when the 410 call came through. They’d told me to stay in the car, of course, but didn’t lock me in. It could get up to 140 in a parked car, and they didn’t want to explain a dead reporter in the backseat. They didn’t want to explain a live reporter in their crime scene, either; if I kept my mouth shut, they’d pretend they had no idea how I got there, and leave it to homicide to throw me out.

There was a sudden hum, and a
whoosh
made everybody jump. A timer had come on, and water was rushing down a pile of rocks at the end. It sounded like Niagara Falls, and Gonzales turned and started yelling at the homeowner, who looked confused and belligerent, like a bear in the underwear aisle at Macy’s.

“Cooney doesn’t know how to work the pool stuff,” my new friend said, contemptuous. “My mom always has to do it.”