Walter Mosley - Parishioner

Next to Sedra in villainy were Mortimer and Leslie Tarvo, who had hired gangsters to kill three kidnapped boys so that they would be certain to receive a twenty-million-dollar inheritance.

There was a bad-apple private detective who committed two murders and was planning more, and a young woman who had been so victimized by Sedra that she finally killed her and ran away.

All of those arrested made deals with the district attorney, avoiding trials and cutting down their possible sentences. Doris Milne actually got away with a suspended sentence and was reunited with her parents-Nancy and Roderick Calhoun. Doris walked into a ready-made family of two brothers and three sisters and was planning a memoir of her years of horror.

Every day during that period Frank called Ecks, but the onetime gangster from New York did not answer the calls.

He was interviewed by Andre Tourneau for fourteen hours one Tuesday.

“Tell me about this Benol Richards?” the cop asked, more than once.

“She had someone ask me to help her.”

“And did you meet this woman?” Tourneau asked at least seventeen times.

“No, sir. My minister asked me to talk to her on the phone.”

“And why didn’t you come to the police?”

“It was a very old case and she never gave me any facts. She wanted me to ask some questions and I did.”

“But Benol Richards was suspected of being the kidnapper.”

“I didn’t know that. Talk to Father Frank if you don’t believe me.”

“I could bring you up on charges, Mr. Noland.”

“I doubt that, Detective.”

On the twenty-second day the story broke that Clay Berber, the man whose house the three young boys were kidnapped from, was found strangled in his backyard with Rose, his demented wife, sitting next to the body-singing happily.

On that day Ecks got into his classic Edsel and drove up to Seabreeze City.

In the rectory he and Frank sat across from each other sipping tea.

“Is something troubling you, Brother Ecks?”

“Is something not?”

“You did a wonderful job with and for Benol.”

“Did she kill her uncle?”

“Brother Soto assures me that she did not.”

“It was the wife?”

“His skin and blood were under Rose Berber’s fingernails.”

“She waited a long time.”

“Justice doesn’t carry a watch.”

“How’s it goin’ with Lenny and George?”

“Lester is the heir to the Tarvo fortune so Lenny is broke. Mr. Ben has him going to school and working for the hardware store. George wants to bring him into the congregation, but we haven’t decided on that yet.”

“Why you been callin’ me, Frank?”

“The elders have decided it’s time for your baptism.”

“What’s that?”

“The final step in making you a part of our union. Once you are baptized you are truly one of us.”

“I thought I already was.”

“No.”

“Well … I got to go.”

“When shall we plan for the ceremony?”

“I don’t think I want to get in any deeper, Frank. I mean, I’m okay with the sermons and Expressions already. I don’t need any more.”

“No one has ever turned down the baptism.”

“Hey … what can I say? I’m an original.”

Ecks stood up and Frank gazed at him, at a rare loss for words.

“But …” the minister said.

“What?”

“You can’t just stop. You have to continue.”

“No, man. I don’t. If you’re tellin’ me that I have to get baptized or leave the church, I’ll accept that. If you wanna turn me in … well, that’s the chance I got to take.”

On the ride back down to Los Angeles, Xavier Rule felt the flush of freedom. He wasn’t afraid of death or prison, taxes or damnation. He was moving forward toward whatever was in his path.

At that moment the cell phone played Monk.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ecks.”

“Benicia.”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“Really?”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Like the condemned man who just got his last-minute reprieve.”