Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Marlene moved on, holding the pistol in front of her. She had not touched a weapon in over two years, except for the firing practice Osborne demanded. She had stopped carrying. She had sworn an oath that she never would again. She nudged the door to the master bedroom open with her foot. There was the bed, and she could hear the frightened yips of Kelsie's dog, but muffled as through a door. The room was L-shaped, she recalled; a little corridor led to a dressing table and, beyond that, to the private bathroom.

She paused at the corner of the L and looked around it cautiously. He was sitting there, at the little dressing table, with his rifle across his knees, talking in what sounded like a reasonable voice to the closed bathroom door. Marlene examined the weapon. Some kind of cheap military-surplus job, a Mauser bolt-action with a box magazine, the stock and barrel cut down to about eighteen inches, and wrapped roughly with silver duct tape. A deadly piece of shit, she thought, like its owner.

Who was toying with the cosmetics spread in messy array across the table. As he talked, he occasionally lifted an item to his face and sniffed. He was in paradise, along with his beloved, surrounded by her intimate life and her scents. "Kelsie, I love you. Don't you understand that? I'm the only one in the world who really loves you." From behind the door, nothing but yapping.

Marlene said, "Jimmy, put the gun down on the floor."

He turned his head. She saw that his glasses were fixed with Scotch tape at the temples. He licked his lips.

"Jimmy, real slow now, grab it by the barrel with your left hand and lay it on the floor. Come on, it's over now."

She could see it working in his eyes before it happened. He stood, whirled, fired a shot through the bathroom door, and Marlene shot him neatly through the right shoulder. He staggered, went down on one knee, still clutching the weapon. He rested the sawn-off butt on the floor. Marlene heard the bolt work, heard the tinkle of the spent round. She rushed forward. His back was toward her, but she could see what he was doing.

"Jimmy, please put it down, please-" she cried, stepping closer, bracing herself to kick the stock of the rifle.

Coleman called out, "I love you, Kelsie!" He had the muzzle under his chin, and when he pulled the trigger, it blew his blood and brains all over Marlene.

Lucy Karp handed the priest, Mike Dugan, a Phillips screwdriver. An associate pastor at Old St. Patrick's on Mulberry Street, he was lying on his back with his hands deep in the entrails of a beat-up Champion UH-100 commercial dishwasher someone had donated to the parish kitchen. St. Pat's was Lucy's regular church, although she had not been by as often in recent months and had switched her volunteer work entirely to Holy Redeemer. A pang of guilt here. Father Dugan had been her main man in the religion area ever since her first communion, and she did not want him to feel abandoned. Or so she imagined. In truth, she was feeling abandoned herself.

Dugan slid out from behind the monster and grinned at her. An odd bird, this one. He was a Jesuit, had been on the staff of the vicar-general in Rome, and then had fallen, badly, no one knew why, ending up as a second fiddle in a pokey New York parish. Brilliant and mysterious, which is why the mother doted on him, and the daughter, too. He had a broad, lumpy Irish face, a shock of black hair, and blue eyes of the kind called penetrating, although they only penetrated on rare occasions. Mostly they skipped over the surface of life with an amused and kindly look, as now.

"I think we got it, kid," he said, standing, stretching, groaning theatrically. "Be a priest, Michael, me dear mother said to me, be a priest and you won't be breaking yer back like yer father and grandfather before ye. And look at me now!"

"Oh, the shame of it, Faather," replied Lucy, falling in with the shtick. "And all for a dishwasher."

"Yes. In the old days, the Church didn't need dishwashers. We had nuns!"

"So ye did, and they were happy to do it, the good sisters. Oh, the holy Church is in a sorry way, Faather."

The priest put his finger to his cheek and applied an impish expression. "Well, we have to see if the blessed thing works, and to do that we need some soiled dishes, do we not? And how do we soil dishes? Why, by eating off them, that's how."

"Ah, Faather, 'twas not for nothing that you read Aquinas for years and years."

The priest walked over to the refrigerator and peered in. "Ah, Mrs. Camillo has left one of her famous chocolate cakes, the lovely woman!"

"Isn't that for the poor, Faather?"

"The poor ye have always with you," said the priest with a dark look. "And we have milk, too."

"Would you be wantin' yer wee drop now, Faather? I wouldn't mind."

"I'll wee drop you on your head, girl. Get us some plates and glasses."

They ate at the table, cake set out on plates, with glasses of milk.

"Ah, this is the fat life, isn't it?" said Dugan, smacking his lips. "Free cake, and no man to say us nay. Sometimes I sympathize with old Luther. We're corrupt to the bone."

The cake was too rich for Lucy's taste, but she ate every crumb, to be companionable. They loaded the dirty stuff into the Champion and threw the switch. The machine gurgled and whirred into life, and Dugan cheered, hugging Lucy.

"Well, now, hasn't this been the grandest day since the cardinal archbishop slipped on a dog turd getting out of his limousine?" Dugan turned to her and looked into her face. The penetration flicked on. "And where have you been hiding yourself, Lucy? We've missed you."

"Oh, going to and fro on the earth," she said lightly. "Mostly around Holy Redeemer, the soup kitchen. Doing some stuff with the homeless."

"Well, good for you." A pause. He smiled. "That's where David Grale works out of, isn't it?"

She swallowed and willed the blush to stay off her cheeks. "I guess. I mean, yes, it is."

Dugan stared at the vibrating dishwasher. "An interesting young man. I understand he's been in some bad places."

"Yes."

"Very romantic, those bad places."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, just that it can become something of a habit. I knew young priests like that in Salvador."

"You were in Salvador? During the war?"

"Yes, I was," he said in a tone that did not encourage curiosity. "Tell me, does he talk about his experiences?"

"No, not really. I mean stuff comes out. I mean we were talking about the mole people, in the tunnels, and someone said they, like, eat human flesh, and he told me about seeing people doing that in Sudan. But he doesn't, like, discourse on it."

Dugan closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "No, he wouldn't. Does he go down in the tunnels?"

"Sometimes, I think. We're looking for someone we know, who might be in trouble."

"This has to do with the poor creature who's murdering the homeless?"

"Yes, the slasher."

"You think this friend of yours might be the slasher." It wasn't a question.

"I don't think so, but the cops are looking for him on it." She dropped her eyes. The penetration intensified.

"And you're simply dying to go down the tunnels with David, aren't you, amid the putative cannibals, to search out a mass murderer and bring him back to God?"

"It's not like that!" Turning sulky. "And he's not a mass murderer. He's just a confused and scared guy."

"Your mother is worried about you, you know that?"

"Yes. But what do you want me to do, stop my life? She's always worried about me, and ninety percent of it is guilt. She thinks I'm going to turn out crazy and violent, like she is."

"She's reformed, you know."

"Hah! Anyway, I can take care of myself. She knows that perfectly well. She imagines I'm in love or something, and I'm going to do something crazy and stupid."