The Sparrow

Emilio must have been in the J-Center office because the reply came back almost immediately. 'Deadly.'

At six that evening, Jimmy started down through the karst hills and forest surrounding the Arecibo telescope site to the coastal city of the same name, and from there drove eastward along the coast road to San Juan. It was twenty after eight before he found a parking spot within sight of El Morro, a huge stone fortress built in the sixteenth century, reinforced later with the massive city wall that surrounded Old San Juan. Then, as now, the wall left the slum of La Perla unprotected, clinging to a strip of beach.

La Perla didn't look too bad when you were standing on the city wall. The houses, tumbling down six or seven levels from the heights to the sea, appeared substantial and fairly large until you knew that, inside, they were all cut into several apartments. Anglos with any kind of sense stayed out of La Perla but Jimmy was big and competent and known to be Emilio's friend, and he was gratified to be greeted now and then as he jogged down the cascade of stairways toward Claudio's tavern.

Sandoz was sitting in the far corner of the bar, nursing a beer. The priest was easy to pick out of a crowd, even when he wasn't in clericals. Conquistador beard, coppery skin, straight black hair that parted naturally in the center and fell over high, wide cheekbones, which narrowed to a surprisingly delicate chin. Small-boned but nicely made. If Sandoz had been assigned to Jimmy Quinn's old parish in South Boston, his exotic looks would surely have drawn the traditional title bestowed on attractive celibates by generations of Catholic girls: Father What-A- Waste.

Jimmy waved to Emilio and then to the bartender, who said hi and sent Rosa over with another beer. Picking up the heavy wooden chair opposite Sandoz and rotating it one-handed, Jimmy sat wrong-way around and folded his arms on the chair back. He smiled up at Rosa as she handed him the beer mug and then pulled a long swallow, Sandoz watching him peaceably from across the table.

'You look tired,' Jimmy remarked.

Sandoz shrugged expressively, momentarily a Jewish grandmother. 'So what else is new?'

'You don't eat enough,' Jimmy said. This was an old routine.

'Yes, Mama,' Sandoz acknowledged obediently.

'Claudio,' Jimmy yelled to the barkeeper, 'get this man a sandwich.' Rosa was already on her way from the kitchen with plates of food for both of them.

'So. You have come all this way to feed me sandwiches?' Sandoz asked. Actually, it was Jimmy who always got tuna sandwiches, bizarrely combined with a double side order of bacalaitos fritos and a half guava in the shell. Rosa knew that the priest preferred beans in sofrito, spooned over rice.

'Somebody's got to do it. Listen, I got a problem.'

'Don't worry, Sparky. I hear you can get shots for it in Lubbock.'

'De Niro,' Jimmy said, wolfing a bite. Emilio made a sound like a game-show buzzer. 'Shit. Not De Niro? Wait. Nicholson! I always get those two guys mixed up.' Emilio never got anybody mixed up. He knew every actor and all the dialogue from every movie since Horse Feathers. 'Okay. Be serious for ten seconds. You ever heard of a vulture?'

Sandoz sat up straight, fork in midair. Professorial now: 'I presume you do not refer to the carrion-eating bird. Yes. I have even worked with one.'

'No kidding,' Quinn said, around his food. 'I didn't know that.'

'There's a lot you don't know, kid,' Sandoz drawled. It was John Wayne, marred only by the barely perceptible Spanish accent that persisted during the quicksilver transformations.

Jimmy, who mostly ignored Sandoz's private games with language, continued to chew. 'You gonna finish that?' he asked, after they'd eaten in silence for a little while. Sandoz swapped his plate for Jimmy's empty one and slumped against the wall again. 'So what was it like?' Jimmy asked. 'Working with the vulture, I mean. They assigned me one at the dish. Do you think I should cooperate? Peggy will have my guts if I do and the Japs will have 'em if I don't, so what's the difference? Maybe I should go for intellectual immortality and devote my life to the poor, which will include me, after the vulture picks my brains and they dump me at Arecibo.'

Sandoz let him roll. Jimmy generally reached his own conclusions by talking, and Sandoz was accustomed to confessional musing. Instead, he wondered how Jimmy could eat so fast and still talk without sucking food into his windpipe.

'So what do you think? Should I do it?' Jimmy asked again, finishing off his beer and using a piece of bread to sop up the sofrito. He waved to Claudio for a second beer. 'You want another?' he asked Sandoz.

Emilio shook his head. When he spoke this time, it was in his own voice. 'Hold out for a while. Tell them you want someone good. Until the vulture does you, you still have some leverage. You have something they want, yes? Once they've got you stored, they don't need you. And if a vulture does a poor job on you, you're immortalized as mediocrity.' Then he was gone again, embarrassed for giving advice, and Edward James Olmos appeared as a pachuco gangster, hissing, 'Horale…ese.'

'Who did you?'

'Sofia Mendes.'

Jimmy's eyebrows shot up. 'Latina?'

Unexpectedly, Sandoz laughed. 'Remotely.'

'Was she good?'

'Yes. Quite. It was an interesting experience.'

Jimmy stared at him, suddenly suspicious. When Emilio said interesting, it was often code for bloodcurdling. Jimmy waited for an explanation but Sandoz simply settled into the corner, smiling enigmatically. There was silence for a little while as Jimmy turned his attention back to the sofrito. The next time he glanced up, it was Jimmy who smiled. Down for the count. Sandoz fell asleep faster than anyone he'd ever met. Anne Edwards claimed the priest had only two speeds, Full Bore and Off.

Jimmy, an insomniac whose mind tended to run on a hamster wheel at night, envied the man's ability to catnap but knew it wasn't just a fortunate quirk of physiology that let Emilio crash at will. Sandoz routinely put in sixteen-hour days; he crashed because he was beat. Jimmy helped out as much as he could and wished sometimes that he lived closer to La Perla, so he could pitch in more often.

There was even a time when Jimmy had considered becoming a Jesuit himself. His parents, second-wave Irish immigrants to Boston, left Dublin before he was born. His mother was never vague about their motive for the move. 'The Old Sod was a backward, Church-ridden Third World country filled with dictatorial, sexually repressed priests sticking their noses into normal people's bedrooms,' she'd declare whenever asked. Despite this, Eileen admitted to being 'culturally Catholic,' and Kevin Quinn held out for Jesuit-run schools for the boy merely on the basis of the discipline and high scholastic standards. They had raised a son with a generous soul, with an impulse to heal hurts and lighten loads, who could not stand idly while men like Emilio Sandoz poured out their lives and energy for others.

Jimmy sat a while longer, thinking, and then went quietly to the debit station, punching in perhaps five times the amount needed to pay for their meals this evening. 'Lunches all week, okay? And watch him while he eats, right, Rosa? Otherwise he'll give the food away to some kid.' Rosa nodded, wondering if Jimmy noticed that he himself had just eaten half of the priest's meal. 'I'll tell you his problem,' Quinn continued, oblivious. 'He's got two-hundred-pound ideas about getting things done, and a hundred and thirty pounds to do it with. He's gonna make himself sick.'

Over in the corner, Sandoz, eyes closed, was smiling. 'Si, Mamacita,' he said, mingling sarcasm with affection. Abruptly, he hauled himself to his feet, yawned and stretched. Together, the two men left the bar and walked out into the soft sea air of La Perla in early spring.

If there was anything that might have strengthened Jimmy Quinn's faith in the ultimate reasonableness of authority, it was the early career of Father Emilio Sandoz. Nothing about it made much sense until you got to the end and saw that the collective mind of the Society of Jesus had been working patiently in a direction mere individuals could not perceive.

Many Jesuits were multilingual but Sandoz more than most. A native of Puerto Rico, he'd grown up with both