“Certainly.”
The reverend stepped aside to let Farrow pass through, and shut the door behind them. Farrow walked slowly down the center aisle of the church, allowing the Reverend Bob to get in front of him.
“Shall we go to my office?”
“Here is good,” said Farrow, stepping up onto the altar floor. He stood in a bar of light that entered narrowly from a glass panel on the roof and widened as it fell.
“Well… okay,” said the reverend.
Farrow heard a catch in the reverend’s voice.
The reverend stepped up onto the altar and stood beside him. Frank looked at him, immaculate in his starched white shirt.
“That’s a Movado, isn’t it?” said Farrow, nodding at the reverend’s wrist.
“Yes.” The reverend smiled. “I bought it secondhand. Of course, a new Movado is a little dear for a man in my profession.”
“My father owned one of those. He was so proud of it, too. Always shot his cuffs around his friends, made sure they got a good look at it. My brother and I stole it off his dresser one night. I gave it to some street kid outside the Whiskey, over on the Strip.”
The reverend looked at him quizzically. “Why do you mention this, Larry?”
“My father fired our maid the next morning. A Chicano woman with four children. He was paying her twenty- five dollars a day.”
“Larry?”
“My name’s Frank Farrow.”
Farrow took his hands from his coat and dropped them at his sides.
The reverend looked at Farrow’s gloved hands and backed up a step. “What… what do you want?”
“I told you I’d be back. When I make a promise like that, I keep it.” The color drained from the reverend’s face. He looked desperately around the empty church and back at Farrow. He tried to smile and use a tone of sincerity, but his voice shook as it came forth.
“Listen… Frank, is it?”
“Frank Farrow.”
“Frank, I never meant to offend you or infringe on your privacy. I was only looking to bring another person into our congregation. If you were ever incarcerated, it makes no difference to me.”
“You were right on the money, Reverend Bob. I’ve been in one kind of prison or another for the better part of my life.”
“Frank – atonement is everything in the eyes of the Lord. Whatever you did, you served your time.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done. And you shouldn’t have pried.” Farrow reached into his coat and drew the. 38 from where it was holstered in his belt line. “Get on your knees.”
Tears dropped instantly from the reverend’s eyes. He raised his hands as in prayer. His lip trembled violently, but he couldn’t speak.
“On your knees,” said Farrow.
The reverend dropped to his knees on the altar. Urine spread across his crotch and darkened the thighs of his slacks. The stench of it grew heavy in the church.
“Are you afraid?” asked Farrow.
The reverend nodded.
“It’s funny,” said Farrow, looking down at him. “I find that those the most afraid are those who believe in God. The same ones who hide their eyes at horror movies are the ones who bow their heads in a place like this. And for what? Something that does not, cannot, exist.”
“Please,” said the reverend.
“Your journey is just beginning,” said Farrow with a smile. “You’re going to a better place. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling those old people out at the home, the ones who are about to die?”
“Yes, but -”
“But, what?”
The reverend looked up at Farrow with bloodshot eyes. “What if I was wrong?”
Farrow laughed. His laughter echoed in the church and then it was erased by the deafening explosion of the. 38. The reverend’s hair lifted briefly from his scalp and fragments of his brain sprayed out across the altar. He fell back; his head made a flat, hollow sound as it hit the wooden floor. A widening pool of blood spread behind it.
Farrow stood over the reverend and shot him again in the side of the face. He walked from the church.
Farrow drove a half mile down Old Church Road in the opposite direction of the interstate until he reached Lee Toomey’s house at the edge of the woods. Toomey was loading some cable wire into his utility truck as Farrow pulled the Ranger into the yard. Toomey’s eyes clouded when he saw that it was Farrow behind the wheel. He noticed the light yellow gloves on Farrow’s hands as Farrow stepped out of the truck and crossed the yard.
“Lee.”
“Frank. Thought you left town.”
“I didn’t. Where’s that family of yours?”
“Martin’s playin’ that TV game of his. My wife and daughter are in the kitchen, I’d expect.”
“Let’s walk into those woods a bit.”
Toomey spit tobacco juice to the side. “Why would we need to do that?”
“We won’t be but a minute. C’mon.”
They went in through a trail and then off the trail until they were out of the house’s sight line. Toomey leaned against the trunk of a pine and regarded Farrow as he lit a cigarette.
Farrow let the Kool dangle from his mouth. He pulled the. 38 and tossed it to Toomey. Toomey caught it and stared back at Farrow.
“I just used that on the Reverend Bob, back in the church. Blew the top of his head off, right up there on the altar. That’s a real efficient weapon you gave me, Lee.”
“Thought I heard a shot,” said Toomey slowly, not taking his eyes off Farrow’s.
“What you need to do now,” said Farrow, “is get over there with some cleaning supplies. I wouldn’t wait for the blood to get too dried in. Scrub that altar down real good and drive the reverend out to that nature preserve we talked about. I was you, I’d bury him up there. Ground’ll be hard, but not too hard. You can thank this mild winter for that. Then I’d throw your gun in the bay, seeing as how it’s got your prints all over it.”
“You,” said Toomey.
Farrow chuckled. “You know, for a moment there I saw the old Toomey in your eyes. Now, that was one bad-ass boy. Getting the Jesus into you, though, it really tripped you up. You and I both know how soft you are now. You’d never make any kind of play on me.”
“That’s right, Frank. I never would.”
Farrow dragged on his smoke. “But just to make sure, I ought to let you know that I’m not going to be far away. I’ve got a little business to take care of up in Washington, D.C., probably keep me in this part of the country for the next couple of weeks. If I even get an idea that you’ve been talking to the law about me, Lee, I want you to remember that I’m just an hour and a half away. I can easily get down here and make a visit to that beautiful family of yours. Or I could pay someone else to do the same. And I’d never forget. Do you understand?”
Toomey felt his blood ticking and his head grow hot. He hadn’t had this feeling for a long while, but it was a familiar feeling, nonetheless. He wanted to kill Farrow right now. He could kill him right now.
Toomey said, “I understand, Frank.”
“Good. You’ll be okay if you move fast and leave nothing behind. The reverend leaving town, well, it happens. Folks’ll just figure he was throwing it to one of the parishioner’s wives. Anyway, you bury him deep enough and they’ll never find him.”
“I’ll do it.”
Farrow looked at Toomey. “See you around, Lee.”
Farrow dragged on his cigarette, dropped it on a bed of pine needles, and crushed it beneath his boot. He walked out of the woods and straight to the truck. Toomey stayed behind, the gun in one hand, the other picking at his beard.
Later that night, when Toomey had finished his task, he phoned Manuel Ruiz at the garage outside D.C.
