middle of Omaha. Nobody looked at the Corporal, no one even came close to him and the place was packed elbow- to-cheek.
The truth came to me slowly, easing into my mind as if through osmosis. “You’re dead, Corporal.”
He smiled. “That’s right, Sergeant.”
Goekenhauer. That was his name. Ben Goekenhauer. “You took a round to the neck, Ben,” I said slowly, almost in a stupor.
“Right again, Mike.” The desert gear was gone, replaced by a navy blue Van Hagar t-shirt and ripped blue jeans.
“Am I dead?”
“Are you?”
The beer slid past my teeth and I gulped at the brew as if it contained the answers I needed. “Don’t feel dead. Feel fine.” Physically I felt great.
“Well, then, Mike. That’s your answer.”
“What are you doing here, Ben?”
The Corporal gently took the cold mug from my hand and took a drink, then gave it back. “Ah, that’s good. I missed beer something awful.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I came to see you, Mike.
A girl bumped into me, a soft hip against my thigh. An innocent looking strawberry blonde in white shorts offered a sweet smile of apology before moving on. The band started up with “Let’s get Rocked
“That girl. I know that girl.”
“Yeah, Mike. You met her here and went home with her when the bar closed.”
I smiled. “That’s right. Jenny … She was so sweet.”
“You dated her for about three months before you realized the calling you felt was for the Church.”
My voice became distant as memories slowly bobbed to the surface. “She cried when I told her. I think she really cared for me, maybe even loved me a little, but she said she understood.”
“She did, Mike, although it broke her heart. A couple of years after you two broke up she met a man named Herrick and married him. They had three kids and, for a while, were happy. She died of breast cancer last year.”
Oh, damn. I felt a lump in my throat for a woman I’d only known for a few months but had cared deeply about-only not as much as I cared for the Lord.
“It was at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church near the river where I heard my calling for the first time,” I mused, mind skipping and jumping like droplets of water on a hot griddle. “Tuesday. Yes, a Tuesday when the traffic was light and the sun was bright. I was fixing to head to Council Bluffs, but I saw that old building and it sang to me.” The memory moved sluggishly through the cotton that shrouded my mind. “I just parked the car and walked in, lost in a world of emotions and thoughts I couldn’t articulate. Pews, the carpet of the nave, nothing registered except the altar and the image of Christ on the cross.” My voice grew thick. “I think that before I even made it to the altar I knew. I knew-the way I knew the feel of desert sand in the palms of my hands-that service to the Lord was my calling, my truth … and I was no longer lost.”
“I like that Sergeant. I really do.” Ben was now dressed in denim shorts, a green t and Converse sneakers.
“Am I dying?”
“Didn’t you just ask me that?”
“No, earlier I asked you if I was dead. Dying is a whole different deck of cards.”
“True, true.” He snagged a cola-drink from a passing waitress, who ignored him just as everyone else did. “No, Sergeant, you’re not dying.”
“Then what is all this?” I gestured to the bar, the people, to the band that was playing “Pour Some Sugar on Me
“I don’t know. This is your place, your construct, not mine. For some reason this place holds significance for you.”
“Hmm. Strange.”
“Listen, Sergeant, I’m here to tell you something. Something important.”
“Is it urgent?”
“Nothing is urgent in this place. Here we are between tick and tock of the clock.”
“Good. Good.” I took a long pull from the still-cold mug. “I want to listen to the music.”
“Sounds good, Sergeant. Sounds good.”
So we listened to classic ’80s rock while drinking cold ones, feet tapping to the beat. The band did a credible job and the crowd was relatively well behaved. It was nice, standing there amid a sea of people who just wanted to have a good time and relax. As for myself, the thought of the real world didn’t intrude on my consciousness, almost as if it couldn’t. There was no urgency, no pain, no Boris.
The house lights came on, the band left the stage and the bartenders hollered out “last call.” A momentary spike of pain, like a flash headache, ran from temple to temple and I knew my brief moment of piece was at an end.
Ben tapped my shoulder. “Ready, Sergeant?”
My heart sank. It was time, I guessed. “Yes, Corporal.”
“Scream, Sergeant. Scream loud and long.”
Scream? “What d-“
Pain, blinding and harsh in my side, a digging, slicing, and hot sear that brought me full out of whatever la-la land I had been in.
Boris’ nasty face was inches from mine and he smiled into the teeth of my agony, enjoying every nerve- twitching moment. “I give you pain you don’t believe, God-man.”
I looked down and nearly gagged. Hands bound behind my back, I was once again in that damn ugly chair placed in the center of the exercise mat that dominated the main floor of the suite. Cold air from the broken window froze the sweat on my naked skin and my Danzinger’s shirt had been torn from my body so I was naked from the waist up. The capper to this whole situation was my left side. Boris had sliced me open a treat and had jammed a pair of pliers into the wound, grasping a rib with the filthy metal. I could
Boris laughed at the horrified look on my face.
“What you say, God-man? What you say now?”
A voice of a comrade came through the fog of pain in my side.
My eye rolled to meet Boris’ mad gaze and I screamed.
Loud and long.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Morgan
Alan fired, but Maggie’s head wasn’t where it had been just a moment before. From the corner of her eye she’d seen the sick greed on Alan’s face, had seen the pistol come up, barrel aimed straight at her head.
Head rocking back, she felt the bullet whisper past her nose, the heat of it making her skin tingle.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” she spat, making a grab for the pistol.
Both apprentices uttered Strength at that same moment. To Maggie, it smelled of oatmeal raisin cookies, to Alan clove cigarettes. Each glared at the other with raw hatred, knowing that only one would leave that elevator alive.
“Why?” grated Maggie, a big hand gripping the barrel of Alan’s weapon, the metal hot against her palm.
Face red, a pulsing vein showing large in his forehead, he answered, “W-what the Valhalla League offered …
