Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

Father Milichuk sat up very straight on his narrow bench, his mind snapping into sharp focus. He was no longer aware of the throbbing in his head. Panicked, he tried to think of a response, but his tongue was dry as paper and stuck to the roof of his mouth. There was a rustling sound from the other side of the confessional, as though the man were removing something from a plastic bag. Crazy, improbable thoughts darted through the priest’s head. What if he brought a gun with him? His knees shook as fear flooded his veins. Say something! He tried to remember if he had ever heard this voice before.

“Aren’t you going to give me penance, Father?” The man’s tone was patient, weary.

The priest was very good at identifying voices and was certain he had never heard this man’s voice before.

“Uh, yes, of course,” he sputtered finally. “Say twelve Hail Marys —” He stopped, stunned by the feeble inadequacy of his response.

The man on the other side of the booth chuckled sadly. “That’s all?”

“H-have you confessed your sin to the police?”

“I’m confessing it to you.”

“Yes, I know, but —”

“I don’t want to go to prison.”

“Who did you — kill?”

“It doesn’t matter. I took a life; that’s all I’m required to tell you. Give me absolution, Father. Please.”

“It’s just that —”

“Please.” It was half entreaty, half threat.

The priest looked at the lattice of shadow cast by the metal grille between them, crisscrossed like miniature prison bars.

“All right,” he said. “But —”

“Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet,” the man began, “me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando …”

He finished his flawless Latin recitation with a final “Amen.”

“Now will you give me absolution?”

Father Milichuk could see no way out of it. Crossing himself, he began to recite the familiar litany.

“May our Lord Jesus Christ absolve you —”

“In Latin, Father — please.”

The priest crossed himself again. His head throbbed, and his palms were sweating.

“Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat …” The words seemed to stick in his throat. He coughed and managed to complete the prayer, crossing himself one final time. But he failed to find the usual comfort in the gesture; it felt futile, desultory.

“Thank you, Father.” The man sounded genuinely grateful. Whatever else he was, the priest thought, he was a true Catholic who believed in the power of absolution.

“Say twelve Hail Marys,” he began, “and —”

“I will, Father — thank you. God bless you.”

“God be with you, my son.”

Before the priest could say another word, he heard the door hinges creak open, then the sound of rapidly receding footsteps on the stone floor of the church. Father Milichuk peered out through a hole in the carved design of the door, but the lighting was dim and all he could make out was the figure of a man dressed in dark clothing walking quickly away. Medium height, medium build; he could be anyone.

One thing the priest was certain of was that the mysterious supplicant was a Roman Catholic, not Greek. His perfect Latin was spoken in the Roman way, and he had said “I have sinned” rather than “I am a sinner,” which was the Greek manner. But why had he come here? St. George was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic church; surely this man had a Roman Catholic church he attended regularly. The answer came to Aleksander Milichuk suddenly: The man had chosen a place where he wouldn’t be known. His own priest was bound to recognize his voice and would perhaps pressure him to turn himself in. Here, he was guaranteed anonymity.

The priest sighed and leaned back in the cramped cubicle, which smelled of stale sweat and candle wax. He put a hand to his temple in an attempt to control the throbbing. What did it matter who the man was or where he was from? Aleks wasn’t a detective, and it wasn’t his job to hunt the man down. He felt the full weight of the sinner’s guilt upon his own shoulders. Perhaps that was what God intended — maybe he was doing his priestly duty now more than ever before, but the thought made him feel only more anxious.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of meaningless activity. There were parishioners to call, schedules to arrange, events to discuss — choir practice, the Wednesday-night church supper, vendors for the annual Ukrainian festival. He wished he could drown himself in the barrage of mundane details, but all he could think of was the terrible secret he would be forced to carry to his grave. He considered the idea that the man was lying, but rejected that hopeful notion. Either he was telling the truth or he was the best actor in the world.

Aleks gazed idly out the window, but even the sight of the white blossoms on the mimosa trees failed to cheer him up. He sat at his desk staring blankly, his head buzzing with apprehension. Normally he would now start writing his sermon for next week’s service, but he was unable to concentrate.

His secretary, the ever-intrusive Mrs. Kovalenko, noticed his mood.

“Are you feeling all right, Father?” she asked, one hand on her plump hip, the other clutching a freshly filled teapot. Mrs. Kovalenko was a great believer in the healing power of tea, and she had the persuasive ability of a used-car salesman combined with a Mafia enforcer. If she wanted to serve you tea, there was little you could do about it. He had briefly considered firing her for the sake of his bladder, but Mrs. Kovalenko was not the kind of woman you fired, so he had resigned himself to frequent visits to the bathroom.

“I’m fine,” he replied, but his heart wasn’t in it, and she continued to stand there studying him. “I just have a headache,” he added when she didn’t move.

She shook her dyed blond curls and clicked her tongue, then she brightened. “A good cup of tea is what you need,” she proclaimed. “Straighten you right out.”

“That would be nice,” he replied; at least it might throw her off the scent for a while. She had nagged him about his drinking in the past, but he had cut down recently — partly because of the headaches. She busied herself gathering the honey and cream, bustling about the office happily humming a Ukrainian folk song. He knew she didn’t speak a word of the language, but she liked to impress people with her knowledge of the culture, and had picked up a few songs and phrases here and there.

“I just bought this tea last week,” she said as she poured him a steaming cup from the ornate ceramic pot, decorated with chubby, beaming angels. She had found it at the weekly yard sale on Avenue A and had presented it to him with great pride. Father Milichuk gazed at an especially porcine angel and sighed. He hated angels. The angel leered at him with a self-satisfied smirk; he yearned to smash the pot and erase the grin from its fat little face.

He made a point of telling Mrs. Kovalenko how delicious the tea was. “What’s it called?” he said, taking a sip and smacking his lips.

“It’s Russian caravan!” she declared, clapping her hands with delight. “From the new tea store around the corner. I’m so glad you like it.”

In truth, it tasted like turpentine. But nothing tasted good right now, not even the butter cookies from the Polish bakery he usually adored. Still, to make Mrs. Kovalenko happy (and less suspicious), he choked down several cookies with his tea. They tasted like dust.

And yet when evening came, he left the church reluctantly. It would be even worse at home, when he had no happily bustling secretary, only his aged and morose mother. His father used to joke that his mother cooked like a Ukrainian but had the disposition of a Russian, dour and depressive, with occasional flights of high-spirited gaiety. She could be giddy as a schoolgirl, but her physical complaints could fill a medical dictionary. If it wasn’t the lumbago in her back, it was the arthritis in her knees. She also enjoyed regaling Aleks with the health problems of her friends at the senior center. Illness was her chief conversational topic, and her eyes would brim with tears of delight as she reported the latest grim pronouncements her friends had received from various medical professionals.

“Do you know that Mrs. Danek’s doctor told her that her heart valve could just pop like a grape? Like a grape, Sasha!” she would say, her eyes wide with amazement. She addressed him by his