Dying Declaration by Ann Marie Potter
Dying Declaration by Ann Marie Potter
It was a murder that could have happened in any city in America. It was a tragedy and because it happened in suburban Las Vegas it was potentially both tragic and tacky. Picture Edvard Munch’s The Scream hanging in a strip club. Anyway, as the story goes, three kids from the country club set go golfing on a beautiful autumn afternoon; testosterone and egos run amok, and one kid drops dead on the ninth with a bullet hole through the throat. Hoopla ensues because, like many cities in America, the majority population doesn’t believe that White, affluent kids should ever die from bullet wounds. But money can’t stop the human heart from shattering. One boy was dead and another—a kid who’d never touched a gun in his life—was being set up to rot in a prison in the middle of the Nevada desert. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not if my brother and I had anything to say about it.
Julian
It was Good Friday and, for the first time in years, I wasn’t in church. Instead, I was in an asparagus-colored room in a hope-you’ve-had-your-shots hotel in downtown Vegas—playing gin-rummy with a guy named Frank who had shed everything but his boxers and his wristwatch. He had a lot of nervous habits, but my least favorite was cracking his toes. Every once in a while he pinched his own nipples with shaking hands, and I knew instinctively that he’d be the guy in the grocery store line buying Geritol and vodka. Poor dear man, I had no trouble picturing him at home, masturbating under the watchful eye of an aging parrot.
Before anybody asks if Frank and I were in a relationship—carnal or otherwise—we were not. Frank was in his shorts because the room was pushing ninety degrees. The air conditioner had wheezed its last in the middle of the night and the Briar Patch’s maintenance man had been on a bender since 1967. I was fully dressed because I’d had an interesting life and all manner of scars to show for it. By our fifth round of rummy, Frank’s toes were going off like pistol shots and his left nipple looked like it was about to bleed. Just for the record, “sequestered jury” is code for slumber party from hell.
I sighed and felt the heat drag my eyelids toward their lower terminus. Time for an early evening nap. Right as I lay down, I heard the bells of St. Sebastian’s ring for the five-thirty mass and was momentarily filled with a ghastly sadness. We were only four blocks from that aging stone cereal box of misery and hope. It was my home, and I loved the parishioners of St. Sebastian’s, the whole quirky, cantankerous lot of them. Which was only right since I was their priest.
I’ll start the story from the beginning by saying that, if you live in Las Vegas and have a twin brother named Domenick Vanucci, eventually you are going to end up standing on top of a toilet seat in the Clark County Courthouse. It was Nicky that had gotten the jury summons. During voir dire, he’d tried to beg off, citing a conflict of interest, but the grizzled veteran from the District Attorney’s office was having none of it. No doubt he expected a world-weary private investigator to lean heavily toward the hang-‘em-high attitude that had long infected the circulatory system of the local judiciary. But he didn’t know my brother. When he’d become a private investigator a decade ago, he adopted a bit of the noir swagger (minus the misogyny and racial slurs), but the bluster was about as genuine as the fog billowing across the Copperfield stage. Nicky was kind, full of grace. He would have made a spectacular holy man.
My brother also has nearly prophetic instincts. By the time the judge had sent him home to pack his tighties and toothbrush, he knew the trial was going to go south, harpooning an innocent kid in the process. I’d been in a budget meeting, phone off in deference to the world’s crankiest trustee, so by the time I got his message, Nicky was being sworn onto the jury and sworn to secrecy. That left Nicky in a pickle but, as usual, he had a plan worthy of the Scooby gang, and I would be going along for the ride in the Mystery Machine.
They say that twins have their own secret language and that’s certainly true of my brother and me. We also had lots of practice using our identical faces to switch lives at opportune moments. (We can’t all remember the finer points of the driver’s manual.) That’s why I had no problem interpreting my brother’s cryptic text: Fr nn CCC 1stflwbath out5. And that’s how I ended up standing on a toilet in the first floor (west) bathroom of the Clark County Courthouse. It was Friday, just before the noon lunch hour, when the jury would be hustled off to a private dining room and fed whichever fast food they’d voted for at breakfast. Those who couldn’t hold their urine long enough to make the strenuous hundred-yard journey to the basement would be given a potty break in the company of a hulking sheriff’s deputy. When the deputy ushered my brother into the bathroom, Nicky stood in front of my stall to keep the cop from pushing the door open. Satisfied with the legless expanse showing below the portal, the deputy left to station himself outside the bathroom. My brother and I got down to the business of well-intentioned deceit.
“My sermon for Easter is on my desk,” I said, giving Nicky my keys and phone. “Try not to…. freelance so much.”
“Freelance?” He was adjusting my clothing to match his, right down to the knot on the tie and the double knots on the oxfords. (Some of us have shoe-lace insecurity.) We had eight outfits that were identical in every detail. Outfit number five was Tommy Hilfiger’s take on charcoal courtroom casual.
“David and Jubal did not get married and live happily ever after.”
Domenick shrugged, “I thought it made for a nice story.”
“It would have, except that David and Jubal were both guys. You and I may be okay with that particular interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, but the Penderhaven sisters were both bug-eyed and apoplectic when they stormed the Office of the Bishop.”
A half-minute later, Nicky was standing on the toilet and staring down at me. “I really appreciate this, Julian. This kid’s a mess, but he doesn’t belong in a prison cell. I have to put it right.”
“I know you do,” I said softly. Clearing my throat, I said “I have Father Corbin coming in to administer the Sacraments on Easter morning. He’s a little too far along the path to preach a homily, but he should remember the Communion Rites. Even if he flubs it, the congregation won’t mind. They miss him. I have subs for the Masses on Monday and Tuesday, so I can give you until Wednesday at noon—but no later. I have a two o’clock with the bishop.”
Domenick grinned. “You don’t trust me to meet with the Most Reverend Thomas Litch?”
I tried not to shudder. “No. And don’t gamble the poker chips from the collection plate unless you can cover the bet.”
Domenick
Whenever I start to question my life choices, I reflect on how much time I spend in the can. Clandestine meetings, hushed conversations, ransom drops. People with an aversion to urinals should never become private investigators. But my switch with Julian had me walking across the parking lot about the time the jury was tucking into their Chalupa Supremes. I was never sad to leave the Clark County Courthouse, an ugly 1950s-era concrete and steel box situated in a downtown grifter’s corridor dotted with bail-bondsmen and law offices. Turn left and you pass the casino formerly owned by Teddy Binion, whose bizarre murder led to one of the city’s most absurd trials. Turn right and pass the charred rubble of the downtown flophouse where six hapless residents recently died in a middle-of-the-night conflagration. The owner of that fleabag would be in litigation for decades to come. On their lunch breaks, courthouse employees can walk to both the mob and cannabis museums. Luckily, Las Vegans are immune to both irony and idiocy.
Julian had been kind enough to leave a Roman collar on the seat of the car and my Glock in the trunk. Although my armpit felt naked, I left it there. I didn’t want to give any gung-ho Metro cop a reason to drag me toward a fingerprint kit. Julian and I had similar fingerprints, but they weren’t identical. Switching driver’s licenses was easy, but if I got busted with the wrong skin on my fingertips, Julian and I would be sharing a cell by ten p.m. bed-check. I was still pissed that I hadn’t been able to talk my way out of jury duty. Mostly. When you’re a sap like me, anything can turn into a moral dilemma. I usually try and do the right thing, no matter how sketchy it looks on paper. For example, the cops don’t need to know about the homeless kids that move into the Serene Street library branch every night. What am I, neighborhood watch? Besides, once in a while I believed in Julian’s God, and this was shaping up to be one of those times. My jury summons could have gotten lost in the mail, but it wasn’t. I could have bred Labradoodles for a living, but I didn’t. I had the skillset, experience, and instincts to do the right thing. One look at the kid in the defendant’s chair and I’d known he was guilty of being nineteen and arrogant and nothing more. He sure as hell wasn’t a killer.
My place was off-limits, so I headed for St. Sebastian’s. Built in the 40s, St. Seb’s was one of the oldest churches in a very young city. Surrounded by a garden of wild roses and grimy cards advertising “Girls, Girls, Girls” blown in by last night’s desert wind, the twenty-foot statue of the saint, destined to be perforated by a slew of arrows, wore an expression of baffled expectation. Maybe he knew what was coming, or maybe he was trying to shake off the plastic grocery bag that had wrapped itself around his outstretched hand. Oblivious to the dilemma of its namesake saint, the church stood, seemingly unfazed by the hell-in-a-handbag destiny of the world around it. Strength and beauty—solid stone with delicately carved detail—I thought it suited my brother perfectly. He wouldn’t have survived our life without strength, but he couldn’t live without beauty. Freeing the saint from his makeshift plastic glove and vowing to spend part of the weekend picking up the porn slappers’ calling cards, I parked myself in Julian’s rectory apartment and fired up his Dell. It was time to gather data and educate myself on the murder of Tristen Gallagher. There was no shortage of footage—the case had been opening newscasts for months. But it had a Vegas twist that the news ghouls didn’t articulate in their breathless coverage. In the minds of long-term Valley residents, the two suspects in the case had come to represent the seemingly never-ending battle between old and new Las Vegas. Twenty-one-year-old Randolph Ellis was the heir apparent to the Cordero-Ellis family gambling vaults and therefore casino royalty. Justin Wheats’ daddy, on the other hand, owned one of the biggest grow operations in the state. Las Vegans had long turned a patient, maternal eye on the rebellious fledglings of gaming moguls. The dope Kings and their dopey kids, however, were a new breed of animal. More often than not, they were seen as an invasive species from the snobbish environs of SoCal.
No surprise, Ellis and Wheats had made detailed statements accusing each other of the killing. For reasons that would take hours to explain—our mother was thoroughly enjoying her new pool—I was somewhat acquainted with the detectives on the homicide team investigating the Gallagher shooting. I had no doubt that they were two days into a spirited bout of betting—casino kid vs. dope kid—when a surprise witness popped up like a drowned roach in Julian’s communion wine. (Don’t ask.) Forty-eight-year-old Alex Maynard, the evening valet at the Miracle Links Golf Club, suddenly remembered seeing a pistol tucked into the waistband of one of the kids earlier in the week. The gun, expensive but untraceable, had been found in a water hazard. After an afternoon in the silty water, no prints were found except, one might suspect, those from tiny turtle toes. Thus, it seemed that the District Attorney’s case rested solely on Maynard’s testimony, which was hard to ignore:
“I remember the kid because his hair was the same color as his 450: red.”
Justin Wheats, who augmented his genetic ginger with strawberry rose highlights, was arrested within the hour.
Julian
When I woke from my Good Friday nap, Frank was gingerly feeling around in the space between his mattress and box springs. I tried to guess what would get him first, a dirty syringe left over from the nineties or an angry spider.
“You’re a P.I.,” Frank whispered, “Do you think this place is bugged?”
I said nothing but cast a meaningful glance at the alcove that housed the sink, towels, tissues, shampoo bottles, and soap slivers supplied by the hotel. I had no doubt that the place had plenty of bugs, just none of them electronic. But it was a lie worthy of a Hail Mary or two if it kept Frank from discussing the case, which was high on the list of jury-duty faux pas. Not that I was scrupulous about following arbitrary rules; I just wouldn’t have been able to bluff my way through a conversation about the case. Frank had the benefit of sitting in the courtroom for two days. I only knew what I’d learned from Channel 7 News.
Frank and I dined in, courtesy of Shanghai Shelly’s and a deputy whose uniform pockets bulged with extra soy sauce, chop-sticks, and fortune cookies. We’d been stripped of all personal electronics and the television set had been removed from the room, so Frank and I resorted to reading while we ate. We were allowed two cocktails per evening, at our own expense. I abstained, but Frank drank his like a man crawling through the mangroves in the Dry Tortugas. His hands stopped shaking instantly and that made me sad.
Frank was reading what was left of the Review-Journal. Anything even remotely pertaining to the trial had been sliced out and the newspaper looked like a slasher victim. Normally, I’d be reading the Church Fathers on a Sunday evening, but I was stuck with Julian’s tastes in literature. I quickly gave up on The Private Investigator’s Guide to Income Tax Deductions, but the latest Jonathan Kellerman novel hit the psychological thriller spot.
Occasionally, Frank wandered over to the sink area to examine the towel racks and built-in tissue holder. I had no doubt that he would have the place dismantled within a day or so. I found myself staring out the window, waiting for twilight and the rebirth of night in a sleepless city. Say what you want about Vegas, it will always be beautiful to me. We were four floors up, closer to the bulbs that outshone the stars, parallel with the neon columns that slid down the sides of buildings like electric ivy. Vegas at night had always been a cathedral for me. I prayed for Justin Wheats and Randolph Ellis and for the half dozen kids in my congregation who were dangling over an early grave.
Then I felt the stab of fear I always feel when I couldn’t talk to my brother, couldn’t be sure he was safe. It was the gnawing dread I felt when my father locked me out of the bedroom so he and Nicky could have some “private” time. Maybe this time it would go too far, too wide, and the seeping of self wouldn’t stop. My father would come back into the living room to watch football and I’d find Nicky dissolving into the sheets. In the Latin, my brother’s name means “belonging to God.” I knew someday I’d have to give him back, but I wasn’t ready—would never be ready. When he stopped existing, so would I. I brushed my teeth with Nicky’s toothbrush and went to bed, not surprised at the tears that came suddenly and steadily. I needed to be back in my room at the rectory, letting Pentatonix re-break and mend my heart. But most of all, I needed my brother.
Domenick
Despite the whacks that life had given me, or maybe because of them, I’d been an arrogant young man. In another life, I would have chased tornados or been the ghost hunter who yelled obscenities at the demons. As it was, I’d blindly chased more than one armed Cretan into a dark place. It took one especially close call and a bullet two inches from my heart to realize I’d been operating with a death wish. It was Julian’s pale and tearstained face above my hospital bed that had turned things around for me. Justin Wheat’s arrogance probably hadn’t lasted past his first few minutes in jail. The last time I saw him, it seemed like the kid had mentally and emotionally evaporated, leaving a ginger-topped oyster shell behind. The red highlights were gone in an effort to tone down the reverberating finality of Alex Maynard’s sworn statement. And it would be the final statement from the golf-club valet. He had given the deposition from his bed at the Mary River’s Home and Hospice and died four hours later. The prosecution insisted on calling it “Maynard’s dying declaration,” which seemed to make it somehow unassailable.
There is an antiquated logic that assumes that a dying man will always tell the truth, knowing that he will be meeting God soon. That supposition takes a whole lot for granted—that the man believes in God and cares what he thinks and, more relevant than ever in today’s society, that the man could discern truth from fiction. It was a legally flawed concept because the defendant’s right to confront his accuser went down the road in a coroner’s van or hearse. Alex Maynard had effectively damned a nineteen-year-old boy with his dying words. But why? The logical answer was money, but Maynard had been in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, an illness that accelerated the death march to a flat-out run. I set off for Mary River’s Home and Hospice to find out exactly how much it cost to die in Las Vegas.
Mary Rivers had partaken of her own services decades earlier, but her daughter Ruby had inherited both her business and her kindness. She surely wasn’t in the pain and death industry for profit. Even without insurance, the hospice services would have been affordable to most and my guess is that she had never turned anyone away and never would. As I hoped, the Roman collar circling my throat helped her relax—two people well acquainted with the many nuances of watching people die. It was hard for me to lie to this nice old lady with paper skin and shaking chin waddle, but then I thought of a red-haired boy in a concrete box. I sipped my rooibos tea and lied like a dog.
“Alex Maynard visited my parish once or twice and I had the sense that he was…searching. I’m hoping you can tell me if he went in peace.”
I could tell she was thinking about lying to me and liked her all the more. But she sighed deeply and shook her head. “He had terrible nightmares, loud nightmares, despite the fact that his system was saturated with fentanyl.”
“What sort of nightmares?”
“He yelled about being on fire, of feeling his skin and bones burn. Of his eyes and lips bursting into flame. We had his doctor in several times and he was positive it wasn’t related to the cancer or the meds. He was sure it was a purely psychological fear.”
A picture was starting to wiggle its way into my mind. It landed with a thud. “Was Alex cremated?”
“Oh no,” Ruby Rivers said. “He was adamant….” She stopped speaking suddenly, her widening eyes barely holding on to their tears. “Oh, have mercy, I never thought of that.”
“He’s long ago outrun his nightmares,” I said softly. “Do you know where he’s buried?”
“Mercy Meadows. I was here when they picked him up.”
I left her thinking about the peace that death might bring for a man like Alex Maynard. On the way out the door, I emptied Julian’s wallet into the donation box. Anyone who helps people die a painless, fearless death should be canonized instantly when their own running shoes came off.
Our father made a pit-stop at Mercy Meadows on his way to hell. Julian and I had been navigating our way through our first foster home and missed the funeral. As teenagers, we’d gone over the wall a half dozen times, Julian staring at the grave and shaking while I made water onto the old man’s final resting place. It was an ugly cemetery, the owners resisting the county ordinance mandating desert landscaping. Despite its browning grass and thirsty trees, however, Mercy Meadows was at the posh end of the Las Vegas death industry. Alex Maynard had paid a fortune to avoid the furnace.
The cemetery’s find-a-grave computer was in an alcove beside the office, a little kiosk that made me think of the gourmet popcorn stand at the mall. I took the time to walk to G19, where I learned nothing from Alex Maynard’s rose-colored headstone. He’d been fifty-two when his pancreas had snuffed him—the middle of life. I’d long ago grown comfortable with conflicting emotions, but today’s fight was fierce. I was profoundly angry at Maynard for erasing an innocent kid’s future. But I also understood how utter terror could reorganize every molecule of your mind and body. Nothing mattered but escape, a pregnant mare tangled in an electric fence—or a little boy trapped in a bedroom with a naked monster. I left Alex Maynard to molder in his box and went to see an old friend.
Milton Huber had exactly one-half of a Fu Manchu. Really. The left side of his face hosted a perfectly shaped tendril that extended a full inch below his jaw. The right side was clean as a flesh-colored mirror.
“Nice collar,” he said, looking up from his workbench.
“Nice moustache.” I’m not particularly squeamish about death, but I was glad that the Grace Meadows undertaker was working on a Quarter Pounder instead of someone’s grandmother. “How’s Carla?” We’d all been in school together and when Milton’s sister had married a Metro officer with wandering eyes and savage fists, I’d helped her disappear long enough for him to drink and drive himself to death.
“She’s great. The kids are great. I owe you one.”
“And I’m here to collect. Alex Maynard.”
“I thought that might be it.”
“I’m assuming Daddy Ellis paid the tab. How was the money delivered? Shadow bank account? Five years of free rooms and buffets? Black duffle bag?”
Milton shook his head. “My Little Pony.”
“I’m sorry?”
Milton pointed a greasy finger at a small pink and purple gift bag on a side counter.
I stepped forward and peered at the bag. Adorable. “You had a party and didn’t invite me?”
“I knew you were a Bambi man. One of Ellis’s men dropped it off.”
“How much?”
“Fourteen grand and some change. Cost of the penthouse suite in the dirt hotel.”
I leaned over the bag. Good surface for prints. I looked inside. “What are those little white thingies?
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Probably not.”
“Eye caps. They keep a corpse’s eyes from sinking back in the head. They also prevent the eyes from popping open during the funeral.”
“You must be a riot at cocktail parties, Milton. I have to make a phone call. Don’t touch that pony.”
Julian
By Saturday afternoon, Frank had all the towel racks down and was doing his best to peer through them like periscopes. I was trying not to think of what might live within the walls, what might escape into the room through the screw-holes. The Briar Patch Hotel and Casino had been collecting stories and nests of many-legged creatures since 1947. Cedrick Briar had emigrated from Eureka, Missouri, bringing a young family and ready cash made in some long-term cons and short and shady deals. Although the Briars coexisted easily with the mid-century Vegas lineup of movers, money-makers, mobsters and knee-breakers, they did so on seriously shaky mental ground. In 1956, the family really started to wobble when the matriarch, Melinda Tonguely Briar stabbed a steak-house waitress in the throat with a corn-cob holder. Four months later, Cedrick Sr. died of a heart attack in an unlicensed brothel in North Las Vegas. The family’s only daughter was notorious for stealing anything in a certain shade of green and spent her days prowling the olive and pickle aisle at the Grocery Magic on Maryland Parkway. When Cedrick’s namesake son died in a perplexing bathroom explosion, son-number-two sprinted to the helm. Melvin Briar moved into the penthouse, hired a squad of goons to root out any remaining union troublemakers, and replaced the entire dealing staff with just-21 Asian girls to exploit the mostly-male clientele’s Geisha fantasies.
When the jury sequester contract came up for grabs in the eighties, Melvin grabbed, finally seeing a use for the hotel’s more unrentable section, smoke damage and cat pee be damned. Recent rumors had it that he was petitioning the Nevada Legislature, the Clark County Zoning Commission, the Gaming Board, and God, for permission to have a dispensary put in beside the buffet and to be the first casino in America to allow their patronage to gamble in a herbaceous haze. Not surprisingly, people had already started calling the place Briar’s Pot Patch.
Frank had worn himself out taking down the ceiling tiles and was making Pomeranian squeaks in his sleep. I was staring out the window and thinking about Justin Wheats. He seemed to be turning into a cinnabrite monument at the defendant’s table. If breathing hadn’t been an automatic function, he wouldn’t have bothered, and we would have seen him flop out onto the floor. I prayed that God would calm his mind and stay his hand long enough for Nicky to get him out of this mess. Many in my faith believe that suicide is unpardonable because it leaves no time for repentance. As if we all didn’t have layers of grunge and darkness hanging off us like sheaths of roasted skin. If we wanted a chance to truly repent before we died, we would need to plan our deaths weeks in advance. If we believe that Jesus died in agony, we have to believe that he understands hopelessness and how human it is to give up when the pain seems permanent. I fell asleep praying for Nicky and thinking of all the ways he could mangle the Easter story. I hoped the Penderhaven sisters were taking their blood pressure meds.
Domenick
“Like many of us, baffled in our everyday lives, I have no doubt that the angel at the tomb scratched his head and said, ‘Dude’s gone, man.’ But Jesus wasn’t gone long…” Behind the Penderhaven sisters, who were turning a pleasant shade of purple, a man was grinning like a sinister pixie in an overgrown English garden. He was wearing a well-cut olive-green suit that didn’t quite hide the gun bulge. Las Vegas has its fair share of idiots with badges, but Detective Sargent Stephen Balaskas wasn’t one of them. We’d met last year when Julian and I had put in a swimming pool for our mother. In the process we’d discovered that not everybody got a penthouse suite in the dirt hotel.
I’d been careful not to touch anything at the cemetery. I’d used Julian’s cell to make my anonymous call to the detective’s bureau, knowing they would trace it. I wanted an update and figured that the cops would come visiting. I wished each parishioner well as they left, delivered Father Corbin back to his nurse, and went to join Detective Balaskas in the now-silent nave. One look at the merry mischief in his eyes told me everything. He knew exactly who I was and found the whole situation absolutely hilarious.
“I knew Maynard had lied, but I couldn’t find the money. What led you to the cemetery?”
“A really nice old lady surrounded by death.”
Detective Balaskas nodded. “Ruby Rivers. I didn’t get too much out of her.”
“You weren’t wearing one of these,” I said, pulling at the collar around my throat. It was starting to choke. Or maybe it was all the responsibilities that came attached to it. Julian spent half his life visiting hospitals and jails and the other half behind the pulpit or standing over fresh graves. I suddenly missed my brother terribly. “Maynard was terrified of being cremated, which led me to the box and backhoe option.”
Stephen Balaskas winced. “Fear can make us do awful things. Well, that answers the why.”
“Did you get what you needed from Milton Huber?”
The detective smiled and I knew he was picturing half a Fu Manchu. “Served the warrant myself. Ellis’s delivery service, a longtime felon named Walter Sayers, froze up until I threatened to fingerprint his six-year-old granddaughter.”
“Our little Pink Pony fan?”
Balaskas nodded. “Birthday party. Anyway, Sayers told us everything, but he’ll either waffle or disappear if this ever came to trial.”
“If?”
“I called the DA at home, told him his rock-solid case was doing a swirly in the bowl. When he was done stroking out, he told me Ellis will probably never be nailed for witness tampering. He’s got the mayor, the governor, and Senator Casey on speed dial. I’m not sure anyone’s going to want to tangle with that. The good news is that the Wheats kid will be bounced first thing tomorrow morning. I stopped by and gave him the good news.
“And Randy Ellis?”
“I won’t be holding my breath on an indictment. Not that I’m heartbroken about that. Three kids who’d learned everything they know about guns from a screen and a joystick. Young, high, and stupid—nobody should go to prison for that.”
I smiled, relieved not to be the only sap in the room. “Thank you. I know my brother will be grateful as well. Locked up in Briar’s Pot Patch with a total stranger, he’s probably ready to head over the wall, with or without a grappling hook.”
Detective Balaskas allowed himself a brief fit of chortling. “I’m sure you’re right. But you went a bit beyond the call of duty, too, Father Vanucci.
“It’s something they teach us in seminary, Detective. Always ask ourselves, ‘What would Jesus do?’” I did my best to look saintly, but Stephen Balaskas was already heading out the Holy Door, laughing like a drunken hyena.
Julian
On Monday morning, we weren’t in the courtroom twenty minutes when all charges against Justin Wheats were dismissed, and we were sent off with the court’s thanks. Back at the hotel, I helped Frank reassemble the room, packed Nicky’s things, shook Frank’s hand, and told him I had a brother who was the priest at St. Sebastian’s and that he should drop by some time. That the coffee and conversation were always free. Riding the elevator down to casino level, I went to find an all-too-rare payphone. I needed a ride and a reminder that I wasn’t alone in the world. I needed a conversation with my better self. I needed my brother.
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Ann Marie Potter 2023
