Gun Church

Forty-Eight

McDonald told me to sit tight, that he’d get back to me with their location after they’d gotten Amy safely away from the loft. I asked if he wanted me to call her to warn her he was coming.

“No, for chrissakes!” he screamed. “You’d only scare the shit out of her and make my job ten times harder. I’ll handle it. Go take a cold shower or knit a fuckin’ sweater and wait for my call. Should be a few hours.”

In spite of wanting to crawl out of my own skin, I heeded some of his advice and took a shower. Afterwards, I sat in the living room of my lightless apartment, waiting for whispers of dawn to shine through my windows-whispers that came as dark clouds and the pinging of rain drops. I barely moved. My mind raced. I’d been so diligent at rationalizing away the obvious that I never let myself fully entertain the possibility that what Jim had said on the boardwalk might actually be a factual accounting of what had happened. Addicts are superb at denial, but there was no denying it, not any of it, not anymore. The bloody symmetry of it came crashing down on my head.

If it was true-and it was-that I had been remade as a person and as a writer, it had been largely at Jim’s hand. There was no escaping it. I may have started the change to win back Amy’s respect of my own accord, but the rest of it was more easily traceable. All the red lines led back to that September day when Frank Vuchovich came to my desk to retrieve his first assignment and stuck a Colt Python in my face. Or did they? Did they lead back to the day Jim found the Pandora chapter or did they lead back to me, to my writing it? Were my ideas the blueprint for the nightmare that ensued? Was Jim simply the Oracle of Brixton, deciphering the signs, making my wishes come true? Did it matter? The net result was the same. Did the body count stop at two or three or four? Jim’s question about killing Mabry rang in my ears: “Did you plant that idea in my head or did I plant it in yours?” The incidents leading up to Stan Petrovic’s death no longer seemed random or unconnected. I could see Jim’s hand in everything.

I was going mad, waiting, raking myself over the coals for my blindness about Jim, worrying about the bodies left in my wake that could be tied to me. I’d had it up to my eyeballs and retreated to the safest place I knew: Gun Church.

McGuinn had had his fill of blood: blood in the name of a cause, blood in the name of boredom. None of it seemed to matter to anyone. He took ice cold comfort in that he could nigh count the bodies he left behind him at home, but he could well count the bodies he and those of the church had snuffed out like the lit ends of still-burning fags over these few short months. There was Old Jack, of course, the two black footballers, the cop … He’d once read a book where the writer wondered what was the cost of another body or two in a world awash in blood. Amen, brother. Amen. So it was that McGuinn threw his gun in the river and tightened the tourniquet around the jumpy bollix’s leg wound.

“Listen, to me, boyo,” McGuinn said, putting his face up close to the wounded man’s. “Yer friends are dead and it stops here. Do you catch my meaning?”

He nodded yes.

“You let Zoe be or I’ll come back here and kill ya so slowly you’ll beg me to murder yer whole fookin’ family just so’s I’ll kill you. Ya getting’ me?”

He nodded again.

“I’m takin’ that van and I’ll call fer help as soon as I can. Any questions, boyo?”

He shook his head.

“Good. Now, ya just lay there quiet and still fer help to come.”

McGuinn stood, turned, and walked back to the van. He was tempted to fetch Zoe, whom he’d left unconscious on the other side of the river, but decided against it. No good would come of that, he thought, the mating of two spiders with nary a human soul between them. He certainly had nothing of his remaining and he’d no notion of where Zoe’s soul had got to. She wasn’t one for talking about such things and McGuinn wasn’t sure he would have believed what she told him in any case. A lot had passed between them in these last months, even something akin to love, but very little truth.

As he drove out of the woods, away from the church, McGuinn looked in the rearview mirror. He feared all he’d see there were the faces of the dead he’d left in his wake. What he saw instead was the inky blackness of an unlit road. If blackness was all that lay behind him, he supposed he could make do with that.

Bleary-eyed and nearly spent, I closed my computer on Gun Church and Terry McGuinn for the last time. Then, at about 6:15 A.M., the phone rang.

“She’s safe, but she’s pretty pissed and not a little freaked.” It was a voice I didn’t recognize.

“Who is this?”

“Tony Dee, Mr. Weiler. I work with Tommy Mac.”

“She’s upset?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“I guess. Where are you guys?”

“Check your email.”

“What?”

“Just do what I tell you.”

“Okay.”

“And, Mr. Weiler … ”

“Yeah.”

“However you get to where you’re going, keep alert that you don’t have company. You notice anything or anyone suspicious, you turn in the wrong direction and call this number. Got it?”

“Got it.”

The line was already dead before I could think to say anything else. When I checked, there was an email waiting. They were keeping Amy in the Whitestone section of Queens. I didn’t know that part of the city very well and hoped Jim didn’t know it at all.

God knows why, but my landlord, Isaac, let me borrow his car. I think maybe he knew I’d once been a famous writer. Even if I were still famous, I thought, who would care? In a country that values the ballroom dancing talents of washed-up actors, writers were less than afterthoughts. At least Amy was safe. That was the most important thing, but I couldn’t quite see my way to making sense of all this for her and I didn’t have much more time to figure it out.

Rush hour driving in New York is a nightmare under the best of circumstances and, with a steady rain falling, it had taken me two hours to get this close to where they were keeping Amy. My phone started ringing just as I was coming off the ramp from the Van Wyck onto the Whitestone Expressway. When I saw it was Renee’s cell number flashing on the screen, I almost smacked Isaac’s right fender into the concrete railing. I wanted to pull over to talk to her, but there was no place to do it. I flipped the phone open and put her on speaker. That’s when I got even a bigger surprise.

“Hey, Kip.”

“Jim? What are you doing on Renee’s-”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Why do you sound so funny? You better not have other people listening.”

“No one’s listening. I’m in a car. You’re just on speakerphone.”

“You better not be lying to me.”

“I swear. No one else is listening.”

“You shouldn’t have done it, Kip.”

“Done what?”

He ignored that. “Why couldn’t you have just gone along with it? Why can’t you just be happy? I gave you everything you ever wanted.”

“You murdered people in cold blood, Jim. How could I just be happy with that?”

“What if you didn’t know?”

“But I do know.”

“But what if you didn’t?”

I didn’t answer. I said, “You mentioned that I shouldn’t have done it. Done what? What’s the it I shouldn’t have done?”

“You went to the police. They’re watching Amy.”

With the mention of Amy, I lost focus and nearly rear-ended the car in front of me.

“They’re not cops. They’re private security. And what did you expect me to do after you threatened her?”

“I wouldn’t have hurt her … not directly.”

“How could I know that, Jim, especially after the things you said to me on the boardwalk?”

“You love her that much?”

“It’s more complicated than just love. I owe her.”

“How about Renee, Kip? What would you be willing to risk for her?”

“Let me talk to-”

“Don’t give me orders. Why couldn’t you have done what you were supposed to?” It was a rhetorical question and I thought I could hear him crying on the other end of the line. “Why did you have to ruin everything?” He was crying. “Why?”

“I’m sorry, Jim. Can I please speak to Renee?”

“What’s that word … indisposed?” I could hear him fighting back his tears. “She’s indisposed.”

“Did you hurt her?”

“Not yet, but I’m going to.” He was crying hard now. “Unless you do what I say, I’m going to do things to her that made the beating I gave that fag editor seem tame. She’ll be begging me to kill her, Kip. That’s a promise.”

“How do I know you haven’t already hurt her?”

“You don’t. You’ll just have to believe me. You didn’t believe me the other night, but you believe me now, don’t you?”

“Yes. I saw the headline. You really did make Renee lure that poor kid out of the bar.”

“She did it to protect you.”

“What did Mabry ever do to you that you had to kill him?”

“Your idea, Kip, not mine.”

“Remember, I’ll hurt Renee if you don’t do what you’re supposed to.”

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I’m almost as mad at you for pissing her love away as I am for the other stuff. She risked her life for you.” His crying had calmed, but the tone of his voice was a toxic mix of anger and self-pity.

“Don’t hurt her, Jim. Please. I’ll do anything you want me to, but don’t hurt her.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“I’m listening. Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Don’t worry, Kip. Amy will know.”

“Amy? What’s she got to do with this?”

“Maybe everything.”

“Jim, this is-”

“Shut up! Just shut up and listen. Don’t tell those security guys we spoke. You tell them, you’ll be signing Renee’s death certificate. Someone else’s too. That will be more blood on your head, Kip.”

“Someone else?”

“You just worry about Renee for now. Promise me you won’t tell those guys.”

“I promise.”

“Say it to me. Say the words.”

“I won’t tell them. I promise.”

“You ruined everything, Kip. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

“I know you think that, but what’s Amy-”

“Get to wherever she is and you’ll understand. See you in a few hours.” And with that, he hung up.

I never felt more pressed for time than I did at that moment. Every foot gained took an eternity. Flashing brake lights taunted me. I weaved the car in and out of traffic just to give myself a sense of progress, to stop me from completely losing my mind and bolting from the car in a dead run. I called Amy’s cell four times, only to get her voice mail. I thought about breaking my word and calling Tony or Tom McDonald, but Jim had put the onus on me. Up until this point, the blood on my hands was naive blood, blood that Jim had put there. Not anymore. The illusion of deniability, such as it was, had been stripped away. From here on out, if there was blood to be spilled, I would not be able to keep its stain at arm’s length.