In Desperation

58

Lago de Rosas, Mexico

T he phone in the priest’s rectory was an old wall-mounted touch-tone.

Father Francisco Ortero was folding his laundered shirts when it rang. He went to the kitchen and answered it.

“Is this Ortero, the priest who hears confessions in Lago de Rosas?”

The young male voice was familiar.

“Si,” Ortero said.

“This is the sicario you promised to help.”

Several icy seconds of silence passed.

“I told you I would be calling, Father. You remember our discussion?”

“Yes.” Ortero adjusted his grip on the handset.

“And my proposal?”

“Yes.”

“I am about to finish my last job.”

“Don’t go through with it. Surrender, I beg you.”

“Listen to me. You made a promise in the confessional to help me.”

“You must stop.”

“Have you arranged for a journalist you trust to tell my story?”

Ortero thought of all the funerals of the innocents murdered by narcotraficantes that he had officiated; how the bloodshed had challenged his faith.

How much suffering does God allow?

“Father? Have you arranged for a journalist you trust to tell my story?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Take note of this information.”

The sicario gave the priest the time and the location near Phoenix, Arizona, where the journalist was to meet him tomorrow, confirming what the priest had suspected.

“Please, surrender. Police everywhere are looking for you and the others. Your faces are on all the news channels. Surrender!”

“It does not matter now. I am nearly finished.”

“Please, I beg you, no more killing. Surrender now and atone.”

“This is how it must happen. This is how it will happen.”

The priest was disgusted with himself. He was aiding a sicario. He squeezed the handset as revulsion and fear coiled within him. What he was doing was akin to the devil’s bidding.

“I am considering sending police,” Ortero said.

“You would break the seal of the confessional?”

“What if it did not matter? What if I stopped being a priest to stop the killing?”

“If you send police, I will kill the girl before their eyes in the most memorable way you could ever imagine.”

“I beg you to surrender.”

“The girl’s life is in your hands, priest. Your betrayal would result in her death. I have killed nearly two hundred people. Do you think I would hesitate to kill her? Do you want to gamble her life with an executioner of my stature?”

“Do you want to gamble with eternal damnation?”

“That is exactly what I’m doing,” the sicario said. “I know my days are numbered. Either way I am damned. This is my last chance at a new life. Send the reporter, or the girl will die. Wait. You anger me, Father. Maybe she will die anyway. Consider this your only hope to save her.”

The line went dead.

Shaking, Ortero fell back to the wall, sliding down to the floor.

What have I set in motion?