The Last Good Guy

45

We dressed, Penelope remarking that consensual, undrugged sex wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I thought she was being funny, then wasn’t sure. In the living room Penelope got her house key out, then shouldered her purse. I took all four hanger loads in one hand — feeling like a strong and capable man after all that loving — and picked up the toiletries bag. Managed to turn the knob and elbow open the door.

Atlas put the gun to my forehead, walked me back, and slammed the door with his foot. His eyes were wrong and he smelled bad.

“If you go for your gun I’ll blow your brains out,” he said. “Don’t move. Don’t let go of that stuff. Penelope, you drop the keys or I’ll shoot you, too.”

I measured my chances. If I tried to draw, Atlas would have drilled out my life before the hangers hit the floor. Penelope next. The desperate energy on Pastor Reggie Atlas’s face made these things appear certain. His gun looked to be a semiauto .40-caliber with a short barrel.

“Nice to see you, Pastor Atlas,” I said.

“Don’t start in on me,” he said.

He considered Penelope briefly and I saw an expression on his face that I couldn’t fathom.

I heard Penelope’s keys hit the floor behind me. I dropped the clothes and the bag of toiletries well away from my feet.

Atlas lowered his aim to my chest. The gun was shaking. “I didn’t tell you to do that,” he said.

“Reggie,” said Penelope. “You stop this right now.”

“Leave your hands up and out like that,” he said to me. “And remember how far away from your gun they are. Remember that.”

In the academy, they teach you to keep them talking.

“Been waiting long?” I asked.

“Cruising, mostly,” he said. “I had this vision you two would be together here tonight. I’m still capable of visions.”

“You must have seen PBS, too,” I said.

“Yes.” He sneered at Penelope. “You, so eager to tell Daley’s story.”

“Atlas,” I said. “What you want is to not spend the rest of your life in prison for murder.”

“And how do I go about that, considering I’m going to kill you both?”

His gun barrel was now moving in a small slow circle, my chest the bull’s-eye. Sweat filled the lines of his face and he wiped his brow with his free hand. His wad of fine blond hair was soaked at the temples and the stink of fear came off him.

“Haven’t you already destroyed enough for one lifetime?” asked Penelope. “Go. Go away, Reggie Atlas.”

“I gave you everything you love,” he said. “I gave you the true path and a child.”

“It astonishes me every day that she could have come from you,” said Penelope.

A minor smile on Atlas’s face, then, filled with what looked like genuine pride.

“I could have enjoyed that astonishment with you, and with Daley,” he said. “The thousand times I asked. I was prepared to leave my life. And create a new one around you.”

“What about the times you threatened to kill me?” said Penelope.

“You brought this on yourself, Penelope! By trying to hide my daughter in the bulrushes of my own cathedral. Here on the edge of the ocean, where you stopped running. And tried to tempt me with her just as you tempted me.”

Atlas pointed the gun at Penelope. I heard the catch of her breath. Then the shaking front sight found my chest again.

“Then you hired this idiot, a man who suffers for money and sees no difference between the sacred and profane? With you two gone, there’s nobody to even suspect me. Nobody to keep me from bringing my daughter into the fold. As I did you. And I will not lose her.”

“I’ll take her and run a thousand miles away,” said Penelope. “You go back to your family. And our secrets can stay right where they are.”

“Oh, no, no, no, Pen. It’s way too late now.”

A chill down my scalp as I wondered what condition Reggie’s wife and children were in.

I lowered my arms by half. The circling of Atlas’s gun barrel had widened. He wiped his brow again, snapping the sweat to the floor.

“Don’t doubt that I will kill you,” said Atlas.

“I believe you will,” said Penelope.

“I don’t,” I said.

Which brought Reggie Atlas’s best smile to his face, his preacher’s, actor’s, can’t-resist-me grin. I’d never seen such derangement on a face, and I had seen a lot.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re too smart,” I said.

“You flatter me to control me.”

“No flattery, Reggie,” I said. “You’re the most repulsive human I’ve ever met. You really did it, didn’t you? You raped a girl of fourteen in a bus. Four Wheels for Jesus. Threatened her and your own daughter for years after. I think you should put that gun to your head and prove how sorry you are, once and for all. End your life with a shred of dignity instead of this groveling. Jesus would agree.”

“Roland, he’ll—” said Penelope.

Reggie gave me a concerned, cagey look. “Do you really think Jesus would agree?”

“I know he would,” I said. “And on a practical level, if you use that gun to do the right thing, you won’t spend a day in prison. You won’t have to face the world as a child rapist and a fake holy man and a murderer. You’ll be remembered as Pastor Reggie Atlas, a brave but troubled man who did what he had to.”

“Roland—”

“You know, you’re right,” said Atlas. “I can do what you suggest. It would address those issues head-on. But it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Give me one reason why it wouldn’t,” I said.

Atlas held the gun with both hands, but now the orbit of the barrel had lost its shape. The mad ellipsoids terrified me.

“Well, for one thing, I was innocent once,” he said. His voice wavered and desperation widened his pupils.

“Yeah? Explain that.”

“Did you tell him how you singled me out, Penelope? How you came to me for private moments of talk and fellowship? How your hands trembled in mine when we prayed? Did you tell him about the looks and the smiles you gave me, and the poems you wrote and the clothing you wore for me — the black sweater and the little pink skirt? The lotions and perfumes that smelled like coconut, because you knew how much I liked it? Because it smelled like the mansion on the sand, where you agreed we were going to live and produce holy children. You haven’t said anything about that? How you tempted and seduced me. Systematically? How you enjoyed what we finally did together? I know you did. You were eager. You were wet!”

I heard movement behind me, then Penelope stepped into my peripheral view. Reggie swung the pistol at her, then back to me, the breath in his nostrils short and fast.

“You know I was too drugged to fight,” she said, her voice seething with contempt. “I’ve told you and you’ve heard, Reggie. I was dizzy and afraid and trapped. I told you to stop. I hit you and nothing happened. Wet? That was my body’s defense against you! Autonomic, like throwing up a poison. It took me years of shame before I understood that. I wanted to be baptized. I wanted to be accepted and loved. I didn’t want to be touched like that, Reggie. It was the only thing I didn’t want you to do! You knew it, too. You one hundred percent knew.”

Again Atlas looked to her, then back to me, but this time left the weapon pointed at my heart.

“I loved you more than I’d ever loved any earthly person or thing,” he said. “And you loved me that much, too. I knew you wanted me and it was time. Our time. I never meant to harm you. In the big picture, I have not harmed you in any way.”

Penelope took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her voice hitched into a sob and she continued. “You tricked me and raped me... You threatened me if I told. You tracked my daughter. No more, Reggie. Enough.”

“You seduced a humble man of God.”

“You used God’s name to fuck a girl.”

“I have suffered, too,” said the pastor.

“Tissue,” she whispered. Swung the white purse around and took out the strawberry-stained wad and pressed it to one eye, then the other.

“You used me,” said Reggie.

“I adored you,” said Penelope.

“You stole my soul and corrupted my flesh,” said Reggie, pointing the gun at Penelope again, the barrel wild. “I want them back.”

“Me, too,” said Penelope, stuffing the tissue into her bag and pulling out a plump pink derringer.

I saw his flinch and launched into Reggie with all the speed I had. Grabbed his gun in both my hands and forced it up and away so Reggie blasted the ceiling instead of Penelope. Her handcannon quaked the room, then boomed again as Reggie crashed back into the wall, his gun clattering to the floor. Eyes wide in the gunsmoke and breathing hard, blood blossoming through his clean white shirt, Reggie gazed down at himself with what looked like disbelief. Then collapsed, the wall behind him pocked by two closely spaced holes.

“Smokey only takes two rounds,” she said. “I’ll reload.”

“Not necessary,” I said.

I took her gun and ushered her into the kitchen, helping her into a chair at the small table. Her face white as snow and her body shaking badly. Over the half-wall I could see Reggie trembling on the living room floor.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Get ready to answer a lot of questions.”

“I’ll tell them the whole truth.”

“That’s all you need to do, Penelope.”

“The whole damned miserable truth.”

Back in the living room I knelt beside Atlas. Watched his breathing stop. Saw his eyes surrender their terror and then their light.

Through the blinds, I saw lights coming on in the houses across the street.

Stood and found my phone.