Whap!

Blood it out.

The blood ran down his back while he kept an eye on the visitors. They made his nerves twitch like a fucking epileptic. They'd been at the church for a couple of days; a man and a woman.

Had to be cops.

Not just cops, but friends of SuperCop's. They were scoping Darcy out, probably already called SuperCop, already got his ass on the road so he could take down his murderer.

Patricide.

Nights had been filled, since the tattoo joint, with nightmares of a cop's gun jammed in his face while hot metal bracelets locked around his wrists.

Or maybe SuperCop would press the gun against the burn scar.

Either way, the gun -- and the bullet -- was coming and how sad to have so much relief in knowing they were coming. How much sadder still to be relieved to finally be relieved.

I never found the pendant, Darcy thought.

Or the money.

Whap!

"Fuck," he said to no one.

The old black man, one of twenty-seven monks in the chapel, adorned with a ring on each finger, a head covered in dreads, and munching on one of his cucumbers, glanced his way.

"Shoot my father's son and shoot my step-father's son." Darcy sighed. "Shoot both of me."

"No problem."

The gun didn't touch his scar, it screwed painfully into Darcy's ear.

"You came."

"Sure as fuck did," the cop answered. "Didn't think I wouldn’t, did you?”

SuperCop slipped from Darcy's side to his front. Darcy frowned. "The fuck're you?"

"Nice try," the cop said. "Where is she?"

He'd known he would be scared, but thinking he'd be scared was nowhere near the full truth. His brown robe had tightened, a noose, around his entire body. His heart was flying and his entire body was a sweatbath. Even his toes grasped at the inside of his sandals.

"Who -- " Darcy cleared his throat. "Who are you?"

"Captain Brooks." The man's teeth bared, a dog looking for dinner. "Carson City Police."

"Where's SuperCo -- Detective Kurston?" Darcy tried to back away but the gun kept him in place.

"Who?"

"Detective Kurston. Barefield PD."

"Never heard of him. I'm from Carson City."

"Carson? By San Antonio?"

"San Antonio? Fuck, no. Carson City, Nevada, asswipe. Remember? You shot up my sewage plant? You killed a couple of my local thugs? You blew at least one really nice Mercedes all to shit? Any of this ringing any bells?"

Okay, hang on. There were huge chunks of that last, bloody night Darcy didn't remember -- thanks to the ganja and whiskey -- but come on, Nevada? They'd made it to Nevada, shot the place up, and gotten back to Barefield?
In…like…two hours?

Darcy laughed and Captain Brooks' eyes blazed. He pressed the gun harder into Darcy's head, cutting the laugh off.

"I've never been to Carson City."

Brooks made a sound like a gameshow buzzer. "Wrong answer."

It had to be a Fagan thing, part of whatever the man had spent the last thirty-five years doing, part of what had kept him from his son. This cop -- curiously alone, Darcy realized -- had to be chasing Fagan.

"Fagan leave you a message?" Darcy asked. "Tell you it was his New York number? But it actually turned out to be a dry cleaning shop in Little Havana in Miami, didn't it?"

Brooks frowned, backed up a step but kept the gun straight at Darcy's head. "The hell're you talking about?"

Drawing a deep breath, Darcy started to speak.

"Save it, asshole," Brooks said.

Quick as a heartbeat, the cop lashed out and slammed a hand against Darcy's head. Darcy slumped to the floor. Pain a thousand times worse than the pissant little sting from the whips against his back, blasted him.

"Whoa," Brother Cope said. "What's up?"

"Back up," Brooks said to Cope. "And take that -- what the hell is that, a raw cucumber? -- damned thing with you. This is official business, boy."

"Boy?" Cope's eyes widened. "Y'all didn't just say that."

Brooks closed the distance between him and Cope. "You gonna play hero, black boy, strangle me with that hair? Or beat me to death with the cuke?" He winked. "Gonna kick my ass so I don't shoot him in the head?"

"I'll sic Monea on y'all's ass," Cope said.

"Cope, please," Darcy said.

"Who's that, you're protector girl?"

"Ain't nothing but a whore I frequent."

"There's not a whore alive who scares me." The lack of emotion when he said he chilled Darcy.

The two visitors entered the sanctuary, escorted by Father Bob, and Darcy understood the shock on their faces. It had been on his face two weeks earlier.

Twenty-seven men, heads tilted back, eyes closed; supplicants at the altar of violence. Every arm stretched out like the arms of a cross. Every right arm holding a short leather whip, every mouth moving, filling the space with chants.

Blood stains -- straight lines -- on the ceiling. Tens and hundreds and thousands of lines, each covering one older which covered one older still.

Ah, the art of self-mortification, and Darcy was pretty sure Brooks hadn't really seen it yet, didn't realize he stood in a chapel built from the living rooms of four single-wide trailers lashed together, walls removed. A giant wooden cross hung near the altar while the windows, blacked out with shoe polish, allowed in only a smudge of late afternoon sunlight; yellow and gold enough that the priests looked like they were dancing in piss.

"One more time, Hal," Brooks said. "Where the hell is she?"

There was a pause. Darcy frowned, saw Cope frown.

"Who?" Cope said.

The cop tightened his grip on the gun. "Hal. You didn't tell your jungle bunny friend here how you shot up my town? How you stole my money and my woman? Awww, Hal, how come you aren't sharing your exploits?"

"Darcy."

The cop's head tilted. "What?"

"I'm Darcy."

"You're Hal." Brooks frowned.

"Darcy."

"Hal."

"Who's on first?" Cope laughed. "Pretty good, lawman, y’all ain't even got the right bad guy."
Cope’s laugh spiraled into the dank air, lost itself in the growing din of the chant. A handful of priests glanced over. All but one quickly looked away.

"Wrong man? Fuck that noise." But Brooks' face was red. "I'm here to get -- " He stopped, dead cold, when he saw the visitors.

"Officer?" Darcy said.

"Son of a bitch." His head swiveled back to Darcy and a new vibe wormed through the air. "Who are you?"

Then he was gone, across the room in a shot. He jammed the gun against the man's head.

"Best be getting to the door," Brother Cope said.

Darcy blinked but didn’t move until Cope urged him toward the doors in the back of the sanctuary.

“Do it slow and ritualize all the damned way. Get a little luck and mayhap this cheap shit Dirty Harry forgets we even here."

When Darcy saw Cope's eyes, his testicles shriveled so far into his body he thought they might be in his throat. "Holy fuck, you're scared."

Cope slapped him quick, a hard pop that rocked Darcy's head back. "Blasphemer." He nodded toward the cop. "'S a scary guy. Whole place just got scary. Time for us to be getting on down the road."

His arms moving, unison with the other priests, what Cope called ritualizing, Darcy moved toward the door. Through it was the rest of the church -- the rest of the mobile homes lashed together and sitting on bricks like a white trash palace -- a hallway, the back rooms, the kitchen and bathrooms. Away from the front door. Deeper into the church.

"That the best way out?"

"Bullets start flying all them priests gonna head for that front door," Cope said. "They gonna die right there. Bodies'll pile up like gristle after a steak fry."

Before the bullets, though, was the blood from the whips.

Whap! Whap! Whap!

Blood exploded, instantly on the air like a chemical spill. It patterned on the ceiling, dripped on heads.

"What in the hell…." Brooks stared at the priests, finally aware of the scene around him.

The visiting woman got hit with blood and fell backward, furiously wiping blood from her face.

"The fuck is that?" Brooks held his gun on the visitors, but turned to face the priests. "You guys are craz -- "

"Go," the visiting man shouted as he shoved the woman toward the front door.

She never hesitated and her speed amazed Darcy. She tore through the priests, knocking them side to side, brown-robed bowling pins.

"What's this?" one yelled.

"Officer, should I get my -- "

A din of questions rose like the blood from the whips; confused, run together, tripping over the previous question, smashed by the next question.

"Who are you people?" "Why are the cops here? I'm wanted in -- "

A gunshot, followed immediately by a second, wrecked everything. Brooks fired and kept firing as priests hit the floor as fast as money at a dice game. A priest jerked a gun from under his robe, fired on the room.

The shots hit the walls, pulverized the adobe, shattered the windows, sent shards glittering through the air like New Year's confetti in Times Square. The thick stench of gunpowder rose. Shit smells like firecrackers, Darcy thought. Big ass, industrial firecrackers.

In the tangle of bullets, Brooks and the visiting man got down to fists.

"I’m a cop," Brooks shouted. "This guy's wanted for murder."

"That's crap," Darcy called to Cope.

The two men kept fighting, ignoring the anarchy around them. Screams and yells, fists and feet, dust. Bits of wood from the cross buzzed through the air like mosquitoes. Cordite and adobe, blood and maybe even the piss of scared men, filled the church, creating a gumbo of odors, something like what Darcy had smelled around desert roadkill left too long in the sun.

The priests tried to get out of the room. A head, somewhere near the middle of the room, exploded in a shower of bone and brain. As the man fell, a single line of bullets whapped through the walls, side to side. They marched around the chapel and just as they got to Darcy, Cope jerked him to the floor. The bullets split the air above him. Cope's big paw covered Darcy's mouth and though he yelled in Darcy's ear, Darcy heard barely a whisper.

"Y’all get to the bike.”

The front doors banged open and priests scrambled for them, running like rioting inmates when they finally realize those rubber bullets were hard rubber.

Cope had been right. Bodies stacked at the doors that had welcomed Darcy to the church. Screaming priests scratched and pawed over those bodies as they fought to get out. They didn't see the junkpile of flesh. All they saw, Darcy knew, was the sunlight, the escape.

"Brother Darcy." The voice was weak, nearly lost in the endless gunfight. "Take me with you."

Brother Enrico, from Sante Fe, stumbled. Darcy heard two shallow pops just as two blooms appeared on Enrico's chest. The priest looked at himself.

"Son of a bitch. I knew that cop was here for me."

"No," Darcy said. "He was here for me."

From the hallway, Cope sneered. "Fuck y'all, he's here for me."

Along the far side of the sanctuary, where the priest kept shooting, something had caught fire. Flames and smoke rose in a meandering plume toward the stained ceiling.

"Shit," Darcy said. "What is that?"

Enrico looked over. "That'd be a fire."

Smoke spread into the sanctuary while Enrico coughed up yellow and pink fluids, then blood. "Damn, this pisses me off."

"Damn y'all, Darcy," Cope said. "What y'all doing?"

"I'm dying, blackie," Enrico said.

"Then die already so I can get outta here, Mexie." Cope stood just beyond the doorway.
Enrico laughed up a huge amount of blood. "Is that sass? God, I love him."

"Love y'all, too, Enrico, now die."

The fire raced from one place to another, fed by the carpet and tossed aside robes and sandals.

"Don't I get…a…send-off?"

Crossing himself quickly, Cope went to Enrico and said, "Hail Mary, Mother of God, here's another one for y'all."

Enrico closed his eyes. "Best he could do, I guess."

"Hang on, Mexie, don't croak out on me yet." Cope pulled a ring from his finger, put it in Enrico's palm and closed the man's hand around it. "Y'all've been a good boy. Maybe this'll help when you get there."

Enrico tightened his grip on the ring. "Thank you. Bless you."

As soon as he died, Cope and Darcy fled the room, dashed into the hallway. Smoke had begun to fill the rooms. Rather than inky blackness, the air was dingy gray. Heat had built up and beneath his robe, Darcy sweated like a fat whore's thighs during a busy high-summer business day.

"Where are we going?" he called to Cope.

"Thought y'all had the plan."

He heard Cope's laugh and didn't appreciate it at all. But when he opened his mouth to say something, smoke rushed into his lungs. Instead of yelling at Cope, he found himself hacking up Cope's name.

Panic squeezed his chest and stabbed his eyes. This was how it was going to end. Not with a bullet to the head or in a cell at the Texas State Prison for killing his father, but here in a fire that was going to roast him like a chili pepper.

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