"You got four bags of weed?"
"Depends if you got the green, man."
Gregory produced a twenty-Doilar bill, which the other snatched, adding it to a bulging roll pulled briefly from his pocket. From behind, another man handed over four nickel bags, which Gregory stuffed beneath his shirt.
At that precise moment a car pulled up outside and three members of the Krypto-Ricans emerged, their guns drawn. The Skin Heads saw the others coming and dived for their guns, too. Moments later, as Gregory and Russell headed for the street to get away, bullets were flying.
Both ran hard until Russell realized that Gregory was no longer at his side. He looked back. Gregory was lying on the ground. By then the wild shooting had stopped, and the members of both gangs were vanishing. Soon after, police and paramedics were called. The paramedics, arriving first, quickly declared Gregory dead, the result of a gunshot wound to the left side of his back.
By chance, because he was driving nearby and heard the dispatcher's radio call, Detective Kermit Sheldon was the first police officer on the scene. Taking his son aside, he spoke sternly. "Tell me everything fast. And I mean everything, exactly as it happened."
Russell, still in shock and in tears, complied, adding at the end, "Dad, this will kill Greg's mother, not just him dying, but the marijuana. She didn't know."
Russell's father snapped, "Where is the stuff you bought?"
"Greg hid it in his shirt."
"Do you have any at all?"
"No."
Kermit Sheldon put Russell in his official car, then walked to Gregory's body. The paramedics had finished their examination and covered the body with a sheet. Uniform police hadn't arrived yet. Detective Sheldon looked around. He lifted the sheet, groped inside Gregory's shirt, and found the marijuana packets. He removed and put them in his own pocket. Later he would flush them down a toilet.
Back at his car he instructed Russell, "Listen to me. Listen carefully. This is your story. The two of you were walking when you heard the shooting, and ran to get away. If you saw any of the people with guns, describe them. But nothing more. Stick with that and do not vary it. Later," Russell's father added, "you and I will have a serious talk, which you're not gonna enjoy."
Russell followed the instructions, with the result that subsequent police and press reports described Gregory Ainslie as an innocent victim caught in the crossfire of an out-of-town gang war. Several months after Gregory's death, the bullet that killed him was matched with a gun owned by a Krypto-Ricans gang member, Manny "Mad Dog" Menendez. But by that time Mad Dog was also dead, having been killed in another shootout, this time with police.
Not surprisingly, Russell Sheldon never used marijuana again. He did, however, confide in Malcolm, who had already half-guessed the real story. The confidence they thus shared as well as grief and a shared sense of blame made their friendship stronger, a bond that would last across the years.
Victoria Ainslie suffered terribly because of Gregory's death. But the cover-up contrived by Detective Kermit Sheldon left her with a comforting belief in Gregory's innocence, and at the same time, her religious faith consoled her. "He was such a wonderful boy that God wanted him," she told friends. "Who am I to question God's decision?"
Malcolm was impressed by what Russell's father had done at some risk to himself to protect the memory of Gregory for their mother's sake. It had not occurred to Malcolm before that police officers could be figures of benevolence in the community as well as enforcers of the law.
It was shortly after Gregory's death that Victoria said to her son, "I wonder if God knew that Gregory was going to be a priest. If He had, He might not have taken him."
Malcolm reached for her hands. "Mom, maybe God knew that I would follow Gregory into the Church."
Victoria looked up with surprise. Malcolm nodded. "I've decided to go to St. Vladimir Seminary with Russell. We've talked about it. I'll take Gregory's place."
And so it happened.
The Philadelphia seminary, which Malcolm Ainslie and Russell Sheldon attended through the next seven years, was an old but renovated turn-of-the-century building, conveying serenity and erudition, an atmosphere in which both young men were immediately at home.
From the beginning, Malcolm's decision to seek religious orders entailed no sacrifice for him. He was happy and composed when it was made. In what he saw as their order of importance, he believed in God, the divinity of Jesus, and the Catholic Church, which brought system and discipline to those other beliefs. Only years later would he realize that, as an ordained priest, he would be expected to reorient that precedence subtly, so that, as in Matthew 19:30, the "first shall be last; and the last shall be first."
The seminary education, strong on theology and philosophy, was the equivalent of college, followed by three more years of theology, producing, at the end, a doctoral degree. Thus, having graduated at ages twenty-five and twenty-six respectively, Fathers Malcolm Ainslie and Russell Sheldon were appointed associate parish priests Malcolm at St. Augustus Church in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Russell at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Reading. The two parishes were in the same archdiocese and only twenty miles apart.
"I suppose we'll be visiting each other all the time," Malcolm said cheerfully, and Russell agreed, their closeness having persisted through the seminary years. But in fact, because of heavy workloads and a shortage of Catholic priests worldwide, which would continue and worsen, their meetings were few and hurried. That is, until several years later, when a natural catastrophe brought them, once more, close together.
* * *
"And that," Ainslie told Jorge, "is pretty much how I became a priest."
Several minutes earlier, in the Miami blue-and-white, they had passed through Jacksonville. Now the airport was visible directly ahead.
"So how come you left the Church and became a cop?" Jorge asked.
"It's not complicated," Ainslie told him. "I lost my faith."
"But how'd you lose your faith?" Jorge persisted.
Ainslie laughed. "That is complicated. And I have a plane to catch.''
4
"I don't believe it," Leo Newbold said. "The bastard probably thought he was being cute, leaving some phony clue so we'd bash our brains together and get nowhere."
The lieutenant was responding to Malcolm Ainslie's report, made from a pay phone at Jacksonville Airport, that while Elroy Doil had admitted to fourteen murders, he had denied killing Commissioner Gustav Ernst and his wife, Eleanor.
"There's too much evidence against Doil," Newbold continued. "Just about everything at the Ernst killings matched those other scenes, and because we held back so much of the information, no one but Doil knew enough to put all that together. Oh, I know you have doubts, Malcolm, and I respect them, but this time I think you're wrong."
A moment of obstinacy seized Ainslie. "That damn rabbit left beside the Ernsts didn't make sense. It didn't fit the other Revelation signs. Still doesn't."
"But that's all you have," Newbold reminded him. "Right?"
Ainslie sighed. "That's all."
"Well, when you get back, I guess you should checkout that other name Doil gave you. What was it?"
"Ikeis, in Tampa."
"Yeah, and the Esperanza thing, too. But don't take too much time, because we've got two new whodunits here and more pressures every day. As far as I'm concerned, the Ernst case is closed.''
"How about the tape of Doil? Should I FedEx it from Toronto?"
"No, bring it back with you. We'll have copies and a transcript made, then decide what to do. For now, have a good trip with your family, Malcolm. You've all earned it."