When she landed, he started groaning and scrambling to his feet. He tried to punch her, but he had no leverage and missed. In return she gave him a dainty little slap. The next one she gave him was not dainty at all.
I got him by the shoulders of his coat and dragged him into the classroom. I was still scared and mad enough that I wanted to pay him back for the kick in the face, so I got a good sharp fast one off to his ribs.
“God,” Donna said, coming into the room, “who is he?”
“I have a feeling we’ve just met Lockhart.”
“Fuck yourself,” the man said.
“Boy, so far,” Donna said, “he seems like a delightful person.”
Probably not even Lockhart’s mother loved his face. He had feral brown eyes and a feral pink mouth and feral pointed ears. He needed a shave and a shower. Donna was right. He was delightful.
“I think you can help us,” I said.
“I think you’re full of shit.”
“That may be. But I still think you can help us.” My face hurt but I’d be damned if I’d give him the satisfaction of rubbing it. “Who killed Reeves?”
He smiled. “Your buddy. Wade.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Gee, then I must’ve been listening to the wrong station. Seems like every time I turn on the radio or the TV, they’re talking about how many cops are out looking for him.” He winced. Looking down at him, the way his eyes narrowed with pain, I wondered if I should have kicked him quite so hard. I probably could have made my point with a bit less violence.
“Why were you out in the hall?”
He looked at Donna. “I was taking a piss.”
She smiled at him. “Gosh, I’m really offended and shocked. Taking a pee in a school corridor.”
“I don’t want to kick you again,” I said.
He grimaced. “You try it, motherfucker, and see what happens.”
I stepped on his hand, quickly enough that he didn’t even try to get it out of the way. I stepped down hard.
“God, Dwyer, c’mon.” It was Donna talking. “God, look at him.” She looked down at his hand as if she were going to be sick.
“Why were you out in the hallway?”
“Fuck yourself.”
I stepped down harder. “Tell me.”
He screamed.
“God, Dwyer, please,” she said.
“Donna, for Christ’s sake, I’ve got to know why he was out there.”
“But you’re hurting him.”
“Look at the left side of my face.”
She looked. “God, what happened?”
“This guy you’re so worried about kicked me.”
“Why, you bastard,” she said to him.
“So will you please go somewhere if you can’t take it?”
“Why did you kick him in the face?” she said to Lockhart. He was too busy grimacing to answer.
“Step on his hand,” she said. “He deserves it.” Then she said, “But not real hard, you know, Dwyer? Not real hard.”
“Donna.”
She made a face. I eased up a little, out of deference to the woman I love, and that’s when he grabbed my ankle and knocked me over, and Donna right after me.
He ran to the door to the stairs. We were maybe a half-minute behind. His feet clattered on the staircase. Below, he careened into two old ladies coming from their Medicare class. They screamed. He kept on running.
I nearly ran into the same two ladies myself, trying to get to him. His flight had been slowed just enough that when he reached the front door I could grab the sleeve of his raggedy overcoat. It ripped away from the rest of his coat. He whirled around, slamming into the doorframe, and then he got his composure again and started into the downpour.
I saw it happen from the doorway.
The street was narrow and the pimpmobile was going at least twenty over the speed limit. It was long and pink, and even with the windows rolled up you could hear the disco music from the tape deck. When it hit Lockhart, it didn’t slow down a bit, nor did it slow down when it reached the corner. If anything, it went faster, and then it disappeared.
Donna was two steps behind me. We started out into the rain. We didn’t run. We knew he was beyond help. She slipped her hand in mine. “God, Dwyer, I don’t know if I’m up to looking at him. Do you mind?”
“Uh-huh. You go back in the school where it’s dry.”
“I don’t give a damn about the rain now, Dwyer. I mean, after what happened to him.” She just stood there with her arms folded, huddling into herself.
I nodded, understanding, and set off for the street. Another car had come along. In its headlights I could see Lockhart clearly. He reminded me of a dead dog in the road. You want to look away but something terrible in you — something that recognizes your own eventual death — holds your eyes there. I thought of how I’d stepped on his hand, the pain I’d given him, and the wild sad look of him then. I felt like shit. I bent and took his pulse. I looked up into the broad face of a sixtyish black man in a plastic raincoat and shook my head. Behind him more headlights appeared. I was surprised to see that it was the pink pimpmobile. A swarthy white man got out. He wore a tatty gray three-piece suit, a very white shirt, and a very red tie. He had a business card held out. The black man looked at me and shrugged. Which one of us was supposed to take the card, and why?
“I didn’t see him, mon,” the swarthy man said in a Jamaican accent. “I did’na see him.” He was so bombed the black man had to help him back to his car.
I found Lockhart’s wallet in his coat and put it in my pocket. I went back to Donna and said, “We need to get out of here. Fast.”
On the way to the car, she said, “God, look at your hands.” I held them out in the dim streetlight. They were covered with Lockhart’s blood.
16
The huge church looked like a fortress put up against the night itself. Lightning cracked the sky as we ran up the broad stone steps through the brutal and relentless rain.
Inside there were huge shadows thrown by the votive candles of blue and green and yellow and red, and incense that smelled holy and exotic at the same time. Statues of the inscrutable Virgin and the weary Joseph looked down on us as we moved up the wide center aisle, past the empty pews and the Stations of the Cross carved in stone. Where Jesus crumpled beneath the cross He carried, Donna shook her head and said, “I really should start going to mass again, Dwyer.”
At the east side of the long communion rail, a squat man in a dark coat knelt, head bowed. Donna and I looked at each other. Wade? I went up close enough to get a look. The man, curious as I was, glanced up at me. He had a pugged Irish face whose shape was lost somewhat in bulldog jowls. He appeared to be a spry seventy. “Are you Mr. Dwyer?”
I nodded. For the first time I realized that he was wearing a priest’s collar.
“Then you’ll be wanting the sacristy,” he said in the middle of my old neighborhood.
Donna came up next to me.
He looked at us both and smiled briefly. “It’s all right. He’s waiting for you.” He indicated the sacristy with a thick hand. “But you, Mr. Dwyer, would you mind returning to speak to me?”
“Not at all, Father.”
“Good, then. Go. He needs to see you. Badly, I’m afraid.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Yes,” Donna, sounding young, said, “thank you, Father.” We went up the steps leading to the altar. “What a neat old priest,” Donna whispered. “I really do have to start going to mass again, Dwyer. Really. Will you go with me?”
“Sure,” I said.
She squeezed my hand.
The sacristy, which was where priests prepared themselves for mass, was in more deep candle shadows when we reached it. I looked in. The long, wide room smelled of communion wine and rain from an open window at the opposite end. It smelled of cold air, too. We went in and found a man sitting in a big chair, which probably belonged to the monsignor. He had black hair and a beard and wore a flowered shirt and a double-breasted sport jacket, both of which were at least ten years out of date. In the candle gloom, his white plastic shoes were a dirty joke. A pint of whiskey lay at a casual angle in his left hand.