That was where I first spun the story about the man on the bridge who struck me and stole my dog. The dog was the touch that made anyone who heard the story believe it. I would call them sentimental fools, but I admit sentimentality is a weakness of my own — like keeping the family photos I snap after every lesson (stored on my laptop for perusing at my pleasure).
Unfortunately, the Mentor identity must be discarded before it really begins. I will jump to another identity, already waiting, everything in place, everything prepared, in Seattle. My fondness for Cleveland is overridden by the necessity of survival. To stay, I would need to remove not just those on the “team” but everyone in the entire support group (sinners all, but such an ambitious program). Seems I have interacted too much with too many to stay much longer.
The only burden of this bold geographic move is my emotional tie to this city, because the monetary aspect is no burden. While every lesson I teach has a purpose, a good number profit me as well. God helps those who... surely you know the rest. Those drug dealers in the Bronx, for example, made a hefty cash donation to help pay for their sins. They also left behind large quantities of the poison they sell. The cash and the drugs alike all came back to Cleveland, packed in gym bags, riding beneath the simpering, sinning little girls in Havoc’s charge.
The drugs I sold to the big sinners who sell that evil stuff to smaller sinners, their joint unwitting contributions benefitting my cause. The Lord provides. If the sinners want to poison themselves, who am I to stand in their way? Didn’t the Almighty give us all free will?
The Bronx lesson was not the only time God provided largesse for me, His devoted, sharp instrument. I work hard, and God shares His bounty with me. His grace is available to any of His children, but they are so blind. So very blind.
Sometimes I can only smile at the thought of myself, God’s Instrument, sitting unsuspected in the midst of sinners, sinners so wrapped up in their greed and lust they don’t see His vengeance biding its time in their midst.
My only sin has been underestimating the imbecility of the police, and young Mark Pryor is such a prime example. How could he settle upon that buffoon Havoc as his suspect? Hadn’t I handed him Stuart Carlyle on a platter, just as Herod gave Salome the head of John the Baptist? Stealing Carlyle’s pistol, using it several times, finally killing the abortion nurse’s sister and brother-in-law and leaving it there, and still Pryor and the rest of them fail to make the connection. If I hadn’t manipulated the sodomite Mills to feed them Carlyle’s name, the morons might never have taken the bait.
I joined the support group to be close to Jordan, God’s Reward to Me, and then became a part of their “team” to stay even closer, not just closer to her but all of them, feeding them information favorable to my position. They were sluggish with sin and needed my help.
So many steps ahead of the police am I that it is almost embarrassing — take, for example, the two they have left in a patrol car in front of my old home. When the time comes, and it will very soon, the simple fools will be eliminated without even knowing they were ever in danger.
For now, they can wait. And I will wait.
Until she comes to me.
Even before her release from the madhouse, I knew she would come to me one day. It is His will. Ongoing media coverage of my Strongsville lesson made mention of Jordan’s release, and I knew that the Violent Crime Support Group at St. Dimpna’s would be her next stop. So I enrolled, too, and she looked even more magnificent than she had on that great night when I repaired her family and we consummated our union in the Holy Church of my mission, and I spared her life so she could spread the news of my teachings.
But she had disappointed me in that. She never spoke of me. To anyone. For ten years, she never spoke at all. So she still needs my teaching, my mentoring.
Yes, the greatest reward for any teacher is a worthy pupil! Yet she has tried my patience, my Jordan. Upon her release, she all but ran into the arms of that callow Pryor — perhaps she could not overcome the frailties of her mixed-race birth. That she would speak with him in a public place, like a wanton hussy — after having lain with me!
Unthinkable.
Further schooling will repair that. She will be reminded that she is bound to one who is truly God’s Instrument. She will be shown the way. She will finally learn the lesson that I gave the night I repaired her family.
The boy Levi had not interpreted my message either. Despite the clear lesson that his abortion-loving parents (Planned Parenthood indeed!) had been taught, he failed to learn and fell into the abomination of lying with men. Raised by sinners, he might seem to have had little chance of receiving true learning. But that is why God gave us free will.
It’s so simple!
The sodomite’s computer with the damning evidence lies at the bottom of the Cuyahoga, next to his cell phone. The eye, the eye that lured him into sinful practices with other men, I burned in the incinerator in the basement. It will offend God no more.
Can there be any doubt that God is my copilot when He sends that foolish boy Pryor to my door? I returned at the very moment that the young detective put the pieces together, but now he is in pieces. Still, this was a lesson for me to learn: time for Traynor to disappear, for Mentor to exist briefly like a flickering flame, and then a new identity, half a continent away, will begin schooling anew.
Night is descending now. Time. My time. Time to go to work. I walk down the stairs — they creak with age.
I have the framed photo of myself in my pocket; I need to return it to the mantel.
Outside, after exiting out back, I creep along the side of the house and peek around the corner. The two officers in the car are looking away. God’s grace, watching over me. I will deal with them later. I walk to the rear of my old house. The fool police have locked it. I unlock it. Obviously, they don’t know I’m expecting a guest.
She will come tonight. She will come and she will finally learn the error of her ways.
And at last my devotion to the Lord, and to her, will be rewarded, and she will be mine.
Hallelujah.
Chapter Twenty
When Jordan rolled down 38th on her Vespa, she was not surprised to see a police car in front of Phillip’s house. The street was dark and quiet, and the streetlamp nearest the Traynor place was out. She cruised on by, the two uniformed officers not even glancing her way, one slumped and apparently sleeping on the job.
So much for police protection.
She turned at the corner, then took a left into the alley, following it all the way to the far end of the block. No cops back here. She tooled her scooter around back to Phillip’s garage and parked it in the shadows against one wall, out of sight.
Behind the old, well-maintained two-story house, the only sounds were a rustle of wind in trees and the rumble of distant traffic. She crept up the narrow sidewalk to the back of the house. The lights were all out, no sounds from within.