“God is stronger than a virus, sir,” Father Henry intoned, and for almost half a second, Demise got nervous. Then he noticed the red marks on the bridge of Father Henry ’s nose.

“You’re fucking nearsighted,” Demise said.

Father Henry’s expression froze and the whore gave out a little moan. “I knew this wouldn’t work,” she said.

“You thought you could fuck with my head by taking off your glasses?” Demise said, almost laughing. “Christ, what a fucking hick.”

“The power… the power of God protects me. You just stand your ground there.” The priest’s voice was wobbling like his neck fat.

Demise stepped forward, took the little man’s chin in his hand, and lifted. Father Henry, eyes pressed closed, took his hands out of his pockets. Demise didn’t see the little black cylinder until it hissed, a stream of pepper mace already scalding his eyes and nose. The pain was nothing compared to the constant pain of death he carried with him, but the stuff did make his eyes water. The little priest pulled away, falling loudly over the rail, while Demise wiped at the tears and roared.

He never saw the whore coming up behind him.

The first jolt of the stun gun hardly stopped him-the pain was negligible. He spun, reaching out for the bitch, but she danced back and then swung in low, catching him just under the ribs. By the fourth shock, his muscles were going weak, and it was getting hard to breathe. The fifth one-a lucky shot on the back of his neck-made his whole right side go numb.

Demise gave out before the batteries did.

Father Henry sat at the altar, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. With his glasses back on, the assassin turned from a muddy man-shaped blur into an actual man, hog-tied in the aisle before the altar. Gina, smart girl that she was, had gagged him with a sock and a strip of cloth and covered his head with a pastel pink pillowcase. She’d moved fast, and it was a good thing. The man had never quite lost consciousness.

“So what do we do now?” Gina asked softly.

“Well, we have this gentleman here, the other one back in the kitchen,” he whispered back. “Seems like hitmen are what you might call thick on the ground just now.”

“There’s still the other one out back. The other one from the car.”

“Well that’s all well and good,” Father Henry snapped, “but I don’t think I’m much up for doing this a third time today. A man has limits.”

“I wasn’t saying that,” Gina said. “But we’ve got to do something.”

“All right. Here, you keep an eye on this here miscreant and I’ll see whether I can’t work something out with our friend downstairs.”

Demise shifted, straining against his bonds, and tried to shout something, but Father Henry was damned if could tell what.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1987

“The whole thing was a setup,” Joey said. “I’m telling you, boss. I was lucky I got out of there at all.”

The restaurant was almost exactly the way he’d imagined it, except that he was empty-handed, Mazzucchelli was frowning, and Lapierre was over by the bar chatting up a waitress. Joey shook his head.

“And this priest got you out?”

“He woke me up after those four Fist guys jumped me and got me outta there.”

“Four guys?”

“Maybe five,” Joey said, trying not to wince with the lie. But it wasn’t like he could tell Mazzucchelli he’d passed out.

“The cops were coming, and he was thinking the Fist might try to kill me. They’d went in there and forced him to help them out. I’m telling you, the guy’s a fucking hero going against them like he did.”

Mazzucchelli took a bite of his pasta and shook his head. Joey scratched at the scars on his left hand.

“Sounds like bullshit,” Mazzuchelli said.

“There was a Fist hanging just outside the back door,” Joey said. “And the cops-they picked up Demise there, didn’t they?”

Mazzucchelli took the starched white napkin off his knee and dabbed the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said with a long, slow, sigh. “Yeah, they did.”

“If I’d have jumped the gun and called in backup, they’d have ambushed us, boss. Demise was just the bait.”

“So how’d this hero priest get the drop on Demise?” Joey grinned.

“Yeah, he told about that too, when he was helping me get my feet. It went like this, see…”

Demise walked out of the detention center in the late afternoon, pissed off. He still had on the fucking Aerosmith t-shirt. The car waited for him at the curb, Phan Lo at the wheel. Demise climbed in and slammed the door.

“What the fuck took you people so long?” he demanded as Phan pulled out into traffic. “I was in there overnight. How hard is it to post a little bail?”

“Gambiones,” Phan said. “They hit back yesterday.”

“No shit?”

“They torched five of our places. We lost twenty, maybe thirty men. Word on the street is they were trying for Danny Mao.”

“Still doesn’t explain why I had to spend a night in the lockup.”

“You weren’t the top priority,” Phan said.

They drove in silence. The day was clearer, but cold. Phan turned toward Chinatown.

“Did you, ah, mention to anyone…” Demise began, but the sentence trailed off.

“They know you got your ass kicked by a deuce priest and a Jokertown whore,” Phan said. “They laughed about it a little and got back to business.”

“Shit.”

“The whole thing was a setup. I saw one of the Gambione guys coming out the back right before the cops showed up. So we got suckered. Let it go, man. No one’s going to remember how they did it. You want to get another shirt?”

“Yeah,” Demise said. “You know, that attitude is just like you. It’s just exactly like all of you. It’s not about who’s going to remember what. It’s about principle. If you let people fuck with you, pretty soon everyone’s going to think they can get away with shit.”

When Phan spoke, his voice was measured and careful. “I don’t think that someone who fucking kills people by looking at them is going to have a lot of trouble with people taking him lightly.”

“You don’t get it. The priest has to die. And I know where he’s going to be on Sunday morning. I’ll kill the little shit in the middle of Mass. ”

“Hardcore,” Phan said, sounding unimpressed.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8. 1987

Dawn threatened in the east, the light from the snowcovered trees making the kitchen window glow. Father Henry put the telephone handset back in its cradle just as Gina emerged from her room wrapped in a thick wool robe two sizes too big for her.

“Coffee smells great,” she said, then “It’s so quiet out here.”

“That’s what we call the country. Haven’t you ever been out of the city?”

“Nah. I was born in Queens.

“You take cream or anything?”

“No. Black and bitter does just fine.”

Father Henry poured the coffee into a couple of Marriage Encounter cups and took them over to the table.

“The Archbishop says he’ll have tickets to Rome ready for us down in Albuquerque by Monday morning.”

“I thought there was a month wait for passports.”

“ Vatican passports,” Father Henry said, blowing on his coffee. “There are certain advantages to being a sovereign nation, after all. And a quarter million dollars is a pretty sizable donation. Exerts a kind of influence.”

“That was my money.”

“It was blood money and only the grace of Christ shall make it clean.”

“And the other quarter million?”

“I’m a man of Christ. It’ll be just fine right where it is. You need any-like maybe for tuition or something?-you just come see your Uncle Henry.”