Parishioner by Walter Mosley Page A

job to do. You can’t blackmail me or browbeat me or talk me down. I will find out what happened, and those that are guilty will pay. It doesn’t matter if you turn me over too. I will do what’s right.”
    “I would never betray your trust, Brother Soto,” Frank said. “Your confessions among us are sacrosanct.”
    “Even if these crimes were committed by members, Frank,” Soto uttered through clenched teeth. “You’ve said more than once that you are not here to protect us if we stray.”
    “Just so,” the minister said.
    Another shiver went through the big cop’s frame and he turned on his heel, strode up the aisle and out of the church.
    Xavier was still thinking about the young girl who killed and gutted children so that her brothers and sisters could survive. For a moment he was nearly overcome by the feelings of empathy and impotence.
    “You will have to take her out of here,” Frank said.
    “Who?” Xavier asked; he was still thinking of the cannibal.
    “Doris. Guillermo might turn his work over to an associate and they could very well get a warrant.”
    “That would destroy the church,” Xavier said, the sheathed knife in his mind.
    “I doubt if it will come to that. But better be safe. Brother Soto may be having a crisis of faith.”
    “What will you do?” Xavier asked, trying to shake the knife out of his thoughts.
    “Pray for him. Maybe pray with him. He doesn’t like you and so it is easy for him to believe the worst.”
    “I hear that.”
    “Find Hope and tell her to bring you out of here through the Revelation Road. Take the girl somewhere where Soto won’t find her. Leave the church and its safety up to me.”

    Sister Hope was kneeling in the corner of a doorless white stone room carved out of the inner wall of the courtyard. He suspected that she was praying for the spirits of eaten children.
    “Hope,” he said softly.
    She stood up automaton-like and turned her huge head and face toward him.
    “Yes, Brother?”
    “Frank told me to ask you to get Ms. Milne and show us the way out down something called the Revelation Road.”
    “Certainly.”
    Hope walked across the yard with measured steps and climbed a rough-hewn ladder up to the second tier of the fortress wall. Then she disappeared within the catacomb inside.
    Xavier sat at one of the outside tables and wondered about the inevitability of a violent death.
    He had always been a fighter. Ambidextrous, naturally strong, and bathed in the hormonal chemistry of rage—he had never backed down and rarely lost a contest. This state of being for him was natural, like rats in an alley or the sun chasing after the moon. He didn’t realize that he was an evil man until the day that he and Frank sat and talked in that dark bar. He wasn’t able to remember most of the words that passed between them. All he knew was that he’d follow Frank anywhere. Right after that initial meeting Frank took Xavier up to Seabreeze City to spend three weeks in a solitary fourth-floor room that faced the ocean. Food and drink were brought for him at regular intervals and there was a bathroom down the corridor.
    He met with Frank every Wednesday and Saturday and sat on the back pew at the services on Sunday. He attended the Expressions but was asked not to speak or comment.
    He was instructed in how to pray by giving life to the Spirit rather than asking for boons, apologizing for being human, or thanking the Infinite for being.
    He disliked Guillermo but still considered him a brother. They were all on the same pageof damnation and they all worked hard to dispel the stench of their lives.
    Soto might have shot him in the main hall; or Ecks might have killed the cop. But these actions were not from hatred, not hatred of each other. And even if they despised each other they were still brothers—even in conflict.
    Xavier smiled and shook his head.
    Always give yourself enough time to reflect
, Frank had said on more than one occasion.
The Infinite always