Virgin by Mary Elizabeth Murphy Page B

me
be, Emilio. I'm settled in here. I'm not bothering anybody. I'm actually happy here. Just tell Dad you couldn't find me."
    "That
would be lying, Charlie. And I never lie . . . to your dad."
    He grabbed the
boy under his right arm and began to pull him from his seat. Charlie tried to
wriggle free but it was like a Chihuahua resisting a pit bull.
    The guy in the
other half of the booth stood up and gave Emilio a two-handed shove.
    "Get your
mitts off him, fucker!"
    He was beefier than Charlie, with decent pects and a
good set of shoulders under the T-shirt and leather vest he wore, but he was
out of his league. Way out.
    "No me
jodas!" Emilio said and smashed a right uppercut to his jaw that
slammed him back into the inner corner of the booth. He slumped there and
stared up at Emilio with a look of dazed pain.
    Emilio turned
and started dragging Charlie toward the door,
knocking over tables in his way. He didn't want a full-scale brawl but he
wouldn't have minded another maricon or two trying to block his way. But
most of them seemed too surprised and off guard to react. Too bad. He was in
the mood to kick some ass. He saw the bartender come out from behind the bar
hefting an aluminum baseball bat. Decker and Mol intercepted him, and after a
brief struggle Mol was holding the bat and the bartender was back behind the
bar.
    Once he was
free of the tables, Emilio swung the stumbling Charlie around in front of him
and propelled him toward the door. Decker and Mol closed in behind them as they
exited. Emilio heard the bat clank on the floor as the doors swung closed. Half
a dozen steps across the sidewalk and then they were all inside the limo,
heading uptown.
    Charlie opened
the door on the other side but Emilio pulled him back before he could jump out.
    "You'll
get killed that way, kid."
    "I don't
care!" Charlie said. "Dammit, Emilio, you can't do this! It's
kidnapping!"
    "Just
following orders. Your father misses you."
    "Yeah.
Sure."
    Charlie folded
his arms and legs and withdrew into himself. He spent the rest of the trip
staring at the floor.
    Emilio kept a
close eye on him. He didn't want him trying to jump out of the car
again--although that might be a blessing for all concerned.
    He sighed. Why
did the senador want this miserable creature around? He seemed to love
the boy despite the threat posed by his twisted nature. Was that parenthood?
Was that what fathering a child did to you? Made you lose your perspective?
Emilio was glad he'd spared himself the affliction. But if he'd had a child, a
boy, he'd never have let him grow up to be a maricon. He would have
beaten that out of him at an early age.
    What if Charlie
did die by leaping from a moving vehicle? Or what if he fell prey to a
hit-and-run driver? A major stumbling block on
the senador's road to the White House would be removed.
    Emilio decided
to start keeping a mental file of "accidental" ways for Charlie to
die should the need suddenly arise. The senador would never order it,
but if the need ever arose, Emilio might decide to act on his own.

    I was two decades and a half in the desert when they came to me.
How they found me, I do not know. Perhaps the Lord guided them. Perhaps they
followed the reek of my corruption.
    They too
were in flight, hiding from the Romans and their lackeys in the Temple. The
brother of He whose name I deserve not to speak led them. They were awed by my
appearance, and I by theirs. Barely did I recognize them, so exhausted were
they by their trek.
    I was
astounded to learn that they had brought the Mother with them.
    from the Glass scroll
    Rockefeller
Museum translation

    5

    Father Dan
Fitzpatrick strolled the narrow streets of his Lower East Side parish and drank
in the colors flowing around him. Sure there was squalor here, and poverty and
crime, all awash in litter and graffiti, but there was color here. Not
like the high-rise midtown he'd visited last night, with its sterile
concrete-and-marble plazas, its faceless