Kay righted the crate and climbed onto it. On the other side was a yard, boxed in on all sides. She gripped the top, swung herself over, and got down on all fours, like a cat. Pulled her gun and shouted “Police” twice, then walked toward the trembling man who lay hunched up against the wooden fence, directly beneath a piece of Black Wolves graffiti. Both arms were up and protecting his head.
“Police!” Kay repeated, keeping the gun on him. “Show me your hands! Now!”
The man raised his arms above his head as though in prayer, but his head was still turned in toward his body.
“Let me see your face!” Kay stopped six feet from the man, far enough away that she’d have time to shoot him if he attacked, close enough to be sure she couldn’t miss.
The man looked up. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Please!” he sobbed. “Have mercy, and the Lord shall have mercy on you!”
Kay stared. She recognized him immediately, even though she’d only seen the face on the TV screen and in pictures. She cursed quietly, pulled out her phone and called the number she’d been given in the police car. The call was picked up at once:
“Fortune.”
“Myers here. You still in control at the theater?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. Don’t let anyone leave, you hear me?”
“You didn’t get him?”
“Oh yeah.” She drew a breath. “But it isn’t him.”
“Not Gomez?”
“No, it’s…” She looked at the face again. White man, fifties, boyish quiff, big glasses, sort of shiny suit. Not that she saw too many TV evangelist shows, but this face was almost as well known as Jim Bakker. “Someone else. We’ll be right back.”
She squatted down in front of the man. “Will I find a gun if I search you?”
The man shook his head.
“I believe you,” she said. “But disobeying police orders during a raid in connection with an illegal movie is an indictable offense, you do know that? Or don’t you, pastor?”
The man’s Adam’s apple shot up and down and he looked terrified. But when he opened his mouth to speak the words poured out of him.
“We are all sinners, sister. But Jesus Christ Our Lord has given us the power and the mercy in our hearts to forgive. I have been put here on earth to do God’s work. Like Jesus Christ Our Savior, I go to sinners in the very places where they sin.” It was the same smarmy, chanting, almost hypnotic voice that disgusted her so much on TV. “But we know that not everyone out there will realize and understand this. So I beseech you to let me go and not to mention my name to the er…media, so that I may continue my work in the service of God. And I will remember the names of you two good citizens in my prayers and in my conversations with Our Lord this evening. And He will open the doors to paradise for you.”
“Thanks, but I’m not a believer, pastor.”
“N-not? I understand. Then how about a more tangible contribution to the work you’re doing? Our Church has means.”
Kay looked at the bullet holes in the wooden fence a few inches above where the pastor was now lying curled up.
“I suggest instead a mutually acceptable agreement,” she said. “You never mention to anyone about how we fired a couple of shots at a fugitive we had reason to believe was armed, and we say nothing about you being found at a jack-off movie theater. How does that sound?”
The TV preacher winked at her, and she could see his business calculator had already weighed the offer.
“Deal,” he said and held up his right hand.
Kay made a face. Guessing the images that instinctively passed through her head, he withdrew it and offered her his left instead. She took it and hauled him up onto his feet.
—
Kay and Olav Hanson stood in front of the Rialto and watched the preacher drive off in a taxi.
“He wasn’t armed,” said Kay.
“No?” said Hanson. “He pointed something in my direction, but the sun was in my eyes. Anyway, they were just warning shots.”
