“Father Gilmartin?” Patsy ran up, stopping beside me. “What happened?” Patsy stooped to help the elderly priest as I darted around the corner, looking into the dark.
Throngs of people streamed toward the church, crowding the sidewalk in front of the school. Families crossed at the light on busy Sunset Boulevard, laughing and talking, oblivious to the pair of men who’d assaulted their priest as they headed to the church a hundred feet away.
“Wes!” Patsy yelled. The panic in his voice was evident as I ignored his cry, searching for the two men in the crowd. Several people stopped and turned in my direction as I pounded towardthe church entrance. I couldn’t see the men anywhere and I stopped when a huge, black man charged out of the church and down the wide stairs, turning in my direction. He held a cell phone pressed to his ear and when he saw me looking around, he came toward me.
“Are you Wes?”
I stopped and looked at him. He was my height, about thirty, and very handsome, but it was the expression of alarm as well as the use of my name, that made me come to a screeching halt in front of him.
“Yeah?”
“I’m Napoleon. Patsy’s on the phone.”
“I was chasing two guys,” I panted.
I looked around, feeling angry as hell when I realized they’d vanished. I was surprised when Patsy’s friend held his phone out to me. I blinked at him and took it. “Patsy?”
“Where the hell’d ya go?”
I spun back to the corner and began heading back to him and the priest with his friend right beside me. “Sorry, I just…I couldn’t let them get away.” I saw Patsy, and Father Gilmartin who’d gotten to his feet. “We’re right here.”
I vaguely registered the line go dead as Patsy spotted me. He was wearing a deep frown as he held onto the priest’s forearm. I watched him pocket his phone before turning back to the father who swayed a little as he held onto Patsy’s shoulder to steady himself. Father Gilmartin wasn’t a small man, standing a couple of inches taller than Patsy and carrying a lot of bulk under his vestments.
“Wes?” the father asked, the moment we got close enough to be heard.
Patsy turned to look at me in surprise. “Ya know each other?”
I nodded. “As you said, the church regularly feeds the homeless and Father Gilmartin always takes the time to meet everyone he can.” I glanced at the priest. “What happened, Father? Who were those men?”
“I was just saying to Patsy, I didnae see them before.” He glanced at Napoleon for the first time and smiled. “Hello, Napoleon.”
“Hi, Father.” Napoleon glanced at Patsy. “You should call an ambulance for Father Gilmartin.”
The priest put a hand to his belly. “Och, no, no. It’s completely unnecessary. They hit me in the solar plexus, but it only knocked the wind out of me for a wee bittie.” His Scottish brogue was soft but more pronounced under stress.
“Father, why would two men you’ve never met accost ya like that?” Patsy asked.
He turned to look at Patsy. “They said they had a message for one of my congregation, Marigold Bishop.”
The father wobbled and I stepped forward, taking hold of his other side, wincing as I realized it was my bad arm.
“Here, let Napoleon do that, Wes. You’ve been shot,” Patsy said.
“You’ve been shot, Wes? Good God, man.” Father Gilmartin’s eyes widened in dismay.
I stepped aside as Napoleon moved in and slung an arm around the priest’s back to support him. “It was nothing, Father. You’d know if I needed you,” I replied.
“Do ya think ya can make it back to the church? Yer not steady on yer feet,” Patsy said.
“If you’d just take me back to my residence, that’d be fine. I could do with a cup of tea.”
“I think we should get ya to hospital,” Patsy said, biting his lip.
“No, no, my boy.” Father Gilmartin’s voice was slightly shaky as we walked him back toward the church. Before we got there, he stopped at the gate to the school. “Let’s go into my sitting room.” He dug inside his robe and produced a set of keys holding them out to me and pointing to the one which opened the gate.
I unlocked it and followed everyone down the path and around the school to the back. It opened out onto a yard which we crossed to the priest’s residence. I handed his keys to Patsy who unlocked the door and let us into the older building. Not unlike the school, this building seemed to have been added after the original church, built right on Sunset Boulevard itself.
I’d been drawn to the church years ago during Pride, when this priest and several others had come out for gay rights during the fight against hate and Proposition 8 in California. The parish and many other churches in Hollywood and throughout the southland had opened their doors to the LGBTQ community before the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in 2015 with the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
