Chapter 3: Sunday with Tommy
Grace and I walked through the parking lot of Saint Gregory the Great Church. I waved at other parishioners as we passed. I nodded at each of them in turn. “Hey, Frank. Ann. Daniel, you okay after the cold? Don’t be a hero. Stay home if you’re sick. You’re not? Okay.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “And people say I’m a nerd.”
I smiled at her. “Sure. Don’t you have homework to do?” I asked her.
“I did that Friday,” she told me. “College professors aren’t as rough as home-schooling.”
I chuckled at her. “Sure, Gracie. Mom and I were really tough on you. You wanted more homework.”
My daughter beamed. “It’s fun. Why do you think I’m a PA student?”
“Because Physician’s Assistant pays better in the long run instead of a doctor?” I asked.
“That, too.”
We walked across the street and through a tunnel underneath the Cross Island Expressway. The street layout made it easier to park at the church, then walk across to the school parking lot.
Grace and I walked toward the school. The food pantry distribution was nearing full swing. We would be there just in time.
I glanced around before I whispered, under my breath, “You have everything, right?”
Grace patted me on the arm. “Stop worrying.”
Grace and I both wore large top coats. It wasn’t surprising in November. But that wasn’t the concern. The nice thing is that the pockets were large enough for the stacks of money we both carried. Yes, it sounded strange, but cash was untraceable. Ever since we had been given a bequest from an old adversary of mine, we had made a point of giving money away on every good cause we could find. The biggest benefit is that we didn’t need the Bishop’s Annual Stewardship Appeal—which always turned the weekly homily into a plea for money. Ever since we’d had the money dropped in our laps nine years before, the dioceses of New York City had never run out of money. But I made sure to write each check personally.
The Bishops and the Cardinal didn’t give me public credit. In the case of the food pantry, I didn’t want credit, either. But all of us carried stacks of hundred dollar bills, the better to stuff into each box of food distributed through the pantry. I preferred it that way. It was an easy way of making people take money—by making sure they didn’t know where to return it.
It may sound like a lot of effort to hide charity. Two things: first, I held fast to the Gospel statement that one should not pray out on a street corner, but in a closet, so one could avoid taking praise and credit on Earth. Second, I was already uncomfortable with the praise I got for paying for all of the ammunition on range day—it happened four times, and then I started a crowdfunding page to “raise the money” (which I privately funded).
Grace and I walked in, taking our time. Everyone wanted to say hello, and I wasn’t going to brush them off.
When we finally got to the back room of the pantry, I was assaulted by two children. One was three, the other two.
And they cried out in unison, “Grandpa!”
I caught my two grandchildren, one in each arm, and hefted them off the ground. The younger boy was named Michael. My granddaughter was three years old, born within the year of my wife’s death. She was also named Mariel.
I looked around, and spotted Jeremy and Lena in the back of the pantry. My son and my ward/ daughter-in-law were already hard at work packing boxes of food.
Which means they were already ahead of us on packing the cash donations with the food.
I smiled. I had seen Jeremy and Lena at the back of the church during Mass, but since I was the Eucharistic minister, I hadn’t had a chance to talk with them. Then they hadn’t joined us on the bus for the gun range (for good reason—it was hard to put ear mufflers on toddlers). This was the closest I might get to talk to them before Sunday dinner.
I endured Michael and Mariel kissing and hugging me with enough force that they were obviously trying to strangle me. I put up a good fight and survived their onslaught. Thankfully, they had both slept through Friday night’s demonic taunting—they slept as hard as Alex had. They had been with Grace while I served as Eucharistic minister. Jeremy and Lena had collected them afterwards, while I was still with the priest, shaking hands as everyone filed out.
“Mommy and Daddy are back!” Mariel told me.
I smiled at her. “I know, I saw them during Mass.”
Michael squealed and kept hugging me.
Then the gunshots rang out.
I went ramrod straight. Jeremy and Lena did as well. We all turned towards the entrance of the food pantry. No one was coming in. So the shooters were outside.
I kissed Michael and Mariel on the foreheads before I handed them off to Grace. “Sorry, kids. Grandpa’s gotta go to work. Stay here with Auntie Grace.” I pointed at Grace. “Stay here. Lock the door after us. Three-F.”
Grace nodded. Three-F was one of our many, many plans developed over the years. Plan three meant we were at church. Variant F was for when we were all there and for Grace to shelter in place with Michael and Mariel. The rest of us went hunting.
I charged the doors and pushed through, dashing through the hall leading to the school parking lot.
In the middle of the parking lot were a dozen Hispanic teenagers. Some may have been a little older, but not by much. They were sporting leather jackets, like this was some sort of gangster movie. Normally, I would have had to look for their clothing to identify them. I didn’t have to. I recognized their facial tattoos.
They were MS-13—the bane of my existence since the beginning of my time as a wonder worker. They worked the slave trade (trafficking and sexual slavery), drugs, terrorism. They were a street gang with the armory and reach of al-Qaeda. There were a dozen of them, armed to the teeth with automatic rifles—some Ingram Mac-10s, and some AK-47s. They were a collection of every cliché armament for gangbangers since the 1980s. Except the leader, who was armed with a shiny Desert Eagle semiautomatic.
“Hey!” the leader called out cheerfully. “More people to join the party.” He looked around, waving his huge Desert Eagle like Italians talked with their hands. “We’ve heard that this is the place to collect free money.” He grinned as he pointed around with the muzzle. “We’re here to sign up for it. All of it.”
I cursed myself for not thinking through my donations. After years of handing out money in the food pantry, I just concluded that it was only through the grace of God that we hadn’t been robbed before. Eventually, people would have talked. Even if they said something as simple as “I dug my way out of poverty, starting with an anonymous donation through a food pantry. Isn’t it great?”
It was a good idea while it lasted.
I stepped forward, hands in plain sight. I wanted them to see me as not a threat. At my size, it was rare, but MS-13 had a tendency to be arrogant and think they were invincible.
Mostly, I just wanted them distracted.
“Pardon me, gents!” I called out. “But I think you don’t want to do this?”
The leader looked at me askance. He held up his gun at a ninety-degree flip—the muzzle was held at three o’clock, and the butt was at nine, as I looked down the barrel. I winced at his grip. It was terrible. I taught people better. The brass flying into his face would suck. Especially with the fifty-caliber shell casings. The Desert Eagle was chrome plated, with additional gold trim. Tacky, but it was an aesthetic I had come to accept from MS-13.
“And what do you know about what I want, vato?” he sneered.
I smiled at him. “Ever heard of Lieutenant Thomas Nolan?”
He scoffed. “Yeah? So? Some cop. Supposedly took out a big shot back in the day. Rene Ormeno. Guy was legendary.” He blinked, then chuckled. “Total psycho, but legendary. What about Nolan?”
“Pleased to meet you.”
The leader paused for a moment, then smiled. “Tommy fucking Nolan, eh?” He called over his shoulder to his men, “Eh boys! We know why he sent so many of us to crash the party! We got Tommy Nolan here. Some boogeyman in blue. And we know cops don’t bring no guns to a church social, eh?”
It was my turn to smile. “We do when we just came back from the church’s Sunday range trip.”
I watched the leader’s lips slowly part, and his eyes go wide. It was like his face was in slow motion as the realization set in. His head slowly turned, without his body or his gun turning the same way.
When he called his men to look at me, that was when everyone from the range trip had grabbed their guns. Especially the scarecrow-like septuagenarian who sat behind one of the tables to my right. He was there because he was a fellow instructor at the range, and he checked off boxes distributed from the pantry.
He was also my old partner at the NYPD, Detective Alex Packard, retired.
The big barrel of the Desert Eagle swung to the parishioners who surrounded us.
The Desert Eagle made it only an inch past my ear when the gunshots rang out behind me. Alex, Lena, and Jeremy had fired at the same time. I felt the bullets from my son and my ward zip past my ears. Alex’s went through the back of the leader’s head—he had been aiming for the man’s ear when he’d turned his head.
The MS-13 gunmen didn’t even have a chance to open fire. None of them had dropped their guns, which meant deadly force was authorized. As a cop, I was required to give them a chance to surrender. Once I had identified myself, they had their chance. With the weapons MS-13 brought to the party, they had to be put down without remorse. Hesitation would get at least one of the parishioners killed.
None were.
I sighed and sagged and turned to my kids. “And a good afternoon to you both.”
From the table, Alex let out a heavy sigh. “One day, Tommy, you’re going to attend a church function and something won’t happen.”
The responding officers let us go a few hours later.
Sunday dinner was a little late.
This week’s guests, however, didn’t mind all that much. One of them was Father Richard Freeman, who was a nebbishy-looking priest who had been graying since I first met him. He had hit his sixties, but they hadn’t hit back. Years of clean living had made him look like a cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Woody Allen, only with slightly thicker wire-frame glasses.
Medical Examiner Doctor Sinead Holland was another friend who was aging gracefully. She was a brunette with silver streaks so artfully placed, I would have suspected she dyed her hair. But if she had been anywhere near that vain, she wouldn’t work in a job that made her smell like formaldehyde. Her heart-shaped face had a few laugh lines around her mouth and some crow’s feet, but her deep brown eyes were quick and lively. She was quick to smile and laugh. I guessed it was a requirement of cutting up bodies. She had brought her husband the heart surgeon.
And Alex, as always, was there.
Of course, the table was surrounded with the rest of my family. My children and their children took up a large portion of our table. Grace and I had spent most of yesterday with prep work for Sunday’s dinner, even though it was simple chicken quarters (we left legs and thighs together, seasoned them, and today, threw them in the oven). Rice was easy, and the vegetables were easiest of all—we microwaved them.
I made sure to keep smiling through the meal. I was surrounded by my friends and loved ones. I was rich in both. I had every reason to be happy.
There should have just been one more place at the table, and one more smile by my side.
“Did you hear about Dennis Weldy and Annie Yoskowitz?” Sinead asked. “They both won Powerball. They won nearly a billion dollars. Each.”
Alex looked at me. “Didn’t you give both of them toasts that sounded more like a benediction at their weddings? Sometime last year? He was January, she was May?”
I shrugged. “I think so.”
Sinead smiled. “Remind me to have you say the benediction at my daughter’s wedding.”
We were about to get to ice cream when the explosion rocked the entire neighborhood.