Parishioner Read Online Free Page A

words sound like a threat.
    Xavier smiled and said, “Congratulations.”
    “Come on, baby,” Iridia said. “Let me take you home and rub your feet.”
    “It’s only four,” Chapman said, his tanned face turning from the dark gangster.
    “It was a good sermon,” the courtesan replied.
    She climbed into the driver’s side and over to the passenger’s seat. Her young lover followed, proving somehow the words of destiny that Father Frank drummed into the congregation week in and week out.
    After the unlikely pair had driven off, Xavier wondered whether he should go back into the church and search out the pastor. He considered this action for long minutes, finally realizing that if Frank wanted to tell him something more, he would. The minister was not shy or half-assed.

    Xavier lived in a small studio on Flower Street between Olympic and Ninth. The building was old and brown, seven stories, and out of place like an octogenarian that had outlived her family and now made do living among strangers. The elevator had stopped working years before but he didn’t mind. He liked the walk up to the top floor and didn’t know any of his neighbors. He had a hot plate and an aluminum sink, linoleum floors and a small window with a view of the alley where his thirty-year-old, wood-paneled delivery truck was parked. The door that led to his utility toilet, with its jury-rigged shower stall, was opposite his single bed.
    Xavier had no television, BlackBerry, or electronic music player. He had a laptop computer that was mostly used for correspondence courses, a cell phone that could do a few tricks, and two custom-made Afghani handguns that could slip into any pocket and fire fourteen shots.
    His license read,
Egbert Noland
, and there was a passport under the name Ryan Adonitello. He most often went by Ecks but never explained when asked where the nickname came from.
    At Frank’s behest Ecks had enrolled in the Southern Minnesota Correspondence University studying religion and literature. He spent the first year online getting his GED, realized that he liked doing homework, and continued his studies with no clear intention of getting a degree.
    He read books in his spare time, perused the
LA
and
New York Times
most mornings after delivering papers. Afternoons he meditated for an hour and then walked three miles to the YMCA, where he exercised, swam, and then worked out in the boxing gym.
    That was his schedule six days a week, but on Sundays he limited himself to delivering newspapers, driving his Edsel up north to church, and then sitting on his straight-backed hardwood chair to think about the things he had done wrong. This he found much easier than forgetting.
    That particular Sunday he thought about a group of young thugs who called themselves the Easties. This gang wanted to take over the
girls
down around the Meatpacking District and make them hand over Xavier’s percentage.
    The Easties didn’t come from the Lower East Side, or East New York, and the girls of the Meatpacking District weren’t really girls. But Xavier and his main man Swan killed Tommy Tom and Juju Bean on a side street that smelled of rotting meat. The executions occurred at three in the morning so that all the late-night sex workers down there could see who was in charge.
    Juju Bean had called for his mother, before Swan, on Xavier’s order, had cut his throat.
    “Mother!” he shouted—not
Mama
or
Mom
.
    Ecks sat at his multipurpose kitchen table wondering what the execution of Juju Bean had to do with Benol. After an hour or so of trying to get the incongruous puzzle pieces into some proximity, he shook his head and went about his Sabbath routine.
    Sunday dinner was cornflakes and skim milk followed by a can of sardines in virgin olive oil topped with slices of raw onion and sweet balsamic vinegar. He ate slowly while paging through LA’s and New York’s Sunday papers.
    Xavier saw the manila folder sliding under his door but he didn’t go to see