"Bigger," said Flynn.
* * *
"It's Father Lucan and it's Brother Michael," Strelski tells Burr the night before, as they sit on the deck of the beach house in Fort Lauderdale. "Pat Flynn here calls the shots. You want to ask Michael something, mostly it pays to have Pat here do it. The guy's a sleazebag and a screwball. Right, Pat?"
Flynn pulls a huge hand across his mouth to hide his gappy smile. "Michael's beautiful," he declares.
"And pious," says Strelski. "Michael is very, very holy ― right, Pat?"
"A true believer, Joe," Flynn confirms.
Then, amid much giggling, Strelski and Flynn divulge to Burr the story of Brother Michael's coming to Jesus and to the high calling of Supersnitch ― a story, Strelski insists, that would never have had its beginning had not Agent Flynn here chanced to be up in Boston one weekend in Lent, taking a spiritual retreat from his wife and curing his soul with the aid of a case of Bushmills single malt Irish whiskey and a couple of like-minded abstainers from the seminary.
"That right, Pat?" Strelski demands, anxious perhaps lest Flynn fall asleep.
"Dead on, Joe," Flynn agrees, sipping his whiskey and taking a huge mouthful of pizza as he benignly follows the full moon's ascent over the Atlantic.
And Pat here and his reverend brethren have hardly done justice to their first bottle of malt, Leonard ― Strelski continues ― when in rolls the father abbot himself to enquire whether Special Agent Patrick Flynn of U. S. Customs would have the holiness to grant him a moment of counsel in the seclusion of his private office.
And when Agent Flynn graciously consents to this proposal, there in the father abbot's office, says Strelski, sits this string bean Texan kid with ears like ping-pong bats who turns out to be Father Lucan from something called the Blood of the Virgin Hermitage in New Orleans, which, for reasons known only to the Pope, is under the protection of the father abbot in Boston.
And this Lucan, Strelski continues, this kid with the ping-pong-bat ears and the acne, is into recovering lost souls for the Blessed Virgin through personal sanctification and the example of Her Apostles.
In the course of which uphill struggle, says Strelski ― while Flynn giggles and nods his red face and yanks his forelock like a fool ― Lucan has been hearing the confession of a rich penitent whose daughter has recently killed herself in a particularly disgusting fashion on account of her father's criminal life-style and debauchery.
And this same penitent ― says Strelski ― in the extreme of his remorse, has confessed his soul so drastically to Lucan that the poor kid has taken his ass full speed to his father abbot in Boston for spiritual guidance and smelling salts: his penitent being the biggest fucking crook Lucan or anybody else has stumbled on in their entire lives....
"Penitence, Leonard, in a doper, that's like a very short feast." Strelski has turned philosophical. Flynn is quietly smiling at the moon. "Remorse: I would say that was unknown. By the time Patrick got to him, Michael was already regretting his brief lapse into decency and pleading the First and the Fifth and his sick grandmother. Also whatever he had said was off the record on account of his dementia and grief. But Pat here" ― more smiles from Flynn ― "Pat with his religion retrieved the situation. He gave Michael exactly two choices. Column A was seventy-to-ninety in a house of permanent correction. Column B, he could play ball with God's legions, earn himself an amnesty, and screw the front row of the Folies-Bergeres. Michael communed with his Maker for all of twenty seconds, consulted his ethical conscience, and found it in him to go for Column B."
* * *
Flynn was standing in the tin shed, beckoning Burr and Strelski to come in. The shed stank of bat, and the heat sprang at them like heat out of an oven. There were bat droppings on the broken-down table and on the wood bench and on the collapsed plastic chairs around the table. Bats hugged each other like scared clowns in twos and threes, upside down from the iron girders. A smashed radio stood on one wall, beside a generator with a row of old bullet holes in it. Someone rubbished the place, Burr decided. Someone said, If we're not going to use the place anymore, no one is, and smashed everything that would smash. Flynn took a last look round outside, then closed the shed door. Burr wondered whether closing the door was a signal. Flynn had brought green mosquito coils. The printed writing on the paper bag said.
