Strangers

Brendan looked through the window at his side, back toward the sandwich-shop entrance. Abruptly, that door was flung wide open, and two young men appeared, one black, one white. The black man wore a knit cap and a long navy peacoat-and carried a semiautomatic sawed-off shot gun. The white man, in a plaid hunting jacket, was armed with a revolver. They came out fast, half-crouched, and the black man swung the shotgun toward the patrol car. Brendan was looking directly into the muzzle. There was a flash, and he was sure he had been shot, but the rear passenger-side window in front of his face remained intact. Instead, the front window exploded inward, fragments of glass and lead pellets showering across the seat, rattling off the dashboard. The near-miss shocked Brendan out of his daze, and he rolled off his seat, to the floor, his heart hammering almost as loud as the gunfire.
        Winton Tolk had had the bad luck to walk unsuspecting into the middle of an armed robbery. He was probably dead.
        As Brendan pressed himself to the floor of the squad car, he heard Paul Armes shouting outside: "Drop it!"
        Two shots cracked. Not a shotgun. Revolver fire. But who pulled the trigger? Paul Armes or the guy in the plaid hunting jacket?
        Another shot. Someone screamed.
        But who had been hit? Armes or one of the robbers?
        Brendan wanted to look, but he did not dare show himself.
        Thanks to an arrangement Father Wycazik had made with the local precinct captain, Brendan had been riding as an observer with Winton and Paul for five days. In an ordinary suit, tie, and topcoat, he was supposed to be a lay consultant employed by the Church to study the need for Catholic charity outreach programs, a cover story which everyone seemed to accept. Winton's and Paul's beat was uptown, an area bordered by Foster Avenue on the North, Lake Shore Drive high-rises on the east, Irving Park Road on the south, and North Ashland Avenue on the west. It was Chicago's poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhood, home to blacks and Indians, but mostly to Appalachians and Hispanics. After five days with Winton and Paul, Brendan developed a strong liking for both men and a deep sympathy for all the honest souls who lived and worked in those decaying buildings and filthy streets - and who were prey to the packs of human jackals among them. He had learned to expect anything riding with these guys, but the sandwich-shop shootout was the worst incident yet.
        Another shotgun blast slammed into the car, rocking it.
        Brendan curled fetally on the floor and tried to pray, but no words came. God was still lost to him, and he cowered in terrible solitude.
        Outside, Paul Armes shouted, "Give it up!"
        The gunman said, "Fuck you!"
        When he'd reported to Father Wycazik after a week at St. Joseph's, Brendan had been sent to another hospital, where he'd been given work on the terminal ward, a dreadful place with no children at all. There, as at St. Joseph's, Brendan quickly discovered the lesson that Stefan Wycazik expected him to learn. To most who were at the end of life, death was not to be feared but welcomed, a blessing for which they thanked God rather than cursed Him. And in dying, many who had never been believers became believers at last, and those who had fallen away from faith came back. There was frequently something noble and deeply moving in the suffering that accompanied a person's exit from this world, as if each shared, for a while, the mystical burden of the cross.
        Yet, that lesson learned, Brendan remained unable to believe. Now, the fierce beating of his heart hammered the words of the prayer to dust before he could speak them, and his mouth was as dry as powder.
        Outside, there was shouting, but he could not make sense of the words any more, maybe because the people shouting were incoherent and maybe because he was partially deaf from the gunfire.
        He did not yet fully understand the lesson that Father Wycazik had hoped he would learn from this Uptown portion of his unconventional therapy. And now as he listened to the chaos outside, he knew that the lesson, regardless of its nature, would be insufficient to convince him that God was as real as bullets. Death was a bloody, stinking, foul reality, and in the face of it, the promise of a reward in the afterlife was not the least persuasive.
        The shotgun discharged again, followed by