A priest, an undercover cop and a widow walk into a bar. The widow is the first to enter. Next comes the priest. The undercover cop comes last, trying to look inconspicuous, an afterthought. Not as if he’s following someone. Such as the widow. Or the priest. He wants you to believe his being there is just one of those things. Like the rise of Communism or the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu. A fluke. Serendipitous.
It’s an old bar on a forgotten side street a short walk from the old Majestic Theater but too far to be part of the tourist scene along the River Walk. Square tin tiles pressed in a decorative pattern cover the high ceiling. Some of the tiles are missing, leaving black holes, as if rotten molars in a mouth have been yanked out by an incompetent dentist. The long, narrow room stinks of beer, Four Roses whiskey and restroom fornications. A couple of lights shaded by stained glass Tiffany knockoffs illuminate the front of the bar. The rest of the room sags into darkness.
Along the slab of scarred and boozy mahogany that runs down one side of the room, the three new customers sit on stools six feet apart as required by order of the Mayor to slow the spread of Covid-19. No one notices that the bar’s being open violates the Mayor’s bar shut-down order. But, hey … this is San Antonio. San Antonio, Texas. Home of the Alamo. On the first day of July, 2020. Times are desperate.
Of the three, only the priest wears a blue medical mask.
It’s just ten o’clock in the a.m. but outside the earth’s on fire. Step outside and you’re a fried egg over easy in the shade.
There’s only one other customer in the bar, a regular, asleep in a booth, head and arms slumped on the tabletop. Has he been there all night? Overlooked when the night bartender closed up? Or did he arrive just as the bar was opening? Slipping in like a ghost while the morning bartender counted the money going into the till? No one knows.
The morning bartender stands at the shadowed interior end of the bar looking at his cellphone when the three patrons enter. He hates the morning shift. Only a few regulars until happy hour starts at 3 o’clock. It goes without saying that the tips are for shit.
But when the three new customers enter, he glances up with irritation. As if to say: What the fuck! It’s way too early for real customers. Leave me the fuck alone.
A red western-style bandana, folded in a triangle hangs loosely around his neck. His white T-shirt reads: ‘I lost my cherry in San Francisco.’ Under it his abs are tight, his chest hard. Tattoos levitate on the indoor-white skin of his arms. At his wrists blue latex hospital gloves take over.
Pulling the bandana up so it covers his mouth and nose—armed robbery style—he douses the palm of each gloved hand with a squirt of hand-sanitizer and rubs them together. Then he moseys down to the first of his three customers. The widow.
Sitting on the bar next to her is a canvas tote. On the floor at her feet rests a white faux-alligator briefcase.
The widow, whose name is Diana (after the huntress), is skinny as a palm frond. As if she hasn’t eaten in six months. When she looks in the mirror she sees fat. That’s why men never want her—because she’s fat, fat, fat. She’s wearing a little black dress with spaghetti straps over bony shoulders. Her neck is long and ropey. Her black-dyed hair, pruned to a pixy cut, needs a wash. Her fire engine red lipstick doesn’t help. It makes her complexion appear as pale as plain, low-fat yogurt. Nor does the Roman toga purple eye shadow, which gives her a haunted look. Deep set deadpan-blue eyes, sunken cheeks, skin scuffed and dry as a sisal doormat. Her one asset are her astounding, once-in-a-lifetime, utopian tits, which the little black dress and a lacy pushup bra show off to loud applause, whistles, shouts and murmurs. She has no idea where they came from, since her mother’s chest was as flat as a saltine cracker. They just miraculously ‘happened’ between her 14th and 16th years. A wakeup call of the feminine powers that are hers.
The barman, whose name is Enoch (from old New England stock), does not find the woman attractive. In fact she comes across to him as a tad scary, like one of those praying mantises that eat their male sex partners. He imagines her springing over the bar, her sharp, minty white teeth going for the juggler. 50 ways to kill and eat your lover.
But he can’t turn his peepers away from fixating on her breasts. Outstanding. A1. The definition of magic realism. God’s truth.
“What’ll it be?” Enoch asks.
The bandanna distorts his words.
Diana double blinks, startled out of a daydream about running over her husband with an SUV. Or is it a recollection? A remembrance of things past?
“What?” she asks.
Okay lady. You’re sitting in my bar at ten o’clock in the f-ing morning. Do you want a drink, or what? Either order a goddamn drink or go down the street and hustle up some business with those tatas. This is what passes through Enoch’s head. What he says is: “What can I get you?”
Instead of answering, she looks sideways at the priest.
The priest studiously ignores her, leafing intently through a small black leather-bound book. A diary, perhaps. Or maybe an address book. Or a pornographic 19th Century novel disguised as the New Testament. Finally he looks at her and winks.
By this point Enoch is really annoyed. He drums his fingers on the bar.
At the sound she looks up at him and says: “Double Jack and an ice water chaser.”
He turns away from her deranged eyes and reaches for the Jack amid the rows of bottles arranged like failed Miss Universe contestants in front of the bar-length mirror. The mirror’s provenance goes all the way to 1929, installed a month before Black Friday. The bartender was born in 1992. Black Friday means nothing to him. He’s happy the bar is open amid the pandemic. Happy he can resume making payments on his iPhone 11 and the monthly service bill from AT&T.
He sets the double bourbon in front of the woman and a glass of ice water and moves on to the priest.
San Antonio is a long way from Del Rio thinks Diana as she sips her whiskey and watches the priest out of the corner of her eye. He orders a Shirley Temple. With two maraschino cherries. The second cherry is on the house.
***
Nine months prior Diana walked out on her husband, Gil ‘Black Gold’ O’Hara, Midas-touch wildcatter and random fornicator. Having bootstrapped herself from trailer park trash to wife of a millionaire, she put up with him for five years. But after hearing every Sunday the whispered tittle-tattle behind her back as she walked on Gil’s arm to their front row seat in the Mt. Zion Cowboy Church, she’d had it up to her fucking eyeballs.
Diana’s nights were Friday and Saturday—a wild saturnalia beginning with Gil, home from the oil fields, at the wheel of his Cadillac and Diana leaning over his lap with moisturized lips poised, followed by a steak and steak fries dinner (hold the salad and the vegetable) and ending usually with Juliette, the abundant hostess at Garcia’s House of T-Bone, commandeered for a late night ménage à trois. The rest of the week, after Sunday penance, she was a castaway in Gil’s 10,000 square foot McMansion in the middle of nowhere, while the great oil baron spread his seed hither and yon among oil field camp followers and tenacious, indefatigable Tex-Mex hookers.
Smoking three packs of Newports a day and drinking undiluted Jack until she fell into a coma, Diana dreamed of using the katana sword that hung above the fireplace to lop Gil’s sunburned, buzz-cut, sweaty, wind-scoured, booze-veined, pig-eyed noggin from his strong-as-an-ox, oil-field shoulders.
Instead she packed her bags, drove into Del Rio, rented a furnished townhome, found the best sleazebag divorce lawyer in town and filed for her fifty-percent share of Gil’s oil loot, Texas being a community property state. Since there was no prenup to worry about, Humbert Humphrey III (esquire) assured Diana her payday would be a slam dunk. And it would only cost $50 grand, mas o menos, to cover (A) the gumshoe work to find out where Gil has hidden his assets, (B) the hours of concentration and mental strain to prepare the necessary pleadings, motions and supporting affidavits, and (C) Humbert’s sterling advocacy before the bench, in judge’s chambers and at expensive dinners with the judge and his girlfriend.
And, since there was a genuine risk that Gil might do something stupid and violent, Humbert’s fees included the lease of a bulletproof black Mercedes sedan and a gat-carrying ex-Irish-mob-hitman driver (formerly of the Town of Mattapan, Massachusetts; now living under the witness protection program in Del Rio) to convey Humbert from his office to the courthouse and back and more generally around town, including stops at the Dollar Store, the HEB Supermarket and Stan’s Burgers, Beer, Liquor & More. Riding around Del Rio in the black Mercedes, made Humbert feel as though he was some kind of hotshot cartel lawyer. Wow! Cool! Except when he really thought about it, it wasn’t cool at all. Working for a cartel was life without parole.
Diana shrugged at the amount of legal fees. It was only money. When you hired the best sleazebag divorce lawyer in Del Rio, you had to expect to be taken to the cleaners. And when the husband you were suing for divorce was Gil ‘Black Gold’ O’Hara, you had to live with the constant expectation of cartel-like retaliation.
Panic attacks assailed her, promulgating bouts of hyperventilation, nausea, sweats, puking, self-induced water boarding, migraines and high blood pressure. She also suffered from fear of dying. Would Gil murder her in the deep, lonesome, prairie night? Or would he shoot her down in broad daylight in front of the Dollar Store?
Was being free and rich worth the jitters and palpitations that assailed her hourly?
Damn straight it was!
She kept a 6-round Ruger .38 in the glove box of her Grand Cherokee.
And lo, Humbert’s investigator came upon fat bank accounts in Panama, the Seychelles and Switzerland owned by layers of corporate shells that ultimately led via a trail of electronic mile markers to the famed wildcatter Gil ‘Black Gold’ O’Hara. Forthwith Humbert filed a motion in the 63rd District Court of Val Verde County to attach said accounts as part of the divorce estate.
That same afternoon, after Gil threatened to eviscerate his attorney who phoned him with the bad news, he double-checked that the magazine of his Colt .45 ACP was full. Satisfied, he drove the three hours from the oil-shale site he was working into Del Rio to the townhome rented by his renegade wife.
Driving home that day, as spidery dusk sucked the life out of a series of moth-shaped clouds, Diana observed from afar Gil’s pick-up parked at the curb in front of her townhome. Lights on a timer had clicked on inside. Gil stood at the bottom of the driveway staring up at the brightly lit second floor windows.
Did he think she was in there? She imagined him shooting the lock, rushing upstairs and strangling her with a length of piano wire. Or better yet shooting her multiple times in the face until she had no face left.
She clicked off the Grand Cherokee’s headlights. Then eased her foot relentlessly down on the gas pedal, causing the SUV to accelerate from 15 to 60 m.p.h. in 3.4 seconds.
Maybe it was the rasp of the tires on pavement. Or the grumble of the engine. As the Jeep barrel-assed toward him, Gil spun about. Like oil and water, like fear and loathing, like Satan and Joan of Arc, their eyes met. Then the Jeep bowled over him like a 1924 Buffalo Springfield steamroller jacked up on rocket fuel.
With a screech of brakes, the Jeep stopped hard just inches from the townhome’s garage door. Diana looked in the rearview mirror. Gil lay at the bottom of the drive. In the twilight a dark puddle oozed around his head.
Just to be sure, she backed over him.
After that, everything should have been fine. Gil was dead. It was a clear case of accidental death. Or, worst case, self-defense. And since they were still married, she would get it all, not just fifty percent.
There was a phone call to Humbert.
Then a meeting with the police at Diana’s house.
“I was pulling into the driveway, officer. Maybe going a little too fast. Gil came out of nowhere. Jumped right in front of me. There was nothing I could do.”
“Were you drinking, miss?” asked one of the two investigating officers. He was a blonde motorcycle cop and loved the creaking sound of his leather gear when he swaggered—which was most of the time. Diana figured he couldn’t be more than 20, 21.
“You know, I was humping in the back seat of a Chevrolet when you were still in diapers.”
“What did you say, miss?”
Luckily, just then Homicide Detective Earl Castro arrived. Del Rio only had one. Hawaiian shirt, olive-drab pants, black and white two-tone Dr. Martens. And the obligatory Blues Brothers sunglasses.
Castro’s retirement date was 2 years, 9 months and 3 weeks away. Diana could tell by the number of wrinkle lines in the corners of his eyes—like tree rings. 2 x 9 = 18 divided by 3 = 6. Six was his number, as in $16,000. She shared her augury with Humbert, who had just arrived on the scene.
Humbert and Castro held a short confab. At its end, Castro said loudly: “No problem.”
He strode over to where Diana stood fumbling in her purse for a cigarette.
As she placed the filter tip between her red lips, Castro flicked his cheap plastic lighter (two for a dollar at the Dollar Store) and a flame appeared. As he lit her cigarette, he smiled. It was one of those smiles that said: thanks for contributing to my retirement fund.
Diana sucked in a deep drag and blew it out tangentially from the right side of her mouth. She smiled back at him. It was one of those smiles that said: de nada.
“I am truly sorry for your loss, señora,” said Castro.
“What loss would that be?” Diana asked.
“The deceased. Señor O’Hara. Your beloved spouse.”
“OH! Right. Him.”
Like a good courtroom lawyer who doesn’t take shit from Shinola or anyone else, Humbert shoved his way into the picture.
“Mrs. O’Hara is in shock, Earl. She needs a drink.”
Humbert took a silver flask from somewhere inside his navy blue pinstripe suit, unscrewed the metal cap, poured a shot of Patron añejo into the upturned cap and tossed it back. He poured a second shot for Diana. Then he took her by the elbow and guided her toward the front door of her townhome.
“Mrs. O’Hara needs to rest,” he catapulted backward over his shoulder.
Humbert helped her upstairs where she made herself a real drink—Orange Fanta and vodka.
“I’m tired,” said Humbert, and left.
Diana took a shower, turned on an episode of Friends, plopped down on the couch and masturbated truly and deeply and meaningfully (as Martha Gellhorn’s husband might have said). Life was looking up.
The next day Humbert called about noon, just as Diana was putting a couple of frozen waffles in the toaster. They agreed to meet at Adios’s, a flyblown back-street enchilada joint he favored. When she got to the restaurant at 3, it was as empty as the lady’s room at a men’s transient hotel in St. Louis. The owner, a little old Mexican lady with a mustache, was sound asleep on a stool behind the cash register. Humbert sat in a shadowy back corner with a can of Modelo. She took a seat across from him and ordered a Modelo. Popping the beer tab, she drank, then wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
“So. What’s up, counselor?”
He handed her a cellphone.
“Check this out.”
She pressed the video play button. It was a nightmare. I Spit on Your Crummy
Grave, Part IX. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Untold Curse. Halloween, Part 99: Blood Carnage Special. Curse of the Undead Wildcatter.
Someone had shot a video of the entire thing. Diana accelerating down the street. Gil flattened. Diana backing over him. Then jumping out of the Jeep and kicking him in the cojones. Repeatedly.
In the face of irrefutable evidence of cold-blooded murder, what was a poor girl to do?
Not much.
At least for now.
She knew beyond a reasonable doubt that her dirty rat bastard lawyer had stashed a copy of the video somewhere super-safe.
Accordingly, at that moment, on that afternoon, she agreed to become Humbert’s sex slave, ATM, cook and cleaning lady. She had read somewhere about a Jewish woman who had done the same thing to avoid the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
A month in hell went by.
The first time she heard about the priest was on her day off sitting on the deck of her girlfriend’s houseboat on Lake Amistad, drinking Mexican brandy martinis with chili powder on the rim until they were both shitfaced.
The priest, excommunicated long ago by the Church of Rome, continued over the years to tend his flock in a lonely hamlet deep in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains. The story went that he had adopted an unusual sideline. To provide maize, scrawny chickens, pulque and the other necessities of life for his flock, he had become an assassin for hire. It was like something out of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre meets Charles Bronson in The Mechanic.
A week later, Diana, on her knees, begged Humbert for time off to visit her mom before she croaked from dread Stage-4 lung cancer. Diana’s acting job was flawless. Take two days, Humbert had said. Three at the most.
With a native guide and a rented 4-wheel-drive pickup, Diana headed into the Mexican back country in search of the killer priest. A burlap bag containing a hundred thousand U.S. dollars lay under the front seat. Arriving in the town of Los Testículos del Diablo, she went immediately into the primitive stone church built on the site of an Aztec devil cult on the zócalo.
She entered the confessional.
Huddled in the penitent’s chamber, nerves fraught, she heard the priest enter the contiguous chamber.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she said. “It has been many years since my last confession.”
“Since you’re last confession, what grievous sins have your committed?” asked the priest.
“I killed my husband.”
“Is that all?”
“I have become a whore and a slave to a very bad man.”
“Is that all?”
“I have thought endlessly about killing that man and cutting off his testículos.”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. How much are you willing to pay to have this desire fulfilled for you by a professional?”
They agreed upon a price of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. One hundred thousand up front. The balance upon completion.
Diana left the burlap bag containing the down payment in the confessional and hurried out of the church, her high heels beating a snare drum tattoo on the flagstones. Back outside nausea ravaged her. Her armpits and crotch broke out in hives, her jaw clenched like a vise. Bending over to puke, she took a series of deep, zen-like inhalations. Slowly the nausea eased. She just hoped the priest wasn’t running a scam, that she had not thrown a hundred thousand dollars down a black hole, that in short order Humbert would take up residence in a pine box.
The guide and Diana spent the evening together getting shit-faced in the bar of the town’s only hotel. There was no hanky-panky. They slept in separate rooms. Diana felt she was sleeping on a sheet of ice. The next day they undertook the dolorous and dusty drive back to Del Rio.
***
The undercover cop orders a Coors Light.
He’s really more of a grifter than a cop. He’s been on the trail of the priest for almost a year, looking for an opportunity to shake him down for a sizeable share of his swag.
Enoch twists off the Coors Light cap and sets the bottle on a paper coaster advertising Coors Light. He keys in the sale on the cash register, makes change which he puts on the bar in front of the cop (whom he doesn’t know is a cop). Then takes another squirt of hand sanitizer.
What a trio of wackos, he thinks. What the f–k are they up to?
Enoch has a sudden urge to go outside and smoke a cigarette. But he promised his girlfriend to give up the evil habit. It’s been a week now and he’s dying for a spike of nicotine. But he’s sure she’ll smell it on his breath when she gets home, resulting in yet another unpleasant scene vandalizing his manhood. He’s beginning to have doubts that his girlfriend is a keeper. Yet another in a long line of failed relationships.
As an oral surrogate, he takes a beef jerky stick out of a glass jar kept on the bar, walks to the front door end of the bar and looks out at the passing scene, which is about as uninteresting as his own life. He turns around and, as his eyes readjust to the noirish interior, he chews on the end of the jerky stick and, for want of something more exciting to consume his time, continues his observations of the three early customers.
The bony chick with the boobs and the priest are making eye contact, as if they know each other from another time and place. She rolls her eyes towards the back of the bar. Tote bag and briefcase in hand, she eases her skinny ass off her stool and walks deeper into the murky rear of the bar. The only thing back there besides some stacked cases of beer and cartons of bar supplies are the restrooms. Red neon signs read “Guys” and “Dolls.”
Diana enters the “Dolls.” The sharp smell of tinkle vexes her nostrils. The restroom is hell’s garbage dump. The beat-up beige walls are ravaged with pornographic offers and accompanying illustrations. Ooze, slime and filth have transformed the sole sink into a breeding ground for dengue fever. The mirror above it is cracked and streaked with something that resembles dried blood. A squalid toilet without privacy partitions offers the only means of relief to a throbbing bladder. A roll of toilet paper sits on its perennially running water tank. This little girl’s room is the perfect venue to freshen up in in preparation for a murder.
Here and there puddles of unidentifiable liquid make it difficult to traverse the dark green floor. Whatever it is, you don’t want to step in it.
Diana proceeds on tiptoes to the shitter. Hiking up her dress, but not removing her wintergreen lace undies, she sits. She doesn’t need to pee. Faux-alligator briefcase on her left, canvas tote on her right, she waits.
The briefcase is supposed to contain two hundred and fifty thousand dollars—the second (and final) installment due upon completion under the murder-for-hire contract with the priest. The deed is done, as per the front page story of murder and arson in the Del Rio News-Herald. The article attributes Humbert’s demise to a contretemps with the Gulf Cartel that escalated out of hand. The charred remains of Humbert’s black Mercedes are presented as evidence of his cartel connections.
In fact the briefcase is packed to the gills with newsprint rough-cut into dollar-bill-sized segments. In the tote are a pair of all-cotton pajamas made in Bangladesh, a change of undies, the Ruger .38 and an extra fully-loaded magazine (just in case).
Diana has no intention of making the second payment. With the oil market in free fall because of (A) the Covid-19 shutdown, and (B) massive overproduction by the Russians and the Saudis, the value of Gil’s oil and gas leases has taken a nose dive into the deep end of an empty swimming pool. Besides, Diana’s trailer park upbringing has made her into an absolute Scrooge McDuck.
On that note, she cocks the Ruger.
After the woman sporting las knockers fabulosas disappears into the shitter, Enoch turns his attention to the priest and the cop.
The priest fiddles with his rosary. In the blistering heat of July he’s in a major sweat under his black cassock. A bad vibe weighs like a cement sarcophagus on his nefarious soul. Images of blood carnage, murder and mayhem flit through his head. Bless me, someone, for I have sinned and the devil’s on the loose.
The cop holds up his empty Coors Light bottle and nods to Enoch for another.
As Enoch heads for the domestic beer cooler, the priest adjusts his cassock to be sure his barbed red tail is hidden. Then walks toward the “Dolls” where the bag of gold he is due awaits.
When the priest disappears through the doorway to the pissoir, the cop leaps in pursuit, drawing a snub-nosed .38 from his ankle holster.
Enoch’s eyes bug out. Whoa! Some serious shit is comin’ down. Ain’t none of my business.
Inside the “Dolls” the stench of hell assaults the priest’s delicate nose more accustomed to sandalwood incense and lavender-scented holy water. He recoils, tears flooding his eyes. For a few seconds he can’t see.
Like a rabid attack dog, the Ruger in Diana’s right hand barks three times.
The priest stumbles backward, collapses in a swirl of black robes, dead before he hits the hideous floor. Diana rushes forward, stands over the body and fires three more times. Blam! Blam! Blam! One in his forehead, two more in his heart—just to be on the safe side. She ejects the empty magazine and inserts the spare.
But the cop is already standing with the barrel of his .38 revolver pressed to the side of her head.
“Don’t,” he says, as he yanks the Ruger from her hand.
“He’s dead,” she says.
“I hadn’t noticed. What’s in the briefcase?”
“$250 grand. Take it. It’s yours.”
He backs toward the toilet. His snub-nose and his eyes are focused relentlessly on Diana. But for an instant, when he reaches for the handle of the white faux-alligator briefcase, his concentration breaks.
Diana’s hand slips under the priest’s cassock as if she might commit an act of necrophilia. But it’s the priest’s .45 semi-auto she’s after. From the second half of a forward roll (she’s been working out a lot lately), she shoots the cop in the right thigh. He screams in pain. His and her .38’s skitter across the squalid floor, as the cop flails backward. He crouches behind the porcelain crapper, holding the briefcase aloft like a shield.
Diana’s second shot shatters the briefcase lock. The briefcase splits open; dollar-bill-sized confetti cascades everywhere.
“You stink like a cop,” she says. Death, mordida and venality. She can smell them on him, like rotting gangrenous flesh. But Diana has no interest in being a cop killer, on the run for the rest of her life.
“But you’re in luck, copper. You get to live to kill another day.”
She shoots him in the left foot (she’s been going to the gun range a lot lately). He screams again.
She picks up his .38 revolver and her Ruger; ejects the full magazine from the Ruger and reinserts the empty one; uses her dress to wipe off her fingerprints. She sets the Ruger on the floor near the cop; drops the .45 by the dead priest.
“Adios, pendejo.”
She bales, barrel-assing toward the front door of the bar.
“Fuck you!” the cop yells after her.
Enoch is long gone. Three blocks down and still truckin’. From time to time he glances apprehensively over his shoulder.
The sleeping drunk, having been jolted awake by the gunshots, stares about him, overcome with awe or dread that he’s back in the world again.
Diana bursts from the bar. The sun’s glare blinds her. She twists around and backs precipitously into the street, the cop’s .38 pointing toward the bar, her eyes focusing on its dark interior to see if somehow the cop is coming after her.
KA-SPLAT!
Diana is imprinted on the front grill of a Peterbilt 18-wheeler traveling hell bent for leather for the Interstate entrance just up the block. Her life doesn’t flash before her eyes.
Oh, well.
(I bet you didn’t see that coming.)
Forehead creased in pain, the undercover cop limps out the front door of the bar. Finding the brouhaha of the 18-wheeler accident, he tucks the priest’s .45 out of sight. As best he can he proceeds up the street in the opposite direction from that taken by Enoch. The sun beats down like a motherfucker. He’s lucky to be alive.
by 
Jonathan Woods
Latest posts by Jonathan Woods (see all)
- A Priest, an Undercover Cop and a Widow - November 28, 2021
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