16.

The Appointment

Sunday, March 17 - 8:03a.m.

A meticulously groomed Tony Malone sat in seat 37B of a jumbo jet heading from Rome to Boston where he was supposed to catch a connecting flight to Las Vegas. As he sat, amidst the drone of the engines, he tried to ignore the constant kick, kick, kick of a five-year-old boy in the seat behind him. He thought about how much he wanted to kill that boy, and how a few years earlier, he might have done just that. Now things were different. Now he had to restrain himself.

He wished to God he could have just one goddam cigarette, but he knew that was not allowed. He wondered if he could sneak a smoke in the airplane bathroom, but they were right next to the stewardess station, so that was going to be tough. He felt another kick, kick, kick behind him as he fished around in his suit pocket for a few squares of Nicorette gum, then he popped them into his mouth and chewed. This was going to be a long flight.

He closed his eyes and thought about his sordid past and how his life had changed.

He had been a sinner, but he had repented, thanks to the Church. The Church saved him from eternal damnation, and it was a damnation he felt he deserved, too. He grew up in Rome and his family had been so poor that when his father was laid off, he was forced to find a job at the age of ten. He had been a runner, doing odd jobs for one of the richest Italian families in Rome. His job paid good money, which kept his brothers and sisters fed. At first, he didn’t like the family he worked for but that eventually changed: it was a Mafia family.

As Malone had grown older, he had been given more and more responsibilities. He had started backing up the older men who collected “protection money” from the business owners around the neighborhood. He didn’t consider himself an extortionist back then, but he started packing a gun anyway, so he could help the boys do their job. The job paid well and he got to wear expensive suits.

The family business was serious work and he grew to like it. He didn’t lead his own collection team for another five years, and by then he knew the business well. The business owners of the neighborhood–especially the new ones–didn’t want to pay the extortion money, so sometimes they argued with the thugs. Malone was good at his job and he did not have to shoot anyone until he was almost twenty-seven years old.

He had worked for the Family all his life, and every day he had been given more and more responsibilities. After thirty years, killing was his business, and business was good. But something happened to change all that. He had a heart attack. Maybe his arteries became clogged because it was in his genes, or maybe it was all that cholesterol in the food at Rosa’s restaurant. Either way, he was sitting in front of a large plate of spaghetti one day when he had a funny feeling in his chest. A dull ache in his chest became a shooting pain in his arms and legs, and he collapsed to the floor.

Somewhere in the process of being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency bypass surgery, he had had a near-death experience. His life flashed before his eyes and he remembered with vivid detail every moment of pain and suffering he had ever caused in his life. After the life-review, it felt like he was sucked down a dark tube. When he emerged at the other end of the tube, he found himself in a place he could only describe as hell. It was hotter than he had ever felt before. He heard a terrible roaring noise, and screams of agony ripped the air. The smell of sulphur choked his breath. He found himself suspended by iron chains over a molten sea of lava, about to be dropped in.

He felt his skin start to blister and burn and he started coughing and choking on the sulphur. The pain in his arms, now worse than that of the heart attack, tore at him as the iron chains dug into the flesh of his wrists. As he struggled against the pain, the chains started to loosen and he started slipping. Then he heard a disembodied voice say, “Tony Malone. I’m giving you one last chance to straighten out your life. Screw this up, and you know what awaits.” Maybe it was God’s version of “scared straight,” but it worked: he was scared shitless. The next thing he knew, he had gasped for air on the operating table. Standing above him was a priest who had been reading his last rites. This priest was wearing different garb from an ordinary priest. “Welcome back to the living, my son. I thought we had lost you,” the priest said. “I am Cardinal Vilotti.”

From that point on, Malone’s life had changed. He started working for the Holy Catholic Church and the good Cardinal had absolved him of his sin. He thanked God every day for delivering him from the brink of hell. And now he owed not just his life, but his very soul to the church that saved him.

Now, as he started drifting off to sleep in his cramped airplane seat, he remembered the conversation he had a few simple hours before his transatlantic flight. He remembered standing in the red velvet office of Vilotti as he had so many times in the past, wondering what the Cardinal wanted. Vilotti had said, “I am sure you are wondering why I asked you here.”

He had asked, “What is it, Father?”

“Tony, I have a special assignment for you. I am appointing you to go on a special mission for the church.”

“You name it, Father.”

“There is a man who recently started making waves in Las Vegas, USA. He’s a rock singer named Mike Tomson. The Church has reason to believe he may be the Anti-Christ. This is a very serious matter. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father. What do you want me to do?”

Vilotti handed an envelope to Malone. “All I want is for you to keep an eye on him. Watch this man Tomson. Get as much information as you can about him. I want to know who he is, what he thinks, what he knows, everything. Follow him and give me reports daily. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, Father.” Malone opened the envelope and pulled out an airplane ticket, some cash, and three photographs of Mike, then he tucked them back inside.

Vilotti wondered how to say it tactfully. “Tony, we have talked about your previous vocation haven’t we?”

“Yes, Father.”

“This man Tomson could be a serious threat to us. We have got to protect the sanctity of God’s church. Sometimes we have to use extreme measures to protect the world from evil. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Two thousand years ago, St. Peter started the Catholic Church and appointed us as its rightful heirs and protectors. Will you help us keep God’s Church safe from evil? If we need your special skills, we will be able to count on you, won’t we?”

“Yes, Father.”

Vilotti’s image faded when Malone felt another sharp kick at his back and it startled him awake. Too bad I can’t have a cigarette and too bad I can’t do the kid, he thought. He couldn’t decide which he wanted worse.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

He said, “Every day is judgment day. Judge your feelings, actions, words and thoughts. If you postpone self-judgments, you will be faced with them on the day you die. On that day, you will ask yourself how much love you brought into the world, and you will judge your own worth by it. You will also judge how much pain–physical or emotional–you caused others, and you will feel shame by it. And if you wait until you die, it’s too late to give yourself a happy ending.”