"A Ship Run Aground" is Robert Miller's second consecutive contribution to the annual short story anthology The Event ... A streak Bob maintains to this day. In this chapter, Mike visits Tommy in lockup to finally let him in on Dorothy's secret ...
A SHIP RUN AGROUND
Robert S. Miller
Chapter 3
III. Searching The Monastery Grounds
The raid on the mission occurred that following Monday at six o’clock in the morning. Though Monsignor Andreatti, an auxiliary bishop for the local diocese, gave permission for ICE, FBI and DEA agents to search the premises, the search was at my direction. Bishop Andreatti was reluctant to grant permission for agents to invade the sanctuary. He refused to allow anyone to disturb the mission on a Sunday, but he agreed to the raid on Monday because I told him that Captain Johnson might be a violent drug offender.
Since I was in charge of the search and knew something about the mission’s layout, I was there with the agents when it all began. I knew of the locations where Captain Johnson and the immigrant family would most likely hide. I could also deal with any side issues that may arise regarding agency authority. Yet, after two hours, agents could not locate any of the fugitives.
At around nine o’clock I received a call on my cellphone from security that I needed to go to the church steps. The caller said an intruder was trying to disrupt the search and was demanding to speak with me. The intruder wouldn’t give his name, but I knew who it was. In fact, I was expecting his arrival.
I left the dorm that the agencies were searching at the time and I walked around the northwest corner of the church. In front of the church was Tommy surrounded by five security guards. Dorothy was outside of the circle and trying to get by one of the guards to talk to Tommy. Tommy saw me and knocked down one of the guards while trying to charge at me. “Mike, you son-of-a-bitch!” Tommy screamed. “I trusted you! I trusted you!”
Fortunately, the other guards were able to slow Tommy down just enough so that Dorothy could get in front of him and plead with him. “Tommy, Tommy,” I heard her say. She was standing between Tommy and me, and she was putting her hands up to Tommy’s face. “Tommy, please! Tommy, please! We can’t have violence here. I need for you to be calm. I need you. I need you.”
It was an act of incredible courage on Dorothy’s part. Especially when Tommy got angry, he was a physical force. Even with their billy clubs, the six guards would only have been able to keep him back temporarily. Nobody else but Dorothy could have stopped Tommy at that point – at least without firing a gun.
Soon Dorothy was holding Tommy’s head in her arms. Tommy began weeping. “I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “I’m sorry. I let you down.” In the years I had known him, this was a side to Tommy I’d never expected to see.
“You didn’t let me down,” Dorothy replied. “You’ve never let me down. This fight isn’t over yet. You have to trust me on that. This fight isn’t even close to being over yet.”
As my presence would only make matters worse, I returned to the dorm to continue with the search. After a couple of more hours with no results, I made my way to the office of the parish priest. Under the orders from the monsignor, he was cooperative. He even found some old maps of the mission grounds showing the various passages and tunnels that had been there for several decades. As we studied the map, I directed crews on where to search next. In about a half-an-hour, I received a call that they located Captain Johnson. Agents found him in a tunnel just outside of the church. However, there were still no signs of Juan and his family.
Eventually, the priest sent a messenger to summon Sister Dorothy to the office. When she arrived, he asked her to sit down in a chair. She did what he said. “Sister Dorothy,” he asked, “in what dorm rooms did the family stay?”
“Father Evans,” she replied, “I cannot in good conscience give you that information.”
An ICE agent was also in the room. “You know we’re going to eventually find them,” the agent told her. “It will only be a matter of time, and any delay will only make things more difficult for everyone. Remember that it was the monsignor who gave us permission to search.”
Dorothy was not impressed. “Tu et qui subveherent ex Monsignore!” Dorothy replied.
“Pardon me?”
“Sister Dorothy!” Father Evans stated.
Dorothy looked innocently at the agent. She didn’t respond any further to the two of them. And while the official obviously didn’t know what she said, he didn’t ask for a translation. He was probably afraid that Dorothy would provide it to him.
“Where’s Tommy?” I asked her.
“They handcuffed him and took him to the local jail. He got upset again when he saw they found Captain Johnson.”
Father Evans asked Dorothy if she wanted a glass of water, but Dorothy refused. She didn’t say anything to him. She was good at being obstinate.
I took another look at the map. Even with all of the tunnels and secret passages in the mission, it was becoming apparent that we were running out of places to look. “Any other locations not covered by this map?” I asked Father Evans.
Father Evans only shrugged.
I left the office for about another hour to see for myself how the search was going. Every agent I spoke to seemed to agree that we were not going to locate the family. I then returned to the rectory office. Dorothy was sitting in the same chair as before. By then, only Father Evans was with her. “They’re going to continue searching, but I think I’m going to go back to town,” I informed them. “I suppose I better speak to Tommy to see if he can tell me anything. If he even lets me in to visit with him.”
Dorothy spoke up. “I want to send him a note. Will you deliver it for me?”
“Of course,” I replied.
She reached down to her purse and took out the small notebook she seemed to carry with her everywhere. She took a pen off of Father Evan’s desk. In no more than five seconds, she wrote her note, tore out the page and handed it to me. The note said:
Tommy,
You need to speak with Mike.
Love,
Dorothy
After reading the note I then glanced at Dorothy. She winked at me. Father Evans was looking at the maps in front of him at the time so he didn’t notice Dorothy’s gesture. I said goodbye to Dorothy and shook Father Evan’s hand.
One of the security guards told me where arresting officers took Tommy. Apparently, Tommy had punched one of the agents and it had taken seven men to wrestle Tommy to the ground.
I drove over to the jail. The clerk at the jail told me he didn’t recommend that I see Tommy. Even handcuffed, it took fifteen or twenty minutes to get him from the squad car and into his cell. I told him everything would be all right if he just delivered Dorothy’s note. The jailer didn’t look too convinced or happy about my request. Still, he gave the note to one of the guards to give to Tommy. In about thirty seconds, the guard returned and said that I could see Tommy. I was told I could only see him on the condition that Tommy would be behind the shatterproof pane glass used to separate prisoners from guests. I agreed that it would probably be best.
The guard led me into the room and I could see Tommy sitting on the other side of the glass. There was a cut under his right eye. Tommy didn’t say anything until the guard left our presence. “It’s not possible,” he said. “Nobody could be that low. I understand using me. But Dorothy? How could you betray the trust of someone like that?”
I waited a few seconds to reply. “They didn’t find the family,” I replied.
“No. But they did find Captain Johnson.”
“And he’s now under protective custody. He wasn’t going to get a better deal than that. Return to Mexico and he’s dead. And if they put him in a prison, someone inside would get to him. The drug lords would find where he was at.”
Tommy was not convinced. “None of this would have had to happen if you kept this quiet. None of it! Where can the family go without Dorothy’s assistance?” I didn’t answer. “You know I’m not going to be in this jail forever. And unlike Dorothy, I’m not into this nonviolence thing.”
I leaned up closely to the window and I think that startled Tommy. “I knew they were not there,” I whispered through the glass. Tommy looked at me like he didn’t understand. “I knew they were not there,” I whispered again.
“Can you repeat that once more?” Tommy said.
I looked him in the eyes. “Do I have to say it loud enough for the whole goddamned jailhouse to hear? I knew they were not there and we wouldn’t find them. I can’t talk about this anymore here. But they’re in a safe place. Only Dorothy knows where they are at.”
I was still not sure if he understood what I was saying. Finally Tommy said, “You and Dorothy arranged this?”
I looked at him with disbelief. “How can you catch on so slow?” I now said out loud. “It was a good thing that Dorothy and I never let you in on what was going on.”
**
"A Ship Run Aground" can be read in its entirety in The Event: Iron Bay, available from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Event-Iron-Bay-Steve-Metcalf/dp/1719024286
Blog cover photo by Image by Jaesung An from Pixabay
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