LITMIR.BIZ

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normally quiet neighborhood.

      The black-on-black Escalade drew more than a few curious stares when it rolled to a stop at the curb, twenty-two-inch chrome rims twinkling in the morning sun. 2Pac’s “All Eyez on Me” poured through the sound system when the car door swung open and Detective Wolf oozed from behind the wheel. He’d made a pit stop along the way over to change out of the clothes he’d been wearing at the bust and was now dressed in a black sweatsuit with a black bandanna tied around his head. His whole aura screamed thug, and the crowd gave him a wide berth as he approached the crime scene.

      A ruddy-faced youth in a baggy blue uniform, who had obviously seen one too many reruns of NYPD Blue, moved to cut Wolf off. His face was sour and his hand lingered near his gun when he spoke. “Move it along, homie. They ain’t giving away no free turkeys today, this is police business.”

      Wolf took a long drag off his cigarette and let the smoke spill from his nostrils. “I see you got jokes,” he laughed. “Stand aside before you find yourself disciplined for trying to be a comedian.” He reached to lift the police tape, so he could duck under and enter the crime scene, but the officer grabbed him about the wrist. Wolf’s eyes traveled up from the officer’s hand to his face. His lips drew back into a sneer, making him look every bit of the animal he was named after. “I’ll give you until the count of three before I put you on the news.” His hands balled into two tight fists.

      “You threatening me?” The officer now gripped his weapon, his other hand still holding Wolf’s wrist.

      “One . . .”

      Another blue shirt approached. “What’s going on over here?”

      “Two . . .”

      “Stand down, officers,” a gruff voice called out before Wolf could finish his count. A pale man, who looked like he hadn’t been getting enough sun, emerged from the church doorway. A thick salt-and-pepper beard almost completely hid his upper lip. The captain’s bars on his white shirt glistened in the sun as if they were made of real gold.

      At the sight of the captain the young officer released Wolf’s arm and took a step back. Both he and the second officer stood straight as boards, trying to look the part of model law enforcement in the presence of their superior.

      “What the hell are you doing?” Captain Marx asked.

      “We were just trying to keep the crime scene clear of rabble-rousers like you asked, sir,” the ruddy-face officer spoke up.

      “You’ve got one more chance to call me by anything other than my name and I’m gonna put your lights out,” Wolf warned the young officer.

      “You raise your hand in the presence of your captain and I’ll make sure you spend the next six months sucking fumes at the Holland Tunnel while you’re directing rush hour traffic, detective!” Captain Marx snapped.

      “Detective?” the two uniformed officers said in unison.

      Wolf pulled out the gold rope chain from inside his sweat jacket and flashed the badge hanging from the end of it. “Detective James Wolf.”

      “Lone Wolf James,” the second officer spat, as if the words tasted like ash in his mouth. James Wolf had quite the reputation amongst his peers and superiors.

      “My friends call me Wolf, and we ain’t friends, so Detective Wolf is fine. Now get the fuck out of my way so I can do my job.” He ducked under the tape and brushed past the two officers.

      “Must you make a grand entrance every time you go somewhere, Jimmy?” Captain Marx asked, leading him up the church steps.

      “I prefer Wolf or James, if you must. And I get my grand old entrances from my daddy,” he said with an easy smile. His father, James “Jimmy” Wolf Sr., had been a blues singer in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He loved to sing, but he loved cocaine more, and it was his first love that put him in an early grave and left James Jr. and his mother alone and struggling. “So, what’s so important that a police captain calls on a wretch like me at the crack of dawn?”

      “Don’t get cute with me, Wolf. Under these bars and this white shirt I’m still the same guy who used to knock your skinny ass around the ring when I was training you,” Captain Marx reminded him. Many years prior, Wolf was one of the young kids who had joined the boxing program at the Police Athletic League where Marx volunteered as a trainer. Back then Wolf was barely one hundred pounds, but he was faster than any man Marx had ever seen. He could’ve been a great fighter, but didn’t have the discipline to focus more on boxing than the streets.

      “I hit a lot harder now than I did when I was fourteen,” Wolf told him.

      “I guess one of these weekends we can climb back in the ring and see what you’ve learned, but that’ll have to wait. Right now, let’s focus on police business.”

      “What’s going on, cap?” Wolf asked, suddenly feeling uneasy about the look on Marx’s face. Clearly, whatever he had brought Wolf there to see had him troubled, and it took a lot to trouble a man like Captain Marx.

      The captain didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he turned on his heels and walked inside the church. Wolf stood there for a few moments, staring up at the stonework of the church. Standing in the massive building’s shadow made him uneasy. His gut began churning. It was as if his feet simply touching the steps of the church soiled them . . . made them unclean, like him, and with every step he took toward the arched entrance, the corruption spread.

      When Wolf crossed the threshold of the church, the first thing he noticed was the smell. It was a combination of mothballs and death. He ignored the detectives and uniformed officers whose eyes followed him as he trailed Captain Marx into the chapel. Once there, it only took a second for him to spot it. Every other eye in the room was turned to it too. There was a series of flashes as a medical examiner snapped pictures of the crime scene from different angles. Suspended above the altar of the church was obviously what had Captain Marx so rattled.

      The victim was a Caucasian man who looked to be somewhere in his late fifties, though it was hard to tell for sure considering his condition. He was suspended from the ceiling by chains, like a side of beef in a butcher’s freezer. Wolf could see where the steel hooks snaked beneath his skin, stretching it so much in some spots that it looked like it was about to tear away from his body. The blood-soaked white collar around his neck said that he was a priest, or at least he had been before someone strung him up. Now he was just meat dripping onto the wood floor.

      “Nasty piece of work, isn’t it?” Captain Marx said.

      “More like sick! Who would carve up a priest like that?” Wolf asked.

      “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Father Fleming was a good man. No enemies to speak of.”

      “You mean no enemies that you know of. Nobody gets dusted for nothing, especially not a priest. What kind of fucked-up individual would do something like this?”

      “I was hoping that you could tell me.”

      “Me?” For the last few years Wolf had been working in narcotics. Homicide wasn’t his bag.

      Before the Captain Marx could clue him in, they were interrupted by two approaching men. The first was dark-skinned, with a tapered Afro and wearing a wrinkled green suit. The second was a tall Latino man dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt. Gold badges were visible on both of them.

      “What’s he doing here? This isn’t a drug case,” Detective Brown, the one with the Afro, said.

      “Blood always brings the wolves out,” Wolf responded, just to get under the detective’s skin. There was no love lost between the two.

      “Well, no pets are allowed in here, so why don’t you let your master take you for a walk, dog,” the second man, Detective Alvarez, said before crossing his heavily tattooed arms.

      Wolf’s brow furrowed. He was being tested. “If you’re trying to be funny, I got a joke that I wanna

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