The young lady in the doorway to the rectory wore a knee-length red plait skirt over white stockings that Jason was certain ended at mid-thigh. A matching red plaid jacket was open at the front, exposing a white blouse that surged outward at her breasts, with a red bow at her collar. The young lady was slender, but the blazer failed to hide the curves where her hips gathered into a narrow waist. She wore a black ribbon in her shoulder-length red hair, which fell about a pretty face with a soft white complexion sprinkled with orange freckles. Her eyes were a hypnotic emerald green.

“Maureen attends St. Patrick’s Parochial School,” Sister Mildred told Jason. “Dear, I’d like ya ta meet…” Then the nun realized she didn’t know Jason’s name.

“Jason Whitlock.” He was surprised that in light of the stunningly beautiful young lady in front of him, he was still able to speak.

“Maureen McCullough,” the young redhead said with a radiant smile that seemed to cut through Jason like an industrial laser. “Pleased to meet you, Father Whitlock.”

“Same here. Uh, you can just call me Jason.” He already felt like an imposter, and it didn’t help that this hot young lady was already calling him “Father.” Had Jason just thought of her as hot? St. Patrick’s was a high school; this girl had to be a minor.

“Sure, Father Jason.” She replied with a smile, exposing the purest white teeth and dimples in her freckled cheeks.

“Father Jason is going ta be leading the shelter,” Sister Mildred explained.

“What grade are you in, Maureen?” Why was Jason asking her that? It was just an idle question, right?

“I’m a junior this year.” She brushed her hair from her face, back over the collar of her plaid blazer, and she was gorgeous. “What happened to your jacket?”

Looking down to his right, Jason saw nothing, but then when he looked at his left blazer pocket, he saw the holes where he’d fired the snubnose .38 through the pocket. Jason couldn’t tell her that he’d shot a baboon to death. “Oh, I dropped a cigarette into the pocket, and it burned a hole.” If his story was a stretch, at least a cigarette explained the singed edges of the holes in his coat pocket.

The young redhead shrugged her shoulders. “Excuse me, Sister, Father, I need to get changed.”

Jason tried not to stare as she walked in her glossy black shoes to Sister Mildred’s room. That cinched it. If Maureen was a junior in high school, then she was definitely underage, and as sexy as she was, she was jailbait.

* * *

“Gramps, you wouldn’t happen to have any scenarios in the Midas Game where there’s an underage girl, would you?”

“Are you kidding? That’s the surest way to get shut down.” Gramps finished reloading his .45 automatic and handed it to Jason. “I’ve got way too much invested in the game to lose it all because of inappropriate content with underage characters.”

After shouts of “all clear!” and nods up and down the firing line, Jason began firing at a refrigerator box, where he’d drawn a target silhouette with a black Sharpie marker. His grandfather fired his Shield .380 at an assortment of cans and plastic gallon jugs. They reloaded and fired again, and did a second reload, until everyone on the firing line was ready for a halt, and a pall of smoke drifted over the gun range.

Taking off his earmuffs and resting them on top of his head, Jason walked over to the cardboard box to inspect his marksmanship. He remembered what Officer Cirillo told him about the band circling the head, and Jason focused on that as a target.

“Not bad,” his grandfather said upon studying where Jason’s shots landed.

The two of them returned to the firing line and loaded up for the day. After they had everything packed up in the car, and Jason’s grandfather slipped the loaded Shield .380 into a holster behind his hip, Gramps pulled his car out from the Nampa public shooting range.

“Thanks for taking me out to the range today, Gramps.” Jason looked out the window, where the hill that the shooting range rested on sloped down to an immense green valley, then rose up to breathtaking mountains on the far side. “I’d like to go shooting more often, but ammo has got to be so expensive, and I’m focused on slashing what’s left of my student loan debt.”

“You’re welcome. And that’s good, just hammer away at that student loan debt.” His grandfather looked thoughtful and steered the car around a tight bend as they headed back to town. “Improving your shooting will pay off in the game, and vice versa. The better you get at shooting the .45 in real life, the better you’ll be able to handle the gun in the Midas Game.”

“And vice versa?” Jason asked. “How could shooting in the game help in real life?”

“They did an interesting study, where they had one group of guys practice their free throws, and another group just visualized themselves shooting free throws, imagining the process, the correct form, how it felt when a shot went right and made a basket. You know what happened?” Gramps looked at Jason in the passenger seat. “The visualization group did just as well as the group that physically shot free throws. To get good in the game, you’re doing the same, envisioning and practicing the correct form.”

“Hmmm, that’s good to know. I want to get to the point where I can shoot two .45s at the same time, like the Shadow.”

“That’s not as easy as it looks in the comics,” his grandfather told him. “Now that I think of it, the Midas Game is really controlled by the gamer. We create the outline of a scenario, and the player’s own mind fills in the blanks.”

“Kind of like improv comedy,” Jason suggested.

“Yes,” Gramps agreed. “It may be possible for a player to inject inappropriate elements into the game. Suppose a player in a video game is sexually attracted to a donkey—the game did not create a bestiality scenario; the gamer added that himself.”

Great. So now Jason’s perverted mind was adding underage elements to the Midas Game. To be honest, he wrestled with the issue of Maureen being a minor, asking if it really mattered, because it was only a video game, and then he kicked himself for even thinking something like that.

It was Saturday, and he’d just had a great time at the shooting range. Jason had no students today, and life was good. He was just going to have to make a point of completely staying away from Maureen when he returned to the Midas Game.

* * *

“What?” Jason shouted.

“They shut us down, said we were unsanitary, and yanked our food service permit.” Sister Mildred wove her fingers together, then rubbed them nervously. “They even cut the electricity ta the building.”

Jason and Sister Mildred stood in the dining area, which was in the basement beneath the church. The kitchen door was padlocked, as was the serving window. Large “CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE MAYOR” signs were plastered over the door and the walls, and the nun told him the outside door to the kitchen was locked, too.

“We’ve got two hours until dinner.” Jason paced, trying to figure out what to do. “The men are going to eat tonight. Those bastards are not going to shut us down.”

Jason fumed, but suddenly realized what he just said. He was a priest, or, well, like a priest, so he needed to watch his language. “Sorry, Sister, I meant to say ‘illegitimate children.’”

“Ya hit it right on the button, Father Jason.” She looked at him through her thick glasses, and her protruding chin jutted out in anger. “The whole pathetic kit ‘n’ kaboodle are bastards.”

“I’ll be back.”

Jason strode up the stairs and walked down the block to one of the main streets, where he rode the subway to the rescue mission. Jason jogged up the steps and came out onto the landing, where he saw Pastor Roy arranging pews and hymnals. “Pastor, got a moment?”

“Sure, what is it, Brother Jason?” The beefy man looked up at Jason while straightening out the pages of a hymnal.

Sister Belinda and Sister Jamie pointedly ignored him as they worked in the kitchen, while making it obvious that they were doing so.

“It’s worse than we thought. Father Milligan was murdered, and I think I know who did it. I’m going to get justice for him, one way or another.” Jason took a deep breath. “I’ve agreed to take over and run St. Michael’s Shelter. It’s not that I’m the ideal guy for the job—it’s just that they needed someone, and nobody else was likely to step up.”

Pastor Roy rested his hand on Jason’s shoulder and squeezed. “No, Brother Jason, you are the right man for the job. I know God has great things planned for you. I just hate to lose you—you’ve been such a help and an inspiration here.”

“Thanks, Pastor.” Jason had the uncomfortable feeling that he was pulling out the rug from under Pastor Roy, who had taken Jason in when the young man had nothing, and no place to stay. “I’ll be back. I’m still committed to getting all the homeless men in the city the medical care that they need.”

“That’s good.” Pastor Roy resumed getting the place ready for church service this evening.

Jason used his key to unlock the deadbolt on the door to his room, then after locking the door behind him, climbed up into his lair, where he removed the .32 automatic he’d taken from the Dominican who tried to pull it on him at the Rincón Club. He grabbed his sap and the palm sap, plus the two snubnose .38s. He decided to come back later and get all his belongings, but for now, he had men to feed.

Forty minutes later he was at Angelo’s Ristorante, with 21 dollars in cash that Diamond Dave gave him for the .32 automatic. It was a beautiful gun, and Jason hated to pawn it, but the men were going to eat, and there was no way in hell that the mayor was going to shut down the shelter. After all, what was a homeless shelter that couldn’t serve food? Jason considered taking the men of St. Michael’s on the subway to the rescue mission, but he didn’t want the mayor shutting down the kitchen of the rescue mission out of revenge.

Jason knocked on the front door of Angelo’s.

Angelo himself appeared at the door, opening it partway.

“Angelo! Que sai?” Jason didn’t know a whole lot of Italian but tried his best.

“Oh, Mr. Jason,” the old man smiled, but then turned serious. “Sorry, but we close now. The mayor close all the restaurant in the city. Say no Mitral.”

“You think you could cook a pot of spaghetti for takeout?” Jason removed a stack of bills from his breast pocket and waved them. “I’ve got 30 men to feed.”

The old man, who was skinny in spite of cooking the city’s best Italian food, beamed. “Sure, I do that for you, no problem.”

“And you think you could add some extra wine to the sauce?”

Angelo smiled. “Yes, that’s the way! Come in, and a sit down.” The skinny old man gestured to a table, and Jason sat in the otherwise empty restaurant, while Angelo and his hefty wife busied themselves in the kitchen.

Angelo’s wife came out to Jason’s table and set down a glass of wine. “It’s so sad what happen to Father Milligan.” She shook her head and crossed herself with her right hand. “What kind a animal gonna do something like a that?”

“Animal,” Jason thought. “You got that right.”

Jason took a sip of his wine. “I’m leading the St. Michael’s Shelter now, and whoever killed Father Milligan is going to pay.”

“Ah, so that’s why you want all that spaghetti.” She bit her lip. “Three days we close now. No customer, not even one. What we gonna do? Excuse me.”

As Angelo’s wife returned to the kitchen, where a heavenly aroma of garlic, onion, and tomato emanated, seeping throughout the restaurant, Jason wondered what gave the mayor the right to shut down businesses without regard to the suffering he caused.

Jason finished his glass of wine, when Angelo and his wife wheeled out a big pot of spaghetti, accompanied by several loaves of bread. Jason started to take the cart, but Angelo cut him off.

“We gonna help you,” the old man said. “We take it to the church.”

Jason and Angelo pushed the cart, while his portly wife followed, and helped steady the cart or the pot as necessary. The shelter wasn’t far, and they were soon easing the cart down the steps. The moment the food arrived the men swarmed the dining hall of the church basement. Sister Mildred and Maureen came down, only now the young girl was dressed in a modest skirt and blazer. She smiled at Jason with her green eyes, and he kicked himself for thinking she was beautiful.

“Get it together, Jason,” he thought. “You’re a priest, and she’s a kid.”

Out of habit, the men sat down at the dining room tables, and looked at Jason expectantly. Like bloodhounds, they could smell the wine in the spaghetti sauce.

Sister Mildred stepped up to address the group, while Angelo and his wife readied the food. “We’re all saddened at Father Milligan’s untimely death, but he’s now at the foot a Jesus. Father Jason here has agreed ta take the reins of St. Michael’s. Father Jason?”

Oh shit, he was supposed to say something spiritual, but he was clueless. “Uh, well, I’m not the priest that Father Milligan was, that’s for sure.”

Jason realized that what he just said could be taken two ways, that Jason was not as good of a priest as Father Milligan, which is how most would understand it. But the second interpretation, the accurate one, was that Jason was not really a priest at all.

Jason swallowed and continued. “Like Jesus, the late father sacrificed himself for us all, and I’m going to do my best to follow his example. I think all of us should. The mayor tried to close us down, but with the help of the Stefanellis, we’re going to serve dinner. And so help me God, the mayor is not going to shut down St. Michael’s, ever.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

“Someone want to say grace?” Jason asked. He felt like a stand-up comic who was bombing, and he’d appreciate some relief. He scanned the room hopefully, but no one volunteered. Jason bowed his head, hoping that everyone else would follow. “Lord, we thank you for this food, for every man who’s here, the Stefanellis, and the women.”

Someone broke out with an enthusiastic shout of “Amen!” at the mention of the women.

“Amen.” Jason looked up, and saw the men raise their heads in surprise. This was undoubtedly the shortest sermon and grace they’d ever heard. The men quickly lined up. Maureen and Sister Mildred handed out plates and silverware, while Angelo spooned out generous servings of spaghetti, to which his wife added a slice of bread.

The men returned to their seats, and Jason realized that there was nothing to drink. Dammit, what was he going to do? The last of the men sat down and started devouring his spaghetti, when Angelo and his wife opened up two bottles of wine and began pouring it into paper cups. The dining room went silent, and every man looked at Jason, uncertain how he was going to respond. Clearly, bottles of wine anywhere in St. Michael’s Shelter violated all the rules, and it was as though the Stefanellis had opened up a bag of cocaine.

“Okay, I know that wine with meals is not our custom,” Jason said loudly enough to be heard by the group. “But I think that out of respect for the Stefanellis and the Italian way of doing things, we should go ahead and drink it, so no one is offended.”

The men cheered as Sister Mildred and her niece began distributing paper cups of wine to the men. The men lit up whenever Maureen drew near, and they all vied to get her attention. Poor Sister Mildred might as well have been in ghost mode, the men were so intently focused on Maureen, the young, slim redhead. For his part, Jason avoided her, and introduced himself to the men, making his way through the tables.

Dinner was just finishing up when Maureen approached him. He tried to dodge her, even going around to the other side of the table.

“Father Jason?” Maureen nearly had to chase him. “I think we need to have a talk…in private.”