“Canon law, article 1388,” he said, managing—just barely—to sound firm. “It is a crime for a confessor to betray a penitent by words or in any other manner for any reason.”
“And it’s not a crime to aid the escape of a suspected criminal? Not a crime to conceal what this criminal has said to you about his crimes? You had been cooperative, and then, after seeing this criminal in his sickbed, you help him try to get away and stop being cooperative. What am I to make of that?”
“That I damned myself by cooperating, and now I wish to make up for it and save my soul.”
That sounded pretentious even to Riordan himself; yet he was glad he’d said it. Valencia trembled slightly. He could all but see the molecules in the captain’s brain swirling in Brownian motion, then rearranging themselves.
“If I were you, I’d be thinking about saving my fucking life, not my soul.”
With a flick of his hand, Valencia signaled his soldiers. They seized Riordan’s arms, the private clamping a hand over the back of his neck, and pushed and pulled him across the road. Riordan kicked and twisted. The private released one arm, swung around, and drove a fist into his solar plexus, the punch taking all his wind, buckling his knees. Then the two men shoved him to the edge of the precipice and stood behind him, the sergeant holding him by the belt, the other soldier gripping his neck, digging a thumb into a pressure point behind his ear. Head bent, gasping to regain his breath, he could not help but look down. The bare rock wall bulged outward near the top, creating the impression of a bottomless abyss. Only by looking straight out, toward the rolling foothills beyond the riverbed, could he achieve any sort of perspective. Which was no comfort. The drop had to be three hundred feet. Riordan, whose acrophobia had undergone a mere temporary remission on the rope bridge, was paralyzed and nauseous. Fearing he would fall from sheer dizziness, he inhaled deeply and raised his eyes toward the sky, the spring desert sky, itself a desert of purest blue.
“No, look at me,” Valencia said.
Riordan was only too glad to. Anything but down. The captain held his motorcycle helmet out over the edge, gave it a flip, and counted, “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four … Ah! There! Did you hear it hit the rocks?”
Riordan hadn’t heard a thing.
“About four seconds, and you would be conscious all the way down, conscious when your body crashed into those same rocks at, oh, I would say more than two hundred kilometers an hour. We paratroopers have to make such calculations when we free-fall. Velocidad terminal, it is called. Terminal velocity. You should think about the terminal part.”
He’s enjoying himself again, Riordan thought.
“Por lo que, una vez más. What did Díaz tell you in the hospital?”
All you have to do is hold out. Show him that you’re not going to be forced or frightened into anything.
“It is a crime for a confessor to betray a penitent by word or in any other manner for any reason,” he repeated. He sounded like a POW—which, in a sense, he was—refusing to give anything but name, rank, and serial number.
“You must think I’m bluffing,” Valencia said.
He walked quickly onto the road and rolled the Harley across it to the cliff’s edge. With two hard shoves, he sent Negra Modelo over. Riordan shut his eyes, but he heard the crash below, and the sound of it, the bang and clatter of shattering metal, was more sickening than the sight would have been.
“A tragic accident!” the captain shouted, gleeful. Drawing closer, he spoke into Riordan’s ear with loathsome intimacy: “Do you know what, priest? I’m begging you to answer me. Really, I am.”
At this point, Riordan didn’t know what terrified him more: being hurled to his death or that, in his terror, he would do and say whatever Valencia wished. Was he committing suicide with this fidelity to a principle? Had he fallen suddenly in love with martyrdom? As these thoughts flew through his mind, he could not believe that his life might be but minutes, perhaps seconds, away from ending. Then, as unexpected as a hurricane gust on a placid sea, an icy blast of despair struck him. He did not feel assured of heaven; he did not, for that matter, feel convinced that any existence succeeded this one—that his consciousness, loosed from flesh, would sail the cosmos forever. He could not help himself—he began to sob.
“Stop it! You’re disgusting!” said Valencia. Then, in a tone of odious compassion: “Listen. I’ll give you an out. I will ask you questions, you only have to nod or shake your head. You won’t have to say anything.”
“Not by word or in any other manner,” Riordan said, choking. “There is no reason for you to do this.”
“No reason is necessary,” Valencia said, then backed away a couple of steps, his hands on his hips, his head cocked a little, quizzically.
“You are not a priest to me. You are not a priest to anyone. You are nothing more than a snitch. But a snitch who has stopped snitching, a finger that no longer points. What can be more useless?”
Someone with an active nature compelled into submission can bear it only so long. Riordan willed himself to look into the emptiness beneath the jutting cliff. He could see the front wheel and fender of his bike, yards away from where it had struck, the bent chrome tailpipe, bits of shiny metal. How would they explain the strap around his wrists? he wondered. Maybe they would find a path down into the riverbed and cut it off. Maybe not, for this was the Sierra Madre, where accountability and questions of guilt, like the mountain rivers, died in the desert. No explanations would be necessary; whoever found his body would know what lies to tell, and beyond the telling, to believe them.
“And you’re no soldier to me,” he said to Valencia. “You’re a thug in a uniform. I have nothing to say to you.”
The captain made a movement like a head feint. The sergeant jerked Riordan’s wrists, pulling him back a few inches. He felt a sawing motion, the flat of a knife blade against his skin. The sergeant was cutting the zip strap. So they were worried about that after all; they had to make sure it looked like an accident. Whose sins you shall forgive, they shall be forgiven; whose sins you shall retain, they shall be retained. It was he, Timothy Riordan OFM, who would be the goat of expiation now. It was he who bore the sins—his own sins and César Díaz’s and every sin he’d heard confessed in his lifetime as a priest. He would atone for them all. A rapturous tide roared through him, sweeping away his fear, his despair, his regrets as Christ’s words tumbled into his mind: I lay down my life that I may take it up again; no man takes it from me, I lay it down on my own.
* * *
With a desperate swing of his shoulders, he wrenched free and stepped out into space.
Also by Philip Caputo
A Rumor of War
Horn of Africa
Delcorso’s Gallery
Indian Country
Means of Escape
Equation for Evil
Exiles
The Voyage
Ghosts of Tsavo
In the Shadows of the Morning
13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings
Acts of Faith
Ten Thousand Days of Thunder
Crossers
The Longest Road
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHILIP CAPUTO is an award-winning journalist—the co-winner of a Pulitzer Prize—and the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including A Rumor of War, one of the most highly praised books of the twentieth century. His novels include Acts of Faith, The Voyage, Horn of Africa, and Crossers. His previous book, The Longest Road, was a New York Times bestseller. He and his wife, Leslie Ware, divide their time between Norwalk, Connecticut, and Patagonia, Arizona. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Also by Philip Caputo
About the Author
Copyright
SOME RISE BY SIN. Copyright © 2017 by Philip Caputo.
All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co.,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design by Rick Pracher
Photograph by Peter Konshak
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Caputo, Philip, author.
Title: Some rise by sin: a novel / Philip Caputo.
Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016030634 | ISBN 9781627794749 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781627794756 (electronic book)
Subjects: LCSH: Clergy—Fiction. | Informers—Fiction. | Drug traffic—Fiction. | Cartels—Mexico—Fiction. | Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3553.A625 S66 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030634
e-ISBN 9781627794756
First Edition: May 2017
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.