Fal-net > Tips / The Saint

"The Saint" from the memoirs of Harvey Johnson

THEY USED TO CALL HIM THE SAINT. He was as holy as the Pope, except he used to kill people. That's the main difference between the most holy man who lives and The Saint. Larry Molta was his real name, but no one ever called him Larry. Everyone called him The Saint. Anyway, The Saint was a perfectionist. You fuck up on a mission, and ol' Larry would rip you out a new asshole. He would never make a mistake and believe me, you knew it if you fucked up on a mission with him.

The Saint was also a painter. He painted shit that nobody's painted in centuries. Icons, Virgin Marys, Nativity scenes, et cetera. Stuff da Vinci and Michaelangelo did all those years ago. When we had down time between missions and other business, he didn't visit a girlfriend or get drunk like the rest of us did; he would paint. Our warehouse had a special side room, used to be the boss' office back when the place was open and had a boss. That's where The Saint painted. He would lock himself away in there, blasting away his Mozart or Bach or whatever the fuck it was. The room was tiny, about eight by ten, and one wall was just a window so the old boss could look out on his workers. The Saint used to face the window, canvas in front of him, sunlight beaming in behind him, and paint. He hardly would get up, except to eat and piss and shit, things humans do. Except for things like that, The Saint wasn't human. He was one of God's anointed, an angel on borrowed time to us lucky souls.

He never showed us the paintings, which was just as well, since we always ridiculed him about them. Garcia swears he snuck a peek at one once, but we didn't believe him. He said it was a perfect replica of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling painting of the Creation. Michaelangelo slaved for years, on his fuckin' back, to create that masterpiece, and the fucking Saint's perfected it, so says Garcia, in a matter of hours. No one believed Garcia when he said it, and The Saint, naturally, denied it. He told us that it was just a nature scene — birds and trees and all that pretty shit. When we asked to see it, The Saint declined in his polite, holy way. He sounded like a priest in his monotone. Garcia was livid then. He was the new guy and figured everyone was just giving him shit, not believing him and all, because of just that: He was the new guy. But it wasn't that. The Saint was just unbelievable. Garcia may have been telling the truth, and if he had said it about anyone else but The Saint we might've even believed him.

The Saint explained to us that no one saw his work. He did it for God alone. Listening to that shit made me laugh, along with a few of the other guys. If there's any business that leads you to believe that there's no God, killing people's one of them. Medicine's another. Funny how two completely opposite jobs can have the same effect. One's killing people, and the other's saving their lives. I guess just being in control of someone's life dispels the belief in God pretty damn fast, huh?

Anyway, The Saint was painting for the greater glory of God. Anytime we were in a tight fix, I half expected a beam of light to come down from Heaven and hear God's voice, "It's time to come home, Larry." But The Saint wasn't just holy, he was also pretty good at his job. He could hit a quarter flipped in the air to determine heads or tails at twenty yards. I'd never seen anyone with a better shot than him. The Saint never complained, and always kicked serious ass when out. He would come back all humble, and wait for the next assignment.

Some nights, you know, we would go out, get drunk at a strip club, and pick up some whores. But The Saint, no way, he'd never join us. He'd just order a pizza or something and sit in that little room and paint.

Anyway, one day we went out to take care of some business. It was a mundane trip, and we were foolish. We let our defenses down and got burned. You hear me refer to The Saint in the past tense, as if he's not with us anymore. Well, that's right. Ol' Larry Molta, The Saint, ain't with us no more. It was partly my fault what happened that day, but I did my best when it all blew up; I covered my ass and helped The Saint cover his.

But it wasn't enough. What happened was that The Saint and I went down to Little Havana to do a simple cash–coke transaction. There was a little disagreement between us and the other party on the precise finances of the deal, but we worked it out and went home.

What we didn't know was that we were being followed. The Saint was driving, and it was my responsibility to make sure that sort of shit didn't happen. We went back to our warehouse, and a few of the other guys were there — Garcia, Cruz, Jolet. About five minutes later we heard a van pull up in the parking lot.

Four guys came out, guns drawn. I was playing solitaire then, Cruz was in the can, and Jolet and Garcia were reading the paper or something, and I don't need to tell you where The Saint was. The four guys came in and pointed at us with the barrels of their shotguns and pistols. It wasn't a pleasant sight. Only Cruz, Jolet, and The Saint were armed. Of course, Jolet drew and it was tense there for a minute, it really was. No one did anything. One of the four strangers asked for a refund of the money they gave us. I asked for the coke back. He refused, and then Cruz picked the perfect opportunity to come out of the can, blazing his saddle and knocking down the bad guys.

When Cruz opened fire, The Saint came out of his office. Two of the bad guys were down by Cruz, but then the third killed him, and Jolet and the first guy just stared at each other. Man, it was so tense there that I nearly had a heart attack. The Saint's presence evened things up: two living gunmen for them, two for us. Jolet then fucked up. He shot the first guy and was instantly shot by the other bad guy. The Saint shot at him, and with God as my witness, he missed. I couldn't believe it. The Saint never fucking missed. I mean, I was serious about the coins being flipped. We used to test him on that.

But this time, The Saint missed. The last guy left shot him and got him in the side, nothing immediately fatal, but time was up. He then left, empty-handed and alone. Well, apparently there was someone waiting in the van 'cause as soon as he was out the door the van started up again. A neat, clean hit, except they didn't come for a hit, they came for the cash, which they didn't get. The Saint stumbled down, and was sorta half-sitting, half-lying, half-crumpled, in the doorway to his office. I think he was trying to fall back into it, as if he would be saved there, but he didn't have the energy. Garcia and I were shocked for about a ninth of a second. Then we rushed to The Saint. Man, this guy wasn't just called The Saint, he was a saint. This man did not deserve to die.

He couldn't get the strength to move into the office and in grasping, he knocked down the easel he was painting on. The painting, about twelve by eighteen, you know? It fell right on him, face down. There was blood everywhere, and Garcia and I could do no good. The Saint's eyes fluttered, and then looked up. He tried to smile, and nodded. Garcia and I just stared. The Saint then said his famous last words. I'll never forget them. "I'm ready."

The Saint then died. It wasn't a weeper of a death. People die all the time in this business, and somehow Garcia and I were lucky then. We then tried to lay his body out flat, and in doing so removed his painting from his body. His body was all bloody, the clothes sopped in the shit, but there wasn't a drop passed on to the painting. It was of the Virgin Mary, as we always suspected, and she was as clean as she had been five minutes before. Man, it was beautiful; I'd never seen anything as awesome as that painting. Why The Saint was in our business was beyond me, he belonged in a museum with all that work.

Not knowing what to do with the painting after finishing with The Saint, I put it back on the corrected easel. I faced it so she would be looking out of the office instead of having her back to it like she always did. When I did that, the miracle happened. The Virgin Mary saw her master, The Saint, dead and bloody on the floor in front of her. Then she cried, man. She really cried. A few bloody tears, hard to notice but obvious upon inspection, dropped from her eyes, and then she stopped. They fell down onto his body, and her blood mixed with his. It was the freakiest thing I've ever seen in my life. I wouldn't have believed it except I saw it with my own eyes, and there was not one drop on the painting, which there shoulda been.

I couldn't ever explain it, and Garcia and I mulled going to the Miami archdiocese to try to get Larry canonized. But we decided against it, because neither of us was ever sure the Cardinal would believe a couple of smugglers like us, and we weren't sure if we believed it.