Three months after he first read the story of the china rabbit, Knuckles arranged a meeting with the FBI. He offered to turn state's evidence against his boss and a slew of other mugs.

He ratted them out in part to redeem himself but no less because he wanted to save the little girl to whom he had read part of the rabbit's story. He hoped to spare her from the cold and crippling life of a crime boss's daughter that daily would harden around her, as imprisoning as concrete.

Thereafter, Knuckles had been placed in Vermont, in the Witness Protection Program. His new name was Bob Loudermilk.

Vermont proved to be too much culture shock. Birkenstocks, flannel shirts, and fifty-year-old men with ponytails annoyed him.

He tried to resist the worst temptations of the world with a growing library of kids' books. He discovered that some book writers seemed subtly to approve of the kind of behavior and the values that he had once embraced, and they scared him. He couldn't find enough thoughtful china rabbits and courageous big-eared mice.

Having dinner in a mediocre Italian restaurant, yearning for Jersey, he suddenly got the calling to the monastic life. It happened shortly after a waiter put before him an order of bad gnocchi, as chewy as caramels, but that's a story for later.

As a novice, following the path of regret to remorse to absolute contrition, Knuckles found the first unalloyed happiness of his life. At St. Bartholomew's Abbey, he thrived.

Now, on this snowy night years later, as I considered taking two more aspirin, he said, "This minister, name's Hoobner, he felt real bad about American Indians, the way they lost their land and all, so he was always losin' money at blackjack in their casinos. Some of it was a high-vigorish loan from Tony Martinelli."

"I'm surprised the Eggbeater would lend to a preacher."

"Tony figured if Hoobner couldn't keep payin' eight percent a week from his own pocket, then he could steal it from the Sunday collection plate. As it shook down, though, Hoobner would gamble and butt-pinch the cocktail waitresses, but he wouldn't steal. So when he stops payin' the vig, Tony sends a guy to discuss Hoobner's moral dilemma with him."

"A guy not you," I said.

"A guy not me, we called him Needles."

"I don't think I want to know why you called him Needles."

"No, you don't," Knuckles agreed. "Anyway, Needles gives Hoobner one last chance to pay up, and instead of receivin' this request with Christian consideration, the preacher says 'Go to hell.' Then he pulls a pistol and tries to punch Needles's ticket for the trip."

"The preacher shoots Needles?"

"He might've been a Methodist, not a Lutheran. He shoots Needles but only wounds him in the shoulder, and Needles pulls his piece and shoots Hoobner dead."

"So the preacher would shoot somebody, but he wouldn't steal."

"I'm not sayin' that's traditional Methodist teachin'."

"Yes, sir. I understand."

"Fact is, now I think on it, the preacher was maybe a Unitarian. Anyway, he was a preacher, and he was shot dead, so bad things can happen to anyone, even a monk."

Although the chill of the winter night had not entirely left me, I pressed the cold can of Coke to my forehead. "This problem we have here involves bodachs."

Because he was one of my few confidants at St. Bartholomew's, I told him about the three demonic shadows hovering at Justine's bed.

"And they was hangin' around the monk you almost stumbled over."

"No, sir. They're here for something bigger than one monk being knocked unconscious."

"You're right. That ain't the kind of fight card that draws a crowd anywhere."

He got up from his chair and went to the window. He gazed out at the night for a moment.

Then: "I wonder… You think maybe my past life is catchin' up with me?"

"That was fifteen years ago. Isn't the Eggbeater in prison?"

"He died in stir. But some of those other mugs, they got long memories."

"If a hit man tracked you down, sir, wouldn't you be dead by now?"

"For sure. I'd be parked in an unpadded waitin'-room chair, readin' old magazines in Purgatory."

"I don't think this has anything to do with who you used to be."

He turned from the window. "From your lips to God's ear. Worst thing would be anyone here hurt because of me."

"Everyone here's been lifted up because of you," I assured him.

The slabs and lumps of his face shifted into a smile that you would have found scary if you didn't know him. "You're a good kid. If I ever would've had me a kid, it's nice to think he might've been a little like you."

"Being me isn't something I'd wish on anyone, sir."

"Though if I was your dad," Brother Knuckles continued, "you'd probably be shorter and thicker, with your head set closer to your shoulders."

"I don't need a neck anyway," I said. "I never wear ties."

"No, son, you need a neck so you can stick it out. That's what you do. That's who you are."

"Lately, I've been thinking I might get myself measured for a habit, become a novice."

He returned to his chair but only sat on the arm of it, studying me. After consideration, he said, "Maybe someday you'll hear the call. But not anytime soon. You're of the world, and need to be."

I shook my head. "I don't think I need to be of the world."

"The world needs you to be out there in it. You got things to do, son."

"That's what I'm afraid of. The things I'll have to do."

"The monastery ain't a hideout. A mug wants to come in here, take the vows, he should come because he wants to open himself to somethin' bigger than the world, not because he wants to close himself up in a little ball like a pill bug."

"Some things you just have to close yourself away from, sir."

"You mean the summer before last, the shootings at the mall. You don't need no one's forgiveness, son."

"I knew it was coming, they were coming, the gunmen. I should've been able to stop it. Nineteen people died."

"Everyone says, without you, hundreds would've died."

"I'm no hero. If people knew about my gift and knew still I couldn't stop it, they wouldn't call me a hero."

"You ain't God, neither. You did all you could, anyone could."

As I put down the Coke, picked up the bottle of aspirin, and shook two more tablets onto my palm, I changed the subject. "Are you going to wake the abbot and tell him that I fell over an unconscious monk?"

He stared at me, trying to decide whether to allow me to change the subject. Then: "Maybe in a while. First, I'm gonna try to take an unofficial bed count, see if maybe I can find someone holdin' ice to a lump on his head."

"The monk I fell over."

"Exactly. We got two questions. Second, why would some guy club a monk? But first, why would a monk be out at this hour where he could get himself clubbed?"

"I guess you don't want to get a brother in trouble."

"If there's sin involved, I ain't gonna help him keep what he done from his confessor. That won't be no favor to his soul. But if it was just some kinda foolishness, the prior maybe don't have to know."

A prior is a monastery's disciplinarian.

St. Bartholomew's prior was Father Reinhart, an older monk with thin lips and a narrow nose, less than half the nose of which Brother Knuckles could boast. His eyes and eyebrows and hair were all the color of an Ash Wednesday forehead spot.

Walking, Father Reinhart appeared to float like a spirit across the ground, and he was uncannily quiet. Many of the brothers called him the Gray Ghost, though with affection.

Father Reinhart was a firm disciplinarian, though not harsh or unfair. Having once been a Catholic-school principal, he warned that he had a paddle, as yet never used, in which he had drilled holes to reduce wind resistance. "Just so you know," he had said with a wink.