Chapter Text
Teaching Him to Trust
Chapter One
San Francisco, California, 2014:
The Bay City had been home to many since it was first created. It saw men and women of nearly every color, nationality, religion and more come to work, live, or in many cases hide, looking for a fresh start. Its many diverse neighborhoods catered to nearly everyone, and if one looked hard enough, they could find nearly anything in this city.
Of course like any city, San Francisco had its not-so-nice sides; people and formally nice neighborhoods changed over the years, but one thing that hadn’t changed in the Lower Haight neighborhood was the stately old St. Lucy’s Church. It was Catholic by denomination but would preach to and care for anyone regardless of color, race, or religion.
While the neighborhood had changed around it, the church and the nuns who took care of it along with the shelters and daycare behind it hadn’t changed much, especially not the no-nonsense old nun who ran it all with a warm heart, kind eyes, and a fist of steel hadn’t changed and wouldn’t ever change.
Sister Rose McCarthy had been at St. Lucy’s since the 1960’s. She’d seen the city go through several changes, some good and some not so good, but she refused to budge on her standards no matter who might gripe and complain.
The 70-year-old had been in charge for the past 25 years, and while she understood that the neighborhood had changed, she didn’t see a reason to change her rules for either the shelter or who should or shouldn’t be allowed to stay there.
“We’ve never had an age limit on who can live in the shelter when a need comes up,” she was replying while snipping dead blooms off of her rose bushes in the back garden of the church rectory. “Are you planning on telling the old men who live in the alleys on Madison that they can’t stay here on a cold or rainy night as well?”
“Of course not but the occasional stay is far different than the case we’re discussing, Rose. I understand your feelings on the matter, but you have to see where the opinions of some of the congregation must come into play.”
Father Patrick was new to St. Lucy’s; he’d just been given the job six months earlier after the former priest in charge had been killed in a shooting. The young man was merely 25 and freshly given the title. He cared deeply about helping others but understood that in this day and time, they had to play a little politics to keep the church as well as the shelter running. This was an act that the older nun did not approve of.
“I am not barring the boy from having a place to stay in the day or night just because a few snippy people feel he’s odd,” Rose replied, her Irish accent coming out more as she turned to face the Priest. She glanced over to where they could see the newly built playground. “The children adore him and he never says boo to anyone else so I fail to see what the problem is.”
Following the nun’s eyes to the playground, the young dark-haired priest could see the tall young man tossing a ball to several of the children in their daycare program or who might be living on the side of the shelter that cared for abused spouses and their children.
“That’s part of the problem, Rose. The fact is that while the smaller children enjoy and like the boy, if an older one or an adult, male or female, touches him or speaks with him, he flips out. That can be very disturbing,” Father Patrick declared, wishing he could learn more about the young man in question but there were very few records since Rose didn’t keep such things. “Sister Martha says he’s been here since he was 12 years old. Where did he come from? Where are his parents?”
Rose huffed out a breath, pulling her gloves off to run a hand back to pat at a stray strand of unruly light-red hair that was tinged with silver now. “Patrick, as you were told, the shelter accepts those in need without question. Jared was found by Father Thomas huddled in an alley outside a store. He was badly hurt and traumatized to the point that it took me six weeks just to learn his name. He was like a wounded animal those first few weeks, so he’s naturally skittish with strangers and adults; he was clearly abused.”
Father Thomas had read this in the few reports the new priest had located. It was believed that the boy, Jared, had run away from either his home or a foster family after being badly abused in all sorts of foul ways. He had lived at the shelter ever since; he was too easily spooked to consider placing him with another family.
The physical wounds could still be seen as some of the scars had been bad enough to remain on the now 22-year-old young man that Father Patrick had been introduced to shortly after arriving, but it was clear that the emotional scares were just as bad since the boy hardly spoke more than a word to anyone unless it was to a small child. Even after 10 years, he would jump or lash out if anyone tried to touch him.
“He could be mentally ill and dangerous, Rose. You never took him to the authorities, so if he was in fact a runaway there could be people looking for him,” Patrick rubbed the bridge of his nose as he watched the young man stoop to tie a small boy’s shoe so he didn’t trip. He noticed that Jared had tensed when a small group of teenagers entered the playground. “Has he ever told you where he came from?”
Rose had also seen the teenagers and knew they weren’t from the shelter, but the local boys also used the playground to play basketball on. Normally she wouldn’t have noticed them except for a few problems they’d been having lately.
“The only thing he would tell Thomas is that he couldn’t recall anything of his life before he was five. The people he lived with hurt him and did things to him until finally, he got brave enough to hide in a truck coming into the city. He said he’d run until he died rather than go back.” The nun had been protecting the boy since he’d collapsed into her arms sobbing and begging that she not send him back.
“He was a child, Patrick. The sadists raped that boy. The clinic we took him to because he was bleeding so badly and because those scars on his neck looked infected said it was plain that he’d been sexually and physically abused for years before he escaped whatever hell he was living in.” She glanced back to the priest to glare at him. “There was a man who came to look for him, and I told that devil that Jared wasn’t here because I wouldn’t have turned a wild dog over to that man much less a traumatized little boy who barely knew how to feed himself or dress himself much less play or do the things children do.
“Jared has a brilliant mind but can barely write his name because he doesn’t know how to trust another person to be close to him to teach him.” Her attention was torn between making certain the playground remained safe and keeping an eye on a car that had just driven past a few times as if searching for something or someone.
Even today Sister Rose and her nuns sometimes had to turn away someone sent by that evil man who had hurt Jared, and it worried her that even now they were still searching for her lost and battered boy, so she was always on guard to shield him or deflect interest.
Those were things she could do so long as she knew where Jared was, but it was the nights that he didn’t stay at the shelter, nights that she knew he’d slept on the street or in some back alley that scared the older woman.
Jared was a sweet innocent boy in a handsome young man’s body, and while he instinctively would fight back against even a casual touch, it always worried the nuns that one day he’d be ganged up on and wouldn’t be able to fight back. Sister Rose knew he’d come in recently with bruises on his wrists but had backed away when she’d asked him what had happened.
“He’s taken to sleeping in alleys because he knows you don’t want him here, Patrick,” she said using her best guilty tone on the young priest. While there had been times since Jared had gotten older that he might stay away for a day, he almost always slept in the same back corner bed that he’d taken as his own since the nuns had convinced him he didn’t have to sleep in a closet. “Those streets are dangerous now and he’s a boy. How will your conscience feel if Jared’s beaten up, killed, or worse since we both know what people out there would do to a handsome boy like him?”
The priest knew he was hitting a brick wall; he didn’t want to see the boy cast out any more than the head nun did, but he was being pressured by others. “The shelter runs on donations, Rose. Several people who donate a lot of money don’t feel it’s sending a good image to allow Jared to be so close to the little kids. They don’t know what he might do or if he’d hurt them like he was hurt because he wouldn’t… Rose, put those down.”
“Patrick O’Shea! I should do more than threaten you with my shears for even suggesting that Jared would ever touch a child much less hurt one like he’s been hurt,” Rose snapped, poking the tip of her pruning shears into the young priest’s clean white shirt. “You let one person say to me that they fear he’s a danger to those wee ones and I’ll be pruning your precious congregation by knocking a few heads together.”
“Rose, you have to understand that as much as you want to help people, there are some you can’t help and others that you have to let go,” the priest argued. Suddenly a noise from the playground had him looking up to frown. “This is what I mean. He attracts trouble and children or people could be hurt.”
Rose looked over and pursed her lips while reaching for her cane that she’d used for many years to knock the sense into hard-headed boys. “All I see is five smart-mouthed street kids ganging up on Jared when he was minding his own business. Look! He is trying to protect the little ones,” she huffed, shoving her basket of trimmed dead roses into his chest. “I’ll go handle this like I always have while you go make… policies with the people who are more interested in hurting than helping.”
Staring as she stormed past him to head to the playground, the priest saw one tall but muscular teen swinging a hard fist into the face of the person he and Rose had just been discussing. The priest shouted for her to come back before quickly following her. Both failed to notice the shiny black car that drove past the church for the third time in under 20 minutes.
The car, a bright and shiny black Mustang, finally pulled over in front of the old stone church that had seen better days to allow its owner to step out to look around.
The man was tall at 6’1” with a pair of dark glasses covering eyes that were a deep emerald green when he wasn’t wearing the light blue contacts he tended to wear on stage. The slight wind off the bay ruffled dark blond hair streaked with lighter blond highlights. These highlights showed up more when his hair was at the length it was now; not as long as it had been the last time he’d stood on this sidewalk but still long enough on top that it spiked when styled or restless fingers moved through it.
Moving around to the sidewalk to take a good look at the battered front of the church, he could see the roof had several spots that needed to be fixed, the doors needed to be replaced or painted, and the bricks could use refacing; the buildings for the shelter and daycare didn’t look much better.
It had been ten years since he’d seen St. Lucy’s and the old nun who ran it; the same nun who had changed his life by not giving up on him and encouraging him to seek his dreams. Ten years that had turned a would-be bad boy, one who’d been on the very rocky road to either a cell or an early grave, into a rock star and sex symbol.
Sex symbol. Those words never failed to make Jensen Ackles smirk since he’d be the last person to ever consider himself a sex symbol. Hell, he still argued about the rock star status, but since his latest two records had gone gold within weeks and the debut songs both went to number 1, it was hard to argue that point any longer.
The packs of screaming fans that tended to follow him, even stalk him when they could, provided additional proof. It was those crazy fans that had sent Jensen away from his record label, his tour schedule, and the wild and crazy life back to the city of his birth and to the closest thing he’d ever really had to a home even if it was only during the day.
Jensen had been born into wealth but as he’d learned when still a child, he’d also been born into a family that seemed to attract media attention of the not-so-good kind.
He’d been five years old when he had his first taste of the media after his high profile lawyer father was sent to prison for hiring a man to murder his cheating wife and her lover. The events left Jensen a virtual orphan and in the custody of his grandmother.
Sarah Ackles has been the matriarch of the family since her husband was killed in a plane crash when most of her four children had been small. She’d taken what she had and held the family together as best as could, but by the time her eldest son had been sent to prison, she was really too busy and tired to raise another toddler. Her youngest daughter had been involved in a scandal when she had an affair at 16 with a married diplomat, her second son joined the military only to be killed in combat, while her third child, thankfully, seemed content to marry, become a doctor, and live in New York.
Jensen had mainly been raised by nannies or other paid staff while Sarah took care of the various Ackles businesses both in the city and around the globe. So while she loved and adored her grandson, she just didn’t have the time to properly raise him and that had led to trouble.
Most of the nannies and caretakers had seen him as just a paycheck, so by the time he was ten he’d figured out that they basically just let him do whatever he’d wanted as long as he was still polite, well-mannered, and knew the correct fork to use when in social settings.
By the time Jensen was thirteen, he was roaming the streets on his bicycle and getting into minor mischief. His private school had seemed too restricting to the outgoing boy; he tended to dislike order and being told what to wear or do. He also tended to not like the other kids who seemed too stuck up and only interested in spending their parents’ money.
While Jensen admitted now that he’d been spoiled and he’d never wanted for anything, he didn’t like knowing he was living off either his grandmother’s money or his small inheritance since he hadn’t come into his first trust fund until he was eighteen.
He had the best clothes, the best shoes, the best toys any boy and then teenager could ask for, but there’d always been something missing. It wasn’t until he was sixteen that he’d figured out what one of those things had been and it had come in the form of a stern nun with a firm hand and a stubborn streak to match Jensen’s.
By the age of fifteen Jensen had started running with the wrong group of kids and by the time he’d hit sixteen, he’d already been picked up for picking pockets, minor vandalism, and was on probation for trying to steal a car.
The last one hadn’t been his idea or even something he’d wanted to do, but it had been hard to say no to Kyle, his best friend and also the head of the gang that Jensen had found himself becoming involved with.
It had been Kyle who got him to steal the car, but then he had vanished and left Jensen to take the fall because he knew Jensen’s family name would keep him out of jail or from serving too hard a sentence.
It had been Kyle Marks, wannabe gang leader, and thug, Jensen knew now, that had been responsible for a lot of the crap that had gone on in his life back in the years between sixteen and eighteen.
Jensen had felt like he’d been living two lives back then. The soft-spoken, polite (if still a little snarky) teen his grandmother and her society friends saw and then the rough, tough, bad attitude, hell-bent on causing trouble no matter who it hurt teen that he was around Kyle and the others in the gang of boys who had been steadily increasing their mischief to flat out crimes.
That had been how Jensen had run afoul of Sister Rose McCarthy one night when he, Kyle, and several of the others had been out late slitting tires, breaking windows in old buildings, and tagging buildings with spray paint.
He’d been reluctant to go out because he had a history test the next morning, and while Jensen would sneer at school, he actually did enjoy most of the dumb classes. He didn’t want to flunk the history test, but he was getting tired of being sneered at by Kyle so he’d gone.
A lot of the crap Kyle had been doing or having the others do hadn’t been sitting well with Jensen, especially the night Kyle had pulled a knife on a young nun to take her purse and rough her up. That had been the first time they’d come to blows and also the last time Jensen had spoken up since it had been hard to cover the damn broken rib and black eye he’d gained for shooting his mouth off to his ‘leader’.
The night he’d met Sister Rose had just been supposed to be a night of casual and simple mischief. Jensen wasn’t sure how the night ended for the others because he’d been the one caught red-handed with the can of spray paint by a testy nun on the lookout for troublemakers and with a swift hand that wielded a mean cane.
He’d been pissed off at something Kyle had suggested; something that involved a lot more than Jensen had wanted to get into, so when the gang leader had dared him to spray paint a crude message on the front door of the church he’d snatched the can rather than risk losing face in yet another way.
The message had been half done when Jensen happened to look up to see his so-called friends running into an alley a block over. Before he could figure out why, a hard object had swatted the can of paint from his hand while an irate older nun was in his face reading him the riot act.
To this day Jensen didn’t know why the hell he hadn’t just bolted over the railing to run instead of just standing there and letting the fiery nun, who was probably only 4’9” if that, yell at him before dragging him inside by his earlobe to continue the stern lecture while waiting for both the police and his grandmother to arrive.
Normally when Jensen went out late, he left his real ID at home and used the fake one Kyle had made for him, but on that night he’d had his actual real ID with his real name and address on it. Since the angry nun already had that information, he’d just blown out a breath and rattled off his grandmother’s phone number with the silent hope that she was out at some charity function and would miss the call.
He’d rather face breaking his probation and sitting in a cell for eight months than see the disappointment on Sarah Ackles’ face when she learned that he’d been grabbed defacing a church.
It hadn’t been that simple because of course she had been home and had come right over at the nun’s call as had the damn same cop who’d picked him up the last time with the car. Jensen knew right then he was screwed because Liam Murphy was a stern beat cop who took no quarter and didn’t give it.
Jensen had simply sat despondently in the church office while his grandmother and the police officer argued about hauling him to jail. They thought just letting him sit in juvie for eight months might teach him a lesson but that had simply made Jensen smirk.
He knew he was in trouble, so as a defense, he’d let all the snark and the cocky punk side come through until he thought for a moment the cop was going to hit him. It was seeing his grandmother start to cry, however, that made him back off, and that had been when Sister Rose had moved in.
Maybe she’d been playing semi-good cop to Murphy’s bad cop, but she’d slapped her cane on the desk to be sure she had his attention. All Jensen understood was that she was offering him a shot to stay out of a cell and keep his already spotted record from becoming spottier provided he played by her rules for the next six months, stayed out of trouble, and avoided Kyle and his other friends.
The last one had been the hardest. Once it got out that Jensen was going to the church and shelter every day after school, it seemed like Kyle or a few of the others would always make it a point to ride by or wander close enough to jeer and make fun of him.
Sister Rose had stood out front each day of the first week as he scraped the door by hand and then repainted it. She’d merely stood there quietly as he debated on whether to join his friends or keep his promise, but after the fifth time it happened, she’d patted his cheek. Jensen understood that this had been the gruff old nun’s way of telling him she was proud of him for resisting the temptation.
After the third week, while he’d been pulling weeds in the rat’s nest of a garden beside the original shelter building, she’d started talking to him more, asking him about his dreams, what he wanted out of his life or if he planned to live off his looks and his granny’s money.
The one made him smirk while the other pissed him off because he didn’t want to live off the Ackles’ name all his life. He wanted to make his own money, build his own life, and maybe try to make himself into something that would make his grandmother proud of him.
Back then the shelter had mostly been for battered women and scared kids, so they’d pretty much stayed away from him while he swept or cleaned up or did any of the other number of odd jobs Sister Rose thought up and she could think up some doozies that made him smile to this day.
On one of the days that it had rained, he’d been working inside scrubbing crayon off walls when a small, skittish little girl with big blue eyes, a broken arm, and a ragged toy cat with both eyes missing came over to sit next to him while he scrubbed.
Jensen had never been around children that much, and especially not one that had been hurt so badly. She rarely left her mother’s side, but for some reason, the small girl had come out to glue herself to his side. Wherever he’d gone in the shelter that day when Jensen would look, he’d see her following him on shaky little legs. When he’d stopped to eat the lunch his grandmother had packed him, he split his orange with the child.
Her bright smile when she’d first tasted the fruit had made him happy. After that each day Jensen would see her waiting in the door to the children’s playroom and if he was working inside, she’d follow him. If he wasn’t working inside, she’d wave out the window until at lunchtime he’d go share whatever fruit or snack with her.
After a month of this, Jensen realized he was now splitting his lunch with about six little kids, but he never bitched or complained to Sister Rose. When she finally asked him about his little following, he’d just shrugged and said he didn’t mind the little rugrats.
During the third month, he’d been taking a break from washing windows outside when Kyle had gotten brave enough to approach him. The older boy said he had something for him to do so ditch the cleaning and come on, but Jensen didn’t want to go and ignored the older boy.
It had been little Callie, Jensen’s first little shadow, who had screamed only a second before a fist swung a brick at Jensen’s head for his refusal. Her scream had saved him from being hurt, and that had been the first time he’d ever swung back and actually drew blood from his friend.
By the time Father Thomas and Sister Rose got out there, Kyle had run off, pissed and yelling threats, but all Jensen cared about was stopping the little girl from crying. She’d clung to his neck when he’d sat down to rub his stinging hand and after a minute or two, he stopped rubbing his hand to begin gently rubbing her back.
That had also been the first time he’d sung to anyone but himself, and he hadn’t even realized he had started to sing until after a few minutes he’d realized Callie wasn’t crying anymore. Instead, she was now smiling up at him with her thumb in her mouth as she rocked herself in his arms in time with the soft lullaby he’d been singing to her.
After that Jensen hummed or sang a little if it was just him and kids that were brave enough to come around him. He didn’t think anyone else noticed until finally one day, while waiting for his grandmother’s driver to pick him up, Sister Rose had asked him if he enjoyed singing and he’d smiled his first real smile at her because singing was what he loved.
Jensen loved music. All types of music. Not just the rock or rap most of his friends had listened to, but he enjoyed classical, oldies, jazz, blues, and even some opera although he had to work really hard to stay awake for that.
He loved to sing music, he loved to write music, and he loved to play music though, as he admitted to Sister Rose, he only got to touch an instrument when in school since his grandmother didn’t know yet. As soon as he saved some of his own money, he was going to buy a guitar and take some lessons.
Those lessons had come more quickly than expected and from Sister Rose herself. She’d been waiting for him the very next day with a battered old guitar that she told him had been in storage. She’d had lessons herself years ago and, she could teach him enough to get him by until he found a better teacher.
The next months of his ‘sentence’ had quickly passed by with odd chores, playing with the kids, and learning enough chords to actually play Callie a song that had the little girl clapping and laughing.
Even after the months of work were up, Jensen still went back to help out. He’d begun to bring the kids who were in the shelter new blankets or toys to play with. When Father Thomas asked how his grandmother felt about him spending money on strangers, Jensen told him the truth. He hadn’t spent a dime of his grandmother’s money. He’d spent his own money instead: the money he was given each week as an allowance, and he’d done it because he wanted to see the kids smile.
Now, as he stood on the sidewalk to gaze between the church and the original shelter building, Jensen could recall handing little Callie a new stuffed cat and how she’d clung to it and him. That had been the last time he’d seen her smile, the last time he’d seen her at all, because when he returned from a three-day trip with his grandmother, he was met with devastating news.
In some ways he supposed it was that day, the day that he’d been met by a grim-faced Sister Rose, that Jensen truly understood his first taste of grief. It had felt like something hit him in the heart when he was told that the small child and her mother had both been killed by the woman’s enraged husband after they’d moved into a new ‘safe’ home.
It would have been so easy for Jensen to slip back to his old life. He’d been filled with rage and grief and when Kyle approached him later that night, trying once again to goad him into making a drug run after trying a little product, he’d nearly given in.
He’d almost given in to the pain, thinking of a world that could so fail such a small trusting girl. The despair had left him sinking, but as he’d gone to touch the needle, a flash of blue eyes hit him and his fist struck Kyle in the face. It was only three other gang members pulling him off that kept him from beating the crap out of the older boy.
Of course, now Jensen knew that that had been the beginning of the end of his old life. Only two days later he’d been he’d been jumped and beaten while walking back to his car, the car that had been a gift from his grandmother for his 17 th birthday. He had just made a quick stop at a small store three blocks from St. Lucy’s to grab some treats for the kids when Kyle and two other boys attacked. The beating would have been bad enough, but the knife to his gut had been meant to be the lesson learned as Kyle cruelly told him dying in a gutter is what traitors deserve.
Jensen, to this day, didn’t really know how he’d gotten from his car to the church; all he remembered was collapsing in the garden and telling Sister Rose who had stabbed him and that he was glad to have met her. Then he’d passed out and didn’t regain consciousness for two weeks.
The knife wound had been serious and he’d nearly bled out. Not even the specialists Sarah Ackles had called in could tell her how Jensen had managed to survive, much less survive without any damage other than a jagged scar on his stomach that he still carried to his day.
Sister Rose had visited him each day after he woke up, bringing him drawings the children had done or helping him get strong enough to hold the battered guitar she’d brought to his room because she didn’t want him lying in bed with too much time on his hands.
By the time he’d been released, Officer Murphy had been there to tell him that the police had picked up Kyle and the others. If he wanted to press charges, then they stood a good chance of seeing the inside of a prison since by that time Kyle and those he’d had with him were of legal age.
It had been a brief struggle with himself since Jensen knew if he pressed charges, if he turned on his former friend, then his reputation would always be that of a snitch. When he’d learned, however, from Father Thomas that the gang had tried to beat up Sister Rose for standing up to them one day, Jensen’s mind had been made up and he went with his grandmother’s attorney to file charges.
By the time the trial was over, Jensen had been threatened repeatedly, the shelter egged and spray-painted, and even his grandmother’s home on Nob Hill had been damaged. He hadn’t given in, he hadn’t backed down, and he had stood in the courtroom while a judge sentenced his former friend to 20 years for attempted murder with the possibility of parole for good behavior.
It had been Sister Rose who had encouraged him on his 18 th birthday to take his love of music and go with it. She believed that he was gifted enough to go far if he stayed with it, if he wanted it bad enough, and that’s what he’d done.
He’d come into the first of his trust funds at 18 so he’d given a third of it to St. Lucy’s and the shelter and had taken the rest to move out of the Bay City to see how far he could go.
Ten years later he returned to the spot where his life had changed. He was now a star of rock and roll, a man who lived off his own money and left his trust funds and inheritance in the bank.
Now as he slipped out of his black leather bomber jacket and tossed it back into the Mustang, he stared at the church and shelter buildings. They were obviously badly in need of repair, and Jensen decided he might be making another withdrawal very shortly. His friend in the city always kept him informed, telling Jensen when the church needed repair or it looked like Sister Rose needed another anonymous donation.
He’d donated anonymously because the stubborn old nun wouldn’t take money if she knew it was from him because she didn’t want him spending it when he wasn’t around to see it put to use.
“Well, I’m here now so we’ll see what her excuse will be,” he muttered to himself, leaving the sunglasses on against the bright afternoon sun. He glanced around and saw a few kids playing on the sidewalk while he could hear others playing around back in what looked to be a small playground that had been built sometime since he’d been gone.
Jensen had only returned to San Francisco once in 10 years, and that had been to see a friend of his who’d opened a bar in the city, but he hadn’t stopped to see anyone else due to scheduling conflicts.
The reason he was back now was because of a too-close encounter with a rabid fan. He had been left with some bruises, six stitches in his side, a torn muscle in his leg, and a slight concussion. He’d told his band, his manager, and the tour promoter that he was taking the next six months off to try to lose some of the stress he’d been fighting, maybe work on some new music and just find himself again.
His first stop after dropping his stuff off at the home he owned in the city was St. Lucy’s. He wanted to finally look the little stern Irish nun in the eye and thank her for giving him his life. He’d felt a little worried at first as he drove around the block a few times until finally parking, but it was on his second pass that Jensen had noticed that not only the church had changed but the neighborhood had as well.
It was harder now, with more bars and other places of a less-than-savory nature, but it was the groups of young men on a few corners that pricked his curiosity as well. The gangs had never really gotten this close to St. Lucy’s before, so Jensen wasn’t certain he felt comfortable with this; he wondered if Officer Murphy was still on the San Francisco PD since he hadn’t yet seen a cop.
“Hey, mister,” a boy of about twelve called from the church steps where he’d been bouncing a ball on the sidewalk so it’d bounce back to him. “Cool car!”
“Thanks,” Jensen returned but paused before turning and eyeing the bright-eyed Latino boy. “What’s your name?” he asked as he moved closer to the steps; he smiled when he heard a definite Irish accent somewhere toward the back.
“Carlos,” the boy answered as he snapped the ball again only to have it caught in mid-air by the older man. In the boy’s eyes, the man had to be pushing middle age, he might even be thirty, so that impressed him.
Jensen recognized the shirt the kid had on as one similar in color to the shirts a bunch of boys had been wearing. He’d seen them when first entering the neighborhood so that already warned him of potential trouble. “You stay here or just hang out looking for trouble?” he asked while flipping the ball off the palm of his hand to catch it behind his back.
“My sisters get help with their schoolwork while Mom’s at work so I wait to walk them home,” Carlos admitted, a little uneasy under the firm eyes that seemed to be staring into him from behind the cool dark glasses. “Me and my friends don’t cause Sister Rose any trouble. Not like some others.”
“Well, then I think we can come to an understanding.” Jensen leaned on the railing a step below where Carlos sat to hand him his ball as well as a fifty-dollar bill. “I’m going to be hanging around here a lot so that means my cool car will be here a lot. Now, the money isn’t to leave the car alone but to tell me who in this neighborhood does bother Sister Rose or the people here or in the shelter.” He waited until his fingers touched the money to tighten his grip on it until dark eyes looked up. “My car gets tagged? I’ll find you and your friends to have a little talk.”
Carlos had seen a lot of people come and go through the doors of St. Lucy’s but no one like this man. He didn’t dress or talk like some of the people Father Patrick had been talking to or who came to services, and he certainly wasn’t like the man that Sister Rose chased away with a hoe one day. He liked this guy so Carlos smiled. “What’s your name, mister?”
“Jensen,” came the reply as Jensen started to reach for the gate to the garden. He froze when he heard the first shouts from the rear where the playground was. “Shit, what the hell’s that?”
“Donny Mueller and his pals must be after Jared again.” Carlos had hurried down the steps to join Jensen by the gate, groaning. “Oh man, Sister Rose is going after them and Donny carries a blade and…”
Jensen’s hand clamped down on the kid’s shoulder while eyeing the distance to the playground through the garden. “Is there a shorter way to get to that playground? And give me a short report on who’s who and what’s going on since I’ve been away for a while.”
“Cut around the side of the daycare building since that’s how people can access the playground from the street,” Carlos told him, hurrying to add, “Donny and his pals don’t stay at the shelter but hang around to cause trouble, especially if they can catch Jared without Sister Rose or Sister Martha around. No one else will stand up for him and Jared won’t defend himself against them.”
“Why are a bunch of thugs picking on some little kid?” Jensen growled under his breath while glancing back to see a strange look on the boy’s face. “What?”
“Jared’s not a kid, mister. He’s old, probably early 20’s but… he’s a little… according to my uncle, he’s not right in the head or something. I don’t know, but he’s always been nice to my little sisters. He still talks to me; I’m not big enough to scare him. It’s grownups like you or teenagers that freak him out, and he gets beat on by Donny’s gang a lot,” Carlos explained, staring as a shout was heard. “Shit!”
“Watch the mouth, kid,” Jensen told him but then broke into a run when he heard a voice he knew he’d have to be dead to forget. “Damn it, Rose,” he groaned.
Sister Rose had stared down stoned hippies in the 60s, so a sneering punk with a switchblade didn’t faze her at the very least. The young priest who was keeping her from defending a young man under her care was bothering her very much, however. “You will get your hands off of that boy and take those hooligans with you as you leave the playground, young man,” she ordered in a huff, shoving at the muttering priest. “Patrick, you’re in the way.”
“You’d better mind your business before this freak ain’t the only one bleeding today, old woman.” Donny was tall; not as tall as the young man he was threatening, but the three young men with him as well as the razor-sharp switchblade he held in his hand made up for that. “When are you going to stop hiding behind the old bat’s skirts, freak? You know the boss’s rules. You cross into our alleys, you have to pay, and we know you’ve been sneaking in to sleep there. So you either fork over the cash I know the nuns slip you or… you pay in another way since we hear that’s about all you’re good for.”
“Don’t you dare threaten him in such a foul way!” Sister Rose suspected that might be what was happening from the way Jared had come into the rectory a few times shaken and quiet like he had been all those years before. “If you don’t take your hands off of him I’ll…”
Donny had his fist curled in the ripped and dirty t-shirt of the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man that nearly everyone in the neighborhood talked about in whispers. He jerked his head toward the nun and the priest as the little kids scattered in fear. “Show her what it means to stick her nose in our business while I teach the freak a lesson.” He drew the knife back only to yell when it was caught in a tight grip.
“Still kicking ass and taking names while I’ve been gone, Rosie?”
TBC