A moment of truth for Franco

“Money Walks,” a serial novel by 16 Los Angeles writers who will be appearing at this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, runs through Friday. The festival takes place Saturday and Sunday at UCLA.

Rev. Franco already knew his first mistake. He’d thought this money thing was about him.

He thought he’d been crafty calling Rudy, that he’d get out of this mess with his hands clean, but he might as well have been out there with the rest of the suckers pounding on empty ATMs.

As much as he wanted to tell himself he’d acted with the church’s best interests at heart, he knew it was a line.

Now, with Rudy and Angela standing before him and Bunny at his side, he was realizing his second mistake.

He’d thrown out the baby with the bathwater. The money thing was global, it was everyone, it wasn’t unique to him. But something else was going on, and he was at the center of it.

Of all the rich old ladies in Los Angeles, Rudy and Angie had gone after Bunny Hortense. They’d picked the one woman who had brought it all out in the open for him, however briefly, who had shown him the twisted paths of his own carnal pleasures. All the better to renounce them later, of course.

That couldn’t be a coincidence.

What was it, then? God’s will? Human magnetism? Something to do with the painting? If paintings had ghosts, this could be one. Or was he succumbing to the delusion, not uncommon in his line of work, that every detail was significant?

All he knew for sure was that Angie was pointing a gun at him and that Rudy believed himself a character in a book.

“In the back,” said Rudy. “The Fellowship Room. There’s a kit in the crawl space. I’ve had the writers refill it.”

“What kind of kit?” Franco asked.

Rudy didn’t respond. Probably something criminal, which meant Rudy had been operating out of the church. Holy Redeemer, what a crock. Holy Recidivist was more like it.

Bunny moved away a half-step and in the process pushed her oxygen tank toward him. The metal rubbed against his leg.

“Go ahead and shoot me,” she said.

Franco couldn’t believe it. What kind of misguided sacrifice did Bunny think she was making?

Rudy nodded his head. Angie pointed the gun straight at Bunny.

“You don’t have the guts,” said Bunny. “I see it in your eyes.”

“If she doesn’t shoot you, I will,” said Rudy.

“Not without thumbs.” Bunny nodded at Rudy’s hands and smiled.

That smile. If he was going to spend the rest of his days in a world without money, Franco knew now he would want to do it with Bunny.

The front doors of the church burst open with a blinding orange ball of fire. Redemption? Reckoning? More like a bonfire in a shopping cart, pushed by a bearded man in a trench coat. The church filled with smoke. Franco could have sworn the man was wearing a pair of tattered wings.

Emboldened by this vision or his rekindled affection for Bunny -- he couldn’t say -- Franco wrapped his hand around the oxygen tank.

This will be my last mistake, he thought.

He was stopped by a small, familiar sound. From when the collection plate got jostled on its way around the room. Metal rolling across wood.

It wobbled for an eternity before coming to rest by his shoe: a nickel.

Wilson is the author of the novel “The Interloper.” He will be on the “Fiction: Breaking Point” panel at 10:30 a.m. Sunday in Young Hall CS 50 at UCLA at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.