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The group laughs uproariously at memories of their brother sprawled and bleeding on the sidewalk, puffing a Newport. The stories help break the monotony of the gang's three-hour security shifts, in which they look out for cops and frisk customers entering the building to score.
Brother Bill listens to the stories with mixed amusement and empathy. He knows too well the whistling sound of a bullet that misses. As he listens, he can't help recalling his life-altering experience 15 years ago--one that hit him with all the force of all the bullets he has since survived.
"I was trying to decide between two good job offers when I stopped into St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church to think things through," he recounts. "When I knelt down, everything turned fuzzy except the face of Christ on a painting near the altar." The image at the altar issued to Tomes the first of several direct orders that would haunt him for the next three years:
"Love. You are forbidden to do anything other than that."
Tomes has told this story, about the first of what became a string of epiphanies, hundreds of times, and always with the same sense of genuine astonishment. Until that moment he had never thought of himself as a particularly religious man. Born in a middle-class home in Akron, Ohio, and raised in Evanston, he stood out as a gifted artist and athlete. He received Jesuit training at Loyola Academy before attending Notre Dame, where he studied English and philosophy and received a bachelor's degree, then two years later a master's in counseling and guidance.
Tomes spent the next 15 years working as a counselor for Catholic Charities. He characterizes his life back then as quite ordinary. "I liked to drink with my buddies and date women," he says. He also had a penchant for material things. In nine trips to Europe, where he interviewed psychiatrists in 18 countries for a planned doctoral dissertation, Tomes built a valuable collection of Russian artifacts. During that time, Tomes never abandoned his own artwork: he has sketched life-size portraits of every Notre Dame football coach from Jesse Harper to the current Bob Davie, each of which hangs today in the Fighting Irish athletic office.
By 1983 Tomes was fresh off a two-year hiatus to pursue his art. He returned to the work force with two lucrative job offers, one as a therapist in a hospital and another as an executive trainee with a major airline.
The question of which job to take led him to the church, where he first heard what he describes as the voice of Christ: "I'll lead; you follow," repeated three times. And then: Don't be afraid; "give all your trust."
"At the time, I didn't understand what there was to be afraid of," he says with a trace of irony. "I do now."
Over the next few months, Tomes says, he received more messages. One was "You must forgive everyone, everything." Another was "Judge not, and you will not be judged."
He picked up a Bible and found this verse staring him in the face: "Take nothing with you for the journey." Two times the next day, he came across the same passage in different parts of the Bible.