Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  In the hospital they told me that if the lung puncture had been any worse, or if it had been another hour before someone found me, I would have died. I had three broken ribs on the right side. You could see the imprint from a crow bar. One of the ribs punctured my lung. I had two hairline fractures in the vertebra of my midback, lacerations on my face and scalp, a bruised kidney, broken nose, and I don’t remember what else.

  But I didn’t have to worry about DiLeo coming after me. My second day in the hospital was his first day out, and someone gunned him down. Nobody liked that guy. Fat fucking bastard.

  That evening, two cops came by my hospital room asking about DiLeo. One of them was a real asshole. A white guy with close-cropped hair and the kind of accent people put on when they want to make fun of New Yorkers. He had big, thick weightlifter arms, and he liked to show them off. “You’re lucky you were in this bed when DiLeo bought it,” he said. “Because otherwise, you’d be suspect number one. We know what you did to him.” This cop was the kind of guy I instinctively wanted to punch.

  The other cop was older. A dark-haired Puerto Rican guy, kind of short, with flecks of grey around his temples. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and told his partner to leave us alone for a while.

  I had a good talk with him. He wanted to know what happened with DiLeo, and he said right off the bat, “Look, the guy’s dead. He’s not going to press charges.” At first I didn’t want to tell him anything. The people I was working with didn’t like anyone talking to cops.

  He said, “Where was the shoe repair place?” I acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he said, “The cobbler shop where you beat up DiLeo. Where was it?”

  He wanted to know because I’d left the money there, and he was worried about the old man and the old woman. “You guys didn’t collect,” he said. “That means they’ll send someone else to get the money. And they’re gonna be angry. You want those people to get hurt?”

  Now that’s a good cop, looking out for the right people. I told him everything, and he took notes. It all went into a police report that eventually found its way into Ed Hartwell’s hands when he decided to look into my background.

  The cop said, “Who else wanted to hurt DiLeo?”

  “Lots of people,” I said.

  “Like? Come on, I got a murder case on my hands and I don’t like leaving killers out on the street.”

  “If I’m gonna start giving you names,” I said, “I’m gonna have to name a dozen people, and that’s just gonna get me in trouble. I don’t know who did it.”

  He said, “OK. You got anywhere to go besides New York?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because you don’t have a future here. Unless you want to take DiLeo’s job and end up like him. But after what you did, I don’t think Slim or anyone else is gonna want to work with you.”

  This was the same conversation I had just had with Rizzardi. Another version of “Get out while you can.”

  When I left the hospital, I wasn’t gonna wait around to see if anyone was looking for me. I took a southbound from Penn Station, and I paid a visit to my mother’s grave in Philly. It was the only place I knew to go.

  Most of my memories of my mother are at the breakfast table. It’s always her filling my bowl with cereal and telling me what a great day we’re going to have. A day that never came.

  The memory that sticks out the most, though, is from a day when I was six. It was a Sunday, just past noon. The first thing I did wrong was I woke up my dad. But he let that slide. He got a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV. The Phillies were playing the Mets. I was jumping around the living room because sitting still for an hour in church had made me antsy. I should have been more careful. He had that look. Angry, irritable, eyes all bloodshot.

  I accidentally knocked his beer off the table, just being clumsy, and he went into a rage. That was the scariest beating I ever got, and I’d had plenty by then.

  My mom was at the grocery store, and the way he was going at me, I was sure I’d be dead before she got back. Then the door opened.

  She couldn’t stop him, so she grabbed me around the waist, pulled me toward her, and folded her body around me. I could feel the blows landing on her back. The shock came through her chest and shook my head. She took all of it, and didn’t let go of me until he had worn himself out.

  How could he have killed a person like that? How could anyone kill a person like that?

  Over the years, the other memories of her faded and blurred. But that one is vivid.

  When Miriam was pregnant and had family on her mind, she started getting more curious, prying into things about my past that she knew I wasn’t going to talk about.

  “Why don’t you ever tell me things?”

  “I tell you everything.”

  “You don’t tell me how you feel.”

  “You can see how I feel. I don’t hide it.”

  “You never tell me about your past.”

  “I told you about boxing.”

  “Why did you stop? It sounded like you were doing well.”

  “It didn’t work out.”

  “Because you lost one fight? Come on, Freddy, I know you’re not a quitter. Tell me what happened.”

  “I told you. It didn’t work out. Why dwell on it?”

  And that was just the beginning. When she wanted to ruin a date, she’d start in with this: “Tell me about your mother.”

  “My mother’s dead.”

  “Tell me about your father.”

  “My father’s dead.”

  “What were they like?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”

  “What about your childhood?”

  “It didn’t work out, so I grew up.”

  “Well, aren’t you a charmer? You want to write your autobiography? Here’s a napkin. Feel free to use both sides.”

  Give me all the paper in the world, I couldn’t explain to you the burden of the debt I owe to the one who brought me into this life, to the one who laid herself down and took all the blows that were meant for me. They say we all have our crosses, right? Well, try bearing that one. How could you ever repay a debt like that?

  This is why I like to keep busy. Empty time isn’t good for me. When I fought, there was always a purpose to what I was doing. The sit-ups and the running and the sparring would make me a little bit stronger, and the next day I’d work harder, just to get a minor fight. A little fight led to a bigger fight. It was all going somewhere. I knew it would take years to unfold, and I could put all my energy into it, day after day after day. It was big enough to absorb everything I had to give.

  And this? What I do now?

  Like I said, I’m thankful to be in good health, to have all my faculties, and a job and a place to live. I’m grateful to Ed for giving me a chance.

  But when I have too much empty time, I start asking myself who I’m really helping. Insurance companies and corporations. Sure, they’re getting ripped off. Sure, the people who are screwing them are assholes. But those companies have millions and millions of dollars. Do they really need my help?

  The only reason I’m still in this world is because all those years ago in Philly, the right person walked in on me at the right moment. All those years ago in New York, the right guy took an interest in me at the right time.

  I always wanted to pay them back. Somehow. Some way.

  9

  I park in front of the church fifteen minutes early. There’s a Chrysler 300 with DC tags and no dealer markings parked in front of me. That’s a Fed car. I wonder if it belongs to the FBI contact Ed mentioned. What was his name? Lomax?

  When I walk into the church, an ashen-skinned elderly woman with a pinched face hands me a program. On the front is a photo of Anna Brook, looking younger and healthier than when I saw her. Beneath the photo is her date of birth, a dash, and the date the plane went down into the sea. September 29.

  T
he vaulted ceiling inside the church has exposed wood beams. Not the rough kind you see in stripped-down restaurants that are trying to look hip and authentic. The beams are thick, finished, and stained. The dark oak pews on either side of the red-carpeted aisle creak when people sit on them. There’s an organ behind the pulpit, to the right of the altar. Whoever built this place didn’t take any shortcuts. They did it right.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a church. That priest who first brought me into Rizzardi’s gym, Father Sanchez, took a special interest in me when he found out my mother used to take me to a Catholic church in Philly. He wanted to bring me back into the fold, but I had no interest in returning to that sheep’s pen.

  A lot of the kids in Rizzardi’s gym were brought in by the cops. They were angry or hopeless, and if they weren’t violent yet, they were on their way, because violence is the natural expression of those feelings. The cops and Rizzardi, and even Father Sanchez, looked at boxing as a way to channel the aggression that would otherwise come out on the streets. Rizzardi taught kids to bring it all to the ring and leave it in the ring.

  Father Sanchez, I don’t know if he thought I was a thug or what, but he invited me to come by for confession. That put me off, because I was thinking, OK, you want me to buy into this religion, and we’re going to start with a list of all the things I did wrong? What about the whole damn world out there and everything that’s wrong with it? Remind me again who created that.

  So I went to confession with a big list I had put together, and I started going through it line by line. “Here’s all the things God did wrong this week: The junkie in the dumpster by the high school. I heard he was only twenty-seven and had two kids. Praise be! The pimp who beat up that hooker in broad daylight. Knocked out two of her teeth. Nothing happens but by his will. The kid on the corner, seventeen, with a dozen bullet holes in him after the drive-by. They say God made man in his own image. Well, which one is His image? The one firing the gun and laughing, or the one too full of holes to pick himself up from the blood-soaked gutter?”

  Sanchez didn’t like that, but I’ll give him credit for not losing his temper. He told me it was natural for a kid to be angry, especially if he’d lost his parents. He asked me if I wanted to be free of that anger.

  “Be free how?” I said. “By accepting all this? By saying it’s all OK and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, so why don’t we just move on? Fuck that!”

  “You have the right attitude,” he said. That was not the response I expected. “You want a better world. You just have to focus the negative energy so it works in a positive way.”

  That was just the kind of thing Rizzardi would say.

  “I don’t have any money for your tithe,” I said. “I’m not a profitable parishioner.”

  “The church’s first concern is you,” Sanchez said. “It’s what we can do for you.”

  As soon as he said that, I was done. That’s the kind of line the dealers used to recruit guys to sell on the corners. Anyone who comes to you saying they’re looking out for your interests is lying. I got up and walked out, but Sanchez kept after me for months at the gym.

  Every day I’d write down the little things I saw. The robberies and the bullying, the drug use and the prostitution and the general meanness of it all. Then when Sanchez tried to talk to me, I’d tell him it was time for God’s confession, and I’d read off the list of all the things the Lord had let happen that week.

  After a while, he gave up on me. And I had to stop making those lists, they made me so damned depressed.

  It looks like only about forty people showed up to the funeral. I would have expected more in a small town like this. But of course she hasn’t lived here in ten years. Maybe with the service coming so quickly after the crash, her old friends didn’t have enough time to get back to town.

  The mourners are scattered about, three in one row, four in the next. I thought they’d all be bunched up front. Maybe Anna and her friends weren’t churchgoers. Maybe they don’t feel comfortable here. How sad for her family to see that in the end she mattered to so few people.

  That must be her mother and sister in the front row. I can only see the backs of their heads. The mother is short, with straight grey hair cut just above the shoulders. The sister is taller, slim, with blonde hair.

  Over on the right is a broad-shouldered guy in a dark-blue suit. That’s gotta be Lomax, the FBI guy. What other man would be here alone? If he were Anna’s husband or lover, or a local, he’d be seated with a group or talking to someone. When he turns, I see he’s holding a paper coffee cup. He’s young, with short blond hair and a thick, muscular neck. He has a bit of a cocky look. Someone nods to him, and he flashes a smile as he brings the cup to his lips and takes a sip.

  Ten minutes till the service starts. Time enough to duck into the men’s room. I walk out of the main sanctuary, through a wood-paneled reception hall with high, lead-glass windows. The restroom signs lead down a narrow hall. I hear footsteps behind me as I push open the restroom door.

  I’m standing at the urinal when the blond guy pulls up beside me and rests his cup on the porcelain ledge of the next urinal. I say, “Are you Lomax?” He has a weird, vibrating energy, like he’s had too much coffee.

  He says, “You work with Ed Hartwell, for the airline, right?” He’s flashing his all-American smile right into the white tiled wall. “Hey, I’d shake your hand, but I kinda got my hands full at the moment.” Then he laughs.

  “Freddy Ferguson,” I say. “Been with Ed for a few years now.”

  “They got you working the passenger list?” he asks.

  “Yeah. You too, huh?”

  “Yeah, this is the fucking junior beat, man. This is for cadets and trainees.”

  I say, “You gotta be thorough, though.”

  And he says, “Yeah, you gotta be thorough.”

  We go over to the sinks and as I wash my hands, I say, “You guys find any dirt on any of the passengers?”

  He says, “You mean other than Obasanjo? Maybe Owen Briscoe. He was mixed up with a bad bunch out in Idaho. Delmont Suggs and his anti-government white separatist militia. Fucking Cracker Jihad. Those guys are gonna go down on a different rap. Weapons trafficking and assault.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “ATF was watching him for a while last year.”

  “Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms?”

  “Yeah.” Lomax turns off the water and shakes his hands over the sink. “Suggs only works in the winter. He does avalanche control, firing mortars into mountainsides. The rest of the year, as far as anyone can tell, he supports himself by selling guns. ATF has a problem with that. But this plane crash…” Lomax shakes his head and grins. “That’s an open and shut case.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  He grabs a paper towel and says, “Pfft! D’you see that guy Obasanjo on TV?”

  “He looked scared,” I say.

  “You know what I heard? The kid shit himself in the interrogation.” He tosses his paper towel into the garbage and turns to me. “He literally shit his pants! And then he started crying! Well boo-hoo, the kid blows up a fucking plane and he doesn’t know why he’s in detention.”

  I grab a towel and dry my hands. “Any idea who he was working with?”

  “Who knows?” He tilts his head back and looks into the mirror like he’s trying to see up his own nose. In fact, that’s exactly what he’s doing. “ISIS says they did it, but that’s probably bullshit,” he says. “They’re always looking for publicity. You ready for the big show?”

  “Yeah.”

  The pastor reads from a typed script, and every time he turns the page, the microphone blasts the shuffling sound through the speakers. I’m sitting three rows behind Anna’s mother and sister. The mother, Roseanne, keeps her head down as the pastor speaks.

  The sister, Julia, turns and looks over her shoulder at me, the same way her sister did in the a
irport. Christ! I nearly jump out of my skin. The two of them look almost identical. Same blonde hair—only Julia’s is real—same blue eyes, bleary from crying all night. But Julia is a little fuller in the cheeks, a little healthier looking all around. Her face shows more emotion. Her mouth isn’t set in that stoic look. She’s got less mileage on her.

  According to the eulogy, Anna was a bright, sensitive girl, loved by everyone. That last part, I might believe. She looks like she got around. Her sister keeps turning around to see the other mourners. She catches me looking at her a few times during the service. But everyone’s looking at her. She looks so much like Anna, it’s like the woman showed up to her own funeral.

  I look around now and then. Lomax is sitting near the back, still sipping his coffee and vibrating. He’s literally vibrating. I think he’s bouncing his knee up and down, like a busy, impatient man who got roped into a pointless meeting, and the motion is making his whole body shake. A couple rows in front of him is a chubby black guy in a suit, and an older white woman in a pants suit. I bet they’re from the airline.

  The minister says that the eye of God is upon us in our hour of grief, and nothing will go unnoticed. If the FBI thought this was an important part of the investigation, the eye of the federal government would be upon us. Lomax would have a camera mounted somewhere and he’d take the video back to DC and run it through facial recognition software to see if he could latch on to someone who might lead him to his target. Instead, he’s on cadet duty, as he put it, sipping coffee and bouncing his leg.

  After the service, everyone goes to the reception hall for coffee and sandwiches. People offer their condolences to Julia and her mother. This is the first time I’ve gotten a good look at the mother, and she seems more than a little tipsy.

  The chubby guy introduces himself to them as Marvin something, offers condolences on behalf of the airline, and tells the mom that if there’s anything they need—help with meals, errands, anything during this difficult time—the airline will offer assistance. He gives them each his business card. From the looks of old Mrs. Brook, all she’s thinking about right now is where she can find another drink, or a place to nap.