Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  I notice a few of the younger folks have their phones out. They’re bunching together in little groups, taking photos. Is that a thing at funerals these days? None of the older people are doing it. But maybe some of these kids haven’t seen each other in a few years. I take out my phone, turn on the video camera, and take a slow, 360-degree pan around the room. Maybe not the best etiquette, but it’ll allow me to pull stills of everyone later, in case I need to follow up on anyone here.

  Marvin introduces Julia and her mother to the older woman standing beside him. She’s a grief counselor. She says it was nice to speak to them on the phone the other day. She’ll be in town for a few days, and after that she can talk by phone at any time. They get business cards from her too. Julia is grateful, she just can’t tell them how grateful she is. Yes, they could use some help. And yes, Julia would like to talk. Her mom, though—she looks like she’s going to need a Bloody Mary or something to stop her breakfast from turning into a noontime hangover.

  Then Lomax introduces himself to Julia. FBI. “I am so deeply sorry for your loss, ma’am. So very, very sorry.” He has the sure, confident manner of a good-looking guy who knows how effective his charm is, but the warmth doesn’t quite seem genuine. He’s on the job, after all.

  Why’s he only talking to the sister? Why doesn’t he talk to Roseanne? Maybe he sees she’s too far gone. He says, “I want you to know we are doing everything possible to bring the people who committed this heinous act to justice.”

  Christ, Lomax, the girl’s in shock. There is no justice at a time like this. And stop staring at her goddamn tits. What the fuck is wrong with you?

  There really is something creepy about the way he looks at her. Like she’s a possession he wants to get back. But she bears it well. Lomax’s false sympathy, I mean. Something tells me Anna would have turned her back on this guy if he’d shown such a blatant interest in her at her sister’s funeral.

  He says something else to her, I don’t know what, and then he flashes that smile and gives her a little touch on the shoulder before he moves on. Now Julia and Mrs. Brook are talking to family friends. A young guy with a beard just dumped the remains of a flask into a Styrofoam cup and handed it to the old lady. That got a rise out of her. There’s some gratitude right there. She put it straight to her lips.

  I wait for the crowd to thin out before I approach the Brooks. I have to be careful what I say, and who hears. The airline rep and the grief counselor are off in a corner. I don’t want them thinking I’m misrepresenting the airline, but I need to tie myself into this situation in a way that doesn’t put the family off.

  “Julia,” I say. “Mrs. Brook.” They both turn at once.

  “Were you a friend of Anna’s?” Julia asks.

  “No. I mean, I saw her once. I’m with the airline, doing some investigative work. You know, I uh…” God, the way this woman looks at me! She’s so unguarded, so open, like her heart is right there for the world to stomp on.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” I say. “I really am. I’m uh… I’m up in DC and…” I can’t lie to this woman. “Anna was the only one from around here who was on that plane. I mean, driving distance from DC, and I just wanted to come down here to show you… you know, people are thinking about you. People you don’t even know. I mean, the world’s not all cold.” Christ, that’s the shittiest lie I ever told, and her fucking eyes are welling up. Then she hugs me.

  She says that’s kind. That means a lot, because these last few days she hasn’t had a whole lot of faith in the world.

  Then this family of five comes up and starts telling stories about Anna in grade school, Anna in high school. How smart she was, how accepting, how you could tell her anything. From the sound of it, maybe the minister was telling the truth about her being loved by all.

  A young woman in the group, around thirty or so, says, “Remember how she’d run and hide every time she got upset?” She has a bittersweet smile. “And we’d all go looking for her? It’s OK, sweet pea! You can come out now.”

  Julia gets the same bittersweet smile. “That was always the signal. That’s the only thing she responded to. How many times did we say those words?”

  From the stories they tell, it sounds like Anna was a sensitive kid who toughened up in middle school, around the time the boys started looking at her.

  After a few more minutes, it’s just the family of five and me and Julia and her mom. Marvin and the grief counselor from the airline have said their goodbyes. The minister is folding up the chairs and stacking them in the corner. Then the family of five leaves. Julia goes to the bathroom, and then it’s just me and the mom.

  I pull out my phone and pretend to check the time. I want to get a photo of Julia when she comes back, though I can’t think of a tactful way to do it.

  “Did she go to college?” I ask.

  Mrs. Brook looks at me with bleary eyes. “Julia?”

  “No, Anna.”

  “Two semesters,” she says. “Lot of good that did her.” She takes a sip from the Styrofoam cup, forgetting for the second or third time that she emptied it several minutes ago. Then she stares forlornly into its depths. “Where’s Julia?” she asks, as if she just noticed she was gone.

  “She went…” I turn my phone in the direction she went, and there she is, in the wood-paneled corridor that leads to the restrooms. She’s leaning back against the wall. No, she’s pressing herself against the wall, and Lomax is leaning over her, talking. I snap a photo of the two of them.

  It’s a narrow corridor, and if he had any sense of decency, he wouldn’t be crowding her like that. It makes me angry, the way he leans in on her. I can feel her discomfort. Why can’t he? She’d push herself right though that wall if she could, just to get a little distance from him.

  Then I realize he can feel it. I know he can. I’ve seen this kind of guy before. A guy who thinks it’s natural for a woman to shrink from him like that, who’s encouraged by her discomfort to press in closer.

  She’s got her hands behind her back now, and she’s looking down, trying to avoid eye contact. He puts his hand up on the wall beside her head and leans into it, closing the space between them and cutting off her exit from the corridor. This is not unconscious behavior. He knows exactly what he’s doing. This is the kind of person who makes me truly violent.

  “Pardon me, ma’am.” I slide the phone into my pocket as I move past the old lady. Six steps, and I’m across the floor. They both feel me coming, like a bull elephant. I grab Lomax by the shoulder and start hustling him back toward the men’s room.

  He’s startled, and he’s alarmed at my strength. “What the fuck?”

  Lomax is a pretty solid guy. I can tell he works out. Probably in front of a mirror.

  “Get out of here,” I say to Julia, as I try to push Lomax into the men’s room. Only, it’s not that easy. The guy is strong, and he doesn’t like being pushed around.

  I finally shove him through the door, and the first thing out of his mouth is, “Are you crazy?” Boy, he’s hot. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  The fact that he doesn’t try to hit me right off the bat—well, if he was a normal guy, I’d chalk it up to him having the decency to refrain from fighting in church, at a funeral. But I know his type. Behind the blue eyes and the blond hair and the all-American frat boy smile, it’s not decency that restrains him. It’s a cold, hard calculation that says Freddy Ferguson, the heavyweight, just came at me pretty hard out of nowhere, and he’s strong and he’s angry, and maybe I won’t come out of this too well. Maybe it’s time to use our words.

  There are some people in this world who only understand power, and if you don’t show it to them right up front, they’ll never respect you.

  “You’re not talking to a perpetrator,” I say. “She’s a fucking victim. This is a time for consolation. For respect. It’s not an interrogation. You don’t intimidate her. You get me?”

  I’m ready for him to
come back at me with something—not a swing, but a verbal counterstrike, something to show me how tough he is. Instead, his whole look softens into one of concern, and he says, “Are you all right?”

  He’s got his hands on his hips and his shoulders are relaxed. That’s not a fighting posture, not even suitable for defense. And the way he’s looking at me, waiting to hear my response, he really wants to know. “What set you off?”

  “Just… Goddammit, don’t crowd the woman. She’s in mourning.”

  He nods, keeping his eyes on me in a calm, friendly, understanding way. “All right,” he says. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have crowded her. You’re a little sensitive, huh? You know, a lot of cops identify so much with the victims, they get bent out of shape. But you have to keep your head, because losing it isn’t going to help you solve anything. Did you know Anna?”

  “No. I just…” I swear I saw something in this guy, and I’m studying him hard now, looking for it again, but I don’t see it. “I just have a trigger for a certain type of guy.”

  He nods with a look of understanding. “Well a cop’s gotta have instincts, right? Better to be overly suspicious than overly trusting.”

  “Yeah.” You know I’m not a cop. “I guess so.” He’s got me calmed down, feeling stupid for losing my cool, and grateful for the fact that he didn’t lose his.

  “Hey.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. I don’t like guys I don’t know putting their hands on my shoulder. It makes me want to hit them. “At least we got out of the office for a day. Tomorrow, we’ll be back at the computer.” He flashes that million-dollar smile, and I can see why he’s so sure of it. It even works on me.

  When he walks out, I go to the sink and splash water on my cheeks and look at my reflection in the mirror. The face that held up under all those beatings looks back at me with disdain. I never thought I’d drink, but I do. I never thought I’d let a marriage go down the drain, but I did. I never thought I’d have my father’s temper, but I do. The only difference is the trigger. And the target.

  10

  When I return from the men’s room, Julia’s standing at the side of the reception hall. Her mom is beside her in a brown folding chair, starting to nod off.

  “You heading out?” I ask.

  “I’m taking my mother back home.”

  “Can you talk for a few minutes?”

  She looks doubtful for a second, sizing me up like she’s not sure how I’m going to behave. I regret losing my temper with Lomax. Then she says, “You said you saw Anna once.”

  “Twice, actually.” There I go, digging myself in deeper. I can’t help it with her.

  “What do you mean, you saw her?” She pauses for a couple of seconds and then says, “Were you one of her clients?”

  Clients? Psychologists have clients. So do hookers. From the looks of her in that airport line, and the goon she was hanging out with, I’m guessing she’s the latter.

  “No,” I say. “Nothing like that. I just saw her at the airport.”

  “When?”

  “Right before she got on the plane.”

  Julia starts crying. She doesn’t even cover her face. “God I wish she hadn’t gotten on that plane. I wish she hadn’t!” The sight of all that grief pains me.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Yeah, well, maybe she…” Her stomach and her shoulders convulse, but she’s not making any noise. I’m worried she’s going to collapse. “Take a seat,” I say as I pull a chair from the wall by her mother. The old woman is dozing, her face deeply lined from years of drink.

  Julia shakes her head. “I don’t want to sit.” She wipes the tears from her cheeks and says, “What were you going to say?”

  “Was I—I don’t know.”

  “You said maybe she… Maybe she what?”

  “Oh. I don’t know where I was going with that. You two were pretty close, huh?”

  “We were. Not as much the last few months, but, yeah. I looked up to her. You said you saw her twice.”

  “Yeah.” I’m starting to feel hot in this suit.

  “When was the second time?”

  “Right before she got on the plane.”

  “That was the first time.” She looks confused.

  “Yeah, well… I guess I saw her twice before she got on.”

  She gives me a funny look. “What did she say to you?” She’s watching me closely. Too closely, like she’s looking for clues.

  “Nothing.”

  Still that funny look. “Did you say anything to her?”

  “No. Listen, who does she talk to, do you know? I mean, when she’s in trouble?”

  She’s still staring at me, like she’s trying to figure me out.

  “I mean, does she have any friends you know of? Outside of DC? Anyone in other states?”

  “Which states?” she asks. “And why do you keep talking about her in the present tense?”

  “Do I? I guess it’s just hard to imagine she’s really gone.”

  “You only saw her once.”

  “Twice.”

  “And you never spoke a word to each other.” Her eyes narrow with suspicion, and then she says angrily, “Who are you?”

  “I told you, I’m an investigator.”

  “What are you investigating?”

  “Your sister.”

  “I thought it was the plane crash.”

  “Yeah, well…” Fuck! I don’t know how to get out of this one. If that prick Lomax hadn’t made me lose my head, I wouldn’t have fucked this up. And if she didn’t keep looking at me like that, with those earnest, probing eyes…

  “OK,” Julia says in a short, angry tone, “you’re violent, and you’re lying, and—are you like a pimp or something? Did Anna owe you money?”

  “If I was a pimp, do you think that cop would have stood for me roughing him up like that?”

  “If you were on the right side of the law, would you be pushing cops around? In church?”

  “Justice,” I say. “I’m on the right side of justice. Justice and the law are not the same thing. They’re on the same road, just not always in the same lane.” I make a slaloming motion with my hand to illustrate.

  She gives me a baffled look and shakes her head and says, “God you’re weird.”

  “I just want to find out who Anna might go to when she’s in trouble.”

  “When she was in trouble,” Julia corrects. “The last few months, she was always in trouble. She would talk to the other girls. Not that they could help. But they could listen.”

  “What other girls?”

  She hesitates for a second, then says, “Working girls.”

  “You know their names?”

  “They all have fake names. Cat. Crystal. Misty. You know, like porn names.”

  “Any of them from Buffalo?”

  “Buffalo?” she says, bewildered.

  “How about Texas?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  I’m just fishing now, and I’m starting to feel bad about harassing this woman. This is the wrong time and the wrong place for this kind of questioning. I stare down at her feet for a moment, telling myself it’s time to go.

  When I look up again, to apologize for harassing her, to excuse myself and take my leave, I see she’s thinking. Then she says slowly, thoughtfully, “Crystal had an accent.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, she was definitely from the South. It could be Texas. I never met her, but I talked to her once on the phone.”

  “You know where I might find her?”

  “In a graveyard somewhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean? Why do people go to graveyards?”

  “When did she die?” I ask.

  “Three weeks ago. That was the last I talked to Anna. She was upset about it.”

  “They worked together in DC?”

  “I think so.”
>
  “But you don’t know her real name?”

  “Jesus, I don’t fucking know!”

  “All right,” I say. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry. You know I really did… I really honestly did come down here to express my condolences.”

  “That’s kind of you.” Her tone is cooler now, a little distant. She’s done talking to me.

  I give her my card and say, “I’m sorry to grill you like this. I’m just… I’m trying to look out for your sister.”

  “But Anna’s dead,” she says. And boy, she gives me a look that goes right through me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as I turn to go.

  She grabs me by the arm and turns me back toward her, and she looks me right in the eye and says again, in this quiet, fierce, powerful way, “Anna’s dead. Say it.” And she just keeps staring, right down to the bottom of my soul. There’s something about a person who’s thoroughly honest, who’s straight and true all the way to the core. A person like Ed, and maybe Julia. When they look into you like that, you cannot lie to them.

  I don’t say a word, but I know my eyes give it away. The look on her face tells me so.

  And then she lets me go. She doesn’t get hysterical. She doesn’t start digging for information. She doesn’t ask for anything. She just lets me go.

  On the drive out of town, from the middle of Staunton to Interstate 81, I see their faces side by side: healthy Julia in her grief and wounded Anna in her fear. I think about the two of them separated, isolated, and all the wrongs that can’t be undone. And maybe, just maybe this one that can.

  As I accelerate down the on-ramp to the highway, Julia calls and says, “Butterfly Talent Management. That’s what you wanted to know, right? It’s in DC. She was Cat. Her friend was Crystal. That’s all I know.”

  11

  October 3

  While I was at the funeral, the news channels picked up on the connection between the schizophrenic passenger Owen Briscoe and the white separatist Delmont Suggs, who had driven him from northern Idaho to the airport in Spokane. Suggs had served early on in the Iraq war. He had special-ops training, carried out a number of dangerous missions, and was wounded twice.