Near Death

by Glenn Cooper

  Sitting there, the Latin echoing around the old church, the woodwork perfumed with age, he felt plugged into the ancient religion and it soothed his nerve endings like butter on a burn. The priest was surprisingly young, his voice almost womanly, his body ample and round. “Pater noster, qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum: adveniat regnum tuum: fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie; et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris: et ne nos inducas in tentationem.” (Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name: thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread: and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation.) And Cyrus and the congregation intoned as one, “Sed libera nos a malo.” (But deliver us from evil.)

  Deliver Tara from evil, he thought. Deliver her, Lord. Deliver her.

  Outside, the crisp autumn morning was suffused with the orange of an ascending sun. He lingered, unconnected to the parishioners but nonetheless taking comfort being in their midst, listening to old-folk conversations about lunch plans. He had no such plans. The rest of his empty Sunday lay before him. His thin-walled apartment sickened him. He supposed he’d try to read but the Pats were playing and the game would be filtering in from both sides. No point asking his neighbors to tone it down; for them it was the big event of the week. Headphones only helped to a point. Their foot-stomping and shouting came through anyway. It would have been a good afternoon to take Tara to a movie and get ice cream but it wasn’t his weekend. He’d probably just climb in his car, pick a compass point and burn some gas. Maybe stop in a bookstore then find a quiet coffee shop.

  The priest looked up and broke away from a knot of congregants. He had noticed the athletic stranger, a man close to his age, late thirties, forty at most, too handsome and well-hinged to be drifting alone on the stairs of an unfamiliar church. Yet there was also a melancholy about him that beckoned the priest to missionary work.

  Though Cyrus was a large man, he seemed smaller than his physical presence, compacted by mood, his heavy shoulders drooping in a tan blazer, hooded brown eyes cast down, mouth curled in a half-frown. The priest approached him with an open-faced curiosity, his white chasuble billowing in the breeze.

  “Hello there, I’m Father Donovan.”

  “Cyrus O’Malley, Father. Pleased to meet you.”

  The priest leaned in, in a friendly way, his breath smelling of sacramental wine. “Any relation to Bob O’Malley from Needham?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “We haven’t seen you here before.”

  “It’s my first time.” He hesitated and found a two-word explanation. “The Latin.”

  “I’m glad you appreciate it. It’s not for everyone.”

  “Forsitan non, tamen ego utor Latin,” Cyrus answered.

  The priest was taken aback. “I haven’t met someone with a conversational knowledge of Latin since seminary. Are you a scholar?”

  Cyrus smiled at the question. “Hardly. I’m an FBI agent.”

  “Well, I confess that surprises me. Our first encounter and I’m confessing to you! Do you regularly attend somewhere else, Cyrus?”

  “I’m in between. I used to go to St. Anselm’s in Sudbury.”

  “Father Bonner. He gives a good sermon. So you like the Latin mass. You seem awfully youthful for that.”

  “Childhood memories.”

  “From where?”

  “In Brighton. St. Peter.”

  “A local boy. Well, we’d love to see you here again, Cyrus.” He waved his arms at his departing flock. “You’d bring our average age down considerably.”

  Cyrus’s phone chirped.

  “You get that,” the priest said, touching him on the shoulder. “It was good talking to you.”

  The caller ID read AVAKIAN. He pictured Pete’s hairy forearms bulging from the sleeves of his golf shirt.

  “How’re you hitting them?” Cyrus answered.

  “Long and left. Fairways hit: zero. Where are you?”

  “Praying.”

  “Me too. Over my putts.”

  “What do you want?” For them, blunt equaled friendly.

  “Just a heads up. Stanley’s got something new for us. He’s rolling it out tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “I told him you wouldn’t. He’s a shitty golfer but he’s not a bad guy. He’s sympathetic.”

  “But …”

  “But, it’s a done deal, Cy. He said he’s been protecting you but he’s got no choice. Our number’s up.”

  Cyrus sighed loud enough for Avakian to hear it over the clamor of his foursome ordering breakfast burritos at the half-way canteen. “How bad is it?”

  “It looks like it could be a big case.”

  Three

  “What’s it going to be tonight, honey?”

  She delivered the question as if she were taking an order from behind a deli counter. The man in the car looked back at her with a blank expression. “I don’t know … the usual.”

  “There’s no such thing,” she said impatiently. “I’m not a mind reader.” She was a white girl, early twenties, a little overweight, a lot of foundation makeup filling in burned-out acne craters. Both stockings had ladders disappearing up her skirt. Her cologne had dissipated hours earlier. She smelled of cigarettes.

  “A blow job maybe.”

  “It’s fifty dollars. You okay with that?”

  He wavered, a few beats too long for her comfort. “Yes.”

  “What?” she demanded. She gave her john another once-over. She’d judged him safe enough to climb in after leaning into his car window and studying his face for signs of trouble as she purred her rote introduction in a faux-sexy voice. He was clean-looking, a big handsome face with prominent landmarks: arching cheekbones, high forehead, large hazel eyes and a smooth jutting jaw, long brown hair pulled into a ponytail. Then his hands: dirt-free, not a brute’s. He looked brainy, not her standard street trade. She had a habit of checking out backseats. Nothing good came from a backseat littered with fast-food wrappers and old clothes, greasy tools, hidden lumpy things under blankets. His was barren.

  “Nothing, no problem,” he insisted, pulling away from the curb after checking his mirrors and signaling with the caution of a kid taking his road test.

  At 2 A.M. Mass Ave was traffic-free. The streets were slicked from an evening shower. She pulled her jacket around herself for warmth. He seemed to notice and like a gentleman, turned up the heater. “Where’re we going?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to park on the street. A friend of mine has a lock-up garage in Cambridge. I don’t want to pull a Hugh Grant.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A British actor. Caught in the act in his car.”

  “You sound like you’re from there. Or at least not from here.”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “People tell me that.”

  “I know places to park that are safe,” she said. “We don’t need to go all the way to Cambridge.”

  “It’s not far. It’s just over the bridge.”

  She screwed up her mouth defiantly. “I don’t like the sound of a lock-up garage.”

  He stopped at a light and smiled weakly. “I understand. The thing is, I’ve got an important job and I can’t risk getting busted. I’ll do a hundred. But if you’re uncomfortable, I’ll let you out here, no harm, no foul.”

  She fumbled for a cigarette and didn’t ask for permission to light up. “Okay, but don’t get weird on me. Tomorrow’s my birthday.”

  He pulled money out of his shirt pocket and politely handed it to her. “You can trust me.” He opened his window to let out smoke then drove toward the river.

  She noticed his knuckles. They were white from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. She’d seen that before. Some of the johns were coiled springs, only letting their guard down a few moments before coming.

&n
bsp; Soon, they left Memorial Drive for the tight, protected grid of Cambridgeport. Cars with pasted-on overnight parking permits lined both sides of the narrow streets. The residential neighborhood was a claustrophobic jumble of triple-deckers, single-family houses, and low, squat apartment blocks, mostly dark except for the students and insomniacs whose lights were still blazing. He made a couple of lefts and a right then slowed to a crawl in front of a two-story house with white siding. The windows were black.

  “This it?” the girl asked.

  He nodded, pulled into the stubby driveway, and told her he’d be back in a second.

  He left the car idling and slid open the garage door. When he returned, the girl said, “You couldn’t do that where I live.”

  “Do what?”

  “Leave a garage unlocked.”

  “It’s a safe neighborhood.”

  It was more of a shed than a garage, too narrow to park at the midline if you wanted to open the driver’s side door without bumping. She noticed right away that the wall was hugging her passenger side and there was no way out. While she nervously lit another cigarette, the john wriggled out his side, flicked an overhead light switch and shut the garage door.

  When he got back in he said, “There.” He seemed more relaxed.

  She rested the cigarette in the ashtray.

  “You smoke a lot,” he said.

  She ignored him and reached for his crotch.

  He told her to wait.

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk first.”

  “You want to talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything.”

  She pouted. “Time’s money. I need to get back to my block.”

  He had another hundred in twenties, folded and ready, as if this were planned out. She suspiciously took the money and quickly put it away in her purse. “So, start talking,” she said like a wiseacre.

  He evenly told her that he was paying and he wanted her to talk. She shrugged and asked for a topic. To her surprise, he mentioned her birthday.

  The suggestion made her uneasy. “What about it?”

  “Tell me about the best birthday you ever had.”

  She retrieved the cigarette from the ashtray and took a deep drag. “You’re weird, you know that?”

  “Any age,” he said smoothly, “the best one you can remember, that’s what I want to hear about.”

  She accepted the assignment and went quiet for a while, sorting through memories until she signaled she’d found the item by resolutely pressing her lips together. “My birthdays were always all mixed up with Halloween, their being so close to each other. When I was eight, up in Bangor, you know, my aunt and uncle had a barn back behind their place and after dinner my parents told me I was going to get cake at my aunt’s house. But instead of going inside, they took me up to the barn. And my mama opened the door and inside it was dark except that it was filled with jack-o-lanterns, all carved up with smiley faces, glowing from candles inside. And there was a big sign, Happy Birthday, Carla, and my aunt and uncles and cousins were there. And a cake too.”

  He startled her by saying her name, “Carla.” Then, “How did that make you feel?”

  She welled up. “It made me feel like they loved me.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “My mama died a few years after that.”

  He said he was sorry then mumbled he was cold as he slipped on leather gloves. She hardly noticed and took a diaphragm-deep hit off her cigarette. A large cloud of exhaled smoke hit the dash and blew back into her eyes. She closed them, waiting for the irritation to pass, and in that moment of darkness she saw the magical barn and her beaming mother again. Lost in thought, happy and sad, she reluctantly blinked and returned to the passenger seat of her john’s car.

  She reopened her eyes the instant before his hands clamped down on her neck.

  She felt her larynx being painfully crushed beneath his digging thumbs.

  This isn’t happening.

  This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.

  The panic of air hunger set in, crowding out the pain. She couldn’t breathe in or out.

  And then, she decided to give up without mounting any fight, any resistance.

  She felt her arms go limp.

  She was almost bewildered at the way she was abandoning her life so easily until she realized she was captive to his voice, his hypnotic voice, soothing her as he was killing her, uttering through the strain of his exertion, “Carla, listen to me. Don’t be mad and don’t be scared. Right now you are being loved as much as you’ve ever been loved. As much as the day you told me about. I’m loving you, little girl. I’m loving you. Your mother is loving you. I know you can hear me. I want you to go to her now.”

  She could see the strain in his bulging eyes, almost empathize with the exquisite pain he must be feeling in his shuddering hands, and in her final moments she was aware he was doing his best to make the last words she’d hear sound silky.

  “Go to her. Go to her. Go to her.”

  Then, in her last moments, she saw a man suddenly gripped by something exquisitely wonderful, something that made his face go soft and his eyes moist. “You’re the lucky one,” he said dreamily.

  What are you thinking, she wondered as she slipped into unconsciousness.

  Four

  England, 1988

  Alex was huddled beside his older brother in the backseat of the family’s Vauxhall Cavalier. Neither dared open their mouths. He was beyond disappointment, but his father was in a different state of angry, mute agony. His mother had remained uncomfortably stiff-bodied since the moment Dickie snapped at her twenty miles back. Her crime: meekly offering her husband a packed sandwich as the dusk was overtaking them on the northbound carriageway of the M6.

  The warm spring day had begun with all the hope and promise of a glorious and certain outcome. When Dickie Weller stamped into the boys’ bedroom before dawn they were already decked out in a kit of Liverpool red and white and were chafing to get on the road for the long journey to Wembley to see mighty Liverpool, league champions, go up against lowly Wimbledon for the FA Cup title. Wimbledon for God’s sake! Complete joke, that! How they’d managed to beat Luton to get to the finals was anybody’s guess, but the matchup’s result was a foregone conclusion.

  Still, the Wellers and scores of Liverpool supporters weren’t itching for drama. They were happy with the certainty of biding their time till their lads were cleanly victorious and forever in the record books at the end of regulation play.

  In the Liverpool stands before match time, the boys had shouldered against each other, straining on their toes to get a good view of the beautiful green pitch. They listened with delight to the catcalls and opprobrium raining down on the pathetic Wimbledon blues massed on the other side of the vast, roaring, heaving stadium. Their father, big and brawny in his red cap, had waved his arm like a general surveying the opposing army and shouted loudly enough for them to hear, “Proud of your Dad, then?” and they were. “You won’t forget this day anytime soon!” he yelled.

  He’d scored the four coveted midfield tickets from Boddingtons for pulling more pints of Cain’s best bitter than any other Merseyside bar owner. His Publican of the Year award hung over the mantel at the Queen’s Arms, beside the photo of a smiling brewery executive from Manchester handing him the tickets envelope. The boys always enjoyed the butter-churn frothiness of living over their wildly popular pub, and in the run-up to Wembley they had sparked from the electricity of their father’s celebrity status.

  As halftime approached, ten-year-old Alex stooped to pick up his dropped pennant just as Wimbledon’s Sanchez headed in a free kick from Wise to take a 1–0 lead. Alex jerked at the roar and saw his father’s water-freezing look of rage and his mother’s hen-clucking pout. His brother, Joe, five years senior, punched him hard in the shoulder as if the goal were his fault for looking away.

  In the nervy second half,
at the one-hour point, Wimbledon’s Beseant secured a place in history as the first keeper in cup finals to block a penalty shot. That was the killer. Instead of reaching a momentum-grabbing tie, Liverpool faltered and couldn’t mount enough pressure in the remaining half hour to avoid a bone-crushing loss.

  At the final whistle, his father’s fists were clenched in furious disbelief at how a perfect day for the Weller clan had been perfectly and inexorably cocked up. During the long painful walk back to the car park, Alex’s eyes burned with tears. He hated the look of despair in his father’s flushed face and the brittleness of his mother’s quietude. And he resented his brother for being able to let the loss slide off him easily enough to turn the full bore of his attention to chatting up a pair of blondies in red jerseys.

  Just north of Birmingham, Alex was resting his head on the window and sleepily staring at the hypnotic chain of headlights coming at them across the divided motorway. Suddenly, he felt deceleration as his father was forced to adjust his speed to accommodate a slow-moving truck that had lumbered onto the left-hand lane from an entrance ramp. Just behind the truck, a Volvo estate car slowed and flashed its brake lights and his father pumped his own brakes a few times to keep off the Volvo’s rear end. He swore under his breath and checked his sideview mirror to see if it was safe to pull into the middle lane but it was not. A Yamaha motorcycle was ripping past their car before pulling even with the Volvo.

  The driver of the Volvo had the same thought of overtaking the truck but the motorcycle must have been in his blind spot because as he changed lanes he merged directly into the bike and set off the first link in a fateful chain reaction that would ripple through time and unexpectedly alter the world—strangely.

  The door panel of the Volvo kissed the rear wheel of the bike, sending the little machine careening into the fast lane and onto the median where the rider fell off and snapped his neck. The Volvo driver reacted instinctively to the contact by sharply turning his wheel to the left. He reentered the slow lane and caught the front end of Dickie Weller’s Vauxhall hard at a catastrophic angle.

  At the moment of impact, Dickie saw what was happening and loudly swore, “Bugger me!”