Near Death

by Glenn Cooper

  “It’s called Bliss,” Frank said. “Heard of that?” At their shrugs he added smugly, “Didn’t think so.”

  “So, what is it?” Abruzzi said.

  “It’s a designer drug. My boss invented it. He’s wicked smart.”

  “What’s it do?”

  Frank smiled. “It takes you to God, man.”

  “God?” Abruzzi asked. “As in Jesus Frickin’ Christ?”

  Frank nodded.

  “You’re such a bullshitter,” Fortunelli jeered.

  “Okay,” Frank said, getting steamed. “Whatever you say I am, I am. See you around, Mario.”

  Abruzzi settled Frank down by telling Mario he’d bust his mouth if he opened it again. “Seriously,” he asked Frank. “What’s the high like?”

  “It’s like nothing in this world, man,” Frank said, suddenly drifting to another place. “I’ve seen stuff … All I can say is, it’s the best thing ever happened t’ me and I’m not the only one. Everyone who takes it freaks out but in a good way, in a very good way, man.”

  Abruzzi looked interested. “So what are the economics?”

  Frank glanced around the bar. “Izzit okay if we don’t talk about it here?”

  “Yeah sure,” Abruzzi agreed. “Where? When?”

  “I gotta meet a guy,” Frank said. “How ’bout you guys come over t’ my place, like midnight.”

  “Midnight it is,” Abruzzi replied, slapping a few bills down on the table. “Save a couple of hits for your buddies. We may want to try this shit.”

  A solitary man gingerly walked up Huntington Avenue in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. A wintry mix of sleet and snow earlier in the evening had turned the inclined sidewalk into a bobsled course. One of the last Arborway trolleys of the night squealed past him, headed inbound to Park Street. It started to sleet again and the man raised the hood on his sweatshirt over his head.

  He crossed the road stepping over the trolley tracks and looked behind him to make sure he wasn’t being followed. Then he made a beeline to one of the darkened doorways of one of the squat brick apartment buildings and slipped inside. He pushed a buzzer and almost immediately was buzzed in. The interior door unlocked and he sprang up two flights of stairs and knocked on one of the doors.

  “Is that you, Jimmy?” a muffled voice called out.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Both men were jittery. Jimmy, a hatchet-faced young man with the small edgy movements of a greyhound looked around the dimly lit flat. It was decorated retro sixties with batik on the walls, paper lanterns, and tatami mats.

  “This place reminds me of a museum. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Every time you’re here. What do you have for me?” The other man was heavyset, with an untucked shirt and an unruly beard.

  “My usual supplier let me down this week, know what I mean?”

  “C’mon. You don’t have any grass?”

  “Nada. I’ll be restocked next week.”

  “Acid?”

  “I haven’t seen the guy who gets it for me. He must’ve moved away. But don’t worry, man, I got something for you.”

  “I don’t want other stuff.”

  “What I’ve got is brand new.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It’s supposed to give you some kind of amazing trip. My guy told me it’s totally insane.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Man, it’s so new it doesn’t even have a name. No, I’m wrong. This guy Frankie said it’s called Bliss.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  “I told you before. Drugs don’t agree with me. I just sell them.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Seventy-five bucks a hit.”

  “No effin’ way, Jimmy! I’m not giving you seventy-five bucks for something I never heard of. Take off.”

  Jimmy grinned. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s expensive shit. I’m going to give you a deal since it’s new. I’ll give you the first hit free if you buy the second for my ask. And if you think you got ripped off, I’ll take twenty off your next grass buy. How’s that?”

  “You’re a businessman, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy took two red paper sticks out of his sweatshirt pocket and dangled them in front of his customer, who reluctantly reached for his wallet.

  “I hope you like it, man. If you do, tell your friends.”

  Frank Sacco lived on the top floor of a Revere triple-decker in an apartment that had been his grandfather’s. He’d purged it of most of the old-man stuff, replacing the lumpy sofa and armchairs with smooth black leather gear and dumping the old cathode-ray TV for a skinny LCD. He’d kept the heavy bedroom furniture, though, and every time he pulled open one of the dresser drawers he got a whiff of Grandpa Sal.

  The sock drawer was where he kept Alex’s bottle of Bliss. Under his t-shirts were stacks of cash. He retrieved the bottle and returned to the living room where Abruzzi and Fortunelli were sprawled on the sofa, wet shoes on the coffee table.

  “Here it is,” Frank said proudly.

  Abruzzi took the bottle, opened it, and sniffed at the white crystals. “So how’d you get this?” he asked.

  Frank threw back some beer. “I know where my boss keeps his keys. He’s pissed off but he’ll make more.”

  “He doesn’t suspect you?”

  “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t give a shit. He’s got no proof.”

  Abruzzi rescrewed the top and passed it to Fortunelli, who repeated the sniff maneuver and shrugged his shoulders at the lack of odor.

  “So, take me through the economics,” Abruzzi asked.

  Frank put down his beer and took the bottle back. “There’s eight grams of Bliss in here,” he said. “That’s eight thousand milligrams and the dose is half a milligram, like a really tiny amount. So, in this bottle I’ve got sixteen thousand hits.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out four red straws. “This is how I package them, in Christmas paper with some sugar to sweeten the sour taste. That was my idea. It’s like a brand. People like that. I’ve been selling it through some guy I know but he’s nothing, a punk. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  Abruzzi took one of the straws. “How much per unit?”

  “I’m selling them for fifty bucks. I hear they’re getting marked up to seventy-five, maybe a hundred on the street.”

  Fortunelli whistled but his partner dismissed him with a wave. “Okay, Mario, you fuckin’ Einstein, how much is this bottle of shit worth wholesale, at fifty bucks a pop?”

  Fortunelli furrowed his brow then smiled. “Eighty grand.”

  “You’re such a dumb shit, Mario. It’s eight hundred grand! This bottle of Frankie’s is worth the better part of a million bucks! And if it’s so great, you could double the price, right? So, Frankie, tell me what makes this shit so great?”

  Frank took a deep breath and began describing his Bliss trips. He didn’t seem to care that Fortunelli was making faces the way he’d done in the back row of English class whenever they had to read literature. Abruzzi was paying attention, hanging on his words.

  Yet when Frank began to talk about seeing a solitary figure waiting for him on the other side of a shimmering river he had to stop abruptly. His lip quivered and he fought off tears, clearly ashamed to be weeping in front of a couple of tough guys from the neighborhood.

  “So who was it?” Abruzzi pressed. “Did you recognize the guy?”

  “Yeah, I knew him.”

  “Spit it out!”

  “It was Kenny Longo.”

  “What the fuck!” Fortunelli exclaimed, suddenly interested in the story. “The kid you killed?”

  “It was an accident!” Frank shouted. “He was my best friend!”

  Two thirteen year olds in a basement, shooting with air pistols at a cardboard box. Horseplay. Waving of arms. A thwock as a puff of compressed gas was released; then a snap, like the sound of a pellet hitting a piece of wood. Only it wasn’t wood. It was Kenny’s skull bone. The kid
dropped to his knees and wordlessly died.

  It was Kenny on the other side waving at Frank, looking as young and fresh as the day he bled out on the basement floor. To Frank’s relief, Kenny wasn’t the least bit mad at him, in fact he seemed ecstatic to see his old chum and called out in a high-pitched boyish voice. “Frankie! Hey, Frankie, come on! You can make it!”

  And when Frank finally recounted the experience to the two men on the sofa—something he’d been unwilling to do in front of Alex or the high-minded farts in the salon—he lost it and began to bawl as he’d done years earlier, standing at the curb while paramedics took Kenny’s lifeless body away.

  Fortunelli, disgusted at the emotional display, got up from the sofa to fetch another beer from the fridge. Abruzzi urged Frank to calm down. There was no empathy in his voice, just an urgency to extract more info.

  “So I hear you, Frankie, but tell me this. You seem all broken up. I thought you said that people like this shit.”

  “They do. I do. I’m crying, right, but I’m not hurting, if you know what I mean. It’s the opposite. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Kenny’s there. I always thought he’d be angry at me but he wasn’t. There’s a heaven, man. I’ve seen it.”

  Abruzzi nodded. “I’m glad to hear you’re so passionate about this shit, Frankie. It’s a terrific testimonial but I’m like a few moves on the chessboard ahead of you. I’m thinking about the business angles. The economics of what’s in this bottle’s making me weep too. Tears of joy, like you. But then what? How do we get more of it?”

  “Almost no one knows about it yet. My boss had a chemist make it. From what I know I don’t think it’s going to be that hard to make more. There’s probably lots of chemists who can pull it off.”

  “Do you know what goes in it?”

  “You mean the formula?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, the formula.”

  “No, my boss won’t show anyone but any good peptide chemist can figure it out from the powder.”

  Abruzzi looked around for a pen, tore off a corner of a magazine page and asked Frank to spell peptide chemist for him. When he was done he asked, “So you want to do business with us, Frankie?”

  “Yeah. There’s a lot of potential. To be honest, I’d rather take the drug than sell it.”

  “What do you think a fair split would be?”

  Frank wiped his eyes dry with his sleeve. “I don’t know, fifty-fifty?”

  “You think that’s fair?”

  “I don’t know. Sixty for you, forty for me?”

  Abruzzi laughed. “Frankie, you’re negotiating against yourself. You’re crap at business.”

  “I know I am.”

  “So I’m going to give you a quick lesson in how I negotiate. You ready? I’m going to take a hundred points and give you zero points.”

  Frank looked confused. “But …”

  “Shhh,” Abruzzi said, putting his finger against his lip. He winked at Fortunelli, who was still standing, slurping from a can of beer. “You don’t like that deal?”

  Frankie began to smile as if poised to absorb a practical lesson being delivered with humor.

  Abruzzi smiled too. “Good. I’m glad to see you’re happy.”

  Fortunelli was gliding behind Frank’s chair. A second later there was a crack and the room misted with blood and smelled of gunpowder.

  Frank lurched forward, glanced off the coffee table and hit the floor hard.

  Rising to his feet, Abruzzi shoved the bottle of Bliss into his coat pocket and smirked. “Say hello to Kenny Longo for us, okay?”

  Twenty-six

  Cyrus was on the Mass Pike driving to work, his mind dulled in commuter mode. WBZ Radio was airing more stories about the William Treblehorn case. Even though the event was still fresh, Cyrus was already tired of it. Rich kids behaving badly … drugs … a death. Suicide? Accident? Murder? He was glad it wasn’t his problem.

  William Treblehorn had been arrested, held overnight then released. Treblehorn’s father was a big-time corporate lawyer. The family was uber connected and papa assembled a dream team to represent the kid before the sun rose. The investigating detectives immediately disliked the preppy blonde and harbored suspicions but could find no hard evidence to refute Treblehorn’s assertion that Jennifer Sheridan had taken her own life during some sort of bad trip.

  Treblehorn was dazed yet freely admitted he gave her a dose of something called Bliss. The assistant district attorney assigned to the case had a problem. She’d never heard of the drug and could find nothing in any online databases or unofficial drug sites to help her out. If it wasn’t a controlled substance, it wasn’t illegal. She considered filing reckless endangerment charges but tucked the notion away for another day pending further investigation.

  Treblehorn, led by a phalanx of lawyers, walked out the front door of the police station the next morning shielding his face from the crush of media surging toward him. He ignored their shouted questions and concentrated on the only thing that really mattered to him.

  How can I get more Bliss?

  The Globe, the Herald, and all the local TV stations committed major resources to covering the case and its sensational angles: prominent family; pretty, talented dead girl; sex, drugs, and death. Yet this was no run-of-the-mill drug. The story would have been scorching enough had the kids been taking something conventional like meth or acid—but what the hell was Bliss?

  When the arresting officer’s report was released, written in the pinched language of police documents, the public read about Treblehorn’s description of a profound spiritual experience, meeting his grandfather on “the other side,” reluctantly returning to the “real world.”

  It all sounded loony, almost jokeworthy, until a local substance abuse specialist, a psychologist at Tufts Medical School, came forward with descriptions of Bliss highs he’d begun to see in a few of his patients.

  Cyrus turned up the volume on Vincent Desjardines’ interview. He spoke haltingly, like a man unaccustomed to a microphone in his face.

  “You mean to tell us, Doctor,” the interviewer asked, “that all of the people you’ve seen who’ve taken this drug, Bliss, claim to have the same vision or hallucination or what have you?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Can you describe this hallucination for us?”

  “Users describe a feeling of floating over their own body then traveling through a tunnel toward a bright light and coming upon a river with stepping-stones. They always see someone on the other side of the river and they go on to describe a vivid encounter with a deceased friend or loved one. There’s also a sense of a Godlike presence across the river.”

  “Godlike?”

  “Yes, but nothing specific. And every one of the eight patients I’ve interviewed describes an overwhelming desire to reuse the drug and repeat the experience.”

  “And you get the same descriptions from every one of them?”

  “Yes. Remarkably similar from one user to the next.”

  “Have you ever dealt with a drug that causes the same hallucination in different people?”

  “Occasionally, drugs like LSD or mescaline or psilocybin will cause stereotypical or similar types of patterns among users but this seems to be quite unique.”

  “Explanations?”

  “I don’t have one. There needs to be more work in the area.”

  “We’d like to come back to you in the near future and to talk some more about this drug, Doctor.”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  Cyrus was about to switch to a music station when the rest of the news began to roll out but a name he heard snapped him to attention.

  Frank Sacco.

  Frank Sacco, twenty-six, found shot to death execution-style in the early hours of the morning in his apartment in Revere. Police investigating, details to follow.

  Cyrus speed-dialed Avakian’s mobile. “You in the office yet?”

  “Just got here. What’s up?”

>   “Check our notes on the head drillings. The guy who works for Alex Weller, Frank Sacco. Tell me his age and address.”

  “Why?”

  “Just check, okay?”

  In a minute, Avakian was back. “He’s twenty-six, lives on Dehon Street in Revere.”

  Cyrus pulled into the fast lane and stepped on the gas. “Okay, Pete, you’ve got to meet me there right away. He’s been murdered.”

  Cyrus and Avakian arrived at Sacco’s apartment at the tail end of the crime scene investigation. The Revere detectives were waiting for the medical examiner and his team to finish up and roll the body onto a stretcher so they could get out.

  The lead detective’s name was Lombardy, a veteran with a hair weave and a gut draped with an extralong necktie. He wanted to know why the FBI was interested in his case and grudgingly had to make do with Cyrus’s vague response that there could be a linkage to another matter under the bureau’s investigation. Lombardy compliantly passed on what he knew.

  The elderly woman who lived on the second floor of the house woke up to the sound of loud footsteps beating down the stairs at about 1 A.M. She looked out her bedroom window and saw two men get into a car and speed off. She went back to sleep but woke again at 4 A.M. worried that perhaps she should have called the police. She put on her robe, went up the stairs to see if everything was okay, saw Frank Sacco’s door wide open and retreated to her apartment to call 911.

  Sacco was dead, face down, with a single bullet wound to the back of his head. The skin, easily visible through his short hair, was split with a star-shaped wound, the edges of which were blackened: a contact wound, the gun having been pressed against his skull like a Chinese state-sponsored execution. The bullet exited through his mouth, clipping a couple of teeth on the way out. It was lodged in the floor near the coffee table, a fully jacketed .380.

  There was no sign of forced entry. A bottle of Windex and a couple of rags were on the coffee table. Lombardy guessed the killers had the presence of mind to wipe away any prints. They weren’t idiots: even the Windex bottle was clean. Robbery didn’t appear to be a motive. The man’s wallet was in his bedroom. The place wasn’t ransacked. Something interesting, very, was in the dresser—a stack of cash, almost $8,000.