by Glenn Cooper
Cyrus poked his own chest twice. “In my heart I know it does.”
“That’s generally not persuasive in the courts,” Avakian told him, chomping away.
Cyrus’s mobile rang. The caller ID startled him. Emily Frost. She’d never called him before. He sat down numbly at Avakian’s conference table.
“Emily, hi … how are you?”
“I’m fine Cyrus. You?”
“Okay …” Fear bubbled up. “Are you calling about Tara?”
“Oh, no! I’m not. How is she?”
He was able to breathe. “She’s okay. Nothing new.”
“Cyrus, I was calling about the website. Have you seen it?”
“What website?”
“The one that popped up this morning; everyone’s talking about it around the hospital. Alex Weller’s on it.”
As he listened to her, he got up and shooed Avakian out of his seat to access his computer. The URL was innerpeacecrusade.net and clicking on it launched a video with a smiling Alex Weller standing in front of a purple curtain.
“Okay, got it,” Cyrus said. “Let me take a look at this and call you back.”
“What’s this?” Avakian asked.
“In my heart, Pete, remember?” He poked his chest again for effect and turned up the volume.
“My name is Alex Weller. I’m a doctor and a scientist. I discovered a drug that’s become known as Bliss. I want to talk to you about it. And I want to talk to you about what I think it means for you, your friends, your family, for all your loved ones, alive and departed. We’re at the dawn of an amazing new era. Have you ever driven through a bank of fog, struggling to see where the road is taking you, and then the fog clears and you can see your path with great clarity? That’s what Bliss is doing. It lifts the fog of our ordinary life on earth and reveals a bright, amazing path to something much more important. A joyous life after death, a certain wonderful afterlife populated with dear ones who have made the passage and something more. God!”
Avakian was stooping over Cyrus, literally breathing on his neck. “Holy shit, Cy. You were right about this guy.”
In the video, Alex continued to speak for five more minutes, laying out his grand vision for a post-Bliss world, the treatise he’d presented to his followers. He then concluded with the following. “So I’m asking you to join me in a new movement, the Inner Peace Crusade, to nudge mankind toward a happier, more meaningful and yes, blissful path, where we will stop forever the usual practice of making ourselves and our fellow man miserable: where we will stop conflict; stop war; stop suffering. Stop worrying and start living in the absolute knowledge that this life of ours is only a transition to something truly magical, truly wonderful—truly blissful. And today, the Inner Peace Crusade is beginning a countdown to a day I call Ultimate Bliss Day. My friends, let the countdown begin!”
The video went dark and a red-numbered digital display appeared below it: 29 DAYS, 22 HOURS, 18 MINUTES, 44 SECONDS …
They watched the seconds tick off then heard Stanley Minot running down the hall, calling their names.
Thirty-six
28 DAYS
The first recorded episode of someone receiving Bliss against his or her will occurred in Homestead, Florida. Two female factory workers at the Homestead Lamp and Shade Company were on lunch break at a picnic table behind the factory. It was a sunny day, the temperatures hovering around 80. Phyllis Stevenson smoothed suntan lotion on her neck and shoulders while her friend, Meg Street, sat across from her and opened a Tupperware box.
Meg pointed over Phyllis’s shoulder and grunted. “The Fred man is coming.”
Phyllis rolled her eyes.
Their foreman, Fred Farquar, waddled toward them, his fleshy pink arms poking out of a short-sleeved shirt.
“This ain’t the beach, girls,” he called out. He drew up behind Phyllis, stood over her and stared down her cleavage. “You missed a bit. Want me to help?”
“Get lost, Fred,” Meg said.
“I could get lost in between those,” he replied with a leer.
Phyllis stood up and almost hit him on the chin with her head. “Leave me alone! For once and for all, just leave me alone!”
“I’ll leave you alone for twenty minutes, honey,” he shot back, startled by her vehemence. “Then get your butt back inside. Don’t forget to enjoy your lunch, now.” He ambled back to the factory, chuckling.
Phyllis sat back down again and pounded the table with her fist. “I hate that man. If it weren’t for this damn job I’d hit him with a sexual harassment claim. But you know how those things go: you make ’em from the outside looking in.”
“How ’bout we get even with him?” Meg said. “How ’bout we give that sonuvabitch an attitude adjustment?”
“You mean cut off his ding-dong?” Phyllis giggled.
“No, I’m serious. My brother-in-law’s been taking this new drug, Bliss. You heard about it, right? It’s had an amazing effect on him. He used to be a lying cheating scumbag, sort of like my Ronnie but worse, and he’s completely turned around since he begun taking it. He don’t curse no more, he don’t drink no more, and I even seen him at church. I say we slip some to the Fred man.”
“That’s got to be against the law,” Phyllis said.
“Maybe, but who’d know? We’d be careful.”
“What if it killed him?”
“It won’t kill him … at least I don’t think so. You sleep on it.”
The next morning, Meg brought in a stick of Bliss. With a nod from Phyllis, she sneaked into Fred’s office off the main shop floor and poured the contents into an open can of Pepsi on his desk, gave the can a little shake then casually walked out.
Throughout the morning the two women laughed nervously among themselves while they soldered lamp bases. An hour before lunch they heard shouting coming from Fred’s office and hurried over with other workers.
Fred’s boss, the general manager, was standing over him yelling for someone to call an ambulance. Fred was cross-legged on the floor yammering about his mother, Ruth.
“I think he’s having a stroke,” the boss declared.
Fred was carted off to the hospital for a battery of tests. Everything checked out and he returned to work the following Monday. Phyllis and Meg spent an anxious weekend more worried about being caught than anything else. First thing Monday morning, they knocked on his office door to see how he was doing. He looked up, happy to see them.
“Come in, ladies. Have a seat.”
They eyed each other. He’d never offered the slightest civility in the past.
“How you doin’, Fred? You gave us a scare,” Meg said.
“I’ve never been better. I feel terrific. I honestly do.”
“You do?” Phyllis wondered.
“I do. Something happened to me last week, I don’t have a clue what, but I believe I had a visitation by God Almighty. I feel cleansed and purified.”
“You do?” Phyllis remarked again.
“I do. I’m not a religious man—at least I wasn’t one—but I had quite a session.” He dabbed at his eyes with his handkerchief. “Maybe I’ll be comfortable enough to share it with you one day. I only hope it happens to me again.”
“That’s good, Fred,” Meg said, easing toward the door. “We’re glad you’re feeling good.”
“Phyllis …” Fred called out. “I want to say something to you …” he dropped his chin to his chest. “I want to apologize for being a jerk. It’ll never happen again. Will you accept my apology?”
“Sure, Fred. Sure I will.”
The two women walked themselves to the ladies’ room, shut the door, and when they made sure they were alone, burst into hysterical laughter.
“That’s the best shit in the world, Meg!” Phyllis roared, propping herself on a sink.
“Honey, my Ronnie is getting a dose in his Bud Light tonight, I can promise you that.”
Ted’s Automotive in Worcester, Massachusetts, was a three-bay shop with a gas pump
and a tiny convenience store. Ted Sperling, a gruff, unshaven man, finished filling a customer’s tank with regular and returned to the warm garage. He employed three mechanics, Ramon and Hector Manzilla, brothers from Panama who’d worked for him for a decade, and a newer fellow, Bobby Lemaitre, a long-haired kid, something of a free spirit. Ted had his doubts about Bobby’s personality but the kid was such a slick mechanic he overlooked the intangibles.
The guys were sitting on stools, drinking coffee in between a couple of cars on lifts.
“I ain’t touching that shit.” Ramon was adamant. “Put it away.”
Hector chimed in, “Me neither. You’re a young guy. You’re making a mistake.”
Bobby held his ground. “No, no, it’s totally cool, man. When I was a kid, my cousin Greg, a crazy little dude, got wiped out by a car on his skateboard. I swear to God, I’ve seen him twice. He looks like the happiest son of a bitch on the planet, except he ain’t on the planet, if you know what I’m saying. I love this shit. I’d take it every fuckin’ day if Ted paid us better.”
Ted limped through the bays and sidled up to them. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”
Hector and Ramon clammed up but Bobby said, “I ain’t ashamed about it. It ain’t illegal.”
“What ain’t illegal?”
Bobby held up three sticks of Bliss.
“I know what that is,” Ted said bitterly. “Keep that out of my shop.”
“It ain’t illegal,” Bobby insisted, “and I don’t take it at work, for fuck’s sake. It puts you out like a light. Makes it hard to turn a wrench.”
“I still don’t like it,” Ted repeated. “Put it away.”
Bobby shrugged, went to the rear bays and put the paper sticks in the socket drawer of his toolbox, with Ted watching him every step of the way.
At quitting time, Bobby was fuming. He came storming over to the brothers and demanded, “What the fuck, man! Who took it? One’s missing. I had three.”
Ramon and Hector looked at each other. Hector said, “I swear it wasn’t us, man. I saw Ted go in there when you were in the john. He took one out.”
“You’re shitting me! That asshole!” Bobby shouted.
Ramon took out his wallet. “How much was it?”
“Forty bucks.”
“Here.” He gave Bobby a couple of twenties.
“Why’re you covering for him, other than he’s the boss?” Bobby asked.
“Give him a break, man,” Hector said. “You know what happened to him. You know, the crash and all.”
Two weeks later, Ramon and Hector pulled into the service station with a couple of empty pickup trucks. The garage was dark, the pumps were off. A FOR SALE sign was hammered into the hard flowerbed.
Ramon honked and Ted came out of the bare store.
“We’re here to pick up our boxes,” Ramon said.
Ted opened the bay doors and let the brothers back their trucks in.
He watched silently as they wheeled the heavy toolboxes up ramps onto the beds of their trucks and tied them down.
Finally, he said, “I’m sorry. You’ve been with me a long time.”
“We understand,” Ramon said. “Hopefully, we’ll find something else.”
Ted seemed inclined to say more. “It’s just that I don’t see the point of it anymore. Since I took Bliss. You know what happened. I killed my Denise. I killed my girls.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Hector told him. “Black ice’s a bitch. What could you do?”
“No, I was going too fast …” He shook his head. “Here’s the deal. I thought Denise’d be mad at me for what I did. But for the past two weeks, I’ve been taking Bliss two, three times a day, and every time she’s so damn happy to see me and I’m so damn happy to see her. I’m not into the shop anymore. I don’t see the point. I’m sorry for pulling the plug and I hope you land on your feet, but I don’t see the point anymore.”
He waited for them to drive off and closed the doors behind them.
Rachel Mahoney reported to work at the Tall Pines nursing home in Austin, Texas, to start her regular eight-hour evening shift as a nurse’s aide. She and a second aide and their supervisor, a registered nurse, covered two wards: twenty men and twenty women. It was an established facility with relatively well-off patients and a solid reputation.
At nine in the evening she made rounds, pushing a juice cart from room to room, checking on her patients, tucking them in and offering a bedtime drink. She had a spring to her step, different from her usual plod. At each stop she said cheerfully, “Orange, grape, cranberry, or apple?” Every time she poured a juice she dissolved a dose of Bliss in each Dixie cup.
Half an hour later, she snuck out of Tall Pines without telling her supervisor, got in her car and drove off, whistling and humming.
She never came back.
The next day, all the Austin TV stations led off the morning news with the Tall Pines story. In the middle of the night, the nurse and the remaining aide on duty became alarmed by their elderly patients awakening with manifestations of hysteria. Some were laughing, some crying, some were shouting uncontrollably. The nurses rushed from room to room but quickly became overwhelmed. Fearing some kind of environmental contamination, they put out the call to emergency services. As the patients were being wheeled out on gurneys to waiting ambulances, they chattered excitedly and called out to long-lost husbands, wives, brothers, or sisters. There was talk of God.
Investigators had their early suspicions. Rachel Mahoney was missing. The intoxications had the hallmarks of Bliss ingestion. But before the lab results were back a posting appeared on the voluminous message board on the Inner Peace Crusade website.
I gave these dear old people in Austin doses of Bliss. I can’t think of any greater gift. Now they know that God is within each and every one of them. They know he’s within their reach, waiting for them. They know they’ll be met by people who loved them. I hope they’ll be able to face their last days with dignity and hope, maybe joy. I know not everyone will agree with what I did but it makes me feel wonderful. It’s the best thing I ever did. Love, Rachel.
Thirty-seven
25 DAYS
“The director personally wants you.” Stanley Minot was doing his best to balance pride for the office and concern for his man.
“Look, Stanley …” Cyrus started to say.
“Cy, don’t even think about telling me no. This is too big and it’s too specific a request.”
Before Tara’s illness, he’d been as ambitious as the next agent. Now, he felt numb on the subject of striving.
“Why me?”
“The task force is a big deal. Top priority. You know Weller better than anyone in law enforcement. You know the drug. The North End raid put you on the radar screen in Washington. I’ll reassign most of your other work and Pete’ll have to pick up some slack. Bob Cuccio, the assistant director for criminal investigation, is the other FBI member on the task force.”
“There’s a lot of space on the org chart between me and Bob Cuccio.”
Minot smiled. “That’s why this is good for you. Next Thursday. The White House.”
Cyrus looked puzzled.
“You know, big building on Pennsylvania Ave with pillars?”
“Funny. Why there?”
“Neutral territory. When you’ve got Homeland Security, NSA, FBI, DEA, FDA, NDIC, NIH all in one room you better go for neutral turf. And by the time you have your first meeting, hopefully FDA and DEA will hand you a big stick.”
On a cool morning, a steady stream of men and women filed into the largest meeting room at FDA’s Parklawn Building in Rockville. At 9 A.M. sharp, Marvin Wolff, the chairman of the Drug Abuse Advisory Committee, called the proceedings to order. The DAAC had been convened in record time, at the insistence of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to take up the narcotic scheduling of Bliss.
Over the next several hours the committee heard testimony from FDA, DEA, and National Institute on Drug Abuse staffe
rs on the abuse potential of the drug, geographic data on usage patterns, suicide and morbidity statistics. Vincent Desjardines, who still had more Bliss patients than anyone else in the country, was brought in to testify and he nervously walked through a PowerPoint presentation. In the open public hearing, the mother of Jennifer Sheridan and other relatives who’d lost loved ones to suicide gave tearful testimony. To be sure, there were Bliss proponents there too. They were given a half dozen slots to speak about how the drug was a tool for enlightenment and self-discovery and that restricting its use would be a blow to spiritual freedom, an anathema. While they talked, surly DEA agents sitting in the audience scowled and whispered among one another conspiratorially.
Shortly before noon, the chairman called for open debate among the committee members. There was little dissention. All members strongly supported imposing severe restrictions on Bliss. When they were done, Wolff called for a vote. It was unanimous. Bliss would be immediately classified as a Schedule I drug, placing it in the same category as heroin, cocaine, and LSD. It was now illegal to make, use, sell, or possess the drug.
Law enforcement had its big stick.
The morning after the first Bliss task force meeting, Cyrus was at Reagan National Airport waiting to board the shuttle back to Boston. He called Marian to check on Tara. The girl came on the line sounding cheerful, which improved his mood no end. Then he called Emily Frost to confirm they were still on for coffee later that afternoon. She sounded cheerful too and with that he stepped lightly onto the jetway.
Back at the office, Cyrus briefed Minot, did some paperwork then dashed off to the Longwood medical area. Emily was already at the coffee shop, smiling at him when he pushed through the door.
“How was Washington?” she asked.
“I’ve never seen so many puffed-up pompous pricks in one room.”
She laughed. “Sounds like a faculty meeting.”
Cyrus told her what he could. She was becoming his sounding board on matters related to Bliss and they’d been speaking on the phone almost daily. He wished he could go all in and tell her details about the investigation but he was careful about confidentiality. She was a good listener, a “professional listener,” he joked, but she also was smart and insightful and helped him connect dots.
