“Right to die,” Izzy said softly. “I guess that would conflict with most Christian principles, even if you were a terminal case. Will of God, or whatever.”
“Ain’t that America,” she said, shaking her head.
“And that might really piss somebody off in those shoes. Maybe even make them a little crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you were in that kind of pain, and you knew it was only ever going to get worse until you eventually died, but the law of the land and your own personal convictions prevented you from doing anything about it. You could go peacefully into the night, except it’s forbidden. So because of God…”
He trailed off, drawing his eyebrows together.
Shannon said, “You’ve lost me, Izzy.”
“It’s that cross,” he said. “He’s fucking dying and he’s mad at God about it.”
“Wait, who? What are you talking about?”
Izzy said, “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”
He set his coffee on the desk and fell into a trot for the nurse’s lounge, where he pulled out his phone and dialed Noah’s number. It took six rings before Noah’s sleepy voice grumbled, “Izzy? Are you all right?”
“I’m going to text you a picture,” Izzy said. “I need you to help me identify what it is, what it means. It’s a cross, but an unusual one.”
“It’s past one in the morning,” Noah complained. “Is this about Cynthia?”
“Yes,” Izzy said. “I know how he does it and I’m damn near sure why he does it. Now all I need to figure out is who the hell this son of a bitch is.”
“Who?”
“Help me identify the cross and I’ll find out.”
Noah sighed into the line.
“Send it over,” he said.
The napkin the student had drawn the cross on was still in Izzy’s pants pocket at home, so he found a black marker and redrew it from memory on the back of a pamphlet on drug rehab options and snapped a picture of it with his phone. He sent it by text message and said, “Okay.”
“Hmm,” Noah said. “Can’t say I recognize it. Hang on, let me try a search on different types of crosses. Maybe I’ll find it that way.”
Izzy heard rustling and assumed Noah was climbing out of bed. He felt his cheeks warm with blood and felt bad for constantly dragging this poor guy into everything. He wanted to say he wasn’t usually like this, that his life was far from exciting or interesting, that Noah had merely met him at an odd time and everything was sure to calm down and cool off soon.
He wanted to say Please don’t run away.
He didn’t say anything at all.
Noah grunted and started tapping away at a keyboard. He yawned and said, “Here we go.”
“What’d you find?”
“There are a lot of different kinds of crosses,” Noah said. “Let’s see.”
“We’ve got a code blue in here, Bishop,” Jarvis shouted into the lounge then, causing Izzy to jerk and almost drop the phone.
He spun around as the doctor made a sharp motion for Izzy to get in gear.
Izzy said, “Gotta go. Text me if you find anything.”
“Not your personal time, nurse,” Dr. Jarvis barked, and Izzy hurried behind him to the ER. An electrocardiogram was screeching a single high note in a bay at the far end of the room, where Shannon performed CPR on an obese, middle-aged patient and Chad readied an epinephrine drip. Jarvis yanked the bay curtain the rest of the way open and inserted himself between the two nurses while Izzy lagged behind, his heart racing and head pounding, exhausted and apprehensive and beginning to acknowledge that he was heading off a panic attack.
Chad got the needle in while Shannon blew another burst into the patient’s lungs, and Izzy’s vision turned fuzzy for a split second before the Emergency Room was consumed by a brilliant, blinding whiteness that swallowed him whole.
“Morning, Sunshine,” Noah said.
He was smiling down on Izzy with a single red rose wrapped in green paper in his hand. Izzy blinked at him, then at the rose.
Noah said, “Gift shop. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“What happened?”
“You passed out. I didn’t hear back from you for so long after I texted you back, so I called and your colleague in there told me what happened.”
“Shannon?”
“Nice lady. I can go if, you know, you’re not out here or whatever.”
“No,” Izzy said, reaching for Noah’s hand. “Please don’t do that.”
Noah squeezed his hand and leaned down to kiss him.
He said, “Look at you. Sleeping on the job.”
“Hard to find good help these days.” Izzy squirmed, trying to sit up, so Noah helped him by propping up the thin white pillows and hefting him up against them. “Anything on that cross?”
“Yeah,” Noah said, setting the rose down across Izzy’s lap and sitting on the edge of the narrow, adjustable bed. “Russian Orthodox.”
“Russian,” Izzy said. “Kid said he dressed like a Russian gangster. Go figure.”
“You’re dealing with gangsters, now?”
“I doubt it. Not in Austin, not Russians anyway. But he might be something much worse.”
“Then let the police handle it, Izzy. You’re so stressed, so overburdened, that you’re passing out at work. You’ve done enough.”
“Enough would’ve been keeping her safe when I had the chance,” Izzy said, and his eyes began to sting. He shut them to keep from crying in front of Noah, but only managed to squeeze the tears out. “I haven’t done near enough, Noah. It’s too goddamn late for enough.”
“Then what’s it going to take?”
Dr. Jarvis approached, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Noah got up and stepped aside.
“Sorry I yelled at you, Bishop,” he said. “You ought to have called out if you weren’t well.”
“I didn’t know I wasn’t,” Izzy said. “Dr. Jarvis, this is Noah Flaherty. I think he’s my boyfriend, or maybe we’re too old for that. We haven’t really discussed it.”
Though Noah looked startled, he accepted the doctor’s handshake.
Jarvis said, “Pleasure. Take him home. He’s off for the rest of the night and until further notice. Get some rest, Bishop.”
“Doctor’s orders,” Noah said as Jarvis left. “Is that good enough for you?”
“I’ll get some rest,” he conceded. “And in the morning I’m going to track down this lunatic once and for all.”
His shoulders slumping, Noah closed his eyes and sighed. He stayed that way for a moment, and upon opening his eyes again, he said, “Boyfriend?”
Thirty-Eight
Izzy and Noah sat in the Mazda, parked on the street with the engine running, and looked at the house on the corner. It was a single story red brick home in an upper middle-class, residential Pflugerville neighborhood only a mile or so north of Austin. Its driveway was crammed full of vehicles—a few small economy cars and a couple of trucks—and still more cars were parked on the street in front and to the side of the house. In the front yard stood a red wooden cross with an angular roof over top of it. Several short ash and chinaberry trees dotted the yard around the cross, and on either side of the high, arched entrance.
Noah twisted around in his seat, examining the other houses on the block, where people watered their lawns and washed their cars and walked their dogs. He turned back toward Izzy, and said, “This can’t be the right place.”
“It’s the right address,” Izzy said, double-checking where he’d written it down on a sticky note on the dash.
“This is the Russian Orthodox Church? I was expecting byzantine spires and ornate cupolas. Naves or something. This is just someone’s house.”
“Well,” Izzy said, killing the engine and taking the keys, “let’s go see if they’re at home.”
He climbed out, shut the door, and was halfway up the driveway before Noah could catch up to him.
“What are you going to say
? You’re looking for a crazy dying Russian they might know?”
“No. I’m going to lie.”
With that, Izzy approached the front door, pulled his wallet from his pocket, and extracted two twenties before pressing the doorbell. Noah watched him with puzzlement written all over his face, but remained quiet. The wallet went back in the pocket and Izzy folded the bills in his fist when the door opened to reveal a short, balding man with a long, scraggly brown beard. He was dressed in a checkered shirt and sweater vest, with khakis and sandals on his feet. The man looked at Izzy, then at Noah, and back at Izzy again. He smiled.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” Izzy said. “My name is Isaiah, and I’m looking for a friend of my sister’s who accidentally left some money behind at our house when he visited.”
Noah listened as carefully and interestedly as the bearded man.
“I’m fairly sure he’s a member of this congregation,” Izzy went on, pointing at the cross in the yard. “Unless I’m at the wrong place?”
“No,” the man said, “I don’t think so. It doesn’t look like much, but the community here is growing. I’m Father Antony.”
Izzy shook hands with him, and so did Noah.
The priest said, “Now who is this friend of yours?”
“Well, my sister’s,” Izzy said. “I really don’t know him that well, but I agreed to run this little errand for her to make sure he got his money back. Forty dollars, a small fortune to some of us.”
He showed the bills to Antony, who nodded.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said. “If you’ll tell me the fellow’s name, I’d be happy to return it to him.”
“It’s a little embarrassing,” Izzy said. “I’m having the toughest time quite remembering it. It’s Roy, or Russ, I think? He’s a thin guy. He’s—well, he’s rather ill, I’m sorry to say.”
Recognition washed over the priest’s face, and he smiled somewhat sorrowfully.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. That’s Ruslan Matveev. He goes by Russ. Poor boy, he’s got bone cancer, at his age. Only thirty-two, you know. How’d you know he was a member of this church, if I may ask?”
“He, ah—he mentioned it to my sister. His faith, and how he was a member here.”
“That’s really quite nice to hear,” Antony said, his face brightening. “I’ve prayed a lot for Ruslan, but I can’t say I’ve seen him in worship with us in a long while.”
“I’m sure he’ll like to hear that,” Izzy said. “When I see him, I’ll give him your regards, Father. Where might I find him so I can return this?”
Again, he showed the cash. He grinned. Antony narrowed his eyes, and wove his fingers together.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but how is it you know Ruslan again? Through your sister, you said?”
“That’s right. Teresa.”
The priest licked his lips, looking down and gathering his thoughts. Noah shot an uneasy glare at Izzy, who ignored him and kept grinning.
“The thing is,” Father Antony began, “our Ruslan has had—let’s say a spot of trouble now and again. Sometimes he’s lost his way, and he’s ended up in the company of people who don’t exactly subscribe to our way of doing things, if you catch my meaning. I don’t think he’s a bad person or a criminal type, nothing like that. Angry, maybe. I can’t think but his health problems have made that worse for him.
“I don’t know you gentleman and I’m by no means casting aspersions, God forbid.” He crossed himself, right shoulder first. “Just please understand that I’d never forgive myself, even if my Lord did, for directing anyone toward that young man who might cause him any further harm. Surely you can appreciate my position.”
“We understand,” Noah put in, touching Izzy on the elbow to spur him.
Izzy drew in a deep breath, nodded, and said, “Thank you for your time, Father.”
“If you do see Ruslan,” the priest said, grasping the edge of the door and starting to push it closed, “remind him he is always welcome in God’s house, and that it is not too late.”
The door clicked shut, and Noah led Izzy back to the driveway and down to the street, where Izzy said, “Yes, it is.”
“It is what?”
“Too late for Ruslan. I may not have gotten a location on him, but I know the fucker’s name now.”
“Izzy.”
He unlocked the door for Noah, let him in first, then went around to climb in behind the wheel. Noah pulled on his seatbelt, watching Izzy closely as he started the engine and began a slow crawl down the street to the stop sign at the end of the block. There he came to a full stop, and he slapped the steering wheel.
“I’ve got him,” he said.
“Great. Now tell your pal in the homicide squad or whatever who he is and this will all be over with.”
“Not until I confront him.”
Izzy stepped on the gas and rolled through the intersection.
Noah said, “Damnit, Izzy. This isn’t you.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe you just haven’t seen this part of me yet.”
“You can’t undo what happened to Cynthia. You can’t undo what happened to you. If this person has committed a crime, the police will deal with it. Neither of us even knows exactly what happened.”
“I know enough,” Izzy growled. He turned right where the road dead-ended, heading south toward Austin. “This guy, this Matveev, was already sort of a bad character before he found out he’s dying. He’s at the end, Noah—jaundiced, kidney failure, the whole thing. He’s at death’s door and he’s suffering, but this religious nonsense that got pounded into his skull keeps him from taking the easy way out. So Ruslan is pissed off at God Almighty, and he’s taking it out on the old sky wizard’s precious children.”
“Okay,” Noah snapped. “Tone down the angry atheist shit, would you?”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I may not be flagellating myself in a hair shirt in the desert,” Noah said rapidly and nervously, “but I happen to believe in a higher power and you’re getting a little ahead of yourself with all that hate.”
Izzy frowned deeply, turning his head to look at Noah, who scowled at the dash in front of him.
“We’re not talking about whether or not there’s a God,” Izzy said. “For fuck’s sake, babe. We’re talking about life and dea—”
The car jolted violently then with a deafening pop and careened brutally to the right rather than forward. An explosive crunch filled the air and Noah was thrown hard into Izzy’s shoulder. The passenger side window burst into a shower of fragments and shards, peppering them both, while the door collapsed inward and Noah screamed. Blood speckled his face, a bright red patina that shimmered with the tiny bits of glass embedded in his skin. Izzy gawped and jerked uselessly at the wheel. The Mazda bowled into a broad patch of tall yellow meadow grass beside the road and rocked to a rough halt. Gasoline fumes and smoke filled Izzy’s nostrils. His head swam and throbbed; his ears rang shrilly, all but blocking out Noah’s sharp voice beside him. He looked up at the windshield, at the spider web crack rippling outward from the upper right corner. He then looked over at Noah, bug-eyed and gasping, crunched up against the console by the crushed door.
“Noah!” Izzy shouted. He could barely hear his own voice.
Fumbling for his seatbelt, he took his foot off the brake, not remembering ever stepping on it in the first place. The car jolted again, but didn’t move forward. He managed to get free of the belt and fell upon Noah, feeling him along the ribs and chest, searching for life-threatening injuries. That was when he saw what hit them, through the shattered window on Noah’s side.
A white Ford Mustang, smashed against the side of Izzy’s Mazda, the hood crumpled and windshield badly splintered.
They’d been T-boned by Ruslan Matveev.
Thirty-Nine
The Mustang’s driver side door opened a few inches and stopped. Noah moaned. Izzy’s eyes were fixed on the Mustang. A minute passed,
then another. The door jerked, then crunched open. A hand appeared, grasping the top of the door for support. Then a head with thin, patchy brown hair.
Matveev hoisted himself out of the car using the door, his forehead cut and bleeding down into his eyes. He did not seem to notice, or mind. He trembled noticeably, but his glare was steady, his pupils solid black. His face showed no emotion, and he held himself as best he could for a minute longer just to glower back at Izzy.
“I’m hurt,” Noah said. “I need an ambulance.”
Izzy said, “It’s him.”
Dragging himself the rest of the way out of the Mustang, Matveev maneuvered his way around the door, holding on tentatively as he edged over to the crumpled hood. There he paused, already short of breath. But he never took his sunken eyes away from Izzy.
From the left pocket of his track suit bottoms, he produced a pack of cigarettes with shaky hands and shook one out. He snapped off the filter and tossed it on the ground before lighting it.
Ruslan Matveev’s cheeks were hollow, spotted with sparse hairs. His face was jaundiced, as were his trunk and arms, visible in the white undershirt he wore above a pair of powder blue track pants with black stripes down the legs. His knees angled inward, pointing at one another. The hairless ridges above his eyes twitched as he sucked on the filterless cigarette.
Only a few feet away from Noah’s side of the Mazda now, Izzy could see the deep, dark red scab on Matveev’s mouth, right in the center of his upper lip. Where Cynthia had bitten him, and apparently bitten hard. She’d fought back. Izzy glowered at dying man, his jaw spasming. He knew now what he’d already assumed, already hoped for. She didn’t kill herself. She hadn’t wanted to die. Cynthia was taken in lieu of this madman’s own sacred life.
Izzy grasped the door handle and shoved the door open with his shoulder. The car dinged at him. Noah groaned pitiably.
“Izzy,” he said, his voice strained and wet.
Matveev winced, bared his teeth. One on each side of his mouth glinted in the sunlight. Gold.
The Irish Goodbye (Izzy Bishop Book 1) Page 20
