The Pressure of Darkness

by Harry Shannon

  "I know you will, my friend. Because you enjoy breathing too much! Ha! Ha! Look, here are tonight's young women. Ladies, come. Join us. Tonight we spend in bed, but we do not sleep."

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Deep in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, a large man walked through an empty Catholic church on Lindley Avenue in Tarzana and knocked on the door to the private offices.

  "Jack?"

  Father Benny was shocked but delighted. Burke closed the door behind him. They walked down a short hallway to Benny's office.

  "Why in heaven's name are you showing up here?"

  "Bet you never thought you'd see me in church."

  "Exactly." Benny's office was chaos. Pillows, file folders, unwashed dishes everywhere. To his credit, the priest was clearly embarrassed. "Have a seat, my boy. If you can find one, that is."

  Burke shoved two ornate pillows aside and sat on the sagging leather couch. He cracked his knuckles and toed the floor, obviously stalling.

  Benny prodded, ever so gently. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

  "I need to talk to someone."

  "I don't recall you ever saying you were Catholic."

  "Lapsed is too mild a word."

  Benny leaned back in his office chair, folded his hands across his plump belly. "Well, that's all the better, then. You can lie to me and not worry about it being a damned sin, right? Excuse me, Lord."

  Burke did not smile. "I have a question for you. And I came here because I don't know anyone else I can ask. Maybe you can answer it, maybe not. All I want is the same answer you would give another priest, the spiritual answer."

  Cautiously. "Okay."

  Burke, voice muffled. "I have done a lot of bad things in my day, Father Benny. Some of them I regret, some I think of as just doing my job. But there are damned few I feel really ashamed about. I don't want to add anything to that pile if I can avoid it."

  "Go on."

  "Just give me an honest answer to my dilemma, and I will be on my way. That's all I'm asking."

  Benny grinned. "Okay, I am officially in priest mode, now. Shoot."

  Burke rubbed his hands together. "There's a woman."

  "There's always a woman."

  "I have loved her for a long time."

  "Since before Mary?" Benny's voice was gentle, probing.

  "Yes. I knew her a long time ago. Since I was in school with her, and she was an exchange student from India. It started then."

  "And . . . ?"

  "She's married."

  Father Benny's face softened, sagged with sorrow. "I see. And so are you."

  "And so am I." Burke looked up, his anguish now fully apparent. "Over to you, Benny."

  Father Benny sighed. He walked his fingers along his shirt, fiddled with his collar. "Have you ever read the prayer of St. Francis, Jack?"

  "Yeah, a long time ago."

  "Where he says 'let me be an instrument of thy peace' and 'let me seek to understand rather than to be understood, to love rather than be loved'?" Benny closed his eyes. "I adore that passage because it resonates so well with the teachings of the Buddha—the admonition against attachments, a dedication to the compassionate release of all worldly things."

  "It does, but I'm no saint."

  Benny laughed gently. "None of us is a saint, Jack. The best we can hope for is to strive to be better men than we were yesterday. I'm just saying that the answer to life's dilemmas is never to cling to what was never ours in the first place, and that eventually means even life itself."

  Burke's eyes widened half in shock. "Do I understand you correctly, here?"

  Benny shook his head. "No offense, but I doubt it. I am not taking an ethical position, or trying to give you pat answers. You didn't come to me for that. I'm saying that the ultimate truth is that nothing belongs to us, Jack. Not even our bodies, much less someone else's soul. God owns it all, lock stock and barrel. He calls us home on a damned whim, excuse me, Lord. Because we serve at his discretion. Go on, name me something you actually own."

  Burke understood and accepted the tenets of Buddhism. He saw where Benny was going but elected to play along. "My house."

  Benny grinned triumphantly. "The bank owns your house."

  "What if I've paid it off?"

  "Don't pay your property taxes for a while, and you'll quickly find out that the state owns that house."

  "What if I pay it off and pre-pay my property taxes indefinitely?"

  Benny leaned forward. "The universe always wins, Jack. Sooner or later you die. The house is torn down and becomes dust. Everything goes back to where it came from. We don't own anyone or anything, we just borrow a bit here and there."

  "Okay, now back to my problem."

  "You don't own either one of these women, Jack. Neither does anyone else. They don't possess you, or your heart—you have chosen to give them something. The pain we feel comes from confusing attachment with love, or affection with ownership."

  "They are already gone."

  "Yes. You will lose them both in the end, and they you."

  "Agreed." Burke grunted, ruefully. "Okay, now you've really made my day."

  "The issue confronting you cannot be dealt with through emotion, or outmoded ideas of romance or attachment."

  "Then how do I think this through?"

  Benny pondered. "You remember why I said I keep flying? Because I think I have to face my fear to know God?"

  "Yeah."

  "Maybe that's a bit of what you're looking at here as well. You need to be willing to face some of your deepest fears if you're going to come to the right decision. Hell, if there is such a thing as a right decision, excuse me, Lord."

  "How do I do that?"

  "What is your deepest fear, my son?"

  Burke shuddered. "My deepest fear is probably what you just described, Benny. The damned impermanence of things, death and the cosmogonic cycle, the loss of my own life and the lives of those I love."

  "You must rethink your priorities, Red. Open up your mind. One simply has to change the camera angle, as it were. To pull back and see the bigger picture. What would serve the greater good?"

  Burke winked. "What would Jesus do? I thought you were Catholic."

  Benny blew a raspberry. "Hell, the majority of the people who slap that bumper sticker on their car don't have a clue what it really means. We're not talking about any individual religion here, and you of all people should know that. We're talking about a spiritual principle."

  Burke leaned back on the couch. "Go on."

  "So you must ask yourself this . . . if I felt nothing but compassion for everyone involved here, both myself, the lady in question, and the wronged spouses, what would I do? What would serve the greater good?"

  "Ah. That's not easy."

  "No." Benny rested his elbows on to the desk. "Take your time. Think it over, pray about it. The answer might surprise you. From personal experience, I assure you that it is also seldom as simple as it first appears. And in the end, you are the only one who can decide."

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The volleyball coach is an Hispanic woman with dishwater blonde hair. She is a young thirty, dressed in tight red shorts and a halter top. She brings the whistle to her lips and stops the calisthenics. The all-girls team collapses to the ground in a heap. Their giggles carry easily on the afternoon breeze.

  The man with the bloodshot eyes sits in the plain brown sedan. Those eyes are glued to one pre-teen with a lithe and almost tomboyish figure. He watches her stand ahead of the others. She is the first to start running in place. He smiles.

  When the coach turns his way, as if growing suspicious of the parked car, the driver lowers his glasses, starts the vehicle, and drives off.

  She looks like me, Scotty Bowden thinks. She's a jock, and I'll be damned if she doesn't look a lot like me.

  THIRTY-NINE

  "234?"

  "234 here."

  "We have a possible 182 in progress at 18745 Lansdale Street, North Hollywood. Be advised that
is south of the intersection and west of Vineland."

  "We're on it. ETA four minutes."

  Officer Mike Gallo feels the familiar thrill. He grins—bright, white teeth in the darkness—lowers the mike and starts the powerful engine. He pulls the patrol car away from the curb and out of the darkened area of the street. His new partner, as usual, doesn't react. Gallo has only known Frank "Bulldog" Gillespie for a couple of days. Bulldog just transferred in from South Central. Bulldog already has the 'thousand yard stare' of a young man who has seen far too much, and way too often.

  "Lock and load." Gallo immediately despises himself for sounding macho. Over a year on the force and still insecure, like I got something to prove. What a dipshit. Gallo weaves in and out of the light traffic and cuts down Vineland. Lansdale is a quiet residential street south of Blix; it touches a long fork that extends south from Vineland and then veers west, into the shadows. A few porch lights are on, but the street is otherwise quiet. "What was it again?"

  Bulldog grunts, checks the computer console in the patrol car. "18745 Lansdale. Must be in the next block."

  "Check us in."

  Bulldog grabs the microphone. "234 on the scene."

  This section of the block is as still as a painting. The house on the left appears uninhabited, although there is one battered Ford truck parked in the oil-stained driveway. The house on the right, an impossibly small one-bedroom cottage, is several yards back from the sidewalk. Someone inside is watching television; black and white images flicker eerily on the closed, beige blinds.

  "Okay." Gallo wishes he knew his new partner better, could trust him more. He takes a deep breath. "Let's do it."

  The young cop opens the car door, one hand on his weapon and the other holding his heavy flashlight. He waits for Bulldog to clamber out of the passenger seat. They examine the house. It is a plain, white one-story 1940s house, most likely two bedrooms and one small bath. There is an empty carport on the left side, rather than the standard one-car garage. The faux redwood frame is warping under the weight of tree branches and a pool of stagnant rain water that has not been properly drained. The rear of the carport is filled with cardboard boxes and tall slats of used plywood. No one, nothing.

  It could be a trap.

  Gallo veers left, shines his light into the carport and works closer. Bulldog takes the vegetation on the right of the house without being asked. The two men keep their hands on their holstered weapons and move quietly. 18745 is the kind of dilapidated home generic to this part of the Valley, where the long-suffering middle class still struggles to uphold a sense of community pride. The dark street has not quite yet descended into gangland, but it is turning into what some cops euphemistically refer to as 'poor white,' and chances are the gang graffiti will start popping up within a couple of years.

  Gallo pauses. A common feature on this sort of property is a tall bank of runaway ivy. Sure enough, the entire back yard is overrun by thick, green vines. Three doors down, what sounds like a gigantic Doberman roars an alarm. His loud wuff agitates other dogs in the neighborhood and within seconds the night is cluttered with barking.

  Gallo shines his light through the kitchen window, sees nothing out of the ordinary. He moves to the far side of the carport. This gig has a "pucker factor" of nine, so his heart is soon doing a very slow, very loud rain dance. Why was it called in? There's nothing going on here.

  Footsteps in the ivy.

  Gallo has his 9mm halfway out before his ears properly place the sound; it is Bulldog, crossing the far part of the yard, exploring a pile of trash and old tires near the fence. Jesus H. Christ. Take it easy.

  Another noise, right in front, and Gallo flinches a little but holds back this time. He is starting to feel a bit like a scared old woman jumping out of her pantyhose. Sure enough, the sound comes again. It is low and to the left, behind some cardboard boxes at the foot of the rapidly metastasizing wall of yellowing ivy. Gallo moves in a bit closer, peeks around the back of a box. A large, striped gray-and white tomcat with badly chewed ears and abscessed skin has cornered something. A slight rustle in the ivy, another pounce a foot or two away from the original position; jaws strike flesh. The cat turns, a stunned rat dangling bloodily from gaping maw, and flashes Gallo an arrogant, possessive grin before trotting off into the darkness with its prize.

  Gallo relaxes his shoulders. He hears footsteps again. Bulldog must be finished patrolling the yard. Mike Gallo turns around with his mouth open to relay what just happened. A firecracker goes off and someone punches him in the groin, just below his Kevlar vest. Confused, he sinks to his knees, mouth still open, pained air hissing out. A sticky, warm wetness flows into his hands. Gallo moans. His vision morphs and he sees Bulldog down at the far end of the ivy, spread-eagled in the moonlight, throat cut and blue uniform covered with blood.

  Oh, fuck. Gallo grabs for his gun. The second shot neatly removes the top of his head.

  Three houses down, the Doberman falls silent.

  FORTY

  THURSDAY

  "What the hell?"

  Doc Jefferson rubs his weary eyes and sits back in his wheelchair. He has slight reddish-white circles around his eyes from using the lab's electronic microscope for too long. He types his findings into the computer and waits.

  Doc knows himself to be a reasonably skilled pathologist, but the blood sample he is examining has him stumped. What he is looking at doesn't make any logical sense. Oh sure, you would not be surprised to find that a homeless woman called 'Bloody Mary' had a form of Chlamydia trachomatis, or any other contagious sexually transmitted disease. But this particular form of rickettsia is new to Doc. It appears to have attacked the woman's immune system with a prototypically voracious appetite, yet something about its hot vector is abnormal. Almost as if it had been affected by another, quite mysterious form of infection, the Chlamydia made stronger by the presence of something else—something far more virulent.

  Doc grabs the switch to his electric wheelchair and rolls away and over to a standing table. He pours some ice water, grabs an ice cube, and rubs it over his forehead, regretting that his insatiable curiosity has opened such a can of worms. The ME's office, on behalf of the Deputy Mayor, clearly instructed him to allow the cremation of the old woman known as 'Bloody Mary' to proceed post haste. And Doc had done just that, but only after paying a nurse's aide named Joyce fifty bucks to go down to the mortuary to draw a sanitary sample of her blood. If this woman died of the flu, Doc wanted to know what kind had done her in.

  Curiosity killed the cat.

  After three hours of examination, the cause is no clearer to him than before. In fact, the presence of what appears to be a severe and abnormally strong influenza infection simply muddies the waters. And was this an H1, H2, or H3? The apparent oddities in the protein coat, or surface characteristics of the virus, left his findings inconclusive.

  Flu is actually a class of diseases, a fragile but constantly evolving group that modifies rapidly every year in response to a number of environmental factors. Many of the seasonal "bugs" that strike Americans actually begin somewhere in the world's bird population, with wild fowl as far away as China. Then they migrate through human beings, eventually to burn themselves out and become dormant again in another attempt to modify and gain superiority. These bugs are mankind's oldest and deadliest foe.

  What few people outside of the medical establishment realize is how dangerous and potentially lethal the entire community of influenza virus types may one day become. Doc remembers reading about a 1918 a flu bug dubbed "Spanish Lady." Fatalities in the United States exceeded the deaths in both world wars and the Viet Nam conflict combined, and all of this took place within a few, hellish months: the stricken ran fevers as high as 107 degrees and suffered brain damage before dying; experienced vomiting, explosive diarrhea, crushing headache pain, leucopenia, nosebleeds, gangrene of the genitalia, partial or complete blindness, and loss of hearing. Spanish Lady slaughtered over thirty million people in four months.


  The world hears about a new strain like SARS or bird flu, and reacts with trepidation. However, the minute the immediate threat has been eradicated, everyone in the press goes back to sleep; however, the medical community does not.

  The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta sends out flu-season requests for reports on any fresh or seemingly aberrant strains of virus. Doc had recently seen one posted in the cafeteria at USC Medical Center, where he occasionally assisted the Pathology department with computer-generated disease vector demonstrations and audio-visual presentations.

  Doc chews his lower lip, fishes in his pocket and palms a pair of Percodan. He washes the painkillers down with ice water. He is giving some serious thought to contacting the CDC directly and e-mailing them a detailed file on what he has thus far. But he doesn't want to get fired. The Assistant ME, a Nisei named Miyori, is known for his refusal to share credit with subordinates. Doc realizes all too well that he is endangering his career by disobeying orders. Going around Miyori without offering to share credit will be tantamount to writing a letter of resignation.

  Doc leans back, closes his eyes and waits for the pills to take effect. As the drugs begin to increase the production of Dopamine in his brain, Doc comes, with great reluctance, to the logical decision. He unlocks his chair, steers it back to the computer keyboard with a slight whir, and sends his annoying boss a carefully worded e-mail. RE: HOMELESS FEMALE. FOUND SOMETHING ODD IN BLOOD SAMPLE. POSSIBLE NEW STRAIN INFLUENZA. NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU SOONEST, JEFFERSON.

  Doc rubs his head, wonders if he's goofed. Hey, what's done is done. He guides his wheelchair back to the electron microscope and resumes his work with renewed energy.

  FORTY-ONE

  Burke drifted down the hospital corridor like a wraith. As usual, the facility was nearly deserted. As he turned the last corner he heard sloshing and what sounded like faint, high-pitched squealing over toy drums: a scowling young janitor with massive, gym-rat arms was mopping the floor. The kid wore headphones and had a CD player strapped to the waist of his overalls. He did not look up.