Prayer (15 page)

“I could use a heads-up, Agent Martins,” he said, standing much too close for comfort, “the next time you try to swat a fly with half the fucking CMOC Team.”

“Well, sir, it certainly didn’t seem like it was just a fly at six o’clock this morning.”

“Says who? You? You’re just a line supervisor, Martins, not Bob Mueller.”

“And I cleared it with my ASAC, sir. Gisela Delillo. Why don’t you take it up with her if you’re unhappy about what happened?”

“Is that supposed to reassure me that you know what you’re fucking talking about?”

“We had good intel that the suspects weren’t the kind to give themselves up without a couple of dozen guns in their faces.”

“Really? The gun cupboard was bare, is what I’ve just been told.”

“You heard wrong. I’ve come straight from the lockup, where my subject was keeping six mini–cruise missiles and enough guns and ammo to resupply the Alamo. And neither I nor Gisela knew that the CMOC was open for business when we called the op.”

“You just make sure you speak to me before you even think of calling an op again. I don’t like opening up a CMOC with just a couple of kids who are straight out of the Academy and a secretary who stinks of fucking mothballs. I don’t like waiting around for people to show up like it was the first day of school. And I sure as hell don’t like you.”

Toward the end of this conversation, Vijay Persaud—the guy from DCS Net—appeared next to my shoulder.

I let Corbin take the elevator by himself. The thought of inhaling his lousy breath was too much for me. I’d kind of hoped that Vijay would get into the car alongside him but he didn’t.

“You should take that up with the AA,” he said. “You know I’m the chapter representative.”

The AA was the FBI Agents Association.

“Thanks, Vijay. But I do believe I will forget all about this. I never did like kids who went crying to their mothers because someone called them fat.”

“Awright.” He paused. “Uh, Gil? We need to talk. Urgently. Remember?”

“Well, go ahead and talk, Vijay. This is the FBI, not the locker room at the Houstonian Club.”

“Actually, no. We have to do this in private, I think. Would you mind if we found a meeting room and talked there?”

I hesitated.

“Like I say, it’s urgent.”

“Okay, Vijay. I hear you. But right now I got something urgent of my own waiting for me in the interview room downstairs. Probable terrorist by the name of Johnny Sack Brown. He was planning to fire a guided missile through the window of a synagogue right here in Houston. So why don’t I come and find you when I’m through with him?”

“Awright. Please do, Gil. Like I already said, it’s kind of urgent.”

I let that one go. But I wanted to tell him that in the FBI it’s always fucking urgent.

Johnny Sack Brown was a “No comment” kind of guy with muscular folded arms and a rolled-up newspaper of a manner. With almost every question Gisela and I asked him over the course of the next two or three hours, he clenched the fist that was manacled to the table and then politely uttered his mantra of antipathy and estrangement. On his chest was a tattoo of startling obscenity featuring an old and presumably divine figure with a long beard and the sentiment “God has a hard-on for Marines,” while on one forearm was an American eagle clutching a banner on which was written “jesUS our sAvior.” These tats intrigued me, and for a moment I sought to turn the one-sided conversation away from the Switchblades I’d found in the lockup on South Gessner Road, in the hope that I might get Brown to talk about anything—anything at all.

“I’ve often thought about getting a tat myself. Only I can’t seem to think of a sentiment that I like enough to endure the pain.”

Brown stared us both down like we were the ugliest dogs he’d ever seen.

“I assume you wouldn’t have those tats if you didn’t believe in God. Is that right?”

For once he did not reply “No comment” to a direct question, and thinking to press ahead with this line, I added, “No, I guess you can hardly say ‘No comment’ about a question like that. Not without denying your religious faith. Although, of course, because of
Miranda
, a court can construe silence as a tacit denial. Perhaps you didn’t know that. So, I’m going to ask you again, sir. Are you a Christian, Major Brown?”

After another long moment, he said: “I’m a Christian, Agent Martins. What of it?”

“I sure didn’t mean any disrespect to your faith. I used to be a Christian myself.”

“What are you now?”

“Oh, I’m an atheist, sir. But you know, I can’t help wondering what God would have made of what you were planning to do. I can’t figure how your God can have a hard-on for Marines who are prepared to murder his chosen people.”

“God punishes his people when they do wrong.”

“It’s one thing to chase the money changers out of the temple; it’s another thing altogether to fire a guided missile through the temple’s fucking window.”

There was a cold steadiness about Brown I found daunting. He was hardly the fanatic I had imagined. He gave the impression of a man who had thought a great deal about what he had planned to do. And he didn’t look in the least bit troubled by his situation. He was going to be a hard man to break.

“I tell you what I don’t understand,” said Gisela. “What I don’t understand is how someone as intelligent as you could plan to commit the mass murder of men, women, and children just because they were Jews. It just doesn’t follow.”

“Isn’t that for you to find out?” said Brown. “You and your shrinks from Behavioral Science.” Then he smiled, leaned back, and folded his arms as best he was able and said not another word.

We tried asking more questions but without result; and after a while, we concluded the interview, switched off the tape, and Johnny Sack Brown was taken into the sally port and handed over to the custody of the United States Marshals Service for transport to a federal detention center.

“We’ll let them all boil over the weekend in FDC,” she said, reclaiming her gun from its locker. “The shrinks can assess our friend Johnny on Monday. There’s nothing like a couple of nights behind bars in the detention center to make a man more talkative.”

I stifled a yawn.

“You need to go home,” she said. “You were up half the night working on the Tac Team op. Go home and I’ll see you on Monday.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve got Vijay Persaud from DCS Net who wants to talk to me about something.”

“It’s late,” said Gisela. “Chances are he’s gone home himself. Forget about it until Monday. If he’s still around, I’ll speak to him.”

“And Corbin’s been chewing my ear about taking agents from the CMOC for the Tac Team.”

“Fuck him,” said Gisela. “Tac Team ops come first. No dead feds. That’s standard protocol. I’m going to take this up with Chuck. I’m tired of that fucker Corbin trying to ramrod my agents. Just because he’s the crisis manager doesn’t mean he runs this field office.” She smiled. “So, go home.”

I went to the men’s room and washed my hands and face carefully. Questioning suspects has that effect on me.

I
t was early on Saturday morning. Somewhere along Driscoll Street a dog was barking, but mostly I had only the noise of my own shallow breathing and the death-watch ticking of the travel alarm on the bedside table for company. It sounded like a frenetic metal beetle chewing into the rotten wood of my life. My sense of being on my own now was always worse at that time of day. I was lying in bed and staring across the wasteland of a king-size mattress separating me from Ruth’s pillow where her blond head ought to have been. I hadn’t slept well since she had left. For the last hour I’d lain awake, making plans for one and trying my best not to feel sorry for myself. The weekend was shaping up nicely to be a piece of shit. But for the fact that I urgently needed somewhere to live, I’d have gone to the office.

Probably it wasn’t a good idea, but in the absence of any better ones I decided I was going to go to Lakewood the following morning. Not to make my peace with God, but in the hope I might meet and make peace with Ruth. I’m not sure where she was, but she wasn’t in Corsicana. Someone had told me he’d seen her and Danny in church the previous Sunday and I thought that while she was there maybe she might be more inclined to do unto others—i.e., me—as she would have others do unto her. But it seemed like a slim hope and most of all I just wanted to catch a glimpse of Danny. I figured Ruth would be more disposed to give me the time of day if I was able to tell her that, as requested by her lawyers, I’d moved out of the house. So, before driving to see Bishop Coogan, I put some clothes in a bag with the intention of moving into a motel while I looked for a place of my own to rent. I had plenty of ideas about that. I just didn’t have plenty of money.

I took a last look at the house, remembering our life there. Mostly I just stood in the doorway of Danny’s room and stared at his little bed and the less favored toys he’d left behind when he and his mother took off. Coming back downstairs, I reflected that I’d never liked the place that much—mainly because I’d had so little to do with choosing it—but for a while, until I fucked things up with Nancy and my new atheism, we’d been happy there. Hadn’t we? And now? Did Danny ever miss home? Or me? I wondered about that: at his grandpa’s house in Corsicana there were horses and ponies for him to ride, a tree house and a swimming pool the size of a wheat field. A small boy can forget about a lot, including his absent father, when he has his own pony.

I drove slowly away and steeled myself not to look back, as if I were Lot himself. I just fixed my eyes on the road ahead and then put my foot down. I headed northwest to the bishop’s residence on Timber Terrace Road, which was off Memorial Drive. It was a sprawling modern house in a quiet leafy part of Houston close to St. Mary’s Seminary where, when he wasn’t working at the chancery of the archdiocese, Coogan performed some occasional academic function for which the house was the reward, I suppose. And a handsome reward it was, too, with a wide curving drive, a satellite dish on the roof, and a kidney-shaped pool, not to mention access to the Cardinal Beran Library, where Coogan was researching a book he was writing.

A housekeeper—possibly a nun—holding a duster and canister of furniture polish in her hand, opened the bishop’s heavy wood-and-glass door and admitted me to a comfortable book-lined study that smelled strongly of cigars and beeswax; outside the library’s elegant bay window a sprinkler hissed like a snake, hard at work keeping a carpet of emerald lawn well watered.

Coogan appeared in the doorway, mopping his brow with a handkerchief as big as a pillowcase; as usual, he looked like a fat Elvis trying out a strange new all-my-trials-Lord costume for a one-off show at the Vatican. We shook hands. In Coogan’s big mitt mine felt no bigger than a cat’s paw.

“Had breakfast?”

“Seems you read my mind, Eamon.”

“You’ve lost weight. That’s easier to read than your mind, Gil. It’s not home cooking you’ve been having, I’ll bet.” He put his big hand on my shoulder. “Come through to the kitchen and we’ll get Mrs. Harris to cook something for you.”

I followed Coogan through the hall and into a well-appointed kitchen where the woman who had answered the door was polishing a stainless-steel cooktop in the center of a granite counter as big as the nave of a small and very clean church.

“Mrs. Harris?” said Coogan. “Would you cook Mr. Martins a huge breakfast, please?”

“Certainly, Your Excellency.”

“I’ve asked her not to call me that,” Coogan told me. “It makes me sound like I should be wearing a pith helmet and carrying letters of introduction to the queen, but she just ignores me.”

Mrs. Harris ignored him; she was already preparing my breakfast; and within twenty minutes it was served, and very good it was, too. Coogan watched me eat it with vicarious pleasure, almost as if he could taste every bit of it that went into my mouth.

“So what did you want to talk to me about, Eamon?” I asked. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No, go ahead. I like the smell of cigarettes.”

I lit one and waited. “And?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The archbishop and I have resolved the matter ourselves. Father Breguet, one of the priests at St. Benedict’s seminary, was suspected of having embezzled some church funds. Anyway, we thought it over and decided not to press charges.”

“You’re going to let him get away with it?” I frowned. “Mind if I ask why?”

For a moment, I had the impression Coogan was picking his words with care.

“His Eminence and I concluded that it wasn’t nearly as much money that went missing as we had earlier supposed.”

“Hardly a federal matter, I’d have thought.”

“No. But you’re the only law enforcement officer I know well enough to talk about these things without having a lawyer present.”

I grinned. “Well, I can’t complain about the food.”

“As it happens, there was another reason I had for going ahead and letting you come here.”

I sighed. “I’m not looking for eternal reassurance. Just some place to live.”

“Then you really have moved out.”

I nodded. “This morning, before I came here. Ruth was about to throw my ass onto the street. A woman can do that when she’s got custody of your kid. And when she’s got her daddy’s Benjamin Franklins bankrolling her. She always seems to know the very best moment to twist the knife in a man’s guts.”

“Well, I’m no expert when it comes to women,” he said.

I let out a long sigh and slapped my full stomach. “So, after I’ve left this wonderfully spic-and-span house of yours, Eamon, I’m going to find a motel and then look for an apartment somewhere.”

“Now, I might just be able to help you there, Gil. Mind you, it’s not exactly convenient. But it might tide you over for a while.”

“Well, my online search criteria are straightforward enough. They come down to this: the cheaper the better. I’m going to need what money I’ve got for a divorce lawyer. Look, it’s very kind of you to offer to help me, Eamon, but I don’t think life in a seminary would suit me right now. These days the only thing I pray for is to win the Texas lottery.”

“I was thinking, there’s a house you can have. All to yourself. And for as long as you want. It’s hardly ideal for a man who works in Houston. But if you’re needing to save money, I’m thinking for a while it might suit you.”

“I dunno, Eamon. I’m kind of particular about things being clean, you know?”

“An empty furnished house. With five bedrooms and a small garden, and it’s as clean as a whistle. Rent-free, too. Until you find something more permanent here in Houston. Which won’t take you long. You can move in today if you’re interested.”

“Of course I’m interested. But there’s just one catch, right? This is where you tell me the house is haunted.”

“It’s in Galveston.” Coogan put his hands in his pockets, pushed his belly out, and smiled, awaiting my response.

I thought for a moment. Galveston wasn’t exactly around the corner, and it was even farther away from Ruth and Danny in Corsicana. Fifty miles south of Houston, the largest seaport in Texas was only just starting to recover from Hurricane Ike. The place was virtually a ghost town. I’ve seen tumbleweed that looks more cheerful than Galveston, and so living there was hardly ideal. There was all that and the fact that I’d spend two hours on the I-45 every day. But what else did I have to do with my spare time? And there are major advantages to living almost anywhere when it’s rent-free, even in a disaster zone. Rent-free is as cheap as you can get. And useful when you don’t have the least fucking idea where you’re going to be spending the night. Besides, the true fact of the matter was that I had little stomach for the business of actually looking for a place to live. From what I’d heard, rentals were nearly always filthy. That part of finding a new place really appalled me. And I certainly wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending days cleaning a new apartment.

“It’s a dump, right? Like the rest of Galveston. Ike took the roof off and left the basement full of water. Either that or there’s still no electricity.”

Coogan shook his head. “Actually, it’s not a bad house. A bit quiet. Most of the neighbors moved out after the hurricane and they haven’t come back. But all of the damage was repaired and the house was redecorated only last year. There’s a wide-screen TV. A power shower. A fully renovated kitchen with all the modern conveniences. Until recently, the place was occupied by a priest who liked his wine and his creature comforts. Father Dyer. He’s in a Texas City nursing home. For retired members of the clergy. And I had the place professionally cleaned after he left, so right now it’s immaculate.”

“Immaculate?”

“Immaculate.” He paused. “Look, Gil, none of the lazy so-and-sos in the seminary even wants to set foot in Galveston. They’re looking for somewhere with a little more action, here in Houston or in Dallas. Somewhere with some people. With some Catholics. And I can’t say that I blame them. The only regular congregations to be found in Galveston are the goddamn cranes and turtles. The house is close to the old cathedral. So you’d be doing me a favor if you could keep an eye on the place. Kind of like a caretaker. We’ve had a few problems with looters down that way. Bastards stealing lead off church roofs, shit like that. A tenant with a Glock might be just what the doctor ordered. If you like, we can drive down there now and take a look at the house.”

“Well, yeah, that’d be great, Eamon. If you’re sure you can spare the time.”

Coogan made a face. “I’m celibate, right? And there’s no damn game this weekend. So what else am I going to do with my frigging Saturday?”

I grinned. “It’s true what they say. If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.”