Prayer

by Philip Kerr

  “The party had started at around seven. But at eight-thirty there was no longer any sign of Philip. Soon afterward, everyone on the terrace heard a commotion that seemed to come from the direction of the plaza. The plaza is a small island of trees and bronze figures just a few yards away. It was a dreadful commotion—like the sound of an animal in distress. I think it was the doormen who crossed the road to investigate. Anyway, they came back to inform us that it was Philip Osborne and that he appeared to be in a state of hysteria. Some of the guests went to see what we could do and an astonishing sight awaited us: Philip was cowering underneath the cupola of a little monument, whimpering like a dog. His hands and face were covered in blood and he was pleading with some invisible figure to leave him alone.

  “When I tried to touch him, Philip let out such a scream that it quite put the fear of God into everyone. Philip then attempted to strangle one of the doormen and it was at this point that an HPD patrol car arrived. One of the officers was about to Taser him when suddenly he gave up the attack and took off across the road into some nearby fountains. And that’s where we found him a few minutes later—lying on the surface of the water, staring up at the sky, and quite unresponsive to all external stimuli, almost as if he were dead. He’s been like that ever since.”

  By now I had remembered the story in the Chronicle—only the report had suggested the author had been drunk, and since it wasn’t unusual for drunks to take a swim in the fountains on Montrose Boulevard, I had paid little attention to it. It all sounded unfortunate, but I was still at a loss as to why Bishop Coogan was interrupting my Sunday evening with this.

  “There was blood—Philip Osborne’s blood—all over that little plaza, as if he’d run around banging into one thing and then another like a crazy man. He gashed his arm and—”

  “Well, there you are,” I said. “He must have hit his head on something as well.”

  “But there were no contusions on his skull. Just a few scratches on his face from the branches on the trees.”

  “And the blood on his hands?”

  “He’d tried to climb the monument.”

  “Did the police find any assailant?”

  “No. The police think it was a simple case of stress, overwork, too much Xanax mixed with too much alcohol. A Britney-style breakdown that ended up being rather more damaging than a photo spread in Us Weekly.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry about your friend, but however you want to cook it, Eamon, Bishop, sir, this meat’s HPD.”

  “And if I told you that this is hardly an isolated case? That there have been similar cases—fatal cases—in other states?”

  “I’d probably say what I said earlier. People go MIA when their heads are upriver. That’s just the way it is.”

  Coogan was shaking his own outsize head. “No, no, this is different, Gil. I’m sure of it. I can feel it.”

  “That might be a deeper source of religion, but it won’t do for my boss. We need evidence.”

  “And I’ve got it. In my duffel bag there’s a file full of evidence. Just promise me that you’ll take a look at it.”

  “All right. But I can’t promise to act on your material. That way I won’t disappoint you. On top of everything else.”

  “You’re thinking you’re maybe an atheist and that I’ll mind and be disappointed, is that it? God’s got an electronic tether on you, Gil. And for the rest of your life it’ll be there around your ankle so that he can come and get you when he’s ready. Once it’s on, it stays on and there’s nothing you can do about it. You could wander to the end of the world, Gil, and it’ll still be sending God a signal once or twice a day forever.”

  SIX

  A lot of people at the Houstonian Club know I’m an FBI agent and I am often given information about some alleged crime that turns out to be a whole bunch of crap. It’s an occupational hazard, I guess, but whenever I’m in the club, it’s not very long before one of the members or even one of the staff approaches me with a story that usually obliges me to step off the running machine and make a few notes: to do anything else would not be good for the image of the Bureau. As would my telling any of these people to fuck off. In order to escape the possibility of any unpleasantness at the Houstonian, I try to stay off the club radar; by using a professional set of picklocks to get in and out of a service door near the parking lot, I can more or less come and go and still keep out of the computer system, thus avoiding any “hot tips” and general bullshit. If no one knows you’re there, they can’t come and find you.

  I had too much respect for Bishop Coogan to brush him off as just another crackpot in a long line of crackpots; however, for Ruth’s benefit, that’s exactly what I did when I got home. Dismissing Coogan’s “tip” was a quick way of dismissing what she always imagined was the case: the power that the Church of Rome still had over me. But as soon as I was alone again—Ruth always went to bed early on a Sunday night—I opened the bag and started to read.

  There were clippings from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post; but mostly I was looking at copies of webpages reproduced on Coogan’s printer. All of these papers had been neatly hole-punched and filed in strict chronological order so that I was quickly able to gain an impression of just what had convinced him that there was something fishy going on.

  When I had finished reading through the file, I fetched a pad of paper, read the contents again, and made some notes. Just before midnight I poured myself a scotch. I don’t normally stay up late and drink scotch, but you don’t expect a bishop to point out what a lot of law enforcement officers had overlooked.

  It was a sultry night with the air temperature still in the high seventies. I opened the window in my little tower and leaned outside with my glass. I lit a cigarette and smoked it quickly in the hope the smell might not reach Ruth’s nostrils.

  I called Coogan at the bishop’s house on my cell. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry I sounded skeptical.”

  “You were just doing your job. What happens now?”

  “There’s a process, a way of doing these things. You might say I have to convert some people to our way of thinking.”

  “But you do agree with me?”

  “There’s something, yes. But don’t get your hopes up. I can’t promise to come back to you on this for a while.”

  “I understand. You’ve got your own archbishops and cardinals, just like I do. Anything else I can do?”

  “Well, I would say that you could pray for me if I thought for one minute it would do any good.”

  That was when I heard something in the doorway and looked around to see Ruth standing there. It seemed like she’d been there for a while—long enough to get hold of the wrong end of the stick because she was looking pretty pissed at me.

  “Eamon, I’ve got to go.”

  “Good night, son, and God bless.”

  “So what were you talking about with Bishop Coogan?”

  “Those papers he gave me. I think there’s more to it than I thought.”

  “It sounded to me as if you and he were discussing your own crisis of faith, honey.”

  I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t anything like that. I’m sorry, did I wake you up?”

  “I smelled the cigarette.”

  “That’s why I was smoking it out of the window.”

  “It still comes in the house when you breathe out.”

  “All right, in future I’ll try not to do too much of that.” I shrugged. “What’s the matter?”

  “I guess I’m a little puzzled that you can talk about things with Bishop Coogan that you don’t seem able to discuss with me.”

  “I already told you,” I said, stifling a yawn, “that’s not what he and I were talking about.”

  She unfolded her arms and took my hand in her own.

  “I was thinking, Gil, maybe we could . . .”
>
  She hesitated long enough for me to get the wrong idea. I put my arms around her and tried to kiss her.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I thought maybe we could pray. Now. Together.”

  I sighed and put a better face on my disappointment. “I really don’t think that’s going to help right now, sweetheart.”

  “It’s okay for Bishop Coogan to pray for you, but not me. Is that it?”

  “Look, you can pray for me all you want, honey. And so can he. His was a professional courtesy, I imagine. But I don’t want to pray with anyone. Not anymore. Not ever. I just can’t, Ruth. I don’t have the words. God isn’t there for me. Perhaps he never was.”

  They say God moves in a mysterious way, but I have to admit I was more than a little surprised by what happened over breakfast.

  Danny was watching television before Ruth drove him to school. I had a slice of toast in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and Ruth was fixing my tie for me, and perhaps it didn’t help that the tie was one she knew I had acquired during my temporary duty assignment in Washington, D.C. If she suspected that Nancy Graham had bought it for me, from Michael Andrews Bespoke—which she had—then she certainly didn’t say so. But this time she did a lot more than merely straighten my tie. The green eyes I knew better than mine flicked up and down between the knot of the tie and my face, and each time I met them they seemed a little sadder than before; then she swallowed a lump in her throat the size of an egg and a tear appeared on one eyelash. In the same moment a terrible fear went through me and, recognizing all at once that something was very wrong, I started to cover her forehead with kisses and to apologize for the previous evening.

  “I’m so sorry about last night, babe,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was unforgivable.”

  “Yes, it was,” she said, and tightened the silk knot of my tie just a little too much. “I could strangle you because of what you said last night, Gil Martins. And I hate having that feeling about my husband. I don’t recognize myself in your eyes. We used to be such good friends, you and I. But now all I feel is your overriding hostility.”

  “Come on, Ruth, it’s not you I feel hostile toward,” I said. “You know I love you. I’ve always loved you. Even when I made that mistake in Washington, I still loved you.”

  “Do you see what you’ve done, Martins? You and this precious job of yours? Do you see where you’ve brought me? Where you’ve brought us?”

  “Let’s not talk about my job again, Ruth.”

  “And I am not going to talk about it. I give you my word on that. I’ll never talk about your job again. Not now, not ever.”

  As she let go of my tie, I put down the toast and the coffee, cupped her hands in mine, and lifted them to kiss the tips of her fingers.

  “Forget what I said last night. Look, if you want to pray, let’s pray. All right? I’m ready. We’ll kneel down and pray and ask for God’s help, just like you wanted.”

  I knelt down and tried to make her kneel with me, but Ruth stayed up on her feet and turned away. “You have to leave,” she said.

  Still kneeling in front of her, I glanced at my watch. “No, it’s okay, honey. I’m still early. Besides, this is much more important than opening a new case.”

  “No, Gil. You don’t understand.”

  “Come on, honey, I’m trying to say sorry.”

  “I mean you have to leave this house. For good.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Suddenly, I felt like I had stepped off the top of the J.P.Morgan building without an elevator. Like one of those jumpers from the WTC on 9/11. There was nothing underneath me except hundreds of feet of empty air.

  I stood up. “What the hell are you talking about, Ruth?”

  “I didn’t want this,” she said. “I tried. I really did. But you have to leave this house, Gil.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  I don’t know why I said that because Ruth wasn’t the type to say anything like that lightly. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward me, but already it felt like she wasn’t my wife anymore and that love and understanding were behind us and that even now we were each returning to our separate pasts and who we had been before we ever met and that what we were to each other for more than eight years was gone.

  She shook her head, firmly. “No,” she said. “I am not.”

  “What, are you crazy?”

  “I’m not crazy, no. But I will be if I continue living with you, Gil. The fact is, I can’t believe in something I hold to be important and still be around someone who doesn’t believe it at all.”

  “Nobody dumps their husband because he’s no longer a fucking Christian. It’s positively medieval.”

  “Well, there you go again. Nobody, huh? ‘Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?’”

  “Ruth? You sound like a fanatic. The sort of people who come out with this kind of thing? We call them Christianists at the Bureau. They’re just as crazy as Islamists only they sing cheesier songs. I can’t believe that’s you, Ruth. Listen to yourself.”

  Ruth closed her eyes. “Listen to myself, he says. Nobody else talks to me. Not you. Not anymore. You tiptoe around me like I’m some kind of minefield.”

  “This isn’t about God or my loss of faith, is it?” I said.

  “Well, that certainly doesn’t help.”

  “It’s about her, isn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you say her name? I’m sure you can’t have forgotten it, Gil.”

  “I thought we were over all that.”

  “And with God’s help, I really think we might have been. But that’s not to be, I can see that now.”

  “God’s got nothing to do with what happened in Washington.”

  “With what happened? No, you’re right about that much, Gil. But I really thought he might help us to shape a future for ourselves. I need God and Lakewood Church because I really can’t do this by myself. I’m not strong enough. And you don’t help, Gil. You’re so detached from me—from me and Danny. Well, you have your work to think about, of course. And I don’t deny that yours is important work. You are helping to keep our country safe. It’s work anyone can be proud of. But with you, it’s more than just work—it’s a refuge, a sanctuary, a compulsion. You come back and you’re all closed up and neat and tight and secure, like a gun safe. But what have I got? Where else can I take refuge but in God and Lakewood? I’d like to know. And don’t say the club. I’m not like those other Houston women who spend all day in the spa having their nails done and reading H Texas.”

  “You were a fine lawyer. You could go back to work, Ruth.”

  She shook her head.

  “You were good at it.”

  “Only you thought so. But I didn’t have the teeth for it. I was too forgiving to be a decent prosecutor. That’s what the DA said.”

  “You could get a job in private practice.”

  “It wasn’t all right for you, but it might be all right for me, is that what you’re saying? You’re joking, of course. People in law firms these days put in twelve-hour days and more. I made a choice, Gil. A choice to be a wife and a mother. Besides, I really don’t want to leave Danny with a nanny.”

  “Lots of women do.”

  “I didn’t try so hard to have our child just to farm his care out to a stranger.”

  “All right. I understand that, honey. But please, let’s try to work this out.”

  “Work it out.” Ruth smiled a weary little smile. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last few months? What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been desperately hoping that I could see some sign that you were happy with just me and Danny. That you’d forgotten about her. Nancy Graham. There, I said her name. I lie awake at night and see it written in the at
oms of air above our bed. But I know you haven’t forgotten her. I can see it in your eyes. It’s not just God and the church that you don’t believe in, Gil. It’s me and Danny. It’s our life in Houston. It’s us.”

  “Oh, that’s nonsense, Ruth.”

  “Is it? I don’t think so. Your atheism is a symptom—an important symptom—of something much more profound. Of a deeper fracture between us as a couple. Maybe you can’t see it. But I can and I just don’t want to deal with it. Not anymore. You think you can humor me with—what was it you said? With what you are prepared to pay lip service to for the sake of family harmony? Well, I’m through with lip service. And I’m through with you. I want more than just lip service from my marriage. I want a connection. I want a union. I want a conversation. I want—I want you gone.”

  “Do you honestly think I’m just going to walk out of here without a fight? No way.”

  “As you like,” she said. “But don’t you think we’ve done enough fighting? That’s why I’m telling you that you have to leave.”

  “This isn’t over, Ruth,” I said, grimly picking up my car keys.

  “Yes, it is,” she said.

  “We’ll talk about this when I come home tonight.”

  “No, we won’t,” she said.

  “Yes, we will,” I said. “Not to talk about it. You think that’s what God wants? Not to give me a chance to put things right.”

  “You should go,” she said.

  SEVEN

  Working late kept my mind off what was happening at home. Ruth and Danny were no longer there. She was already back with her parents; their home—a twelve-hundred-acre hilltop ranch in Corsicana—was the first place I telephoned when I discovered Ruth was gone, and it was all Bob could do not to sound pleased when he said that she didn’t want to speak with me. He always felt that Ruth could have done better than pick me. I suppose all fathers feel that way about their only daughters; but it’s not often they tell you as much.