The Moment Before

by Jason Makansi

  John zoomed in on one image and looked up at Holly. “What do you think?”

  She peered over his shoulder, close enough that her breasts were pressed up against his back. “I don’t know. I was young then and he’s old now. I just can’t tell if it’s the same man.” Then she smacked him on the shoulder making him flinch. “John! I have to go home.”

  “Home? Okay, are you coming right back?”

  “No, I mean home home. Joliet. My mom’s storage container. I remember one Fourth of July picnic where my father took a picture of me, Maya, and Moody.” She couldn’t stop herself from shuddering at the memory. “Her old pictures are in her storage locker, and if I can find it I’ll know for sure if the guy is really Moody or not.”

  John was on his feet. “I’m coming with you.”

  She already had her purse over her shoulder. “No. I need to do this by myself. Besides, you have … you have other obligations.”

  He heaved a long sigh and chewed on his lip. Jesus Christ, he wanted to go with her. He wanted to be with her. “Okay, okay. You’re right.”

  “I need to borrow your phone, though. I have to call Penndel.”

  A stab of jealousy tore through him. “You’re taking Penndel?”

  She looked up at him, her head cocked slightly. “No, just letting him know where I’m going and to call you if his guy finds anything.” She held out both hands. “No cell phone, remember. And then I need to call my uncle, let him know I’m coming.”

  She left a message for Penndel and then dug through her purse for her old phone book. She dialed the eldest of her uncles and waited as the phone rang and rang. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” she mumbled. Finally, a deep voice came on the other end of the line.

  “Uncle Peter? It’s Cheryl. I need to get into Mom’s storage unit.” She’d only been into the storage unit once since her mother’s funeral. It was full of the things no one wanted to part with, but no one wanted to live with, either. “I’m coming up today.”

  “Today? Give me an ETA, and I’ll meet you there.”

  “No!” Holly hoped she didn’t sound too eager not to have him there. Uncle Peter had always been good to her, in his own gruff way. “What I mean is if you will just give me the code to get into the unit, that’s all I need. I don’t want to inconvenience you. There are some things I’d like to go through. On my own, you know?” She hoped that sounded convincing.

  Her uncle gave her the code and she wrote it down and repeated it twice. After she hung up, she turned back to John. She’d been sitting on the edge of his desk, and John had been watching her with something between mild panic at her leaving, happiness at being able to help her find some answers, and a longing so deep it bore right through his soul.

  “I want to go with you.”

  “You know you can’t.”

  “I know, but, Jesus, Holly—”

  “I’ll call if I find anything. Promise.” And then she was gone.

  She pulled into Joliet late afternoon, the sun having neatly tucked itself beneath the horizon for the day. She drove out to the facility on Mall Loop Drive, territory unfamiliar to her. She had only been back to Joliet a handful of times, usually for the ritualistic holidays with family on the other side of town.

  The code worked fine, as did the lock on their unit. She pulled up on the cord to the garage-door like entrance and wondered when was the last time anyone had been here.

  In no time, she found the deep, plastic storage bin containing shoeboxes full of photographs, some of which had been maniacally categorized, labeled, and organized in her father’s neat script, and others which had been just tossed into boxes. Those had been taken after her father disappeared. The rustic smell of the cedar chest that once held these photographs at the house on Eastern Avenue materialized out of thin air like an old favorite song hanging in memory.

  Her father had loved to take pictures. Her mother hated having her picture taken, unless she was in uniform. Holly had always been the stand-in whenever Elias needed a person in his photographs. She remembered the hand-held contraption that printed words on thin strips of hard plastic with an adhesive stubborn enough to someday become an archeological artifact. And she remembered that he had sent photos home to Aleppo, to her grandparents, along with whatever extra money he could part with. All through Father Moody.

  Holly opened a box labeled, Shishkabob Feasts. She thumbed through the photographs, but couldn’t help dwelling on several of them. It had been decades since she had seen these, since just her mother’s funeral. Many were of Maya and her family, shots from a distance of her mother, even shots of the food! He had wasted an entire roll, it appeared, on the trays of baklava from different close-up angles. There were plates of food, bowls full of cubes of meat, piles of sliced tomatoes and onions, different shots of cucumber and yogurt salad in various bowls, and slices of bread soaked with the meat’s juices. That was her father, she thought, occupied with the minute details that made life worth living.

  The hot, stale air of the corrugated box was stifling, so Holly took a few boxes of photos to her car, sat sideways on the passenger seat, legs stretched and crossed out under the door, ankles resting on the pavement.

  Here was a full box of photos of her mother in her police uniform, not as opposed to having her picture taken if she could hide behind her badge. Holly’s eyes prickled despite herself, but she retained her composure. She had a job to do.

  She returned to the box labeled the picnic feasts. She looked for the one, recursive memory she had, of being posed by her father with Maya and Father Moody in front of that big black car. Her skin began to crawl in the same way it had so many years ago when the man touched her.

  She found a photo of Elias and Father Moody, which must have been taken by her mom, or maybe one of the uncles. After a few more minutes pouring through each of the photographs, she found the one of her as a nine year old with Moody and Maya. Immediately, she matched the outfit she was wearing to the age she was at the time.

  From the glove compartment, she picked up the set of photographs she’d taken of the man on the bench. She held the new one next to the older one, faded black and white and yellowed at the edges. No resemblance. Then she compared them in the brighter light of the car’s headlights. She couldn’t even tell whether the heights of the two men were similar since one was taken with him sitting down and the other standing up. Is this what happens when you age, Holly wondered. Or was plastic surgery involved? The face of the man on the bench certainly didn’t seem artificial, but who knew? And who knew who he really was? And what his connection to her father was. He’s a trusted friend, her father always said. “I don’t think so,” she said to the photo.

  The place was now lit only by yellow halogen lights. Loneliness hung over the facility and she felt like a child frustrated and fearful she couldn’t find her way out of a maze. No, she was now finding her way to the end of that damn maze. Finally. She heard the crunch of gravel. At the other end of the row of storage units, another car had parked. A woman got out of the vehicle and proceeded to unlock her unit. Whatever it was the woman was looking for, Holly hoped she’d find it.

  Holly put the box in the back seat and went back into the unit. Seeing the images of the clothes her father used to wear brought back the scent of tobacco, the cigarettes, small cigars, and even the long periods when he smoked a pipe. The smell had permeated everything that originally came from Syria, lingering with a tenacity that she even now marveled at. It had been an odor beyond her ability to categorize, and now it called to her. She dug a flashlight out of her trunk and started rummaging through boxes. Her mother had saved all of his clothes after all, instead of disposing of them like she’d threatened so many times.

  An hour later, she pulled out an old wool sweater, held it to her nose and inhaled. She felt like she’d found an old friend, The fabric was thick, baggy, and sturdy, a supple form of burlap, if such a thing existed, and with two large buttons and a belt, it was more like a short bathro
be than the kinds of sweaters people wore now. It hung low, below the hips and the large pockets on each sides could comfortably house a puppy. She remembered her father wearing it. And later, after he was gone, she remembered slipping it off the hanger and wearing it when her mother wasn’t around. She ran a finger around one of the buttons and then folded it carefully and put it back in the box. She stood to go, stretching her back and wondering what time it was. She was about to pull down the door, but then stopped. What was she thinking? She didn’t know when she’d get back to Joliet to sort through everything one final time. She’d have to do it sooner or later. But for now, there was one thing she knew she was taking with her. She went back to retrieve the sweater.

  Once in receipt of Holly’s photograph of the two girls standing next to the man in front of a long black sedan, John sent a copy to Penndel and Stuart. Penndel’s friend’s friend, the facial recognition expert, matched the recent photo Holly took in the park and the old one Holly retrieved from her mother’s storage container. “The match has a ninety-five percent confidence level,” he told Holly.

  “I knew it,” she said.

  In DC, Stuart took one look at it and knew it was the same Vernon Meracle he’d interviewed. John told him Holly was the girl on the left, but Stuart knew immediately which one she was. The blonde proprietor of Holly Chicago’s bar in Cairo was still years in the future, but the shape of the face and the little girl’s eyes hadn’t changed. He still remembered them from all those years ago.

  As a child, Holly’s hair had been dark brown, almost black. She made a sour face at the camera and visibly leaned away from the man next to her. Her shorts hung down to above her knees, and she wore a peasant blouse with a cap like a Greek sailor would wear, short brimmed, almost like a beret, cocked to one side.

  The waste of it all washed over Stuart again. Holly’s life had been upended because of the political calculations some bureaucrat made, calculations that did not include the unintended consequences of little girls losing their daddys. His heart clenched and he thought of his own daughters.

  He swore under his breath, picked up the phone to let John know Holly’s photo provided more confirmation, as if any more was needed, that Moody and Meracle were the same man, and that Holly could be confident he’d definitely been involved in her father’s disappearance.

  “Nothing is more satisfying than solving a problem from multiple directions and arriving at the same answer,” Stuart told John. “Convergence in data mining is sublime.”

  “So, now that we’re positive this Vernon Meracle character is the one associated with Holly’s father and that her father is at Guantanamo,” John said, “what do we do now?”

  “You tell Holly.”

  The Saturday after she returned from Joliet, Holly woke up needing coffee more than normal. She slipped on her father’s sweater and drove to Egyptian Grounds. She ordered her usual and went outside. It was cloudy and looked like it could rain, but it was still nice enough to sit at one of the little café tables. She set her coffee down, and, unconsciously pushed each hand into the respective pockets of her father’s sweater. A piece of paper rustled. It felt odd against the skin of her fingers. Something of her father’s, an errant grocery list or a receipt? The paper was folded into a tight square. The smoothness of Scotch tape on one end.

  She lifted it out; regarded it closely. On the one side, her mother had written: For Cheryl - March 1994. Holly’s heart sank as so many thoughts ran through her head, she couldn’t possibly grab one of them, tie it down, or make sense of it. The date was one month before her mother had died.

  43

  February, 1973

  Paula left the twenty-second precinct in southwest Chicago after her shift ended at 11:00 p.m., drove south on Longwood Ave., east on west 115th Street, picked up Interstate 57 South to I-80 West, then the Lincoln Highway into Joliet. The drive was so automatic, she almost forgot about the detour she had to make before going home. Or maybe she wanted to forget.

  After she’d finally reached her decision, Father Moody had given her detailed instructions on where to meet his contact, but she’d scribbled them on a piece of paper and almost left it balled up in her locker at work. Now the wrinkled paper sat on the seat next to her with her own barely legible writing staring up at her. Did she really want to keep this appointment? She shuddered. The last time she’d met Moody, back in August, was in a remote parking lot sandwiched between a forest preserve and a row of industrial warehouses. It was the kind of place that Paula Kabelevsky Haddad the cop knew bad people went to conduct unsavory business. Where would the new set of directions lead her?

  She had always considered Father Moody one shifty fucker, but bowed to Elias’s wishes whenever he invited him over for one of his grand shish kabob picnics. He wanted his neighbors to know about the priest from Chicago with the fancy car; his father’s trusted friend from the home country. The meeting in the remote parking lot proved exactly how shifty the man was, but then, what did that make her?

  That night, she had spotted his Town Car, pulled up next to it, and rolled down her window. He suggested they talk in his car.

  “No diff,” she replied, and climbed out of her car. When she closed the door of Moody’s car, she was stunned by the blast of frigid air and strange music blaring from the stereo speakers.

  “Do you mortgage your home every time you fill this thing up?” she asked as she positioned herself close to the passenger door, keeping as much distance between herself and the priest as possible.

  “Yes, she has an unquenchable thirst.” The priest caressed the dash. “But she’s a voluptuous beauty.”

  “If you like big and—”

  “I like comfortable and commanding,” he said.

  “Well, the least you could do is turn down the air conditioning. Aren’t we supposed to be in an energy crisis or something? I’m freezing for Chrissakes, and it’s August.”

  “I did not come to this country to worry about fueling my car.”

  “And what’s this crap on the radio, anyway?”

  “Radio? What you’re listening to, in quadraphonic sound, Paula, is jazz pianist extraordinaire, McCoy Tyner.”

  “Sounds like jungle boogey to me, man.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “Okay. How about we get down to business?”

  “There’s nothing more to tell you, Moody. It’s over. I’m filing papers as soon as I get enough time to pay attention to it. The guy has no motivation. He’s no dumbass, but he still drives a cab after nine years. He throws these elaborate picnics for the whole neighborhood that I’m supposed to pay for on my salary. He sends half his earnings back home to people I’ve never even met.”

  “Hardly a cause for separation.”

  “Worst of all is he thinks I’m supposed to be a baby factory. We can hardly afford the child we got now. Look, Moody, I know you’re his benefactor, or whatever the hell this thing is between the two of you, but we had a shotgun wedding without the gun. He was handsome and exotic and I was young and stupid. The man has badgered me for nine years to have more children. I didn’t want the first kid. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love Cheryl. I really do. But it was never part of my life plan to have a kid at age twenty-two. I wanted to be a cop, not a mom. And Elias, he’s a dreamer. No aspirations. I’ve given it almost ten years. I’ve tried to do what’s right by Cheryl.”

  Moody shifted his body to face her, bending one leg over the other. He looked directly into her eyes. “These are still not grounds for divorce. Not in Elias’s world.”

  “What are you, a marriage counselor now, too?” She peered past the windshield into the thick foliage of the woods. “Okay, man, do I have to spell it out for you?” she said, her voice rising, as she leaned into his space. “He practically raped me one day when everyone was out of the house. I had no time to, you know, get protected. I assume you know what that means. I mean, it wasn’t rape per se. I wasn’t saying no to sex, that’s always been good with us. I was saying
no to sex without protection. It didn’t take long to realize I was pregnant again. I got the abortion. I meant never to tell him. I meant never to tell anyone, but once, I got so freaking mad, I unloaded on him. That was the beginning, and the end. We’ve barely looked at each other since.”

  Silence filled the interior of the car. Paula breathed deeply, taking in the smell of leather upholstery.

  “He wasn’t any good for you. He wasn’t any good for me.”

  “What do you mean? And anyway, what is your deal, Moody?”

  “I deal in information. You’re a cop. You know the value of good information. Your Elias had enough to fill a thimble. Barely. He’s been useless. His father double-crossed me. He sent me someone who knew nothing.”

  Paula was confused. The man was hanging around Elias, driving from Chicago for the Saturday feasts, to pry information out of her husband? Then her eyes widened. “Jesus Christ, you’re an informant? For who? The Feds? I’ve had you in my fucking house and you’ve been spying on my family? I may be done with Elias Haddad, but you—”

  “Paula, everything I do is for the good of my adopted country. And everything I do is completely legal.”

  “You are one slimy son of a bitch, Moody. You know that?”

  “I’ve been called worse. Now, I have a solution to your problem. Do you want to hear it or not?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “You want an end to your marriage. But you don’t want a messy divorce. You don’t want a custody battle because you fear a judge might think a mother who is also a cop cannot be a good mother.”

  “My hours are terrible and my job is dangerous.”

  Father Moody nodded. “And you don’t want a division of property in which you might fair poorly, and you can’t afford legal expenses. And if Elias has the sense to tell his attorney you had an abortion without his knowledge, your chances of being awarded custody will be next to zero.”