Fire in the Blood

by Perry O'Brien

  “I’m sorry, I’m just sort of wandering…”

  “It’s okay,” she said, with a merciful smirk. Coop was impressed with how cool she was, how unfazed.

  “So you don’t mind if I take a shot?” he asked, pointing to the game.

  Eva grinned. “You have the bridge.” She fed a few quarters into the machine before slipping off the chair.

  Coop seated himself at the console, aware of Eva’s warmth at his back.

  The little white ship appeared, and big, slow-moving rocks began drifting in from the borders of space. He got the hang of the controls and advanced through the first few stages. While she watched him play, Coop saw Eva take sips from a small glass bottle with a label covered in foreign characters. She saw him noticing and put the bottle in her coat.

  “I have a cold,” she mumbled. “Watch it,” she warned, as Coop narrowly missed a small, fast-moving rock.

  “You play this a lot?” he asked.

  “Got hooked in med school,” said Eva. “My roommate, she was Korean. Said the games make your brain more plastic.”

  “That’s a good thing?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eva. “Some days I think it just helps to blow stuff up.”

  He smiled, and saw her smile back in the screen’s reflection. “Uh-oh,” said Eva. “Hear that music? Alien coming for you.”

  Sure enough, a pixelated UFO came floating out of the abyss, firing lasers in every direction. Coop dodged in a wide arc.

  “You know,” said Eva, “my grandfather was in the Army. You heard of the Triple Nickel?”

  “Of course,” said Coop, battering the fire button to take down the UFO. He was genuinely impressed. The 555th Airborne was a legendary outfit among paratroopers. “When was he in?”

  “Did almost his full twenty. During World War Two he wanted to go to France but ended up jumping into Montana.”

  “The forest fires,” said Coop, remembering the story. As an experiment in nonconventional warfare, the Japanese had loosed hundreds of incendiary balloons into the eastern jet stream, hoping to set fire to the American coast. The Army’s countermove was the first black airborne unit, all recruited from Buffalo, New York. The way Coop had heard it, generals at the time had been reluctant to use African American paratroopers in real combat, so instead they dropped them into the great conflagrations of the Northwestern wilderness, and the Triple Nickel became history’s first smoke jumpers.

  “Later he was in Korea with the Rangers,” said Eva.

  Coop whistled. “He must have some stories.”

  Eva smiled faintly but didn’t respond. Then the game ended: rocks came from the darkness to obliterate Coop’s little ship.

  “I have to dry,” said Eva. Coop followed her out of the little arcade. He blinked under the harsh, corrosive fluorescence of the laundromat, watching Eva unload her clothes. He caught sight of a damp tangle of purple underwear and automatically looked away.

  “The police,” Eva was saying. “Did you talk to them?”

  “What?”

  Coop had been distracted, but now he looked up and was surprised to see the expression on Eva’s face, staring off. Anger. She’s pissed at me, thought Coop. And then realized, No. She looks mad at herself.

  “Have you talked to the police yet?” she said again. “About what happened to Katherine?”

  “There was a detective at the funeral,” said Coop. “But he didn’t know shit.”

  “No,” said Eva. “Of course not.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  All the best soldiers are criminals, Coop had once been told. This piece of wisdom came from a vagrant named Gerard who used to hold court at Tommy’s Park back in Portland, Maine, in the fall of 1999. At the time, all the news was focused on Seattle getting overrun by protesters, and the big countdown. Only a month left until Y2K was scheduled to wipe out the universe. Meanwhile, nothing was happening in Portland. Nothing better to do than drift around the Old Port, stand around in the cold. Listen to an old gutter punk tell war stories.

  That night Gerard squatted on a boulder in the park, gripping his paper-bagged bottle of malt liquor. Gerard dressed like a beggar, with a mangy goatee and a newsboy cap. He had wrinkles around his eyes and a smoker’s voice that sounded like rocks getting crushed in his larynx. Nobody knew much about him, except that he’d been a medic in the Army before getting kicked out, and he still wore a big red cross stitched onto the back of his leather jacket. He couldn’t have been older than thirty, but to Coop he seemed ancient.

  “You guys know anything about the DMZ?” he asked the scattered audience of teens. “That’s in Korea. Where unbeknownst to the general fucking populace, there’s still a war going on.”

  Gerard said sometimes the North Koreans would sneak over the border, and the next morning his unit would find a sentry with a slashed throat.

  “The military always calls it a training accident, because nobody wants a real war. No, you get murdered out on the DMZ and you’ll never get a Purple Heart. Never a parade. Just a phone call to your family from some junior officer.”

  Gerard made his hand into a phone and assumed a tone of mock formality. “Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss, but please understand that even in the safest training circumstances, accidents can happen.”

  This led Gerard to the subject of officers. He spat on the brick floor of the park, and with no warning whirled to point a finger at Coop.

  “You resemble a smart young man,” Gerard said. “Tell me something: Did George Washington ever kill a man?”

  Coop faltered.

  “Well?” said Gerard, standing up. He seemed emboldened by Coop’s confusion. “Did Mr. Founding Father ever put a redcoat between his sights? Did he take saber in hand, did he swipe at another man’s bowels?”

  Gerard rasped and sputtered, making fencing motions with his beer.

  “He did not!” Gerard bellowed. “After all, why would he soil his white fucking gloves? Now what about Lee or Grant? Zero kills between those two. How about Patton, you think he killed any Nazis, I mean personally? Not with his fancy six-shooters, not with his epaulets. But surely—Eisenhower? I mean, Eisenhower.”

  Gerard held up a splayed hand. “Five stars.”

  He began dropping fingers: “But—not—one—single—kill.”

  Gerard took a swig of his malt liquor. “You know who wins wars?” he said. “It’s the criminals. People who know how to hurt people and break shit. People like me.”

  Later, if Coop had to pick a single reason why he joined the Army, he’d always think of Gerard. Not his rants but his wrinkles. Because that night, after leaving Gerard alone in the park with his bottle, Coop had gone into the bathroom of Java Joe’s coffee shop and looked himself hard in the face. He stretched the skin around his eyes, looking for signs of those premature hard-ass lines. At the time, Coop had liked to think of himself as hard. But in that moment, pulling at the baby skin of his face, Coop had understood that he was fundamentally untested.

  Of course, months later when he went to the Army recruitment center on Congress Street, Coop had told himself all the usual lies about travel, college money, and job skills. But the truth was, he never joined the Army to have a future, he did it because he wanted to get a better past.

  Now, as he exited the subway at Mosholu Parkway, Coop found himself thinking of Gerard’s historical rant. People like me.

  He walked north under the shadow of the elevated subway track. Overhead the sky was deep and gray, with swatches of blue beneath the heavy clouds.

  His coat jingled. Though he’d been forced to leave his demolition kit in Afghanistan, Coop had brought along his sapper’s D-ring: a heavyweight black carabiner hung with a jangling assortment of tools—tweezers, hex wrenches, keys, screwdriver bits, odd twists of wire. He also had a tactical flashlight and the Strider knife he’d
checked in his duffel bag.

  I’m just looking, Coop reminded himself. Just looking.

  The Mosholu Medical Offices were situated in a narrow three-story building. No lobby, just a locked door with swipe card access. Across the street was a bodega. Coop hunkered down inside, where a jumble of tables and aluminum folding chairs were occupied by hospital employees in white coats and scrubs, slurping coffee and eating sandwiches on big crusty rolls. Coop found a seat where he could watch the building through a few gaps in the Mexican beer ads that were pasted on the windows.

  A white van pulled up to the offices, and from the back doors came three guys in coveralls. One swiped an access card while another used a milk crate filled with cleaning bottles to prop open the door while they ferried supplies from the van.

  A rumble began down the train line. Coop stood up and left the bodega, cold wind swirling down his neck. Checking up and down the street, he saw a parked police car on the next block, windows darkened in the shade. Coop hunched his shoulders as the noise of the approaching train grew, and he looked back at the open door. Two of the cleaners were carrying a floor buffer through the side doors. The train passed overhead like a giant metal rattle in the sky, and Coop crossed the street. The cleaners didn’t seem to notice him; they had finished getting the waxer inside and were back rummaging in the van. On the platform above them the train doors opened and closed repeatedly, and the conductor’s amplified voice warned passengers to stay clear of the closing doors. The rumble of the train began again, and Coop followed the cleaners, quickstepping behind the crew as they carried more supplies into the building. He let them get a few paces ahead and opened the first door he passed, then slipped into a stairwell where he paused, listening to the fading clatter of the train.

  He crept up the stairs toward Presser’s office, which according to Eva was located on the third floor. He heard a movement in the walls, the whirring of gears. A passing elevator. The cleaners would start on the top floor, he reasoned, then work their way down. Coop exited the stairwell on the second floor, into an alcove with a crooked row of vending machines. Beyond, an empty receptionist’s desk and a wide hallway. He went down the corridor checking doors, leaving boot prints of dirty water behind him, looking for a place to hide. All the doors were locked.

  Coop put his hand on his head and paced in quiet circles, trying to think. Upstairs he heard the slap of mops and the whine of a floor buffer.

  He went back to the alcove. The glass-front snack machines looked like they’d been carelessly installed, each turned at a slight angle instead of sitting flush against the wall. Coop looked behind them, checking to see if they were bolted in place. Then he put on his winter gloves and squatted down in front of one of the machines. He worked his fingers underneath the front corner, took a deep breath, braced himself, and lifted, trying to pivot the massive weight. The dispenser trays rattled softly but the machine barely budged. He repositioned himself, panting as quietly as he could, then tried again, his legs and back straining. After a third attempt he finally managed to rotate the machine so it was angled a few more inches from the wall.

  Upstairs, Coop heard the buffer winding down. Then a door opened and voices echoed in the stairwell.

  He clambered over the top of the snack machine, trying to avoid smearing his muddy boots against the glass, and as the cleaners came down the stairs, Coop swung his legs down into the narrow scalene of space he’d opened between the machine and the wall. He squeezed himself into the gap, one elbow pressed to his side, dusty coils and prongs digging into his body. He waited there, breathing into his sleeve, while the cleaners went to work on the second floor.

  * * *

  —

  “Jesus, where do I begin?” Eva had said, a few hours earlier, after leading Coop from the laundromat to a small Hungarian pastry shop.

  “I didn’t know it when I started here, but Next Start is kind of a bootleg operation.” Eva spoke with her head lowered, fingertips pressed into the space behind her jaw, as if to ease the pain of this unburdening.

  “Bootleg?”

  “A scam. Let me ask you, does Presser seem like someone who cares about this community? Someone who wants to help people?”

  Coop shook his head.

  “No,” said Eva. “Guys like Presser come to the Bronx talking about the drug epidemic, how they want to do early intervention or introduce new kinds of care. They sell local electeds with this BS and score major grants from the state, then they use the public money as leverage to pitch the private equity firms. Meanwhile they don’t know anything about actually treating addiction, so we get these scam clinics that aren’t doing a damn thing except making money for people like Presser and his investors.”

  “People invest in rehab clinics?”

  Eva shrugged. “I guess the smart money is on heroin making a comeback. Anyway, there’s all kinds of ways to cut corners and make even more cash. Defrauding Medicaid, for one. But honestly, I think Presser might be into worse things.”

  At this point, Coop had felt compelled to interrupt. “Sorry, help me understand. How is all this connected to Kay?”

  “Okay,” said Eva, “so I was there when we found out. About Katherine. The police came to the clinic. This was after hours, just me and Dr. Presser, and after they left, I saw Presser carting a box of files to his car. Your wife’s case files.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “This situation is like Presser’s worst nightmare. Katherine always made him nervous. He was always asking about her, how she was doing. It’s her family—I think he was scared of them.”

  “Wait, why would he give Kay a job in the first place?”

  “I’m not sure he had a choice.”

  Coop thought about that. “Presser was at the funeral,” he said. “Trying to talk with Kay’s mother.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Eva. “He’s probably losing his shit right now.”

  “So what exactly would be in these files?” said Coop.

  “It could be a lot of things. But one possibility…Jesus, I shouldn’t do this to you…”

  Coop leaned forward and fought the urge to kick her under the table.

  “It could be that Kay was hurt by one of the clients,” said Eva.

  “Hurt?”

  “Attacked. Killed, I don’t know.”

  Eva’s lips were pressed tight. Her eyes dropped to the table between them.

  “We’ve had incidents before. Staff who’ve been threatened or grabbed. Mostly nothing serious, but a few months back one of our caseworkers was on a house visit, out of nowhere the client comes at her with hammer, chases the poor woman down the street.”

  “Goddamn,” said Coop.

  “Dr. Presser is supposed to report these things to the police. But see, if he did that, the clinic’s numbers go down and the government stops paying. I told him we needed to make the reports, that it was only a matter of time until something happened…”

  “So if Kay was assigned one of these dangerous ‘clients,’ that would be recorded in the files you mentioned? The ones Presser took from the clinic?”

  Eva nodded.

  “Any idea where he might’ve taken them?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. Why?” asked Eva, looking suddenly suspicious.

  “The detective I met,” Coop improvised. “I could tell him about the files, maybe get him to look into it.”

  He wore his most earnest, reassuring face.

  * * *

  —

  Coop waited until the building fell quiet again before extracting himself from behind the vending machine. Afterward he limped upstairs to the third floor row of offices and found 316, the number Eva had given him. As expected, the door was locked. On his D-ring Coop kept a collection of bump keys, each made from a standard house key but with the teeth filed off. He tried inserting these
one at a time into Presser’s door, found one that offered a reasonable fit, then used the weighted handle of his flashlight to rap on the key head. He flinched with each metallic crack, the sound echoing down the empty hall. After several strikes the pins clicked into place and the door came open.

  Darkness inside. Coop turned on his light and swept the room. The lab was made of several workstations, each cluttered with paperwork and medical equipment. Coop saw microscopes, cardboard boxes of slides and test strips, various electronic analyzers, and the open-mouthed pod of a centrifuge. Against the wall were storage lockers and a few miniature refrigerators. There were two other doors, one marked RESTROOM, the other half open, showing the outline of a desk and filing cabinet. Coop paused at this second doorway and aimed his light around the room.

  As with the lab, the furniture in Presser’s office was simple and impersonal. Scanning the room, Coop’s flashlight settled on a crumpled pile under the desk. A pair of corduroy pants. This discovery struck Coop as somehow disturbing. He continued searching the office, uncovering strange new signs of domesticity. There was bedding on the couch, and hanging from the doorknob, Coop found dress shirts hanging in crinkly plastic. Then on the desk he spotted a glass vial, and next to it, three lines of powder. Coop was trying to reconcile these dissonant details—evidence of a drug user living in the office of a rehabilitation doctor—when he heard a sudden eruption of liquid noise. The flushing of a toilet.

  All the signs of habitation coalesced into a sick fear, and Coop felt his entire body contract as he turned to see a figure stumbling into the doorway behind him.

  Nowhere to hide; Coop instinctively transferred the flashlight to his left hand, aiming it upward at a pinched and suddenly blinking face, and with his free fist slugged the man, pitching him sideways into the doorframe before he fell to the floor. Coop took a step back and shined his light on the man’s face.

  From the unconscious pile of Dr. Presser came a soft animal whine. He wore a dress shirt, boxer shorts, and one argyle sock, long hair splayed around him, murmuring through his blood-sticky beard.