by Alex Dolan
“French, right? I thought those people lived forever.”
“Not the ones who smoke.” That came out meaner than I’d meant it. “That’s not even what’s killing her. She’s only at stage two. She also has Waldenstrom’s disease.”
“Sounds like you made that up.”
“Bone marrow cancer. When it rains it pours. The illness exterminates leukocytes—white blood cells. She’s had blood transfusions, but it’s past the point where they’d be any help. In a few months she’ll die from influenza or another common infection.”
“You talk to the doctor this time to make sure this is all on the level?”
I frowned, but had no rebuttal. “I met with the doctor and the family weeks ago. They wanted her to come home to France. They just passed a law that allows physicians to accelerate death for the terminally ill. She’d get what she wants without having to skirt the law.”
“Why doesn’t she just—”
“She’s not strong enough to travel.”
Beatrix LaCroix lived in a shoddy apartment complex yellowed by flaking paint. Unattended vines tangled up the side like a squid fighting a sperm whale. When we parked, the wind stream waned, and we humidified. Under my wig, sweat beaded up in moments. Leland’s demeanor changed. He adopted a precise, manicured sense of respect, like a mannequin come to life. Maybe this was how he held himself at the FBI field office. “Do you want to go in first?”
“She knows you’re coming. You think I wouldn’t tell the client I’d have company?”
He’d given me back my brown aviator satchel, and I gathered it under my arm while we paced briskly to the door. Since I was in costume, I wanted to get off the street as soon as we could. Beatrix kept her key above the doorframe, and I let myself in. She waited for us in a dark bedroom.
She was a tiny peanut swaddled in an old pink quilt. She didn’t like the sunlight and kept the blinds drawn. A gold-framed portrait of Jesus hung over her bed, anemic with a long horse face. The opposite wall displayed a crucifix made from intertwined driftwood. She rasped, “Kali.”
“Hi, Beatrix.”
She wore her white hair in a pixie cut. The pillow matted it to the side, making her look Reaganesque. A photo on the dresser showed her in her twenties; back when she looked like Bardot. The oversaturated Kodachrome burst with orange and pink, with Beatrix dressed in a mod skirt that showed off her knees. Back then, before she moved to the States, she had milky skin. After decades of American beaches, she had turned the color of bourbon.
Beatrix never remarried after her husband, Henri, passed away. That was nine years ago. She lost her house, and lived in the apartment because she didn’t want to move in with her son or go back to France. On the nightstand, another framed photograph showed her husband holding her tightly around the waist from behind, their cheeks touching. My favorite was a family shot: Beatrix, Henri, and three kids—two daughters and one son all under ten years old. They stacked on top of each other as if they’d just collapsed a human pyramid, everyone was laughing. I met the family three weeks ago when they flew into town, and only the eldest smiled at me to convey gratitude.
“Who’s that?” Beatrix cooed. Leland loomed behind me but clammed up, which I imagined was an unusual show of willpower.
“Remember, I mentioned someone would be coming with me?” I had told Beatrix and her family that I’d be bringing an associate. As I’ve mentioned, the amount of people can vary during a final visit, and since none of my clients or their families had ever been through a terminus before, they believed me when I told them the process worked better with two people.
“What is your name?” she asked the federal agent. When she got agitated, her homeland accent came out. Beatrix turned is into ease.
“My name’s Malcolm, Mrs. LaCroix,” he said. I swear I wanted to smack him.
“What do you do that she doesn’t?” Beatrix was sharper-toned than when we’d last met. The stranger in her house stirred up something.
Admittedly, it satisfied me to see Leland squirm for a change. Beatrix drew the quilt toward her chin, perhaps questioning whether to go through with it. If she canceled, I’d be fine with it. It would show Leland that he was a fool and prove that I wasn’t reckless. If Beatrix really wanted my help, I could come back another day.
“I help with spiritual matters.” You wouldn’t think a line like that would go over, but Leland was earnest and respectful in a way he’d never acted toward me. He stepped around me and motioned to an empty chair by her bed. “May I?”
“Yes,” she said. “Are you a priest?”
Leland sat. “A priest wouldn’t be allowed to be here.” He picked up the Bible that sat on her nightstand. “I thought we might pray while Kali got ready. Would you like that?”
Fucking stones on this guy. But Beatrix brightened. And Leland was warm, as warm to this frail woman as he was to his son. I was seeing a different man. Beatrix responded well, lowering her quilt. He placed one of his large hands over her petite ones and asked, “Are you cold?”
“Not now,” she said.
When my clients prayed, I bowed my head, but I couldn’t pray with them. You can’t fake faith, and I thought it would have been disrespectful to try.
“Let’s get you comfortable. Beatrix, are you ready for this?” he asked.
“I am. I want this.” She was physically weak, but vigilant. Leland nodded to acknowledge her wishes.
“Then let’s pray.” He closed his eyes. Beatrix did the same. He murmured the Lord’s Prayer. Even a nonchurchgoer like me knew that chestnut by heart. “Our Father which art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name…” If you’ve ever been in a church, odds are you know the rest. Both of them chorused the recitation in earnest. I confess this might have been the first time I’d paid attention to the words. Leland spoke as if he’d written the words himself. She closed her eyes and held tightly onto his hand, maybe hoping she could sleepily ease into the afterworld just by following his voice.
All of this was off script, so I should have been outraged. But it worked. He was helping her. I dug through my satchel while they prayed, slightly mesmerized myself.
When she opened her eyes to his, Leland followed. “I’d like to read something else. Something special for you, for today. Would that be all right?” Beatrix nodded, captivated. I’d never noticed before, but to the right person and under the right lighting, Leland Moon could be handsome. She gazed at him as if he were a matinee idol dipping her for a kiss. From his suit pocket he retrieved a Bible about the size of a cell phone. He’d placed a pink Post-it where he marked the section. “Revelation chapter twenty-one, verse four.” He slowed down so they could both savor the words. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For the former things are passed away.” Tears formed in Beatrix’s eyes, and Leland plucked a tissue from the nightstand. He dabbed her cheek, familiar as a relative.
Is it wrong to say that I felt left out? Probably. Assuredly selfish. But this was my show, and Leland had nudged me aside. He addressed me as if he was in charge, and I was the associate. “Kali?” He said it in the way a stage manager would precede. “You’re on.”
What was I to do but go along with it? Any tension between Leland and me would complicate the moment for Beatrix, and she was the most important person there. She had already warmed to him, and I had no selfless reason to make her more uncomfortable.
With a chair placed on the other side of the bed, Leland and I bookended our client. He had cradled her hand for some time. Gently as depositing a stray hatchling back into a nest, Leland lifted her hand and gave it to me.
I’d already explained to Beatrix how the process would work, but like other clients, she wanted me to go through it again. I tried to speak as much like a doctor as my training would allow. I would inject a high-dose barbiturate. She wanted to know details, so I told her—twenty milligrams of sodium thiopental. She would only
feel the slightest pinch. Once she was asleep—I avoided using the word coma—I would administer a second injection, twenty milligrams of pancuronium bromide.
Leland listened keenly. If he could have taken notes without it seeming too clinical, he might have.
His tone and body language were intended to set Beatrix, and possibly me, at ease, but having him there made me self-conscious. I’d never felt like my work was immoral, but having a federal agent on the other side of the bed made me feel like I was on stage—worse yet, auditioning. Now that he’d bonded with Beatrix through prayer, he’d nullified the caretaker aspect of my role. I was here as a clinician.
When I got through my explanation, she nodded to let me know she understood. She returned her attention to Leland, and he assured her, “We’ll get through this together. And he’ll be waiting for you.” Jesus or Henri—it didn’t matter. Maybe both.
Beatrix kept a tight grip on Leland’s hand while I prepared the syringe, and they silently prayed together with their eyes shut. I cradled her other arm, and beyond a mild flinch when the needle went in, she remained calm. Leland stayed still with her, respecting the solemnity of the moment. He held her hand firmly. His face grieved for her. With me holding one arm and he the other, I felt strangely connected to him. When her chin rolled to one side, I told him, “She’s asleep,” while I prepared the second needle. He could have said something, but he only gave the slightest nod. I inserted the second needle and depressed the plunger.
Together we felt the slight tremble when she passed. Only then did Leland open his eyes. He kissed her hand softly.
Chapter 11
One day later, I went with Leland on our second visit, the flip side of the trade. This time Leland drove in the family car, a decade-old cream SUV. Tesmer usually sat in the passenger seat, and I pushed back my seat so my knees wouldn’t bang against the glove compartment.
I didn’t know where we were going, but we ghosted through the Richmond Bridge toll plaza toward Marin County. Like a long, lazy roller coaster, the snaky span rolled over the water. Mild salty air breezed through the window—Leland’s open, mine closed. The hills were green most of the year, but without much rain in the summer, by the fall the straw grass colored the slopes beige as a Labrador retriever.
At Leland’s request, I dressed in a suit. He told me to look professional. “Office professional,” he’d put it. That meant light makeup and no wigs. Leland dressed in a suit himself, even thought it was Sunday, and he even wore a tie. Suits on a weekend made me think about church, and that reminded me of Leland’s prayer with Beatrix.
“I didn’t know you were religious,” I said.
“Most of the country is.”
“You didn’t strike me as someone with a spiritual bent.”
“I guess people can surprise you.” He kept his eyes on the road, his voice flat. He’d lost some zest since we visited Beatrix. Leland took no delight in taunting me that day. His manner cold, I suspected he felt he had witnessed something he considered murder and had done nothing to stop it. And he wasn’t saying anything about it now because he still wanted my help and didn’t want to disrupt the deal by arguing.
I wasn’t looking forward to whatever this trip was going to be, but at least we were getting it over with. Wherever we were going, we’d be finished by the end of the day. He’d have seen my world, and I would have seen his, and that would be the end of it. Still, the tension in the car was stifling. I could have just kept quiet, but that unquenchable caretaker impulse got the better of me. Even with Leland. When I saw someone that visibly upset, I couldn’t help but try and comfort him.
I asked, “Is something wrong?”
“Something more than usual?”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“You’re really asking a federal agent if you’ve done something wrong?”
“Our last meeting made you uncomfortable.”
“You think?”
Kali had attended clients for four years now. The process seemed natural. But to Leland it was new. He had attended his first terminus just the day before. I imagined back when it was new for me, the discomfort I felt, even for someone who was emotionally disposed to this work. I’d puked a few times after some clients’ final visits, and sometimes drank myself into tequila bed spins—which meant more puking. I understood why even a seasoned agent like Leland Moon would have been morose. He couldn’t have been shocked by death itself, but he hadn’t seen death like that. A newcomer might confuse clinical precision with a lack of humanity.
I tried to put him at ease. “You comforted her. That was good. The prayer helped her.”
“Glad I could help.” He was as tetchy as his son.
“You asked to come.”
“I know I did.”
“Beatrix was suffering.”
“Someone who’s starving will take whatever food you give her, even if it’s poisoned.”
A part of me wanted to ask, “What the hell did you expect? Rainbows and gummy bears?” But there was only so much I could antagonize him. With our trade near completion, there was no need to stir things up now. Fortunately, the way the wind came into the car and made conch shells of our ears, we didn’t have as much silence to fill.
To our left Alcatraz stood marooned in the water. I’d toured the prison long ago and seen how small the cells were. Thinking of it now, I wondered about what my life might be like in prison.
“Why aren’t you telling me where we’re going?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
On the other side of the bridge, we turned through dusty hills until we came to a chain link fence topped with a coil of razor wire. Beyond it stood a compound of uniform white buildings. As the chain link fence wrapped around the compound, it led into a high concrete wall that separated the buildings from the water. We were at a prison. “This is San Sebastián,” I said.
The impulse to burst out my door would mean rolling on the pavement. Even if I survived the spill out onto the highway, a car rounding the bend in the opposite direction could plow into me. Poof! I’d be gone like Dad. I couldn’t see any guards yet, but I imagined them. Law enforcement types, barrel chests in uniforms straight off of a propaganda poster. I imagined the tight rows of cells in there, and imagined one particular cell, where a familiar figure laid atop a charcoal wool blanket, his blond hair still immaculately coiffed.
He slowed the car down as we approached the entry gate, and I unlatched my seatbelt and lunged for the door handle. Leland seized my wrist, right where the cuffs had gone. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not arresting you. This wouldn’t even be the place to do it. I’ve had every opportunity to bust you and I haven’t. Look at me.” Catching myself after a moment of paralysis, I wrenched my arm free. “This is not why we’re here.”
I was certainly thinking about captivity, but not mine. “Gordon Ostrowski is here.” He would always be here. When he died, they would bury him in the prison graveyard with a numbered marker. “I told you that wouldn’t be part of the deal. I’m not seeing him.”
“We’re not here for Gordon. He won’t know you were ever here.”
“I don’t believe you.” I jostled the door handle.
Leland threw the car into park and pulled his gun out of his holster. I should have grappled. That’s what they teach you in self-defense. Charge a gun, run from a knife. But in the moment I froze, considering the potential canon boom of a gun in a tight steel box, the likelihood of shattered windows and ricochets. The bullet might zing around and rip through us both. Before I could properly react, he handed it to me, grip first. “Kill me if I’m lying.” I took it from him and held it like a live grenade. Leland waited for a reaction. Daintily, I drew my seatbelt back across my chest and fastened it.
“We’re here to see Walter Gretsch.” Of course that’s why we were there. I’d been too self-involved to remember who else was locked inside the facility. Not that I wanted to be there anymore now, but my fingers released the door handle
.
“Don’t let the guard see it.” We drove around the chain link fence while I dropped the gun in the glove compartment. We arrived at a checkpoint. Through the windshield, I saw an armed guard step out of the booth. He was in his midtwenties—my age—and his full black beard reminded me of a young Fidel Castro.
When he rolled down his window, the guard joked, “Lost?” Leland flashed his badge. It didn’t earn any smiles, but within a few moments the white picket barrier lifted and we entered the compound. A small sense of suffocation squeezed my lungs once the fence was behind us.
The inner compound looked like the worst miniature golf course I’d ever seen. They’d built the sniper tower to resemble a small lighthouse. I couldn’t see any guards up there, but bullhorns crowned the top. The main entrance reminded me of a medieval castle, but faced in stucco, complete with peaked cathedral windows and a flat rooftop with crenellations, originally designed for archers. The paint on all of it was the color of bird shit, but occasionally the paint and plaster flaked off to reveal brick. Instead of guards patrolling the rooftops, swiveling cameras perched like crows on every building, watching us from every angle.
“You know why they call it San Sebastián?” Leland asked.
I thought about the guys in the department who regaled me with stories about California history. You go on enough rides with them, you pick up something. “I assume there was a Mission San Sebastián here at some point.”
“You’re almost correct. There was a Spanish mission here, but it was Mission San Ramon. It was renamed. In the early 1800s, let’s say 1830 or so, there was an alcade—that’s a mayor—up here named…” he had to come up with it, “Fermín Rubio. He was a friar, but he also got saddled with running the politics. He was the local magistrate—that’s what guys like that did. Anyway, other than a random assortment of settlers, he was close with the indigenous locals, the Miwok tribe. Got to pick up some of the customs. He was good with a bow and arrow, so good the chief gave him a bow covered in snakeskin. You understand, this was a good gift—he was on good terms with everybody. But then Rubio’s own people had to go and screw it all up. Mexico was newly independent, and local Mexican rancheros were kidnapping Miwoks to work on their ranches. Sometimes they’d just slaughter a whole bunch so the rest wouldn’t resist. To sort it out, Fermín Rubio found these people, and when he did, he executed them. He’d sworn off guns, but he was handy with a bow, so he would strap the victim to a tree, this tree,” he pointed to a gnarled oak by the front gate, with a thick trunk and twisted branches, “and plug him full of arrows.”