Book of Judas--A Novel

by Linda Stasi

  “I’m sorry,” she responded as kindly as she could while trying to get the baby out of there. “Just one of you can ride. Which one is the parent?”

  “We both are,” I said. “We both are.”

  35

  At New York’s Metropolitan Hospital, Terry was rushed into the ER, and they let me stay by his side as they patched my arm up. I just had a flesh wound, but the baby? That was another story.

  Terry was placed in a little metal crib as the blood seemed to gush from wounds everywhere. I leaned in to him and sang in his ear once again my own words to Brahms’ Lullaby: “Terry boy, Mommy’s boy, Mommy loves you so much, ’cause you’re handsome and you’re nice, and you’re Mommy’s best boy. Terry boy, Mommy’s boy, Mommy loves you so much, Terry boy, Mommy’s boy, Mommy loves you so much,” over and over as they tried to get him to breathe normally.

  The monitors were blazing and suddenly, somehow, there were my parents and Dona and my brother, Arlo, in from California, by my side. And about a million cops until the doctors shooed everyone away. My mother, fiercely determined not to be turned away, showed the ER nurses her credentials and even they were cowed by her and permitted her to stay with me.

  A dome-shaped oxygen tent was placed over Terry’s crib, and we held on to each other staring down at my infant boy as the doctors tried to staunch the bleeding.

  Worse than they actually were—thank God—and that only a few required stitches. The others could be closed with surgical strips. At least there was that.

  We watched, helpless, as my suffering baby struggled for every breath—even my mother was helpless in a situation like this. Yes, she was a pediatrician, but it wasn’t her hospital and she wasn’t an ER doc. She checked that his legs and arms were moving.

  Terry looked so tiny in there, fighting for his life. I knew that Mom knew he had a slim chance of making it.

  I leaned close to the tent and began the lullaby again. My mother, her arm around me, said, “When he’s strong enough, they will have to take him for an MRI, you know. You understand that?”

  We both understood what she meant: They needed to assess possible spinal damage.

  It was a very, very long night of touch and go. Several times, the team came running back in when Terry stopped breathing. My mother and I just plopped down on the floor whenever they asked us to move.

  By noon, the doctors felt that Terry was strong enough to be brought down to the basement for an MRI, which was vital. They sedated him and Terry was moved with a board on his back. I cried as the horrible noise began, knowing my little boy was again in a black tunnel with no one to hold him. It must have been at least twenty agonizing minutes.

  Back in the ER in his little crib with the oxygen tent over it, the orthopedist gave us the news. And it was good. So good, in fact, that I began to actually breathe for the first time in I don’t know how long. The little guy had no spinal cord damage. That being said, however, he was far from out of the woods. It was still minute-to-minute, but Terry was finally sleeping in fits and starts with the help of the oxygen and being hydrated and medicated via IV.

  Mom begged me to take a break, to go get a cup of coffee for five minutes, but I wouldn’t leave. They let Dad come in, who took over the plea patrol: “We’re here. Please get some coffee and a donut for yourself. Just right outside in the hallway there’s a nice coffee cart.”

  No.

  Dad left and came back in with the heavy artillery: Gramma. My beloved grandmother must have rushed out so quickly that she was still in pajamas, robe, and fuzzy bedroom slippers. “Go get a donut and coffee. You’re going to give me a heart attack and I’ll die on the spot if you don’t do what I’m telling you,” she threatened, rubbing her chest.

  Nobody refused Gramma—especially Gramma in pajamas, who I knew from experience pretended to have a heart attack if we didn’t do what she asked—so I went to get a coffee. “I’ll be right here, honey,” Gramma said, shuffling me out as she plopped down on the floor next to my mother.

  Dad and I found Dona standing with Pantera right outside the door. How long had he been here?

  The hallway, too, was full of cops. I could see Dona had been crying, and when I came out, she grabbed me and hugged me like she’d never let me go. Then, Pantera took one hand and she took the other and walked me down the hall.

  Barracota was standing near the coffee cart with a bunch of suits.

  “Give us a moment alone,” Pantera asked—well, he actually told Detective Barracota.

  The detective just nodded and said, “I’m here when you’re ready to speak to us.”

  “My baby’s fighting for his life. He’s only a little tiny thing,” I cried, completely breaking down again. “I can’t. I can’t do anything right now but concentrate on him. I know you need to do whatever. Are they all dead—the kidnappers?”

  “We don’t know, Ms. Russo,” Barracota said.

  Pantera walked away with the detective, saying, “I can sort out some of what you need.”

  Dona and I sat down in the seating area near the coffee cart—which was, for such a sad place, incongruously decorated with happy decorations and stickers of smiley faces drinking coffee, suggesting, HOT! HOT! HOT! CHOCOLATE! and HAVE A SUPER DELISH DONUT! Jesus.

  Dona tried to bring me back to life. “Do you want a super delish donut? Never mind, I’m getting you one. You need the sugar.”

  She brought the coffee and half a dozen donuts over. Yes to the joe, no to the donuts. I took a sip. She had poured in what tasted like six sugars. She shrugged, sitting down next to me. “I figured you wouldn’t eat a donut.”

  After no more than two or three minutes, I got up, intending to go back into the ER. Pantera came over and indicated for me to sit back down and then he sat next to me on the other side. “I need to show you something,” he said, opening his phone.

  “What?”

  “It’s the cop video.”

  “That’s the last thing I need to see now!” I snapped.

  “Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dona stood up and glared at him like she would have killed him if there weren’t so many cops around. “Geezits, Mr. Pantera,” she seethed. Dona is very Christian and, unlike most reporters I know, she doesn’t take the name of Jesus in vain. “You are one insensitive son of a bitch.” She could, however, curse like a sailor, using every other word in her arsenal. She then attempted to snatch the phone away. It didn’t work. He was much nicer with my friends than he was with, well, anybody else.

  “Please just look at it,” he insisted, ignoring her demands and gently turning my face to the phone. “It’s important.” Dona let out a huff when I opened my eyes to watch, even as she stood—all six feet of her—hovering over us like a giant protective mama bird.

  The cops, I could see in the video, had brought huge spotlights down, so the tunnel was completely illuminated and filled with NYPD uniforms, SWAT team members, detectives, and forensics people.

  “How did you get this video?” I foolishly asked, turning away from the horror.

  He shrugged.

  “Please just watch,” he urged again. I saw detectives and what must have been the medical examiner—all in protective gear—turning over the body of the man in the suit.

  Dona leaned down to put her arms around me, and Pantera said, “Looks like they had Terry down in the tunnel for about twenty-four hours. It was a holiday yesterday so the sandhogs were off.

  “Thus, the desperation to get you down there immediately,” he said. “They didn’t think Terry would make it.”

  “Of course with the secret to…” I stopped. “This innocent baby lying in there had nothing to do with anything!”

  Dona, tears forming, deliberately looked at me only. “But Terry’s made of your incredible stock. He’ll make it. He’ll make it.”

  The next video showed the cops pulling up the mangled, blood-soaked, electrocuted body of the woman in the black coat and the man who’d tried to save her. Dona and I both re
flexively turned away. “You don’t need to look,” he said. “You know who they are.”

  I wanted to make sure, however. The cops were just zipping the yellow body bag over the woman’s charred face in a two-second shot. All that remained intact was one thing: an oversized, ornate cross hanging around her neck. Next came the body of Dane.

  “Jesus Christ, why?” I cried to the now-dead sons of bitches.

  They’d already hauled off the dead Russian, but I still am not sure I was ready for what came next. The next person was still remarkably alive. The video showed him, blood soaking thru the blankets, being lifted onto a gurney and rushed onto the elevator.

  “The kid’s fearless!” kept running through my head. At first I couldn’t tell, even with the hoodie pulled back, if it was indeed Donald, because they’d placed an oxygen mask over his face. Donald, is that you? Please don’t let it be you. But it has to be you.

  I heard Pantera’s voice call out in the video, “Hey, scumbag! We gave you a fake tube,” he said, which caused Hoodie to turn his face toward the camera. Greed wins out over logic every time. No. It couldn’t be him!

  “Jesus H. Christ,” I yelled out. “Larry. It’s fucking Larry! Bastard! I can’t believe that he was smart enough to pull this off,” I screamed, shaking my head and jumping up in disbelief. “He was only in my apartment that one time, when Donald babysat for me.”

  Pantera answered, “Well, I don’t know that he pulled it off. More likely they recruited him to get to you through Donald.” Then, almost rhetorically, he added, “Must have stolen an extra key when he was in your apartment alone with your ex-husband or handed it off to your neighbors to make a copy before you noticed it missing.”

  “I can’t imagine. You’re not saying Donald was in on it?” Well, not unless he was the one in the trench coat and fedora, but—no, it couldn’t be, I thought to myself. Donald would never let any harm come to Terry. Or maybe he would. Was he that angry that Terry is Pantera’s child?

  “No, not Donald,” I continued. “I don’t think he knew any of the players except for Larry as far as I can figure. He loves Terry.”

  “I believe that,” Pantera said without malice.

  Realizing, finally, that not all of the kidnappers had been accounted for yet, I asked, “But what about the last man—the one in the trench coat and fedora? If Dane was the mastermind…”

  Pantera looked down. “I’m not sure and there’s no more video. There was one more person and he got away.” He paused and looked down. “With the tube and the keys.”

  “So you don’t have…? You said it was a fake tube.”

  “It wasn’t,” Pantera answered.

  We were all the new Judases, then. I’d traded my son for the knowledge in those pages, and the Judsons had traded their lives for the shot at resurrection, yes, but the man in the fedora? Who the hell was he and what was he trading for eternal life?

  “I wonder why Raylene so wanted the secret to resurrection when her son was so long dead? So past bringing back to life? Just crazy, I guess.” I put my head in my hands. “And I trusted her with my precious little son!”

  Pantera put his hand on my shoulder. “Yes. But whoever they were dealing with wanted the pages more.”

  “I bet the Voynich Manuscript is no longer in my apartment, either. The man who got away is the one with all the marbles now,” I lamented, disgusted that I’d started this filthy business.

  “My God.” I let it soak in and sat there for a few minutes in stunned silence. We all did, although Dona didn’t understand the import of what it all actually meant. As the horror of what we’d done to save my boy filled me, my mother came rushing down the hall, breathless. “You need to go back in … Please hurry! Terry’s…”

  Without giving her a chance to finish, my heart in my throat, I bolted up and ran down the hall, slamming through the swinging doors of the ER, my mother shouting something behind me, trying to catch up. I paid zero attention to her, no idea what she was shouting.

  I made it to Terry’s crib literally in seconds. “Is he breathing?” I cried, shoving the nurses out of my way. Tears pouring down my face, I reached under the tent and experienced the second miracle of my baby’s life—the first one was his even being born after they told me I could never have a child. Terry’s eyes were open. He turned his sweet baby face toward my voice, his body full of tubes, his breathing steadier. Then? Sick as he was, he managed a tiny giggle. Once more, I experienced that thrill of hearing my baby’s laugh—the purest, most gorgeous sound in the universe. Never more so than it was right at that second.

  Then he coughed that terrible croupy sound again.

  All I wanted to do was grab him out of the oxygen tent and kiss him and hug him and kiss him some more. But I couldn’t. So I squeezed his little hand, trying not to disturb the tubes, and cried, “I am so sorry I let them take you. I will never let you out of my sight ever again. Mommy is so sorry. I love you so much and I am so sorry…”

  The big arms of Pantera were suddenly around me, pulling me away, up to his chest. “Shh. It was not your fault.”

  I just let the tears flow into and all over him. “It was and I won’t ever even try to forgive myself.”

  “It wasn’t and you have nothing to forgive yourself for.”

  Maybe. But still.

  The ER doors opened and they must have given the OK because my family came rushing through. Crying. We’re Italian, after all. Even my brother, Arlo, the corporate lawyer, who I always suspected was a WASP and had been switched at birth was drying his eyes on his expensive shirtsleeve.

  It was a great moment.

  Except for one thing.

  To save our own flesh and blood, we had given—to the Devil himself, a man who had nearly killed our son—all the power on Earth. And by my reckoning, powers well beyond this Earth as well.

  What had we done? And then there was Roy. In the horror, I’d nearly forgotten about my dear friend. He was rotting in a cell, and might remain in jail for the rest of his life. My beloved hero firefighter. My true brother.

  36

  For four agonizing days Terry remained in the pediatric step-down unit—one unit up from the ER, which meant he was not as critical as when he’d been brought in, but he was not out of the woods by a long shot. He had pneumonia, as I’d feared. Watching my baby and hearing him struggling for breath will forever remain the most terrifying sound in my life. It was almost worse than all that had come before.

  There was a bed for me next to Terry’s crib, and two big sleeping recliners for family. Pantera catnapped in one, often with my mom or dad catching some sleep in the other.

  It was the only funny scenario in the midst of all that sadness. Yusef Pantera’s life had been spent making things happen behind the scenes: he was complex, unknown, unattached, untraceable, unknowable, and yet here he was around the clock with my insanely knit-together family, punctuated by pop-ins from Dona and yes, Donald.

  Pantera is as opaque as steel and the Russos are as transparent as glass. Dad helps low-income families get what they need, Mom helps sick and impoverished kids get healthy, and Arlo, well, he helps white-collar one percenters stay out of jail. Then there’s Gramma. Gramma makes lasagna, which helps everyone feel better about everything.

  Even though I make a living by covering events like coups, terror attacks, assassinations, tsunamis, hurricanes, death and disease, and war and the horrors of it—all without ever missing a deadline—this time I wrote nothing, and even left the press briefings to Terry’s doctors, my parents, my brother, and Mad Dog, who loves a camera like, well, like a mad dog loves a postman’s leg.

  Of course Pantera was never out front, either—because as the rumor mills had it, he was—what?—Terry’s baby daddy/an international man of mystery hired by Mad Dog to rout out the kidnappers/a professional assassin/an archeologist with ties to the (!) Russian/Chinese/you-name-it Mob. Rumors were flying. Some were closer to the truth than not, I suspected.

  While
sitting in the hospital, I once asked Pantera, between bouts of hysteria, how someone like him who probably didn’t even exist on paper, felt with the ever-present press desperate to get a glance of me and “my” mystery man.

  In his usual articulate way, he shrugged. “It’s fine.” I knew it wasn’t.

  Then there was the Donald problem. I felt that if it weren’t for Donald, there would have been no Larry, and if there had been no Larry, there would have been no kidnapping. My resentment was out of control and Donald’s regret knew no bounds. Larry was either a moron pawn in a high-stakes international scam, or a con man of the first order. Since Donald himself was a savvy, award-winning photojournalist who’d seen even more than I had of every disaster and war zone of the past decade, and had hung out in every sleazy back-alley bar in every dangerous city in every marginal country on the planet, I knew he’d have been able to spot a con. What was Larry’s story?

  I imagined Larry, if he were still alive, was now shackled to a bed in Bellevue with all the other sick and wounded convicts. “I hope they put that son of a bitch in the infectious disease unit, and the bastard comes down with Ebola!” I screamed at Donald, who shook his head in rage and said, “That fuckin’ piece of shit better hope he never gets out.” I knew he meant it. Donald had many friends in many low places.

  In the meantime, the press was continually surrounding the building, desperate to “make” my “unknown accomplice” who had killed all those people and helped me rescue my baby in the tunnel. The headline in The Standard read: TERMINATOR TO K’NAPPERS: DROP DEAD, while other tabloids ran with: CLARK KENT UNMASKED! They had nothing. And: DIRTY HARRY CLEANS UP SUBWAY. That was true.

  So far, I didn’t think many people bought into the rumor that the mystery man was also the mystery father of my baby. Most people thought Donald was the actual dad and since I had always felt it was not most people’s business, we just left it at that.