Right To Die

16

"AREA A, DETECTIVES, NEELY."

"Neely, this is John Cuddy."

"Cuddy, how ya doin'?"

"Doing fine. You have a chance to run those names for me?"

"Names? Oh, yeah, just a second, got them here… somewheres… Hold on, okay?"

"Right." Through the phone I heard him tear off part of a sandwich and chew.

"Cuddy?"

"Still here."

"Ga wha chu wan."

"Go ahead."

Neely swallowed. "Okay. We got Yary, Gunther W. You want just his sheet or D.O.B. and that shit too?"

"Start with his sheet."

"Got a commitment to DYS – that's Division of Youth Services?"

"I know."

"Commitment in seventy – eight on his first juvie. Must have been a pisser, send him in as a first-timer. After that we got A &B as an adult, then disorderly… disorderly… another A &B. Obstructing a public way, probably some kind of demonstration thing. That's it. Nothing heavy, no hard time, just your run-of-the-mill asshole."

"Schooling?"

"Hyde Park High, no college here."

"Employment?"

"Delivery service over in Dorchester." He gave me the name and address.

"A1l right. Who else do you have?"

"On Doleman, Louis R. Just a flag. Seems his daughter was dying from something or other, and he made some phone calls to the doctors, the hospital about it."

"What kind of calls?"

"Says here 'harassing'."

"You figure that means 'threatening'?"

"Don't know. Ask Mass General."

"Mass General?"

"Yeah. That's where she was at."

Odd that Eisenberg didn't recall the treating hospital. "Anything else on Doleman?"

"Yeah. Gun permit."

"To carry?"

"Sporting. Just rifle and shotgun, not concealed."

"How recent?"

"Last renewal two years three months ago. Probably means the calls to the medics weren't too serious."

"Or he wouldn't have gotten his renewal."

"Right."

At least you'd like to think so. "How about Strock?"

Neely chuckled. "You're gonna love this."

"What'?"

"I told you I thought I heard the name, right?"

"Right."

"Well, turns out I caught the call. Seems this guy Strock's a professor. Of law, yet. Also seems he kinda had the hots for one of his students coupla years back. You with me?"

"Go ahead."

"Well, this student has an apartment on the Hill, backside down near Cambridge Street. Old Strock follows her from some kind of student party over there at the school, and tries to slap the make on her."

"Christ. Rape?"

"Uh-uh. But this was four, five years ago, when the heat was on for those kinda things, so I get sent with the uniforms. When she opens the door for us, here's this Strock guy, half into his pants."

"He was in her apartment?"

"Yeah. Seems he gave her a song and dance about feeling sick or something, and she bought it. Anyway, here's this guy, and he's drunk, weaving and stumbling with the pants and the belt coming through the loops and all, trying to make like everything was okay. Kinda pathetic."

"What happened?"

"Oh, nothing. What do you think? Nobody decided to press nothing. Wouldn't even have remembered the guy, but you asked me and the sheet registered, that's all."

"Anything on O'Brien?"

"Not yet. Be a day or two. Call me."

"I will."

"For lunch."

My turn to swallow. "Looking forward to it."

Providence lies about forty-five minutes south of Boston. There's a point, a few miles north of the city, where I-95 hooks just right near the top of a hill, and you catch an imposing view of the state house. Huge white dome like the Capitol in Washington, a pillared mini-temple at each point of the compass.

Downtown Providence is stolid rather than showy but has probably the best indoor athletic facility in New England. the Providence Civic Center. I stopped to check in at police headquarters across from the center. It was change of shifts. a lot of brown and beige uniforms heading out, like United Parcel drivers wearing sidearms. I'm not licensed in Rhode Island, but usually nobody would question that. If they do, it's a good idea to have checked in first with the local department. A real good idea.

The desk sergeant also gave me impeccable directions to the address I wanted.

There was no answer when I pushed the button in the vestibule of Steven O'Brien's apartment building. There were sixteen mailboxes, a glimpse of at least one envelope through the slot with his name on it. I went back out to the Prelude to wait.

For the second time that day, I was glad to have a book with me. About an hour later a man came walking down the street, taking out a snap-case and carefully shaking free a mailbox key. Roly-poly, he wore a blue insulated Windbreaker, the bottom of a light green tie trailing almost past the fly in his dark green pants. I got out of my car as he turned and pulled open the glass entrance door. He had just put his key into the right mailbox lock when I slipped through the door behind him.

O'Brien looked up suspiciously. Doe eyes, thinning black hair, the first person in years I'd seen with dandruff flakes on his shoulders. When he was young, I bet the other kids called him "Stevie," stretching the first syllable.

"Who are you?"

Paul Eisenberg was right about O'Brien's voice. Like an altar boy on Palm Sunday. "John Cuddy."

I flashed my ID, but he never even glanced at it.

"What do you want this time?"

I ran with it. "Same as last time. Upstairs or a ride?"

O'Brien sighed resignedly. "Upstairs, I guess."

Ascending two flights, I followed him partway down one dim and scuffed corridor. Using three different keys on the locks to his apartment door, O'Brien nearly put his shoulder through it to overcome some warping.

We entered on the living room. There was an old cloth couch outclassed by a leather chair that would have been a showpiece in 1945. A twelve-inch black and white stood on a trestle table that was too big for the television.

O'Brien took off his Windbreaker, having to shrug and tug to clear his elbows. Underneath, he wore a V-neck sweater vest, the shirt badly discolored under the arms. He walked toward the chair, motioning me toward the couch.

I said, "I'll take the chair instead."

With a sour look, O'Brien moved to the couch. Sitting, he said, "You know, I have a First Amendment right to send those letters."

In an even voice I said, "Tell me about it."

"What do you care?"

"Try anyway."

"The bishop isn't doing a thing, not a solitary thing, about the abortion issue. How can he expect me to sit still while God's children are being murdered?"

O'Brien threw me. "Does that mean you had to send the letters?"

"Of course it does. How can I get noticed otherwise? I'm a book keeper, for heaven's sake. I don't have brazen anchorwomen wanting to interview me. I don't have any access, even to my own church's newspapers. They refuse to print my letters anymore, and the bishop told them not to."

"How do you know that'?"

"How do I know? How do I know? You think you people are a hierarchy, with chiefs and captains and sergeants, you should deal with the Church for a while. I did. For thirteen years I was in Fiscal, the assistant bookkeeper for the Diocese. Well, for a lot of the diocesan activities, anyway. In all that time, do you think the Church encouraged me? It did not. Instead of taking the time, the effort to bring me into the fray, on the side of God and Life, they pushed me out of a job. Pushed me to go outside the Church to bring my message to the people."

"And just what's that?"

"What's that? I'l1 tell you what's that. They want to kill us all."

"Who?"

"The atheists. Like the pagans of old, they believe in human sacrifice. The sacrifice of the unborn and the undead. That's where they start, that's where they always start, down through history. They kill the babies and they kill the elderly, and that's how they get everyone used to the idea."

Playing the card, I said, "I don't get you."

"The atheists have taken over our government. They've maneuvered their people to the point of being in power everywhere. The legislatures, the courts, even the Supreme Court of the land, where they said it's acceptable, it's a woman's right, to kill her own baby. Now they're trying it with the elderly too."

"Explain it to me."

"Look." O'Brien leaned forward, warming up. "We're in a hospital, and someone's Aunt Emma is on the kidney machine. She's basically just being maintained, with some pain, because there is no cure right now for what's wrong with her. Well, Aunt Emma has put aside some money by working hard over her long life, and the only heirs are a couple of nephews. Do you follow me?"

"Yes."

"Now, Emma's doctor is getting a little tired of seeing her on that machine. Oh, Emma can afford it, although she is starting to eat into that money she's saved. But the doctor has in mind this younger patient, who's not on a machine because the hospital doesn't have enough machines to go around. The medical insurance companies would pay for this younger patient to be on a machine if one was available. The nephews see their money, their inheritance, shrinking, so they decide to use her pain. One says, 'Aunt Em, it's so bad to see you hurting like this.' And the other says, 'Aunt Em, I don't know why you've got to go through all this.' And then the first one says, 'Aunt Em, let us talk to the doctor, see if something can be done.' Et cetera, et cetera."

O'Brien's parable sounded like something he'd once heard someone else present. "So?"

"So? So the atheist nephews and the atheist doctors, with maybe some help from the atheist lawyers, get the atheist judge to let them turn off the machine on Aunt Emma. Pull the plug so the patient the doctor wants on the machine can have it."

"Pretty farfetched, isn't it?"

"Read the papers. They do it all the time in Massachusetts and New York. All the time."

"Yeah, I was at a debate up in Boston last night about it."

O'Brien withdrew a little. "Debate?"

"Yeah. That's what they were talking about. This doctor, Eisenberg, I think it was, and – "

"Eisenberg! One of the worst."

"How do you mean?"

"Come on. He's supposed to be this big-time defender of the right to life? Writes books and papers and gives these courses in the med school and speeches all over. But he's in with them."

"With the atheists."

A vigorous nod. "I went to see him a couple of times. At these speeches. And I hung around afterward, to talk to him. I thought, after what his people had been through, over in Germany with Hitler and all, Eisenberg would understand. He'd see what's happening in this country."

"But he didn't."

"He's in bed with them! He gets up and talks about this stuff on the same stage with these people, even has dinner with them. For him it's like this intellectual exercise, like he's just talking about something that's not real instead of fighting something that is real, that's horrible and threatening us all."

"Eisenberg's not fighting like you are."

"Of course not! The things he writes, he told me himself, they get edited by the people at the magazines – or journals, whatever they call them – that print his stuff. And who do you think the editors are?"

"More atheists."

"Finally. They're everywhere, like I said."

"Another speaker at this debate last night. Ever heard of Maisy Andrus?"

"That slut! She killed her own husband! I don't even mean pulling the plug and just letting him die. She took a needle and shot him up with poison. It was all over the papers. She's this big-time law professor, marries a tennis player, thinks people forget. Well, I saved every article about her. She thinks people forget? I'll never forget."

"You feel this strongly, how come you weren't at the debate too?"

O'Brien hunkered down. "I was thinking about it, but I couldn't. Had to work. Our fiscal year ends in a couple of weeks. They need me to check things. All kinds of things."

"Who at work can I call about that?"

His head whipped up. "Why?"

"Because I'm asking you politely, that's why."

"I mean, what does this have to do with my letters to the bishop?"

"Maybe I can just call the personnel manager."

O'Brien cowered. "No. No, call… call Carla Curzone. She's my… our head bookkeeper."

"Give me the number I should use."

He rattled it off, adding the extension as I wrote it down.

"Only…"

I said, "Only what?"

"Do me a favor, okay?"

"What?"

"Don't tell Carla you're from the po1ice."

"Don't worry. I won't."

"Bad pizza?"

Nancy watched me carefully from across the glass coffee table in her apartment. On her haunches, she wore a New England School of Law sweatshirt over denim shorts and grasped a beer mug by its handle. Renfield, Nancy's cat, watched me expectantly from under the table as I picked at the slice on my plate.

I said, "No, the pizza's fine. Just a lousy day."

"How so?"

I summarized it for her, starring Louis Doleman and Steven O'Brien.

Nancy said, "It's no fun to be that close to crazies."

It bothered me that I was probably bumming her out, since she had to deal with crazies a lot more often than I did.

"John?"

"Yes?"

"I found a surefire way to get over that."

"Over what'?"

"Over being around crazies too much." Nancy took a mouthful of beer.

"What is it?"

"You seek out a no-nonsense, normal person and get deeply involved in an absolutely rational discussion."

"The cure sounds worse than the disease."

"No, really. Logic, deduction, P implies Q. It's the secret." I tossed a piece of sausage to Renfield, who played croquet with it until he realized the ball was edible. "Okay. How do we start?"

Nancy set down the mug and made her eyelids flutter. "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours."