Prayer Read online

  “Perhaps if we didn’t sit so close to the front, that might not be so obvious. I’d feel more comfortable if we sat at the back.”

  “I like being close to the front,” she said. “It feels like I’m nearer to God.”

  “I think God notices the cheap seats, too, don’t you?”

  “Maybe we should speak to someone.”

  “I don’t think holding hands with a Lakewood prayer partner is going to help, Ruth.”

  “All right, then. Perhaps if we prayed together about this, Gil, just you and I. The way we used to pray.”

  The last time Ruth and I prayed together had been when we were trying to have a child. Ruth’s idea, not mine. She’d suffered a miscarriage and took happy pills for a long time after that. She also experienced difficulty in becoming pregnant again, and she eventually thought the Lord might be of some assistance. This was what got us both going to Lakewood. We went to church and we prayed for another baby, although when I say we prayed for another baby we didn’t just do it in church, we prayed in bed, too. Whenever we made love, we would ask the Lord for his blessing, and there’s nothing quite as unerotic as that: the whole sex-prayer thing more or less killed our sex life. Having Jesus in bed with the two of us gave me a real problem and obliged me to take Viagra in secret, which is probably the only reason she got pregnant at all—but for Ruth, Danny was the miracle that proved God’s existence. Since then, we’ve been pretty regular at Lakewood. Which is more than I can say about our sex life.

  “I’m certainly willing to give prayer a shot,” I said reluctantly.

  Ruth sighed loudly. “What prompted you to read those books anyway?”

  I shrugged and shook my head, although I knew perfectly well. I had started flirting with atheism more than a year ago, around the same time I had started an affair with a certain lovely Profiling Coordinator in Washington, D.C., where I had been given a temporary duty assignment. Ruth had chosen to remain behind with Danny. The Profiling Coordinator’s name was Nancy Graham, and she and I had met after a debate at Georgetown University—the subject of the debate was “There’s No Point in Praying,” and the two antagonists were the British journalist and antitheist Peter Ekman (for the motion) and the former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Mocatta (against the motion). Ruth knew about the Profiling Coordinator because I had stupidly told her and, for that very same reason, I hardly wanted to bring up the subject of Washington and the TDA again.

  Ruth never ever mentioned Nancy Graham. But I knew the affair had hurt her deeply, and instead of seeking out a divorce lawyer as another woman might have done, Ruth had taken refuge in her religious faith. The affair was over, and I was deeply sorry for what had happened, and Ruth said that she had forgiven me for it, but I knew that the pain of my having had an affair was never far from my wife’s thoughts.

  You might think that Texans are violent. Not a bit of it. The high incidence of gun ownership gives people some useful pause for thought. Most Texans are friendly, well-adjusted folk, endlessly hospitable and always polite. By contrast, the Scots are preternaturally aggressive. Many would pick a fight with a brick wall, which happens more than you might think. Scotland is the most violent place I’ve ever been. There’s something in the air, perhaps, that makes Scotland one massive fight club. If gun ownership was as easy in Scotland as it is in Texas, the population would soon be decimated.

  When my family left Scotland in 1990, the country was in one respect not much different from the Scotland of 1590 because it was divided by religion into two bellicose and bigoted camps—Protestant and Roman Catholic. In this ancient feud it always mattered more what you were than who you were and, at the sharp end of the divide, things were every bit as bitter as anything in Northern Ireland. But while religious hatred was as deep as in that other conflict, the violence in Scotland was usually limited to the fierce tribal rivalries that continue to exist between Scotland’s largest football teams—both of them based in Glasgow—Rangers and Celtic. At “Old Firm” matches between these two teams the strictly segregated fans now hurl insults at one another where once they hurled rocks and bottles. But God forbid that you should be a Rangers fan who finds himself astray in Celtic territory or vice versa; and in such circumstances murder is not uncommon. For many decades sectarian football violence has been Scotland’s dirty secret and few of the tourists visiting there ever have any idea of the horrors that lurk underneath my home country’s threadbare and bloody kilt. I exaggerate, of course, but only a little. Then again, I am completely and utterly biased. And now let me explain why.

  My father, Robert, is an orthopedic surgeon and, until his retirement last year, was a professor of orthopedic surgery at Tufts Medical Center. Prior to this, he was a surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and perhaps the leading Scottish specialist in the field of sports injuries. In 1988, when I was twelve years old, my father—a fairly prominent Roman Catholic—treated a famous footballer named Peter Paisley for a chronic knee injury that threatened to end his career. Paisley, a Protestant, played for Rangers Football Club. Following several operations, Paisley returned to the team and helped Rangers win the Scottish Football League title for four years in a row; but not before my father had received death threats from aggrieved Celtic supporters, not to mention an explosive device that almost blew off his hand.

  I didn’t find out about the bomb until we had left Scotland forever, but I remember coming out of our house one morning to find my father’s Jaguar covered in graffiti. Soon after that, my parents and I, and my three brothers and two sisters, went to live in Boston where my dad had wisely accepted the position at Tufts. He has never returned to Scotland and probably never will.

  The move was something of a wrench for us all. And it was only later that I was able to see how being a Catholic had defined me in the eyes of my Scottish friends. Of course, none of this mattered in Boston, and my religion soon seemed less important as I learned to think of myself not as a Scot, or a Scottish-American, or even a Catholic, but as just an American; in the USA what seemed to matter more than where I was from or what religion I practiced was where in life I was going.

  After we came to Boston, my father stopped being a Catholic altogether.

  After graduating from Boston College and Harvard Law, I went to work as an intern with a firm of New York lawyers, DLB&B, but I was already coming to the conclusion that I was more interested in working in law enforcement than in becoming an attorney. Nine-eleven only underlined that. DLB&B’s offices were in the old WTC 7, which was badly damaged when the North Tower of the WTC collapsed; it caught fire and fell some six or seven hours later, by which time I was quite certain that I wanted to serve my country in some way. The following Monday I put in an application to join the FBI.

  After Quantico, I had four years working in Counterterrorism in NYC. All we did was work to make America safe. I even learned to speak Arabic. I can speak the language reasonably well—although my Italian is better—but I found it hard to read and write, which is what the Bureau wanted most: agents who could read intelligence documents in the language, so that was that. The Bureau always figures it knows best where a man’s talents really lie. And in 2008 the Bureau sent me to Texas to work in Domestic Terrorism.

  After more than ten years with the Bureau, however, I’m still just a Supervisory Special Agent and nothing more. Fact is, I might be an ASAC right now if only I’d been willing to work in the Chief Division Counsel’s office, but being a lawyer with a badge wasn’t why I joined the Bureau. My boss, Gisela, is an ASAC—an Assistant Special Agent in Charge—and so is Harlan Caulfield; but the field office boss, the Special Agent in Charge, is Chuck Worrall, who doesn’t like me at all. And maybe, if I am being honest here, it’s not just because I didn’t want to work in the CDC’s office.

  You see, Chuck is from Washington, and he was previously Nancy Graham’s boss. After our affair was over, Nancy Graham resigned from the FBI and it’s my o
pinion that Chuck held me responsible for the loss of a very promising agent.

  From Lakewood we went to the Houstonian Club, where Danny went down the water slide and Ruth swam fifty laps. Ruth is a beautiful swimmer, very elegant, with a flip turn a dolphin would be proud of. I sat under an umbrella and read a newspaper and watched the other guys around the pool watching Ruth. She’s worth a look. In her swimsuit she has a physical grace and a presence that always reminds me of an Olympic athlete.

  When Ruth was through swimming, she came and lay next to me under the umbrella. She played with the hair on my chest while I stroked her head. Ruth is a very loving woman. It’s not her who has the sexual problem, it’s me. It’s said that most men prefer their wives to be a lady in public and a whore in the bedroom. Well, I’ve got a saint in the bedroom, the kitchen—pretty much everywhere you can think of. You try fucking a saint. What else do you call it when the minute after you’ve fucked someone they start reading the Bible or saying their goddamn prayers?

  When we arrived back at Driscoll Street, Ruth made meat loaf. After dinner, I played an Xbox game with Danny and put him to bed; then I watched TV and fell asleep in my chair. I didn’t hear the telephone ring, but Ruth answered it in case it was the Bureau. It wasn’t uncommon for the office to ring on the weekend given the DT caseload, but it wasn’t the office, although I might have wished it was.

  “It’s Bishop Coogan,” she said, handing me the telephone.

  It had been months since Eamon Coogan and I had spoken, and while I was surprised to have him call me, I tried to look more surprised than I was. This little pantomime was for Ruth’s benefit as I hoped to avoid a scene with her the moment the call was over; I guessed she would assume his call was connected with my earlier declaration of disbelief and that I had already tried to bring my doubts about God to the bishop. I pressed the speakerphone button on the handset so she could hear all of our conversation in the hope it might save me the trouble of a denial.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you on a Sunday evening, Gil. I was hoping I could ask you to come and see me. In private. There’s something important I’d like to discuss with you. I know it’s short notice, and you’re probably very busy, but would now be possible?”

  I glanced instinctively at my watch. It was already seven-thirty.

  “Nothing’s happened back in Boston, has it?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that, Gil. It’s something I need to ask you about in your capacity as a federal agent.”

  The bishop was South Boston Irish and, despite his having lived in Houston for several years, some of his vowels sounded as wide as the Charles River. When he said “ask,” he sounded like JFK.

  “Yes, sir. But would you mind telling me what it’s about?”

  “It’s hardly a subject for the phone, I think. Come over to the bishop’s residence in an hour. Just sound your horn and I’ll come out. I was thinking, perhaps, we could go over to O’Neill’s.”

  It was just like Eamon Coogan to suggest that we go to an Irish bar.

  “All right. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  I rang off and looked at Ruth.

  “What do you suppose that’s all about?”

  “If you ask me,” said Ruth—much to my irritation, she could always mimic a Southie accent perfectly—“it’s perfectly obvious what it’s about.”

  I shrugged.

  “It can only be about pedophile priests.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think it goes on here, just like in Boston and Chicago?”

  I put my arms around her waist and kissed her back. For a while, she let it happen and then pushed me gently away.

  “God, I hope that’s not what it’s about,” I said, wrinkling my nose with disgust. “It’s really not something I feel comfortable talking about. He’s my mother’s oldest friend.”

  FIVE

  Brian O’Neill’s bar was the only Irish pub I’d ever seen with two palm trees out front, but inside things were more authentically Celtic, with the best draught Guinness in the city and perhaps the worst service anywhere west of Dublin. The place was popular enough, although, even by Texas standards, most of the bar’s customers looked as if they could have survived a couple of Irish potato famines.

  No less in size was Bishop Coogan, who made any room he was in look small. He was sitting in a very fat-old-womanish way, all chubby-fingered and splay-legged, with the sleeves of his huge black jacket rolled up over his forearms and the waistband of his equally enormous black trousers riding just under his armpits. The priest’s collar around his neck was almost invisible under his chins. He looked like a sumo wrestler at a wake.

  I set a second tray of drinks down on the table in front of him and one of the whiskies instantly disappeared. Now that our small talk about Scotland and Northern Ireland was exhausted, I was impatient for him to get to the point. I was especially intrigued by the old duffel bag he had brought with him.

  “So, Bishop, what’s in the bag? Is it guns you’re bringing me or the loot from the Woodforest National Bank robbery? The Buick that’s parked on the drive in front of your house looks like the getaway car on that one.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Gil, but it’s just a lot of newspaper clippings, a couple of books, and some printouts off the Internet. One way or the other, I seem to be spending a lot of time on the Internet these days.”

  “You and me both, sir.”

  “The papers and the books are for you.”

  Coogan unzipped the bag and handed me a paperback book titled All the Possible Gods. The author was Philip Osborne. As soon as I saw it, I laughed.

  “Only an hour or two ago Ruth was giving me hell for reading this book. And several others like it.”

  “Oh? Such as?”

  “Dawkins, Hitchens, Peter Ekman.” I shrugged. “Sam Harris, Dan Barker, Daniel Dennett . . .”

  Coogan chuckled. “That’s virtually the whole pantheon of disbelief you have there.”

  “Why the hell do you want to give me this book?”

  “Philip Osborne is a friend of mine,” said Bishop Coogan. “Or at least he was.”

  “You say that like he’s dead.”

  “He might as well be. He’s confined to the Harris County Psychiatric Center here in Houston. I visited him a few days ago and spoke with his doctors who described to me a case of psychogenic malignant catatonia resulting in permanent cognitive impairment. They’ve concluded there must be actual damage to the frontal lobe of his brain, although there’s absolutely no identifiable trauma that might normally have caused such a state of mental breakdown.”

  Coogan’s familiarity with all these medical terms impressed me, at least until I remembered that before becoming a priest, Coogan had been a medical student at Tufts in Boston, where he had been taught by my father.

  “So he didn’t fall and nobody hit him,” I said. “But you’re going to tell me what did happen.”

  “I’m not sure I am. But I’d like to tell you what I know, Gil. And why I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “Go ahead, but”—I shrugged—“I don’t see how I can help. At the FBI we have jurisdiction over violations of federal law. And so far I can’t see there’s anything federal here. If you want, I can put you in touch with the right people in the Houston Police Department.”

  “Fidelity, bravery, and integrity,” said Coogan. He was quoting the Bureau’s motto. “Perhaps I should go ahead and add patience to that little trio of the better human qualities.” He laid his hand on the book. “It’s not a bad book at all. As a matter of fact, it was me who gave him that title. Or at least recommended it as a title.”

  “All the Possible Gods?”

  “It’s from a quote by Stephen Roberts. He’s another of your so-called new atheists. As if they make any more sense than the old atheists.”

  “I think that p
erhaps I’m not as patient as you think I am, Eamon.” I looked at my watch pointedly.

  “About a month ago Philip turned up at my house in an agitated state. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he hadn’t been sleeping. That was obvious. And when I suggested he see a doctor and get some sleeping pills, he told me he couldn’t because he was already taking Xanax and that whenever he did sleep he had terrible nightmares. I asked him if he could account for this change in himself and he shook his head and said something strange. Well, for him it was strange—I might have said it was impossible. He asked me if I would pray for him.”

  Coogan sat back for a moment. “Gil, you could have knocked me over with a feather. It was awful, that’s what it was. You see, I’m a man first of all, and a priest second. So there was no bloody rejoicing about a lost sinner. I felt sorry for the poor bastard.”

  “So what happened after he came to your house?”

  “My praying for him seemed to give him a bit of peace of mind. But only for a while.” Coogan searched his pockets. “I need a cigarette. Let’s go outside.”

  It was hot on the terrace. We moved away from the tables where a few of the bar’s more heat-resistant customers were eating and drinking under the shade of some black-and-white umbrellas; we stood at the edge of the tree-lined road. Quickly and expertly Coogan made a roll-up and tucked it into the corner of his lopsided mouth, where it remained until it was the size of a lost tooth. Meanwhile, he continued to tell his story.

  “A couple of months ago, Random House—his publisher—launched his latest book at a party at the Hotel ZaZa. The book is called More Faith in a Shadow. It’s kind of like the other one. A drive-by shooting outside the gates of heaven.”

  “At least that sounds like a crime, Eamon.”