Ripper

  “I’ve got to call Indi,” he said to Pedro. “Pass me the phone.”

  “It’s five forty on a Sunday morning, bro,” said Pedro. “This is no time to be calling people. Here, drink this and get some shut-eye. I’ll take Attila for a walk.”

  Ryan just managed to swallow the strong coffee and a couple of aspirin before racing to the bathroom to throw up, while his buddy tried in vain to persuade Attila to let him put on the muzzle and the leash. Having no intention of leaving Ryan in such a state, the dog sat in front of the bathroom door, whimpering, his one ear cocked, his one good eye alert, awaiting orders from his companion in misery. Ryan turned on the shower, holding his head under the freezing water for a few minutes, and then emerged from the bathroom in his boxer shorts, dripping wet, hopping on his one leg and gesturing for the dog to go with Pedro. Then he pitched forward onto his bed.

  Out in the street, Pedro’s ringtone blared, a brass band playing the military strains of the Uruguayan national anthem. Struggling with the dog’s leash, he fished his cell phone from the bottom of his pocket and answered to hear Indiana’s voice, asking for Ryan. She had last seen him being dragged by two burly cops into a waiting police car while two other officers, with the help of the gorilla who worked the door, tried to calm down a number of drunken, emotional revelers who were still throwing punches while the go-go dancers shrieked, still wearing their feathered finery. As he cowered behind the bar, Danny D’Angelo had watched the upheaval, a nylon stocking still covering his hair, his Whitney Houston wig in one hand and his eyeliner streaming down his tear-streaked face.

  In his laconic manner, Pedro brought Indiana up to speed.

  “I’m coming right over,” she said. “Could you pay for the cab?”

  Thirty-five minutes later Indiana appeared in the loft apartment, wearing her snakeskin boots, a raincoat thrown over the black dress she’d been wearing the night before—and with a black eye. She kissed Pedro and Attila and went over to the bed where Ryan was snoring, covered with a blanket Pedro had thrown over him. She shook him until he took his head out from under the pillow and sat up, blinking and trying to focus.

  “What happened to your eye?” he asked Indiana.

  “I tried to restrain you and got a smack in the face.”

  “I hit you?” Ryan was wide awake now.

  “It was an accident. It doesn’t matter.”

  “How could I have sunk so low, Indi?”

  “We all make mistakes from time to time, Ryan—we fall flat on our faces, then pick ourselves up again. Now get dressed.”

  “I can’t move.”

  “Aw . . . the poor little Navy SEAL! Get up! You’re coming with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Sunday, 19

  Hi, my name’s Ryan and I’m an alcoholic, and I’ve been sober for six hours.”

  This was how he introduced himself, repeating the formula used by the people dotted around this windowless room who had gone before him. His words were greeted with sincere applause. A few moments earlier, Pedro had driven Ryan and Indiana to a building with a tall spire on the corner of Taylor and Ellis in the heart of the Tenderloin.

  “What the hell kind of place is this?” Ryan had asked as Indiana took him by the arm and pulled him toward the entrance.

  “It’s Glide Memorial Church. How can you have lived here for years and not known about it?”

  “I’m an agnostic. Why are we here, Indiana?”

  The soul of Glide Memorial Church, Indiana told Ryan, was the African-American pastor Cecil Williams, now retired. In the 1960s he’d been assigned to this failing Methodist church and transformed it into the spiritual heart of San Francisco. He had the crucifix removed from the sanctuary, saying that it was a symbol of death and that this congregation should celebrate life.

  “That’s why we are here, Ryan: to celebrate your life.”

  She explained to him that Glide attracted tourists because of the irresistible music of its gospel choir and its open-door policy. Everyone was welcome here regardless of race or creed or sexual orientation: Christians of any denomination, Muslims and Jews, drug addicts and beggars, Silicon Valley millionaires, drag queens, movie stars and criminals. No one was turned away; Glide had hundreds of aid programs to house, clothe, educate, protect, and rehabilitate the poor and the desperate.

  They elbowed their way through the people patiently waiting in line for a free breakfast. Indiana spent several hours a week here helping with the seven-to-nine morning shift, the only time she could spare, she told Ryan; the church offered three free meals every day of the year to thousands of people in need, something that required seventy-five thousand hours of voluntary work.

  “I only do about a hundred hours,” she said, “but they’ve got so many volunteers there’s a waiting list.”

  At such an early hour, the crowds had not yet begun to arrive for the Sunday service. Indiana clearly knew her way around, and led Ryan directly to a small room where the first Alcoholics Anonymous group of the day was meeting. Only half a dozen people were standing around the side table, which was laid out with pots of coffee and plates of cookies, but more arrived over the next ten minutes. Everyone took a seat on the plastic chairs arranged in a circle. There were people of all colors, races, and ages, and most of them were men; almost all of them were worn down as a result of their addiction, and some—like Ryan—bore the scars of a recent brawl. With her healthy glow and cheerful manner, Indiana looked as though she had wandered in by mistake. Ryan had been expecting a class or a lecture, but a short, skinny man wearing thick glasses began the meeting. “Hi, I’m Benny Ephron, and I’m an alcoholic,” he introduced himself. “I see a couple of new faces here this morning. Welcome, friends.” Then they went around the circle, with everyone in turn giving his or her name.

  Coaxed by comments or questions from Benny, some of them talked about their experiences, how they had started drinking, lost their jobs, their families, their friends, their health, and how through AA they were trying to turn their lives around. One man proudly held up a chip with the number 18—the number of months he had been sober—and everyone applauded. One of the four women in the group, a smelly, disheveled wreck with rotting teeth and a restless stare, confessed that she had lost hope because she had relapsed so often, and the group applauded her for having the courage to face them that morning. Ephron told her that she was on the right path, that the first step was to admit you were powerless over your life, adding that hope returns when you entrust your life to a higher power. “I don’t believe in God,” she said defiantly. “Neither do I,” said the scrawny, bespectacled man, “but I believe in the higher power that is love; the love we are able to give and the love that we receive.”

  “Nobody loves me. Nobody’s ever loved me,” said the woman, blundering to her feet to leave, only to be stopped by Indiana, who put her arms around her. The woman struggled for a moment, trying to break free, then collapsed sobbing against this young woman who held her with the firm tenderness of a mother. They hugged each other tightly for a moment that seemed to Ryan to be interminable, unbearable, until the woman calmed down and they both returned to their seats.

  Ryan spoke only to introduce himself, and listened to the revelations of the others with his head drawn into his shoulders, his elbows resting on his knees, fighting back the waves of nausea and the throbbing pain in his temples. He had more in common with these people than even he would have suspected the night before, when in a moment of distraction or rage he had grabbed the nearest drink and, for a while, become the thuggish brute of his adolescent fantasies again. Like all the men and women around him, he too was a prisoner of his addictions, terrified of the enemy lurking inside, waiting for the moment to destroy him—an enemy so stealthy he had all but forgotten it. He thought about the golden glow of the whiskey, its sunlight sparkle, the delicious tinkle of the ice cubes in the glass; he thought about the pungent smell of the beer, the gentle e
ffervescence, the delicate froth.

  He wondered what had gone wrong: he had spent his whole life in training to be the best, learning to be disciplined, developing his self-control, keeping his weaknesses in check. And now, when he least expected it, the enemy had come out from its lair and ambushed him. Once upon a time—when he had been lonely, when he had given up hope of finding love—he would have had every excuse to crawl into a bottle for a while, but he had stayed sober. He couldn’t understand why he had given in to temptation now, when he finally had everything he’d longed for. For the past two weeks, he’d felt happy and fulfilled. That blessed Sunday when he had finally taken Indiana in his arms, his life had changed. He had surrendered completely to the wonder of loving her, to the consummation of desire, to the miracle of being loved, being needed, to the dream that he had been redeemed, healed forever of all his wounds. “My name is Ryan Miller, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said to himself over and over, feeling his eyes prickle with unshed tears, feeling a desperate urge to run away from this place, but held there by Indiana’s hand on his shoulder. When they finally left forty-five minutes later, one or two people clapped him on the back, called him by his name. He didn’t answer.

  At midday, Indiana and Ryan went on a picnic to the same park with the redwood trees where two weeks earlier a freak thunderstorm had given them an excuse to make love. The weather was changeable, with moments of light drizzle and others when the clouds parted and the sun shyly revealed itself. Ryan brought an uncooked chicken, lemonade, charcoal, and a bone for Attila; Indiana took care of the bread and the fruit. Indiana was carrying an old hamper lined with red-and-white gingham, one of the few things she had inherited from her mother, and ideal for picnics. There wasn’t a soul in the park—it would be thronged with people by summer—and they were able to sit in their favorite spot, a stone’s throw from the river. Sitting on a thick tree trunk, wearing ponchos against the chill air, they waited for the charcoal to heat up while Attila raced around after the squirrels.

  Ryan’s face looked like a battered pumpkin, and his body was a map of deep purple bruises—but he was thankful: according to the primitive justice his father had taught him with his belt, punishment absolves guilt. During his childhood, the rules had been clear: evil deeds and reckless actions must be punished. It was one of the inescapable laws of nature. If Ryan got up to mischief without his father finding out, the exhilaration of getting away unpunished was short-lived; he was quickly overwhelmed by feelings of terror and the conviction that the universe would avenge itself. In the end, it was always easier to atone for his sins with a few lashes of his father’s belt than to live in dread, waiting for some nameless retribution. Evil deeds and reckless actions . . . He wondered how many he had committed during his forty years, deciding that there must have been many.

  In the years he had been a soldier—young, strong, in the thrill of adventure or the heat of battle, surrounded by comrades and protected by powerful weapons—he had never questioned his actions, just as he had never doubted his impunity. In war, it was acceptable to play dirty: he didn’t have to justify himself to anyone. He honorably fulfilled his duty to defend his country; he was a Navy SEAL, a member of the elite troop of mythic warriors. Only later did he begin to question things. During the months in the hospital and in rehabilitation, when he was pissing blood and learning to walk with irons strapped to his stump, he decided that if he was guilty of anything, he had more than paid for it with the loss of his leg, his comrades, and his military career. The price had been so high—exchanging a hero’s life for a life of tedium—that he wound up feeling cheated. He took spurious comfort from alcohol and hard drugs, staving off the loneliness and the self-loathing as he languished in a bleak condo in Bethesda.

  And then, just when the temptation of suicide was almost irresistible, Attila saved his life a second time. Attila had been seriously wounded by a land mine ten miles outside Baghdad: Ryan had a new mission. Fourteen months after being airlifted out of Iraq, strapped to a gurney and doped up on morphine, he was jolted out of his depression and back on his feet.

  To Maggie, his neighbor in Bethesda, a widow in her seventies with whom he became friendly over games of poker, he owed the second motto that governed his life: Those who seek help will always find it. A tough old bird who cursed like a longshoreman, Maggie’d done twenty years for killing her husband after he broke almost every bone in her body. This hulking woman, feared by everyone in the neighborhood, was the one person Ryan could bear to spend time with during this dismal period. Maggie treated him with her usual crudeness but also with surprising kindness. In the beginning, before he could fend for himself, she cooked his meals and drove him to his medical appointments; later she scraped him off the floor when she found him drunk or high on drugs and kept him busy playing cards or watching action movies. When they heard what had happened to Attila, Maggie announced that the only way Ryan would get custody of the dog—assuming it survived—was to sort his head out, since no one would entrust a heroic animal to this wreck of a human being.

  Ryan had refused to have anything to do with the military hospital’s addiction programs, just as he had refused to see a psychologist specializing in PTSD. Maggie agreed that addiction programs and therapy were for faggots, insisting there were quicker and more effective ways of dealing with things. She emptied his pill bottles down the sink or into the toilet, then made him strip and took away his clothes, his laptop, his cell phone, and his prosthetic leg. As she left, she gave him a thumbs-up, then locked him in his apartment, crippled and butt-naked. Ryan was forced to go through the hell of those first days cold turkey: shivering, hallucinating, half-crazed with nausea, paranoia, and pain. He tried to break the door down with his fists, without success; he knotted bedsheets together to try and escape by the window, but he was on the tenth floor. He pounded on the wall separating his apartment from Maggie’s until he fractured his knuckles, and his teeth chattered so hard one of them broke. On the third day he collapsed, exhausted.

  Maggie came by that night to visit and found him curled up on the floor, whimpering softly and more or less calm. She made him take a shower, gave him a bowl of hot soup, put him to bed, and sat there keeping an eye on him while she pretended to watch TV.

  So began Ryan Miller’s new life. He focused on staying sober, on the campaign to get custody of Attila, who by now had recovered from his injuries and been awarded a medal. The red tape he had to negotiate to adopt the dog would have put off anyone not motivated by Ryan’s steadfast gratitude. Helped by Maggie, he wrote hundreds of requests to the authorities, made five separate trips to Washington to plead his case, and managed to get a private audience with the secretary of defense, thanks to a letter signed by his brothers from SEAL Team Six. He left the secretary’s office with the promise that Attila would be flown back home and, after the standard quarantine period, Ryan would be allowed to adopt him. During these months of bureaucratic wrangling he moved to Texas, prepared to spend all his savings on the best prostheses in the world. There, he began to train as a triathlete and finally thought of a way to put the skills he had learned in the navy to good use. He was an expert in security and communications; he had contacts high up the chain of command, an impeccable military record, and four decorations to attest to his good character. He called Pedro Alarcón in San Francisco.

  Ryan had been friends with Pedro since the age of twenty. After high school, he had applied to join the Navy SEALs—both to prove to his father he was as much of a man as he was, and because he felt he didn’t have the skills to go on to college, being dyslexic and suffering from ADHD. In high school, he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in studying, but he had been a star athlete. He was a mass of hard muscle, and felt he had the endurance and the stamina for any physical task. Even so he found himself eliminated from the Navy SEALs during Hell Week: a hundred and twenty punishing hours designed to test each candidate’s ability to achieve the goal at any cost. It was there that he learned that the strong
est muscle is the heart. Shortly after he started, when he knew he had reached the limits of his ability to withstand the pain and exhaustion, he found it could give more and more—but not enough. His humiliation at having failed was compounded by the sneering contempt of his father when he heard the news. For this man—coming from a long line of military men and having retired with the rank of rear admiral—the fact that Ryan had been rejected simply served to reinforce his low opinion of his son. Neither Ryan nor his father ever mentioned the subject, each retreating into a sullen silence that would separate them for almost a decade.

  Over the next four years, Ryan studied computing while putting himself though rigorous training so he could reapply to the Navy SEALs. This was no longer about vying with his father, it was a vocation; he knew now what it meant and wanted to devote his life to it. If Ryan had succeeded at college, it was because one of his professors had taken a personal interest in his case, had helped him to manage his dyslexia and his ADHD and overcome the mental block he had about studying. The same professor had convinced him of his intellectual ability and persuaded him to graduate before enlisting in the navy. That man had been Pedro Alarcón.

  In 1995, when Ryan finally achieved his ambition of becoming a Navy SEAL and the deputy chief pinned the Special Warfare insignia—the SEAL Trident pin—on his chest, the first person he called was his former professor. He had survived Hell Week; and in the endless months of brutal training that followed over sea, land, and air—weeks during which he endured extreme temperatures, was deprived of sleep, was molded by hardship and physical suffering, and strengthened by the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood—he had pledged to live and die like a hero. In the sixteen years that followed, until he was wounded and given a medical discharge, he saw little of Pedro, but they kept in touch. While he was off on secret missions in some of the most dangerous places on earth, Pedro had been hired as professor of artificial intelligence at Stanford University. This was how Ryan discovered that his old friend was something of a genius.