Robert Tanenbaum: Bad Faith

An older woman with frizzled hair, poorly dyed to a sort of burnt orange, answered the door. “Are you believers?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Sadler replied. “We believe there’s a sick child on the premises, and these two men need to see him.”

The woman’s eyes widened and she tried to close the door. “No doctors! Blasphemers!” she shrieked. “You can’t come in!”

“Like hell we can’t,” the police sergeant replied, and pushed the door open with his shoulder, entering the apartment with the two paramedics as the woman continued to protest.

The apartment was enveloped in shadow; the shades were drawn over the windows, and no electric lights were turned on. The only illumination was from dozens of candles that had been lit and placed around the small living room and tiny kitchen. But even in the half-light, the police officer and paramedics could see that the only adornment on the walls were portraits of Jesus and of the Reverend Westlund.

Several people were sitting on a couch and on a few chairs pulled into a circle in the living room. They’d appeared to be praying when the men entered but had stopped and now only stared up at the intruders.

“We’re looking for a sick child,” Sadler announced. No one answered. “Who called 911?” Again there was no answer. Instead, the group returned to their prayers, their voices droning on.

“Come on,” the sergeant said to Razkov and Bailey. He led the way down a hallway to a back bedroom in which more than a dozen adults and several children were crowded around a bed praying. A young boy lay on the bed, nude except for a pair of underwear, his skin nearly white except for the dark circles below his closed eyes. His thin chest rose and fell slightly and he groaned once.

The paramedics pushed through the crowd and checked the boy’s vital signs. “He’s comatose,” Raskov said, looking up at the police sergeant. “His pulse is weak and breathing shallow, we need to transport him to the hospital now!”

“You can’t,” one of the women in the prayer circle said. “My name is Nonie Ellis and I’m Micah’s mother. My son will be cured through God’s will; Western medicine is the false hope of Satan. We will heal him with prayer!”

“He hasn’t got a prayer if we don’t move him now,” Bailey replied.

“I want you to leave,” Ellis demanded. “You have no right to force us to accept your ways.”

“And I’m ordering you to stand back,” Sadler told her. “In fact, if anyone in this room delays us one more second, I’ll have the whole lot of you hauled down to the Tombs-and if you want to meet devil worshippers, that would be the place to spend the night.”

A worried-looking man walked over and stood behind Ellis. “Nonie, honey, I think we have to let them take him,” he said as he tried to put his arms around her. She shrugged him off but made no more attempts to stop the men and instead ran from the room.

Bailey picked the boy up in his arms. “No time for a stretcher,” the paramedic said, “this kid’s dying.”

The sergeant looked at the man who’d tried to console the boy’s mother. “And you are?”

“David Ellis,” the young man replied. “I’m Micah’s father. Please help him if you can.”

This time the paramedics led the way out of the apartment and down the stairs to the ambulance. Waiting on the sidewalk, having been joined by the people who’d been in the living room, the Reverend Westlund yelled when he saw Bailey emerge with the child. “There they are! The new centurions! No different than the Roman soldiers who helped the Jews murder Christ!”

“Blasphemers!” someone shouted.

“Satan worshippers!” yelled another.

“Stop them!” cried a third.

The crowd of Westlund followers started to surge toward the ambulance even as Bailey laid the boy on a gurney to be loaded into the back. But before they could reach the paramedics, Sadler and the other three officers on the scene had placed themselves in the way.

“Hold it right there!” the sergeant yelled, his booming voice rising above all the others. “Back off, or we will arrest each and every one of you!”

The crowd hesitated. But then from the rear Westlund cried out, “Don’t be afraid, my brothers and sisters! ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!’ This is a direct affront to the will of God!”

Again the crowd, which had been augmented with those who’d been praying in the boy’s bedroom, started to move forward. The sergeant pressed the button to the radio transmitter on his shoulder. “Dispatch, we have a situation and are in urgent need of backup,” he said even as he pulled the Taser from its holster again. He and his men prepared to defend the paramedics.

“Stop this!” a voice suddenly shouted. It belonged to David Ellis, who inserted himself between the crowd and the police. “Micah is my son, and I don’t want anyone else hurt,” he said to the angry mob. “Please, we appreciate your prayers and your concern. But just go home now. Please.”

The crowd stopped and seemed unsure of what to do. A few of them yelled but no one moved to interfere with the police and medics.

Sadler turned to Ellis. “Thanks, son, that could have got ugly,” he said. “Now, do you and your wife want to ride in the ambulance with your son?”

The young man turned to find his wife and saw her standing next to Westlund, who had his arm around her shoulders as she sobbed. “Honey, do you want to go with Micah?” he asked.

His wife stopped crying long enough to glare at him. “I will not sin! Micah was in the hands of the Lord and now you’re taking him away.”

Westlund pointed his finger at David Ellis. “Whoever removes the boy from his fellow believers is responsible for his passing from the world and will face the wrath of God.”

The father’s shoulders sagged and he looked back at Sadler. “I’d like to go, thank you,” he said.

The sergeant directed him to the back of the ambulance. “Then let’s hurry, son, your boy needs more than prayers right now.”

David Ellis climbed in and sat next to his son, his hand caressing the boy’s ashen face. “Please, God, take care of Micah,” he whispered, and began to cry.

Four Months Later

The two men tried to look as calm and nonthreatening as possible as they waited in line for the ferry that carried tourists to Ellis Island and then onto Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty stood bathed in the morning sunlight. They had arrived at Battery Park early that Monday to make sure that they would be on the first boat to the islands.

Both men were Muslim, one an American-born twenty-one-year-old of Pakistani descent. The other was a twenty-five-year-old native of Afghanistan who’d come to the United States two years earlier on a student visa. According to plan, the Afghani attended classes at New York University, but acting like a student was only a ruse. His attendance had been spotty at best, and when a month ago he’d begun preparing with other members of the team for the Ellis Island event, he stopped attending school altogether.

As the student and his partner stood in line, they chatted idly about the late-March weather, relatives, and schoolwork while occasionally-to reinforce the image of themselves as innocent sightseers-smiling at their fellow passengers and chuckling at the antics of children, all of whom would be dead by noon. God willing , Aman Ghilzai thought as he bent over to pick up a stuffed animal dropped by a toddler who was being held in the arms of his mother.

“Thank you so much,” the doomed woman said to him.