My blood ran cold as I weighed the possibility of her doing it.
"You wouldn't," he said. "Besides Evan has a financial stake in the piece's return. If you destroy it you will be stealing from him."
"Oh I fully intend to make him whole, in fact I think it will be some of the best money I've ever spent. By the way, don't you think two million is a rather modest reward, even for you Samas?" She clicked the lighter, striking a small flame on the second try.
"Poppy please don't," he pleaded. "What will it take to satisfy you?"
She looked up at him and shook her head in disbelief. "You're incorrigible. You still think you can get out of this don't you?"
My eyes stayed locked on the tiny sprite as she edged it upward, ever closer to the dry, frayed border of the painting.
"No, no please, I beg you!" he shouted.
She held the lighter in place. The small flame blackening the bottom corner threatened to awaken and consume the canvas at any moment. "Perhaps you should offer a more handsome sum for it, one that would force me to reexamine my ability to reimburse Evan."
"Yes-yes, good idea," he brightened. "What say three million?"
"Twenty," she said coolly.
"Twenty?" he retorted, his eyes in a squint as if the mere mention of such a number pained him. "I don't--"
"Don't be so fucking coy," she shouted. "I know you have it and you know its worth twice that."
"But I--"
"Well here goes nothing." she said, moving the flame closer.
Samas shot his arms out in protest. "Okay you win Poppy," he blurted out. "Twenty." He exhaled in a throaty groan as the lighter clicked closed, snuffing the sprite.
"A fifty-fifty split of twenty million, how does that sound to you?" she asked me.
"M-more than fair," I stammered.
She shook her head disapprovingly. "Don't set your standards so low junior, lest scoundrels like this continue to prey on you."
"I guess you have a deal," she said to Samas as she handed him the canvas. "Get on the phone to Diltz. I want to know it's done."
Samas, his large frame somehow smaller with resignation, tucked the painting under his arm, sat down in the deck chair and picked up the phone.
"What will you do now?" she asked me in a whisper as he dialed.
"Travel I guess. Build the life I've wanted. Go away for a while. That's what we do isn't it?"
"Sounds like a good start. Would you like a ride back to the airport?"
I nodded. "Thank you," I said behind a cupped hand.
She smiled. "It is I who should thank you. Oh that was fun."
Samas' voice cracked as he spoke into the receiver. "I need to affect a transaction Mr. Diltz. Into the accounts of Poppy and Evan, ten million American dollars. Yes, each." He hung up the phone without saying goodbye and lay back in his chair, clutching the roll. "It is done," he said, defeated.
Poppy looked at me and nodded toward the stairs.
I walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder. I felt pity for him, not for what had happened but for what he was. "Thank you for the opportunity. Sorry it turned out this way. You can keep the guitar, for Zohra I mean."
Poppy suppressed a snicker and took my arm as we walked out.
"Hey," Samas called out over his shoulder. "Does this make us even?"
She stopped at the top of the stairs and thought for an instant. "Why not, life is cheap."
Zohra sat on the bottom step wringing her hands. She started nervously at our presence then bolted upright and sprinted up the stairs past us as we descended. Poppy rested her head on my shoulder and squeezed my arm as we walked silently back to the car.
"Where are you off to now?" I asked her as the driver wheeled up next to the jet.
"Back to France, then Los Angeles. What about you?"
"Zurich first, I need to get my finances in order."
She stepped out into the noonday heat. "How does it feel to be rich?"
I plunged a hand into my pocket and pulled out the last of my money. "I wouldn't know yet. I'm down to my last fifty bucks. Speaking of which, I was wondering if you had any cash, enough to get me to Switzerland maybe?"
"Sure," she said, walking across the tarmac to the plane. "Will ten thousand francs be sufficient?"
"I think so." I followed her up the steps into the jet. She opened a polished wooden panel against the back wall and removed ten wrapped packs of bills from a pile of more than a hundred.
"Here you go," she said handing me the blue bundles. "I'd like it very much if you would come to see me whenever you are back in Los Angeles." She moved close and gave me a quick kiss. "Take care Evan."
I stood alone in the hot blasting jet wash as the plane taxied away, the stack of bills in one hand, the cane in the other. I watched the jet until it slowly rolled behind a hangar then turned and began the long walk across the open expanse of asphalt to the commercial terminal.
The money showed in a lewd bulge as I waited nervously in the ticket line.
"Your destination?" asked the woman behind the ticket counter.
"Zurich," I said as I removed a bundle. "First Class.”
The wide grey leather seat embraced me. I lay back in the seat, exhausted from the events of the last twenty four hours, but still too excited to sleep. The entire world lay open before me and I would be awake when I met it.
I was the first to exit the plane when it rolled to a stop. Though familiar, the Zurich terminal visible beyond the narrow exit causeway looked different somehow. The colors seemed more vibrant, the floors cleaner, the people more promising. I studied their passing faces as I stepped over to the roped off area around the customs desk.
"Do you have anything to declare?" asked the customs agent in a low monotone. His partner asked the same question to the woman behind me. A third man in a different uniform sat at an adjoining desk.
"Only cash and this," I said holding out the cane in my right hand.
"What is your business in Switzerland?"
"Banking."
He glanced quickly at the dragon, then fixed his eyes on the new tattoo. "Detective," he said, getting the attention of the third man behind the other desk.
The officer stood up, grabbed a file and walked toward me, the brass badge pinned to his brown uniform read 'Interpol.'
"Is there a problem?" I asked the customs agent nervously, my windpipe constricted with apprehension. I looked over at the approaching agent in time to see him close the file and nod to the customs man, who snapped a cuff around my outstretched right hand. I recoiled, pulling the other end of the handcuffs away from the stunned officer. The Interpol agent dropped the file and tackled me to the floor. I wrestled with him over the spilled contents of the folder. He clasped the other cuff around me just as I saw myself in the computer reproduced black and white photographs littering the floor. My own face, firm with concentration, looked back at me in image after image. I had been captured in each flashing strobe; first hiding on my stomach, then getting to my feet, and finally running toward the gallery's back door. The fresh tattoo showed clearly in each one.
25
The events of the next two weeks showed me quite clearly how tenuous my purchase in the world had been, as though cruel fate, weary of countless snubs, lunged at me from the shadows like a hungry tiger, eager to capitalize on any mistake. But of course, whenever you have to mention fate you already know it's been cruel. I saw then that life is everything that happens between the narrow getaways. That life was over.
From the airport holding cell, I was taken to a Swiss detention facility in downtown Zurich, surely no more than twenty blocks away from the Hotel St. Germain. It was only the first small taste of what awaited me.
The first feeling you get upon entering a prison in chains is one of regret, not for doing what you did, but for the now obvious error in the doing. The second feeling, as the first door closes behind you, is the presence of an order higher than your own. Initially, as you stand inside the first do
or looking back, that sense of helplessness seems to have its teeth only in the outer layer of your skin and you still harbor the fantasy of bolting back through that door toward freedom as soon as it opens, like a lucky rabbit escaping the jaws of the higher fox. But as you are led farther and farther inside the thing, past a second, third, then a fourth and a fifth door, some primordial instinct of self preservation alerts you to the fact that your chances of escape are halved and then halved again with each door latching closed behind you. And when you are led to the last and smallest room, the guards close that last door and take your last reserve of hope with them. You inevitably find resignation waiting for you--no, longing for you--on the simple steel bunk. I sat as a supplicant and wondered why I had not struggled, and how I had been led here so easily.
That first taste, though initially bitter, would itself eventually become the fixation of fantasy as my condition of confinement became more barbarous and inhumane with each successive stop, first in Italy, then back to Tunisia.
The fifteen minute meeting in a side room of the Tunis city jail that passed for my trial proved to be nothing more than a parade of gesticulating accusations in Arabic, a comparison of my bruised and swollen face with that in the photographs, and a sentence, translated into English. Twenty five years, no parole. I later discovered I had been tried on the same day, in absentia, in Rome, and had been given a twenty five year sentence there as well, 'to run consecutively' the letter said, 'for my refusal to cooperate in the recovery of the Vermeer.' By that time it didn't matter, they would never find the painting and I had already found my resolve, or so I thought.
The next morning, after a sleepless night filled with the wails of other men being interrogated, I was led onto an old, rust colored bus with steel plates welded over the windows so that the other five passengers and I had no view save that of the stoic, machine gun carrying soldiers. I braced myself as best I could with cuffed hands as the bus pitched and bucked over the crude Tunisian road. By midday the heat had robbed the oxygen from the sealed vehicle and I concentrated on microscopic particles of dust as they filtered up from the road and danced in the narrow shafts of light penetrating through what looked like bullet holes in the roof.
Just before sunset, the bus came to a lurching stop. I was the first prisoner off the bus and the first one to see the place. The ancient, menacing, brown brick fortress was the same color as the endless, featureless sands that lay siege to it. More armed soldiers prowled along the tops of the wall, their young faces twisted into angry scowls at having to be in this miserable station at my invitation.
The lonely dirt road that wound back into the distance, that wound back toward everything, would be the last vestige of humanity that I would see with these eyes. I stood beside the bus in my bare feet as the others were led off, my shoes draped around my neck by their tied laces. I visualized myself walking down that road on bare blistered feet back toward the world, ‘would that not be penance enough for them?’ I would never survive it, no one could, but there would be a goal, a promise of something before I met their justice. Anything but inside. I wondered if they would shoot me if I just started walking home. The guard grabbed me by my shirt and shoved me in line with the others as they filed willingly through the open steel gate. Again, I went quietly, my head down, looking at the hardened, bare, brown feet of the Arab in front of me.
I knew immediately that it would be rough. The guards spoke to their countrymen and treated them with apathy where I received a shout and a harsh shove. The first stop on the inside was a delousing shower of white lime. Each of us stripped naked and walked through the white dust cloud, breath held and eyes covered. I was held back and forced to go last. A new set of red and white striped cotton prison fatigues awaited me on the other side. No shoes or socks were provided.
"Hey, what about shoes?" I asked and pointed to my feet.
The unseen baton blow behind my knees knocked me to the stone floor. The pain curled me into a defensive ball as they delivered more blows across my back and head.
"Yala!" came a barking command from behind the circle of blue uniformed soldiers. I fought to force air back into my bruised body as soon as the blows ceased.
"Get up," said the sergeant in two thick syllables. His blue uniform was stretched tight across his distended, obese stomach. Faded yellow chevrons were stitched to his short sleeves. A dense shadow of black stubble lay on his full tanned checks below the small sadistic eyes that looked out from under the wooly line of his single eyebrow.
I struggled to my feet and stood in a slumped posture. He stood before me, silent as a statue, sizing me up, yet showing me his size at the same time.
"You no talking," he said with loud confidence. "Understand?"
"Yes," I answered between shallow breaths.
He opened his fat slab of a hand and slapped me across the face, again knocking me to the floor. Through my ringing ears I thought I heard the surrounding younger soldiers laughing.
"You no talking," he shouted. "Understand?"
I got to my feet quickly and licked at the salty blood trickle running from my nose. He opened and clinched his fists repeatedly as he waited for my answer. I nodded in a wince.
"Good," he bellowed. "You go there," he said, slapping me down a long dim hallway lined to the end on both sides with close set riveted steel doors. The caravan of slapping, clubbing and cat calls ended as I landed in a heap in front of the last door. The number above read 145.
The fat sergeant jingled his keys in the lock. The door creaked open to reveal a small grey cell, the open ceiling criss-crossed with iron bars, the crude wooden cot complete with reclining Negro. Four guards each grabbed a limb and heaved me forward onto the dust covered floor. I lay motionless as the door slammed shut behind me. The sound of their laughter slowly died as they walked back down the hall.
I looked up to find the man on the cot looking at me. His red and white fatigues faded into a striped combination of pink and dingy grey. The pant legs were tattered to rags below the knees and the sleeves were ripped off to expose his sleek black arms. His wild eyes shined with the intention, or perhaps the result, of a mischievous spirit. Taut muscles rippled under his skin with the slightest of movement. Deep lines of worry crossed his brow and separated his haggard face from his smooth ebony head, shaved as clean as a billiard ball.
"The joke of it is, they think we're the bloody savages," he said in an English Cockney accent. "My name's Reginald. What's yours?"
I blinked at him in disbelief for several seconds before I measured my response. "I'm Evan Michaels, at least I used to be," I said, turning my eyes toward the bars above.
"Don't fret it," he said getting up. "We'll get ya cleaned up in no time." He walked over to a small, dog sized steel hatch set low in the wall next to the door. I watched as he opened the lid on what looked like an inverted wooden bucket and stuck his hand inside, pulling out a striped, wet rag that looked to be the remains of one of his sleeves.
"They've made a mess of you friend." He sat cross legged on the floor in front of me and swabbed at the open wounds dotting my face. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I'm very glad to see you, well I'm glad to see anyone to be more specific. They keep the foreign prisoners together, infidels they call us. That's rich. The bloke before you was Dutch. And for the last..." He left the sentence hanging as he looked up and tallied the chalk marks on the wall above his bunk. "Seventeen months I've been alone. I enjoy the extra space and all, but the lack of conversation can be maddening." His face exploded into emotional expression as he spoke.
"What happened to the Dutchman?" I mumbled through swollen lips.
"He died. Dysentery it was. He made a real mess of it in the end. Gave it to me too. Can't you tell? I must have lost thirty pounds. What am I talking about, how could you know," he laughed nervously. "Never mind me. I have a tendency to ramble, at least that's what Steen used to say. He was the Dutchman we were talking about. I'm just excited at the possibilities
of conversation, especially with an English speaker."
"I don't feel much like talking right now."
"Oh that's okay you just listen and rest for now," he said, cleaning blood matted hair away from a scalp cut. "But I do look good for what I've been through don't you think?"
I had no idea what his eyes had seen, but looking around, it wasn't hard to imagine. And through it all, he had been deprived of such a simple and basic comfort as his own reflection in a mirror. I knew that's why he asked and why I lied. I nodded and slowly laid my head on my arm, surrendering into a fitful sleep under the stream of his ramblings.
The first sunlit rays of dawn lit the streets of the Istanbul I had known. Thousands of peddlers stood watch behind their wares that covered the sidewalks on both sides of the street. I walked down the middle of the narrow cobblestone avenue, the cane tapping out a rapid rhythm beside me. The brass tip on worn stone and my own shuffling footfalls provided the only sound to the scene, as though the milling merchants on either side operated in a vacuum. They remained oblivious to my presence, mouthing unspoken words and clanging silent pots.
It was only when I walked past the first of them that they took notice and began to move out toward me. They approached from behind at first, struggling to keep up with my quick pace. Women came forth offering up platter after platter of goods, their weathered, aged faces pursed into narrow eyed pleas. Their husbands, hats in hand, reached out for me and mouthed nodding words of praise through silent, toothless smiles. The small crowd of eager sleeve tugging followers attracted the attention of other vendors farther up the street, who stirred to life in mass preparatory ambush. I strode quickly in an attempt to outpace them, but they converged on the center of the street like waves crashing in from both sides. Their heads disappeared below the innumerable platters they offered up, each filled with spongy, mold covered fruit or gray, maggot ridden meat. They swarmed around me, jostling, sometimes violently, in order to make the best presentation. Platter after platter of spoilage was passed under my nose as I struggled to make my way through them. I shouldered my way as best I could and swung the cane overhead menacingly only to notice the crowd ahead had exploded into a seething mass of bodies, three or four deep, filling the boulevard into the distance, each one climbing over the one below, their hands outstretched toward me.
The Reincarnationist Papers Page 39