Red Dress in Black and White

by Elliot Ackerman

  Murat gets up from the sofa and stands uncomfortably close to Peter at the window. “Let’s go and find them,” he says. “If she doesn’t want to come back with me, I won’t make her. But it’s no good for her and William to be out in this weather.”

  Peter turns to Murat, so the two of them are staring squarely at one another. “You won’t force her to go back with you?” he asks.

  “I could have forced her to stay.”

  Peter can’t help but see the logic in Murat’s answer, and the insanity of Catherine wandering penniless through the city in a storm with her son.

  “You should think about whether or not you want to know who William’s father is,” Murat continues. “But you should also consider something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whether you want to know who William’s mother is.”

  Peter had never considered that William wasn’t Catherine’s son. Turning away from Murat, he looks back out the window. The red dress is gone. The wind has taken it away. Peter searches the streets below, the adjacent rooftops, the terraced balconies that pour rainwater from their gutters—nothing. Peter’s gaze wanders, flitting uneasily over the distance as he searches for some fixed object to rest his eyes on, so that he won’t have to stare at Murat.

  He can’t find anything.

  May 29, 2013

  Kristin had taken a white sedan from the consulate’s motor pool, a Chevrolet, American-made per U.S. government regulations administering vehicular acquisitions. The small fleet of cars she used to meet with the locals who peddled her information were less conspicuous. They didn’t have diplomatic plates, or seat belts for that matter, and were manufactured by companies based everywhere from France to South Korea, but none of those were right for this job, in which she wanted the full weight of the U.S. government behind her. For this job, she needed the white Chevy.

  When she had received the phone call from the detective at the Twenty-second Precinct, inquiring about an American photographer who claimed an affiliation with the consulate, she knew that her visit would be in her titular capacity as the cultural attaché, as opposed to her nontitular capacity, the one which centered on her collateral duties, those duties for which she used the other, non-American cars.

  The sun was rising. She jostled the transmission into drive, tugging down a curious doglegged gearshift affixed to the base of the steering wheel. The streets were empty. The garbage trucks had already made their rounds and the water trucks had passed by, tamping down the dust. The morning commute had yet to begin. The traffic lights shifted onto the wet, empty roads, their glare like a palette of spilled watercolors which cast reflections of red, yellow, green. Taksim’s Gezi Park was a few miles off. As she drew closer to the city center, checkpoints appeared. The white Chevy’s official plates would ensure that the police let her pass. The citywide demonstrations had lasted for nearly a week, and the officers manning the checkpoints had a famished, hollow look, as if they’d been on duty for the entirety. Few had shaved. Their uniforms were wrinkled, as if they’d slept in their patrol cars. Their breath stank from tea and cigarettes as they queried Kristin, wanting to know where she was off to so early in the morning. To a man they were irritable. Their eyes made a cursory search of her vehicle, but they couldn’t do anything more, even though they seemed to want to out of sheer spite. Rumors had already begun that a western conspiracy had fueled the demonstrations. The same old three-lettered foreign agencies came under suspicion, their almost unspeakable acronyms articulated in cautious whispers with each of the letters evoked like an individual head of a hydra that would need to be slain. Kristin knew better than to credit any of these agencies, even though she wished the theories were true, even though she wished her organization, or the others like it, possessed such powers, or even such competencies.

  At each checkpoint she recited the badge number of the detective she had spoken to at the Twenty-second Precinct. He hadn’t offered his name, which had seemed odd to her, although not too surprising given the mistrust of foreigners Kristin had become accustomed to. The detective had called from Peter’s phone to explain to her the situation, which was that Peter had been detained when despite prior warning he had wandered into a restricted area.

  “What restricted area?” Kristin had asked.

  “The protest zone.”

  “So what’s the charge?”

  The line went silent for a moment. “Trespassing,” the detective had said.

  “Trespassing?” Kristin had asked incredulously.

  She had heard what sounded like a metal door slamming in the background, followed by curses in the guttural Anatolian accent common to the country’s remote interior. She had then heard the detective’s stifled voice added to the chorus, as though he had muffled the receiver with his palm. Then he had returned to the line. “If you come and pick him up, all charges will likely be dropped. But for now, the charge is trespassing.”

  Since the demonstrations had begun a week earlier, the phone call on Peter’s behalf was far from the first cry for help that Kristin had received from her network of assets strung throughout the city. In a moment of crisis, when the network she had developed was obligated to stay in place and report, she had found herself receiving hardly any information from them at all, rather only their requests for rescue, evacuation, asylum—these were some of the terms they used when pleading with her. She had chosen to help no one. If at the first sign of trouble an asset wanted to flee the country, then in her estimation that person wasn’t worth helping. This did, of course, establish a contradictory paradox. When Kristin’s help was needed the most, it wasn’t on offer.

  Peter was her exception.

  From the instant she had received the call on his behalf, Kristin had known as an embassy official that she was obligated to come to his aid because he was, to her great annoyance, a U.S. citizen. While she navigated the checkpoints toward the precinct, inching along with traffic and passing through a warren of one-lane streets flanked by rickety gecekondus, she knew that she had no choice in the matter.

  Of all her assets, the one she felt most concerned about was Murat. She had heard nothing from him. Although she felt certain that he was physically safe, she had begun to speculate about how the demonstrations might affect his financial interests, which, as he often complained, existed in a state of perpetual volatility. She imagined his government partnership on the football stadium would likely dissolve. After his failed project at Zeytinburnu 4, Kristin’s superiors would balk at bailing him out of another deal gone crosswise. She stood to lose him if his business collapsed. And if her conscious mind was focused on getting Peter released from prison, her subconscious was calculating the various options that would ensure Murat weathered the current upheaval, if not for his benefit then for hers.

  Kristin pulled up in front of the Twenty-second Precinct. It took her two tries to align the wide Chevy into one of the diagonal parking spaces arrayed along the curb. She levered the gearshift into park. On the seat beside her, she gathered up her diplomatic credentials as well as the project proposal Peter had submitted the year before, which was still, as of yet, untitled. She had by her own admission neglected Peter and his work for too long. This seemed like the appropriate time to direct his efforts more clearly, even if she wasn’t certain how.

  She tugged the Chevy’s door handle. It had a tendency to stick, so she put her shoulder into it. The latch sprang open and the edge of the door smacked into the car next to hers. A few of the officers who lingered by the precinct’s front steps took notice. She wondered if they’d get involved, but they didn’t. With complete indifference, they resumed smoking their cigarettes and reading headlines from their cellphones.

  Kristin crouched next to the glossy black door opposite hers, checking for a dent. She thought she felt some unevenness beneath her fingers but wasn’t certain. A little of the white paint from t
he Chevy had flecked onto the black, but she was able to scrape it away with a dab of spit and her thumbnail. When she stood, she caught a glimpse into the backseat. Hanging in a dry cleaner’s bag by the window was a familiar charcoal gray suit. Her eyes ran toward the hood ornament, a Mercedes’s silver tripartite circle. It was Murat’s car.

  * * *

  Kristin approached the precinct’s booking officer. He sat opposite the entrance, behind a chest-high desk on a stool. In front of him was a single partition of bulletproof glass. Behind the glass, officers pored over written forms or sat with their glazed eyes fixed to computer screens as they triaged the massive arrest rosters from the night prior. From a steel door at the far end of the precinct, the detained were paraded out to complete paperwork from what Kristin assumed was a holding cell. She glimpsed Peter sitting at a desk among the officers. He was cuffed to his chair, fastened to its arm by a single plastic zip tie. Deniz sat next to him and was similarly cuffed to the desk, which was empty except for a roll of dry paper towels, a mound of wet ones, and a carton of half-and-half creamer. Halogen bulbs ran in a centerline down the ceiling of the Twenty-second Precinct, their glare reflecting off the well-buffed linoleum floors. Outside, the morning light was gentle. The light here was not. Everything was very clean and adding to the harsh light was the antiseptic smell of bleach. Mixing with it all, Kristin could smell the creamer.

  Deniz clumsily poured the creamer from the carton and across the paper towels with his one free hand, making a wet compress that he laid against Peter’s eyes; it stuck to Peter’s skin as thick and sticky as papier-mâché. This was an old trick, one Kristin had seen in the aftermath of other protests in other countries. The alkalinity of the cream would gradually counteract the acidity of the pepper spray, diminishing its effects. Kristin hadn’t seen, let alone spoken to Deniz in longer than she could remember, but the manner in which he took care of Peter indicated a closeness between them, a connection that Kristin could ill afford to remain ignorant of if Peter was—as she assumed—nominally within her sphere of control.

  The booking officer was reading a magazine. While barely lifting his eyes from the page, he asked Kristin what she wanted. She presented her diplomatic credentials, sliding the documents through a slot beneath the glass partition. The booking officer rested his flattened palm on top of them while in earnest she explained herself, as if her credentials might be returned only if her reason for being here proved satisfactory. Kristin pointed over the booking officer’s shoulder, at Peter, saying that she had come for his release.

  The booking officer closed his magazine. His mouth bent into a considered frown as he made a closer examination of Kristin’s documents. He then slid down from his stool and lumbered toward the back of the precinct, offering Peter and Deniz a scrutinizing glance as he passed them by.

  Behind the rows of steel desks, which made up most of the precinct’s work space, there was a bank of a half dozen glass offices. All of the offices were empty, except for one, whose door was shut. But through the floor-to-ceiling glass Kristin could see a plainclothes detective leaning casually against a desk. A gold badge hung around his neck, glinting in the harsh light. His holstered pistol peeked out where the zipper of his faux leather jacket fell on his hip. A woman sat across from him in a chair, her back toward Kristin. The booking officer stepped inside. The woman in the chair turned around as the door behind her opened. Her eyes met Kristin’s. It was Catherine.

  On reflex, Catherine jerked back around in her seat. Kristin watched as a quick, confused exchange took place between the booking officer and the detective. Kristin’s credentials were handed over, reviewed and then handed back to the booking officer, who then recrossed the precinct and reassumed his perch on the stool. “Follow me, please.” He reached beneath his desk and pressed a buzzer that unlatched a waist-high gate. He waved Kristin through, holding the gate open for her with one hand.

  In his other hand he clutched Kristin’s credentials. “May I have those back?” she asked. The booking officer glanced down, as though he had forgotten that he carried them. “You’ll have to ask him about that,” he said, pointing to the glass office and the detective, who had resumed his conversation with Catherine. “And no speaking to them,” whispered the booking officer as he nodded toward Deniz and Peter, whose head was tilted upward as he leaned back in his chair, the compress over his eyes.

  As Kristin walked toward the glass office she passed by them. Peter stank of the cream. It had soaked into his shirt and onto the floor around him. It was a sickly sweet odor, a vagrant smell and an inadequate remedy to the violence the police had done to his eyes. Kristin didn’t want to stare at Peter for too long and she knew that Deniz wouldn’t acknowledge her, that despite his characteristic bravado he could exercise a well-practiced discretion bordering on invisibility when circumstances required. However, through a single glance she could see Peter’s vulnerability and intuit his fear. His vision was his livelihood and so he sat, cuffed to his chair, hoping that it might return.

  The detective held open the office door and the booking officer once again handed him Kristin’s diplomatic credentials. “Are you who I spoke with earlier?” Kristin asked. She rifled through her bag, searching for the slip of paper where she had scribbled the badge number. While she looked she dabbed a drop of Purell on her palm from the bottle she kept and wrung her hands together. Before she could find the slip, the detective told her that he was the one she had spoken to. He also apologized for the confusion. Kristin recognized his voice and then glanced toward Catherine, who sat with her back to the door. Catherine seemed uncertain whether or not to acknowledge her relationship with Kristin to the detective, while Kristin’s mind immediately turned to the Mercedes parked outside. Catherine never drove herself anywhere in this city. That she would drive here, for Peter, caused Kristin to suspect that what had passed between them had more depth than a casual affair. A beat of silence interrupted their conversation as Kristin and Catherine choked on their suspicions of one another.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” said the detective. He offered his hand.

  Kristin shook, but with a moment’s hesitation, one only she perceived—her reflex was to keep her hands clean. The booking officer returned to his desk and the detective offered Kristin a seat next to Catherine, who continued carefully to ignore her.

  “I apologize, but when she arrived”—and the detective nodded in Catherine’s direction—“I assumed that she was you, that she was from the consulate. An honest mistake. You can see the chaos around here.” The detective looked past both of them, through his window and into the precinct. “It’s been like this all week.” He then returned his focus to Catherine and Kristin. “So you are both his friends?”

  Kristin glanced at Catherine, curious as to whether she would answer this question and define the nature of her relationship with Peter—one that had clearly evolved considerably since their introduction. It wasn’t only that Catherine had driven herself here, to a police station in the earliest hours of the morning, on Peter’s behalf—a friend might do that for a friend, particularly among expatriates—but the way Catherine averted her eyes to the floor and the hesitation that accompanied her every movement, as if she’d determined that each gesture needed its justification, that a single motion if not properly measured could reveal her. Recognizing this, Kristin knew that Catherine wouldn’t speak first, so she did. “Yes, we are his friends.”

  The detective nodded, slightly pursing his lips as though he were considering the nature of their friendship with his mouth, as if the idea had a taste. “He faces a charge of trespassing—which of you did I tell this to?” Kristin lifted her hand. “The man he came in with, Deniz, he faces the same charge. Did you know Deniz is also his friend?” The detective’s mouth ticked upward, forming a nearly imperceptible smirk, which accompanied the sly insinuation that Peter’s arrest alongside Deniz had revealed some illicit sexual preference that n
either of these women knew.

  Kristin was well aware of the vagaries surrounding Deniz’s sexual proclivities, but she doubted the inference the detective made about Peter and, even if it were true, she didn’t care. Kristin glanced at Catherine, whose focus was on the confusion of papers strewn across the detective’s desk. Her passport lay next to his computer, alongside Peter’s. From a side table, a fan rotated on its axis. It generated a gentle breeze. Each time it passed over the detective’s desk it was as if an invisible hand flipped through the passport’s mostly unstamped pages. Kristin possessed a reasonable understanding of what the authorities could and could not glean from the records connected to a passport, but she wondered if Catherine understood the same.

  “I introduced Peter to Deniz,” Catherine offered.

  The detective nodded. “And … ?”

  “And what?” said Catherine.

  “Where did they meet? How do you know them? How long have they known one another?” The detective had been leaning casually against his desk, but he now circled behind it, sitting at his computer with his back straight and arms extended. His fingers began to work furiously at his keyboard while he floated a staccato of interrogatories in a flat, disassociated voice that became only more pointed as he gathered information from Catherine. If she hesitated in her responses, the detective would peer from behind his computer screen and ask her, “Anything else?” or “Are you sure you don’t remember?” and then resume typing for a few menacing seconds as he made some further entry.

  Catherine unspooled her story. Much of it confirmed what Kristin had already learned from Murat. Kristin couldn’t say for certain that the detective knew who Catherine’s husband was, but he likely did, or at least knew the Yaşar family, and the insider’s look into that family which the detective now elicited took on a voyeuristic air. Many of the detective’s questions seemed designed to inform his own curiosities as opposed to Peter’s relation to Deniz and the current charge of trespassing.