Swift Horses Racing

by Victoria Kazarian

  He got the call while sweeping leaves out the back gate of the patio. He considered letting it ring—something he was incapable of doing—then set aside the broom and ran into the house.

  When the display announced it was Rose, he felt uneasy.

  “Good morning, Rose.”

  “Duke, I seem to be missing something after our cleaning the day before yesterday. It’s an old book, nothing special, but it had a lot of sentimental value to me. The binding is old —black cloth.”

  Duke paused for a bit, to appear to think about it. “I don’t remember seeing a book like that.”

  “I have no idea where it could have gone.” Rose said, her voice sounding like a challenge to confess. “I remember putting it in the living room bookshelf. You didn’t take it from there, did you?”

  “No, I just took the boxes you told me to,” Duke lied.

  “You said you were interested in his technical journals. Could it have been in the stack of books you took for yourself?”

  “Let me check.” Duke set the phone down, then walked back and forth across the kitchen loudly, as if he were running off to look for the book. Then he came back to pick up the phone.

  “Rose?” He added a little bit of breathlessness to his voice. “I looked through the books I took from Karl’s place. I don’t see it here.”

  He heard Rose sigh heavily over the phone.

  “I’ll check with Salvation Army then. You took the book boxes to the truck on Redmond, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll stop by and ask. If it turns up later, please let me know. Right away.”

  “Will do, Rose.”

  Duke hung up, feeling conflicted. Now he’d lied to cover up stealing. What else would he do? He didn’t want to give the book back. He wanted to finish it.

  He was the right person to have the book. He knew Karl. He knew him better and would judge him more fairly than anyone else. Maybe more than Karl’s children.

  Something stronger than his conscience told him. Giving the book back to Rose would be a bad idea.

  44

  That morning, the threatened rains descended on the valley.

  Water puddled in street corners and potholes, flooding drains still clotted with leaves from the fall. Weather reports were warning that the atmospheric river was here, a multi-day rainstorm.

  At this rate the Guadalupe River would rise to levels that would threaten nearby houses and businesses. After yearly threats of a drought, San Jose would now be overwhelmed with an excess of rain. Low-lying Highway 880, with its potholes and dips, would flood. Flooded areas would either close or cause long backups, as cars slowly made their way through inches of standing water.

  Avoiding the freeway, Flores headed for a short cut he’d found, down Southwest Expressway and onto side streets leading into downtown. He passed city workers in orange raincoats using pumps to clear a drain blockage at a corner.

  He’d been an outdoor kid used to biking and skateboarding every day. Any day without sun—and there were a lot of them here— made him feel out of sorts. The clouds were thick and grey today, and it felt as though they were oppressing him personally. Dawn would make fun of him if she’d been privy to his thoughts this morning, rolling her eyes at his feeling that the universe was plotting against him. But it sure felt like that. He might have gotten a break today, but the case was moving slowly.

  On top of that, Oksana had come by last night to pick up her Hamilton CD and a makeup case she’d left under the sink. She was in a big hurry because her precious fucking Tim was downstairs in the car.

  He pulled into the station parking lot into the nearest spot he could find close to the entrance. He’d get wet, that was a given. He covered his head with a magazine, grabbed his take-out latte and made a run for it.

  When he got to his desk, Mandy passed by with coffee and a stack of paperwork, an odd look on her face. She raised an eyebrow.

  “There someone to see you at reception. Says her name is Reyna.”

  Something like fireworks went off in his stomach, then shot up his digestive tract, so that when he thanked Mandy it sounded like someone had their hands around his throat.

  As he walked downstairs, a feeling of inevitability swept over him, like a dark veil. Fate. A ship headed for him, like in some World War II submarine movie he’d watched with his dad years ago. Proceeding at full speed, estimated time of contact five minutes. He felt he was biding his time until the point of contact. He would go down.

  He knew he would.

  It was as if the past week was preparation for this. All signs had been leading up to this and he could not redirect at this point. Every thought he’d had, every image that had come into his mind over the past seven days, had led him to this. He could not avert course. He could only wait to see what would happen when impact happened.

  His feet led him to the front reception, one foot after the other, with a sureness that amazed him. Energy coursed through his legs, as he remembered it did at the opening shot of his first marathon during college. Muscles taut, yet loose and ready.

  She sat with her bag slung over her shoulder, her legs crossed as she looked down at her phone, her black hair swept to one side and falling onto her shoulder. Her bare, muscular legs peeking out from her tight skirt were light brown and smooth. When she looked up at him, she smiled in a way that made his heart pound. An irrepressible happiness welled up in him. The darkness of this, his next-to-last day on the case, was lifting.

  There was promise glowing, hidden right behind the warm tan skin and soft smile of this woman.

  He remembered standing at the top of a hill in his neighborhood, twelve years old, one foot on his skateboard, looking down to the tree-lined street below—that instant before he started the descent. His friends watched, in awe that he was attempting this.

  The anticipation, that moment of hanging on the edge, then the release, his stomach dropping with the initial takeoff.

  “My car’s in the back,” he said with a nod. Even then, he said it casually. As if it was an offer and she could still say no. And in his mind, if she did say no, he would be relieved.

  She stood up and smiled, her eyes suddenly wide, soft and brown. He felt so connected to her now. Her could feel her eyes on his face.

  Every time she took a breath, he felt it.

  “I didn’t ask you what you wanted.” He looked straight ahead as he drove the Prius through the rain, taking the side streets again, avoiding the freeway. He headed south, toward Monterey Road.

  “What do you think I wanted?”

  “To see me.”

  She let out a laugh. “You’re pretty full of yourself.”

  “You’re pretty brazen.”

  “That means what—you think I’m a slut?”

  Worried, he turned to assess her expression and saw that she was laughing.

  “I would never use that language, ma’am. Not about you.”

  He was off script now. He had no idea what was going to happen. It was terrifying, yet there was a freedom in that. As if he was a kid playing in the sun again, no responsibilities to anyone but himself.

  They continued down Monterey Road until the scenery changed from suburban to rural. Not far from the field off Watsonville Road and the burned SUV. Fir and eucalyptus trees, grassy fields, turned bright green from the rains. He opened his window and as a splat of rain hit his face, he sucked in the cool, fragrant air.

  “Jimmy told me you were upset about the shooting the other night. Sorry that happened. I’m just glad Jacky’s okay—”

  “I don’t want to talk about Jimmy.”

  He felt the sharpness in her voice, a slap across his face. He went quiet, as they drove past houses with big, rambling yards and fenced off farms with big, slow cows.

  “How do you feel about Morgan Hill?”

  “I know a good taqueria.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were eating big, sloppy tacos at a sticky formica counter, served to the
m on plastic plates by a large chef with a broken nose. Flores couldn’t remember tacos tasting this good, strips of barbacoa slathered with fresh guacamole and tomatoes. They finished off two each, then Flores laid a twenty on the counter and they headed back to the car.

  After buckling up, he turned to her and moved toward her tentatively, then backed off. They couldn’t do this. Not here.

  As he started the car again, she rested her hand on his thigh, and he felt like his groin was on fire.

  With laser focus he managed to keep the car pointed forward, following Monterey Road until they came to a stretch that used to be the thoroughfare for tourists headed over Highway 152 to the coast. The motels here were fallen from the grace of their heyday in the 1950s. Signs proudly announced air-conditioned rooms and TVs. He imagined the drug deals and the tricks that took place in these rooms.

  He pulled into the potholed parking lot of one that looked in better condition than the rest, and looked around cautiously, scoping out the area. Parolees, delinquents, meth users. All the bad guys. What you’d find scurrying around if you lifted a rock and looked underneath.

  “Do you feel comfortable waiting here while I go inside?”

  Again, he said it clearly, telegraphing that if she wanted to back out of this, she should say so. Though this was something he’d wanted for the past week, he would have been relieved if she said no and told him to drive her back to San Jose. She didn’t.

  “I’m fine, Mario. I can take care of myself.”

  He came back with a key within five minutes, and they followed the whitewashed, wrought-iron-railed stairs to room 202.

  The room smelled of mildew, but that faded to the back of his mind as soon as she started unbuckling his belt.

  He unbuttoned her silk top, spotting with interest the skull tattoo above her left breast. She took off her bra and there she stood, as good or better than he’d imagined her this past week. He felt that top-of-the-street-on-his-skateboard feeling again.

  She led him to the bed, and he bent over her, unable to stop looking at her. She closed her eyes and he put a hand between her legs. She looked up at him with an expression, half mysterious, half mischievous. He lay down over her, pressing insistently till he was inside. Something like the last chorus of a rock song pounded in his head and he was on his skateboard, flying down the road toward the dip, in an arc that he didn’t want ever to end, yet he did very much want to end.

  He felt himself release in her, but drove in again, going with the momentum, then he pulled out as gently as he could and lowered himself down on his side next to her.

  He didn’t know exactly how long they lay there, but at some point he became aware of sounds that he must have blocked out in the excitement of being alone with her. He heard pounding on a door a few rooms down. Creaking bedsprings and moans next door. Voices in the parking lot, somebody letting out a cat-like wail. The sounds of an ambulance siren speeding by, going down in pitch as it passed.

  The 1980s-era digital clock read 12:45 p.m.

  Now that his primary brain was engaged again, he realized he had a meeting at 2. He reached for his pants to find his phone. He’d have messages needing answers by now. He was laying the foundations of a case against Christoph Schuler. He was careful with his documentation, assembling the pieces needed for the future court case. It was one of his favorite aspects of police work. If he was fortunate, the reports he needed would be there by the time he got back.

  If not, the day would go bad fast. A meeting with Buckley, a good-bye speech to the team.

  “Hon, I gotta get back.”

  She raised her head sleepily, an amused look on her face. “You called me hon.”

  Her eyes were half open and her hair swept messily to one side, rippled like ocean waves. That unprotected, uncomposed look he always preferred over styled, blow dried and made up.

  “Does the word bother you?”

  She held his face and leaned over him to press her lips against his. Her breath smelled like vanilla. Her breasts pressed against him, which began to get him excited again.

  He returned the kiss, but turned away from her, which he made up his mind to do, and reached down to find his clothes. Slowly, she got up, wrapped the sheet around her and headed for the bathroom.

  After a quiet ride through the rain, driving as fast as he safely could back to San Jose, Flores dropped Reyna off at her car on a side street, not far from the station. A small river was forming next to the curb by her car. After she buckled up, she reached for his hand. He kissed it furtively, then glanced around.

  “I need to see you again.” He almost hissed it. It came out of his mouth like an order, and he didn’t know where that came from. “Can you get away tonight?”

  “I will call if you I can, Mario.”

  She smiled and closed the door, picking up her phone.

  That’s when it hit him. A sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He was one of the bad guys.

  45

  Karl Schuler’s Journal

  The human mind is capable of amazing feats of self-deception.

  If you are in a situation that is unconscionable, it is almost too easy for your mind to contort itself to see the situation as normal, in order to cope. You tell yourself lies every day to maintain that normality. Eventually you lose your bearings entirely: what is horrible and evil begins to look right to you.

  After my first meeting with Dr. Von Braun, I gradually spent more of my time at Mittelwerk. I knew the place well. I was given more responsibility than I should have had for someone so young. I was the favored one, the one who understood the operations and the science behind the V2 rockets and V1 flying bombs. Even that young supervisor, who had demanded my respect because he was a year older than me, now listened to me. Even took orders from me.

  The workers, brought in from the nearby Mittelbau-Dora camp, lived and worked in subhuman conditions in the tunnels. They worked 14 hours at a time, were fed very little and their work was incredibly dangerous. One third of the slave laborers died in the tunnels. The first workers had been made to dig tunnels with their bare hands, because of fears that tools would turn to weapons in a revolt.

  At the end of a few months in Mittelwerk, I had made a subtle shift in my thinking. I had begun to think of the inmates simply as units of work that could be devoted to making the rockets. More workers, working more hours, meant more rockets. These rockets had become my new love. Agnieszka, for all I knew, was dead, and it hurt too much to think of her.

  But I saw the rockets every day. They were stunningly beautiful to me, an invention that had pushed the limits of flight. And we Germans had created them.

  So when the workers revolted and committed acts of sabotage because of their inhumane conditions, I was one of those signing orders for them to be hanged.

  I had sunk to the point that I thought that their deaths would be a warning to others to continue working. Production of the rockets could not lag.

  It was not until after the war, as Hermann, his family and I waited in Bavaria for the Americans to come to us, that I woke up. I began having nightmares. I saw the emaciated faces. I saw the men, disfigured and broken, continuing to dig with skeletal, clawlike hands in the darkness of the cavern and its tunnels. The faces haunted me then. They haunt me now.

  All I had done in Mittelwerk was evil: I had condemned to death people labeled as untermenschen. I had put my stamp of approval on the orders and values of the Reich. Yet the CIA program that brought us to America erased this record of my and my uncle’s past—so the U.S. could recruit us and claim our scientific expertise before the Russians did.

  This clean slate seemed like a gift at first. My guilt was blotted out in the eyes of the world, my family, my employers. I looked good to everyone, a war refugee, like so many of that time. But there was a stain deep inside me. I knew what I had done. It was there, dark and weighty, ever before me.

  I decided I would wipe that stain out myself. From the moment I c
ame to the United States, I would balance what I had done with only good. I would find the poor, the immigrants, the ones who had fallen by the wayside. The ones with little opportunity or hope. I would help students by encouraging them to study math and science, making sure they got the help they needed.

  It made me feel good to see these people benefit from my help. They bloomed like flowers around me. The students saw what they were capable of doing when they cared about something. When someone said, Yes, you can do this.

  Yet no matter how much I did, the darkness was still deep inside me. I could taste it like bile. And it never left me.

  Five years before I retired, a Frenchman came into my office and shut the door. His father had died in Mittelwerk. He’d gone back to Germany, and he’d seen the documents with my name. And the tie to my uncle Hermann, which as time went by, anyone could look up to verify.

  The anger flared in me at this employee, but I kept calm. That man in the documents could not be me, I explained easily, reasonably. There had to have been a mix-up with identification. I had no part in this, I told my company’s management. The Frenchman lost his job and eventually his marriage and returned to France.

  Everyone had believed me.

  “No screen time till I see that your homework is done, mijo.”

  At some point, Jacky had sneaked into the kitchen and sat down at the computer desk. His hand was busily moving the mouse around.

  “I’m looking something up. For my homework.” The boy said it with the righteous indignation of the falsely accused. But when Ruiz stood up, he could see a helmeted warrior on the screen, with a baggage list of weapons and treasures. The kid earned the money for his game. Now he couldn’t stay off it.

  “Off. Now. If you aren’t off in five seconds, no computer till the weekend.” Ruiz looked at his phone and calmly began the countdown. Jacky scrambled to shut down the game, click exit, and run away from the desk.