Fidelity

by Jan Fedarcyk

  “And all that about the mission?”

  “That was true,” Andrew said. “That was all true. The mission is the only thing that matters—but someone has to carry out the mission, Kay, and as far as I’m concerned I’m as good a person to do so as any. I would think—I would hope—that every member of the Bureau feels the same way and is hungry to make their own impression, to rise to the level of their own ability. Don’t you?”

  Kay considered the question for a moment. Three years now she’d been in the FBI, and she’d spent most of it just trying not to make any unforced errors and figuring out the nuances of violent crime and gang investigations, let alone the peculiarities of the Baltimore Field Office, and then assigned to counterintelligence with all of the concomitant difficulties that it entailed. All her life—most of her life, at least; all her life since that day twenty-odd years earlier when she had come home to learn that she would never see her parents again—she had wanted to work in law enforcement, to solve crimes, to—though she would not have said this out loud—right wrongs. But beyond that? The idea of rising through the ranks, of wielding power within the organization, power and all the benefits that came with it? “Not really,” Kay said finally, honestly. “Not really.”

  “You should,” Andrew said, judging the beef patties could sit a minute and setting down his spatula to put a hand on her shoulder. “The FBI, the CIA—these are organizations like any other at the end of the day, not much different than Ford or Bank of America.”

  “Ford doesn’t arrest traitors,” Kay said.

  “No, of course it doesn’t—but, like the FBI, it is made up of a very large group of people, all of them working at once towards a common goal and in the furtherance of their own individual ambitions.”

  “I don’t feel that way,” Kay admitted.

  “Well, you should. Look, Kay, Anthony was a good guy and I don’t wish him any ill. It’s bullshit that he got moved; you know and I know that Sadler getting iced wasn’t his fault, didn’t have anything to do with him. But the suits, in their infinite wisdom, decided that his was the head to get chopped. If they decide that I’m the next in line on the chopping block, I could be pushing papers in Poughkeepsie this time next month. As of right now, I’m the golden boy, and they’re overimpressed with anything I can do. I don’t expect that to last forever or pretend that luck didn’t have some hand in it. But neither am I going to ignore an opportunity to further my career. You might be wise to think about your own,” Andrew said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means that you’ve gotten quite a reputation over the last year and a half: first with your . . . good work in Baltimore, and now as part of the Black Bear investigation.”

  “I thought you said the Black Bear investigation was a failure.”

  “I said it wasn’t an unqualified success, but that’s not quite the same thing. People, important people, people at your headquarters, they know your name. You could be a blue-flamer. Jeffries won’t be around forever. No one is around forever. If you want to spend your career as a brick Agent, working cases, that’s fine, that’s admirable, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think you have more ambition in you than you let on. And for good reason: you’ve got the most talent of anyone over there; I know it and so do you. And why shouldn’t you rise to a position appropriate to your ability?”

  After a long silence Kay said, “That’s not how I think about it.” Although she said it quietly, and without any great excess of confidence.

  51

  THERE WAS a banging on Kay’s door very late one Saturday night—very early Sunday morning—and she was up like a shot. She grabbed her service weapon off the chair next to her bed, slipped it out of its holster almost without thinking, checked to make sure it was loaded even though she knew it was, switched the safety off and sidled stealthily towards the door, crouching low. Another loud knock. The practical side of her mind told Kay that it was nothing: some drunken buffoon visiting a lover who had gotten his doors mixed up, a neighbor locked out and looking to make a phone call. But the other half flashed images of SVR hit men or grim-eyed associates of Rashid Williams who’d come up from Baltimore looking for payback.

  When she called out, she was crouched around the corner from the entrance hall. “Who is it?”

  A muffled response through the door that she could not make out.

  “Speak louder and slower.”

  She still couldn’t make out what was being said, but she knew the voice, and Kay sighed and went to open the door for her brother.

  As a rule, people banging on your door at three a.m. rarely come dressed in a suit and tie, with their shoes freshly shined and their hair combed back neatly. But even by his usual standards, Christopher looked bad. Christopher looked very bad indeed. He was drunk, first of all, or stoned—Kay couldn’t tell with certainty—but his eyes were dark, frightened dots in a sea of red capillaries. He looked very thin, and he had an ugly bruise below his cheek. It was not at all the first time that he had awakened her this way, but she had a sneaking certainty that this would be the worst.

  “How did you get in?” Kay asked.

  “It’s the weekend,” Christopher said, a little trace of his usual devil-may-care attitude slipping out. “Not everyone goes to bed at eleven. I just waited around until someone came in.”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “I think I left my phone somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Not in my jacket pocket,” he said. “Are you gonna invite me in, or were you going to shoot me and bury my body?”

  Kay looked down at the Glock in her hand as if she were seriously considering the question. Then she moved out from the doorway and waved him inside.

  He half collapsed on the sofa in her small living room. Kay went into the kitchen and poured him a glass of water. When he was finished she poured him another. When that was finished she sat down on the chair across from him. “Well?”

  “I’m in trouble,” Christopher said.

  “Really?” Kay asked. “You didn’t just come by for a game of chess?”

  “I’m serious, Kay. Something . . . I think I did something really bad.”

  Kay was still wearing her sleeping clothes: long flannel underwear and a well-aged T-shirt. A warm evening but she felt the chill all the same, and brought her legs up against her body to preserve some heat. “Is it bad enough that maybe you shouldn’t be telling me the specifics? There’s only so much I can look the other way on.”

  Christopher righted himself from his slouch, pulled a box of cigarettes out from his jacket. “I think it’s pretty bad.”

  “Don’t smoke in here,” Kay said.

  Christopher put the cigarette back into its box and the box back where it came from. “Sorry.”

  “I imagine that’s not the last time you’ll be saying that tonight.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Is this going to be long?” Kay asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll make some tea.”

  After she had made it, and put it in two cups, and brought one over to Christopher, Kay returned to her perch, took a sip and said, “Well?”

  “Bartending doesn’t pay all of my bills,” Christopher said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What does?”

  “I . . . I moved a little bit of blow.”

  Kay put her head in her hands, held them there for a while, as if looking through an old-fashioned viewfinder. “I’ll get you a lawyer. I’ve got some money. But if you’re thinking I can just wave my magic FBI wand and make the NYPD disappear, you’re in for a rude awakening. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It’s not the law.”

  Kay brought her eyes back up. “Then what?”

  But he didn’t answer at first, just sat there listening to
the loud hum of the air-conditioning, staring down into his tea as if it held some sort of answer. “I was just small-timing it, Kay. Really—a gram or two behind the bar, just to people I knew, friends from the neighborhood. Hipster kids and slumming yuppies. No one ever would have found out. I’d never have gotten into any trouble.”

  “There are a lot of people in jail right now who thought something similar.”

  “You’re probably right about that.”

  “You keep saying ‘was.’ ”

  “Sorry?”

  “You’ve been talking in the past tense. What changed?”

  “A couple of months ago these guys started coming into the bar. Not like our regular clientele: big guys, Russians or some such, tracksuits and open noses. Friendly, though. They seemed like good guys. I mean, not quite tax-paying citizens, but good guys.”

  “They sound absolutely charming. And what did these paragons of virtue want with you?”

  “Nothing at first. Just came in to drink and to talk. Like I said, they were friendly.”

  “And then?”

  “At some point they found out about my . . . side business. Told me they had a source for it, could hook me up whenever I wanted. For cheap, real cheap. Like, crazy cheap.”

  Kay could feel a lecture gathering steam on her tongue, was preparing to give it full vent, sighed and let it escape out into the air. “And you went through with it.”

  Christopher nodded. “They were friendly about it. Said I could pick something up on consignment, no cash up front.”

  “Jesus Christ, Christopher.”

  “That’s not all of it,” Christopher said begrudgingly.

  “No? What exactly could you have done that is worse than felony distribution of narcotics?”

  “Funny thing is, Kay, I never actually got to that stage. I was holding on to it for a day or two. The truth is . . .” A glimpse of that old smile came back, that foolish, shit-eating grin, that I-know-I-done-wrong-but-I-can’t-help-myself look that Kay knew as well as she did the back of her own hand. “The truth is I didn’t really even know who to sell it to. I’m not much of a drug dealer. I guess maybe I’m not much of anything.”

  “Don’t do that,” Kay said sharply. “Don’t take shelter in self-pity. You made your decisions: Be man enough to own up to them.”

  But this little bit of meanness seemed to have no effect on him, like water poured over barren earth. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I got robbed: four guys in masks broke in, grabbed the stash.”

  “When?”

  “Kicked in the door late last night. Early this morning. Terrified my . . . bedmate, near scared her out of her wits. Didn’t do much for me, either.”

  “That’s where you got that shiner?”

  Christopher brushed at the bruise above his eye. “Yeah. Butt of a shotgun. After that, I told them where I’d hid the coke, and they took it and disappeared.”

  “How did they know you were holding on to enough drugs to make robbing you worthwhile?”

  “I guess word must have got out.”

  “From who? You just said you couldn’t even figure out who to sell it to.”

  “I don’t know, Kay. The men who robbed me weren’t real forthcoming.”

  Kay went silent for a while, looking through the thing in her head, moving it about, checking the undercarriage. Two possibilities had begun to emerge in her mind. The first and most likely was that Christopher was just very high, higher than he had seemed, and most or much of what he was saying was false. The second possibility was strange and dark and somewhat terrifying.

  Kay decided to start with the first. “What are you on right now?”

  “I had about a half bottle of vodka after the conversation, but that was six hours ago.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing. I swear.”

  Kay did not want to believe him but found somehow that she did. “You ever mention me in conversation to anyone? At work or with your . . . friends?”

  “No,” he said. “Christ, no.”

  “Like it would be the worst thing you’ve ever done,” Kay mumbled.

  “Believe it or not, Kay, the people I spend time with, they wouldn’t be all that enthusiastic about discovering I have a relative in law enforcement. It’s not something I make a point of mentioning when I’m passing out dime bags.”

  Kay sat for a long time with her legs folded up against her chest, staring off at the wall. Christopher reached for his cigarettes, then recalled their earlier conversation and settled his hands in his lap.

  “These men who approached you,” Kay asked, “what were they like?”

  “Brighton Beach types, like I said. Big guys, Russian or Eastern European.”

  “Lots of them out Bushwick way?”

  “No,” Christopher said. “Now that you mention it, there aren’t. I guess . . . I guess when you put it like that, it sounds a little strange.”

  “It sounds more than strange,” Kay said, but quietly, almost to herself.

  “Look, Kay, I know you’re angry. I’m sorry.” His tongue wagged out of his open mouth, back and forth as he shook his head. “I know I say that a lot, but it’s always true and it’s twice as true now. I’m sorry, but I don’t have anyone to go to: these guys, they’re no joke. They’re going to kill me. I gotta get out of town. Portland, maybe Seattle. I know some people out there. But I don’t have the money,” he said. “Just let me hold on to a thousand or two, just enough to get out to the coast and set myself up for a few months. It’s my only way out.”

  Kay went silent again, silent for a long time, the tea growing cold on the table beside her, Christopher yawning and wiping at his eyes and yawning again.

  “No it isn’t,” Kay said finally.

  52

  KAY WAS late to brunch, which was rare verging on unheard of, at least in Justyna’s experience. Her goddaughter did not show up tardy, never missed appointments or forgot engagements. She had always been that way, even as a child, stern and perhaps overserious, with a way of staring at you that eight-year-old girls generally did not possess, perhaps more severe than precocious. And of course after Paul and Anne had passed . . .

  Justyna was sitting outside, finishing her mimosa, had a good view of the subway station and noticed Kay walk out of it finally. She looked haggard, worn, even from a distance. She had on loose jeans and a drab blouse, and she moved swiftly through the packed crowds of tourists and Sunday brunch–goers, waving once she got close.

  “Kay!”

  “Auntie.” She leaned in for a kiss, holding herself there, lips against the thin skin of Justyna’s cheek, then took the seat across from her.

  “Coffee,” Kay said to a passing waiter.

  “And another mimosa,” Justyna added.

  When he was gone, Kay settled back into her chair, rubbed at the skin between the bridge of her nose and her bleary, red eyes. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “Think nothing of it, nothing of it. Late mornings in bed with the beau?” Justyna asked hopefully.

  “Actually, Andrew had to go back to D.C.”

  “Oh,” Justyna said, trying not to let disappointment show on her face. “What does that mean for the two of you?”

  Kay didn’t answer for a long time; seemed almost to have forgotten the question. When the server came back with her coffee, she brought it swiftly to her lips, then set a half-empty cup back down in the saucer. “I’m not sure,” she said.

  And of course Justyna knew better than to push her. Justyna prided herself on her decorum, an old-fashioned sense of etiquette that allowed for the uncomfortable to be swiftly forgotten. And anyway, Kay had never been the sort of person to answer a question she did not want to, or to be bullied into anything generally.

  They ordered breakfast, a happy interruption, a useful segue from t
he awkward beginnings of their conversation. They made small talk for a while. Kay asked about Luis and about her charity work. Justyna avoided asking about Andrew or about Christopher, although they were the only two subjects in which she had much interest. The waitress came and Kay gave a desultory order after a casual glance at the menu, food apparently not on her mind.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” Justyna asked. “You seem like you’ve just been put through a wringer.”

  “It’s been a stressful few weeks,” Kay admitted, with what Justyna suspected was a palpable understatement.

  “Work?”

  Kay shrugged and stared at the dregs of her coffee. “It’s a lot of things,” she said. “I was thinking of taking a vacation,” she offered awkwardly, as if she had been looking for an opportunity to say it.

  “What a wonderful idea!” Justyna said, clapping her hands happily. “You’ve more than earned it; just the thing to get you out of the doldrums. Where were you thinking? Perhaps something coastal? We have friends on Cape Cod we could put you in touch with. Or perhaps intercontinental? A busy time of year, but then, there’s never a bad time to go to Monaco. I’ll have to think of who I can put you in touch with.”

  “I was considering making a visit farther east. I’ve never been to Eastern Europe, you know. I was giving some thought to Poland, in fact.”

  Justyna made a sound in the back of her throat: melodious, sweet-sounding, having no clear meaning of any sort.

  “Do you still know anyone out there?” Kay asked.

  “Not . . . so much these days,” Justyna responded neatly. “Besides, the cities in summer are miserable. Much better off on a beach, burning yourself and drinking something slightly sweet and moderately alcoholic.”

  “I’ve heard Kraków is very beautiful.”