If Sean wasn’t going to come to me, then maybe I could go to him. I glanced at my watch.
Ten o’clock.
Jim was still up, watching the news, when I tiptoed into the living room. He glanced up. “Sweetie? You okay?”
“I just need to go for a drive.”
He searched my eyes before he answered. “Not a problem. Keys are on the table in the hall. We’ll have some cocoa when you get back.”
* * *
The restaurant I drove to was just one of dozens located in the shabby strip malls lining Columbia Pike. Redevelopment was relentlessly chewing up Latin American groceries and halal delis, and spitting out gleaming condos and sleek office buildings. But along that stretch of the Pike, restaurants were still numerous. On offer in that block were five continents’ worth of food. Rai music competed with punchy mariachi. On summer evenings, when the doors to the restaurants were propped open, it was as good as going to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival down on the mall in DC.
When we first moved to the neighborhood, Sean and I must have passed the restaurant a thousand times before a taxi driver called it to our attention. Best kebabs in town. It soon became our go-to takeout, though I hadn’t been since Sean had died.
My eyes swept the restaurant.
No Sean.
I was trying to be surreptitious, but the other three customers were looking quite pointedly at me.
I stepped up to the register and ordered what had, at one time, been my usual. After ordering, I took a seat in one of the darker corners, facing the kitchen. I listened, trying to imagine how the sounds would filter through a cell phone. The kitchen door opened and the strains of rai music drifted out into the dining room. It made me think of the desert. Of minarets and cool oases. The door swung shut, muffling the music.
He was there. He had to be.
I glanced at my watch. Ten thirty. I looked at the other two tables. Their occupants were eating with plastic utensils. From paper plates. My hopes spluttered and died. On the phone I’d heard the clatter of dishes. The slide of metal utensils against plates.
The music was right, but the setting was wrong.
60
I left the restaurant, clutching a bag of unwanted food, trying to push back my fears. I needed Sean’s help to figure out what to do. After navigating the uneven sidewalk, I stepped over a broken curb and left the spotlight of the streetlights for the bleakness of the alley where I’d had to park.
The back door to the restaurant opened with a metallic scrape, flooding the alley with light. Music poured out of the door, along with the clatter of dishes. A man appeared, backlit on the doorstep, as a voice called to him in words that were indecipherable. He paused. Pivoted toward the interior as he answered. Then he bent, picked up a cardboard box, and carried it out to the dumpster. After balancing it for a moment on his thigh, he lifted the lid and hefted the box over the edge. As he turned, the streetlight drenched him in its glow.
“Sean.” I whispered his name.
He was wearing a worn pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Fastened around his neck was a stain-blotched apron. With his bushy beard and longer-than-I-was-used-to-seeing hair, he fit right in with the restaurant.
He sent a sharp-eyed glance toward the edges of darkness and retreated to the building. As he took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his back pocket, I stood there fascinated. Sean didn’t smoke.
Shaking a cigarette out, he put it to his mouth and cupped a hand around it while he lit it.
Had he smoked in his former life? Back when he’d been in the gang?
Holding the cigarette between two fingers, he raked his hair from his forehead. Massaging the back of his neck, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.
I stepped forward from the shadows. “Smoking can kill you.”
His mouth curled before he even opened his eyes. “I’m already dead.” He tossed away his cigarette and came toward me. “They’re closing in on me.” Without breaking his stride, he took me by the arm, pulling me with him back into the shadows.
I’d come to talk to him, but right then I just wanted . . . him.
He glanced back over his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be here. I think I’m being watched. That’s why I can’t meet you. It’s too dangerous.”
I put a hand on his arm and the other on his chest, reminding myself that he was real. This was what I was fighting for. I slid one hand to his shoulder. Used the other to tug at the too-long ends of his hair. “I know.”
He closed his eyes. Bowed his head.
I moved my hand to his beard-covered jaw. This was where he was. This was what he was doing. I’d come to talk to him, but instead I stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
His lips were unyielding.
He smelled of cumin and grease and cigarettes. His beard was scratchy. My hands moved beyond the tangle to his temples, my thumbs splaying down toward his cheeks. Bringing his head toward mine, I kissed him again.
He exhaled, heavily. Then he removed my hands, pressed a fleeting kiss to my palms, and dropped them.
In the shadows, I couldn’t read his eyes. I didn’t want to let him go. I moved to embrace him.
He blocked me, slipping from my grasp. “I can’t—” He stepped away, out of my reach. “I can’t be here for you, Georgie. Not like this.”
“I just— I need you.” I approached slowly, took up his hand. Skimmed my other hand up his bare forearm.
His muscles tensed. “Don’t.”
“Sean.” I kissed what I could reach. I kissed his shoulder, through the T-shirt. I stepped closer. Kissed his neck. Kissed just beneath his ear, a spot his beard hadn’t reached. I kissed—
His hand fisted into my shirt, at my waist.
I put a hand up to his jaw. Encountered his beard where it used to be smooth. Pulling, just a tiny bit, I turned his head toward mine so I could press a kiss, just a single kiss, onto his lips.
His embrace came swift, fierce, so tight I couldn’t breathe. He pulled me in to himself and then his mouth descended on mine. Hungry, desperate.
I wanted.
I wanted him. I wanted everything. Everything I didn’t have. I wanted him turning to me in the night. I wanted him waking up next to me in the morning. I wanted him catching up our son and throwing him over a shoulder.
I wanted him.
I wanted us.
A shout came from the kitchen.
He raised his head. Answered in that unknown tongue. Then, breathing heavily, he let his forehead dip down to touch mine.
I kissed him again. Once. Twice. “What language?”
“Arabic.” He kissed me back. Once. “I can’t do this.”
“Sean.”
“I can’t.” Even if he hadn’t been whispering, his words would have been hoarse. He gripped my forearms, tightening his hands when I tried to loosen their hold. Gently, he held me off. Held me apart. “I can’t. Not again. Not until this is over.”
“But—”
The man from inside the kitchen opened the door and called out.
“I have to go.”
I grabbed his head, pressed his forehead to mine. “My father met Russians out in the desert that first night. It wasn’t the Republican Guard. It was a Russian outpost. Not advisers; soldiers. They were there to fight. They traded a way through the minefield and their position for their freedom. But there’s no way to actually prove it unless my father admits it. In Bosnia, he met up with Russians again. He gave them information about the positions of Bosnian commanders to pass to the Serbs. The Serbs bombed them, along with some of the allies.”
He stepped away from me, though he kept his gaze on mine. “That’s what this is. That’s who they are, who wants to keep this quiet. They’re not FBI or DoD. They’re Russians.”
Once again, everything shifted. “I thought—I assumed—” I’d interpreted everything wrong. It wasn’t the DoD trying to protect their own, hoping to cover for a mistake. It was the Russians. “My father is a
traitor and a murderer.” They were words I’d never imagined I would ever say.
“Yes.”
“You were wrong, you know.”
“About what?”
“About your parents. You said you couldn’t save them. But you were young, Sean. You were just a child. It wasn’t your job to save them.”
He tried to move away, but I stopped him. “But Sam and me? This is going to work. It is. You’re saving us. This is going to work and you’re going to come back. You are not going to lose us.”
He was watching me.
“Because I won’t let you.” I took a breath. Blinked back the tears that pressed against my eyes. “So tell me, what do I do? I need actual proof. How do I find it?”
“I don’t even—” He broke off helplessly.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to talk to people. They keep getting—”
The man from the kitchen came out onto the stoop and yelled.
Sean yelled back. “I’ve got to go. This job is how I get the money to pay people off. I need to keep it. But we’ll talk. Soon.”
“But—”
He strode away toward the kitchen.
“—they keep getting killed.” I said the words to no one at all.
61
June let me borrow her car again the next day; mine would be in the shop for the rest of the week. It turned out that Reginald Wallace lived about an hour and a half away, out past one of the small farming communities that populated Maryland between the border with Delaware and the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The land was cut by small streams and pocked by ponds. The trees were gilded, the grasses golden. It was one of those bright, burnished autumn days when the sun still gave off warmth.
But it was dry. The windshield soon collected a fine coating of dust. I pulled the lever for windshield washer fluid, turning the dust to mud. A few more pulls washed it all away.
As I followed my GPS through the twists and turns of the countryside, a gray car bobbed in and out of my rearview mirror.
There were a lot of gray cars on the road in the region, but there always seemed to be one in close proximity to me in particular. I was too paranoid to chalk up my suspicions to coincidence. If someone was following me, why oblige them by leading them straight to my contact? I approached the next T in the road without signaling and didn’t slow down as I turned away from my intended destination.
The gray car turned the same direction I had.
I was starting to worry. It was one thing to be followed discreetly, another thing entirely to be followed brazenly. With one hand on the steering wheel, I widened the view on my GPS program to take a look at my options.
There were more streams in that part of Maryland than roads.
The longer I drove in the direction I was going, the closer I got to the Potomac River. The closer to the river, the fewer the roads. There looked to be only one possibility to escape being dead-ended.
I glanced into the rearview mirror.
The gray car was still there.
I looked back at the GPS. I was coming up on what had to be farm plots because they were bounded by roads that formed a grid of tight, even squares. I could turn down one and then, by making a series of turns in the same direction around the grid, I could resurface on the same road I was currently on. Then I could head back down it, in the right direction, toward Reginald Wallace’s.
And if I took those turns fast enough, maybe I could lose the car behind me.
Of course, the driver of the gray car might intuit what I was doing, and if he was clever, he could use the same method. Only he could come at me from the opposite direction. And in that landscape of narrow roads and deep ditches, I didn’t want to play chicken with anyone.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. It was time to make a decision.
In three . . . two . . . one— I turned hard to the right. Glanced back to see the gray car do the same. I stepped on the gas and flew down the road, then gritted my teeth and got ready for my next turn. In three . . . two . . . one.
My back wheels fishtailed, fanning a cloud of dust.
No time to think. I just tried to counteract the fishtailing.
Was the gray car still there? I couldn’t see for the dust. When it began to dissipate I saw that the answer was yes.
I’d broken out in a sweat. Making that first turn at the T had been a mistake. What I needed to do was get back to a main road. If anything happened to me, it was more likely to be noticed there. I was more likely to be found.
One more turn and then I could head back in the right direction. And once I hit that road, I was planning to hit my accelerator too.
Behind me, the gray car honked. Once. Twice.
What did he think I was going to do? Pull over?
I glanced back to see him turn off onto a rutted lane. Farther down a pickup truck waited. A man was standing in the bed. He straightened. Gave a wave to the driver of the gray car. Then he held up something dark. Something long and narrow.
Reflexively, I cringed.
It was something that looked . . . just like a fishing pole.
* * *
It wasn’t until I made that last turn that my heart started beating again.
Gradually, my fingers held steady. As I got back on the route to Reginald Wallace’s, my muscles began to relax. As I turned off onto the narrow ribbon of a lane that led from the highway to his house, I was nearly run off the road by a car that shot past me in the opposite direction.
I hoped it wasn’t Mr. Wallace; due to my detour, I was late. But after that, I crept around every bend of the road. I passed several other houses before I finally reached his.
The lane ended in a driveway that curved up to an old-fashioned white farmhouse and a tidy metal-roofed barn. I parked in front of the house, behind a sun-faded pickup. Then I walked up the front steps to the wide, covered front porch, rang the bell, and waited.
There was no answer. No sound of footsteps coming toward the door.
I rang again.
Nothing.
Stepping off the front porch, I walked over to the barn.
“Mr. Wallace?”
The sun filtered in through the open door, making the dust motes sparkle as they drifted through the air.
“Mr. Wallace?”
Over in the corner, a light shone from a workbench of sorts. Tools lined the walls.
He’d said he was hard of hearing, so I went in and walked toward the workbench, my feet scuffing against the concrete floor of the barn.
“Mr. Wallace?”
My view was blocked by a riding lawn mower. As I moved around it, I saw a body lying on the floor.
62
I froze. Then I dropped to the floor in a squat. Old men have heart attacks more frequently than they get murdered, but knowing what I did about my father and the Russians, I couldn’t take any chances. What if he had been killed? And what if the killer was still there? I didn’t want to be the next victim.
Keeping my profile low, I crept over to Mr. Wallace and shook his arm.
No response.
I stretched over him so I could see his face. Then I wished I hadn’t.
Vacant eyes stared up at mine. A hole had been blown right through his forehead. I rocked back onto my heels and took a deep breath, forcing air into my nostrils and down into my lungs to try to keep from retching.
I had a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to stand up right there and reveal myself. To shout, “I’m out. I’m done.”
But the people who had killed Mr. Wallace wanted to kill Sean. And they wanted to kill me and Sam too. In fact, they almost had. So it wouldn’t be over until we managed to get through.
I worked my way around to the entrance of the barn and then I stayed there, in a crouch, watching. Waiting. Listening for any sign that someone was still there.
How had the Russians known who I was going to talk to? They were there the day I’d talked to Steven Edgars. They were just ahead of me in comi
ng to Mr. Wallace’s. Actually, if I hadn’t been late due to my detour, I might have walked right into them.
Somebody was watching me. And closely enough that they knew my habits. They knew when I went to work; they knew when I came home.
There was somebody. There had to be. They were watching me as closely as Jim kept watch on his neighbors. He knew everything that happened on our street. He was the first to notice visitors. The first to help me with the garbage cans or yard work. The first person I’d been turning to when I needed help.
No one knew more than Jim did.
And whose car was I borrowing? June’s.
Which might make a person start to wonder.
* * *
Eventually I made my way back to the car.
There was nothing I could do for Mr. Wallace. And if I called for an ambulance or reported the killing to the police, then who would be their chief suspect?
Me.
As it was, I’d probably left far too many traces of myself in that barn.
I drove all the way up to Waldorf before I pulled off at a gas station and took my phone from my purse with shaking hands. I’d been making a tally. They’d killed Paul Conway. I assumed they killed Steve Edgars. They’d just killed Reginald Wallace. Who else was on their list? Who else had I talked to?
I called Mr. Ornofo.
It rolled to voice mail.
I hung up.
Just because he didn’t answer didn’t mean he was dead. But I wanted to be certain. I googled his name. It brought up the same pages on radiosport that I had accessed several days before.
I moved the cursor back to the search box. Typed in Lee Ornofo death. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to tap the Search button.
It wasn’t as if I would be summoning Death. Tapping Search had no bearing on whether he was alive. But still I felt like an executioner. He was Schrödinger’s cat. Both alive and dead as far as I knew. And I wouldn’t know for sure until I could find more information.
State of Lies Page 23