I put on speed.
I looked toward the lead Bradley again. It kept coming. Something about the body language of the soldier manning the gun alarmed me. Not much time left. Ari had almost no chance of escaping arrest now. I notched my voice up and shouted, “Turn around—they’re at your back!” Ari’s ginger hair ruffled in the breeze, the light making it look like spun gold. He began edging his camera off his shoulder, preparing to greet me. He grinned. Said something to me. I felt the warmth of his smile link the two of us. But I couldn’t hear him and that meant he still hadn’t heard me.
The gun on the Bradley fixed on him. They were getting ready to make a move.
Look behind you, Ari! Get back in the car and get the hell out of there.
What sounded like firecrackers went off. Ari buckled as if a missile had struck him. His camera toppled to the ground. He screamed and grabbed for his chest. One of the journalists lurched out of the press car, blurting out a volley of Italian. Ari crumpled into the dirt, a geyser of blood bursting over the front of his shirt.
“They shot him. They shot him!” I screamed this as I ran the last yards. I threw myself down beside him. Ari struggled for breath. Wheezing sounds rushed out of his throat. His eyelids flickered and his whole body shook with convulsions. I had no idea what to do.
Soldiers appeared on either side of me. It took two of them to pull me away. “Let me alone,” I said. “I’ve got to do something; he’s hurt, you can see that.”
“There’s other people coming,” one of them said. “Let them take care of it. Who are you?”
I looked toward Ari, military men now crowding around him, attempting to stanch the flow of blood. I sank down on my knees, shuddering. “His friend,” I said. “I’m his friend.” I could no longer talk, the agony as great as if it were my own life draining away. The soldier set his gun aside and crouched down beside me, putting his hand on my shoulder. He said, not unkindly, “They’ll try to save him. You can’t make any difference now anyway.”
When the team around Ari finally stepped back it was clear nothing more could be done. His body lay in the dust. The soldier guided me toward him, let me stand near Ari for a few moments to say goodbye. They assumed I was with the press team. I took off the sun medallion Ari had given me and wound it around his hand, recalling Diane Chen’s prediction: Only the sign of the sun can save you.
The Italian crew eventually drove me back to the city. Mazare was nowhere to be found. I asked the journalists to take me to the al-Mansour Hotel. I got thoroughly tanked in the hotel bar and spent the rest of the night wandering the grounds, wishing the dogs would come to finish me off, the scene of Ari’s last moments competing with the horror of Laurel’s fate playing over and over again in my mind.
I finally came to my senses with the dawn.
A freelance journalist planning to leave for Kuwait City agreed to give me a ride late that afternoon. The day was an oven again, the heat so thick it seemed to take on a material form. As we drove out of Baghdad I took one look back. The waning sunlight had turned the buildings into orange flares. It looked like the city was burning.
Thirty-eight
Friday, August 22, 2003, 12 P.M.
Three days later I returned to New York. In three more days my grace period would be over and the new owner would be installed in the condo Samuel and I had shared.
Amir brightened up when he saw me. “You keep vanishing and then reappearing. I’m beginning to think you’re a ghost.”
I gave him a weak smile. He had no idea how close he was to the truth.
“How come you sold your place?” He looked a little hurt, as though my leaving was a personal affront. I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for money.
He pursed his lips. “A lot of people came looking for you. I wrote them down.”
He hunted for something under the front desk counter and retrieved a scrap of notepaper. “The first was a policeman, I’m guessing in his late fifties. He came on August 4, over two weeks ago. A man built like a wrestler with holes in his face.” Amir peered at his handwriting. “Detective Gentle.”
“Gentile,” I said.
“Yes, that’s it. He seemed mad. Like angry mad.”
“Who else?”
“Next day the black lady came back again.”
“You mean the lady who dresses in black.”
He nodded. “Yes, her. A sad person.”
“That was Evelyn.”
“And last came a beautiful stranger. An angel woman. Hair shining like ice, blue eyes.”
“When was this?”
“They all came in around the same time.” He looked down at his paper again. “The light-haired woman showed up on August 5. Nobody since.” He crinkled up the paper. “You have mysterious friends.”
I explained I’d lost my keys and got a duplicate from him, then grabbed the armload of mail stuffed into my box. The elevator door had almost closed when he called out to me.
“I forgot one more thing. The carpet fitters came last week.”
Carpet fitters? The new owners must have been in already.
Since they came from Dubai, I wasn’t sure whether they planned to rent the place out or keep it for occasional use. What if they’d already removed my property?
I opened my front door with great reluctance, expecting to see the place stripped bare. Instead it looked like a drunken football fan’s hotel room.
Graffiti had been sprayed across the walls, quite unimaginative taunts like up yours and your mom is a whore. They were a careless bunch who did this, spraying right across the paintings when the mood struck them. The sofa was ripped to shreds with the stuffing left intact, so it was plain they weren’t searching for anything. Huge gouges had been scraped in my teak media cabinet, a retro piece I was particularly fond of.
Bleach had been poured over every one of my precious Turkomen carpets, eating through the fabric in places. On the floor in front of the cabinet it looked as if a mirror had been smashed into tiny shards. All my CDs had been taken out of their cases, broken to pieces, and dropped on the floor.
It made me sick to see what they’d done. I bent down and found fragments of my Steve Vai DVD. I gathered them up in my hands, wishing them back together. This was his performance two years ago at London’s Astoria; one cut, “Whispering a Prayer,” was one of the best guitar solos ever recorded. A personal anthem for me.
“Watchtower” on the Ali soundtrack, Jimmy Page and John Mayall with Mick Taylor on lead. What a travesty. Some of those disks were irreplaceable.
I wandered from room to room. The kitchen counters of Brazilian black slate and the stainless steel cupboards had been criss-crossed with lurid green spray paint.
My bedroom was a similar mess. Scrawled on my mirror with Magic Marker were the words Dear John, Thanks for your hospitality. Sorry for leaving things in such a mess … The Rap. It would be impossible to tie him to the crime, of course, safely stashed away in jail as he was. His friends had done this job.
There was no way to set things right in three days. Our insurance had terminated with the sale. I assumed the new owners had some and hoped it would cover the damage. Visions of lawsuits danced before my eyes. I was heading for bankruptcy anyway—this would just get me there a bit faster. My emotional reservoir had already been drained dry, but I seemed to find room for another wave of despair.
I wasn’t sure I had the guts to open the door to Samuel’s suite. I pried it open a crack and peered in. More graffiti was sprayed on the walls, but their energy must have flagged at this point because other than the books pulled from the shelves, I couldn’t see too much damage.
I hauled my treasure chest from the closet. All the items were still inside. Samuel’s secretiveness about the engraving and the condo sale had blown a hole through my trust. Was the story about my origins perhaps a little too neat? There had never been any photographs, no long-lost relatives showing up at our door. Samuel and I didn’t resemble each other
at all.
I picked up the golden key. What was it meant for? What beautiful woman had inspired the portrait on the cameo? With Samuel gone, who could fill in these blanks? I pushed the chest back again, wondering how I’d ever find the answers now.
I stripped off and stood under the shower in Samuel’s bathroom, turning the hot water to steaming and letting it cascade over me for as long as I could stand it. A map of my tribulations was etched all over my body. The cartography of my failures. Reddish welts still demarcating the ribs hurt in the accident, the burn and tenderness of my arm, yellowing bruises in the various places Shim had laid hands on me, blemishes on my lip, scrapes on my face, the herringbone scar the surgeon made when he sewed up my leg. I scrubbed hard to wash away my sins.
I had no choice but to put my old clothes back on because Samuel’s were too small. All the garments in my dressing room had been torn to shreds. Using my landline, I called the police. The new owner’s insurance company would expect me to report the vandalism right away. The clerk assured me someone would be sent over immediately.
An emphatic knock on my door came half an hour later. The police don’t have to be buzzed up like the rest of us common folk. I opened it to see the detective built like a wrestler with pockmarked cheeks standing beside Vernon, his uniformed sidekick. “I see you’re back from your travels, Madison,” Gentile said and walked in.
He held up his hand. “Don’t panic. I’m not here to arrest you.”
He placed himself in the middle of my living room and revolved slowly as if he were at the Louvre and wanted to take in all the masterpieces while standing in one spot.
“Somebody doesn’t like you,” he said. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I came home to this. You’ve been demoted, I guess,” I replied. “Chasing after B and Es?”
“Ever the smartass, Madison. That’s healthy, actually. Meeting adversity with humor or something like that.”
I swallowed a stinging retort. There was no point adding any more problems to my catalog of misery. “Why are you here?” I asked. I was afraid to hear his answer. Was he really telling the truth about not arresting me? Had they been asking questions about Laurel and suspected me of being involved?
“Just cleaning up some details,” he said. “Let’s have a talk.”
We went into Samuel’s study and sat around the worktable he’d used when he wanted to spread out maps or illustrations. Gentile asked to hear my version, again, of the events on the night Hal had been killed. I decided to tell him the whole story of the past weeks with two exceptions. I mentioned nothing about Laurel. If he wanted to raise it I’d answer truthfully, but I had no intention of offering myself up on a platter. Nor did I reveal the true nature of Tomas’s discovery.
Occasionally Gentile would ask me to repeat something, but in the main he listened quietly. Vernon scribbled in his notebook. The detective seemed shocked only once when I described the cataclysm at the North Gate Cemetery. But he appeared to believe me; that surprised me.
“So he’s dead then, Ward,” he said.
“I don’t know. They flew him to a burn unit. He’s still in Kuwait.”
“That reporter Ari Zakar died. It was all over the media here. He filmed his own death apparently.”
His words brought back the image of Ari falling, the camera toppling off his shoulder. I pressed my hand to my eyes in a vain attempt to obliterate the sight.
Gentile took out a tissue and patted his forehead. I’d noticed earlier it was growing shiny with sweat. He got up and walked over to the window, stood there with his back to me.
“I did some looking into the woman, Eris Haines or Hansen. She’s had a checkered history. She was the subject of an outstanding warrant for a criminal assault on another matter. And I believe she was likely responsible for your car accident.”
If I’d been asked earlier whether anything else could shock me I would have laughed in disbelief. But this did. I pushed back my chair and rushed over so I could look him in the face. “How did you find out?”
“Our people working the stolen vehicle rings. They seized a pickup in a body shop raid. Matched the paint and the collision marks to our alert. Your car was deliberately driven off the road. It was traced to her.” He paused. “Mind you, your speed was excessive. Whether that was a contributing factor or not, we’ll never know.”
I wasn’t responsible for Samuel’s death. A huge sigh traveled through my frame and left me, as if an exorcist had just banished a demon. “Thank you for telling me,” I said.
“We’ll write this up. I’ll want you to come in tomorrow to sign off on the report.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll do anything you want. What about Hal’s murder?”
“It will probably end up in the cold case docket. I’ve got nothing but suspicions and your story at this point.”
As I walked him to the front door Gentile pointed to the mess. “Vernon will stay for a bit and document the damage. Give your insurance company my name. I wouldn’t hold my breath on finding the vandals.”
The ensuing weeks were busy ones. A wire transfer arrived, authorized before Ari’s death, for about seventy thousand, the amount he’d persuaded Tomas to part with from the proceeds of the condo sale. A fraction of what our place was worth. I hadn’t expected to hear from Tomas, but I imagined his sorrow over Ari was extreme.
The greater portion of the money went toward the next year of Evelyn’s care. As soon as I had my life somewhat back on track I went to see her. She lived in a Midtown studio apartment, in a featureless brown-brick housing complex. After I knocked at her door I could hear the creak of her wheelchair, then the door opened and before I even had a chance to step in, she leaned forward. I barely had time to crouch down to her level when she hugged me. I should really say clung to me, for it seemed long minutes before she was even willing to release me from her embrace.
She was already in her dressing gown and pajamas, so I’d almost come too late. As much as she could with her arthritis, she scrunched her knobby fingers and pressed them to her cheeks. Tears gathered in her eyes. Her words tumbled out. “I was afraid I might never see you again. I tried and tried. The hospital wouldn’t let me in. Only close relatives, they said. I called so many times. Wrote a letter even. Did you find it?” She stopped almost in mid-sentence and peered at my face. “What’s happened to you? Those marks on your face?”
“It’s nothing, Evie. Don’t worry about it. I’m here now. Everything’s fine.” I wheeled her over to the couch and sat beside her. I’m ashamed to admit this was the first time I’d been to her home. Samuel had cared for her, and when we got together it had always been on outings he’d arranged or for dinner or weekend afternoons at our place. The times he’d been away, he’d hired someone to help her out.
The apartment was cramped but neat as a pin. How she managed to keep it that way with her disability I couldn’t imagine. On a table beside the couch sat a pill box sectioned into the days of the week, a glass half full of tea, and a box of tissues. She had a small TV, radio, books, and things on a wall unit; a simple kitchen and bathroom; and a recessed area for her bed. There was one piece of fine furniture, a buffet that once belonged to Samuel. The top was crowded with framed photographs, one picture of her and Samuel, all the rest of me—the two of us walking in Central Park, me as a toddler holding a dripping ice-cream cone, school pictures from elementary through to university. That came as a bit of a surprise.
I’d made up my mind to say nothing about Hal’s game or my time in Iraq; it would only upset her. “Evie, sorry it’s taken me this long to visit you. Getting over the accident and feeling lost without Samuel took its toll. I had to deal with it in my own way.”
“You know he’s sold your place? I wanted to warn you. Samuel was going to tell you when he came back, but of course he didn’t get a chance. I begged him not to do it. It was your home but he wouldn’t listen.”
I wondered how much she knew about the whole affair. �
�Did he say why he wanted to sell it?”
“To help the museum. To protect its treasures. He was a good man but he went too far. He sold your birthright. That wasn’t fair.”
I smiled and said, “It’s done now and I’m managing okay.” Samuel and Evelyn had had such a long acquaintance, and I knew they’d often shared confidences. “Speaking of treasures, you remember my little casket, the one Samuel gave me on my birthday?”
“Of course. You played with it so many times.”
“Samuel once said it was part of my inheritance. But I’ve gotten to thinking. Is there anything else? Did he talk to you about my parents? Are there any photos I didn’t see? Letters? Anything like that?”
“There is nothing else.”
“It’s just, I’ve started to question … to wonder about my past in Turkey.”
In what seemed like an unconscious gesture, she rubbed her hand over her heart. “When I first came to this country I told myself, ‘You have a new chance. If you keep remembering bad things about the past they will become like demons flying around inside you. Forget them.’ That’s what I did. Don’t bring trouble to yourself by asking about these things, John. It will not help you.” She’d kept her eyes averted from me as she spoke, which was quite unlike her. Perhaps another time, if there was anything to reveal, I’d find her more forthcoming.
We talked for a while longer but she started to fade. I got her settled in for the night, dismayed to see the little huffs of breath she let out with the pain of moving off her wheelchair and getting into bed. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and said goodnight.
A few days later we visited Samuel’s grave together. The balance had shifted. The appeal of the bad-boy image had faded for me, and Samuel’s saintly aura had been modified by the very real repercussions of the disaster he’d set in motion. I was thankful for this reunion with him and for the restoration of good memories, untarnished by guilt.
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