Fugitive: A Novel

by Phillip Margolin

  “I’ve seen you interviewed on TV and I’ve followed your career. I believe that the articles in World News present an unbiased view of world affairs. Would your excellent magazine be interested in sending a reporter to write an article that would tell the American people about the wonderful things President Baptiste is doing for the people of Batanga? If so, please contact me so we can arrange the details.”

  Charlie read the e-mail twice before sending it. If Baptiste saw it he might hold off killing Charlie in the hope that the interview would be published. This would buy Charlie some time, and time was his most important ally. Time would give Charlie a chance to survive; a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless, and Charlie had always been a man who seized an opportunity when he saw it.

  Charlie had drunk a lot at the banquet but the horror in the basement had sobered him. He doubted he could sleep, even though it was almost three in the morning. He poured a glass of scotch and carried it to his balcony, which was the best thing about his dingy apartment. Before sunset, he could watch the native fishermen surf the waves in their canoes as they brought their catch in to shore. After dark, the stars would shine bright in the African sky and he would gaze at the lights of ships anchored in the Freeport. During the rainy season he was presented with lightning storms that were as dramatic as a fireworks display.

  Charlie took a stiff drink and tried to imagine what Bernadette had suffered before death had shown her mercy. A tear trickled down his cheek and he brushed it away. The tear was as much for himself as for his dead lover.

  THE HEAT OF the sun woke Charlie. He opened his eyes and stared at the sea, wondering why he was outside. There was a chair next to Charlie. In the second after waking he thought he saw Bernadette out of the corner of his eye, sitting beside him, laughing in that way of hers that lit up any room she was in. Then Charlie remembered the events at the mansion and suppressed a sob.

  Six years ago, Baptiste had introduced his fourth wife to Batangan high society. Charlie had been taken by her elegant beauty and warm smile but he knew she was untouchable and soon forgot her. Over the next few years, he saw Bernadette from a distance at state dinners and a party or two. He remembered the way her pregnancy suffused her features with a maternal glow and the way she smiled when she gazed at Alfonse. But she wasn’t smiling the first time he was alone with her.

  A little over a year ago, the secretary of state had hosted a party for a visiting dignitary from Ghana. Charlie was bored by the company, annoyed by the noise, and tired of just about everything else that was going on. A set of stairs led down to the beach from the patio of the secretary’s house. Charlie set off along the shore and found Bernadette sitting on a thick log that had washed up in the tide. It was dark and neither the moonshine nor the ambient light from the house were strong enough to breach the shadows that obscured Bernadette’s face. When he drew closer, as well as tears glistening on her ebony cheeks, Charlie saw a split lip and a swollen eye. The darkness and the damage to Bernadette’s face prevented Charlie from recognizing her right away or he would have fled. God knew what Baptiste would do to a man found alone with his wife. By the time he realized who she was, Bernadette’s head was on his shoulder and her tears were dampening his shirt.

  Bernadette had given up on kindness and now she’d met someone who was tender and compassionate. When she stopped crying and began to think clearly, Bernadette realized the threat she posed to Charlie. She thanked him, squeezed his hand, and left him alone on the beach. But then, a month later, while the president was in Las Vegas, gambling and whoring, Bernadette saw Charlie at a gala at the Batanga Palace, the country’s only luxury hotel. This time she lost her heart to him.

  At first, Charlie resisted his desire to be with Bernadette, because he didn’t want to be cut into tiny pieces by a chain-saw or slowly turned into barbecue by a blowtorch, two of the president’s favorite methods of execution. But Charlie had never been in love before and he was stunned by the depth of his feeling for this beautiful lost soul. They began meeting in a room at the hotel, which Charlie rented under an assumed name. During their first tryst, Bernadette confided that the all-powerful ruler of the Batangan people was anything but in the sack. Charlie learned that Baptiste blamed Bernadette for his many failures in bed and beat her when he was unable to perform. The beatings had gotten so bad that she’d begun to fear for her life.

  Bernadette and Charlie talked of escape and a life together, even though they should have known that the affair and their dreams were insane. But people in love lose touch with reality. Charlie never asked himself how it was possible for their trysts to go undiscovered in a country where everyone was a spy and the one person most likely to be the subject of surveillance was the supreme ruler’s wife. Now Charlie knew that Baptiste had always been aware of every move they’d made.

  Charlie wept quietly as he wondered how it was possible for someone as wonderful as Bernadette to be dead. When he’d exhausted his tears, he closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and felt the sun on his face and the caress of a sea breeze. Waves were washing over the rocky beach below his apartment as they did every minute of every day. The world continued its beat and Charlie was alive to enjoy it. And as long as he was alive, there was a chance he would survive and win some measure of revenge for his lost love.

  CHAPTER 3

  Four days after his escape from the mansion, at a little after eight in the evening, Charlie walked through the milling Waterside crowds. The dusky air was filled with the competing rhythms of native drummers and radios blaring hip-hop and African highlife. Smoke from cooking fires curled into the night sky. The fires had been built in front of tumbledown shacks made of corrugated tin and other junk. They were stacked one against the other near open sewers. Women wrapped in rainbow-colored cloth sold fish fresh from the canoes of the fishermen while other vendors squatted on low stools beside small grills, hawking roasted yams.

  Charlie passed bands of bare-chested boys wearing ragged shorts. They played in the dust near open-front stores protected by thick metal gates. These children believed that all white men were rich, so they approached Charlie with hands outstretched, crying, “Papa, papa, gimme five cents.” Many had distended bellies. One boy dragged a horribly mangled foot behind him. Another had a large lump on his stomach and sat in the road, his dull eyes staring. Older beggars with missing limbs or blind eyes pleaded for alms more quietly, thrusting rusty tin cups out when he walked by.

  Charlie ignored the children and the beggars as he struggled up the hill toward the center of Baptisteville. At the top was Main Street, divided by a tree-shaded center island that stretched the length of the city. On either side were Western-style drugstores, movie theaters, restaurants, and gift shops that catered to wealthy Batangans, expatriates, and the rare tourist. The evening crowds were smaller here, because the European or Middle Eastern owners had closed their stores, but the streets were still crowded with taxis and money buses. Charlie crossed the road and turned into Lafayette Street, the center of Batanga’s nightlife. Here were the Cave, the Peacock, the Mauna Loa, and other brightly colored shack bars where bar girls hustled a mostly white clientele to the incessant beat of rock and hip-hop.

  Charlie maneuvered past several Batangan men in shorts and ripped T-shirts who sat on the curb outside the Mauna Loa, joking, arguing, and drinking from bottles filled with warm beer. A cigarette vendor tried to interest Charlie in one of the packs that rested on a tray he’d balanced on a wooden stand. Several beautiful African girls in tight, flashy, low-cut dresses leaned against the outside wall of the bar. Charlie greeted the women, who knew him by name. One girl promised him a night of ecstasy unlike any ever experienced by mortal man. Charlie begged off, claiming that a night with any one of them would end with him dead from pleasure. The women were laughing when Charlie entered the shack.

  Expatriate white men and African women sat along a wooden bar or at the few small tables that took up most of the floor space. Charlie edged past two Batangan girl
s who were dancing with each other to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and took the only empty stool at the bar.

  “Eh, Charlie, why you not come more?” asked the bartender.

  “Rebecca, you know I love you too much,” he answered. “If I come too much, I will say you must marry me.”

  “Maybe I will say yes, eh?” she answered coyly.

  Charlie shook his head, feigning sadness. “I can hope, but I know you will break my heart.”

  Rebecca laughed raucously. “I say, Charlie, you bullshit me too much.”

  Charlie smiled. “Do you think you can find me a cold Heineken?”

  Almost everyone in Batanga lived from day to day. Baptiste’s secret police exploited their destitution by paying for information. Charlie had learned that it was wise to trust no one, but Pierre had told Charlie that he could trust Rebecca, a beautiful Batangan woman who had once been the mistress of the cabinet minister, who owned the Mauna Loa. Charlie frequented the bars on Lafayette Street and knew Rebecca. He had never heard her utter a subversive thought or discuss politics, and he was shocked to learn that she was part of the underground.

  Bartenders meet a wide range of people and Rebecca had acquaintances, Batangan and otherwise, up and down the social ladder. Pierre had told Charlie that Rebecca would find someone who would help him escape from Batanga. This morning, a small boy had begged him for money using a code phrase. While Charlie was giving him a quarter, the boy told Charlie to come to the Mauna Loa at eight thirty.

  Rebecca set a frosted green bottle on the bar, while Charlie casually scanned the room. The men in the bar were in groups or chatting up women. None looked the least bit interested in him. When he swiveled back, a white man who’d been sitting two stools away leaned across the bar girl who sat between them.

  “I know you,” he proclaimed so loudly that he could be heard over the music.

  “I don’t think so,” said Charlie, who could smell the booze on his breath from the distance of two barstools.

  The man was broad-shouldered, big through the chest, and spoke with a southern accent. Charlie figured him for six two and two hundred. He was bald with a ruddy complexion and faint traces of boyhood acne and looked like he could handle himself in a fight.

  “No, no, don’t tell me. It’ll come to me,” the drunk insisted. He gazed into space for a moment then snapped his fingers. “TV! I’ve seen you on TV.”

  Charlie held his breath.

  “You’re that guru. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “No, you got it.” Charlie sighed.

  “Hey, honey,” the man said to the bar girl who sat between him and Charlie, “would you mind switching places? I’ll buy you another to make it worth your while.”

  The bar girl surrendered her stool and the man moved next to Charlie.

  “Hope you don’t mind but it’s not every day I bump into a celebrity in this place. Brad and Angelina don’t pop in here much,” he said with a braying laugh that set Charlie’s teeth on edge.

  “Chauncey Evers,” the man said, reaching out a large hand. Charlie shook it reluctantly.

  “Charlie Marsh,” Charlie answered as he tried to figure out how to get away. His contact was never going to approach him while he was with this clown.

  “I have to apologize upfront. I haven’t read your book. I meant to but I haven’t. But I did see you on TV during the thing at the prison when you saved the prison guard’s life. That was something.”

  Two men and two women vacated a table. Evers picked up his glass.

  “Let’s grab that table and you can tell me all about the standoff at the prison.”

  “That’s okay,” Charlie said, desperate to beg off. “I’m supposed to meet someone.”

  “Well, you can drink with me until she gets here,” Evers said with an exaggerated wink, “and the drinks are on me. It ain’t often I get to meet a genuine hero who was on television and wrote a book.” Evers lowered his voice. “And wants to escape from this hellhole.”

  “You’re…” Charlie started, but Evers had turned away and was weaving unsteadily through the close-packed tables. As soon as he was seated, he thrust a pen and a napkin at Charlie.

  “Can I get your autograph for my girlfriend?” he asked loudly.

  “Can you get me out of here?” Charlie said as he leaned over the napkin.

  “That’s easy,” Evers assured him.

  “How soon can you do it?”

  “As soon as you pay me seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  “Seventy-five?” Charlie repeated anxiously.

  “And it’s got to be in cash. I don’t take checks. Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Charlie said.

  World News had agreed to do the interview, so Charlie would ask Rebecca to get a message asking for the seventy-five-thousand-dollar fee to Martha Brice through Pierre Girard and the rebels.

  “What I want to know,” Charlie said, “is how you’re going to deal with Baptiste’s secret police?”

  “You mean that guy over by the wall?” Evers said as he kept his eyes on Charlie, a big smile on his face. “I spotted that clown as soon as he walked in.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t be so smug. I spotted him too. He tailed me from my apartment and he didn’t try to hide the fact that he was following me. There are people outside my place every minute I’m at home and someone on my ass whenever I go out. Baptiste wants me to know he’s having me shadowed. His secret police are very good. They can make themselves invisible if they want to. This is Baptiste’s way of telling me I’m on a short leash. What I want to know is how you’re going to deal with these guys.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Evers said confidently. “You get me the money and I’ll get you out.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  Evers shrugged. “Beats me. But you’re the guy who sent for me. So,” the mercenary asked, “what did you do to get Baptiste’s panties in a bunch?”

  Charlie hesitated. If Evers found out that the president had a personal grudge against him he might change his mind about taking him home. An American passport went only so far as protection, in Batanga.

  “Come on, Charlie. If I’m going to risk my neck to get you out of here I have to know what I’m dealing with.”

  Charlie looked down at the tabletop. “I had an affair with one of Baptiste’s wives.”

  Evers whistled.

  “He tortured her to death and showed me the results. Then he pretended he didn’t know who her lover was, but he knows,” Charlie said bitterly.

  “Man, you are in a heap of trouble. But never fear. Chauncey Evers will come to the rescue.”

  “What do I do next?” Charlie asked as he handed the autographed napkin to Evers.

  “Get the money. Tell Rebecca when you have it and she’ll tell me. Then you do exactly what I tell you to do and you’ll be back in the good old US of A before you know it.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Some people said that God was good and merciful, but Dennis Levy knew that was not true. One had only to turn on the television news to see evidence of gross injustice in the world. One percent of the Earth’s population skied at Gstaad and lay on the beaches of Nevis while millions starved in Africa. And what about AIDS and Katrina and the poor in India, who lived in the streets and scavenged in garbage dumps for their meals? Closer to home, there were undeserving people who held positions of power and worked in luxurious offices with views of Central Park because they had married money, while those with real talent—like Dennis Levy—slaved away in a cubicle and had to kowtow to them.

  These were some of the things Dennis was thinking about as he trudged from his cubicle to the luxurious office of Martha Brice, his boss at World News. Levy had grown up lower-middle-class on Long Island and had worked like a dog in high school to earn a scholarship to an Ivy League university. While he bused tables in the cafeteria at Princeton, the legacy morons in his class received a weekly allowance from dear old dad. When Levy was studying i
nto the wee hours and graduating with a three-point-fucking-eight GPA, the sons and daughters of the rich were getting drunk and stoned and screwing anything that moved, safe in the knowledge that plum jobs in their parents’ firms or corporations waited for them regardless of their grades. Where was the justice in that, and what had all his hard work and sterling academic career gotten him? His rich classmates were raking it in as stockbrokers and lawyers; people who couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag got the choice assignments at World News while he was making peanuts reporting on stories that would never earn him the reputation he deserved.

  Levy forced himself to smile when he announced his presence to Brice’s so-called executive assistant, Daphne St. John; though he was willing to bet this was not her real name. Daphne was a stuck-up bitch, who had turned down Dennis’s offer of a drink shortly after she was hired. Memories of her incredulous refusal still burned, but he was damned if he’d let Brice’s glorified receptionist know it.

  “Mrs. Brice is on an important call,” Daphne told him, clearly implying that Brice’s meeting with him was not important. “Take a seat and I’ll tell you when she’s ready to see you.”

  Dennis planted himself on a sofa and fumed silently while he leafed through the latest issue of World News. He had just finished mentally editing another article on the Middle East poorly written by one of the senior hacks when Daphne told him he could enter Brice’s inner sanctum.

  Dennis was tall and gangly, with the pasty complexion low-paid reporters have when they only make enough to subsist on fast foods. His black hair was curly and his blue eyes were intense. He always seemed to be on edge and—though he was obviously very smart—he was slow to get jokes, because he lacked a sense of humor. Dennis was also socially inept. He had no sense of style and never felt comfortable in a restaurant that rated stars or at a function where a tuxedo was required.