by Alyssa Cole
“Until?” she prodded.
“Until he got a little taste of power. I’m sure it’s in your records, but when we were teens, we started a gang. ”
“And now you’re a spook. Were you scared straight?” Yates asked, eyeing him curiously.
“Something like that. I wasn’t what you call a good kid, but I knew the difference between right and wrong,” Julian said smoothly, ignoring Yates’s probing look. If she wanted to know his secrets, she could do her job and investigate him. “Birdie only knew what made him feel good, and if he didn’t get caught—and he never did—why should conventional matters of morality bother him? He only had one code of honor: the Besa.”
Yates picked up the well-worn copy of the Kanun Julian had spotted on her desk. It was basically the guide to Albanian culture, discussing the four pillars: hospitality, good conduct, honor, and kin loyalty. The latter two were what the gangs used to their advantage.
“The Besa, aka, the bane of my existence, aka, the reason we can never get an Albanian to snitch,” Yates said, dropping the book and starting to type. “Why does it still hold such sway with people? Isn’t all that tribal shit in the past?”
The past is never the past, Julian thought, but then paused before answering. He had given much thought to the topic over the years, especially in the aftermath of the dark memories that plagued his sleep, when fire bit at his hands and smoke filled his lungs, and he had to tell himself that it had only been another nightmare.
“The way I think of it, and this is just my opinion, is that when a person is poor, the only thing they can control is their honor,” he said. “Think about in this country. Where are you most likely to hear about someone getting killed over some innocuous slight, real or imagined? A housing project or a trailer park or a rundown town in the middle of nowhere.
“After years of isolation, war, genocide, pyramid schemes, and government corruption, the Besa is the only thing that seems real to some Albanian people. It’s a code that’s survived thousands of years.”
Yates looked at him, gave a thoughtful nod.
“I grew up in a mining town in Appalachia,” she said. “I know how much honor costs when there’s no money to back it up. But give me some more stuff about Bardhyn when he was young. We mostly have information on his adult activities: gunrunning, murder, human trafficking… Crazy that the thing that finally put him on our radar was forging passports, isn’t it?”
“The government has to have priorities,” Julian said, stretching. His back ached from hunching over the desk for so long.
“So you were telling me about this gang,” she said, not bothering to hide the judgment in her voice.
“We were kids. A gang seemed like a good distraction from the fact that the government was collapsing and people in other countries thought our kind should be wiped from the face of the earth. Trust me, I paid for my dalliance with the bad boys.”
Yates stopped typing, and he could tell she was avoiding looking at his scars.
“Sorry,” she said.
Julian ignored her and continued.
“I was good with words, and the other boys liked having me around to tell them what to do. We didn’t really do much but play bootleg video games and get into schoolyard fights until I brought Birdie in. It was fun at first, having him there, but as time went on, he wanted to steal more, hurt people worse, use weapons. But things were different then, and I thought of him as my brother.”
“So you were that close with him?” Yates asked.
“Too close to realize how dangerous he was until it was too late,” Julian said. He started scanning through transcript files.
“Is that why you’re doing this? Out of guilt?”
“I joined the FBI because I had an aptitude for languages and a desire to help people,” Julian said. “I was lucky enough to get to this country and have complete strangers believe in me. If I can help stop a terrorist or a drug dealer, it’s the least I can do.”
He paused.
“But catching Birdie would make everything else worthwhile,” he finished quietly.
He could feel Yates’s eyes on him, but he kept thumbing through the transcripts. Someone had gotten a phone tap on the girlfriend of one Birdie’s low-level thugs, a Russian who had scurried over to the Albanians when they became one the most powerful gangs in town. He skimmed the Cyrillic transcriptions, mostly the boring dramas of daily life, until a snippet of conversation from the newest batch of intel caught his eye.
“So is your boss is going to handle this or what, Alexi? I don’t want child services breathing down my neck again. It’s your fault the teacher got so mad.”
“I told that bitch not to go to the cops! Luckily, she went to a precinct right in his territory. Those pigs are under his thumb, they’re not gonna touch him. But her, she’s got something coming. I told Birdie that she—”
“She’s gonna get fired, right? I told Yelena she’d better say whatever I told her to when we went to the principal or I’d beat like she never got it before.”
“Fired? Do you even listen to the shit I tell you about this guy? He’s gonna make her wish she was never born.”
“Why not just kill her?”
“What’s the fun in that? Check the newspapers this week. This Jones bitch thinks she can threaten me? She fucked with the wrong guy.”
“Yeah, your boss. Too bad you couldn’t take care of her yourself, you pussy.”
“I'll take care of you next time I see you, bitch.”
“Ah, young love,” Julian said as he grabbed a pen and circled the conversation in red ink. It had to be something. That little thrumming motion in his stomach, his gut instinct, was on high alert.
He searched for the date of the transcript and then flung the pages over his desk at Yates.
“Read that,” he said as he pulled up a search engine on his Web browser and his fingers tapped out the relevant keywords.
“Blah, blah blah blah, blah,” she said in an annoyed tone before tossing the papers aside. “It’s in Russian, Mr. Multilingual Showoff.”
“Okay, forget that and come over here.” He beckoned her. “It’s a conversation between one of Birdie’s social climbers, Alexi Turginov, and one of his girlfriends. She’s asking him if his boss is going to take care of some teacher who threatened to call child services on them. Et voila.”
Julian pointed at the screen with a flourish, his delight at having easily found the teacher mixed with horror at what he had pulled up. An image of a woman trying to shield her face from tabloid reporters as she exited a police station was plastered on the front page of a local newspaper. She was dark-skinned and fine-featured and obviously terrified. Julian knew the look in her eyes well. Fear and disbelief and dead-eyed horror.
“Teacher Hot for Students,” Yates read the bold headline and then the bullet points, her tone dripping with disgust. “Local teacher embroiled in teen sex scandal. Teacher was involved with multiple organizations that gave her access to young, underprivileged girls.”
“Jesus,” Julian said. “How much do you want to bet that there’s no real evidence to support any of these claims?”
Unable to look at the large brown eyes brimming with tears for a moment longer, he clicked away to another image. In this picture, probably taken from a social networking site, she was wearing nothing but a very small bikini and a broad smile as she sipped from a giant daiquiri on a pristine beach.
“Why? Because she’s hot?” Yates asked, eyeing the photo appreciatively.
“No, because if you read the transcript, he says Bardhyn is going to ruin a teacher named Jones’s life. Being accused of being a child molester seems like a definite life destroyer. Plus, I can just…tell.” His instinct thrummed in agreement. He clicked back in the browser and enlarged the initial picture. “Come on. Does that look like the picture of a perp, or like someone who’s caught in a nightmare?”
“Maybe you’re right. If she’s innocent, then that means she might know some
“Because Birdie is a sadistic fuck. He doesn’t think like you or me. He likes killing people, but more than that, he likes hurting them. He enjoys destroying their very essence. What little can you glean about this woman from this front page?”
“She’s a teacher who also volunteered with underprivileged kids,” Yates said.
“And she got Birdie’s attention because she tried to stop people who were abusing a kid,” Julian added. “So he hit her where it hurts. She’ll never be able to teach again. She’ll never be able to volunteer again. Anytime someone searches for her name—and Salomeh Jones is a very unique name—this is what will come up. It doesn’t even have to be true.”
“He’s a thorough bastard,” Yates said, flopping down in her seat. “This is sad and all, but the more important thing here is taking this guy down. What does she know? Do you think it'll be valuable to us?”
“Only one way to find out,” Julian said, wondering if this Salomeh Jones knew just how much trouble she had gotten herself into.
Chapter Two
“Salomeh? Come on, guapa, enough of this already.”
Marta’s voice was muffled from outside the heavy quilt, beneath which Salomeh lay motionless, pretending not to hear her best friend. Maybe if she didn’t move, Marta wouldn’t find her. It had worked in Jurassic Park. It could work for her.
“Salomeh?”
Marta was closer now. Apparently she wasn’t as easily fooled as a giant reptile with a brain the size of a walnut.
Salomeh sighed and unfurled from the fetal position, preparing to leave the relative safety she had found beneath her sheets. She had been holed up in her apartment for days. Even the familiar tree-lined streets of her Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood had become too fraught with danger to navigate. It wasn’t only the fear of reporters waiting to pounce or strangers ready to judge her, but also the knowledge that Alexi and his boss could decide to hurt her, broken-kneecaps hurt her, at any time.
Home was safe, and under her quilt was safer.
When she heard the bedroom door open and the groan of her window being forced open, Salomeh cursed herself for giving her friend a spare set of keys. Even so a surge of happiness tightened her chest as the bed sank under Marta’s familiar weight.
Marta rested her hand on Salomeh’s shoulder through the layers of fabric and batting, giving her a subtle shake.
“Can you come out from under there?” she prodded gently, which was thoroughly un-Marta-like. “Look, I’m the depressed fuck-up, and you’re the one who consoles me and forces me to stop feeling sorry for myself. You know I don’t do well with change.”
Salomeh squeezed her eyes shut against fresh tears and sniffled. She felt the covers being pulled away and didn’t resist. The fresh air seemed foreign in contrast to the musty air that had been trapped with her beneath the sheets. She inhaled deeply just as Marta pulled the blankets completely off the bed.
One of her neighbors was having a barbecue, and the smell of charcoal and burgers made her stomach rumble and her heart ache. She had always been invited to neighborhood cookouts before.
“Five more minutes,” Salomeh croaked, squinting against the afternoon sunlight that flooded the room. Marta was highlighted by the sunlight pouring in from the window. Her pixie-cut blonde hair was perfectly mussed, and her big hazel eyes, which men and women alike couldn’t resist, shone with concern.
“Nuh-uh. Hibernation is over, Sal,” Marta said.
Salomeh shook her head as if her friend would settle for that and leave her be.
“Girl, this is not the look,” Marta said with a sigh, gesturing to the mound of crumpled tissues that had formed a nest beneath the blankets.
Salomeh sat upright, sweeping the tissues onto the floor next to the quilt before leaning back against her dark wood headboard. She felt a twinge of embarrassment at the mess and at her tatty old pajamas, which probably smelled as bad as they looked, but it passed quickly. Marta was the only person in the world Salomeh would allow to see her at her most vulnerable.
“They provided good insulation,” she said peevishly. “Just trying to do my part to prevent climate change.”
Marta rolled her eyes.
“You haven’t left the house in, like, a week, Sal. It’s time to say ‘fuck these people’ and start living your life again,” Marta said, her voice taking on a sternness that almost made Salomeh smile through her sadness. Marta was using the “teacher tone” that Salomeh had been wielding against her friend for years. “You can’t let them win by becoming a hermit. You deserve better than this.”
I’ve been fighting to make things better my entire life, and this is where it got me, Salomeh thought. There’s no point in trying anymore.
“Marta, they’ve already won.” Salomeh picked up one of the less icky tissues and swiped at her nose. “I may as well be Hester Prynne, but instead of being branded with a scarlet letter, I’m photoshopped into a picture with pedobear.”
She shook her head in frustration. “Have you ever had a strange woman walk up to you and tell you that you deserve to burn in hell for what you’ve done? Had men make impossibly lewd comments because they think you’re the lowest of the low? I had to change my phone number, and I refuse to check my e-mail ever again.”
Salomeh didn't mention one phone call in particular, the first one she had received at her new number; a refined female voice that had calmly stated, “Bardhyn wants you to know that if you even think about telling anyone about Alexi, the girl will suffer. Terribly. You’re smart enough to know that this is not an idle threat.” That was the only contact she'd had from the man who had ruined her life. He couldn’t even be bothered to threaten her himself.
Salomeh’s stomach plunged at the reminder of how little value her life held for this man. She thought of how her first cat would behave when it caught a mouse: it would toy with the poor creature for as long as it derived enjoyment, or until the mouse was irreparably broken.
Marta sighed and moved from the bed, her strides carrying her through the long, narrow bedroom and out of sight. The fear that Marta was walking out on her gripped Salomeh, but Marta quickly returned holding two paper coffee cups, the familiar blue-and-white pattern as comforting as chicken soup. Salomeh eagerly took a cup, turning it so that the cheery “Have a nice day!” slogan faced away from her.
She took a sip of coffee and then closed her eyes as the caffeine buzzed pleasantly through her system. She had been a five-cup-a-day drinker when she was teaching and mentoring, but caffeine had been the last thing on her mind for the past two weeks. All she had wanted to do was sleep. It was the only way to escape the nightmare her waking life had become.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Marta said irritably as she sat cross-legged at the end of the bed. “You didn’t do anything but help that girl, and the cops have no evidence against you. Why is this still an issue?”
“They have no evidence because they can’t find Yelena,” Salomeh said quietly. The girl had apparently disappeared a few days ago. Her mother said she had gone to stay with relatives in Moscow for the summer, but Salomeh couldn’t ignore what the phone call implied.
“The girl will pay.”
Marta sighed and shook her head.
“I can’t find it in me to be sad that the girl who helped unleash this shit storm isn’t around to cause more trouble right now,” Marta said, her thin brows furrowing.
“She’s a kid, Marta,” Salomeh said. Her instinct was still to protect Yelena, even now. “An abused kid who was afraid for her life. I doubt she had much choice in the matter.”
“I know,” Marta said, frustration lacing her tone. “And I know you felt a special attachment to her because you can’t—” Marta stopped herself short, but Salomeh knew what she was going to say. Because you can’t have kids of your own.
“I just can’t stand seeing what’s happened to you,” Marta continued. “Isn’t there something your lawyer can do to make all those newspapers retract their stories?”
“Unless he’s a time-machine salesman in his spare time, then no,” she said, feeling a bit more of herself returning with each word she spoke to her friend. Perhaps going into full recluse mode hadn’t been the best choice. “The charges have been dropped, but the allegations will never go away.”
“Why don’t you just tell someone your side of the story? Why hasn’t your lawyer?” Marta asked.
“I tried, but the police say that there’s no record of my having made a complaint against Alexi,” Salomeh said, trying to sidestep Marta’s inevitable curiosity. “The girl will pay.” “Who would believe me anyway? If I told them that some strange man set me up because I tried to help a child, they’d think I was insane.”
And maybe by the time this ordeal is over, maybe I will be, she thought.
“There has to be something we can do to make this right,” Marta said.
“I don’t see how,” Salomeh said. She had been avoiding thinking about this topic because she always came down to the same conclusion. “Newspapers, blogs, social networks… This story spread everywhere. There are people all around the country who think I’m some perverted freak. And even if people forget, all it takes is a little Google search to remind them. It’s all too much.”
And that was without the added factor of a missing child and a criminal who would harm both of them if Salomeh tried to vindicate herself.
“Ugh, I wish I could do something to help,” Marta said, looking down and clutching her paper cup tightly. “Why couldn’t I have a cool job like an assassin or something so I could just go kill the guy who did this? Being a project manager at an architecture firm doesn’t exactly give you lethal skills besides the ability to bore people to death. I do have some pretty sharp tools, though.”
Salomeh could very easily imagine her friend trying to track down the men who had hurt her. Marta was the definition of loyalty, and she didn’t mind breaking heads when necessary.
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