Forgive Me

by Joshua Corin

  “What is his real name?” asked Konquist as they approached the pawnshop’s glass-eyed front door.

  “It’s a state secret.”

  “I hate that about the feds. Everything is a state secret. Am I not a payer of taxes?”

  “Don’t blame me,” said Xana. “I got fired.”

  Then her phone went off. No, wait, not her phone. Konquist’s phone. It was Detective Chau. Konquist and Xana loitered outside Yuri’s pawnshop for a few minutes while the former traded questions with his partner. When he finally hung up, he appeared even more ornery than before.

  “Bad news?” Xana asked him.

  “State secret,” he replied.

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “We’ve been investigating the Serendipity Group’s financials, hoping to find some connection to Phillip Wilkerson or Father Dacy. You know, follow the money. But so far we’ve got nothing. So I requested they dig a little bit more to see if they could at least link the Serendipity Group to what’s-his-name, the best friend…”

  “Ross Berman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you always had this problem with names or are you just getting senile?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Xana smirked. “I think I like you.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “So were they able to make a connection?”

  “Nope.” Konquist sighed. “They’re smart.”

  “But they’re not perfect. Nobody is. Not even me.”

  At which point the door to the pawnshop opened from the inside and a wide old man in a cheap black suit glared at them with years of constipated hostility. His face was pink and brown except at its center, which was a dull, unblemished white. This was Yuri’s nose, or rather the putty reconstruction of it that doctors had glued to his bones. It quite resembled a boy’s athletic cup.

  “Come in if you are coming,” he muttered, “or leave if you are leaving.”

  They went in.

  The pawnshop had seen better days. Its rows of shelves were nearly empty, unless dust now counted as merchandise. Near the front of the store were spread its long, well-lit glass counters, and these were where the expensive items were contained…normally. Now only a lone pocket watch remained encased, and its second hand had died halfway between an ornate eight and an ornate nine. Behind the counter was Yuri’s armchair, raised on a dais and within easy reach of the cash register, and Yuri mounted himself on the armchair while accompanied by the snapping percussion of his own joints.

  The wall behind the armchair was bare, although the sun-bleached outlines of over a dozen firearms had left a faded design on the tan wood. One firearm did remain, though. It was a Colt Single Action Army .45 revolver. The Peacemaker. The gun that won the West. Long silver barrel. It lay beside the antique cash register. Yuri picked up a child’s toothbrush, dipped it into a well of oil, and slid its slick bristles into one of the shooter’s six chambers.

  “My name is Detective Konquist and I just have a few questions. First question—did she do that to your face?”

  “She?” Yuri glanced over at Xana. “No. I tripped.”

  “You can tell him the truth.”

  “Oh, I have permission from you to tell truth? Good. Thank you. I tripped. Next question.”

  Konquist sighed.

  “What happened to your store?” asked Xana.

  “Doctors happened to my store. Doctors tell me they are going to fix my face. I ask how much it is going to cost. Everything costs. Doctors do not know how much, but tell me not to worry. Tell me they are going to fix my face.”

  “Because you tripped.”

  “Do you not have gravity where you are from, Detective?”

  “Yeah, we have gravity.”

  “What happened to your store, Yuri?” Xana repeated.

  On hearing that name, Yuri grinned. His teeth were yellow. His artificial nose lifted as his cheeks spread with the smile.

  “Doctors fix my face,” he said. “I go home. Then bills come to home. Bills follow me home like stray dogs. I have to pay. They fix my face. So I pay. This is what happened to store. Doctors fix it. Detective, how do you know her, this woman, Xanadu Marx, she-wolf of the FBI?”

  “She-wolf of the FBI? Wow. That I will remember.”

  “Yes. We all remember.”

  Xana cleared her throat. “Yuri, I came here because…the thing is, I’m sorry. I know I’m responsible for all this and it sucks and I wish there was something I could do. Is there anything I can do?”

  “You are sorry?” Yuri oil-brushed another chamber in his centuries-old revolver. “Everybody is sorry. That is not why you are here. I give permission for you to speak truth, she-wolf.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t come here to apologize?”

  “Because you come here with police detective.”

  “He’s my moral support.”

  “Ha! Moral support. You need morals to need moral support, she-wolf. Why are you here?”

  Konquist took the bait. “What do you know about the Serendipity Group?”

  “Ser-en-di-pi-ty?” Yuri placed his toothbrush on the counter. “This is name?”

  “Yes. Although it’s also a word. It means…you know…it means when something is…when two things are…serendipitous.”

  “It’s means ‘a happy coincidence,’ ” added Xana.

  “Ah! Yes. A happy coincidence. Yes. And what means, tell me, please, a sad coincidence?”

  “That’s just bad luck, I guess.”

  “Bad luck.” Yuri closed the .45’s cylinder. He shut one eye and aimed the empty revolver at Xana. He pressed the trigger. “Bang. You’re bad luck.”

  Konquist fingered the release on his shoulder holster. “Please put away the weapon, sir.”

  “It’s fine,” said Xana.

  “See, Detective? It is fine.” Yuri maintained his aim on Xana. Straight line from the barrel to her sternum. “You are sorry?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled the trigger again.

  Click.

  “Sir, I will not ask you again.”

  “Then do not ask me again. Confess to me, she-wolf. Tell me what you are sorry for.”

  He pulled the trigger a third time. Click.

  “I’m sorry I hit you in the face with a glass. I was impatient. I know now that I should have tried something else.”

  “Tell me what else you should have tried.”

  Xana opened her mouth to reply—and then stopped. She hadn’t anticipated that question. She hadn’t anticipated that question because she had never considered an answer. She had gotten what she had needed. Why reassess a successful outcome? Hayley had been disgusted by her act of violence, but the information Yuri subsequently provided had saved lives. How else could she have obtained the same result? Men like Yuri didn’t comply with polite requests. And it wasn’t as if she could have blackmailed the information out of him. What could she possibly have blackmailed him with? His family was dead. His friends, the few still alive, were half a world away. He paid his taxes on time and in full. And given Yuri’s background, the threat of violence would have been meaningless without any follow-through.

  What else could she have tried?

  Mind games? Trickery? Feign a relationship of trust? There hadn’t been time for any of that. A quid pro quo? That had been the tactic Yuri had played. He had promised to deliver the information and all he had asked in return was that she take a drink. He had known what he was asking her to do.

  Her pivot to violence had been as much retaliatory as interrogational.

  And Yuri knew it.

  But he also wasn’t working with the Serendipity Group. Of that Xana had been nearly certain before, and she was fully certain now. Yuri, if he wanted revenge, would exact it himself. He was not going to rely on assistance from anyone, least of all an American charity. If he wanted her dead, he wouldn’t contrive a scenario to trap her. He would aim a gun so that she could see it and then he would pull th
e trigger.

  He pulled the trigger. Click.

  His putty nose sat on his face like an albino hippopotamus.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Detective Konquist.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  They turned to go.

  Konquist left first. The bells above the door jangled. As Xana stepped outside the doorway, though, Yuri called out to her:

  “She-wolf!”

  She turned and looked back at him. This pathetic old immigrant she had rendered even more pathetic in her zeal and impatience.

  He opened the cylinder of his revolver.

  A bullet slid out from a chamber and onto the glass countertop where it bounced, bounced, bounced, and then rolled off the edge to the floorboards below.

  Chapter 29

  “He’s a charmer,” said Konquist, pulling out of their parking spot.

  But Xana was thinking about the bullet. Yuri must have palmed it somehow, hidden it from view, and snuck it into the chamber just before closing the cylinder. She and Konquist had been standing outside his shop for a while before entering. There had been their discussion of state secrets and Chau’s phone call and then Ross Berman’s lack of financial ties. Yuri had had plenty of time to think and to prepare.

  He had pointed a loaded gun at her and she had let him. She had let him! He had pulled the trigger how many times? Three? Four? And all the while he knew exactly what he was doing, this pathetic old man with a putty nose. Had she not left when she did, would he have pulled the trigger a fifth time? A sixth? Would he have shot her in cold blood?

  Yes.

  Then why hadn’t he? Why had he let her go?

  She hadn’t mentioned the bullet to Detective Konquist. She never would. For many reasons, this was on her.

  “So who’s next on your shit list?” the detective asked her, and Xana recited the Dunwoody address Hayley had given her for Marcos Martinelle. They hopped on the freeway heading north. Dunwoody was a picket-fence neighborhood just above the city perimeter. Most non-residents who ended up in Dunwoody went there reluctantly, and for good reason. The city of Dunwoody played host to a massive medical complex that included three separate hospitals, seven independent labs, and several thousand acres of subsidiary offices and diagnostic clinics. Their destination was a mile away. It was called Lynch Commons and it was a retirement home.

  They got out of the car. A short bus passed them. Attached to the front windshield was a large white sign with clear large text. The text read perimeter mall. The bus appeared to be full. The average age of its passengers appeared to be Mesozoic.

  Konquist gazed with visible skepticism at the bi-level pinewood building. “You really think your nemesis is in here?”

  “You’re just upset because you didn’t want to come here until you had to.”

  They advanced toward the sliding door opposite the circular driveway.

  “There’s no way I’m ending up in a place like this,” said Konquist. “Better to burn out than to fade away.”

  “That’s a good line. Remember who said it?”

  Konquist answered her with a gesture.

  The front desk was manned by a young woman, twenty-five at most, who greeted them with enough energy to melt Three Mile Island. She wore scrubs, but her scrubs were neither blue nor green. Nor red. Nor black. They were flower print. Daffodils and lilies, all soft and colorful.

  “Hello! I’m Vicki! And who are you here to see!”

  “Marcos Martinelle,” replied Xana.

  “That’s super! Is he expecting you!”

  “No.”

  “Surprises are awesome! Please write your names here!”

  They took turns scribbling their signatures on a sheet of paper that had the day’s date in hearts and curlicues at the top. There were only two other names on it.

  “Fantastic! Mr. Martinelle is in Room Y!”

  “Room Y?”

  Vicki indicated the three lines—purple, orange, and turquoise—painted on the linoleum floor. “Take the purple line allll the way.”

  The purple line led them past the cafeteria, where groups of seniors were playing team trivia; and past the rec room, which was absent of people but loud with Jimmy Stewart blathering in black and white on a giant TV to the empty room; and past a board of activities; and past a bank of elevators; and past a solarium, where two older women sat with identical romance novels; and farther down a corridor, scented as the rest with peach blossoms and antiseptic. All the rooms were labeled with a letter from the alphabet. Room Y occupied a third of the cul-de-sac at the end of the corridor.

  Aside from the Y, the door also boasted a photograph of an old man whose face had been ribboned into wrinkles but whose hair remained bountiful and black. His eyes were light blue and wet with age. He wore a cardigan and ironed slacks. He stood in a hospital room—single bed, single window, heat register, television. No, not a hospital room. His room, here. The penultimate residence of Marcos Martinelle. Xana knocked on his Y.

  “He looks like a whistleblower,” Konquist opined.

  Whether he did or not, he was. Back during Xana’s rookie years, Marcos Martinelle had telephoned the Atlanta field office to confess his company, Robison S&L’s—and, by extension, his—evildoings. This being the 1980s and S&L being short for savings and loan, the evildoings of Robison S&L were endemic to the entire industry. Deregulation had led to rampant fraud and an acceleration of junk loans, which Robison publicly denied but which Marcos Martinelle privately confirmed. Juicier was the tidbit that Robison had three Georgia congressmen on their under-the-table payroll.

  Juiciest was the tidbit that Robison was knowingly and willingly funneling money for a sex-trafficking ring.

  Xana had been assigned, along with several others in her office and a team of U.S. Marshals, to quietly process Marcos Martinelle’s information and also quietly process Marcos Martinelle, lest he become a victim of retaliation.

  None of this, though, was why Marcos Martinelle’s name had been the first, chronologically, on Xana’s HR report listing her many abuses of authority. No, that event came a few years later, when the DOJ case against Robison finally went to trial and Marcos Martinelle, days away from testimony, started to make demands. He was well aware of his value. He was the star witness for the prosecution. As it turned out, it was Marcos who had secured the accounts of the sex-trafficking ring. All that cash for all those enslaved women, many of whom were underage. Quite a felony to be granted immunity for, but, alas, such was the case.

  But immunity, apparently, hadn’t been enough. He had been moved to a safe house in the one-stoplight hamlet of Pleasantdale, GA. Much of the safe house’s value stemmed from its middle-of-nowhere locale, but Marcos Martinelle had needs.

  “A VCR, for one,” he told Xana. She and another young G-man, Dwayne Kaputnik, had been assigned the pleasure of safeguarding Mr. Martinelle. His hair had been the same back then—bountiful and black—although his face had been pink marble compared to the face in the photograph below the Y. “And videos. And I’m not talking art films, lady. Ever heard of Nina Hartley? Those are the videos I want. And Traci Lords. Anything with Traci Lords.”

  Dwayne left the room to get a pen.

  That was when Marcos added, “Or you could just go down on me right here, pretty lady. I like ’em tall.”

  He reached out to cup her right breast.

  So she reached out to cup his cock and balls. And then she grasped them. And then she squeezed them. And then she turned them as if they were a stuck cap on a pickle jar.

  Forty-three minutes later, a doctor in the ER at Gwinnett Medical Center was diagnosing him with acute testicular torsion. Two hours after that, Marcos Martinelle was undergoing surgery. The DOJ lawyers started preparing briefs to beg the judge to allow their star witness to testify from a hospital bed or at least allow a continuance until he recovered.

  But then came a stroke of unbelievable luck. The following morning, they received a very nice sett
lement offer from Robison’s attorneys. Prison time for the CEO, the CFO, the CBO, and seven VPs. Fines in the seven figures. The DOJ lawyers never had to submit their last-minute motions. Unbelievable luck.

  As in impossible to believe.

  But if Xana had had a hand in it, she wasn’t talking and nobody, frankly, was asking. Xana had been suspended without pay for a month and then reassigned to a desk for ten months. Only the arrival of a new special-agent-in-charge had rescued her career. Hello, Jim Christie. Good-bye, desk duty.

  And then, twenty-five years later, good-bye Jim Christie.

  Xana had relayed a portion of the story to Detective Konquist on the ride over. He admitted to already knowing the basics.

  “You know how it is with law enforcement,” he explained. “We love gossip.”

  “As the man said, ‘news travels at the speed of boredom.’ ”

  “Which man was that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They all sort of blend.”

  Xana knocked again, just below the Y, right against the photograph.

  “Could be he’s asleep,” said Konquist. “Could be he’s dead.”

  “We should be so lucky,” Xana replied, and she tried the knob.

  It was unlocked.

  So she opened the door.

  Chapter 30

  Marcos Martinelle was not dead.

  He was, however, naked as the day he was born and sitting on the linoleum floor beside his bed. Those scarred, ribbony cheeks ran deep with tears. The floor underneath his pink chicken legs and skeletal buttocks was also wet, though not from tears.

  “Christ,” said Konquist, and he moved into the room to help this poor man, once extremely rich, out of his own mess.

  Xana hesitated—and then flinched with self-scolding at her hesitation. Soon she was beside the detective and together they hefted Marcos Martinelle, who weakly fought against them, up to his mattress.

  “Find a towel,” Konquist told her. “Something.”