This is far too much for Terrance. He bursts forward from the couch with a furious shout. The man’s gun swivels in Terrance’s direction, but I catch it with my left hand and twist. There’s a snap and a yelp as the man’s index finger breaks against the trigger guard. Terrance slams into him, knocking the rest of the breath out of his lungs and twisting the man around. The gun spins from my hand and skitters across the parquet.
I yank the belt free from my robe, loop it once around the man’s neck, and pull him close. He arches his back as he tries to get his fingers under the belt, but I pull hard, leaning into him with my shoulder. My fingers turn purple with the effort and the fabric of the belt burns my skin like fire. Rude, that’s what it is. Intruding into this little corner of the world Terrance and I had carved out for ourselves. Planning to kill us. Fucking rude.
He’s almost a full head taller than me and has at least a twenty-kilo advantage, so I have to get him to the floor where I can control him better. I lower him slowly, steering him to the ground so he can’t jerk free. We’re lying together on our sides now, and I picture my instructor Zvi back in Montevideo shaking his head in disappointment. Strangling is too sloppy. Too slow. Better to break his neck and be done. But reality is like that sometimes, sloppy and slow. The trick is to not let up, not for a second, not ever, until he’s dead. I press a knee against the man’s spine, the strength of every muscle in my body dedicated to pulling the belt around his neck tighter, tighter.
He is someone’s son, this man. Someone’s father maybe. What is left of the alcohol in me entreats mercy and human love, misericordia, compasión. But I pull tighter, tighter. You get no love without giving it.
Terrance scrambles for the gun and points it uncertainly at the man’s chest. He’s obviously never held a pistol before and he studies the thing in his hands: Is there a safety? Do I pull back the hammer? What does this button do? Christ, Terrance will kill me, too. Through gritted teeth I seethe at him to put it down, but he can’t, or won’t.
Fucker just won’t die. His face is purple and swollen and his eyes are round and white like golf balls, but still he fights. Strangling someone isn’t like it is in the movies. It’s not over in ten seconds. It’s not even over in a minute. The body of any animal fights for life, savagely, with everything it has. So you need to have leverage, endurance, a good grip on the rope or the belt or the necktie, whatever you’re using.
He goes, by my rough estimate, somewhere around two and a half minutes later. That’s when his body stops jerking, when his grip relaxes, when his hollow choking stops. There is an eggplant-colored ring around his neck when I loosen the belt, which at points is abraded and seeping blood. I place two fingers where his jaw and neck meet, feeling for a pulse, but there’s nothing.
I stand, my own breath raw with effort, looking at my hands, which are bleeding and so cramped I can barely open them. The sensation begins like an electric tension in my guts—wires charging, pulling taut—then climbs to my throat, coming out in a sound like a laugh or a gasp.
I sicken myself.
I am proud of myself.
* * *
Terrance is still holding the gun, so I tell him to put it down, and when he doesn’t, I tell him again. I make sure I’m well away from the muzzle, then gently, with a mother’s touch, unfold his fingers from the grip, take the pistol, and set it on the floor.
“You okay?” I ask. “Need to throw up? It’s okay to throw up.”
His eyes and mouth are wide open as he struggles for air just like the dead man did. I hear him gasp, then he shakes his head. There’s fear in his face, fear and incredulity, like the world has just flipped inside out and he doesn’t believe any of what he’s just seen. His eyes dart from the body to me, back to the body, back to me.
“You killed him.” It comes out of him flatly, no judgment, just a fact.
“This is what it looks like, Terrance.” I touch his shoulders. He flinches. “And before we get the money, there might be others. I hope there won’t be, but it’s a safe bet.”
He nods once, then his jaw muscles tighten and he nods again. “I understand.”
I sit down next to him on the bed, lean my head against his shoulder. Terrance puts his arm around my waist and pulls me close. I’m not sure who’s comforting whom. He takes my hand in his and inspects it, the abrasions like bad rug burns, the dots of blood drying into dark specks.
“We—we can’t call the police,” Terrance says.
Good. Thinking like a grown-up. “No,” I say.
“So what now?”
“Go through his pockets,” I say. “Get his wallet, his phone. His passport if he’s carrying one. We can find out who he is.”
“And the body?” he asks.
The body. There’s no realistic way we can move it. And putting the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and running to the airport will only make Terrance a fugitive wanted for murder.
“I can call someone,” I say. “A friend. A kind of friend.”
I search through my backpack until I find the business card and call the number from a new SIM in my phone. A sleepy male’s voice answers.
“This is Judita Perels,” I say. “I need to talk to Brent Simanski.”
* * *
I was right: Marlboros, BMW keys, phone, wallet, passport. The items are spread out on the desk and his phone is hooked up to Terrance’s laptop. It was locked, he tells me, but because of a security flaw in the outdated version of Android something-something-something. I don’t get it, but he does, and that’s what matters.
“Boleslaw Koziol,” Terrance says. “He has a Serbian passport but born in Poland. Age twenty-seven. According to public records, he owns a general contracting company in Belgrade, where he also has an apartment. That’s his official life.”
I watch over Terrance’s shoulder as he toggles to another tab on the browser.
He points to the screen and a mug shot of the man currently dead on the floor. “I looked him up in the Interpol records, on the notices they send out to the FBI and whatever,” Terrance continues. “According to the Munich police department there is no Boleslaw Koziol, at least not anymore. It’s a cover ID for a Bulgarian named Nikko Kucheto, but that might be an alias, too, it says.”
“So Nikko Kucheto, who does he work for?”
Terrance scrolls down the screen and points to a line: Associate of Viktor Zoric.
Viktor Zoric. Reaching out from beyond the grave to protect his money. I lean onto the table, press my fingers to my temples. “How did he find me?”
“He didn’t,” Terrance says. “He found me.”
Terrance switches screens, pulls up an e-mail. “My travel for the past few weeks, sent to Nikko two days ago. Flight numbers. Hotel rooms. Credit card charges. Then, three hours ago, another e-mail. Giving him my new room number after you had me switch. Gwen, someone put this Nikko onto me. Because it would lead to you.”
Something cold inches up my spine. “The e-mail. Who sent it?”
“An anonymous address from a server in Crete, but that means nothing. It’s a black box, a TOR relay, just a place where the e-mail took a left turn. It could have come from anyone.”
But it didn’t come from anyone. It came from someone specific, with instant, real-time access to travel itineraries, bank records, hotel room numbers. Someone who knew about Terrance. Someone who knew I’d reach out to him.
He is being so brave. But the threat that was, just an hour ago, theoretical, is now real. And now his theoretical bravery must be real, too. I pull a chair beside Terrance and sit, then take his trembling hand in mine. Or maybe it’s me who’s trembling.
Thirteen
Brent Simanski arrives a half hour later, sleepy, unshaven, a suit thrown over yesterday’s rumpled shirt. He doesn’t come alone. A young woman with hipster cat-eye glasses and a young man wearing a cabbie hat and jaunty little scarf trail behind him, both wheeling suitcases like a pair of cool tourists. They look at me as they enter, sizing me up
, but don’t say a word.
“You must be Terrance,” Brent says, shaking Terrance’s hand with the bright enthusiasm of a salesman. I hadn’t mentioned Terrance on the phone call with Brent, so how Brent knows who he is, I have no idea. As Brent pulls on a pair of blue translucent gloves, he crouches beside the body along with his two colleagues. The woman traces the ligature marks on the neck with her finger and whispers something to her partner in Hebrew.
“My friend asks if you were trying to pull his head clean off.” Brent smiles. “For future reference, you don’t have to use so much force. But that’s what I like about you, Judita. Everything done with such gusto.”
One of the colleagues takes a photo of the dead man’s ear with a cell phone while the other takes prints from the fingers. “We’ll send these in and get confirmation of his identity in a few minutes,” Brent says.
Terrance holds up the passport. “Boleslaw Koziol,” he says. “An alias for someone called Nikko Kucheto.”
“Know what it means, Nikko Kucheto? It’s a nickname. Nikko the dog.” Brent rises and examines the other items on the desk. “He arrived yesterday on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt, seat 24-D. He was following you, Terrance.”
“We know,” I say. “We saw the e-mail on his phone.”
Brent slides Nikko’s passport into his pocket. “He was Viktor Zoric’s interrogator. A specialist in getting information. The murders are only incidental. Keep going in the Interpol file and you’ll see what he did to a narcotics officer in Romania. Use the search terms ‘curling iron’ and ‘rectum.’”
Brent’s colleagues unzip their suitcases. The man removes a folded plastic sheet, like a shower curtain. The woman removes a pair of battery packs, the kind used for power tools, along with an electric saw.
“You have a bathtub, yes?” Brent says.
Terrance pinches the bridge of his nose, nods toward the bathroom.
“We’ll let them do their job,” Brent says. “Judita, you and I can go for a walk, get some air. What do you say?”
“Anything you can say to me, you can say to Terrance,” I say.
“We have business, Judita,” Brent says. “Terrance, grab a seat and watch some television. And turn it up. Loud.”
* * *
In the park a block away from the hotel, there’s a late-night crowd not quite ready to head home. A knot of porteños sit cross-legged and drink wine beneath a gnarled tree that looks like it’s a thousand years old. A juggler performs in the cone of light from a streetlamp to an audience of a handful of tourists. A teenager and his girlfriend sit on a bench. He’s playing the guitar and singing to her.
We walk along the concrete pathway. I shove my trembling hands into my pockets. “Thank you,” I say. “For—taking care of this.”
Brent’s eyes catch the light as he turns them to me. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” His voice is so low I have to walk very close to him just to hear. “First, you pull that disappearing act in Montevideo. Then you break cover, contacting Terrance. Tel Aviv is livid with you. Livid.”
I gesture with my head back toward the hotel. “I can handle myself. As you see.”
“That mess? No, Judita,” he says. “That, back there, is a fuck-up. Your fuck-up. You knew the protocol: There’s your old life and your new life, and they can never overlap. Never even touch.”
A middle-aged couple walks by and Brent smiles sheepishly at them as if he’s just a father caught in an embarrassing argument with his wayward daughter. When they pass, he leans in close. “This Terrance. What is he to you? Love him? Just a friend?”
“Why?”
“Tel Aviv is curious.”
“What business is it of theirs?”
“Because at this moment, there’s a group of old men who’ve never met you sitting around an office, smoking too much and scratching their asses. Know what you are to them?”
“I don’t care.”
“A line in a budget. And right now, they’re wondering if it’s worth it, relocating you and your dad again. New IDs, new cover stories. Or whether to go with option two.”
I’m about to ask. Then it hits me violently, Brent’s words no different than a physical blow. Option two is to eliminate the one outsider who knows my new name, my new location. Kill Terrance. Kill him and cut him up like Nikko. Easy-peasy, problem solved. I ball my fists, nails pressing into my palms like blades. All my instincts, all my muscle memory, command me to respond in kind, violence for violence. But I choke it down.
“Look, it’s this simple,” I hiss. “Touch him and I kill you.”
“Sorry about the world, Judita. The way it works,” he says. “But the one person keeping the lid off your coffin is me. So watch your fucking mouth.”
Silently, we reach a truce and start walking again, slower than before, stopping as we near the group of tourists watching the juggler. He’s moved from rubber balls to bowling pins, starting with three, then adding a fourth and a fifth.
I look up to Brent as he watches, transfixed. “Terrance isn’t like me,” I whisper. “He’s better. He has a life. A future. This world I dragged him into, it isn’t his.”
“It is now,” Brent says. “Thanks to you.”
“You have to convince them, Brent. He needs to stay alive.”
“It gets exponentially harder with each one,” Brent says.
I blink at him in confusion. “What does?”
He nods to the juggler. “Adding a fourth is twice as hard as three. And adding a fifth is twice as hard as four.”
I watch the juggler, too. The bowling pins spinning through the air. His little grunts as he catches and tosses, catches and tosses. I watch him until he fails, the bowling pins crashing to the lawn one by one. The crowd begins clapping anyway: a glorious failure, and so entertaining to watch.
I lean in close to Brent, my words masked by the applause. “You gave me a mission.”
Brent grins and claps along with everyone else. “Yes, and when you didn’t reply, I assumed you walked away.”
“I was wrong to do that. I’m sorry.”
“Zoric isn’t just our enemy, he’s yours.” He touches my upper arm and guides me away from the crowd. “Too bad it took a visit from Nikko to make you see that.”
“I see it now.”
A phone buzzes from inside Brent’s suit jacket and he answers it. I can hear the voice on the other end, speaking in Spanish. Dry cleaning is done and ready for pickup. Then there’s a question, something I can’t quite make out.
“No,” Brent says into the phone, his eyes locked on mine. “The young man stays.”
* * *
Gleaming porcelain, smelling of bleach. I sit on the edge of the tub, run my hand along the side. Cleaner than it’s ever been in its life.
Terrance hovers in the doorway. “They took him out in the suitcases,” he says. “By the end, they were using these fluorescent lights, looking for drops of blood. When they found one, they cleaned it with a Q-tip.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “No one should have to see that.”
“Mainly I didn’t see it.” He sits next to me on the edge of the tub. “They didn’t let me in until the end, after it was mostly over. Mainly I heard it. The saw.”
I place a hand on his knee and sink to the floor. I scan the room again. Nikko is more than simply gone. He’s been erased. Terrance has no idea how close he was to joining him. “I’m sorry, Terrance. I’m so, so sorry.”
He pushes the hair away from my eyes, cups the side of my face. “It was the Americans, wasn’t it? My credit cards, the room change. They’re the only ones with real-time information like that.”
I bite my lip and nod.
He looks down, stunned, about to be sick. “So now—I’m being hunted, too.”
“They’re getting a new passport for you,” I whisper. “They’ll call me tomorrow. Drop it off wherever we are.”
“What do you mean, a new passport?”
“I talked them into it. Br
ent was going to—anyway, it’s the best plan.” I lean forward, rub my hands up and down his arms. “A new name, Terrance. So we can run.”
A sob comes out of his mouth, then I realize a second later it’s laughter. “Who am I going to be?”
I shake my head, try to sound hopeful. “They choose it for you. You don’t get to decide.”
Fourteen
He is in shock, perhaps as deep in shock as he’s ever been. But there is a rationality to him, an understanding of next steps, and he stays in the moment with me. There is, for example, the matter of logistics: finding a new place to stay until we can figure out how to transfer two fugitives to Europe, and, as always, the matter of money. I have close to 1,500 US dollars in cash and he has about the same. Credit cards—so easy to track—are off the table, so he decides that a visit to the bank and a one-time withdrawal from whatever’s left of his father’s fortune is worth the risk. Just under ten grand each is our plan. Enough for two last-minute plane tickets and enough to live off for a while, but not enough to get in trouble with EU customs officers if we’re searched.
I wait at the busy corner of two busy streets amid the anonymous throngs of people while Terrance climbs the grand staircase of a bank that looks like a Roman temple. His image is now being recorded by at least a dozen cameras, and I have no doubt the transaction will trigger a series of events that leads to the footage being beamed by satellite or undersea cable to Washington, where every frame will be pored over and analyzed. Someone will pull someone aside in a hallway: Why is he still alive? And where’s the girl?
Arms folded across my chest, hovering in the entrance of a deli, I watch the bank’s doors like a sniper, waiting for him to reappear. When he does, he’s walking casually, smiling at passersby, casual as can be. But when his feet touch the sidewalk at the bottom of the staircase, his expression changes and his gait picks up speed. He barely slows down as he passes me, and I fall into step beside him.
“Una irregularidad menor, is what she called it.”
The Greed Page 10