The Destroyers

by Christopher Bollen

  “The Chicago pedophile,” I say. “He’s your agent.”

  “Yeah, the pedophile,” she confirms. It’s a brilliant cover. Who would get close enough to him to learn the truth?

  “I thought you said you didn’t want to do anything criminal with your degree. What happened to staying far away from tragedies? Have you said anything sincere since day one? I hope you’re getting paid a lot to inform on your friends.”

  For the first time, her face is pierced by something human, the rancid aftertaste of genuine hurt. It’s not the accusation of cheating that breaks her composure but the suggestion that she has a price.

  “I’m getting paid nothing,” she snaps. “Once the agent explained to me what Charlie’s been doing, it wasn’t hard to convince me to help. I told you about my brother and what drugs did to him. That was sincere. What about all the lives destroyed by the junk Charlie’s smuggling from Turkey? You think I’d just sit by and say, sorry, I’m on vacation, ask someone else. It was my duty to do what I could. Yes, I felt guilty. But that’s worth more to me than Sonny or—” She pauses and I don’t think she’ll say it. “Or you.”

  “I’m glad you’re finally being honest.”

  She exhales a pained breath and sinks against the wall. “What was I supposed to think? My god, your history is all over the Internet. You were practically in league with drug cartels. You show up as his new manager, and it all makes perfect sense.” An hour ago, I would have rushed to convince her that I’m better than the searches of my name. But I no longer owe Louise an explanation. I don’t have to sanitize my mistakes.

  “All I said I’d do is keep my eyes open. That’s all. If I came across anything that implicated Charlie, I promised to pass it along. I wasn’t investigating. And I warned you not to take that job. I did everything I could to convince you not to join Charlie’s company. I hope you remember that.”

  Her brown eyes lock on mine, two trowels digging into loose dirt.

  “And you came across me.”

  She tosses her head back, knocking it against the wall. “I was hoping you would tell me what you knew so I could put an end to it before you got in any deeper. That’s all!” That’s all, she keeps repeating, just one more step, one more ugly little action and nothing further. But both sides are infinitely greedy. Virtue will take as much from you as it can. “I don’t blame you for hating me. I’d probably hate me too.”

  “Probably?”

  “Yeah, I’d hate me, all right? But I care about you no matter what you think.” Her forehead creases, and her lips begin to fray at their seams. “Our time together meant a lot to me—”

  “Stop!”

  “—and there’s good in you, I know that. There’s still that guy from college who dreamed of doing good. Do you really want Charlie to win no matter what the price is? Beyond all the money and summers he can throw at you?” She shakes her head so certainly, as if goodness is a blood type. “I don’t care if you were best friends as kids. That’s not you, Ian. It just isn’t. You tell me if a man came to you to help stop so much misery that you’d turn your back and enjoy the beach and nights up in Chora, eating out of Charlie’s hand? You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t. You’re not like that. I’ve seen you up close. You’re one of the good.”

  Louise has my address. She’s found the right street and the right house. But I’ve already moved. It’s a stranger who opens the door.

  “I’m not that good anymore,” I say simply. “I’m really not. You haven’t seen me at all.”

  “Bullshit. Even if you did accept a bag of cash from Charlie when you got here, I can’t believe you knew the full extent of it.”

  Louise must have gone through my room. If I hadn’t kept my phone on me, she probably would have read my e-mails.

  “Charlie didn’t give me that money. It was mine.”

  She shakes her head furiously, as if her thoughts have gotten stuck. “What? Who travels with a bag of money like that? What did you do, knock over a cash machine on your way to Patmos?”

  “I took it from my father. It was all I could get.”

  “All you could get?” There’s doubt in her voice, sweet vicious doubt. Maybe her memory is homing in on the vague question I asked the day we visited the cave, about the legality of stealing money after a relative dies. I decide to be clearer. Right now I hate Louise most for her childish universe of absolute right and wrong. I want to destroy that universe inside of her where Ian Bledsoe lives under the permanent status of “good.” I’m going to annihilate him for her and I want her to suffer every second of his loss. I want us both to walk out of this room violated.

  “I stole it after he died.”

  She flattens her hand on the floor. “I’m sure you had your reasons.”

  “Right after he died, I went straight to the bank. I didn’t withdraw more because I was worried I’d be caught. I didn’t go to his funeral, either. I just skipped town.”

  “Before you arrived, Charlie told us your father was too hard on you. He said he never supported you, that he was always putting you down.”

  “I watched him die.” I don’t even recognize the voice coming out of me as my own. I’m smiling, though, the way a gazelle seems to be smiling when its neck is being drained in a predator’s mouth—and maybe the gazelle is smiling, this is finally over, I’m out of this constant hell of fear and running. It’s hard work to destroy Ian Bledsoe, but I’m committed. “I sat there alone with him in his room. He’d already had two strokes and could barely move. I was right by his bed.”

  “Okay, enough.” Louise climbs to her knees.

  “He made this sound, like an extended gasp, and his hand fluttered up. More like swatted up, really, like he was trying to keep something away. But I’m pretty sure he was signaling for me to get the nurse.”

  Louise’s mouth cringes. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands except to hold them out for balance as she stands.

  “Fifteen seconds of that sound and that swatting, maybe twenty.”

  “I get it. You can stop.”

  “I hated him so much for how he treated me and what a useless, piece-of-shit son I was to him. It hit me that it would be easier if he died. The money I thought would come to me, yes, but it was so much more than that, not what I was getting but what I was losing. Pain. He went so fast, and I sat right through it.”

  “All right! I don’t want to hear it!”

  “I couldn’t move, or I didn’t. In the end, there wouldn’t have been time to get the nurse. But his eyes were open, and he was alert. He must have realized in those last seconds that his son wasn’t moving a muscle, wasn’t running for help or even trying to say good-bye. He hated every single move I made in my life. So for once, I just sat there and let it happen.”

  I’m not even aware that I’m crying until I taste the runoff. Louise doesn’t try to comfort me. She stands at a safe distance from the bed, her face turned away.

  “You said there wasn’t time to get the nurse. You couldn’t have done anything. Twenty seconds isn’t very long.” Her universe is more durable than I expected. It won’t exterminate its good creatures easily. “You were in shock!”

  “No. I wasn’t. I knew exactly what I was doing. And twenty seconds is a long time to watch someone die. His eyes were pleading. He looked right at me. He was scared.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re remembering wrong. You’re grieving and you’re—”

  I’m no longer listening. Whatever is coming out of me needs to spread before I can pull it back. I wrestle my phone from my pocket and find Lex’s e-mail.

  I took the money. I’m sending it back to you. Do what you want about filing charges.

  “What are you doing?” Louise shouts.

  But I’ll answer your question. Yes, I saw him take his last breath. Yes, it’s my fault. I didn’t say a word to him even though there was time, no last mention of you or Ross or Lily or me. I just sat there instead of calling the nurse and let him go.

&nb
sp; “Ian, don’t write anything when you’re this upset,” Louise orders. “Seriously, do not press SEND. You’re not in your right mind.”

  I will be exactly what you want me to be, your evil, poisonous, destructive, selfish brother. That’s my parting gift to you. Someone to blame. Good-bye Lex.

  My thumb jerks to the SEND button, where it will slip from guilty hands into the electronic bloodstream, and the virus will be permanent and terminal. Technology offers new ways to kill yourself.

  Before my thumb touches the button, I feel a blinding punch against my cheek. As I reel back, Louise wrenches the phone from my grip. She glances down at the screen and then at me.

  “Give me back my phone!”

  She’s a flash of black shirt and white underwear disappearing through the connecting door. I’m close behind her, but she gets to the sliding door and shoves it open. Out in the hot night, chalky with stars, she sprints to the edge of the patio and lifts the phone high. As I swing for it, she uses all of her strength to slam it down. The screen shatters, and pieces streak across the stone.

  “There,” she yells, as if she’s fixed it. I’m gawking at her, fear and hate so out-of-breath I’ve passed over into astonishment. “I had to,” she says harshly. “You needed someone to look out for you.”

  Is there any worse feeling than the world not ending right when you accepted that it would? I threw parts of myself into that hope for a quick conclusion that I’m certain I will never regain. I feel dizzy and sit down on the wall. Louise uses her foot to sweep some of the glass into a pile and she sits too, a few feet away. The night is too humid for touching, although the urge is still there. I wish we could go back to that first afternoon on Charlie’s balcony, four nearly young bodies that had not yet deceived or disappeared or had to keep their eyes open. But I’d have to go back even further to undo all the errors to make that moment complete. The glitches were already in place.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Goat bells ring in the darkness.

  “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” she asks. I can’t tell if she means under the same roof or in the same bed. “Just to be sure you’re okay?”

  I shake my head.

  She wipes her eyes. “I’ll get my bags and find a hotel. My ferry is the day after tomorrow. I won’t—” She pauses. “I’m not going to say good-bye. Not to Sonny or anyone. I’ll e-mail her when I’m back in the States and try to explain.” Her hands are shaking.

  “You’re quitting your mission?”

  I can feel her watching me, but I continue to stare down at my shoes, pretending to find some fascination in them.

  “Charlie’s gone,” she says. “I thought maybe he was just avoiding everyone, but the fact that he hasn’t come back even when his brother died makes it pretty clear he’s fled. Who knows, maybe he found out that there was an agent onto him. Maybe he realized what I was up to. The dock is closed. The boats aren’t running. The agent still hopes he’ll turn up, but if he doesn’t, there’s nothing left to catch. If it’s my fault, I’m sorry. He’s gone.” Perhaps Louise is hoping I’ll provide some last-minute information that will verify the good in me. Or perhaps she’s right and all along it was Louise that caused him to run. It doesn’t matter now. I’m going to hold her to her promise of no good-bye.

  She gets to her feet and walks to the sliding door. I sense her standing at it, but when I finally look up it’s just the reflection of white moonlight on the glass. It could have been five minutes. Or ten. Or a few seconds acting like hours. But eventually a car weaves up the hillside, and one of the island’s silver taxis lurches onto the driveway.

  Louise carries her suitcases down the stairs, and the driver pops the trunk. However long she waited for her taxi in the darkness of the cabins, it gave me time to inventory all the reasons why I hate her and the one thing she did to save my life. I dart through my bedroom and down the steps. I’m almost too late. Louise is climbing into the backseat, half her hair beaten around by the car’s blasting air-con.

  “Louise,” I call.

  She turns to look at me, a different woman from each angle, all of them somber, none of them less sure of themselves.

  “Before you go, I do know something. It isn’t Charlie. But you and the pedophile can stop a shipment from going out.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Every morning in August the boat guides line the port of Skala. Older white-haired islanders with charbroiled skin linger along the quay, the chalkboards next to them promoting FULL-DAY TOUR WITH SUNBATH, SNORKEL, PATMOS COAST AND SWIM COVES, FRESH FISH LUNCH €50. The captains’ shirt collars are flipped up to protect their necks from the sun, which lends them a hustler’s coolness, and for all their claps and whistles of encouragement, they never muster direct eye contact. They remind me of the tuxedo-ed maître d’s on the last, dying blocks of Little Italy, grabbing tourists by the shoulder and pulling them toward their doomed establishments. “Everything you are looking for! All you want!” As with the restaurants in Little Italy, each vessel is nearly identical: a steel guardrail surrounds a floating clothes iron draped in antique lifesavers and fleshy buoys. Gangplanks connect the boats to the port like a row of World War II field stretchers. Cash only. Time of your life.

  It is 9:45 A.M. and the ferry to Athens doesn’t arrive until eleven. I have no desire to witness the outcome of the tip I gave Louise last night. Maybe the agents are already in place, crouched behind the blooming bougainvillea and desiccated palms, awaiting the hippies with their tourist T-shirts and bloated backpacks and round-trip tickets tucked into their guidebooks. Carrie won’t be whiling away the eight-hour ferry ride with her friends, after all. She’ll also probably never learn that Vic was responsible for her sister’s death.

  I scan the excursion boats. One is already packed with crouton-colored Americans stuffed in red life vests. Another holds a clutch of screaming toddlers and their indifferent, zinc-nosed parents. Farther down, I notice a smaller craft with three young tourists slumped under the deck’s nylon shade. A pair of thin Eastern European grandparents smokes in synchronicity at the bow.

  “What time are you leaving?” I ask the captain, whose sunglasses are affixed around his enormous ears by a purple cord.

  “Ten,” he shouts.

  “And when do you return?”

  “Four.”

  I hand him the money. I won’t be back on solid ground until the raid is over. But at least some justice will be served today. The good Ian Bledsoe—he’s hard to kill. This morning I mailed the manila envelope International First Class to Lex in New York.

  I walk the rickety plank and sit on one of the wooden storage compartments that doubles as a bench. The boat’s name is Tadita, and it has none of the comforts and amenities of Domitian. When the captain removes a trapdoor to punch the engine switch and pour oil over the gears like salad dressing, a black heifer of smoke heaves around the guardrails. The motor sets the entire deck jittering, and I use my towel as a seat cushion to soak up some of the vibration. A heavyset Italian family makes a last-minute assault on Tadita, extinguishing my prayers for legroom. They squeeze sun lotion over themselves with ejaculatory fervor. The captain unwinds the ropes, offers the grim smile of a prison guard, and passes out plastic bags.

  “What’s this for?” I ask him.

  “Protect your phone.”

  I wad up the bag. It’s another favor Louise did me. Break all contact with the whistling beast. Smash the antenna you’ve voluntarily stuck in your pocket. I should have destroyed it a long time ago.

  When it’s clear there aren’t any other latecomers joining us, we cast off into the harbor.

  Perfect blue. Miles of it in every direction, the sea and sky traveling in adjacent lanes. We motor north along the island, and our Patmian captain refuses to cede to the oligarchs and plutocrats of sleek yachts as sharp and shiny as carving knives. Their crewmen yell at him with maraca-ing arms, but he
shrugs them off and keeps Tadita swerving along in its phantom path. A white wake trails behind us like feet kicking under a sheet. The captain points out the basalt formations rising along the cliffs, the lunar shrines, and the huddled village of Kampos. We pass Goat Island and the pebble beach where Charlie’s boat once moored. I spot the peach taverna halfway up the hillside. We sail on.

  The three youths laze under Tadita’s deck shade, a guy and two girls in their early twenties, dark-haired and dark-eyed with their swimsuits loose around their skinny waists. One of the girls is holding a strand of her brown hair up against the sun, mesmerized by it. The other girl might be her twin sister with the same slender nose and overly spaced teeth. The guy keeps staring at me in that curious way that could either be sexual attraction or an urge to inflict violence. He pulls his flip-flops off his feet and ventures a question.

  “Where do you come from?”

  I smile. “America.”

  “Told you,” he says with a nudge to his companions. “New York?”

  “Michigan.”

  He’s momentarily disappointed.

  “What about you?” I ask.

  “Spain,” the girl who isn’t absorbed in her hair answers. “I’m Branca. That’s Andres. And here”—she pats her twin gently—“is Julia.”

  “Are you two sisters?”

  Branca slaps her stomach and laughs, indicating that they aren’t.

  They tell me they’ve been traveling the islands for the past two weeks, crashing in hostels and sleeping on ferry decks. Me too, I say. Yesterday they splurged on a hotel in Skala. I tell them I just arrived and haven’t yet found a place.

  “All alone?” Andres asks.

  “Yep.” Not the entire truth, a few scattered lies, but enough of the truth that I believe what I am saying. Right now, off the island and the grid, I feel released, a free-floating human who could spend nights in cramped hostels and wash up in unexpected beds. Their faces hold the griminess of infrequent showers. My face, I decide, is too clean. Maybe it’s the American in me, but I’m struck with the sense that I’m never too damaged to start over: life with unlimited free refills.