After a few hurried steps, Chuck said, “All right, what do you know?”
The guy didn’t stop walking. Chuck kept up with him.
The guy said, “You’re talking about a guy used to come in a lot. I worked on his bike. '92 FXR. Beautiful machine. Kept up nice.”
“What’s his name?”
“Easy, cabrón. We got to walk more.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Chuck grabbed the guy’s arm. “Just tell me.”
The guy yanked his arm away. “Don’t touch me, man. You want something, I got it, but you gonna pay for it.”
So that was it. “How much?”
“How much you got?”
“Nothing. A couple of bucks.”
The guy shook his head. “Not enough.”
“Then we have a problem.”
“I don’t got no problem. I got a solution. Right around this corner there’s an ATM. You got a ATM card?”
“How much you talking?”
“I think you want this name pretty bad.”
“How much?”
“Six hundred.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I know. That’s what they call me.”
“Okay, Crazy. You think I’m just gonna to give you six hundred dollars?”
Crazy smiled. “I think so.”
“Make it a hundred,” Chuck said.
“Forget it.”
“How do I know it’s worth more?”
“Oh, you gonna want to know. It’s good stuff.”
Chuck’s stomach clenched.
“I’ll give you a hundred. If it sounds good I’ll give you another hundred.”
“Have a nice day.” Crazy started back toward the shop.
“Okay,” Chuck said, knowing he was had. “I’ll give you two hundred for it.”
“Three,” Crazy said.
“If it’s worth it I’ll give you another hundred.”
Crazy shrugged. “Show me,” he said.
Chuck got two hundred from the B of A ATM. After the bills were in Crazy’s hands, he motioned Chuck to the bus stop overhang. “Okay, this is how it is. His name is Thompson. That’s all I know. I never got his first name. He never talked to me, only to Russell.”
“Who’s Russell?”
“The boss.”
“So Russell was lying to me?”
“Russell is a big fat liar all the time.”
“That’s not worth another hundred.”
Chuck watched as Crazy thought it over. He wasn’t that big, maybe street tough, but Chuck was emitting a barely repressed rage. He knew the guy could feel it.
“Okay,” Crazy said. “I got one other thing to tell you. But you can’t do nothing to me about it, because it’s gonna make you mad. You hear what I’m saying?”
“Talk.”
“The money.”
Chuck hesitated. Then he got another hundred from the machine. He slapped it into the guy’s mitt.
“Okay,” Crazy said. “I only seen 'em together one time, right? Out back of the shop, okay? They were, you know, goin’ at it.”
The sound of blaring horn skewered the moment, went into Chuck’s ears like a hot poker. He felt feverish
“What exactly do you mean?” Chuck said.
“You know.”
“Spell it out.”
“Makin’ out, man. Tongues and everything. Get a room, I’m thinking.”
Chuck closed his eyes, fought to keep steady on his feet.
“Easy, man,” Crazy said.
“Get the hell away from me.”
Crazy put his hands up and backed up a step. “Okay, okay. I know how you feel, man.”
Chuck wanted to make him eat the money and then find out how he felt about it.
And he stood there alone for five minutes, maybe ten. Two, or was it three, buses stopped, loaded, unloaded. An ambulance went by, sirens blaring, Chuck wanting to be standing in front of it, then thinking what did it matter anyway? You live, you die, sometimes you die before your time, like Julia. Lying, cheating, you can do that too in life, can’t you? Do it to someone who put his pumping heart in your hands every night, letting you hold it, the only one, the only one . . . and there won’t be another like you, Julia, I won’t let the beating heart go anywhere close to that you know, thank you, you lying, lying, lying . . .
Chapter 32
Steven Kovak, born Svetozar Zivkcovic, looked at his son and almost wept. For his son, yes––for what he was not and never would be. But also for himself, for how he had failed to forge a will of iron in his only child.
But while there was time left, he would not give up. He had never given up on anything. If he could only get that through to his boy, his work on earth would be truly done and he would have peace with God.
They were on the balcony overlooking the dark Pacific. The stars were bright, the sky clear. Kovak enjoyed his pipe, but his son still looked lost in the muck of his own confusion.
“This country is the problem,” Kovak said finally. “It always has been. Oh, maybe not at the very beginning. Or during World War II. But after that the country became meek, womanish. It has allowed women to take away its martial spirit, its grit. They raise girls, not boys or men. This is why their time of greatness is gone. It will not survive. And their weakness is our advantage.”
His son’s head moved slightly downward, as if listening through one ear.
“We must never forget who we are,” Kovak said. “We come from a proud race. Deep inside us we have flowing the memory of the Turks slaughtering us in Kosovo. That was June 15, 1389. The day hell came. The day you must never forget. We learned what subjugation was then. The Turks, the Mohammedans, took our children and conscripted them. Their blood tax bled us dry. Their abuses of our women taught us to hate on a scale never before known. History is what we must remember, son, because that is what keeps us strong.”
His pipe was cold. Pausing to relight it, he looked upon his son and loved him.
“I have never told you this,” Kovak said. “Now is the time.”
Dragoslav’s head came up slightly.
“It was August, 1968,” Kovak continued. “I lived with my mother and father, your grandparents, on a farm in Kosovo. We had fields of wheat and cattle. Then the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia and that scared Tito, Prime Minister of Yugoslavia. He was not Serb. He was Croat-Slovene, and to keep power he took the side of Albanians in Kosovo. Who then began to drive all Serbs out. One day they came to our farm. They told us to get out or die. My father refused. They took my mother and cut her open in front of us. Then they hanged my father. I pretended to scream and cry, but by then I knew I would never feel such emotions. The will to power and life flooded into me, and I surprised one Albanian with a rifle by jamming a stick into his eye. I took his rifle and killed two men before escaping on foot. I was three days without food. I thought I was going to die. Perhaps I did die, for I saw a great light just before I woke up in the bed of a Serb woman who found me, and nursed me back to health.”
He noted Dragoslav was listening intently. This was the time he had been hoping for.
“I was in an orphanage, but ran away a year later and joined the Army. It trained me well. I made a name for myself. I knew God was with me. The great light. I knew I had a destiny. In the early 1990s I came to the attention of Radovan Karadzic.”
“Karadzic?” Dragoslav said.
“The very same.”
“You never told me.”
“The time was never right. It is right now. The world calls him a war criminal. They call what we did ethnic cleansing. That is no crime, not in the eyes of God. You need only read the Jews’ book to know that. I am proud of what we did, and you need to feel that pride, too.”
“I want to, Father. I do.”
Kovak put his pipe down on the small table between them, and put his hand on his son’s head. “Of course you do,” he said. “Why then do you allow your emotions to take you awa
y?”
“It’s the alcohol,” Dragoslav said.
“Yes,” Kovak said. “In that you speak the truth.”
“I want to stop,” Dragoslav said. “I can.”
Kovak took a handful of Dragoslav’s thick hair. He gently pulled his son’s head toward him and kissed his cheek.
Someone knocked on the French doors. Kovak saw it was Simo, indicating something in his hand.
He stood and opened the doors, went inside.
“Further information on the teacher Samson,” Simo said, handing Kovak a folder.
“Ah. Dragoslav, come inside.” He waited until his son joined them. “This concerns you as well.”
“I’m sorry, Father, I—”
“No, say nothing. To apologize is to be weak.” Kovak opened the folder.
His breath left him.
“What is it?” Dragoslav said.
“The hand of God,” Kovak said.
Chapter 33
Saturday, after a so-so night in the motel, Chuck got Stan off to work and walked to Wendy Tower’s apartment building to get his car. She was waiting for him outside, leaning on the dented hood, reading a book. Chuck saw the cover when he got to her. Savage Beauty.
“Serial killer novel?” he asked.
She looked up, smiled. “Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. You know, I burn my candle at both ends?”
Chuck said nothing. Stared. Stared at the picture of the poet on the cover of the book. She stared right back at him.
“What’s the matter?”
Chuck wanted to say something but somebody’d stuck a pitchfork in his brain. He put the heel of his palm against his forehead.
“Chuck, what is it?” Wendy said.
Still he could not speak.
“Sit down,” Wendy said, taking his arm and practically shoving him onto the hood of his car. She sat next to him. “You want to come inside?” she said. “You want me to—”
“I’m all right.”
“You don’t look all right.”
“I am. I just . . . thanks for watching the car.”
“Sure, but—”
“I’m fine.”
“Then I’d love to,” Wendy said.
Chuck shook his head like a boxer getting off the canvas. “What?”
“I could use a drive. And so could you.”
“I have to go someplace,” he said.
“That’s the very point of a drive,” she said.
“You don’t want to be seen in this junker.”
“Live dangerously, I always say.”
“I mean, all the way to Beaman. It’ll be––”
“Great. I’ve never been.”
“Wendy––”
“I think you could use the company. Me too.” She stood up from the car and he noticed how nicely her UCLA sweatshirt fit her form. How casual her beauty was. Not savage like the book said. But real in a way he hadn’t appreciated before. Or, to be honest with himself, just hadn’t been able to notice.
“What I’m doing,” he said, “wouldn’t be of interest.”
“Try me,” she said.
Maybe he should. Maybe he needed another set of eyes and ears to help him make sense of things.
More, maybe he needed someone to trust.
“All right,” he said.
He got onto the 101 freeway at Tampa. As he merged into traffic, Wendy said, “How’s your brother holding up?”
“A little restless at night,” Chuck said. “But getting used to fine motel living.”
“And how are you doing?”
“Now that’s a complex question.”
“So, how?”
“Maybe you should ask me what the capital of North Dakota is instead.”
“I’m asking about you.”
“Bismark,” Chuck said.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way . . .”
“All right,” Chuck said. “You don’t know that much about me.”
“I know you’re a good teacher,” she said. “I know you were a chaplain in the military. I know that fits you somehow.”
“Why?”
“Just a feeling. How’d you get into that line?”
Chuck wanted to give her a short answer, a quip, but found himself saying, “I went to seminary because I wanted to know if there were any answers to the crap.”
Wendy said nothing but Chuck felt the nothing as if it was a sharp stick to the side.
“I had a friend, we were in a band in high school. Great athlete, too. He could’ve been the starting quarterback on the team, but he liked music more. So the football guys are getting injured and knee surgeries and all that, but Guy is playing the drums and we’re getting high together and laughing all the time. And then one day he’s eating a burger at Tommy’s over on Topanga when a couple of gangbangers come in, and one of them has a baseball bat. They’re looking for somebody, it was a drug thing gone bad, they thought it was Guy. So they . . .”
Chuck fought back the tears, fought them hard, wasn’t going to let them out in front of Wendy, in front of anybody, the VA doctor could go suck an egg.
Wendy said. “I’m sorry I––”
“No,” Chuck said. “They batted him around and he’s a quadriplegic now. He can’t play guitar anymore. He lives with his mother in North Carolina. Last time I saw him, before he moved, he begged me to help him die.”
He paused, blinked his eyes hard.
“A couple years go by,” Chuck said. “I get a letter from Guy’s mom talking about Guy finding peace, God and all that. I thought, sure. Right. Good for him. My mom used to send me and my brother to Sunday School when we were kids. But that’s about all the God stuff I had. Then I get another letter from Guy’s mom. This time it’s because Guy is dead.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Finish this thing, get it over with.
“I was messed up. High all the time. And really, really pissed off at God. But I realized I didn’t know that much about who I was supposed to be pissed off at. So I went to seminary. You know why? Revenge.”
He glanced over and saw Wendy’s confused look.
“That’s right. I wanted to find out enough to know how to be mad at God and let him know it. Then 9/11 happened. It took me a long time to wrap my head around that. Should I be angrier? But I found I wasn’t. I found myself . . . wanting . . . connection. They had this chaplaincy program at the seminary. I went and signed up for it. It was make or break. If I didn’t get some kind of faith through it, I was going to leave. But I got closer, and I graduated, and they made me a chaplain and I went over.”
“Afghanistan, right?”
Chuck nodded. “My first sight of the place, it was like a part of the world where all the color had been sucked out, leaving nothing but browns. God forsaken.”
He paused, gathering the memory, which was one he could still access. “I was in Kabul for a week. I went to visit the children’s hospital. I was told they needed help. I was met by the director of the whole hospital, a doctor named Yousufzai. He wanted me to see. He said, 'Please tell the Americans.’ What I saw were children with broken bones and wounds being held by their parents on plastic chairs, waiting for hours to see someone. And babies lying side by side on warming tables, sometimes all day, crying, as their mothers waited for injections that might or might not help. A place too cold in winter and too hot in summer, with cracked walls and windows. They’ve been promised funds for upgrading the hospital for years, but nothing’s come in. They are understaffed and tired, and can’t do anything. That was my first look at the war’s toll. It was on the children, not the soldiers.”
Silence for a moment. Then Wendy said, “You were . . . your brother said you were . . .”
“I got captured. Worked over. Somebody sliced my neck. I got rescued. Everything about that’s in bits and pieces.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“This you need to know. I’m a case. A head case. A real head c
ase for the VA until they stopped seeing me.”
“Stopped?”
“I’m pretty rare anyway. Maybe they just don’t know what to do with me. My form of PTSD has a past and a future element. As far as the past, I have what’s called abrasive amnesia. It means there are random places where my memory was sort of wiped out, rubbed down. I can remember some things and not others. Some things I can sort of remember, but it’s fuzzy. And I’ve got foreshortened future. It means I think the future is just this dark thing, no point to it. That’s why a lot of the guys commit suicide.”
There it was. The S word was out. And now a question hung in the air between them.
“I guess I’m just too stubborn to kill myself,” Chuck said.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Wendy said.
Chuck snapped her a look, like, How could you know anything about it?
“It’s because of your brother,” she said. “You care about your brother.”
She was probably right about that.
Wendy said, “Why did the VA stop seeing you?”
“A problem with the paperwork,” Chuck said. “It happens more times than you care to know, Ms. Taxpayer. My buddy, Royce, has been knocking heads with them, for me and a bunch of other guys. It’s them I’m burned about. I mean, I have my arms and legs. A lot of them don’t.”
They rode in silence for a time.
“One more thing,” Chuck said finally. “You know about my wife, about Julia?”
“Only that she died,” Wendy said.
“I got some news. A little kicker, if you want to call it that.” He paused, feeling his stomach roil as if it was filling with noxious fumes. This was more difficult than he thought, but he pushed himself to say, “I think she was having an affair.”
Wendy said nothing. And he wondered if he should have brought it up at all. What business did he have dumping this on her? But she asked for it, and it needed to be out, all of it, between them, once and for all.
“I think it was with some biker named Thompson,” Chuck said. “That’s about all I know. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it was my fault.” He took in deep breath. “Maybe I hid in my PTSD. Maybe I drove her away. Maybe I screwed it all up.”
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