He walked slowly into the room and then bolted for the bed, flinging the first pillow back, then the second, then the spread. He cursed in Arabic.
“Looking for this?” Anthony said, presenting the pistol.
The Arab stopped moving and looked down to one side, the picture of dejection.
“You don’t like it when someone else has the advantage, do you?”
“What do you want?” he said in a guttural English, his tone coarse and scowling.
“First, to be treated with a little respect. Okay?”
The Arab said nothing.
Anthony looked hard at the cold assailant and considered his options. Then he pointed the barrel of the pistol at the bags of cocaine on the desk. “You realize, of course, that your—merchandise—changes everything.” He pursed his lips and slowly nodded his head. “I think I know what I need to do here.”
Anthony stood, motioning to the Arab to back up. He took the telephone from the desk and returned to his seat. “You’ll excuse me.” With both eyes on his prisoners, he picked up the receiver and dialed a number. He waited a moment, smiling demurely at Kelly and the Arab. “Ah, good, you are in . . . I need your help . . . well, it is a somewhat delicate task, and you are the only man for the job . . . I have made the acquaintance of a rather ugly pair of thugs—drug dealers actually . . .”
The Arab’s body slowly shrank as if preparing to pounce. “Ah, ah, ah,” Anthony warned, waving his gun at the Arab, who grudgingly straightened his spine.
Anthony returned to his telephone conversation. “No, I am still here . . . the Hotel Glorioso in Córdoba, room 434 . . . maybe. I would come armed . . . good. Thirty minutes it is. Adiós and thank you.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” the Arab said.
“You are in no place to negotiate.”
“What do you want? Do you want the goods?” he asked, pointing his head at the cocaine. “You’ve got it.”
The proposal was so outlandish that it made Anthony smile in disbelief. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll tell you what, though, I am interested in that beautiful diamond ring you have on your index finger. I believe that belongs to me. Just set it on the desk nice and easy next to your precious bags of cocaine.”
The Arab pulled on his finger, put the ring in the palm of his hand, and slapped it down hard on the desk as if it were a domino.
“Please, I said ‘nice and easy.’”
The Arab stood there, his mouth slightly open, feeling the inside of his lower lip with his tongue. He was the kind of punk you wanted to slap across the face.
“I’ll also take the Rolex. On the desk—easy this time, if you please.”
He did so.
“Good. Now empty your pockets.”
Done.
“And now take off your clothes. They don’t belong to you; they belong to me.”
The Arab flashed a cold look and stripped to his undershorts and socks.
“The socks, please.”
The socks came off.
Anthony thought for a moment. His ego and spirit were brawling. Shaming the thug was tempting—very tempting—and yet, at the same time, revolting. He took a long pause, finally deciding that humiliation was too easy and too sordid. Of course, Diego was right: The visit could not be about revenge. For Kelly it would be about forgiveness; for the Arab—that was different—something else was at stake: justice and the protection of innocence.
“You can keep the shorts; they’re not my style.”
The Arab expelled a breath of relief. He actually tipped his head fractionally in gratitude to his captor for the small consolation.
“Now, on your knees.”
Anthony stood up and, never taking his eyes off the Arab, opened the French doors to the balcony. Then he stepped back, distancing himself from Kelly and the Arab.
“Kelly, gather his clothes and shoes and throw them over the balcony.”
“Is this necessary?” she protested.
“Please do as I say, Kelly.”
She followed the instruction and returned to her chair.
“Now you,” Anthony said, wielding his gun at the Arab. “That must be uncomfortable on your knees. If you will be so kind, please take my chair.”
The Arab stood up, walked to the chair opposite Kelly and sat down. He felt a chill from the open doors and wrapped his arms around himself.
Anthony moved to the desk, giving his two captives a wide berth. He put the diamond on his finger and, not wanting to fumble with the band, stuffed the watch in his pocket. He sat on the desk and planted his feet on the seat of the desk chair.
On the desktop were a wallet, a set of keys, some change, and a butterfly knife—the same blade that had ripped a hole into his shoulder. He opened the wallet with one hand and struck it rich. There were at least a hundred thousand pesetas (about $1,000) in new bills, a debit card with the name ‘Anthony Rossi,’ and an Algerian passport. Anthony thumbed through the passport.
“Abdul-Khaliq Ben-Salem. A beautiful name. What does it mean, if I may ask?”
“Servant of the creator,” the Arab muttered.
“Servant of the creator,” Anthony repeated slowly. Suddenly, he was saddened by the untold story of a wasted life. “How tragic. What a mockery. You have dishonored your parents, Abdul.”
The Arab’s face was vacant.
Anthony continued to scrutinize the passport. “Did you know your visa has expired? This is not good, Abdul. I’m sure the Spanish government would frown on this.”
Anthony crammed the passport, the wallet, and the knife into his pocket. “You know, I don’t see my passport in all of this.”
“We sold it,” Ben-Salem said quickly, beginning to shiver.
“Hmm. What is the market for an American passport these days?”
“A lot,” the Arab said with cold eyes, “if you know the right people.”
“And you know the right people.”
Ben-Salem suddenly shut up.
“Right.”
Anthony nudged the chair under his feet to one side, stood up, and arched his back. “I think I’ve had enough of this.” He put one bag of cocaine in his pocket and began to backtrack toward the front door. “Kelly, come here.”
Kelly walked to Anthony, and Ben-Salem started to follow.
“No, not you,” Anthony said, pointing the pistol at the Arab. “You stay right where you are.”
The Arab sat.
Anthony drew out Kelly’s passport and a wad of bills and, without ceremony, handed both to her. “Kelly, I want you to run as fast as you can. Do not look back. Go home and make something of yourself; you are worth it.”
Kelly was stunned. She looked first at the passport and money clutched in her hands and then at Anthony, searching his eyes for understanding.
Anthony smiled at her. “It’s all right, Kelly. Get the hell out of here.”
Kelly smiled, heaved a sigh of relief, and kissed Anthony on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said with genuine gratitude. Then, in the next instant, she was through the door and gone, closing the door behind her.
Anthony turned his attention back to the Arab. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Ben-Salem.”
With his back to the door, Anthony unlatched the lock. He took a handkerchief from his hip pocket, wiped down the gun, opened the chamber, and dropped the bullets into his hand. He then gripped the revolver by the barrel and pitched it into the middle of the room.
The Arab started to rush toward him.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Anthony shouted, drawing a hand grenade out of his suit pocket. He held the grenade at arms length between thumb and forefinger.
The Arab’s feet stopped moving.
“Why don’t you sit back down? You look a little strange standing there in your underwear.”
The Arab retreated to his chair.
“I’m so sorry; I almost forgot,” Anthony said, tapping the side of his head with the grenade. “I had this little gift for you. Have a nice day.”
He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade into the room. It bounced once and rolled within three feet of the Arab, who leapt from his chair and dove through the French doors onto the balcony, pressing his back against the outside wall.
Anthony backed out of the room, shut the door, and took the elevator to the lobby. He walked directly to the front desk.
“May I help you, sir?” asked the desk clerk.
Anthony placed the confiscated passport, wallet, bullets, knife, and bag of cocaine on the desk. He spoke with absolute calm. “I believe yours is a respectable hotel.”
“Without a question, sir,” the clerk said, clearly confused.
“Then you have work to do. There is a drug kingpin in room 434. All of this belongs to him,” he said, passing his hand over the goods. “I have already called the police. Please make sure they get this.”
That said, he turned and strode out of the hotel, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar as he walked. On his way to his car, he looked up at the fourth-floor balcony where the Arab was still sealed to the wall. He put two fingers to his mouth, blasted a shrill whistle, and waved. The balcony captive looked at Anthony and then peeked around the corner at the grenade.
Anthony got into his car and started the engine. “Without mercy there is no love,” he said to himself, quoting Diego. Then he added: “But without remorse, mercy is best left to heaven.”
He could hear approaching sirens as he pulled out of the driveway and headed back to Espejo. As soon as he left the Córdoba city limits, he pulled the car off to the side of the road and changed clothes, feeling out of sorts in the new business suit. At home again in his field clothes, he settled in behind the wheel and pictured Lupita’s smile.
After ten minutes on the balcony, the Arab decided the grenade was a dud. He stepped into the room. His plan was to fling the grenade over the balcony railing, but when he lifted the bomb it felt strange—too light to be a real grenade.
He looked confoundedly at the object and, tentatively, pressed a lever at the crown. A one-inch flame sprang to life. It was a cigarette lighter, and the Arab flung the “grenade” through the open French doors, his enraged scream dissolving into a police siren.
At that instant, there was a crushing blow to the door.
Abdul-Khaliq Ben-Salem stood shivering in the middle of the room in his undershorts. A pause and then a very slow “Shit.”
He had a big problem, and his mind scrambled for a solution. He saw the kilo of cocaine on the desk, pounced on the bag, and flung it like a discus toward the open balcony doors, but he missed his mark, and the bag smacked hard against the sharp edge of the door jam and exploded, filling the room in white dust.
A second blow breached the door, and a pair of armored policemen rushed into the room. And there, behind the SWAT team, in the mist of cocaine dust and door fragments stood Miguel—his feet set apart, his weapon drawn, and his eye trained down the barrel of his gun. When the policemen had pinned the Arab to the floor, Miguel lowered his pistol, stepped into the room, and cuffed the prisoner. It was done. The sacred, unspoken dream he had guarded for so long had finally come true: a genuine, unequivocal felony bust! The Espejo chief of police unleashed a smile that uncovered all his teeth.
IV
THE RETURN
IT WAS WINTER IN EAST Harlem, and Little Tony, just five years old, was once again locked out of the Pleasant Avenue apartment. It happened every time his mother left the flat in the late afternoon. She always locked the door behind her, and she had the only key. If Tony was outside at the moment, as he was this day, he was stranded. He would not gain entry into the apartment, until his mother returned sometime in the early morning.
Tony wedged his back into the corner of the stoop landing. He drew his knees to his chest for warmth, wrapping his arms around his spindly legs and tucking his fingertips inside the crevices of his elbows. It was 2:30 in the morning, and the snow was falling. He watched the crystalline flakes wafting from above the streetlights, a kaleidoscope of white against a black sky. The flakes perched on his tennis shoes for just an instant, before melting into the frayed canvas. How short-lived were these delicate flecks of ice.
Tony’s teeth were chattering, so he locked his jaw, his mouth becoming a thin line of determination. He would survive and survive on his own. He could knock on any apartment door and immediately be escorted into a neighbor’s warm apartment. He would be offered hot chocolate and a cookie—maybe an oatmeal and raisin cookie that was chewy on the top, but crispy on the bottom. Yes, he could be eating cookies right now, but he would not allow himself that luxury; he would not even allow himself to think about it. As cold as he was, he could not bear to look into the eyes of a well-meaning benefactor: eyes of judgment or shock or, worst of all, pity. He would rather fall asleep in the drifting snow than endure that awful scrutiny.
And so he waited. At 4:45 in the morning, a yellow cab pulled alongside the curb in front of Tony’s tenement. A brown-faced man with a white woven skullcap stepped out from behind the wheel and circled the rear of the car. He opened the curbside passenger door and reached into the darkened interior. He had Tony’s mother by the wrist. It was not a polite touch; it was a white-knuckled grasp, as if, with utter repulsion, he were squeezing the life out of a snake.
Mrs. Rossi’s head did not clear the door opening and made a clunking noise as bone collided with metal. She did not react to the blow. She swung her legs out of the cab and onto the street, but one ankle lay precariously on its side. When she emerged from the car, the ankle gave out. She collapsed like a house of cards, landing face down in the snow.
The cab driver threw his hands over his shoulders in a gesture of detachment and moral innocence. He shut the door with a flick of his wrist and turned his back on the woman crumpled in the snow. When he had rounded the cab again and opened the door, he placed one hand on the edge of the door and the other on the roof. From that vantage point, he took one last look at Tony’s mother and said, “Masha’allah”—God has willed it. When he drove away, the wheels spun and slid left and right, before grabbing traction in the middle of the street.
At five foot even and ninety pounds, Mrs. Rossi looked less like a human being and more like a dead dog left to rot on the street. Tony rushed to his mother’s side and pulled on the shoulders of her cotton coat. His mother’s head fell forward.
Tony tugged harder on the thin coat. “Momma, Momma, get up,” he cried. “Please, Momma, get up. You gotta get up now.”
Somehow Mrs. Rossi managed to open her eyes ever so slightly. “Hafta get up,” she said, half comatose.
“I hold you,” Tony said, now wrapping his arms around his mother’s waist. The woman lifted herself to her knees and then, pressing down on Tony’s shoulder, got both feet under her. She was more stooped than standing, but with her arm around Tony’s neck, she was able to shuffle her feet forward. Like a little soldier, Tony tried to stand tall and straight. In what seemed an eternity, mother and child inched their way up the stairs to the tenement’s front door. The woman leaned against the door as Tony held his breath and rummaged through her coat pockets. He expelled a blast of air, when he found the key. The boy unlocked the door, and when he turned the knob, the door flew open and the two of them fell across the threshold in a heap.
“No, Momma,” Tony said. “We no be home. You gotta get up, Momma.”
The woman did not move. “Sleep,” she said. “Lo vado a dormire, I go to sleep now.”
“No, Momma. You no can sleep, Momma. You no can sleep.”
Tony straddled his mother, again cupping his hands under her waist. He squatted over her and then lifted with his legs, his head tipped back, heaving with all the strength of his little body.
The woman responded. Again, she dragged herself to her feet, and finally—step by step, flight by flight—the two tugged and towed themselves to the third-floor apartment. When Tony had opened the door, the two of them lurched into the room. The boy directed his mother to t
he single rumpled bed, where she immediately collapsed like a corpse.
Tony was dead tired himself. He rolled his mother to one side to dislodge the only blanket they owned. They would need it; the apartment was unheated, and the frost had crystallized on the window that overlooked the alley below.
The boy pulled off his mother’s shoes. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and with a grunt tugged off his sneakers. He lay down beside his mother and then snapped the blanket so that it fell equally across their bodies. Then he pressed his rump into the curve of his mother’s midsection and pulled her arm across his body. Finally, he placed the palm of her hand over his heart, covering her slender fingers with his own little hands. His mother did not move, did not respond to the warmth of his body, and the boy immediately fell asleep.
Tony was awakened, not by light, for the sun had not yet risen, but by moisture and the smell of urine. He felt his coveralls between his legs; he was dry. He then felt the mattress under his mother’s thigh; it was soaked through.
Half asleep, the boy walked across the cold floor to the bathroom and lifted the soiled and threadbare bath towel from the hook behind the door. He returned to the bed. He rolled his mother to one side and wedged the towel under her hips.
Mrs. Rossi was still drunk, still unconscious or at least almost unconscious. She moaned, not in her own voice, but in a voice that was husky and yearning. “I know whacha you like-a,” she said in the fog of her own nightmares. “Come to you liddle bitch.”
“No, Momma. It’s me, Tony,” he said, still pressing the towel into the wet mattress under his mother’s hips. “You go back to sleep, Momma.”
But Mrs. Rossi did not go back to sleep—not really. She took Tony’s head in both hands and, with legs akimbo, pressed his face down, under her dress, and into her crotch. She was not wearing underwear, and the smell of urine and semen made Tony gag. He was suffocating. At that moment, he could feel his spirit leaving his body—his nascent soul drained and then refilled with depravity and torment. He struggled to escape her hold, but the more he wrestled to release himself from her hold, the more she pulled the boy into her genitals, writhing in his face.
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