Detour

by James Siegel

  We are negotiating. We are in discussions. Stay brave.

  Joanna knew there’d be no such comfort for her. Paul had left and vanished into the ether, as quickly and completely as her former life.

  Her third morning, there was a knock at the door. That itself was unusual, since the guards tended to simply barge in on a whim. The three of them might be sleeping, whispering, even partially undressed and sponging themselves from a tepid bucket of water; a whore’s bath—wasn’t that the expression?

  This morning they were sitting in the center of the room fully clothed, passing the time constructing lists of their favorite cities. Beatriz had picked Rome, Rio, and Las Vegas. Maruja, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Acapulco. It was Joanna’s turn. All she could come up with was New York. The city she lived in, the one she was aching to return to.

  The door opened and Galina walked in.

  It was a measure of Joanna’s desperation that the sight of her kidnapper gave her a rush of—what? Pleasure? Relief? Simple familiarity?

  Maybe it was because Galina appeared different than the last time Joanna had seen her, when she’d solemnly informed her about Paul’s failure to come through. She seemed more like the other Galina now—the one you wouldn’t mind hanging out with on a sunny bench in the park.

  She motioned for Joanna to come closer—she had something to tell her.

  “We’ve heard from your husband,” she whispered, and squeezed Joanna’s hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

  And Joanna’s heart, spirit—whatever that thing is that allows people to occasionally walk on air—surged. Not just because of the news. No.

  Galina hadn’t come to the mountains alone. One of the guards—a shy boy who looked all of thirteen—entered behind her.

  He was holding Joelle.

  TWENTY-THREE

  They’d traveled over the Williamsburg Bridge, then through the Lincoln Tunnel, headed to a place somewhere outside Jersey City. It was five o’clock. They were on a mostly empty road flanked by fields of swaying cattails. High as an elephant’s eye. The lyrics were from Joanna’s favorite musical, Oklahoma! They’d attended the revival on their last anniversary, Paul told Miles.

  The word last stuck in his throat.

  It was three days and eighteen hours since he’d left his wife and child.

  The swamp was throbbing with the steady hum of insects. Still, you could hear the Major League scores clear enough. Miles was listening with rapt attention.

  “Baseball,” Miles said, “is the hardest sport to handicap. Brutal.”

  “You mean bet on?”

  “Yeah, bet on. You’ve got to give runs, two, three, depending on the pitcher. The worst team in the world wins sixty times a year. Go figure. It’s a sucker’s bet.”

  “You bet on sports?”

  “Well, sure. Penny-ante. You know, twenty, thirty dollars—just to keep things interesting. It’s my little rebellion against prescribed living. Orthodoxy has little rules for everything. It can drive you nuts.”

  Paul guessed that going to work without his yarmulke was another one of Miles’ little rebellions against prescribed living. “Did you ever think about not being Orthodox?”

  “Sure. But then what would I be? It’s sort of like asking a black person if he ever thought about not being black. You can think about it all you like, but it’s kind of who you are.”

  “So? Are there rules about betting on baseball games?”

  “Yeah—you have to stay away from the Padres.” Miles turned up the radio for the National League scores.

  Paul felt like mentioning that he and his coworkers had spent more lunch hours than he cared to remember establishing risk ratios for specific pitches thrown to specific batters in specific parks. A bunch of regular Bill Jameses. He could’ve told Miles, for example, that throwing a down-and-in fastball to Barry Bonds in 3-Com Park had a risk-to-reward ratio of three to one. Every two times you got Barry, he’d launch one into the stratosphere.

  He didn’t, though.

  Paul understood Miles was talking about sports so they wouldn’t have to talk about something else. What they were doing. Meeting drug dealers in a swamp outside Jersey City. If they talked about it, they would be forced to acknowledge that they were hopelessly out of their element.

  “Thank you,” Paul said.

  “For what?”

  “For doing this with me, I guess.”

  Miles remained silent for a minute. “I sent you to Bogotá. I told you you’d be safe. That makes me kind of responsible, doesn’t it?”

  “Great. Can I hire you to sue yourself?”

  “Sorry. I don’t do suits.”

  “How long have you been a lawyer?” Paul asked after turning up the AC.

  “How long?” Miles repeated, as if he’d never been asked that particular question before. “Too long. Not long enough. Depends on the day.”

  “Why did you want to be a lawyer?”

  “I didn’t. I wanted to be Sandy Koufax. God didn’t cooperate. My fastball was more like a change. If you can’t be Sandy, you get to be a doctor or lawyer. Indian chief wasn’t available—it should be, we’re a tribe, aren’t we? I went for lawyer. Maybe not the kind of lawyer they expected.”

  “They?”

  “You know, all the wise men of the tribe. Everyone goes real estate, tax, or corporate. I went legal aid. Juvenile division.”

  “What was that like?”

  “Crazy. I had a caseload of about a hundred fifty. I’d get about ten minutes with each kid and a quick glance at their file before saying hi to the judge. That was it. And it’s not like I could do any pleading-out there.”

  “Why not?”

  “You couldn’t threaten the prosecutors with a long jury trial because there are no juries in juvenile, and kids don’t really have any information worth trading. No one wants to deal. The best I could do was get them committed to a Bronx hospital, because it was safer than putting them in a juvenile hall.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Yeah, a mental hospital. They’d do their time popping meds instead of getting gang-raped. Trust me—it was heaven next to your average juvenile prison. For them it was the safest place on earth. Anyway, when I got to court and began mistaking Julio for Juan, and María for Maggie, I thought I might be in trouble. I told my supervisor he had to lessen my caseload—that I was committing borderline malpractice. He said keep dreaming. I left.”

  “So you went from juvenile delinquents to Colombian babies.”

  “Yeah. I thought I’d get involved at an earlier stage of development. It pays better. What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Hard to believe you always wanted to be an insurance man. What did you do—fall into it?”

  No, not fall, Paul thought. My mom died, he wanted to say. My mom died and I got scared. He felt like explaining this to Miles, that like Einstein, he was merely trying to impose order and probability on a cold universe.

  “More or less,” was all he said.

  A dirt road appeared to the passenger side of the car—not so much a road as an indentation in the muck. A trail to nowhere in particular.

  Miles slowed, then pulled over.

  “They said a dirt road about three miles down,” he said, trying to peer ahead down the mostly hidden path. “Oh well . . .” He turned the car into the opening, bouncing over a small hump.

  Suddenly, cattails were scouring both sides of the Buick, making it feel as if they were traveling through a car wash. Paul, who’d hated roller coasters as a kid, hadn’t liked car washes much either. His fervid imagination had attributed a malevolence to those stiff bristles, smothering sponges, and scalding jets of water.

  He felt the same kind of vulnerability now. The car was safety. Outside in the swamp, who knew?

  He peered through the windshield, which had quickly become a battlefield of slaughtered swamp bugs. Miles turned on the wipers in an effort to clear them—but it was as if they were beating agains
t a monsoon.

  When the road ended, they were in a small clearing all by themselves. Miles stopped the car.

  “I guess this is it,” Miles said. He tapped the steering wheel, once, twice, peering nervously from side to side. Miles might’ve felt half responsible for Paul’s predicament, but it seemed like he might be having second thoughts about actually accompanying him. “What’s the protocol with drug deals? Half-hour waiting time?” He looked at his watch. “We’re five minutes early.”

  Paul said, “Are you sure this is it?”

  “No.”

  “Great. Just checking.”

  Ten minutes went by. Miles commented on the weather, then immediately ran out of small things to say. Paul understood. Making conversation when you’re scared shitless was an effort. Paul rubbed his hands together and attempted to swallow his own dry spit.

  Paul heard the car first.

  “Someone’s coming,” he said.

  A minute later a blue Mercedes-Benz emerged out of the cattails and came to a lurching stop about twenty feet from them.

  Both cars sat there, facing each other.

  “Okay,” Miles said after a good minute went by, “I guess we get out.”

  Miles flipped the trunk switch, pushed his door open, and gingerly stepped out of the car. Paul followed.

  They met at the back of the car.

  “You want to hold it?” Miles said. “Or me?” The well-traveled black bag was peeking out from under an old tarp.

  “I’ll take it,” Paul said. “I’m the one who was supposed to deliver it in the first place.”

  He pulled his bag out. No one had gotten out of the other car. It was still sitting there, its engine idling, no discernible movement from inside.

  “Did you hear the one about the lawyer and the actuary?” Miles said.

  “No.”

  “Me either.”

  They approached the Mercedes side by side. It reminded Paul of a western—just about every western ever made, where the two lawmen stride toward the gunslingers shoulder-to-shoulder in the movie’s final showdown. As a responsible actuary he would be remiss not to mention that legions of western heroes had defied the odds—roughly fifty-fifty—of getting their heads blown off.

  The Mercedes’ driver’s door opened. Two men stepped out of the car. They might’ve been car salesmen. No mirrored sunglasses, heavy gold chains, or garish tattoos. Instead, they wore well-pressed chinos and golf shirts. One in a powder-blue Izod, the other opting for a striped Polo.

  The driver—he was in Polo—nodded at them. “You guys look a little nervous.”

  Okay, Paul thought, give him points for being perceptive.

  “Which one’s Paul, huh?” he asked. He spoke with a noticeable accent—Colombian, Paul assumed. His voice was high-pitched, almost girlish.

  Paul had to restrain himself from raising his hand.

  “Me. I’m Paul.” They’d stopped about five feet from each other. The black bag seemed to be growing heavier by the second.

  The driver nodded, slapped his neck. “Fucking mosquitoes. I’m gonna get West Nile.” When he took his hand away, there was a blotch of bright blood on his neck.

  He looked at Miles. “Who are you, my friend?”

  “His lawyer,” Miles said.

  “His lawyer?” He laughed and turned to his companion. “Fuck me, I don’t have a lawyer.” He turned back to them. “Are we going to have to sign papers or something?”

  Miles said, “No papers. If you could just make sure they give him his wife and daughter back.”

  “Hey, don’t know what you’re talking about. Not my job,” he said, affecting a thicker accent for comic effect. No one laughed. “I’m here to sight the white, okay?”

  “Okay,” Miles said.

  Paul remained silent. Good thing. He was too scared to speak.

  “So, boss?” the driver said. “You here to give me the bag or ask me to dance?” The other man laughed.

  Paul held the bag out at arm’s length.

  “Open it,” the driver said. “I like to see what’s inside first.”

  Paul laid it on the dirt ground and zipped it open. When he bent down, he felt light-headed and nearly tipped over. Something began humming in the swamp, an überhum, the biggest insect in the pond.

  The driver stepped forward and gazed down at the bag.

  “Huh? Looks like fucking rubbers to me.” He had a lazy left eye; he seemed to be looking in two directions at once.

  Paul started to explain. “They’re filled with—”

  “Shit, I know what they’re filled with. I’m goofing with you, boss.” He smiled. “Let’s take one out and make sure, okay?”

  When Paul hesitated, the man said, “You do it. No offense, but they were up your ass.” He turned to his pal. “Culero, eh?”

  The insect hum had gotten louder—Paul’s ears were ringing. Paul reached into the bag and took out a condom, neatly tied in a knot by one of those women back in Colombia. He held it out in his now seriously sweating palm.

  The driver pulled something out of his pocket.

  Click. A sinuously shiny blade caught the light. Paul tensed, and Miles took one step back.

  “Relax, muchachos.” He gripped Paul’s hand, almost gently, and pointed the blade straight down. Paul wondered if the man noticed his hand was shaking.

  He did.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to Paul. “I’ve only slipped a couple of times.”

  He flicked the blade at Paul’s palm. When Paul twitched, he laughed and did it again. The other man—the one wearing the Izod with the little green alligator—said something in Spanish. He had a thin, almost whispery voice.

  The driver jabbed the end of the blade into the condom, opening up a tiny slit. He was reaching down to scoop up some of the white powder onto his finger when something happened.

  It was that hum.

  It had grown even louder, annoyingly loud, as if it were causing vibrations in the ground itself. You wanted to shout shut up, to swat whatever it was with a newspaper, to crunch it under your shoe.

  It would have been useless, though. Using your shoe.

  The two cars plowed out of the cattails at about the same time.

  Jeeps, the kind with fat, deeply treaded tires and juiced-up engines. They were belching black smoke and closing fast.

  The man looked up and slapped his neck again. And just like last time, his hand came away with smeared blood.

  “They shot me,” he said.

  He grabbed the bag and ran. The other man too. They vanished into the cattails. Polo and Izod.

  Paul felt frozen to the spot. It took something whizzing past his ear and puck-pucking into the ground about a foot from his left shoe to actually get him to move. That, and Miles, who grabbed his right arm and yelled, “Run.”

  He scrambled after Miles into the weeds.

  He could hear this behind him: the sound of rumbling engines being shut off, of car doors slamming, of shouts and screams and war whoops. He thought westerns again: the outlaw band riding into town on a Saturday night intent on letting off a little steam, firing their six-shooters into the air. Jeep Riders in the Sky.

  Only they were shooting semiautomatics, and they were shooting them in their direction.

  Paul ran straight through the cattails, dry thin stalks whipping his face and arms. He followed the shape of Miles’ disappearing body. The ground wasn’t conducive to running for your life—it was wet, thick, and mucky. Ten seconds into the weeds his socks were soaked to the skin.

  Behind him the men were still screaming. They were still shooting too—cattail heads were disappearing like airborne dandelion spores.

  And something else, something that had become uncomfortably and chillingly clear.

  The gunmen were following them.

  The cattails, Paul gratefully noticed, were as high as an elephant’s eye. Wonderfully, gloriously high. High enough, Paul thought, to completely swallow them. He could barely make out
jittery patches of blue sky overhead. The dealers had chosen an impenetrable place that would be hidden to just about everyone.

  They stood a chance.

  He remembered something. In the childhood game of rock, paper, scissors—paper, the most fragile substance on earth, always won out over rock. Why?

  Because paper can hide rock.

  Somehow the thought didn’t comfort him.

  He kept running, panting after Miles as if he were a faithful hound out duck hunting. He tried not to dwell on the fact that they were the ducks. His feet churned up dollops of mud, his blood jackhammered into his ears.

  The men were behind them and gaining.

  Paul wasn’t certain whom it occurred to first—Miles or him. It seemed like they both stopped running at almost the same moment. They turned and stared at each other and made the same unspoken decision more or less in unison. They dropped straight to the ground.

  If they could hear the men chasing them, then the men could hear them.

  Lie down and do nothing.

  Their pursuers would have to get lucky.

  Do the numbers. He imagined it as an actuarial problem that had been dropped on his desk. The square mass of two bodies, divided into the square mileage of this swamp, divided by six or seven people looking for them. What were the odds of being found? Substitute the cattails for hay, and they were the proverbial needles.

  They hugged the ground.

  It soon became apparent that Izod and Polo had different ideas.

  They were still running. Somewhere off to the left—the sound of two small breezes whipping through the weeds.

  But behind them a kind of tornado.

  Run, Paul thought. Run, run.

  They had the drugs. They were carrying Joanna’s fate in their hands. They had to make it out of the swamp.

  But the sounds of separate footsteps seemed to converge into one dull roar. Then someone screamed, and suddenly all sound stopped. Even the insects seemed to bow their heads in a moment of silence.

  After a minute or so it picked up again, like a skipped record finding its groove.

  What happened?

  Paul received his answer almost immediately.

  “Hey!” someone shouted. “Hey! We got your dancing partner here. He looks kind of lonely.”