Detour

by James Siegel

  It was just the two of them now.

  Miles said, “Come in.”

  He led Paul into the familiar clutter of his office. “So what did Moshe say? Can he help you?”

  Paul still desperately wanted to believe Miles.

  He wanted to apologize for braining that man with a cement block and for stealing a car.

  He wanted to cling to the image of a Miles who’d braved death with him in the Jersey City swamps.

  He couldn’t shake Miles’ initial expression at the door. His surprise at Paul’s aliveness. Miles had known what awaited Paul in that warehouse. If Paul was wrong about everything else, he was right about that.

  “What’s the matter?” Miles asked, still the friendly lawyer out to help. “You said you ran into trouble. What happened?”

  “María called me,” Paul said, letting that simple statement hang there for a moment.

  “María?” was all Miles said.

  Paul noticed that the telephone Miles had used to call María Consuelo—or not call her—was lying off its hook. Then he remembered something.

  Religious Jews weren’t allowed to take calls from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

  Orthodox rules.

  Miles thought Paul was dead and buried, because Moshe hadn’t been able to call and tell him otherwise.

  “That night you picked up the phone and called María?” Paul said. “You didn’t call her. You just pretended to.”

  Paul made sure to speak slowly so Miles would be able to grasp the full import of what he was saying—and because it was hard to actually get the words front and center. “If María hadn’t called and told me, I would’ve walked into that office with your friend. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t going to walk out.”

  Everything seemed to drain out of Miles’ face. Paul remembered a Thanksgiving Day balloon he’d seen punctured on TV when he was a kid—the huge smiling visage of a cartoon sheriff running into a streetlamp and deflating into something wrinkled and insubstantial.

  “You’re an insurance actuary,” Miles said, “right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. What are the odds of you making it out of here alive?”

  He was pointing a gun at Paul’s head.

  It had suddenly materialized from behind the desk; he must’ve pulled it out of a drawer.

  “Let me give you the facts,” Miles said. “It’s how you guys work, right? Facts—then figures. This is an Agram 2000. Croatian made, machine action. It used to belong to an honest-to-God KGB assassin—at least that’s what Moshe told me. They liked the Agram because it’s small enough to stick in your pocket and highly accurate up to twenty feet. More facts. We’re alone—my wife and sons are praying to a just and benevolent God. Also, that funny thing on the end of the barrel? A silencer. No one will hear me shoot you. Okay, now, what would you say the odds are?”

  “Poor,” Paul said. And getting poorer by the second, he thought. Miles was having trouble keeping his hand steady—the one gripping the Agram 2000.

  “Why?” Paul asked.

  For a moment it appeared that Miles hadn’t heard him; he seemed to be listening to something else. He stood up, walked to the window, peeked out through the curtain—all the while managing to keep the gun trained on Paul.

  “You see anyone out there?” he asked.

  “Anyone? What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? I mean, did you see anyone out there? Anyone not wearing a yarmulke, for example? Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

  He came back behind the desk, sat down.

  “Why?” Paul asked again.

  “Why? You sound like a child asking one of the four questions. Why do you think?”

  “Money.”

  “Money. Well, sure, money’s part of it. You ever bet on anything, Paul?”

  “What?”

  “You ever bet on anything? Guess not. Stupid question. It’s probably against the actuarial code. Remember the 1990 no-huddle Buffalo Bills?”

  Paul was having trouble remembering anything except the gun pointed at his head.

  “My first colossal blunder. You know you can bet straight up if you’ve got the guts. If you just know. None of those annoying points to deal with. Only you’ve got to lay three to win one. That’s okay. I was sure. I knew. My religion prescribes one ritual bath a year. That was mine.”

  “You lost.”

  “Oh yeah. Sure you didn’t see anyone out there, Paul? Someone driving by the house maybe?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “You said you bet thirty dollars here and there,” Paul said. “Just to keep things interesting.”

  “I fibbed. It’s more interesting when you bet thirty thousand. I’ll tell you how I got started. One day I was sitting and waiting by the phone. You know what for?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I. Something. When it rang and I picked it up, the person on the other end said Mr. Goldstein, this is your lucky day. It was a touting service. A Delphic oracle of the ESPN generation. They toss you the first pick for free, just to show what excellent prognosticators they are. They were excellent—that day. I won. I even won again. That’s the problem. You start feeling kind of omnipotent. You forget that’s reserved for the man upstairs. I began practicing a personal form of downside economics. I bet more than I actually had.”

  Someone started up a car outside. Miles jerked his head toward the window, gripped the gun with knuckles turned suddenly white.

  “It’s just a car,” Paul said.

  “Sure. It’s just a car. Everyone walks on Shabbat.” He kept one eye on Paul, and the other on the window, at least until he heard the sound of the car engine slowly drifting down the street.

  “Are you expecting someone?”

  “Yes. I’m expecting someone. I’m just not sure when I’m expecting them. Sometime soon, I think.”

  Miles closed his eyes, wiped his forehead.

  “My bookie wasn’t very understanding, Paul. About not having the money. What were the odds he’d say no problem and wipe the slate clean? Come on, Paul . . . numbers?”

  “I don’t know.” Paul was continuing to answer him, back and forth and back, as if they were in that car in New Jersey, just shooting the breeze. As if the pet weapon of the Russian KGB weren’t trained on his head. Maybe something brilliant would occur to him.

  “You don’t know? Come on. You’ve met him. Moshe, the Russian businessman. By the way, he doesn’t really do a lot of business with Colombians. He doesn’t have to. He does perfectly fine taking bets from me.”

  Paul remembered the conversation he’d overheard in the bathroom. Had Wenzel made the vig? one of the men asked. Fucking GNP of Slovakia. And they’d both laughed.

  “By the way, you know what the Russians call the Colombians?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Amateurs.” He smiled, wiped his forehead again. “Moshe called me his favorite Jewish lawyer back at the warehouse? Because other Jewish lawyers take his money. I’m the exception. I’m the gift that keeps on giving. See, I owed Moshe what I didn’t have. What were the odds I could wiggle out of that one?”

  Paul was calculating other odds—trying to gauge the distance to the office door, wondering how long it would take him to make it to the front door of the house if he made it out of the office.

  “You’re still here,” Paul said.

  “Yeah. I’m still here. You can have smarts and you can have luck. I needed both. I opened my arms and waited for manna from heaven. And I was delivered.”

  “How?”

  “How? That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” The gun was still drifting—every so often Miles would notice with a slightly sheepish grin and attempt to re-aim it.

  “You don’t want to shoot me,” Paul said.

  “I don’t? That’s odd. That’s really odd. You see my neck’s back in the noose again. Not from you—you’re just inconvenient. It’s those assholes with Uzis and kerosene I’m
worried about. They looked through my car—they know I’m here. They’re smelling blood. They’re starting to put it together. I can tell. They’re closing in.”

  “Put what together?”

  “Maybe they are amateurs next to the Russians, but not by much. In the pantheon of assassins, let’s call them lower Division 1. I’m cooked.”

  Miles looked cooked. His face was in full flop sweat. Paul couldn’t help wondering if his trigger finger was sweating as well, if it might unintentionally slip.

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said.

  “I know you don’t.”

  “The men in the swamp. You said they were Manuel Riojas’ men. What does he have against you?”

  “What are the odds poor little Paul’s ever going to figure that one out? Let’s just say no good deed goes unpunished.”

  “What good deed?”

  “Okay. No bad deed goes unpunished.”

  “I don’t—”

  “He who saves one child saves his ass.”

  It was as if Miles were speaking in fragments, Paul following a step behind, collecting each piece and desperately trying to glue them together.

  “Joanna!” Paul nearly shouted it. Miles had lied about calling María. It suddenly occurred to him that he might have lied about something else. “You said she’s fine. Is she?”

  It seemed to take Miles a second to refocus, to concentrate on the question being asked of him and actually answer it. “Sure,” he said. “Under the circumstances. Sorry about your wife and kid. Not my fault—sort of. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Can’t help you there. Wish I could.”

  “Miles . . .”

  “Uh-uh.” Miles waved his gun at him. “My turn. I’ve got one more question for you. Last one, honest. It’s not even an actuarial question. Ready—pencils out?”

  Paul was preparing to launch himself at the door. Or across the desk. Pick one. He had nothing to lose.

  “Know what’s the worst sin in Orthodox Judaism—other than marrying a shiksa, of course?”

  “No,” Paul said.

  “Sure you do.”

  Paul made it only halfway across the desk when the bullet exploded out of the barrel. It entered the cranial cavity, which governs memory and social skills, exiting below the neck and embedding itself into the cover of New York State Adoption Statutes. He’d gone toward Miles because he thought it might give him the element of surprise.

  He was wrong about that.

  Miles had surprised him first.

  The worst sin in Orthodox Judaism?

  It wasn’t murder.

  No.

  I promise that after I talk to Paul here, I’ll take a nice long rest, he’d told his wife.

  He’d kept his word.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Joanna was granted one of those rare afternoon feedings where she was allowed to linger with her baby, rock her into sleep, and simply stare at her.

  When she came back to her room, Maruja and Beatriz were gone.

  There had been talk lately. Something in the wind. A possible prisoner exchange or straight cash ransom. The last time Maruja saw her husband on TV, he’d hinted at imminent release.

  Joanna had caught Maruja praying with the rosary beads that had been given to her by one of the guerrillas—Tomás, sad-eyed and secretly religious, who’d fashioned them from cork and presented them to her after she’d asked him for a Bible.

  The man they called el doctor, who periodically visited them like a dutiful concierge making the rounds, told Maruja and Beatriz that they might be taking a little trip soon and winked at them.

  Joanna had felt like two people. One of these people was overjoyed for Maruja and Beatriz; they’d become like sisters and she felt their pain at being separated so long from children and family.

  The other Joanna felt devastated, jealous, and abandoned.

  Now Maruja and Beatriz were gone.

  The room reeked of loneliness, of people who’ve packed up and left. It was freshly tidied—the mattress fluffed and turned, the floor swept. The meager clothing Maruja and Beatriz had accumulated over time—castoffs from the kids, as Beatriz called their guards, most of whom were kids—was conspicuously missing. Beatriz had fashioned a makeshift dresser from two milk crates—when Joanna looked inside, there was only the sweatshirt with the logo of the Colombian national soccer team that Maruja had graciously handed down to her.

  Joanna sat in the corner and cried.

  After an hour or so she knocked on the door and asked to see el doctor. It was opened by Tomás, looking even more melancholy than usual, who didn’t respond one way or another. But a few hours later the doctor knocked on the door and walked in.

  “Yes?” he said, flashing that magnanimous smile that Joanna found incongruous from the person imprisoning her.

  “Where are Maruja and Beatriz?” Joanna asked him.

  “Ah. Good news,” he said. “Released.” As if he’d been pulling for them all along.

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Yes.” His smile grew even wider. “Next. You.”

  Joanna allowed herself to believe him—for a moment she did.

  “And my baby.”

  “Yes, of course. Babies belong with their mothers.”

  “What about Rolando?” she asked.

  The doctor ignored her. Instead, he gazed at the surrounding sparseness. “You have more room now, yes?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “Good.”

  THE FIRST NIGHT A.B.—AFTER BEATRIZ—JOANNA HAD TROUBLE sleeping. The mattress, which had always felt crowded if snugly warm, now felt uncomfortably roomy and ice-cold. There was a strange, slightly nauseating smell in the air. She woke up thirsting for company. Somehow this translated into something more tangible.

  She knocked on the door and asked for water.

  The female guard with long black hair opened the door. She was watching the TV, where a somber news anchor was reading from a sheet of paper.

  When she went to get Joanna water, she made a point of turning the TV off.

  The water, which was tepid and acidic, did nothing to help Joanna sleep. She lay with eyes wide-open, staring up at the ceiling. Beatriz had drawn a multitude of stars on the plaster ceiling with a felt pen. A way to break down their prison walls and create a pathetic illusion of freedom.

  Joanna dug her head into the mattress and selfishly wished Beatriz were back beside her.

  That smell. What was it?

  It seemed stronger now. She decided it had to be the mattress itself. They’d turned it over in a clumsy stab at neatness, but the side she was sleeping on—or attempting to—had been against the dirty floor forever. It was the absence of smell too, she thought—the familiar scent of departed friends.

  She stood up, turned the mattress back over, then lay down again.

  She didn’t notice it right away.

  The room was too dark. It took her eyes getting used to the blackness and the fact that the smell, instead of improving, grew exponentially worse.

  It took Joanna turning first left, then right, even reversing her position on the bed. It took her placing her head facedown into the foam and nearly gagging.

  She lurched to a sitting position and stared at the place on the mattress where her head had been seconds before.

  It was like a Rorschach blot. Staring at an amorphous mix of color and shadow and finally finding the haunting image within.

  A large, uneven stain.

  She thought she knew what it was. A stain the approximate size of a human head.

  She closed her eyes and pressed a finger into the middle of rusty brown. It felt damp, like cellar earth. When she looked at the tip of her finger, it was stained brown. Blood.

  She staggered to a standing position. She lurched around the room as if drunk, chased by a growing panic.

  She banged furiously on the door.

  Tomás again. She wanted to say their names out loud—to state them clearly and
unmistakably. But she saw something dangling out of the crook of his pants pocket.

  The rosary made of cork. The one he’d given Maruja, the one she’d sworn to always keep with her as an eternal symbol of faith, hope, and dogged survival.

  Joanna waited till he shut the door, till she slumped onto the floor and buried her face in her hands.

  Then she screamed bloody murder.

  THEY KNEW SHE KNEW.

  About Maruja and Beatriz.

  She probably told them herself, every time she jumped when one of them entered the room or came within two feet of her. She couldn’t help wondering which one pulled the trigger, drew the knife. Was it Tomás, who seemed to mope about even more than usual these days? Or Puento, who’d pointed a rifle at Joelle when she was in the screaming throes of pneumonia? Or both?

  She had to reassure herself each time that they hadn’t come for her.

  She was absolutely certain they knew she knew when el doctor came in and apologized for having to chain her to the wall.

  He seemed genuinely remorseful about it but explained that it was for her own good.

  “If USDF patrols begin shooting,” he said, “you’ll be safer like this, no?”

  No. Joanna asked just once for him to not do it. Please.

  He shrugged and sighed. It was out of his hands, he explained. It was just for nighttime—that’s all.

  They chained one end to a piece of a long-defunct radiator. The other went around her left leg.

  It wasn’t physically uncomfortable—the pain was psychic. It put a punctuation mark on her existence. She was now literally under lock and key.

  One of them would come in to unlock her in the morning. Joanna wouldn’t start breathing normally again until this ritual was actually accomplished. Then she’d know she was alive for at least one more morning. She could let herself look forward to feeding time. This living from hour to hour was taking its toll. She was generally jumpy, weepy, and exhausted. There were times she found herself unable to stop shaking.

  When she told Galina that she was pretty positive Maruja and Beatriz had been murdered, Galina shook her head and said no, they were released.

  “They weren’t released,” Joanna said. “Tomás has Maruja’s rosary beads. She never would’ve left them behind. The girl turned off the news that night when she saw me looking. There was blood in the bed. I know.”