Detour

by James Siegel

  Galina wouldn’t listen. She went deaf.

  It was maddening. It was sickening.

  It was clear that talking to Galina about certain things was like talking to a wall. Joanna knew what that was like, because she talked to her wall in lieu of talking to Maruja and Beatriz. She’d decided it was slightly more rational than talking to herself.

  Sometimes the wall became someone she knew. Paul. From time to time she tried to imagine where he was—in a prison for drug smuggling? Dead? When she felt suffocated with fear, she’d place him right there beside her and fill him in on her day.

  Sometimes Paul answered back.

  What’s wrong?

  They killed my friends.

  Maybe you’re wrong about that.

  No. There was blood on the mattress. I discovered it the day they left.

  Maybe one of your friends cut herself.

  No. It was a lot of blood. And Maruja left something behind.

  Still.

  You have to believe me. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy, but I’m not going crazy.

  Okay. I believe you.

  I’m scared now. Every day I’m scared.

  Stay strong. You’re Xena, my warrior princess, remember? Besides, I’m coming for you.

  When? I want to be home, Paul.

  Soon, honey.

  When?

  Soon.

  SHE ASKED TOMÁS FOR THE ROSARY BEADS.

  “Maruja gave them back to you when you released her, I guess,” Joanna said.

  Tomás didn’t answer her. But when Joanna asked for them, he handed them over.

  She’d been watching the way the door locked. A key turn from outside slid a small bolt into the lock. That’s it. The wooden jamb looked ancient and wormy.

  Joanna ripped off one cork bead from the rosary. The cork was barely malleable, like half-hardened clay.

  When Galina took her out of the room for the next morning feeding, she pushed the small piece of cork into the lock hole, grinding it in with her thumb.

  That night she watched as one of the girls left the room, closed the door behind her, and dutifully turned the lock. Joanna listened for the telltale click. She didn’t hear it.

  A growing excitement took hold of her. A warm glow, like a shot of aged brandy when you’re really, really cold.

  Beatriz had drawn stars to get out of prison, only Beatriz had been murdered in her bed.

  This was better.

  Only she was still chained to the wall. And she couldn’t leave without her baby.

  There was the question of what to do next. She didn’t wake up one morning with an escape plan. She hadn’t talked strategy with the wall. She took this first step and said if it works, we’ll take another.

  Then something presented itself, something that took care of two major obstacles at once.

  Joelle got sick again.

  Just a bad cold this time—enough to make her sniffly, irritable, and slightly feverish.

  Joanna asked Galina if Joelle could stay with her. Not just for an hour or two, but all night, like the time Joelle had pneumonia and she’d walked her back and forth for hours on end.

  Galina said yes.

  Then Joanna asked her something else. Could they unchain her? What if Joelle needed to be rocked? Joanna might need to walk her around the room. It would be immeasurably helpful if she wasn’t chained to the radiator.

  Galina seemed less accommodating there.

  Joanna pleaded her case, and finally, Galina said she’d talk to the guard.

  It was Tomás. Maybe he liked her more now that she’d gotten religion. Maybe he was making amends for murdering her friends. He said fine. No chain tonight.

  When he closed the door behind him and turned the lock, Joanna held her breath.

  No click.

  So here it was. She’d taken one step, then another and another, and suddenly, she’d reached a door. It was tantalizingly open.

  For a moment Joanna wondered if she could actually walk through it.

  The bloodstain on the mattress both prodded and held her back. If she failed, they’d kill her for trying. If she stayed, they’d kill her eventually.

  Courage.

  She waited for hours—till her internal clock placed the time at somewhere around two in the morning. She was reasonably sure there wouldn’t be anyone outside the door—when she’d needed that rag in the middle of the night, she had to bang on the door for five minutes before Puento answered.

  She tiptoed to the door and put her ear up against the wood. Nothing.

  She turned the knob.

  It didn’t move. For just a moment she said okay—I was wrong. The cork didn’t work. The door’s still locked. I’m stuck.

  Then she gave it a bit more pressure.

  The knob turned.

  The door edged open.

  It was like the door in a haunted-house movie—the door you shouldn’t open but do. The door that has something evil waiting for you on the other side.

  There was nothing there.

  Empty hall.

  Since they’d removed her mask for walks to the feeding room, she’d learned enough to know where things were. To her right was the kitchen, the feeding room, the place they kept Rolando—if he was still actually there.

  To the left—freedom.

  Joelle was sleeping fitfully in her arms. She had visions of her waking up and screaming—the best alarm system a FARC guard could ask for. She’d have to move very slowly and very carefully. She’d have to inch along.

  When she stepped out into the hall, it felt as if she were moving through something physical—a force field of science fiction. She stopped and breathed. Then she turned left and padded down the hall, one small shuffle at a time, till she came to what had to be the outside door—the one they’d brought her through blindfolded and terrified.

  She was still terrified.

  She pushed it open.

  THIRTY

  Trajectory.

  Atoms have it. Electrons and neutrinos. Lives too.

  The trajectory of the bullet that killed Miles, that left him slumped and oddly peaceful-looking with the Agram 2000 still glued to his hand, went through his neck and directly into one of the dusty legal tomes that took up most of his bookcase. New York State Adoption Statutes. The bullet’s force sent several other books flying, scattering pages like confetti.

  Paul ignored it at first. Trajectory.

  Instead, he assumed a helter-skelter trajectory of his own. Nearly flying off a suddenly blood-splattered desk, then staggering around the room like a boxer on his last legs, unsure whether to go down or keep fighting.

  He remained upright.

  Clues, his brain nagged him.

  Miles was his last link to what happened in Colombia.

  Clues.

  Miles had been right about the silencer. No one would’ve heard the gun go off—it sounded like the small pop you make by pulling a finger out of your cheek. Like a cartoon sound effect.

  There was plenty of blood, though. The room stank of it.

  Paul came around the side of the desk where Miles still sat—his body. He tried to ignore it—this lifeless lump of flesh that used to have a name and a voice and a family.

  Know what’s the worst sin in Orthodox Judaism?

  Paul opened the desk drawer. Papers, staples, pencils, two half-empty packs of gum. Wrigley’s spearmint. A calculator, ticket stubs, paper clips, envelopes. He had no idea what he was looking for.

  Clues.

  The question was, what was a clue? How did you divine clues from ordinary office things, the stuff of daily life?

  They’re starting to put it together. I can tell.

  He looked through some of the papers in the desk drawer. A W-2 tax form. A solicitation for subscription renewal from a legal journal. A coupon from Toys “R” Us—circled in red ink. Chatty Cathy. A New York Giants schedule from 1999.

  A phone book.

  The one Miles had looked throug
h when he’d pantomimed calling María—when he’d snapped his fingers and said the driver. Pablo. María must have his number somewhere.

  María’s number was in there, of course.

  Pablo’s would be also.

  Paul didn’t know his last name—he’d just been Pablo the driver, Pablo the hired help.

  Then Pablo the kidnapper.

  He had to search through A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, and K before he found it. Pablo Loraizo.

  Odd, the last name seemed familiar.

  He ripped out the page and stuck it into his pocket.

  He was searching for clues, but he was clueless. About what to do. Call the police? Find the local shul and inform Rachel and kids that their husband and father had just blown his brains out?

  Leave.

  Leaving sounded good. When the police came to talk to him, he’d tell them they’d chatted, then Paul had left. Suicide? What suicide? Or he’d tell them everything—that Miles had sent him to Colombia to be kidnapped and his wife and daughter held for ransom. What ransom? Two million dollars’ worth of uncut cocaine he’d dutifully smuggled through customs. Maybe he’d leave that part out.

  He felt light-headed, like in Galina’s house when he’d stood up to confront Pablo and ended up lying down instead. His thinking was all over the place, scattershot. Unlike the bullet that flew through Miles’ head.

  He took notice of it now—its trajectory.

  It had made a mess. Book pages were scattered all across the floor. No, they weren’t book pages. On closer look they were handwritten.

  Letters.

  Okay, Paul remembered.

  The night he couldn’t sleep and wandered down here to find something to read. He’d ended up reading that letter from summer camp—Dear Dad: Remember when you took me to the zoo and you left me there? Feeding his loneliness by gorging on someone else’s family.

  He was stepping over the sheets of paper to make his way out of the room when he noticed something else.

  He read, bent down, stood there transfixed, hands on knees.

  A bullet’s trajectory is governed by physics, he thought.

  By the forces of propulsion, drag, and gravity. And the position of the shooting hand itself. This is important. Which way the hand’s pointing.

  Maybe just before Miles decided to put a bullet into his brain, he’d reflected on the odds of poor Paul ever figuring this out and decided to better them.

  He said I’m pointing here.

  This way.

  THIRTY-ONE

  He was back in the comfy surroundings of home—he’d been unable to think of anywhere else to go.

  Except it wasn’t comfy. There were too many reminders.

  He pushed the crib across the apartment and halfway into the closet so he wouldn’t have to look at it, pink teddy bears grinning up at him on their ride across the room, as if amused by his childish attempt to hide the hopelessness of his situation.

  Lisa must’ve heard it rolling across the floor, because a second later Paul heard a knock at the door. When he tiptoed over to squint through the eyehole, Lisa, Joanna’s best friend, was squinting back, her puzzled expression causing her mouth to twist nearly sideways, an endearing affectation Paul had always found vaguely sexy. Not today. Either Paul and Joanna were back—suddenly and unannounced—or someone was burglarizing their apartment.

  Paul felt a little like a burglar, an intruder into his own life.

  Paul waited her out.

  He had the visa story all ready to go, but he was in no mood to use it. Not yet.

  After Lisa had knocked once more, then shrugged and left, Paul picked up the stack of letters he’d taken from Miles’ office. If you sniffed them closely, you could still smell his blood.

  He closed the blinds and turned off the phone. It would take Rachel a while to locate him. He couldn’t remember whether she knew his last name, probably not. It didn’t matter—at some point she’d look through Miles’ phone book, with the police over her shoulder, and collect all the Pauls. They’d winnow it down to him. Eventually, they’d call.

  I went to talk to Miles about my adoption problems. When I left the house, he was alive. Was he depressed? A little—he mentioned something about gambling debts. I’m so sorry to hear about this.

  The letters weren’t dated.

  But he was able to organize them chronologically by color. From parched yellow to off-white.

  The most recent was the letter he’d read that night, the letter Miles’ son had written from summer camp. It was the other letters he was interested in. The other letters that had come tumbling out of The Story of Ruth. These letters were different. These letters weren’t written by a child.

  They were written about a child.

  Dear Mr. Goldstein, the first one began.

  I have a child in desperate need of adoption.

  Most people wrote to Miles wanting to adopt a child. Needing, asking for, even begging, for a child. This letter was different—it was offering one up.

  Consider this a special request, this letter continued. This has to happen immediately. There’s no time to follow the usual paperwork. That’s why I’m writing to you directly. That’s why I need your help. I have to hear from you now. Today. Tomorrow. I beg you to answer me as soon as humanly possible.

  Paul went on to the second letter, then the third.

  He read them slowly, carefully, sometimes going back to reread something before pushing forward through time. All the letters, of course, were written to Miles. He didn’t have the letters Miles wrote back. It was like eavesdropping on one-half of a phone conversation. You had to supply the responses yourself. You had to fill in the blanks.

  The letters went on to explain who this child was. A three-year-old girl. The letter writer insisted the child needed to leave Colombia now. It explained why. Her father was after her. The girl was in terrible danger. And finally and most tellingly, the letters explained how this was all going to take place.

  After he’d read the last letter, he reread them all. And he remembered how Miles had spoken in fragments and how he—Paul—had followed behind trying to collect the fragments and glue them together.

  What are the odds poor little Paul’s going to put this together?

  Bad, Miles, he thought now, awful, but it’s just possible the odds were getting better.

  The full name of the little girl’s father never appeared. Just an initial. R. Somewhere between letters, his name must’ve been whispered in Miles’ ear, then never mentioned again.

  But the letter writer was there at the bottom of every page. That’s what Paul had noticed exiting the room, blood in his nostrils—what had made him stop and look and read. The signature at the bottom of the page.

  A lovely lilt to the letters, especially the G.

  For Galina.

  THIRTY-TWO

  At first he thought the sound at his door was a dream.

  Maybe because that’s what he was doing. Dreaming, at least half dreaming.

  About his wife and daughter.

  About the little girl.

  And that sampler that sat over Miles’ desk.

  He who saves one child saves the world.

  Who was this little girl? Galina’s granddaughter.

  She’d clearly stated that in her second letter to Miles. And she’d written about the girl’s father. That too.

  Once I thought my own daughter was safe from him, she’d scrawled. I was wrong.

  She’d begged Miles for help. Her granddaughter needed to get out of the country.

  Her father is looking for her. He won’t stop till he finds her. As you know, R has the power and means to do so.

  She needed to be adopted by someone in America. This needed to happen fast.

  As the letters continued, she told him a little more about the girl.

  She’s seen things no child should ever have to see, she’d written. No one should have to see. She has nightmares.

  By the fourth letter i
t became obvious that Miles had said okay. That he’d help. More than help. He’d evidently made an offer of stunning generosity and selflessness. He’d agreed to adopt Galina’s granddaughter himself.

  Are you sure? she’d written him. As overjoyed as I am, you must understand this is not a sometime thing. It’s a forever thing. You won’t simply be her parent. You’ll be her protector. Her guardian. Her only hope.

  Yes, Miles must’ve written, he was sure.

  But he’d wanted something in return.

  What?

  It was hard to say.

  It was obvious Galina’s joy had more or less vanished. Her letters had taken on the sober tone of a business negotiation.

  Understand what you ask might not be possible, Galina wrote. I don’t know them. I don’t speak for them. I can only ask them.

  Them.

  Paul was like a two-year-old, beginning to understand that meaningless words stand for meaningful things.

  Them said yes.

  They must’ve, because Galina’s last letter was a heartrending plea for her granddaughter’s future.

  I ask a few things of you, she wrote. To comfort her when she wakes up frightened in the middle of the night. Please read to her—she likes stories about trains and clowns and rabbits. Teach her what she needs to know in her new country. Protect her. From time to time, I ask you to please let me know how she’s doing. Not every week, not every month. Now and then. This is my last letter to you. The less contact we have after this, the safer it’ll be. I ask just one more thing. It’s the most important thing. For you and your wife to love her.

  There was someone at the door.

  He was suddenly wide-awake, staring at the bedroom ceiling.

  He heard it again.

  A soft scratching. It sounded like a cat asking to be let in.

  He didn’t have a cat.

  He continued to lie there on his bed; he wondered which door it was. The closed door of his bedroom, the apartment door itself? This was important. If it was the apartment door, he still had a chance. If it was the bedroom door, he was dead.