Point of Balance

by J. G. Jurado

  “No way, bro, you wigged out,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Look, kid, do I have to remind you that if you can walk it’s thanks to me?”

  The grandmother stood between us with her arms stretched out wide.

  “Don’t you even think of answering, Jamaal.”

  “Mama, I need your grandson’s help.”

  “I knew you wanted to entrap him. You’re trying to catch him out.”

  “I’m not, Mama, I promise.”

  “I don’t believe you. What would somebody like you want a gun for?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “That makes it worse. Because you’ll break the law.”

  “I won’t mix Jamaal up in it.”

  “Well, you say that.”

  “Mama . . .”

  “Get out of here before I call that cop who’s sitting by the door. Ask him for a gun, not some black kid from Southeast.”

  I gently held Mrs. Carter by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes.

  “Listen, Mama. I won’t harm your boy. But I do need a gun.”

  “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. So says the Lord,” she said, looking away from me.

  “I am not going to kill anyone. I just need it to right a wrong, I can’t tell you any more. I need you to believe me, Mama. Before you said there was kindness in my eyes. I need you to look in them and believe me.”

  Mama finally looked up and met my eyes. Up close, her face showed all the ravages of age. Hardship and poverty had furrowed her brow, but not her soul or her dignity. The whites of her eyes were yellow and bloodshot, and her cheeks were puffy. She was pushing seventy, so she knew only too well what it was to ride at the back of the bus, to use blacks-only bathrooms and fight for her rights. She had lived an unsettled life in which certainty was the most elusive of prizes, and I was asking for her trust on a plate. For her it would be a monumental act of heroism to take a rich white guy’s word for it.

  “The Almighty moves in mysterious ways,” she said after a while, clamping her lips between words. “I’ll ponder them while I sit on that chair and not listen to a word that is said in this room.”

  I nodded in admiration and gratitude, and turned to Jamaal.

  “Dude, talk to me.”

  Kate

  Kate checked the address one more time before she got out of the car. There it was: the corner of Twenty-Fifth and Greenmount, in Baltimore.

  She had known that scrap of paper was meaningful as soon as she took hold of it. It was a crumpled, garden-variety gas station receipt. But the time stamp and location told her she was onto something. Dave could not possibly have been in Baltimore at one p.m. on a weekday, when he was supposed to be in the hospital. She would have liked to call or text him to make sure and avoid another false lead, but it was too risky. And she had nothing else to go on, either.

  The receipt was for $24.71, or about seven gallons of gas. Whoever it was had paid in cash, so Kate couldn’t be sure. But her intuition told her that that receipt had belonged to Svetlana.

  She shivered with cold as she stepped out. The leather jacket did little to keep out the chill early morning wind. She raised the collar, although that didn’t help much.

  The yellowish first light of dawn cast her distorted and lengthy shadow along the cracked sidewalk. She had parked two blocks away from the gas station so as to stretch her legs a bit and reconnoiter the place. It didn’t tell her a great deal she didn’t already know about Greenmount. It was one of the scariest neighborhoods in the country. Derelict buildings were thick on the ground, and most had become crack houses or shelters for bums. There was nobody about, merely silence slicing between the empty shells on the wings of an icy wind.

  The local stores were going under owing to the lack of patronage. The odds of falling victim to a violent crime if you went out at night hereabouts were one in nine. Things were a tad quieter by day, but it sure was no neighborhood to hang around in for the heck of it.

  What made you come here, Svetlana? Kate wondered, looking around her.

  A shy twig of a girl, who looked unassuming and harmless, according to Dave. One who turned out to be a plant for the worst type of psycho killer: the kind that nobody even knows exists.

  Even so, this was no place for her. Were you on your way someplace else?

  If that were the case, Kate had nothing. She fought off the urge to run the last few yards to settle her doubts once and for all.

  To tease information out of potential witnesses, you must never look desperate. If they are hostile, they’ll turn the tables on you. If they are law-abiding, then they’ll be so keen to help out they’ll probably make up half of what they tell you, without even knowing.

  When she laid eyes on Rajesh Vajnuli, Kate discerned the gas station attendant would belong to the second category. He was so helpful and efficient, he seemed capable of being in two places at once. His talents must have been wasted in that desolate backwater, with no customers to bend over backwards for. When she showed him her shield and it became clear she wasn’t a client, his enthusiasm didn’t dim one iota. The traditional mistrust recent immigrants have of law enforcers was conspicuously absent.

  “Are you really a Secret Service agent?” Vajnuli said in a raucous voice and an accent that hissed the S’s, like a kid sleighing through freshly driven snow. “Like in that show, you know, the one with Jack Bauer?”

  “No, that was the CTU. A make-believe agency.”

  Kate fielded similar questions at all times of the day and night. When a public appearance was announced ahead of time, an agent could spend hours face-to-face with the crowds waiting for the president. People got bored, and the biggest show in town was the agent standing firm a few yards away. Since she had been on the First Lady’s detail, they no longer picked her for such assignments. So she didn’t have to reply so often to questions over vagaries such as Area 51 or the JFK assassination.

  “The CTU doesn’t exist?” the attendant asked, quite disheartened.

  “Afraid not.”

  “You’re kidding me! What if someone wants to blow up a nuclear power plant? Who’s to protect us from terrorist plots?”

  “The FBI, the CIA, the NSA and thirty-three other agencies. Look, Mr. Vajnuli—”

  “Call me Rajesh.”

  “Mr. Vajnuli, I need you to listen carefully. Look at this receipt,” she said, holding it out to him. “Your name is printed on it. Did you serve this customer?”

  “Yes, that’s what’s down there, see? But I can’t be sure who it was . . .”

  “A young woman, twenty-four years old. Thin, high cheekbones, Eastern European accent.”

  “Oh yes. That was a few days ago. She was here, I served her.”

  “Do you know her name? Had you seen her before?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m sorry.”

  “I’d like to see your security cam recordings.”

  Vajnuli leaned over in a confidential mood.

  “Look, don’t tell anyone, but the security cam recording system is very expensive. So we can only go back twenty-four hours. Enough for the cops to see who has held us up.”

  Sure you don’t keep them. Because that would have made things too easy, Kate thought, massaging the bridge of her nose.

  “I see, and that day you weren’t held up, right?”

  “No, we’re on a roll. We haven’t had a robbery for more than a month now. Almost like my hometown, Mumbai.”

  “And I guess you wouldn’t remember her.”

  “Quite the contrary, Agent Robson, I have total recall, especially for hot chicks,” he said, raising his eyebrows twice. Or at least trying to, as they barely rose above the frame of his Coke-bottle glasses.

  Kate raised her eyebrows in turn—not in response to Vajnuli’s flirting, but in surprise at the attendant’s descrip
tion.

  “You’d say she was cute?”

  “Oh, most definitely. She was short and very slim, but she wore a soft cotton dress and it showed her to advantage in all the right places, know what I mean? And she was dolled up. That’s why she struck me, because that’s not usual around here.”

  “Neither is paying in cash, is it?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, ma’am. Many of my customers call in for gas every day. They come with a couple of bucks or a five spot and eke things out that way. The odd one has to pawn his TV midweek to pay for gas or food.”

  “Can’t you tell me anything else?”

  “What’s she done? Robbed a bank or something?”

  “I am not authorized to reveal that information,” Kate said with a vague wave of her hand, an old trick she had learned in her days on the fraud squad. It could mean any old thing—the sole idea was to momentarily satisfy the witness’s curiosity and keep him talking.

  Vajnuli sucked his teeth several times before he went on.

  “Well, she was very polite. That I do remember.”

  “When she paid?”

  “Not only that, but she also asked for permission to park her car in the lot here. It’s reserved for the car wash clients, but what the heck . . . It’s been broken for a year and I don’t think the company wants to spend money on fixing it. I figure it won’t be long before they close us down.”

  Kate looked out the window. From the counter there was a great view of the space set aside for the lot, merely a couple of stripes painted on the blacktop.

  “She asked me to keep an eye on it,” the attendant added. “I said yes, be my guest. Although if they’d stolen it, the most I could have done would have been to tell her how many people there were. In my country we have a saying, ‘Never get between a bear and his honey pot.’ ”

  “Wise words. Know how long the girl was gone?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Half an hour, an hour maybe. I’m busy, you know?” he said, lifting up a book thicker than Kate’s arm entitled Advanced Quantum Mechanics. “I have to get my doctoral thesis approved.”

  “So I see. Thanks for your help.”

  “Aren’t you going to give me a card with your number? You know, in case I remember something and have to get in touch with you in a hurry?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows again.

  “That won’t be necessary, sir. Have a good day.”

  Kate walked out of the store. The sound of the automatic door closing spared her the good-byes from a very disappointed Vajnuli. Outside, the bracing dawn breeze was laced with the acrid smell of gasoline.

  A soft cotton dress.

  Dolled up.

  It had taken Kate fifty minutes to get to Baltimore. If Svetlana had been there by one, she must have left home at noon. David always took Julia to school on his way to the hospital. Svetlana would have fixed breakfast for them, and then the coast would have been clear for her to get ready.

  Why would an ostensibly reserved student who always wore casual clothes dress up and drive forty miles midweek? Did she go for a job interview behind David’s back? Then what was she really up to in the house? Could it be she wasn’t part of the plot?

  No way, José. Because she gave Dave her supervisor’s number. A sham number. She must have known.

  What truly unnerved Kate was that description of Svetlana. The gas station attendant was a lonely young guy ready to hit on anyone in a skirt who made the door go ding-dong.

  Kate was a good-looking woman in her own way. Her lean, wiry frame gave off a special vibe, but she was a severe judge of herself. When she looked in her bedroom mirror she couldn’t see past her pointy elbows and the flab that was beginning to gather under her butt cheeks, which no amount of daily jogging could burn off.

  You would have to be desperate to pick up a Secret Service agent, she thought.

  The attendant was probably no more than a horny youngster who got the hots for anyone. But even so, David’s description of Svetlana didn’t remotely tally with his.

  Could he really have been blind to the nanny?

  A healthy, straight man who takes no notice of a twentysomething chick with a nice rack living in his own home?

  Although he was in mourning, Kate had been around enough men to know that was not possible.

  Unless we’re talking about David, right? The man who only had eyes for Rachel from the moment he saw her.

  It was the Spring Block Party in Georgetown, the legendary event they held every year right outside the campus. It was Kate’s first, and she was raring to go. It was the second time around for her sister, who wasn’t much into crowded festivities. She had said no, but Kate didn’t know the meaning of the word. She had shown up at her dorm with a huge sign saying “I NEED TO PARTY.”

  “You will not drag me down there,” Rachel insisted, rolling her eyes and turning back to her desk.

  “You can’t do this to me, Rae. We’ll have a ball!”

  “No we won’t. It’ll be all booze and guys trying to get into our pants.”

  “Sounds cool! Come on, what’s with you? I’ve been working my ass off all winter to get ready for my midterms. Look, it’s even chair shaped,” she said, shaking it under her sister’s nose, while Rachel vainly tried to study an anatomy book. “Doesn’t it look flat to you?”

  “You get your butt out of my face,” Rachel said, tittering. “I said we’re not going, and that’s final.”

  So they went. They danced, they drank, and when it was Kate’s turn to get more drinks, she bumped into a tall, dark-haired guy with green eyes. They jabbered about nothing in particular, small talk. Kate could remember the conversation verbatim, but that didn’t matter. Because the only line that truly counted in their chat (uttered solely because Rachel wouldn’t stop pinching her arm to say she wanted to get away) was:

  “David, this is my sister.”

  And the rest was history. His head spun toward her so quickly the girl in The Exorcist would have been green with envy. When a half hour later Rachel told her that David (“Guess what? Turns out he’s in med school, like me”) had invited her to have a drink somewhere quiet, and asked whether she minded. Kate’s smile quavered a little, but she said no, no sweat. She would repent at leisure over the years for that hasty lie, wondering what might have happened had she said what she really felt. That she had seen him first, that Rachel wouldn’t even have been there were it not for her, that it just wasn’t fair . . . but nothing could have taken away that spinning head or the twinkle in his eyes when he saw her sister for the first time.

  No, David would have taken no notice of Svetlana, at least not in that way. Nonetheless the attendant’s comment hinted at something, something important.

  She had dressed up for somebody.

  She was on a date, with a guy she couldn’t see on weekends, because she had told David she didn’t have a boyfriend. David said she used to spend the weekends shut up in her room, with her nose stuck in some books.

  But there was someone. A boyfriend. And if there was a boyfriend, there was a lead. Some string to pull on.

  Or there would be if I knew where she went from here. A coffee shop, or maybe—

  The cell’s ringtone disrupted her train of thought. She picked it up instantly on seeing it was her boss.

  “What the hell’s going on, Robson?” McKenna’s voice came through thick and angry.

  “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  “I’ve been up all freakin’ night prepping for the St. Clement’s security op. And before the briefing starts, in comes the chief of medical staff and says there’s a change of plan, that we’re off to Bethesda. The surgeon won’t be your bro-in-law, but some Baltimore prick who hasn’t had a single goddamned security check, no clearance, nothing. He could be a clean-shaven Osama for all we know.”

  Rachel was struck dum
b.

  “Still there, Robson, or has that diarrhea been the death of you?”

  “Osama’s dead, sir,” was all she could find to say.

  “So Renegade says. I say show me the evidence. Anyway, you’d better haul your ass over here right now or you’ll be sorry.”

  He hung up.

  Kate stared at the phone. She didn’t get it. Exactly what was all that about? Who had made that call? Because if it had been the White House, that left David in a real fix and turned Julia into excess baggage.

  She yelled out of rage and impotence, because David was incommunicado and she couldn’t find out what the hell was happening. They had agreed that he alone would get in touch. That any other option was too dangerous.

  Hell’s bells, what more can go wrong?

  A huge truck went by and blocked out the sun for a few seconds. When it came back, the rays dazzled her and she had to shield her eyes with her hand.

  And then she looked straight ahead and saw where Svetlana had gone.

  23

  The first thing any Washingtonian tells you when you move to the nation’s capital is, “Never, never go to Anacostia.” They stress the second never. When I entered the address in my GPS navigator, the gadget dithered while it loaded the data. Perhaps it was giving me time to have second thoughts.

  I crossed the river and drove into Barry Farm. The neighborhood was composed of little rows of houses, all in desperate need of a good coat of paint. As I looked at the house fronts, I guessed fear loomed over those people’s lives. All the downstairs windows (and some upstairs ones) were covered in bars. Many were boarded up on the inside. The boldest residents had curtains for their sole protection upstairs.

  I did not see a single open window.

  The Lexus created a stir as it went along. Kids of ten or eleven began to chase me when I turned a corner. It was Thursday before noon.

  You should all be in school, I thought. Don’t give up. Hang in there.

  I felt like stopping to tell them I’d had it tough, too. That I’d had an awful childhood but had kept going, despite everything. That I’d made it. But I doubt they would have believed me, and I couldn’t hang around. After three blocks the kids got tired and faded from view in my mirror.