Dr. Knox

by Peter Spiegelman

  “No doughnuts?” Shelly said. “No chicken wings? You a fuckin’ health freak?”

  “Have an apple,” Sutter said, and tossed her a Granny Smith. “You’ll live longer.”

  Shelly caught it with her good arm, and winked at him. “That all it takes?”

  Sutter and I went into the little kitchen. He unwrapped a chicken salad sandwich, and I peeled a banana. I twisted the top from a liter of water, drank from the bottle, and passed it to Sutter.

  “Called a buddy to hang outside for a while,” he said. “Remember Tommy?”

  “Tall guy, weird hair, bullet holes in his left leg?”

  “That’s Mosul Tommy; this is Kabul Tommy I’m talking about. Anyway, he’ll be around if you want to head home.”

  “I should keep an eye on them—especially Elena. Make sure her gut’s okay.”

  Sutter smiled. “She seems to have no problem in that department.”

  “Neither one of them.”

  “You bringing the kid over?”

  “Arthur’s sister is, tomorrow morning.”

  “And then what?”

  I shrugged. “A mother-and-child reunion.”

  “It’ll be beautiful, I’m sure. You going to send photos to Siggy and the Brays? You think that’ll make them go away?”

  I drank some more water. “I’m not counting on it.”

  Sutter took the bottle from me. “You got that right.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Danni brought Alex over at nine the next morning, and when he walked through the door, Elena sobbed and opened her arms. She was sitting on the sofa, in clean sweats and a tee shirt, and her hair was damp. She was still pale and exhausted, but color spread across her neck and cheeks when she saw the boy, and her smile was wide. Alex was across the room before Elena could rise, and he buried his face in her neck. The coiled watchfulness in their dark eyes vanished, and tension slid from their shoulders like an overcoat falling. They quivered as they held each other, and Elena stroked his hair and cooed to him in words I didn’t understand.

  I offered Danni breakfast but she begged off. When I’d seen her to her car, I walked around to the backyard. Sutter and Shelly were drinking coffee at a redwood picnic table and watching planes cross the sky. Sutter raised the coffee carafe and pointed at an empty mug. I nodded.

  “How’s the little dude?” Sutter asked, pouring.

  “Happy,” I said. “Crying. Elena too.”

  Shelly nodded sagely, her blue forelock sweeping across her pale face. “Shit, yeah. They’re tight.”

  I drank some coffee. It was thick and biting. “She never said anything about who was looking for him?”

  Shelly shook her head. “I told you—she didn’t say much about anything. She talked about Siggy—about clocking some Westside john and taking off from one of his apartments, and that Siggy was going to skin her alive. She said nothing about the kid’s problems.”

  Sutter chuckled to himself. “Need-to-know, huh?”

  “Fuckin’-A,” Shelly agreed. “Ellie doesn’t give away shit. Getting her to tell about Siggy was like pulling teeth, and even then it was only ’cause she had to—I had to know who we were running from if I was going to help her run.”

  I drank more coffee, leaned back against the picnic table, and stretched my legs. I’d gotten maybe two hours sleep the night before, and my head was flopping like a sawdust doll’s. The sky was milky, and there was a tang of kerosene that waxed and waned with the passing planes. But the air was soft, and the small breeze carried the smell of bread baking not far away. My stomach grumbled. Sutter laughed.

  “Got a couple of popovers here,” he said, and slid a pink bakery box across the table. “Fresh this morning.”

  I took one from the box and pulled it apart. The warm yeasty smell made me dizzy. I ate it and drank more coffee, but when Sutter offered another I shook my head. I rose. “No,” I said, stretching. “I’ve got to pull some teeth.”

  “Didn’t know you were a dentist too,” Shelly said, and laughed.

  —

  Elena had made toast for Alex, and sliced an apple and some cheese for him. They were sitting at the little kitchen table, and she held his arm and watched him as he ate, as if a wind might carry him off if her grip or her vigilance faltered. Alex looked up as I came in. He smiled.

  “How goes it, bud?” I said.

  “Good,” he said behind a mouthful of apple.

  “He is hungry,” Elena said.

  I nodded. “Alex, you okay taking your breakfast out back? You remember Shelly?” Alex smiled and nodded. “She’s out back with my friend Ben. They’re watching the planes come and go. They fly low, and it’s kind of cool.”

  Alex looked at Elena, uncertain, and she looked at me.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  Elena’s face sagged. She squeezed his arm and nodded. “Go, pui,” she told the boy. “But finish the food.”

  I held the kitchen door for Alex, and he carried his plate from the table. I ruffled his hair as he passed, and then I took his seat.

  Elena stared at me, her oval face still and utterly opaque. She picked up the paring knife.

  “You want toast? Apple?” she asked. I shook my head. She smiled thinly. “You just want a story, huh?”

  “I need to know what’s going on, Elena. If you want help, you—”

  Her face tightened. “I don’t want help.”

  “Then you’re stupid.”

  Elena straightened and almost smiled. “Thank you, doctor. Very kind.”

  “Stupid—because you obviously need help, you and Alex both. And I’ll give it to you, but you need to tell me what I’m in the middle of.”

  “You are going to help me? How? You going to scare that Russian prick away? Or the Brays? You got more money than them? More soldiers?”

  I sighed. “I can’t know what to do until I know what’s going on.”

  Her fist tightened around the paring knife. “What’s to know? I sold myself to Siggy to get here, I run from him, I take back my kid, and here we are. Good enough story?”

  “I already knew most of that.”

  “Then why you asking?”

  I sat back, crossed my legs, folded my hands in my lap, and said nothing.

  Elena muttered something and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know where is the start. I don’t know where it begins.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “In Los Angeles? Three months and twenty-two days. For nineteen days before, I was traveling here.”

  “Traveling from Romania?”

  She nodded. “From Lanurile. A little town—village—not so far from Constanţa.”

  “On the Black Sea?”

  “Lanurile is inland. A guy Kurt—friend of my stupid brother Nico—from him I meet another guy there—Vladi.” Her mouth twisted like there was something spoiled in it. “Kurt tells me Vladi can get me to Los Angeles, no passport, no questions. Vladi works for Siggy, getting girls. Recruiting. I take a car with him from Lanurile to Constanţa, and then to Varna, in Bulgaria. Then no more Vladi, but more people who work for Siggy. I take a truck to Burgas, and then into Greece—Xanthi, Kavala, some other place on the coast, I don’t know where. Then a little boat across to Athens. From there, a plane to Canada—Montreal—then a plane to Vancouver. Last part was a boat down here. San Pedro.”

  “That’s a long road.”

  She nodded. “You don’t know,” she said softly.

  “Alex was with you?”

  Elena shook her head. “He has been here more than a year.”

  “You traveled by yourself?”

  “There were other girls—getting into truck, getting off if they cry or complain too much. Disappearing. I don’t know who they were or where they go. And there were men—the ones who drove, the ones who watched us. The ones who…They all work for Siggy.”

  Elena’s voice choked and her face hardened. “There was a doctor too—in Constanţa—to make sure
I was healthy enough, no AIDS or anything else. That I was worth to send all the way to Los Angeles. I don’t know if he was any good—he smelled of cherry brandy and he didn’t even know I had a baby. Maybe I could’ve told him I was virgin and he’d believe it. Anyway, he says I’m healthy—good to send—so they should take care with me. So that was something.”

  “Did they take care with you?”

  Her laugh was short, metallic, and full of hate. “Sure. When they raped me in Varna, and again in Burgas, and in Xanthi, and in Athens, it was only one guy at a time, and they used condoms, and didn’t cut me. So, sure, better than some girls.”

  For a moment I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, and then I couldn’t get it out again. “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I’m sorry that that happened to you.”

  Elena shook her head. Her hand was tight around the paring knife. “It’s not like I didn’t know, doctor. They tell the girls some story about how jobs are waiting for them—nanny, maid, whatever. It’s bullshit, but some girls believe, or pretend to. Me—I knew.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  She squinted at me, as if I’d asked why the sun rose. “You don’t have kid,” she said finally. “Otherwise, you know—there’s nothing you wouldn’t do. Nothing. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get here—to get him back.”

  “There wasn’t another way for you to come over?”

  “What other way? Those bastards left me empty pockets. No money, no family, no passport or visa, and they owned the fucking cops there—they buy anyone they need in the fucking government. I had nothing.”

  “Which bastards are you—”

  “Brays, Brays—who else I am talking about? They buy what they want, and they take everything else. Like they take my bunica—my grandma—who raise me. Like they take Nico, my stupid brother. Just like they take my boy.”

  “Kyle is his father?”

  Elena flicked her hand as if she were shooing a bee, and she looked as if she might spit. “They say Alex is theirs—like they own him, like he’s a car or house, or one of their companies. He is not owned.” She took a deep breath, and a vein in her neck pulsed rapidly, as if she were sprinting.

  “How did you get tangled up with the Brays?”

  “Tangled?”

  “Involved. How did you meet them?”

  “Through Nico. My brother worked with many foreign companies in Bucharest. He help them do business—show them how things are done there, introduce them to people in ministries, in unions, in the prefectures. Nico knows everybody, some big people, yes, and all of the people in the middle—the ones who really do things. So he helps these foreign companies get permits for things—buildings, whatever, helps them with licenses, documents for import, export, this kind of thing.”

  “He was a fixer.”

  She didn’t know the expression, and furrowed her brow until she decided it worked. “Fixer—yes. He fixed things for these foreign companies, so everything worked for them. For the foreign people too. He take them around Bucharest, the places to eat, the places to party. The places to meet people. To meet girls.”

  “He did that for Kyle Bray?”

  Elena looked at the tabletop, her hands, the knife. She tightened her grip on the handle. “Yes,” she said softly. “Nico worked for a company the Brays bought—Petroplan Ploieşti—and Kyle came to Bucharest to run it. To play at running it. Nico was fixing things for them, and he liked Kyle—liked his cars and suits and his big watches. Liked how Kyle spent his money—how much he didn’t care about it. Of course, this is what they care about most, the Brays.

  “So Nico fixed a job for me with Petroplan. The company was trying to win a contract with the Ministry of Industry, and they are hiring people. I was in school for geology until our bunica got sick and I had to go back to Lanurile, and my English was good enough, and I knew the technical words for things. Nico got me a job as a translator.”

  “You met Kyle there?”

  Elena nodded. “He saw me in the office and said he needed an interpreter. My speaking English wasn’t good enough, I told him. He didn’t care.” Elena shifted her grip on the paring knife, holding it like a pencil, and she poked delicately—poke, poke, poke—again and again, at the wedge of Swiss on the table.

  “You worked for him?”

  She nodded. “Work, and more than work.” Poke, poke, poke. “I…I don’t know why.”

  “You must’ve liked him.”

  She looked up at me and nodded. “Maybe for the same reasons Nico liked him. The car, the clothing, the big suite at the Carol Parc. The dinners and the drink. He didn’t know anything about Romania, but he seemed to know everything else. It was like a movie…like he came from another planet, where they know so much more than us it’s like…magic.” Poke, poke, poke. “Yes, I liked that.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Happened? We run around Bucharest for six months. I’m basically living at the Carol Parc with him. We’re out every night, drinking, dancing, big parties, whatever. We go away on weekends, to Constanţa, to Istanbul, even to Dubai and Paris. I don’t go to the office anymore, and he barely does. The business—Petroplan—I guess is going to shit, but he doesn’t care too much. Then the father comes to town.”

  She pronounced the word father with a strangled snarl, and buried the knife hilt deep in the cheese. She looked at me and worked the blade free. “The father comes, and that is the end of things.”

  “His father wasn’t happy.”

  Elena smiled grimly, and rose from the table. She walked around the kitchen, the knife still in her hand. Her movements were slow and cautious, guarded, but she showed no signs of pain.

  “Not happy. Not with anything. Not with Petroplan, not with Kyle. Not with me. He comes to Bucharest on a Monday morning—walks right into the suite at the Carol Parc. The hotel manager is cringing like a dog behind him. He stands at the end of our bed with his…his soldiers. He’s looking at us, not speaking, just shaking his big head. Then he says something to his guards, and they open the curtains and turn on the shower and pull Kyle from bed and carry him to the bathroom. Kyle doesn’t even fight. The father takes a suit from the closet, and a shirt, and goes into the bathroom after him and closes the door. I hear voices, but I can’t understand anything—I’m just trying to cover myself, and the guards are staring. Finally, the door opens and Kyle and the father come out. Kyle is looking at the ground, walking between his father and a guard. He doesn’t say anything to me, or even look. He walks out, and the rest of them walk out, and I’m alone. Alone until the maid comes and tells me I have hour to leave or they call the police.”

  I watched her as she moved carefully about—watched her face, which remained shuttered, watched her breathing, which had settled down, watched her hand around the knife. She was silent for a long while, and then she sighed.

  “I went back to Lanurile that night. I had nothing in Bucharest, nowhere to go. My flatmates had rented out my room. Nico didn’t want to see me. He was mad when I called, said I’d screwed up a good thing and cost him a customer. I had my clothes and whatever money I could find around the hotel room, so I got on a train. My bunica was happy to see me.”

  Elena returned to the table and sat. She sighed again and looked at nothing.

  “You were pregnant then?”

  Her eyes flashed and she looked at me hard. “I didn’t know then; I didn’t know for six weeks. After, there was no mistake. So tired, throwing up like crazy…” Her voice grew soft and there was a wistfulness to it. Then she shivered. “My bunica knew. She took care of me. Of us. She was the only one.”

  “Your brother didn’t help?”

  Her mouth turned bitter. “Nico? No. I didn’t hear from him at all. He was traveling then, taking Germans and Russians all over the country. He didn’t call us or visit, not for years.”

  “And no help from Kyle?”

  Elena shook her head. “What help did we need? When I stopped throwing up, I got a job.
Nothing much—there was a factory not far, and it had an office. I worked there awhile, and they let me come back after Alex was born.

  “And then, for short time, everything was okay. Fine. I went to work. My bunica took care of the boy, and she worked too, like she always did—washing clothes, ironing, mending. She even made dresses. They all looked like the curtains in her kitchen, made everybody look like potatoes in a flowered sack, but the old ladies liked them.” Elena smiled and chuckled softly. “We were okay. Fine. Until Nico decides after a few years it’s time to visit.” Elena rose again, and this time she froze in the middle, and put a hand to her belly. Her face was gray.

  “You all right?” I said, and put a hand out.

  She brushed it away and shook her head. “First time I see Nico since Bucharest. Last time too.”

  “Was he still angry at you?”

  “No, no—he was…he was friendly. He had a new car, money in his pocket, and he wanted to be friends. He brought flowers and chocolates and a bolt of fancy fabric for our bunica, and he had Italian wine and a bottle of vodka, and…then he saw Alex. He saw his nephew for the first time.”

  “He didn’t know you’d had a baby?”

  “He didn’t know anything,” Elena said. She walked to the sink, touched the taps, but didn’t run the water. “Nico just stared at Alex, watched him chase a little football—soccer ball—around the sitting room. Finally, he asks how old, and I tell him almost four years, and I see him doing sums. Then he asks if that bastard sends us money, and I say he should leave it alone. I tell him the Brays know nothing about Alex, and that he’s not their business, and he should leave it alone. But I can tell by his voice and his crazy eyes and how red his face is getting that he won’t. I beg and plead with him, and so does our bunica. We cry, we get angry, but it doesn’t matter to Nico. He’s drinking the vodka from the bottle, the wheels are turning in his head, and he doesn’t listen. He drives to Bucharest that night.

  “Two days after, the police call. Nico’s car went off a road somewhere, and into a ditch, and there was a fire, and maybe bears or an earthquake too. I didn’t know what the hell they were saying, but I knew it didn’t matter. I knew they were full of shit. I knew what happened to him.” She touched the taps again, and this time she turned them on and watched the water.