It was mine. It was still coming out of me.
My leg, up near my groin, was pulsating with it, churning it out at a steady rate.
Forget the gun. I put both hands there, as hard as I could, applying pressure. When the geyser stopped, I averted my eyes, knowing that the visuals of my own wound could send me over the edge.
In fact, I was too close to the edge. I maneuvered myself away from it, pushing with one hand and my working leg, getting myself closer to the trail. Then I reached back to grab the Glock, to bring it closer.
Okay, no running. Very little mobility at all. No cell phone. No one within shouting distance, except a girl across the trail who wasn't going to be a lot of help, because she wanted me dead.
I had to change her mind. I had to get Parashie to help me and relatively quickly or I wasn't getting off this mountain outside of a body bag.
“Parashie?” I called. “Listen. You don't have to hurt me. I'm on your side. Your father trusts me, he told me everything, I know about the training school he's running—”
“I don't care!” she yelled. “My father doesn't know about this.”
“What do you mean, ‘this’?” I called. No answer. “The DVDs? He doesn't know that Alik is trafficking in stolen DVDs?”
“He will kill Alik if he finds out.”
She could have been any teenage girl talking about her brother flunking chemistry and being in danger of death-by-parent.
“Parashie, I won't tell him,” I said.
“You would. He said you are moral. He said you are that type.”
“Who said?”
“Alik. He said you would not cooperate if you knew. He said Chai would cooperate, she had no morals. But I didn't trust her.”
“Okay understandable. I wouldn't've trusted her either. But you can trust me.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Parashie, think!” I yelled. It wasn't a great yell, because my voice was wavering. “You—whatever you did to Chai. Poison. Car crash. Fine. And then I guess you killed Crispin. But I guarantee if you kill me too you'll get caught. It's too big a risk. People notice these things. Three bodies in Calabasas in the space of—”
“No. The only risk is to leave someone behind to tell the story.”
“It's just DVDs! Home entertainment! Alik will have to pay a fine if he's caught, but it's a minor crime, a venial sin, not a mortal sin—” My arguments were getting weaker. I couldn't even convince myself.
“You don't know anything,” Parashie yelled. “My father, what will he do? He will send Alik away. He will cut him off. It will be a big scandal. How is Alik to take his place in the new government, after the revolution, if there is a scandal? In Belarus, they will say he is a pawn of the West. Yuri will exile him. We will not be a family.”
My left hand was cramped, and I switched to my right to stanch the flow of blood. I couldn't keep this up forever, let alone discuss politics or family dynamics while I did it. Underneath me, blood was turning the dirt to mud.
“Parashie, I'll cover for Alik,” I said. “He can run for president, for all I care—”
“You care that I have killed Chai. And Crispin.”
I was about to answer that I didn't care if she'd killed Jimmy Hoffa when I saw, coming up the trail, an animal. Loping wearily, tongue hanging out.
Olive Oyl.
I made a clucking sound, and she stopped, then saw me, and bounded over with renewed energy. She set about licking the blood from my face.
“Olive Oyl,” I mumbled. “Tell them I'm here. Go tell someone to come find me.”
Olive Oyl, instead of answering, turned her head and snapped at the air. Some annoying bug.
Bug.
I switched hands once more on my blood-soaked leg, to feel the skintight back pocket of my shantung pants. There it was.
The last bug.
FIFTY-ONE
I turned the switch to “on” and stuck it onto my skin, just below my collarbone. “I'm bleeding quite a lot. I'm no doctor, but I have to get down the trail fast or it's not good news. From the Milos house I'm straight up the trail, a ten-minute walk. I'm lying near a bench that's on a promontory that overlooks the ocean. I think that's the right word, ‘promontory’”
“Olive Oyl! Come!”
I looked over to see Parashie's head emerge from behind the rock calling the dog. Olive Oyl abandoned me in a second and ran to the girl. Parashie hugged the dog around the waist and held her and then moved toward me in a crouch.
Olive Oyl struggled against the awkwardness of this, but Parashie held fast. I watched them make their painstaking way toward me for a full minute before I understood. The girl was using the dog as a canine shield.
I'd been holding my leg with both hands, trying to maintain pressure, but now I picked up the Glock once more. “Don't come any closer,” I called.
“Don't make me laugh,” Parashie said. “You won't shoot a dog.”
“How do you know?”
“Americans can't shoot a dog.”
“I will,” I said.
“Go ahead,” she said.
But I couldn't. I wasn't sure I could shoot her either, only I had to look like I could. I raised the gun.
She said nothing. Olive Oyl's big yellow body advanced toward me, walking sideways, protecting the girl. I was lying down on the uneven ground, my upper body propped up against a boulder. I had little stability. Parashie was going to come and roll me down the mountain. I knew it. I'd be found like Crispin had been found, if I was found at all.
She was close now. She stopped twelve feet away, forcing Olive Oyl up on her hind legs so that the dog's stomach was exposed. Olive Oyl whimpered, not liking the dance in the least. I held the Glock up, trying to get the girl's head in my sights. The problem was, I needed both hands to do it the way Yuri had taught me, but I was too scared to let go of my leg. My life seemed to be draining away with my blood, and my hands were both slippery. I had no confidence I could pull it off. There was one chance in a million that I'd hit the girl and not the dog. If I hit anything. The odds improved if I hit the dog first and then got a second shot off at Parashie. Or shot through the dog to the girl. Except I couldn't shoot the dog.
I felt blood flow out of me. I had to make a decision. If I waited too long, my arms wouldn't hold the gun up any longer. It would be death by indecision.
“Parashie, stop,” a voice said. “Wollie? You put down the gun.”
I looked over to see Grusha on the trail, in her yellow housedress in the fading light. She held an MP5, aimed at me.
“Let go of the dog, Parashie,” Grusha said.
“No,” Parashie said, her voice petulant. “She has to put down her gun first.”
“You,” Grusha said to me. “Put down your gun.”
It was a funny kind of moment. If I put down the gun first, then Grusha would shoot me. Or Parashie would push me over the edge into the canyon. I wouldn't survive the fall. I knew this.
I knew something else now too. If Parashie let go of Olive Oyl, then I would shoot her. If she rushed me, if she came at me, I would do it. I no longer had any compunction about it. If she stood still, I wasn't sure I could do it, but if she came at me, I could. Maybe I was in some primal, wounded-animal mode, close enough to death that I was willing to take someone else along.
It was a strange thing to discover about myself, that I could kill someone.
“Put down your gun,” Grusha said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Trust me.”
Trust her? The witch in the housedress? Who'd never said a kind word to me in all the time she'd known me? Who was pointing a submachine gun at me? The notion was so unlikely that I smiled. The smart thing to do, of course, would be to shoot Grusha first, then try for Parashie, dog or no dog. But that's not what I did. I took a different sort of chance.
I put down the gun.
Parashie let go of the dog.
Olive Oyl ran to Grusha.
Parashie came toward me, rea
ching for the Glock.
Grusha shot her in the heart.
FIFTY-TWO
I opened my eyes and saw a cottage cheese ceiling like they have in cheap apartments—the kind I generally live in—and in hospitals.
“She's waking up,” someone said.
My ears worked, along with my eyes. That was good news. I turned my head and found there was something in my mouth. A tube. I looked down at it, my eyes crossing.
Joey was at my side suddenly. “There's an IV in your arm,” she said. “So be cool.”
“What's up?” I croaked out. It came out as “Mmfqueek?” but Joey and Fredreeq nodded, like they spoke the language.
“You had a hole in your femoral artery,” Fredreeq said. “And they fixed it up and gave you a few gallons of someone else's blood and you've been having a lot of naps. You're going to be fine, but you should abandon your dreams of being a Rockette. And you're not looking great. If it were up to me, Simon would never see you like this. But he's been here a whole lot, throwing his weight around like he's J. Edgar Hoover.”
“What about Parashie?” I asked, which came out as “Fmpruchna?”
Joey shook her head. “Parashie's dead. Justifiable homicide. The housekeeper did it, to save you. But also because she'd promised the kid that no one would ever take her away from her family. It seems that the orphanage Yuri found her in did a number on her brain.”
“Yeah. She was missing a conscience,” Fredreeq said.
“She was almost totally normal,” Joey said, “except for a habit of killing people. By the way, none of this is common knowledge and don't ask how come we know because we can't ever tell you and, in fact, we'll deny it all, if forced to.”
I closed my eyes. Then opened them. “Alik?”
Joey shook her head again. “Long gone. Halfway to Paris while we were all in Santa Barbara. The FBI is trying to extradite him, but the State Department will probably step in. On the other hand, there was an arrest this morning, an editor working at Disney was making copies of new films before the watermark went on them. So that leak's plugged and the route's closed, and that'll make the news. The trades and the L.A. Times at least.”
“Howdjaknowthisstuff?”
“I told you, don't ask,” Joey said.
“But since you did ask,” Fredreeq said, “We had a long talk with your boyfriend, who realized that indiscretion was the better part of valor. That if he wanted us to plead his case with you, he had better be forthcoming.”
“Whywouldja?”
“Plead his case?” Fredreeq asked. Her eyebrows went up and down twice. “You'll find out. When you can keep your eyes open for longer than four minutes.”
And she said some more stuff, I think, but I was asleep by then.
My ears woke up before my eyes the next time. I heard a rhythmic breathiness and a whimper. I opened my eyes. On the hospital bed next to me was Olive Oyl.
“Hey, puppy,” I said.
“Good,” said a voice in the doorway. “I thought I would have to leave the country without saying goodbye.”
I turned to see Yuri smiling at me. He looked at least ten years older than when I'd last seen him. He looked, finally, his age.
“Where are you flying to?” I asked. My voice was working much better. The tube in my mouth was gone.
“Bratislava. The family has a small castle in the countryside of Slovakia. We've been slowly moving our base of operations to that part of the world, preparing for the coup that will happen soon now, if all goes as planned.”
“Everyone's gone now? The whole family?”
“Everyone you know, except Bronwen and Zbiggo. We placed them with excellent media consultants.”
“I'm sorry,” I said. “About how things turned out.”
Yuri nodded. “I knew I could live in the West without succumbing to its temptations. I did not consider my children. We all have our blind spots.” He walked over to my bedside. “I saw that Parashie was damaged the moment I found her, but I didn't think it was irrevocable. Alik, I knew not at all.” He looked down at his hands. “I believed it was Grusha who had killed Chai. It happened when I was in Mogilev. Grusha told me not to ask, and I trusted her. She is a soldier. Grusha found Chai dead, and she recognized the signs of selenium poisoning. Parashie had put it in Chai's borscht. Parashie had tried foxglove too, earlier, but it only made Chai sick.”
“And the car crash?”
“Grusha went to Alik, told him about Chai. They covered it up, with the help of two trainees—it's the kind of operation they can do. Alik wanted to protect his sister. And himself, I suppose.” Yuri looked deeply tired. “He and Grusha thought they could keep her under control, that it was one aberrant incident. The death of the young man dashed that hope. Once we learned of his connection to Chai, it was clear that Parashie had stabbed him. She is—was—a talented fighter. So. Alik came to me, told me everything, and we knew it was time to go. We moved quickly, but not quickly enough. The police know nothing of what I've just told you, about Alik or Grusha, that they covered up a murder. They won't be coming back to America.”
“You would have taken Parashie with you?”
He didn't blink. “She was my child.”
I was tired myself, more tired than I could remember ever being before. I let my head fall back on the pillow. The world was changed. Questions of morality and loyalty and right and wrong were no longer black and white for me, if they ever had been. I was too tired to judge Yuri's choices. I looked at the sleeping form on the bed next to me. “Do they let dogs in hospitals?”
Yuri half smiled. “I am not without connections. Kimberly would like her to stay with you for a time. The quarantine procedures in Europe are quite Byzantine and my wife can't bear for the dog to be crated up. Grusha thought you would be willing to keep her until we straighten it out.”
I nodded. I had no idea what the Oakwood Garden Apartments pet regulations were, but if I had to move, I had to move. It wouldn't be the first time.
Yuri must've read my mind. He came to the foot of my bed. “Your things have been returned to your apartment, and a check deposited into your account. I hope that's not intrusive.”
I looked down at myself, at the thin blanket covering me. Fluids were entering and leaving my body through translucent tubes, and my hospital gown was open in the back. Intrusiveness was relative. “Yuri, I wasn't just working for you,” I said. “I was working for the FBI. They hired me to spy on you.”
“So I've been told.” Yuri came to the head of the bed and brushed the hair from my forehead and planted there a gentle kiss. “Vyzdoravlivajte. Heal.”
When I opened my eyes again, Yuri was gone. On the bed next to Olive Oyl, Simon was stretched out, asleep. I watched him a long while, his breath rising and falling in time with the yellow dog. After a few minutes, I turned my face to the wall and fell back asleep.
FIFTY-THREE
He stood at the foot of my bed, where Yuri had stood the day before, and looked at me. Then his face broke into a big grin. “You've been talking in your sleep.”
“Really?” I said. “Did I say anything of interest?”
“You wanted to know if we wore the same size hospital gown.”
“And what'd you say?”
“That I'd steal one for you when they let you out. We'll wear it every night. We'll alternate.”
“Very sexy.”
He pulled up a chair. “In other news, Bennett Graham retired two days ago.”
“Retired?”
“Yes. It was agreed by all concerned that his use of civilians was such an egregious violation of policy that he would be happier in the private sector. And in still other news, Lucrezia Zola was indicted three days ago, along with her brother Guillermo.”
“For how long?”
“If she deals, she could be out in fifteen. Or she could do twenty-five to life. I'm hoping for life.”
“You going to tell me about the case?” I asked.
“In exhaustive detail
. Until it puts you to sleep. I'll read to you from the transcripts. You can watch the trial. I can teach you how to smuggle pseudoephedrine hidden in bolts of raw silk.”
“That could be fun. Did you sleep with her?”
His eyes didn't waver from mine. “Twice.”
My heart stopped. Then started again. “Was it fun?”
“Not as fun as arresting her.”
I leaned back in my bed and closed my eyes. “I think I'd like to be alone.”
When I opened my eyes, he was gone.
FIFTY-FOUR
“Wollie, wake up.”
My brother's voice pulled me out of a sound sleep. My eyes blinked open. “What? P.B., what's happened? Are you okay?”
“You're the one lying in a hospital bed,” he pointed out. “You don't look so good. They said you're okay but you don't look okay.”
“How'd you get here?” I asked.
“Apollo and Uncle Theo. They're down in the cafeteria.”
“Apollo drove?”
P.B. nodded and, apparently satisfied I wasn't at death's door, opened a book.
“What are you reading?”
He held it up. Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything.
“So how are those superstrings?” I asked. “And did they find the theory?”
“I'm only on page one thirty-one.”
“Well, how's it look? Will there be a happy ending?”
He shrugged. “They've dealt with relativistic covariance, quantization, and grand unified symmetries, so Green and Schwarz are happy. But they haven't even broached the deeper meaning of closed loops.”
“Well, then.” I thought for a moment. “Is Mrs. Winterbottom mad at me for ditching the Madonna?”
“I don't think so,” he said without looking up. “She sent you flowers. Those yellow ones. Uncle Theo read all your cards.”
“You're kidding.” On a table by the window, there they were, an extravagance of yellow roses, screamingly cheerful. “So I guess she liked our chalk painting?”
A Date You Can't Refuse Page 32