Hostage Zero

by John Gilstrap

  After two or three more spoonfuls, Evan realized that he was the only one eating. He looked up at the old woman who had brought him in, and he gestured with his forehead toward the pot. “Please,” he said. “Eat.”

  Apparently, those were exactly the words they’d been waiting for because they wasted no time diving in and ladling stew into their own bowls. Conversation he didn’t understand roiled all around him as they crammed onto the benches hip to hip. They all seemed happy, and Evan didn’t understand how that could be the case when one of their tribe-if that’s what you called them-was being brutalized nearby. For all he knew, every one of the soldiers was out there raping someone. Yet the people in here were laughing and having a grand old time. It didn’t seem right.

  But the stew was great. He ate like the starving young man he was, slurping spoonful after spoonful down his gullet, barely pausing to chew the vegetables and the occasional hunk of meat that tasted different than anything he’d had in the past. It wasn’t till he’d emptied his bowl that he realized that the others were all way behind him. They were watching him, and whatever expression crossed his face made them all laugh. He felt his ears turning red, and then they laughed some more.

  But it was friendly laughter. He smiled along with them and even got the feeling that he probably would have been laughing with them if only he’d known what was so funny.

  The lady who’d brought him in leaned close and said something he couldn’t understand. It sounded like blahn key roho. When he shrugged to tell her that he didn’t understand, she repeated it. He still didn’t get it.

  She held out her hand palm up, and he gave her his, palm down. She gently lifted his arm and ran her fingers down its length. She fingered his long blond hair. “Wheat,” she said. “ Blanco. ” Then she brushed his cheek and ear. “Roho.” She paused as she searched for a word. “Red?”

  Then he got it. She hadn’t been saying wheat all this time. She’d been trying to say white. White boy. White arm, white hair, red face. Evan smiled. He rubbed his own cheeks with his other hand and said, “Blushing. White skin and red face means ‘blushing.’”

  She repeated the word, and he didn’t correct her when it sounded more like blooshing. Then they all tried it, and they all laughed. There was some more small talk and laughter, and then the faces of the people across from his turned suddenly fearful.

  Evan felt Oscar’s presence before he heard anything. “Kid!” he boomed. “You ready?”

  The boy felt his shoulders sag, and the instant it happened, he knew that he’d just telegraphed weakness. “No,” he said. “I like it here.”

  Oscar laughed. “Two minutes,” he said. “ Dos minutos. Don’t make me drag you out of here. It’s tough to walk on a broken leg.” Two seconds later, he was gone.

  The mood in the hut turned black. His hostess stood, and the others followed. She hooked her arm in his armpit and gently lifted him. When he got to his feet she cupped his chin in her palm and said something to that he couldn’t understand, but the tone of her voice clued him in that it was important.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” Fear rose in his throat.

  The woman looked to the others for help, but there was none to be found. Her eyes brightened, and she held up her forefinger as an idea struck her. She hooked her arm around Evan’s shoulder and moved quickly across the room to a primitive set of shelves that was packed with all kinds of crap. Talking a mile a minute, she tore a small piece from a sheet of paper and then shaped into a rough oval. She held it up for him to see, nearly pantomiming Father Dom’s pose when he offered up the Host during Holy Communion.

  Whatever she was trying to tell him, it was all about the slip of paper. Apparently it was a very important piece of paper.

  “I don’t understand,” Evan said with a full-body shrug.

  The woman shook her head emphatically and tapped his lips with her fingers. She wanted him to be quiet and listen.

  That’d be great if only he knew what the hell he was listening to.

  “Evan!” Oscar boomed.

  The sound of the man’s voice made the woman double her pace. Still yammering about whatever, she gestured one more time with the piece of paper, put it in her mouth, then violently spit it out.

  Evan reflexively jumped back, but the old woman grabbed his hand to keep his attention and spat again, three times for added effect.

  “I’m supposed to spit?” he asked.

  She nodded enthusiastically. “ Si, si. Speet.”

  So he spat. No wad of goo; just, you know, spit.

  “No, no, no, no.” She let him have it with another long string of Spanish. Or maybe Martian. He didn’t understand one any better than the other.

  “Evan!” Oscar reappeared in the doorway. “Right now. Ahora. ”

  All of the animation drained from the woman. She exhaled heavily, then gave Evan a quick hug. “ Vaya con Dios,” she said.

  Evan knew what that one meant, though he wasn’t sure why. She’d said, Go with God. He smiled even though he inexplicably wanted to cry. “Thank you,” he said. “ Gracias. ”

  The woman smiled, then turned him around and swatted him on the ass. “Bye-bye, blooshing boy.”

  He turned to smile at them, but they seemed to not want eye contact.

  “Come, kid,” Oscar said. “The boys are refreshed, and we’ve got a long walk.”

  The little parade reformed outside, and Evan fell in line. He looked away as they passed the hut the girl had been dragged into. He might have been imagining it, but he’d have sworn that he could hear crying from inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Navarro seemed incapable of sitting. He walked to the rear of the house, to the kitchen, inviting Gail to join him. “Would you like some tea?” he asked.

  “Yes, please,” she replied with a smile. She hated tea. It reminded her of childhood sickness, when her mother used hyper-sweetened tea to mask the flavor of whatever foul home remedy she might have concocted. Still, an affirmative answer seemed like the best way to keep Navarro talking.

  He filled the copper teakettle from the spigot over the stove and settled it on a front burner. He turned the knob and bent at the waist to verify that the blue flame was exactly right; then he turned to face Gail.

  “I was their attorney,” he said, getting right to it. “I dealt mostly with a man named Arthur Guinn, but I did meet Mr. Bell a time or two. They were surprisingly nice people. Very cordial, always dignified. Not at all what you’d expect from people in their line of work. If you didn’t know they were mobsters, you’d have thought they were Ivy League country clubbers.”

  “So you knew they were mobsters when you went to work for them?” Gail pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and helped herself to it.

  Navarro turned on the sink spigot and pushed the lever all the way to hot. “Of course I knew. The whole world knew. But when I started, I just did corporate work for their legitimate covers.” He filled the teapot with hot tap water and set it aside. “Preheating the pot is very important,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When making tea. Too many people make the mistake of pouring the heated water directly into a cold pot. Ruins the tea.”

  “I’ve always just put a tea bag in a cup of hot water,” Gail said.

  Navarro shivered. “Might as well drink from a mud puddle.” He withdrew two cups and saucers from a cupboard over the stove and started preheating those, as well. “Tea drinking and pipe smoking are both as much about the fuss-budgetry as they are about the final reward.”

  Gail didn’t care. But she didn’t want to push too hard.

  Navarro leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms and legs. “I remember when I was in law school a professor told us how fragile one’s ethics can be. He was an absolutist. His favorite expression was, ‘You can’t be just a little bit dirty.’ It made sense in the classroom, but in practice it’s a hard lesson. Rationalization is a tricky thing. Y
ou know you’re working for a criminal, but you justify it by telling yourself that even criminals need legal counsel. It’s the way our system of justice is built. I was working just for the legal side of what they do. After a dozen years or so, the blurry line gets fuzzier and fuzzier. Before you know it, you’re seeing the line for exactly what it is, but you look the other way. In the end, you’re in so deep that it doesn’t matter anymore where the line is.”

  The teakettle whistled, and he turned to tend to it.

  “What sort of things did you end up doing?” Gail asked.

  He killed the flame under the kettle and let it sit while he dumped the water from the preheating pot and cups. He wiped them dry with a dish towel and then measured two teaspoons of loose tea from a tin into the dried pot.

  Gail had never seen all this pageantry for a cup of tea, and she found herself oddly fascinated.

  Navarro poured water from the kettle into the pot and put the lid in place. “Three minutes,” he said. “No more, no less. In America, we tend to oversteep our tea. Where were we?”

  “You were about to tell me what sort of services you performed for Sammy Bell and company.”

  “Ah. Well, toward the end, I was the handler of cash. The trusted middleman.”

  “For what?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “But you knew.”

  “I suspected at first; but yes, sooner or later I knew. I handled payments for services rendered. With my fingerprints on the transaction-literally and figuratively-it all became subject to attorney-client privilege, and therefore untraceable.”

  “What was the money for?”

  He hesitated. “Just about anything you can think of.” He busied himself with a search of the kitchen drawers.

  Gail sighed heavily. “Please don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

  His head snapped up at that. “It is difficult, Ms. Bonneville. It is extremely difficult, and I’m doing my best not to just shut up and send you on your way.”

  Gail looked away, inexplicably embarrassed.

  He wasn’t done. “Have you ever done anything you’re ashamed of?”

  She felt heat rising in her ears. Lord yes, she thought; but she would never share the details with others.

  “If you have, then you know how easy it is to push the awfulness aside.” He closed one drawer and opened another. “I’ve built myself a cozy little life here in exile. I have very nearly reached the point where I can look at myself in the mirror and not feel nauseated.” This time he slammed the drawer in frustration, and went for a third. “So if I am somehow frustrating you by not baring my soul quickly enough, I’m afraid I’ll just have to beg your pardon.”

  This time, he slammed the drawer hard enough to shake the floor. “Where the hell is my tea strainer?”

  Gail stood to help and saw it right away. “Is that it? There on the counter?” She pointed next to the sink, to a spot in plain sight.

  He followed her finger, and his shoulders slumped. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.” He picked it up and rinsed it in the sink. “As I’m trying to introduce you to the wonders of tea, I can’t very well leave it unstrained, can I?”

  His voice cracked at that last part. Gail returned to her seat and just watched while he finished the pomp and circumstance. He carried the cups easily, each balanced on its saucer with a spoon on the side. “Sugar’s on the table,” he said. “Would you like lemon or cream?”

  I don’t even want the damn tea, she didn’t say. “No thank you.” She opened the sugar bowl and was not the least surprised to find cubes. She helped herself to two lumps and stirred them in, while Navarro took three. She sipped, and was delightfully surprised. The flavor was like no tea she’d ever had. “This is good,” she said, the surprise evident in her voice.

  “Let this be a lesson,” he said. “Life is too short and filled with disappointments to deny yourself the best.” He took a sip of his own and savored it. “Tea bags are a sin.”

  Gail laughed. She felt as if she’d stepped through the looking glass, tea party and all. This man savored his brew as Jonathan savored good scotch. She allowed the moment to stretch a little more, and then came back around to business.

  “A young boy is awaiting rescue, and people are trying to harm him,” she said. “We have to get back to the subject at hand.”

  Navarro bowed slightly from the shoulders. “Please,” he said.

  “Tell me about Marilyn Schuler,” Gail said. “How does she fit into all of this?”

  Navarro sat taller in his chair and shifted his eyes to a spot over her shoulder. She followed his gaze, but there was nothing there.

  “Marilyn was a lovely woman,” Navarro said. “Lovely in every sense of the word.” He looked back to Gail and made his eyebrows dance. “Perhaps too lovely for her own good.”

  Gail waited for it.

  “You know she was having an affair with another young man on my staff.”

  She played dumb.

  “A fellow named Aaron Hastings. I never did like him much. Never trusted him, really; but he was a recommended hire from my biggest client.”

  Gail’s ears perked. “Sammy Bell?”

  “The one and only. And it never behooves to disappoint one’s largest client.”

  “Especially this one,” Gail said.

  “Indeed.” He took another sip. “If only Mr. Bell knew the truth of his friend.”

  “What truth is that?”

  Navarro looked concerned. “Alice didn’t tell you?”

  “You’d be shocked-or maybe pleased-to know how little she shared with me about anything.” Gail told herself that she was going to have to reexamine her whole attitude about tea.

  Navarro pushed his chair away from the table and crossed his legs. “I don’t have any real proof, you understand. Common wisdom-now there’s an oxymoron for you-has it that Marilyn’s husband killed her because of her affair with Aaron, but I’ve always felt that poor Mr. Schuler was set up by that young man, and that the young man himself was Marilyn’s killer.”

  Gail recoiled. “Why would he do that?”

  Navarro’s face twitched. It looked like equal parts smile and wince. “I hope you have time for a long story,” he said.

  As Navarro unfolded his tale, it seemed obvious to Gail that he’d been thinking a lot about this over his years in exile.

  “Sometimes I found myself in the position of shuttling money,” he explained. “I was never entirely sure what it was for, but you get a feel for these things over time. The amounts were always large. Tens of thousands of dollars. And of course nine times out of ten, the money was flowing toward Mr. Bell’s operation. Rarely away from it.”

  Gail detected subtext. “Except sometimes?”

  He stabbed a finger toward her nose. “Exactly. Except sometimes. Like, for example, the three days before my life as I knew it was forced to end. We handled an outgoing payment of two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

  Gail gasped. “Yowsers.”

  Navarro smiled. “My thoughts exactly. We handled the payment in two parts, about a week apart. Half one week and half the second week.” His eyes narrowed. “So, Ms. Private Investigator, what does that sound like to you?”

  “Half on contract and half on delivery.”

  Navarro gave a conciliatory bow. “I left out a detail. There was no delivery of goods. Just a payment followed by another payment.”

  Something clicked in Gail’s head. “A hit?”

  He jabbed his finger in the air again. “That’s what I concluded. It’s the only thing that made sense. For that amount of money, it’s somebody damned important. And it certainly makes sense to have a completion bonus. There’s also the fact of the dead drop. I forgot to mention that, too. We weren’t supposed to deliver either payment to a person. Instead, there was a dead drop at a rest stop along the Jersey Turnpike. Lots of money, anonymous recipient.”

  Gail found herself nodding. “Definitely a hit.”

>   “Right. Murder. Cold blood and all that. Be honest with you, that was way beyond anything that I signed up for. Scared the bejesus out of me. It’s one thing to risk disbarment and maybe a year or three in prison, but now we were talking big time.”

  “Did you say no?”

  He gave her a don’t-be-an-idiot look. “The ‘say no’ ship had sailed long before then,” he said. “I was in far too deep to play that kind of game. So I swallowed hard and made the first payment. Then, on my way back, about three miles from making the drop, I got pulled over for speeding. Seventy-eight in a sixty-five. Funny how some details just stick with you, isn’t it?”

  Gail stole this thunder: “That created a record,” she said.

  “It did exactly that. It was just a routine traffic stop, I know. Nobody’s going to think twice. But then if someone gets hit, they’re going to start checking records.”

  That’s exactly what they’d do, Gail thought. After a murder, one of the first investigative tasks is to check moving violations in the area. “Did you have a criminal record?”

  “No, but I had a high profile. When you’re a mobster’s lawyer, people notice. You’d be surprised how many people are jealous, in fact. So that next week, I was a basket case. I scoured newspapers and the Internet looking for something about a murder, but I never saw it. Then I got the order to make the second drop.”

  “But no one was ever killed?”

  “Not that I knew of. Still, I was spooked. I didn’t want any more blood on my hands, so I sent Marilyn Schuler to make the delivery. She wouldn’t do it unless I told her what was in the package, and when I did tell her, she sort of freaked out. She didn’t know what it was for, of course, but it was still a lot of cash. She insisted that she’d only go if I let her boyfriend come along to protect her.”

  “That would be Aaron Hastings?”

  “Right.” He leaned forward. “Only the money never arrived. Marilyn and Aaron disappeared. I didn’t realize that things didn’t happen until over a day later when I got word from Arthur Guinn that there was one very pissed off, very bad man who wanted his money.” Navarro closed his eyes and cocked his head, as if the memory had become painful.