Walls of Silence
Page 44
So it was Julia Tochera who had called. The nurse had decided on intensive care. Manelli must have taken her seriously, the burnt-out helicopter had a neighbor with “Police” all over it. The guys in cars were presumably local, although I couldn’t see Officer Miller anywhere.
Manelli seemed to scan the scene with me. “And I find this,” he sighed.
But it was McIntyre’s message that really interested me. The message was for me, not for Manelli; it was a cancerous olive branch, being held out from a clattering, panic-stricken bubble somewhere above New York.
McIntyre wanted my silence, and presumably Carol’s too.
Was there enough to pay for it? To cover Gemini’s debts?
There might be, just might be.
And what about Charles Mendip?
Didomertafeature somewhere deep in the Gemini code?
Was he to be the sin-eater for them all? Would he have the stomach for it? Would he be able to breathe at all with the extra weight?
A young uniformed cop ran up to Manelli and whispered in hisear.
Manelli turned to me. “The girl you said we’d find on the beach, she isn’t there.”
Where was Preeti? A fleeing shadow along the shoreline, perhaps. She could run fast; I remembered the speed with which she’d crossed my father’s bedroom. But that was a long time ago.
Another policeman approached us; he was carrying an oxygen bottle with a tube that snaked up to a plastic mask strapped over Mendip’s mouth. Mendip was leaning heavily against him.
He guided Mendip to the ramp where I was sitting, and set him down next to me, resting the oxygen bottle on his lap.
“Only two ambulances showed up,” the cop said. “One has taken the woman. I’ve asked for another but they can’t say when it will show.”
“Jesus,” Manelli moaned. “Anyone would think I was dealing with a low-grade mugging here.”
I looked at Mendip. Each breath was a battle for him and his eyes slid drunkenly in their sockets, never settling on my face. I wondered what it would do for his asthma if I told him what his Gemini brothers might have in mind for him.
A man in a suit approached us.
I’d seen him before.
“Hi, Manelli,” the man said. “What’s up?”
Manelli looked surprised. “Cy, what you doing here? This isn’t your territory.”
Outside my apartment block, in the driving rain, the man leaning against his car, looking up at me. He must have been a cop after all.
The man frowned. “Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to stick behind the desk, play with my computer. That’s all you think us college guys are good for.”
Manelli seemed embarrassed. “Cy, you’re in the wrong place.”
“Sure, Manelli.” The man fixed his gaze on me. His eyes burned with something, something more than the thrill of a techie cop getting a look in on the action. “Fin Border,” he whispered. The voice was cultured, the suit well-tailored.
“Yes, it’s Border,” Manelli replied.
“You going to lock him up?”
“You better leave, Cy . . .” Manelli moved toward him. “Your boss will be none too happy when he hears about this.”
“He can fuck himself,” the man shouted. “He didn’t have a daughter on the FDR that day. Border didn’t kill one of his kids.” His hand moved inside his jacket. “You like my makeover on your apartment, Border, you fuck? Did your whores understand the messages I left for them?” He pulled out a gun. “But you, Border, only a bullet will do for you.”
The surrounding policemen hesitated momentarily, then grasped the situation and started to move.
Reaching out, I could have stuck my finger down the barrel.
I started to pull myself into the interior of the ambulance, effectively boxing myself in. I was the cornered animal.
A daughter, for Christ’s sake.
I held up my arms in a futile appeal.
My need to live suddenly overwhelmed me. It was everything. Now there was a deal to be done.
I looked into the man’s face. He was also overwhelmed—with the need to kill me.
It was everything to him.
“It wasn’t me,” I pleaded. “I’m sorry about—”
A blast filled the air. What was left of my eardrums, after the exploding distress flare, seemed to disintegrate in my head. Cordite tingled in my nostrils.
But how? I was dead.
There was a weight over my chest.
I peered down my body and met the empty stare of Mendip, his open mouth a cistern filling and then emptying blood into the oxygen mask that lay askew on the side of his face. When the blood had filled the mask, it overflowed onto me. I felt its warmth. I could smell it.
EPILOGUE
Spring 2002
We—that is, Carol and I—rescue kids. Try to, at any rate. We operate at the unfashionable end of the rescue spectrum where the kids are calloused and knowing beyond their age or otherwise damaged in ways unappealing to the section of the public that still watches documentaries. The kids come from countries that give most people goose bumps, assuming they’ve heard of them: Nepal, Bangladesh, and, of course, India; although Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand have now joined our repertoire. Travel isn’t easy and so international expansion is going to be a slow process. Terry Wardman handles the more complex visa requirements, gets us into places that don’t want us, would want us even less if they knew what we were really doing. Maybe theydoknow. Terry will have to turn the valve the other way to get us out if things burn too ugly.
McIntyre and Askari can’t understand us. Why bother, they say. If we want to enter the do-good hall of fame, there are plenty of other routes. Nobody gives a shit, they say, it’s somarginaland there’s plenty else to worry about. Anyway, they say, the human traffic willdry up. But it hasn’t dried up. The money’s too good and the market’s still there, flourishing, even; following different paths, to be sure, with different players, but still very much there. And that makes me angry, Carol too. We have found a niche where anger works, where it has energyanddirection; not so much a motive as motive force.
But we need McIntyre and Askari. And we have a deal, a more symbiotic standoff: They help with making the contacts, establishing the conduits, maintaining the expense account. And we . . . well, it’s more a case of what we don’t do. We don’t tell tales: to the authorities, to the Lords of the Pixies. We don’t let e-mails fly. We let the old gents sit at their senior partners’ desks and stay great and good.
Shamira is typical. It isn’t her real name, not because she or I mind telling you, but because even her name was a casualty of the spiral of despair and decay that characterized her life from the age of nine. Nepali, fairskinned, now thirteen. Sold by her stepmother to a man in Katmandu to “work” for him. Sold on. Shipped to Bombay, beaten and screwed in a Falkland Road hovel, handed over to truckers and millworkers as much as twenty-five times a day. A hundred rupees for a role in the destruction of a child, an active role. There are few waxwork extras in this Bollywood movie. Shamira is one of maybe seven thousand similar cases finding their way from Nepal to India each year. Down a sick pipeline.
Shamira’s typical, but individual. All of them are. They share characteristics: All are victims, are bruised, are wrecked. Streetwise, yes, but all retain sad vestiges of the child: of innocence—love of films, a doll, a cuddle. Hideous faux adults, piteous children. Pixies. Each one with a story taken from the same ugly anthology, but each uniquely heartbreaking, each retaining the potential to grow into something different—if HIV will let them get that far.
Shamira won’t ever reach the States. Damaged goods kept for the domestic market, nonexportable. But we can dress her in a uniform proudly bearing the badge of Ganesh. The school is run properly now, the curriculum befits a child. But still she dreams of the States.
And that’s the irony. In some ways the ones whoareshipped abroad have it better. Carlstein’s philosophy had a sick kernel ofreason. They avoid th
e mill of prostitution in the subcontinent, are kept clean for their discerning patrons abroad. But in the end, it’s only a comparison between two hells on different rungs of the same ladder, where gods and demons vie for souls with equal vigor, it seems.
Askari once gave us a glimpse of the secret rituals for the Devadasi cult, where girls as young as ten are dedicated to Yellamma, the Mother of All. “Dedicated” being a euphemism for sale into prostitution. A thousand or more every year find their way into the industry in this fashion. There are other sects, cults, and superstitions that feed the machine, but, I suppose, mostly it’s old-fashioned grinding poverty that provides the fuel.
Sometimes we work with the agencies, the nongovernmental organizations, NGO’s: the National Network Group Against Trafficking, Sanlaap, and others with flourishing acronyms. But Askari gets jumpy when we near officialdom, even quasi and unpopular officialdom. The Lords of the Pixies might get to hear and, with his cover blown, Askari would be dead in five seconds, McIntyre too. Exposure is a far more potent threat than the e-mails could ever have been.
So, Askari doesn’t want the authorities involved. Okay, we say, fair compromise. We’ll stay freelance, guerrilla style, beyond the bounds. If it works—even a little—then we’ll stick with the methodology. But only as long as it works. Sometimes, Carol and I argue about strategy, but mostly it’s about how to pay the grocery bill. We don’t want to ask for McIntyre’s subsidy to keep us fed. We have a small law practice, strictly non pro bono, to keep the rent paid. Small stuff, in keeping with the slender reputation and status McIntyre has left us with.
McIntyre proved himself the master over the system, for himself, for me. I don’t think it was easy for him, juggling a merger with one hand and whipping up a smokescreen around us with the other, and I can only assume he had a third with which to hold the hands of battered clients in the wake of the World Trade Center attack, Jefferson Trust no doubt included. Pablo helped, making sure the forensic people came out with the right answer: that the McLaren sale documents were forgeries, that the damn car wasn’t mine. That was the easy part: After all, Iwasinnocent. The hard part was tearing down the signposts that might point to McIntyre and Askari and erecting new ones directing official traffic exclusively to Charles Mendip. As Manelli andthe District Attorney grasped at the evidence, they found out just how little they had: evaporated junior employees at Delaware Loan and the McLaren dealership—paid to disappear by McIntyre; Huxtable Trust now an empty shell surrounded by a wall of silence and shredded paper. The Indian authorities were no help; officialdom greased by Askari and further incentivized by the fact that the names of some very senior functionaries appeared in Carlstein’s e-mails.
Every so often Brad Emerson ofAmerica Dailytries to fan the flames under the lies and conspiracy, but a few letters and visits to court normally neutralize the more extreme acids in his prose.
The fires of litigation still smolder, but they are underfed, desultory; effectively doused by fifty million paid over to the victims. My name appears on bundles of court papers, but with no assets and the police uninterested in me, I feel my presence is more for old times’ sake than anything else. But the smell still hangs over us—Carol and me—it always will, I guess. It decays like radioactive material, in half-life steps, never quite dissipating altogether. So our little law practice doesn’t get much quality work. An attorney gets the clients he deserves. And I have a different view of reputation now. Reputation: the world’s opinion of you. It can evaporate in the rustle of a newspaper, or in a shower of soda cans over Fifth Avenue—the final bill for my daring stratagem was twenty thousand bucks—McIntyre paid.
Paula got her million. She’s in Florida now; more exotic fish down there, perhaps. Miranda got her money too. Where is she? No idea. But I got a letter from her saying that she’d sacked her attorney and would no longer pursue me.
But Pablo remains part of our life, sentinel over McIntyre, partner with me over too many malt whiskeys too often. A wise counsel when we fuck up, which is frequently. He often refers to me and Carol as the lunatics who’ve taken over the asylum. Any keeper other than Carlstein must be better, we say. Sheesh, he says.
We often think that one day the ax will fall on us. Wielded by the Lords of the Pixies, by a pimp, by Askari or McIntyre. There’d be reason enough and it would be easy. So each day’s a gift. And we try to return a day of life to a Pixie in thanks. I don’t keep a tally. We’re not talking billable hours here.
Preeti is married now. To an American. On and off we hear from her and she responds when we ask her for details that might help us in our work. We call on her knowledge less and less, we have moved on, built our own database and have no need to remind her of her old life.
I’ve been back to the Towers of Silence. It doesn’t seem such a dark place now. I didn’t see a single vulture—I’m told they’ve pretty much died out from disease. The cross my mother planted is still there, but it doesn’t summon her up for me; it doesn’t need to: Her blazing journey into the Arabian Sea remains as fitting in hindsight as it did when I let her slip. The image of it fills me with memories as powerfully as the flood tide.
The Towers don’t seem so relevant to my father either. Maybe Askari was right: The location was a coincidence; destiny didn’t dictate where my father should die, where his killers should kill him. My father had no reason to prostrate himself in front of Zoroaster, God of the Persians, the Parsis. It was where it happened, that’s all.
So many gods. Gods divine: of the soul, of love, of eternity. Gods of the flesh, of money, of man’s deeds. Gods handing down stone tablets of superstition or truth. Either way, the tablets are law. Imperatives to be followed. A world full of jostling, often contradictory, imperatives:allto be followed. Sometimes, I look up at the Credence Building, a brick in the wall of buildings that obscure the space that was once the World Trade Center, like a tarpaulin in front of a fatal car wreck. The Clay & Westminster attorneys have gone uptown to their new home, but I imagine the not so little army of remaining lawyers, drafting, reviewing, arguing, mooting, sifting through the imperatives looking for some way to turn the tablets on their head. Switching superstition into truth and vice versa. An ancient alchemy. All that brainpower, paper, money, time, and sweat devoted to liquidizing the tablets, molding tombstones of done deals and lawsuits won, offshore havens fortified, fee notes dispatched. Isn’t there a better alchemy?
Then I kick the sanctimonious part of me. Most of them are honest enough; they just do what they do. Hell, I’ve got no answers. I have Carol and a career niched into the two oldest professions. Some people would say that I should just count myself lucky and leave off judging others. But I won’t leave off. I won’t stop being angry. I won’t hang up until the phone call is truly finished, until there’s nothing more to be said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iowe so many people my heartfelt gratitude for their enthusiastic and unstinting help over the years leading to the publication of this book. Joanna Mackle, whose insights did so much to turn a dream into a plan into something typesettable. Mark Lucas, my agent—ever the mentor, friend, and consummate professional. His marvelous colleagues at the LAW Agency. George Lucas and the dedicated team at Atria Books steering the new guy round his new block. Vinita and others in Bombay who helped shed light on a place few, if any, should claim truly to understand. The multitalented Herb Sontz—sourcebook on everything from US securities law to the location of all the cemeteries in New York and New Jersey. Jeff and Kate Tollin, cherished friends and wholehearted givers of time and inspiration—and their house. And finally, my family, who have put up with night owl, grumbleguts Daddy and his bloody keyboard for longer than they care to remember.
To my wonderful wife, Corinna
Part I: Summer 2001
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Part II
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven