Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1)

by Evans, Jon

  “Jesus fuck. We were supposed to go months ago. That’s why he brought you in. The zombies are getting itchy.”

  I blinked. “Zombies?”

  “That’s what I call all those other Serbian fucks.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the road. “Your neighbours.”

  The other houses on the road were occupied by a group of about two dozen people, mostly men, mostly middle-aged and badly worn down by life’s sandpaper. Only two of them stood out, a tall white-haired man with an aristocratic look, and a very short goateed man about my age. Whoever they were, they didn’t seem to have any official role in Sinisa’s organization. In fact they rarely left their houses, and when they did, they passed by me as if I didn’t exist. The only time I had encountered them in Sinisa’s mansion was on an occasion when I had passed his office, looked in, and witnessed the white-haired man arguing with Sinisa in Serbian as several others looked on.

  “Who exactly are those guys?” I asked.

  He opened his mouth, closed it again, gave me a look, and shook his head.

  “All right. I won’t ask.”

  “One more month to American pussy,” he said, stretching his short hirsute frame. It struck me that Arwin looked more like a rodent than any other human I had ever met. “And that fuck-me-dead girlfriend of yours. How did an ugly loser like you get so lucky?”

  “I wonder that sometimes myself,” I admitted. “You know, nobody’s told me, how are we getting to the States? I figure it’s on a ship, right?”

  Arwin sighed and gave me another look.

  “Okay. Okay. No more questions.”

  “I got a question for you. What’s the job situation like in California?”

  “Terrible,” I said. “But you’re going back to Brooklyn, right? Oh, sorry, no questions.”

  “Nah, you can ask about me, no one gives a shit what I do. I can’t go back to New York, I got fucked over by these Russian mafia assholes, one of them was my fucking cousin, you believe that? Flesh and blood and he fucked me over for five thousand dollars. That little shit. Except now he’s a big shit. I show up there again he’ll rip my balls off just for the practice. Nah, I’m thinking California. Surfer girls with big tits, right? Like Baywatch. And all the dope you can smoke, and it’s almost legal.”

  “It’s not all like Baywatch,” I warned him. “And even in Berkeley pot isn’t exactly legal.”

  “Whatever. I’m sick of Brooklyn. Too much like Russia. California sounds good. As long as I don’t have to help out any more. All these fucking zombies, they make me sick. Think you can help me find a job there? Under the table?”

  “I’ll try,” I said, truthfully. I liked Arwin. He was incredibly crude but often hilariously so; on my second day of work, his lengthy rant about the professional limitations of Vlore’s one and only whorehouse had left me simultaneously squirming with discomfort and shaking with laughter. And he was a hard worker, a reasonably good C programmer who knew his limitations and was making a point to learn what he could about Java and web and database programming from me. He had the real hacker thirst for knowledge. Sure, he was also venal, criminal, sexist, racist, arrogant, and obnoxiously opinionated, but at least he never pretended otherwise. He was fun to be around and to work with, and was even fairly generous and considerate given his other moral limitations. He never once complained about my constant leeching of his cigarettes. If that didn’t qualify him for a perverse kind of sainthood, nothing would.

  That night, when I left Sinisa’s mansion, a half-dozen of the ‘zombies’ were clustered on the porch of the house two doors over from ours, where their patrician white-haired leader lived. He sat on a wooden chair while the others, the little goateed man and four sour-faced middle-aged men, stood around him, gesticulating and talking loudly in Serbian. They looked like they were petitioning him for something. Then one of them saw me looking at them, and all of them fell silent and stared at me suspiciously as I passed.

  I wondered who the zombies were, and why Sinisa had invited them to come from the former Yugoslavia and stay in his private neighbourhood. Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a single plausible theory; they were too numerous, and too apparently useless. Insufficient data, I decided. But I didn’t believe Sinisa was housing and feeding them out of sheer altruism. They were surely, in some way, part of his plans.

  * * *

  From: balthazarwood@yahoo.com

  To: talenar@lonelyplanet.com

  Subject: Re: the albanian times

  Date: 11 Apr 2003 11:03 GMT

  I’m sorry. I’ve treated you badly, I know that now, and I’m so sorry. I know how inadequate that sounds. I don’t think sorry ever counts for much, you know that, but I guess it’s at least a start. I hope I’m at least beginning to make it up to you.

  I don’t know what else I can say. I wish I did.

  Things are fine over here. The work’s actually interesting. It’s a tight deadline, I’m working probably 70-80 hours a week, but I’m pretty sure I’ll make it, and you don’t know how good it is to be building something, doing something tangible again.

  I love you.

  Paul

  I almost didn’t write that email. Not because it wasn’t heartfelt, but because I had discovered that my computer had a keyboard monitor and packet sniffer running at all times, meaning that anything I typed, and all my Internet traffic, was recorded by virtual eyes perpetually looking over my shoulder, presumably to ensure I wasn’t posting Sinisa’s trade secrets on the Web. I didn’t like the thought of Sinisa or Arwin reading anything so personal. But if I wanted to write freely I would have to walk an hour to downtown Vlore and one of its Internet cafés, and in those early days of Mycroft’s development I didn’t dare take that kind of time away from work. I feared that if more than a day or two passed Talena would misinterpret my silence, so I resigned myself to Arwin and Sinisa reading every word I wrote.

  * * *

  There was a boxing gym in Sinisa’s basement, with a full-sized ring, jump ropes, punching bags suspended from the ceiling, speed bags dangling from head-high wooden discs, gloves hanging on wall hooks, a chin-up bar, a set of dumbbells, a big wall clock counting out three-minute rounds and thirty-second intervals, and the thick smell of dried sweat. I started going there daily to work out and clear my head when it grew clogged with cobwebs of Java code. At first I just used the dumbbells, but the temptation to hit things was overwhelming and I soon took to donning gloves and clumsily pummelling the punching bags.

  Near the end of the first week, I was interrupted in mid-punch by a voice from the door: “Do you want lesson?”

  Zoltan’s voice. Zorana stood next to him, both of them dressed in workout gear. I hadn’t seen them since arriving in Vlore.

  “Okay,” I said tentatively.

  “You must make many changes,” Zoltan said, approaching. “First your stance. Right now you show your opponent all your body. In real fight, very bad. You must turn, like this, show him only left shoulder, with feet like this. Feet are very important. Most of boxing is feet and hips. Forget fists. When you throw punches they must come from hips. Even jab. Jab, you throw like this…”

  After demonstrating, he strapped flat little pads with bullseyes onto his hands, “focus pads” he called them, and had me punch them for five rounds. Fifteen minutes doesn’t sound like much, but during the last round I was on the verge of collapse and twice fell over throwing wild roundhouse hooks. In those five rounds I learned quite a lot about boxing. Most importantly the fact that you had to be in much, much better shape than me. When the final bell rang I slumped against the wall, gasping for air, so drenched in sweat I might as well have gone swimming. The world reeled around me and I closed my eyes, afraid I was about to faint.

  “You are fat and slow,” Zoltan scolded. “Punching is most easy part of boxing. Being punched, that is hard part. You must do much running, much ropework. You are very weak.”

  I was in no condition to argue.

  “Do y
ou come here every day?” Zorana asked.

  “I guess,” I eventually managed.

  “Good,” Zoltan said. “Every day, very good.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure, yeah, sure. I should, I should go shower, work, lots of work to do, very busy.”

  “Tonight, you would like to come for dinner with us?” Zorana asked. “We would like to talk to you, practice English, ask questions.”

  “Uh…” I looked from one to the other, slightly unnerved by the invitation. It was like being asked out by Special Forces troops. But I was too dazed to come up with a polite out, and I couldn’t refuse and insult them. “Sure.”

  “Excellent. We will come and find you,” she said.

  “Great. I should, yeah, shower. See you, uh, tonight.”

  When we arrived at one of the vaguely Italian beachfront restaurants, the proprietor scurried out and all but kowtowed to Zoltan and Zorana. He was visibly nervous as he took our order. We decided on pizza.

  “We want to know about California,” Zorana said, as three draft beers arrived.

  “Like what?”

  “Everything. We go to live there, you understand.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Zorana said. “There is nothing for us in Serbia any more.”

  “Serbia is weak,” Zoltan said bitterly. “Our people are weak. No strength. No pride. No, how you say?” He barked a word in Serbian.

  “Brotherhood,” Zorana said sadly. “Serbia has forgotten its history and brotherhood. Our people have betrayed their own brothers and sisters. The traitors, the falsehearted, they have taken over. We fought for Serbia, Zoltan and I. We bled for Serbia. Many like us died for Serbia. Now they have driven us away, they have destroyed our country, sold our home, they kneel and lick the boots of England and France for a few euros like beggars on the street.” Her face wrinkled like she wanted to spit something foul onto the table.

  “America took Kosovo from us,” Zoltan said. “Kosovo, home of Serbian heart. Now we must go make home in America.”

  They exchanged a long, sorrowful look, as if they were discussing the painful demise of a close family member. I wished I was somewhere else.

  “So,” Zorana said. “California. We have money, but we need to know everything else. Where to live, how to move around, where to go if we need a doctor, how to stop the police from finding us. Remember we will be illegal.”

  “Not really.”

  They looked at each other. “That is what Sinisa says,” Zoltan said cautiously.

  “Well, technically, yes, but nobody talks about illegal immigrants there. There’s too many of them, there’s at least a couple of million Mexicans who snuck over the border to work there, the state’s whole economy would collapse without them. Calling them illegal is considered, well, insensitive. We call them undocumented. I don’t know much about living undocumented, but, you know, two million poor Mexicans do it, a white couple with money like you, I don’t think it’ll be that hard.”

  They nodded, pleased. The pizza arrived. As we ate I began to explain life in California to them. What a Social Security number was and how not having it was going to make their lives difficult. How in order to have a good life anywhere but San Francisco you had to have a car, but the undocumented couldn’t get driver’s licenses. The congested web of American health care that I didn’t fully understand myself, but which, contrary to what many Europeans believed, at least guaranteed that if you walked into an emergency room you would be cared for, although they would try to bill you later. How much rent would cost – I suggested that they sublet from someone else for cash. The contempt with which American banks treated retail customers and how hard it would be for them to get an account without a legal identity. They listened raptly and Zorana even made some notes.

  “Tell us about the police,” Zoltan said.

  “The police?”

  “We know some things from television, but…is hard to say.”

  “We have many questions,” Zorana added. “When are they allowed to arrest you? When can they come and search your house?”

  I answered as best I could, although my knowledge of the American justice system stemmed mostly from watching Law & Order. They were weirdly interested in the niceties of warrants and jurisdictions.

  “You have not been police trouble, in America?” Zoltan asked.

  “No,” I said. “Remember, I’m not American, if I got convicted they’d send me back to Canada and not let me back into America ever again.”

  “You have never been arrested?” Zorana asked.

  I shook my head, then, remembering Sinisa’s warning, clarified “No.”

  “We worry about American police,” Zorana said. “Sinisa says they are not like here, you cannot pay them to not go to jail.”

  “That’s true,” I said. Maybe not 100% always true, but I didn’t want to drown them in subtle distinctions.

  “If we go to America, and there is trouble,” Zorana said, “you will help us?”

  After a moment I said, “Sure.” I couldn’t very well say no. And besides, I kind of meant it. I was still nowhere near comfortable around Zoltan and Zorana, but they appeared to be on my team, at least at the moment. There was obviously a lot being kept from me. I wasn’t clear on why they were abandoning their much-loved Serbia and jettisoning their lives to move to America. But the fact they were doing so at all made me sympathize with them a little. I knew it was no easy thing, leaving your home, trying to find and make a new one.

  “Thank you,” Zoltan said, reaching over and clapping his hand on my shoulder hard enough that my chair rocked back and forth a little.

  “Tell us, Paul,” Zorana said. “If a friend of yours, a good friend, asked you to break an American law for them, for an important reason, would you do it?”

  “Well,” I said cautiously, “it would depend on the friend. And the reason.”

  “Suppose there is woman like Saskia,” Zoltan said. “Suppose she need safe San Francisco home. You help this woman?”

  “Or suppose your friend gives you a,” Zorana made a square shape with her hands and frowned a moment before finding the right word, “a box, and asks you to take it to their friend in Los Angeles.”

  Subtle, they weren’t. I considered my options. I didn’t want to endanger our newfound rapport. But I didn’t want to promise them they could start using my apartment as a safe house, and me as a courier, if and when I made it back to San Francisco. I already wished I had never made my magnanimous offer.

  “It would have to be a very good friend,” I said.

  “You are loyal to your friends, yes?” Zorana asked.

  “Very,” I said.

  “Good,” Zoltan said. “Is good. Loyal is very important.”

  I nodded, hoping they didn’t think I was agreeing to anything more than that sentiment, hoping they weren’t going to pursue this subject any further.

  “Maybe we go now,” Zorana said to my relief. “We talk like this again, yes?”

  I’d really rather not, I didn’t say. “If you like.”

  “You good man, Paul,” Zoltan said, giving me another of his bone-rattling back-claps. I tried not to wince. “You good man. I think we become good friends.”

  * * *

  From: talenar@lonelyplanet.com

  To: balthazarwood@yahoo.com

  Subject: Re: the albanian times

  Date: 13 Apr 2003 02:11 GMT

  Is there anything you need or want over there? DHL and FedEx deliver to Albania. It’s a bit expensive but they say they can get stuff there in 72 hours.

  Your apology is received and understood. I think maybe we should postpone the relationship part of this conversation for now, what do you think? We’ve both got too much to worry about in the next month to start brooding about what might happen after that. My mother always said that if you took care of the present the future would take care of itself. Of course look what happened to her.

  Shit. I’m just babbling. I’m scared, P
aul. I stay up late every night and wake up every morning worried that something’s happened to you two.

  Maybe I should just start drinking and doing crack, hold up convenience stores, that sort of thing, you know, unwind a bit. :)

  I miss you. I can’t wait to see you. I want you home. Be safe. Write every day.

  Talena

  From: balthazarwood@yahoo.com

  To: talenar@lonelyplanet.com

  Subject: Re: daily update

  Date: 12 Apr 2003 17:47 GMT

  Brain hurts. Poor brain, so tired, all its crenellations mashed flat by evil Apache Web Server archenemy.

  Work going well. Saskia a little bored but learning English amazingly fast, and excited to come to SF. I still have no idea how exactly we’re going to get there.

  Thanks for the offer, but actually we’re pretty well-supplied with stuff. This place isn’t as boonie-remote as all that.

  I hear what you’re saying about now and the future. Worry about the future when we know there is one, sure, okay, that sounds right. Sorry, I’d be more eloquent, but brain is dead.

  Love,

  Paul

  Chapter 12

  Out On The Tiles

  When I was twenty-one years old, on the verge of graduating from university, infected by a feverish wanderlust that eight years later I still hadn’t fully recovered from, I made a list of cities where I would like to live for a month. The thriving metropolis of Vlore, Albania, was nowhere to be found. In fact I am willing to bet that it has never been found on any such list ever.

  But I almost liked it. Sure, it was a poor and ugly town, decorated with Stalinist concrete architecture, old groaning vehicles spewing diesel fumes and dark clouds of smoke, streets of cracked and potholed tarmac, or uneven hard-packed dirt strewn with filth and broken glass. During Albania’s several recent periods of violent instability Vlore had been openly ruled by warlord gangs, and it still had a certain Wild West feel. But once I got used to it, Vlore really wasn’t so bad. I liked walking down the main drag at sunset, a wide flat road bustling and thriving with people, small businesses, cafes, pasticeris, and a half-dozen banks. The pasticeris, ice-cream stalls, sold good Italian gelato for twenty leke or approximately fifteen cents a cone. The people dressed sharply given that they couldn’t afford much, and although it was theoretically a conservative Muslim country all the younger women seemed to have adopted the standard Balkan fashion of skimpy and two sizes too small. Every evening, the town’s teenagers and twentysomethings flooded onto the main street; the men stood around in small packs, sipping beer and smoking cigarettes, and the women paraded up and down the street, occasionally deigning to stop and flirt with the men.