The Devil_s Garden

by Richard Montanari

  She was petite and pretty, with a generous mouth and slender, boyish hips. She wore a stiff white blouse, navy skirt. She seemed to be in her late thirties, although her hands suggested she might be older.

  “Can I get you something?”

  They had been airborne for two hours, served a gourmet meal. The crew had dimmed the lights.

  Aleks looked around the Club World cabin of the large, powerful Boeing 747-400. He knew all too well about societal divisions in life. The small group who had stood in a separate, fast-moving line at Heathrow, the select few who had been welcomed aboard with a warm towel and glass of champagne, looked at each other with an understanding that they were all in this together, a cut above those who traveled coach, chosen all.

  Aleks glanced back at the woman. She was not a flight attendant. She was a fellow passenger. “I’m sorry?”

  She pointed over her shoulder, spoke in a hushed voice. “From the kitchen. Club World passengers have access to the galley, you know. Would you like some juice, or a glass of wine?” She held up her own empty glass.

  What a world, Aleks thought. Your own kitchen on a plane. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  The woman eyed the seat next to Aleks. Business class had individual seats, side by side, facing in opposite directions. The seats flattened into beds, and could be fashioned into dozens of positions. The seat next to Aleks was unoccupied. The woman clearly wanted to sit and chat for a while.

  “My name is Jilliane,” she said, extending a hand.

  Aleks smiled a disingenuous smile. He was traveling under one of his three passports. This identity was Jorgen Petterson. He introduced himself, carefully crafting his accent.

  “My friends call me George,” Aleks added. When it was clear the woman was not going to leave, he gestured to the seat next to him. Before she sat down, she picked up the small pile of papers Aleks had put there. He had meant to put them back in his bag. He must have dozed off.

  Jilliane arranged herself on the seat, smiled. Despite the dim light, Aleks could see her teeth were white and even. She had dimples, a flawless complexion. She glanced around the cabin, back.

  “This is all quite posh, isn’t it?” she said. Aleks could smell the sweet-sour breath of alcohol.

  “Yes.”

  She tapped a manicured nail against her wine glass, perhaps searching for a portal into the conversation. “Do you travel to New York often, George?”

  Questions, Aleks thought. He had to be vigilant. If he said he came to New York often, she may ask him other questions. “This is my first time.”

  Jilliane nodded. “I remember my first time in the city. It can be a bit overwhelming. I live there now, but I grew up in Indiana.”

  “I see.” Aleks was beginning to regret asking her to sit down.

  Before she could respond, she pointed at the swing-out table on Aleks’s side of the partition. “What are these?”

  She was referring to pair of marble eggs sitting on the table. The eggs were actual size, intricately carved to depict the ancient Russian legend of an egg inside a duck inside a hare, the fable of Koschei the Deathless. Aleks had had them carved in Kaliningrad. He had forgotten to put them back into his carry-on bag. He wished the woman had not seen them. It was a mistake.

  “These are for my precious brorsdotter,” he said. “For Easter.”

  Jilliane looked puzzled.

  “I’m sorry,” Aleks said. “They are for my nieces. I am from a town called Karlskrona. It’s in south-eastern Sweden.”

  Jilliane picked up one of the eggs, a little mystified. She put it down, getting to the point. “Do you like music, George?”

  “Very much,” Aleks said. “I play a little.”

  Her eyes lighted. “Really? What do you play?”

  Aleks waved a dismissive hand. “My instrument is the flute. I kneel a thousand feet below Gaubert and Barrere.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you’re just as good as those guys.’’

  Those guys. He remained silent.

  “What about jazz?”

  “I am quite a fan,” Aleks said. “Chet Baker, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson. There is not that much to choose from for the flute, but I have played some of Charles Lloyd’s arrangements. To no great acclaim, I’m afraid.”

  Jilliane nodded. She didn’t know Charles Lloyd from Lloyd’s of London. She hesitated for a moment, looked over shoulder, back. Most of the cabin was asleep.

  “Look, there’s this jazz place I go to, not too far from where I live. I think you’d like it a lot.” She took her pen out, and grabbed a cocktail napkin off his tray. “They play a lot of jazz like Kenny G.”

  My God, Aleks thought. Jazz like Kenny G.

  She whispered, “I’m free all weekend, George.”

  She gave him her number.

  Long after Aleks had spirited the napkin away, and Jilliane had returned to her seat, he glanced at his watch. They were somewhere over the Atlantic.

  He wondered what Konstantine would look like. The last time he had seen the man he had been standing over the body of a Chechen soldier, the dead man’s heart in one hand, a half-eaten pomegranate in the other. If one did not know Konstantine, it might have looked as if he was eating human flesh.

  Aleks did know him, and it was entirely possible.

  He settled into his seat, the thoughts of his past set aside. For now, he slept.

  Five hours later he awoke from a dream, a vision of Estonia, a fantasy of sun sparkling on the river, of yellow flowers in the valley, of children running through the pines. His children.

  Moments later, the jet began its slow descent to JFK International Airport.

  FIVE

  Abby Roman stared at the young man in disbelief.

  He looked about nineteen or so, drove a tricked-out Escalade with tinted windows, spinner hubcaps, and a vanity plate that read YO DREAM. A real class act. He looked a little threatening, sitting high in the SUV, but that was just part of the white boy thug routine. Abby glanced at the girls. They were in the back seat of the Acura, still strapped in. They were both listening to audiobooks that Michael had downloaded onto their new iPods. Charlotte was lost in A Bear Called Paddington. Emily was giggling at something called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The windows were rolled up. They wouldn’t hear anything, if there was anything to hear.

  Let it go or stand down, Abby?

  She glanced at her watch. She had forty-eight hours off at the clinic, and at least sixty hours of things to do, but that had never stopped her from getting in the face of some asshole.

  Not yet, anyway.

  She may have grown up in Westchester County, she may have had a horse named Pablo – named after Neruda, of course, not Picasso – and studied ballet at the Broadway Dance Center, but she had spent nearly ten years in the city, all of them as an ER nurse, and there was a principle at work here

  She pulled the handbrake, and got out of the car.

  When the kid emerged from the Escalade he turned out to be about five-four – baggy jeans, T-shirt, backwards Mets cap. The bigger the SUV, Abby thought. He clicked the remote-control lock button on his key ring, locking the Cadillac with a toot of the horn. Just one more thing to endear him. He turned to do his pimp-roll into the market, staring at his cellphone, God’s gift in a pair of Nike Jordan Six Rings.

  “Excuse me,” Abby said, at least twice as loud as necessary.

  The kid glanced over, pulled the earbuds from his ears. He looked at her, then to his left and his right. She could only be talking to him. “Yeah?”

  “Got a question for you.”

  The kid looked her up and down now, perhaps realizing that, for a woman around thirty, she was in pretty good shape, and maybe, just maybe, he was going to hook up here. He half-smiled, raised his eyebrows in anticipation. “Sure.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?”

  Exit the smile. Exit most of the blood from his face. He backed up an inch. “Excuse me?”

  “You
did that for a parking space?”

  For a moment the kid resembled not so much a deer in the headlights, but a deer that had just been run over. “Did what?”

  “Endangered my life. The lives of my children.” A little dramatic, Abby realized, but so what.

  The kid glanced at the Acura, at the girls. “What… what are you talking about?”

  Abby took a deep breath, tried to calm herself. This kid was completely clueless, as expected. She put her hands on her hips. “All right,” she said. “One more question.”

  Another step back. Silence.

  “When was the last time you saw me?” Abby asked.

  The kid did some kind of ape-math in his head. Apparently, he came up with nothing. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  Abby moved in, her finger out front. “Precisely my point. I was about to turn into that space and you jammed into it right in front of me. You didn’t even look. You didn’t even see me.” Abby clocked it up now, the angel of death on a tear. “You’re so caught up in your damn MP3, cellphone, text message, Jay Z gangsta-wannabe world, you can’t see anything past the end of your fucking 37th Avenue Serengeti knock-offs.”

  The kid looked at the ground. So they were fake. He looked up. “What… what do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to move your truck.”

  The kid grimaced. Abby knew the word truck would get under his skin.

  “It’s not a truck. It’s an Escalade.”

  Wow, Abby thought. An Escalade driver with attitude. How rare. “Whatever. I want you to get inside, start it, and move it.”

  The kid looked around. There were no parking spaces for about a hundred feet in any direction. “Where should I go?”

  Abby glared her answer at him, as in, who gives a shit?

  For a second, the kid looked like he was going to stand his ground. He glanced at the front window of the Acura. On the dashboard was a parking permit for the Queens County DA’s office, a large rectangle of laminated plastic that, despite the mayor’s efforts to curtail, generally allowed ticket-free parking on everything up to and including sidewalks.

  The kid glanced at his laceless Nikes for a moment, weighing the options. He conceded. He pressed the button, unlocked the car, and with a movement somewhat slower than the glacier that had carved out the Niagara Escarpment, rolled back, and slipped inside. Driving down the aisle he executed his gangster lean, gave Abby one final glance in the rear-view mirror but did not – as Abby had expected – give her the finger. Obviously, he still had to go inside the store, and was not quite prepared for Round Two. Besides, who would get Mom’s nutmeg if he left?

  Abby got in her car, pulled into the spot, the thought of NEW YORK AXIOM #208 giving her a warm feeling all over, that being:

  Parking spaces fought over are much sweeter than parking spaces earned.

  She unbuckled her seatbelt, checked her purse, making sure she had her wallet. Before she could open her door there was a query from the back seat. It was Emily.

  “Mom?”

  Abby turned around. Both girls had the earbuds out of their ears, and their iPods turned off. How did they learn these things so quickly?

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Who was that boy?”

  Abby had to laugh. Boy.

  God she loved her girls.

  The city was every photograph he had ever seen, every film, every song, every postcard. Aleks had taken a cab from JFK Airport to a section of midtown Manhattan called Murray Hill.

  If he had been a tourist, he could see himself taking in the wonders of New York for a week or more. He looked at the booklet. The UN Building, Grand Central Station, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Flatiron Building, the Guggenheim Museum. There was much to see.

  But he was not a tourist. He had business here. The most important business of his life.

  The Senzai Hotel WAS located at East Thirty-Eighth Street and Park Avenue. The pictures on the website had not done the place justice. The floor was marble, the ceilings were high, the brass appointments were subdued. Before leaving Tallinn, Aleks had had his hair cut at the airport salon. He knew that all styles were served in a city like New York, and it would take something pretty outrageous to stand out, but he did not want to take any chances. At just over six-foot three, with shoulder-length sandy hair, dressed all in black, he might attract some attention. So now he looked like a tall European businessman in town for a meeting. In many ways, this was true.

  He checked in. The girl behind the desk was Japanese, about twenty-five. She had small streaks of gold in her lustrous black hair.

  She greeted him warmly, moved with grace and efficiency, an attention to detail Aleks had not only anticipated but expected. It was one of the many he things he admired about Japanese culture, another being how much was expressed in a non-verbal way. He sometimes lived in silence for weeks at a time, and he appreciated this.

  After running his credit card, she asked after his immediate needs. In his best Japanese – which was quite meager, the product of a brief study he had made before visiting Tokyo on R amp; R in the federal army – he told her he was fine for the moment. She smiled again, pushed forward his electronic key. He took it with a slight bow, which was returned, and headed toward the elevators. Before he had taken two steps the concierge approached and told him that a FedEx package had arrived for him, and that it would soon be brought up to his room. He tipped the man, and took the elevator to the eighth floor, slid his electronic key into the lock, and entered his suite.

  The room was small, but tastefully appointed. In the closet were slippers, a pair of terry cloth robes, an umbrella. He had selected the hotel for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it featured a rooftop garden.

  After he unpacked, there was a knock at the door. A bellman handed him his package.

  Aleks tipped the young man, locked and chained the door. He flipped on the television – it seemed to be some sort of show where people were locked in a house with each other, people who seemed to hate each other – and opened the box. Everything was intact. He removed the pair of passports, the cash, the Barhydt from its bubble-wrap cocoon.

  After a shower, he dressed for the day, then took the elevator to the roof.

  Although far from the tallest building in sight, the view was nonetheless exhilarating. He had been in a number of cities, but was never inclined to follow the tourist route, visiting the observation decks of the Eiffel Tower or the Triumph-Palace in Moscow or Frankfurt’s Commerzbank Tower. The view from above did not interest him. It was the view into a man’s eyes that told him everything he needed to know.

  Stepping to the edge of the roof, a rush of warm air greeted him. Below the traffic on Park Avenue hummed. To the left was the massive Grand Central Station, a legendary place about which he had read and heard his whole life. So far, New York seemed rife with legend.

  He glanced around the rooftop and, seeing he was alone, opened his flute case, lifted the instrument to his lips, and began to play “Mereschitsja” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kashchey the Immortal, pianissimo at first, then building to a crescendo. The notes lifted into the morning air, and drifted over the rooftops. When finished, he returned the instrument to its leather case, glanced around the rooftop once more. He was still alone. He took out the Barhydt, touched the razor-sharp tip of the blade to his right forefinger. A glossy drop of blood appeared.

  Aleks tilted his finger just as the breeze died down. The drop of blood fell toward the street, disappearing into the rushing city below, forever marking this place as one with him. It was his ritual, to stain the battlefield with his blood. He knew that, in this place, some were going to die. He owed them this, to mingle his blood with theirs.

  “I will find you, my hearts,” he said, closing the knife. “I am here.”

  The Stop amp; Shop on Tall Pines Boulevard was crowded with locals stocking up for the long weekend. As always, the girls insisted on pushing the cart. They lin
ed up, each grabbing a portion of the handle and, as Abby watched them roll down the produce aisle, she realized that it wasn’t so long ago that they couldn’t even move the cart a foot without help. Now they did it with ease.

  Abby clicked off the items on her list, with Charlotte and Emily on point, gathering things from the lower shelves.

  As they waited at the deli counter, Abby noticed that both girls were humming a song, a song that sounded vaguely familiar. Was it a classical theme? Was it on the audiobooks they were listening to? She couldn’t put her finger on the tune, but it sounded so melancholy, so wistful, that she suddenly felt a chilly shiver of disquiet. It seemed a portent to something, although she had no idea what.

  Abby shifted her attention to the Muzak. It wasn’t anything classical. It was an instrumental version of an old Billy Joel song.

  “What are you guys singing?” Abby asked.

  The girls stared up at her, and for a moment they looked as if they were disengaged from the present, as if they were not in a store at all, but rather rapt by another moment. They both shrugged.

  “Did you guys hear it on the radio or on your iPods?”

  They both shook their heads. A moment later they seemed to snap out of whatever mini-trance they were in.

  “Can we get macaroni and cheese?” Charlotte asked, suddenly brightening. She wasn’t talking about the Kraft variety. She was talking about the prepared kind. This store had an amazing prepared food section, and offered a three-cheddar ziti. Lately, it seemed, Abby was taking full advantage of the prepared food counters. She wanted to cook for her family every night – she really did – but it was so much easier to buy it already made.

  “Sure,” Abby said. “Em? Mac and cheese okay?”

  Emily just shrugged. The girls were so different in many ways. Charlotte was the schemer. Emily floated.

  They got their cereal (Captain Crunch for Charlotte, Cheerios for Emily); their peanut butter (smooth and crunchy respectively), their bread (they both agreed on multigrain for some reason; Michael thought it tasted like tree bark).

  While they waited in line, Abby cruised the tabloids.