Levon's Time

by Chuck Dixon

  In hindsight, it had all gone to hell when he saw the girl being taken away to be raped. She reminded him of Merry. He could have turned away. Maybe he could have if he were another kind of man. He was following the snaggle-toothed bastard into the trees before he even knew what he was doing. He knew, before closing with the man, to remove the automatic concealed under his shirt and throw it deep into the woods.

  He waited by the man he had dropped until his comrades came to get him and offered no resistance. The rapist was unconscious, and couldn’t offer any details. The delay allowed the girl to find her mother and get far away. It had cost him a beating, but that was better than seeing that girl’s face for the rest of his life. He didn’t need that in his head. He had enough company in there.

  A jerk and a tug brought him back to the here and now. The bus was moving. The benches either side had been filled with two dozen new convicts. Sweating men pressed close on either side of him; the benches were at capacity. Two men sat on the floor of the bus, steel cables looped through their wrist chains and locked into ring bolts they shared with seated prisoners.

  Some of the new guys were of a different breed than the rest of the passengers. Two wore what looked like expensive Italian-cut suits. These guys were having trouble keeping the fear from their eyes. Another guy was in tan military fatigues. Young guy in his late twenties. Short-cropped hair, and the black mustache that was standard issue in the Turk army. Former military. These were certainly political prisoners. Erdoğan wasn’t resting easy in the presidential palace and was locking up anyone not one hundred percent in his corner. That was how Levon had gotten scooped up. This was what justice looked like in a counter-insurgency.

  One-Eye made remarks to the two men in suits that caused the other convicts to laugh. One of the men tried to engage One-Eye in a civil conversation that the Cypriot wasn’t having any part of. He made further remarks about the two frightened men that caused more laughter. Rather than discourage the hilarity, the guard watching them from a cage behind the driver joined in with his own witticisms. Levon couldn’t follow most of it but understood that the harder men were imagining the two suits joining a harem once they got where they were going.

  All attention was focused away from him. Levon retreated into himself once again, imagining the rocking of the bus to be the motion of a fishing boat cruising an inlet under a gull-filled sky.

  10

  It was the best job he’d ever had in his life, and he’d had some shitty jobs.

  There weren’t a whole lot of cushy gigs for a twenty-nine-year-old with one year of community college. Ed Nunez had flipped burgers and come home smelling of fry grease. His mom made him strip his clothes off in the garage before she’d let him into the house. He did day labor at construction sites and woke up each morning with pain in every joint. When he did restock at the Walmart, then the Target, then the Publix, he realized that dying of boredom was a real possibility.

  But working Security at the outlets was a trip, man. The pay was good. The benefits were better. He got to wear a uniform and carry a taser and had a membership at Anytime Fitness paid for by the company. Got to stay fit, right? And staying fit was like a second job with all the free food he got from vendors. He needed four hours a week on the stair-stepper just to burn off all the gratis Cinnabons.

  The respect was cool, too. The uniform and the badge and the taser made people look at him as an adult for the first time in his life. People older than him called him “sir.” He could talk to girls he’d never have approached before. The uniform gave him an excuse, opened the world to him in a way that the old Eddie Nunez could never access.

  It made him wonder what a real cop’s life was like. How sweet must that be? He fantasized about maybe stepping up his exercise regime, getting in shape and applying to the sheriff’s department. Wear a real uniform. Carry a gun, dude. Drive a police cruiser instead of the piece-of-shit Impreza the mall had him use to patrol the lot.

  Not that Ed had any interest in serving the public or the lofty notion of justice. His notion of law and order, right and wrong, was malleable at best. He’d stolen stuff at every job he’d ever worked. Even as a day laborer, he had boosted an air compressor and sold it to his cousin for two bills. He’d never been caught, so he had no record. The mall would never have hired him for this job if he had.

  No, for Ed, the authority that the uniform gave him was a gateway to status, however limited, and advantage, like free snack food, and the esteem that gave him the confidence to talk to the fine honeys who worked the store counters and kiosks.

  “I’m on break,” he told the two guys who slid into the booth opposite him at the food court. The bonita at the China Wok had given him an extra-generous helping of kung pao over his rice noodles, and he was anxious to dig in. Walking ten miles a shift worked up an appetite.

  But these two guys were serious.

  “I want to talk to you,” the chubby one said. The other one, a tatted-up younger dude, just stared. He had a thick accent like Ed’s abuela. Ed peppered his speech with phrases his grandparents used but was hardly bilingual.

  “Yeah?” Ed said, taking up a forkful of spicy noodles.

  “E. Nunez,” the chubby guy read from plastic name badge on the breast of Ed’s uniform blouse. “Ernesto? Enrique?”

  “Eduardo.”

  Chubby grinned and nudged his inky amigo.

  “I had a brother by that name. Hermanos, no?”

  Hardly, Ed thought, but shared the grin with a shrug.

  “Brothers help each other sometimes. Es verdad?” Chubby asked.

  “Sometimes. Sure.” And there it is, Ed thought. The pitch.

  “You have many cameras. Cameras watching all the time.”

  “Yeah. Whole place is wired. High definition.”

  “High definition,” Chubby said, except it was “high def-ee-neesh-on.”

  “We don’t miss much.”

  “And you sometimes are the one to watch these cameras?”

  “Sometimes.” He spent an hour or more every shift in the surveillance room. Four guards on each shift rotated indoor patrol, parking lot prowls, and monitor duty.

  “And you record what you are watching? You keep this video how many days?” Vee-dee-oh.

  “It’s stored on a hard drive for thirty days. It’s a state law.” Ed thought he had heard Shift Commander Doug say that once.

  “So, you could see what was happening last night?”

  “Like a rerun.”

  “Like a rerun.” Chubby let out a high titter and nudged his compadre again. The tatted-up hombre growled something Ed didn’t catch. Chubby cleared his throat and leaned over the table to tap a finger by Ed’s paper plate.

  Ed took a sip of lemonade and waited for the guy to get to his point.

  “We would like to see something that happened last night.”

  And there it was.

  “Our niece has run away from home. Our sister is muy upset by this, you know? Claro? We know she came here last night to meet someone. A boy, maybe.”

  “And you want to see the footage to find out who she took off with,” Ed said.

  Chubby’s fixed grin broadened. His amigo tried a smile, too. The effect was disturbing.

  “That’s not so easy. We’re not supposed to allow anyone into the monitor room unless a formal complaint has been made.”

  Chubby nodded.

  “But you probably have a reason you don’t want to make a formal complaint.”

  Chubby shook his head, eyes closed and lower lip thrust out.

  “But it’s your niece, right? Your sister is worried.”

  “Very worried, mi hermana.”

  Ed took a long pull from his lemonade. He wiped his lips with a napkin and dropped the napkin into the puddle of red grease on his plate. He waited while Chubby counted one, two, three, four, five, six fifty-dollar bills onto the table. Ed covered the bills with his plate.

  “Be by the restrooms outside the security office
at three,” Ed directed.

  “At three,” Chubby agreed. Both men slid from the booth and walked away into the main mall.

  Yes, best job I ever had in my life, Ed thought.

  11

  It was full-on night when the bus slowed to a stop. Levon sensed this was the end of the ride by the wakeful attitude of the men around him. He leaned from the bench to see the glare of the bus’s headlights against high cyclone fencing. The front doors hissed open, and a man in a sharply pressed navy-blue uniform worn under a quilted nylon jacket stepped in with a clipboard in his hand. He took papers from the driver and checked them against his list before doing a headcount of his own.

  Once he’d stepped off, the bus continued through a gate and along a winding road that led to a second gate and another headcount by another guard in blue. This guard stayed with them as they moved through the second checkpoint and between rows of buildings before coming to a stop again. Three more guards entered the bus and worked their way between the benches to free everyone from the ring bolts. Still wearing the belt manacles, they were ordered to stand and file out of the bus.

  The bus rested on a gravel lot under the harsh glare of banks of lights mounted on the roofs of single-story buildings that resembled barracks. The buildings were old, with crumbling stucco faces covered in thick coats of bright yellow paint. Barred windows were spaced along the walls. Levon could see fists gripping the bars behind the streaked glass. The men inside were curious about the new arrivals.

  The clipboard guard from the bus barked, and the prisoners formed a ragged row as the empty vehicle pulled away. He strode the line, pointing at one man or another. Guards would remove the cuffs and belts and manacles from each in turn. They were given numbers and trotted off into the gloom beyond the lake of bright lights. The number of their assigned buildings, Levon guessed. Most of these guys had to be repeat offenders. They knew the drill, and where to find their new digs.

  He noticed that none of the guards were armed with weapons other than the truncheons that hung from their equipment belts. The clipboard guard had a rattan rod tucked under one arm, with a leather-wrapped handle and a lanyard at the end. He was a mean-looking bastard with a long sharp nose and close-set eyes.

  The sorting continued according to the scheme on the clipboard until only Levon and the three political prisoners were left. The cold air was biting, with a dampness that created a bone-deep chill. Gusts of wind blew hard enough between the buildings to rustle their clothing, and there was a tang of salt in the air. They were either on the Med or the Black Sea Coast. Levon had never heard of Tekirdağ, and so had no way of knowing. He stood at ease with his hands clasped behind him, as did the man in fatigues. The other two, the suits, stood shivering, hugging their arms around them, faces pinched and white.

  Clipboard walked in front of them, eyeballing them. He showed little interest in Levon. When he came to the young man in fatigues, he stepped in closer, right inside the man’s space. He was shorter than the soldier and was forced to look up at him. He craned his neck so he could sneer inches from the taller man’s face. He said something to the soldier that Levon could neither hear nor understand. Flecks of spittle from Clipboard’s lips made dark dots on the tan cloth of the soldier’s blouse.

  With a sudden movement, he thrust the corner of the clipboard into the soldier’s gut, folding the man over. The clipboard in both hands, the guard brought it down hard over the back of the soldier’s head, dropping him to the gravel on his knees. He spat on the soldier’s back and hissed a curse.

  A wave of his hand, and two guards had the soldier up and frog-walked him away into the dark between two buildings. Another gesture and the two suits were led away as well, leaving only Levon standing alone.

  “English?” Clipboard asked.

  “Canadian.”

  “Number foor-teen. You know number foor-teen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are in foor-teen with other yabanci. Euros. You know?”

  “Foreigners.”

  Clipboard nodded to another guard, who trotted forward.

  “I’d like to speak to someone from the Canadian consulate,” Levon said.

  With lightning speed, Clipboard struck out, this time with the rattan switch. Levon tasted salt before he felt the sting. The end of the switch had opened a strip of flesh along his jaw. The strike was hard enough to cut the flesh inside his mouth against his teeth. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Noted.

  Levon was led into the dark to a second row of buildings behind the ones where the bus had dropped them. His escort gestured for him to step back and keep his hands atop his head. The numeral 14 was stenciled in black on the bright yellow stucco. The guard undid locks on a wooden door, swung it open, and made a sweeping motion toward the interior. Levon stepped into the gloom, then heard the door slam shut behind him and the rattle of the lock being secured.

  He stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the minimal light coming in through the grimy glass outside the bars on the windows. He could still see his breath. He was out of the wind, but it was still cold in the building.

  Someone was coughing somewhere. Someone else spat. The sound echoed off the bare walls of a high-ceilinged room. Levon sensed a confined space filled with men.

  A long, narrow corridor was visible now, in shades of gray. It ran the length of the building. It was lined on either side by open doorways, and had a vaulted ceiling high above the tops of the cells, out of reach of even the tallest man standing atop a cell wall. Figures slumped in the doorways or leaned out to catch a glimpse of the new man. A solitary figure stood in the center of the corridor, a diminutive man with a tuft of hair at the crown of his head that shone whitish in the scant light. His eyes gleamed as his head turned, the glare from a doorway reflecting off his eyeglasses. He was wrapped in a blanket he wore like a serape.

  “Deutsch? Francois? Yankee? Zu groß, um Japaner zu sein,” the man in the blanket said.

  “Canadian,” Levon replied.

  “Kanadisch? Québécois or English?” The voice was German-accented. Low German. Munich or Heidelberg.

  “English.”

  “Well, let me show you to your room.” The man in the blanket turned to move down the hallway.

  Levon spat out a mouthful of blood and followed.

  12

  “That girl eats like she’s never seen food before,” Uncle Fern said as he finished building a third stack of pancakes. He set them down in the middle of the table in front of Esperanza. She was spooning bacon and eggs onto a wedge of buttered toast.

  “Well, look at her,” Merry said. “She sure hasn’t seen food like this in a long time.”

  “Or any kind of decent bed or bath.”

  “She slept almost sixteen hours straight. I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “It is when you’ve been tired for a long time. Or scared. Or both.”

  Merry looked at her plate, poking a fork into what was left of her scrambled eggs.

  Fern took a seat between them in the sunny kitchen of his cabin in the woods. He poured himself a mug of coffee and sat marveling at the sheer poundage the little girl was packing away. His three hounds had circled the table a few times and made sad puppy eyes at the girl, who ignored them as if they weren’t there. When it was clear she wouldn’t be sharing her breakfast with them, they filed out through the doggie door, looking for something to chase. Fern Cade’s other dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback, was curled up under the table at Merry’s feet.

  “Now, you know I didn’t buy that whopper you told me last night for a minute,” Fern said to Merry.

  “Sorry, sir,” Merry said, eyes cast down.

  “A foreign exchange student staying with the Hamers. You know one phone call to Jessie is all it takes to blow that one all to hell?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, stop bullshitting your old uncle and tell me where this girl came from.”

  Merry laid out the timeline and described the men and
how they were keeping Esperanza like a slave to steal for them. The girl looked up from eating at the mention of her name and beamed a maple-syrup-smeared smile at them both. Merry ended her story with a plea to her uncle not to tell Jessie Hamer about this.

  “I’ll take all the blame. Sandy didn’t want to do this,” Merry pleaded.

  “I guess you did the right thing,” Fern said.

  It was his turn to lie. The old man knew damned sure his niece had done the right thing. This poor little thing eating like a termite at his table couldn’t be more than twelve. The bad hombres playing Fagan to her Oliver Twist would surely have turned Esperanza to more profitable labor once she’d matured a bit. God only knows, they might have turned her out already or abused her themselves. Fern pushed his imagination away from what this little one’s life had been like since leaving wherever she called home. Human traffickers thought of their charges as property, living cash machines. They treated them worse than livestock. He’d seen his share when he served in Southeast Asia. Children with painted faces offered up by pimps who were just as likely to be their siblings or even parents. He doubted Esperanza’s story was much different. Probably bought for a price somewhere and brought across the border with someone posing as her father or mother. And he was sure Levon’s daughter had spared this one from a life of hell.

  “Well, she can stay here until we come up with something better,” he said. “But no more lies.”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir.”

  “When you lie like that, it makes me think you think your old uncle is some kind of moron.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir!” Merry said. A hand leapt to her mouth to stifle a giggle. Esperanza laughed too, looking from one to another. Not getting the joke, of course, but joining in anyway.