A Fire in the Night

by Christopher Swann

  The roads were already filling with cars and SUVs bearing license plates from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, even as far away as Vermont and Arizona. Fewer than two hundred people lived in Cashiers year-round, but over the past several years entire communities of vacation homes had sprung up on the mountains like mushrooms after rain. And now that summer had started, the tourists had begun arriving in full force.

  When Nick got to the traffic light at the village green, he went straight through and then pulled into the white gravel parking lot of the Carolina Mountain Shop, a one-story white clapboard store with dark-green trim. The bell rang over the door as Nick entered the shop. The long front room held books, toys, candy, candles, crockery, postcards, walking sticks, kitchen gadgets, place mats, linen napkins, and an abundance of other bric-a-brac. A wide doorway led to another room, which contained sweaters, shirts, blouses, skirts, pants, and other clothing items.

  In the back corner by the register stood Lettie Corden. She was being talked at by a customer, a tall, beefy, red-faced man wearing a white polo and chinos. The customer was saying something about maps, occasionally gesturing like he was directing a cavalry charge. Lettie, dressed in black pants and a red sweater set with pearls, her blue-gray hair perfectly coiffed, listened calmly while the man spoke and waved his hands.

  “They told me to go to Panther Valley,” the man said. “I just need a map.”

  Lettie had her hands on a bin next to the register whose several slots held various maps of western North Carolina. “It’s Panthertown,” she said.

  The man shook his head. “There’s no town there,” he insisted.

  “I didn’t say there was,” Lettie said. “But that’s the name of the valley.” She pulled out a map and handed it to the man.

  He looked at it. “This is Sapphire Valley,” he said, thrusting it back at her. “I need Panther Valley.”

  Lettie leaned over the bin and scanned the maps, lifting a hand to brush her strand of pearls. “I’m looking for it.”

  The red-face man smiled, halfway to a sneer. “You’ve lost it, you mean,” he said. “Not very good with maps, are you?”

  Lettie straightened and looked the man square in the eye. “I don’t need a map to know where I am,” she said. “Or where I’m going.”

  The man glared at Lettie, but under her steady gaze he began to sputter, then harrumphed and turned and hurried past Nick and out the door, the bell jangling in his wake.

  “I think you lost a sale,” Nick said.

  “Jackass,” Lettie murmured. She smoothed the front of her skirt. “The customer is always right, until he’s a jackass. Might have to get that in needlepoint and hang it by the cash register.” She shook her head, then smiled at Nick. “What can I do for you, Professor?”

  “May I borrow your phone? I hate to ask, but—”

  “But you don’t have a phone anymore,” Lettie said. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a phone myself. Only keep it so I can call 911 and get harassed by telemarketers.” She nodded toward the door behind the register. “Just don’t order anything illegal. And don’t go through my files.”

  “You hiding state secrets in your desk drawers?”

  Lettie smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  Behind the door was an office, cramped but neat as a pin. Nick closed the door behind him and from his pocket took out the folded piece of paper Annalise had given him before he sat down at Lettie’s desk. She had an old black push-button telephone, and he picked up the handset and dialed the number on the back of the paper.

  The phone rang twice and then Nick heard a man’s voice, an automatic message. You’ve reached Lapidus Investigations. For appointments, press 1. For office hours and address, press 2.

  Nick pressed 2. Now a pleasant female voice stated that office hours were eight AM to four thirty PM, Monday through Friday, with on-call services available for current clients 24/7. The recording then rattled off an address in Charlotte, which Nick wrote down on a notepad on Lettie’s desk. After a pause, the original message replayed, and Nick pressed 1 for appointments.

  There was a beep, followed by the same female voice as before, except live this time. “Lapidus Investigations. How may I help you?”

  “I need to speak with the investigator hired by Jay Bashir, please,” Nick said.

  “I apologize, sir, we cannot reveal the names of our clients.”

  Nick squeezed the handset, but his voice remained calm. “I appreciate your sense of privacy, but this is an emergency.”

  “Sir, we cannot reveal the names of our clients.”

  “Your client is dead,” Nick said.

  Silence on the other end of the line. When the woman spoke again, her voice was tight with tension. “What is your name, sir?”

  “I’m Jay Bashir’s brother,” Nick said.

  Another, shorter silence. “Hold, please,” she said.

  Nick sat hunched forward, staring at the floor, as jazz played over the line. In less than a minute, the music cut out and a new voice, a man’s, said, “This is Frank Lapidus. Who am I speaking with?”

  “My name is Nick Anthony,” Nick said. “My brother is Jay Bashir. Was. He was killed three days ago. I’m in possession of some sort of map that he sent me. Your phone number is on the back, along with the word Halliwell.”

  Lapidus sounded like a two-pack-a-day smoker, as if his voice had been dredged through gravel. “You said killed. How?”

  “He and his wife were tortured. Then someone lit their house on fire and left them inside.”

  “Jesus,” Lapidus said.

  “Why is your number written on this map?” Nick said. “And who is Halliwell?”

  “I don’t know anything about a map, Mr. Anthony,” Lapidus said. “But I have something for you. How far away are you from Charlotte?”

  “About three hours. What do you mean you have something for me?”

  “I’d rather not say over the phone,” Lapidus said. “Can you get here this afternoon? By, say, two o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Two o’clock, then,” Lapidus said, and hung up.

  Nick dropped the handset onto the cradle and sat in thought for a moment. Then he picked the phone back up and dialed another number, this one from memory. As the phone rang on the other end, he sat back in the chair and looked out the window at a wall of pine trees.

  On the third ring a voice said, “Hello?”

  “Jean-Jacques,” Nick said. “It’s Nick Anthony.”

  The barest fraction of a pause. “Nick,” Jean-Jacques said. “This is a pleasant surprise. How are you? Are you in DC?”

  “No, I’m in North Carolina. I’m sorry to bother you. How’s Georgetown?”

  Jean-Jacques’s hmph was a particularly Gallic expression that landed somewhere between indifference and a grudging acceptance of reality. “The students keep getting younger. As you have probably noticed. And you are not bothering me. I’m grading papers.”

  “That bad?”

  “Allow me to read you an opening line. ‘The fundamentals of international finance law as applied to a region such as Lebanon leave something to be desired,’ end quote.”

  “Lebanon is a region?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Please tell me you spoke with that student.”

  “He has an appointment with me this afternoon to go over his paper. I’m sharpening my knives.”

  Jean-Jacques Christophe was the child of a French deputy minister of finance and a Lebanese photographer. He had followed in his father’s footsteps and spent two decades enticing Western countries to invest in Lebanon. He and Nick had met at a conference in Beirut, where they soon became thick as thieves.

  “Jean-Jacques, I have a favor to ask,” Nick said. “I’m trying to track down a contractor, an American who was doing business in the Middle East.”

  “That should narrow it down to several thousand people.”

  “This one was trying
to make contact with the Syrian government last fall. His name was Jay Bashir.”

  “Bashir, Bashir,” Jean-Jacques mused. “What was the nature of his business with the Syrians?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’m guessing either information or arms.”

  Another pause. “I don’t do that, Nick.”

  “I know you don’t, Jean-Jacques. But he wouldn’t have known that. And you know everyone worth knowing in the Middle East.”

  “Hardly. But I vaguely recall a Jay Bashir looking for an entrée to the Assad regime. The kind of man who wants to impress and thinks he has, even when he hasn’t.”

  The description of Jay made Nick smile while at the same time he had to throttle back a sob. He cleared his throat. “That sounds like him. Do you remember anything else?”

  “I told him he was foolish to consider doing any sort of back-deal business with Syria. He seemed to understand. I got the sense he had several irons in the fire, as it were. Said he had an appointment with a Saudi minister. That was his parting shot.”

  Syria and the Saudis. Nick stared out the window at the pine trees. What had Jay been up to?

  Jean-Jacques coughed politely. “May I ask why you want to know?”

  “He’s my brother,” Nick said, continuing to stare at the pine trees. “Just trying to keep track of him.”

  “I understand,” Jean-Jacques said. “Family is important.” He sighed. “Nick, how are you doing, really? I know this past year … it must have been terrible. You should come up for a visit. Yvette would love to see you, as would I. You’re welcome anytime.”

  Nick closed his eyes. “I appreciate that, Jean-Jacques. Thank you. Give Yvette my best.” Nick hung up before the other man could say anything more. Jean-Jacques and Yvette had been good friends when he and Ellie lived in Beirut. But Nick could bear only so much sympathy—responding to it was like smiling with a mouthful of razors.

  The kind of man who wants to impress and thinks he has, even when he hasn’t, Jean-Jacques had said about Jay. Always looking for the deal, always selling something, even if what he was selling was just smoke.

  When Nick had been offered a scholarship at San Diego State, he’d seized it, choosing to double-major in medieval European history and Arabic studies. “You’re literally a child of two worlds,” his father had said when Nick announced his intended course of study. Nick liked that idea, standing astride two different but intertwined cultures that had often clashed in the very part of the world where the earliest human civilizations had flourished. Nick enjoyed college, where he studied and drank and had sex and avoided going home as much as possible, but it felt more like a way station, a crossroads where none of the paths before him were clear. He thought he wanted to be a professor, which made his father proud, and he applied to the master’s program in history at UC Davis with the potential to work toward a PhD. He had a sharp mind and was quick to absorb whatever he learned, and he earned the respect of his professors. But somewhere at the back of his head, behind a door he mostly kept closed, lurked the feeling that, for him, spending several more years in school was an indulgence, a way to escape the real world, to distance himself from his own family.

  Meanwhile, Jay had stopped attending the mosque and started dressing like a businessman in suits and silk ties. After high school, he had not followed Nick to college but borrowed money, often from Afghan refugees his parents knew, to finance real estate deals. Many failed, but one investment paid off well enough that Jay was able to invest in other ventures. Soon he was driving a Porsche and wearing a watch that was close enough to a Rolex to impress at a distance.

  If Jay made Nick roll his eyes, their mother broke his heart. Her world had dwindled to their house, the market, and the mosque. She refused to watch television, convinced the government was spying on them through the screen. She also thought the electric company was running a scam, so she left all the lights off, sitting in perpetual dusk in the house. Flashlights were okay, however, so when she was home she was either cooking by candlelight or peering at her Koran, a yellow plastic Eveready in one hand throwing a circle of light on the page.

  “She needs to see a psychiatrist,” Nick said to his father one Friday evening when his mother was at the mosque. They were in the kitchen with the overhead light on—Nick knew his father was watching the clock and would turn the light off before his mother was due to return home. “This isn’t normal, Dad. She isn’t well.”

  His father shook his head. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” he said. When Nick started to argue, his father raised a hand to cut him off. His hair thinning, a paunch visible above his belt, his father looked weary. “She refuses to go to any doctor. I’ve even tried to speak with the imam.” As his father was a committed agnostic who despised organized religion, Nick knew he must be supremely concerned to have talked to the imam.

  Later, Nick realized that he never should have gone to Jay for help, that instead he should have taken his mother to a doctor himself, even if that meant carrying her over his shoulder to a psychiatrist’s office. But at the time, Jay seemed the best of a narrowing set of unpleasant choices. Nick got his brother to meet him at a coffeehouse near campus. Jay walked in wearing a gray suit and pink shirt with no tie, his fake Rolex glinting on his wrist. “This the best place you can find to get coffee?” he said as he slid into the booth across from Nick.

  “Good to see you too,” Nick said.

  Jay looked around the room. “Any service around here?”

  “You order at the counter,” Nick said. “I need your help, Jay. It’s about Mom.”

  Jay grunted. “Yeah, well, Mom needs help.”

  “She won’t listen to Dad,” Nick said. “And she sure won’t listen to me.”

  Jay’s eyebrows rose, the beginnings of a sneer on his face. “And you think she’ll listen to me?”

  “You’re her favorite,” Nick said. “If anyone can get her to go see a doctor, it’s you.”

  Jay snorted. “Poor Nick,” he said. “Firstborn disappointment.”

  “That’s a nice suit,” Nick said. “Wear that when you talk to Mom. She would like it.”

  Jay laughed. “God, you’re so transparent. You think you can flatter me, say I’m the golden child and get me to take our mother to a doctor?”

  It’s working, Nick thought, watching as his younger brother absently ran a hand down a lapel on his suit jacket. Nick sat there, coffee cold in his cup, willing himself to say nothing.

  Jay tapped a finger on the table, thinking. “I need a favor,” he said finally.

  Nick waited.

  Jay sighed. “It’s not a big deal. Basically you’d just stand in the background. You wouldn’t even have to say anything. Easy.”

  Nick let the moment of silence stretch until he saw Jay was about to say something, then cut him off. “Remember Brandon Deeker?”

  Jay frowned. “Kid in junior high?”

  “He was bullying you. You told me if I went with you to stand up to him, he’d get scared and back down.”

  Jay waved his hand as if dispelling smoke. “That was a long—”

  “He went to the principal and had us suspended for threatening to beat him up.”

  Jay opened his hands to encompass the room. “You see a principal here? Somebody going to suspend us?” He leaned forward. “I need a favor,” he said. “You help me, I’ll deal with Mom.”

  The favor involved Nick showing up the next evening at his brother’s office, a rented box of rooms in a strip mall in El Cajon. It was a cool night, the sun still flaring red beyond the horizon and the sky above a deep blue, but it wasn’t cool enough for the front door of Jay’s office to be left swinging open. Nick glanced around the mostly empty parking lot, then eased through the open door. He stepped into an anodyne waiting room, an unmanned mahogany-veneer desk presiding over beige carpet and floral-print furniture. The overhead fluorescents were off, but yellow light and men’s voices spilled from another open door at the back of the waiting room. Nick
picked up a glass paperweight from the front desk and put it in his pocket, then strode to the open door.

  Beyond was an office the same size as the waiting room, but with wood paneling and a thicker carpet and a nicer desk. Jay, wearing a navy silk suit with an open-collared white shirt, was backed against the desk, three men standing in front of him. Two wore off-the-rack suits, one gray, one brown, like TV cops. Nick was certain neither of them was a cop. The third man had a mullet and tight jeans and a purple Members Only jacket and was thrusting a finger into Jay’s chest. “It’s bullshit is what it is,” he was saying, his voice nasal and grating. “You fucked me, Bashir, so now it’s your turn.”

  When Jay saw Nick over the man’s shoulder, relief shone from his face. In that moment, Nick hated his brother.

  The three men turned to look at Nick. “What?” the man with the Members Only jacket snapped.

  Nick saw a slight bulge underneath Brown Suit’s jacket, another at Gray Suit’s waist. Both men flanked Members Only and stood one deferential step back from him. He was clearly the leader. Nick ignored all of them and fixed his eyes on his brother. In Dari, he shouted, “Keep your mouth shut and don’t say anything unless I tell you to.”

  “The fuck is this?” Members Only said. The two goons scowled.

  Nick kept his eyes on Jay. In English, he said, “What is it this time, Bashir? TV sets? Cars? What?” Jay opened his mouth, seemed to remember Nick’s earlier warning, and closed it again. Exasperated, Nick turned to Members Only. “What did he take from you?”

  Members Only managed to look astonished and outraged at the same time. “What the fuck do you—”

  “What,” Nick said, “did he take from you?”

  Members Only blinked. “Cigarettes,” he said.

  Nick glared at Jay, incredulous. “Cigarettes? You wrong these men for cigarettes? Do you know what Mustafa will do to you? I’ll tell you what he’ll do. He’ll make you wear your tongue as a necktie.”