The Resolutions

by Brady Hammes

  “I’m here for Andre,” Jonah said, suddenly intimidated by the woman’s beauty.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Jonah. He’s expecting me.”

  Satisfied with his explanation, she stepped aside and allowed him to enter. Jonah glanced at the display cases glowing with expensive rocks. He’d anticipated a much seedier place, something like a pawnshop, but despite its location next to an ice-cream parlor, the store actually lived up to its name. “Do you work here?” he asked.

  Without acknowledging his question, the woman pointed to a door at the back. “Go in,” she said.

  Jonah entered what appeared to be some fusion of an office and a speakeasy. There was a baby grand piano in one corner and a bar cart stocked with an assortment of liquor decanters. An African American man of about thirty, dressed in a gray suit, was sprawled on a velour sofa, watching SportsCenter on a plasma television mounted to the wall. His eyes were large and penetrating and a shrub of hair sprouted beneath his bottom lip. “Johnny,” he said, standing. “Please, come in. Very nice to meet you.”

  “It’s Jonah.”

  “Of course.” Andre cleared a mess of papers from a large mahogany desk and took a seat behind it. “Please sit,” he said, motioning to a well-worn club chair.

  Jonah sat and looked at Andre across the desk. He looked more like a mortgage lender than an ivory trafficker, and the intimidation Jonah had initially felt was replaced by a mild annoyance at having to drive all the way down here on Christmas Eve.

  Andre smiled and leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, a man with a terrific offer to share. “One day you’re with my cousin in Gabon and the next day you’re here with me in Chicago. Very small world.”

  “Yeah,” Jonah said, “I guess.”

  Andre stood and walked to the bar cart to refill his tumbler of gin. “Can I get you a drink? How was your flight? Any trouble?”

  Jonah wasn’t sure how much Andre knew. He wasn’t even sure how much Slinky knew. Surely Slinky would have gotten suspicious when Mateo failed to return to the village, though there was no way for him to know that his number one man had been cut open after trying to screw him out of fifty thousand dollars’ worth of ivory. Andre’s tone made it seem as if the ordeal had gone off without a hitch, and he didn’t see any reason to clue him in on the bloody details. “Flight was fine,” Jonah said. “Everything’s in the case. Where’s the money?”

  “We’ll get to that soon enough.”

  “I’d prefer to get to it sooner rather than later, Andre. It’s Christmas Eve and my brother is waiting for me outside.”

  “Of course. I understand.” Andre walked over to the case and opened it slowly, carefully, as if there were something in there that might bite him. “Perfect,” he said, glancing at the tusks. He carried the case to a digital metal scale and frowned at the results. “And the rest of it?”

  “This is everything,” Jonah said.

  “This is eighty pounds.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was told to expect one hundred.”

  “This is what I was given.”

  “Now, Jerry,” Andre said, his mood turning.

  “Jonah.”

  “Forgive me, Johnny, but the problem is that I was told to expect one hundred pounds, and you only brought me eighty. You must understand my situation.”

  “Look,” Jonah said. “I smuggled this into the country, against my will, without getting caught, which is no small task.” Because of Jonah, Slinky had been able to eliminate his Chinese middleman and sell his product for a substantial markup. The real money in the ivory trade was made by those capable of getting it out of the source country, which Slinky had never been able to do himself. Jonah knew that his Chinese partner paid him only a fraction of what he was later fetching at the shops and bazaars in Asia. He’d made Slinky a tremendous amount of money in a relatively short amount of time, and it seemed to him like Andre could be a little more appreciative.

  “I understand the risk you took in bringing this here, and I want you to know that my cousin and I both appreciate it. But that doesn’t entitle you to keep some for yourself.”

  “I don’t know what your cousin told you, but I have no interest in keeping this. I find it reprehensible.” There was a moment, albeit a brief one, when he’d considered turning himself over to the customs agent in Paris, confessing to everything that had happened and hoping it might result in some kind of mercy. But the more rational part of him knew how unlikely that was, and so he’d scrapped the idea.

  Andre stood and made a lap around his desk, running his fingers along the veneer surface. “I think we must make a phone call to my cousin. Hopefully he can sort this out.”

  “Let’s do that,” Jonah said, eager to conclude the visit.

  It was almost midnight in Gabon, but Slinky picked up after a few rings. They exchanged pleasantries in French before Andre passed the phone to Jonah.

  “Hey,” Jonah said.

  “Elephant Man,” Slinky’s voice boomed. “My cousin tells me there’s a problem.”

  Jonah paced around the room. “I delivered the ivory like you asked.”

  “He says you only bring eighty pounds.”

  “That’s what I was given,” Jonah said evenly.

  “Not true, Elephant Man. I gave Mateo one hundred.”

  “You’d have to talk to Mateo about that.” Jonah looked to Andre, who was watching him from across the room.

  “He’s not answering his phone,” Slinky said.

  Jonah plucked a mint from a bowl on the coffee table, plopped it in his mouth. “There’s a reason for that.”

  Slinky went quiet, which Jonah took as permission to continue. “I don’t think Mateo was quite as trustworthy as you thought. When we got to Libreville, he tried to sell the ivory to some guys who didn’t feel like paying for it. So they killed him. They had planned to take the ivory themselves, but I was able to get away with it. You should actually be thanking me right now.”

  “This doesn’t sound right,” Slinky said, a shade of uncertainty entering his voice.

  “It’s the truth.”

  Slinky exhaled audibly through the phone. “And how do I know this?”

  “I would tell you to ask Mateo, but that isn’t possible.”

  “Who are these people Mateo visited?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonah said. “It was a bunch of dudes in a garment factory. Some old hunchbacked guy.”

  The silence on the other end of the line suggested that Jonah had struck upon the very detail he needed to validate his story. “Osman,” Slinky finally said in the dejected manner of someone whose fear has been confirmed.

  “Who is he?” Jonah asked.

  Slinky explained that Osman was a Nigerian ivory broker and member of the terrorist group Boko Haram. Slinky had never met the man, since most of Osman’s dealings had been with poachers along the border with Cameroon. But he’d heard that Osman had intentions of expanding his network into Gabon, though he’d been told, incorrectly, that those plans were merely hypothetical. Slinky guessed that Mateo had tried to pledge his loyalty to a man who wasn’t interested in such things and learned a difficult lesson in the process. “But I’m not like them,” Slinky said. “I don’t kill innocent people.”

  “Just elephants,” Jonah said.

  “Look, Elephant Man. Just bring me my money, so we can finish this. You’ve already done the hard work. Now you just have to return my money.”

  “Sure,” Jonah said, though he wasn’t sure it was that easy. He’d heard stories about mountaineers who died on their way down Everest, the ones whose sense of accomplishment became their fatal flaw. He was determined not to become one of those people. “I’ll call you when I get to Libreville,” he said, handing the phone back to Andre, who walked to the other end of the roo
m, where he spoke in hushed tones.

  Andre occasionally looked over at Jonah, who was now relaxing in the club chair with the poise of a man in firm control of his situation. A moment later, Andre hung up and began filling a backpack with stacks of banded bills from a safe under his desk. “Sounds like you had a big adventure,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “This is fifty thousand dollars,” Andre said. “I expect you will take all of it—not one dollar less—back to my cousin.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Jonah said.

  Andre handed him the backpack. “Do better than that.”

  Back outside, Jonah walked to his brother’s car and got inside. Gavin was listening to some kind of audiobook in which the narrator was describing, rather ornately, the musculature of a racehorse. “What are you listening to?” Jonah asked, pulling the seatbelt across his chest.

  Gavin lowered the volume. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Books,” Jonah said.

  “What kind of books?”

  “Textbooks.”

  “Can I see?” Gavin reached for the backpack, but Jonah pulled it away.

  “Let’s go,” Jonah said.

  “Not until you show me what’s in the backpack.”

  “Drive.”

  “No.”

  “Really?” Jonah had hoped to keep his dealings with Andre private, because he worried his brother might use this dark knowledge as leverage for something.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you show me what’s in the backpack,” Gavin said. “I drove you down here. I’d like to know why.”

  “Okay, sure, have a look.” Jonah unzipped the bag and peeled back the top flap, revealing the banded stacks of cash.

  “Jesus,” Gavin said. “How much money is that?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Are you selling drugs?”

  “I’d feel a lot better if I were.”

  “What the fuck, Jonah? Why do you have all that money?”

  “You know, Gavin, the thing I really appreciate about our family is that we don’t discuss our problems. I’d prefer to keep it that way.” Jonah zipped the bag shut and tossed it in the back seat. “Let’s go. We’re late for church.”

  * * *

  —

  BECAUSE THEY WERE LATE and because it was Christmas Eve, the church parking lot was full, so Gavin parked in the lot of a liquor store three blocks south. Jonah stashed the backpack in the trunk, then locked the car and followed his brother down the street, a fierce wind cutting at his face. Despite his assemblage of outerwear, he lacked the mental fortitude for this kind of meteorological assault. “How much farther?” he called to Gavin, who charged unaffected through the cold.

  “We’ve only gone one block,” Gavin said.

  “It’s shockingly cold right now. I’m not used to this.”

  “Neither am I, but I’m not complaining.”

  Jonah knew that the only reason Gavin wasn’t complaining was to avoid the accusation—rightfully earned during their fourteen years under a shared roof—that he was a perpetual complainer. As a kid, Gavin had complained about everything, to everyone, everywhere they went. On a summer vacation to Los Angeles, he complained that the air was too dirty, the beach too sandy, the freeways too crowded. He complained when he didn’t catch a home run ball at the Dodgers game and when their visit to Universal Studios resulted in zero celebrity sightings. He complained about the thirty-two hours in the car, then complained that he was being unfairly maligned when their mother suggested he stop being such a whiner. So the fact that Gavin wasn’t complaining about the cold didn’t mean that it wasn’t affecting him, just that he’d learned to shut up about it.

  The church was at capacity, the overflow of parishioners sitting in rows of folding chairs at the back. The priest stood at the altar, leading the congregation in the Penitential Rite. “As we prepare to celebrate the mystery of Christ’s love,” he pronounced, “let us acknowledge our failures and ask the Lord for pardon and strength.”

  Jonah located their parents and squeezed into the pew. The voices in the church rose, and together said, “I confess to almighty God. And to you, my brothers and sisters…”

  “You’re late,” their mom whispered to Gavin.

  “His fault,” Gavin said, nodding at Jonah.

  “That I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do…”

  “Where’s your sister?” his mom asked.

  Jonah shrugged.

  “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” the priest recited.

  “Gavin,” his mom hissed across the pew. “Where’s Sam?”

  “She said she’d be here,” Gavin whispered back.

  “Therefore, I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, and all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord, our God.”

  “Amen,” the congregation chorused.

  “Amen,” Jonah said.

  “Unbelievable,” their mom said.

  SAMANTHA

  SHE BATTLED HER WAY THROUGH cosmetics, dodging women spraying clouds of perfume at her face. She passed the shoe department, which had been ransacked by derelict shoppers, then through lingerie, and finally to a quiet corner of the store, where she found a stray wardrobe rack hung with loungewear. She rifled through the robes, running her hand across the downy cotton, appraising the threads of each one. She and her mother used to be the same size, but Sam had lost so much weight over the last year, though how much that was she couldn’t say because she refused to step on a scale for fear of what she might learn. She chose a simple, white terry robe by Ralph Lauren, size two, and carried it to the dressing room.

  “Excuse me,” she said, intercepting a female employee about her age. “Can I try this on?”

  “The bathrobe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can slip it on out here if you’d like.”

  “I’d prefer a room.”

  Annoyed, the employee led her to the dressing rooms. “Let me know if you need another size,” she said, pushing open the door.

  The floor was littered with discarded sewing pins, which Sam swept away with her shoe. She slipped into the bathrobe and cinched the sash tight around her waist. She looked in the mirror and mouthed don’t three times over, but the decision had already been made. She removed the drugs from her purse, spread her utensils on the small bench in the corner of the room, and fixed herself a dose. Leaning against the thin dressing room walls, she shot herself full of the one thing she could no longer live without, a flush of warmth going through her body, a faint smile stretching across her face. In the room next to her, she heard giggling female voices that slowly faded as her eyes flickered twice and closed.

  * * *

  —

  “MA’AM?” THE VOICE CALLED. It was followed by a pounding at the door. “Please open the door or I’ll have to open it myself.”

  Sam nodded awake, as if surfacing from somewhere deep underwater. Her face was flushed and she had sweated through the bathrobe. She looked in the mirror and tried to place herself.

  “What’s going on in there?” the voice said again. It was a male voice, authoritative and annoyed.

  “Just finishing up,” Sam said. She stuffed the drugs back in her purse and returned the bathrobe to its hanger. She stepped out of the room and came face-to-face with a man she guessed was the manager.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I was trying this on,” Sam said, holding up the bathrobe.

  “She said you’ve been in there for thirty minutes.” Standing behind him was the female employee, looking alternately smug and annoyed.

  “We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” he said.


  “I’m done anyway,” Sam said, slipping out of the room and hurrying toward the register.

  After paying for the robe, she pushed through the revolving doors and stepped outside, where a light snow had begun to fall. She made her way south on State Street, then across the bridge, past a homeless man lecturing the river. She pulled her phone from her purse to check the time, but her battery had died and she wasn’t wearing a watch. The streetlights were snapping on and she guessed it was well past six, which meant she had missed Mass.

  How would she explain that? she wondered. It was the lying that was so exhausting, yet she wasn’t ready to admit the truth, at least not to anyone other than herself. Because if she was being honest, then she must acknowledge that it was her choices that had led to this moment, and that’s what troubled her. It was the element of personal responsibility, the conscious decision she’d made to dive into a pool of unknown depth. It might have been excusable, or at least expected, had she come from a broken home or been abused as a child or any of the other false reasons for believing drugs can fix the sad feelings. But she’d experienced nothing but the plain love of parents who had sacrificed greatly, and yet somehow, despite her easy fortune, she had devolved into the kind of girl who nodded out in department store dressing rooms. Her life was a lie that begot other lies, a bad decision that spawned other bad decisions, which, if one connected the dots, would sketch an accurate portrait of the young woman now walking the streets of Chicago, alone and despondent in the winter twilight.

  She eventually arrived back at Joey’s, the only place that was still open, and ducked inside to warm up. She took a seat at the bar and looked around, but most of the faces from earlier were gone.