So he said, “Help isn’t possible, sir. Please don’t trouble yourself.”
“I’m not the only one, am I?” said the Chinaman, reading his mind. “Forget about the others. They’re fools. There’s only one way to help a man in your position. Here,” he said, nodding at the side of the road. “Pull over a moment.”
They had just left the highway and entered Charlottenburg, not far from Sophie-Charlotte-Platz. “Why?” asked Andrei.
“Because I don’t want you to have an accident when you see this.”
He pulled over, wondering how much time he should allow before kicking this bastard out of his taxi. He didn’t need to see anything to risk having a wreck. All he had to do was be reminded of Adriana. The man opened the envelope and removed a single photograph. It was familiar, too familiar, but clearer than the one Erika Schwartz had shown him. The man-that man-talking to Adriana by the entrance of the courtyard. She was beautiful. He touched the photograph, touched her, and then the Chinaman took it away, saying, “He killed her.”
“No,” Andrei answered, not even wondering how a Chinese man had gotten hold of the image. “It was someone else.”
“Who told you that?”
“German intelligence.”
The Chinaman smiled and shook his head. “Spies protecting spies. This man, the one who killed your daughter, is an American spy.”
“No, he’s a tourist.”
“That’s what they call them. But he’s a spy.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know everything about this man. If you’d like, I can share that information with you.”
Andrei looked again at the photo in this stranger’s hand and felt as if he might vomit. Confusion was beginning to set in. He swallowed, wondering why all the spies he knew were obese. “Who are you?”
“Call me Rick. And know that I’m sickened by what this man did.”
“Where is he now?”
“Back in America.”
“Then it’s no good. I can’t go there.”
“I can help with that.”
It was too stuffy in the car, and Andrei got out to light a cigarette, but the rush of traffic kept blowing out his matches. He moved to the sidewalk and got it lit and took a deep drag. The Chinaman didn’t bother getting out, just rolled down the window and stared at him with his Asian eyes. Andrei walked away, puffing on his cigarette, then returned. Above the roar of traffic the man called Rick began talking, and he had to squat beside the window to hear. He, too, was a father. Or he had been until those same spies had killed his only son. “I felt like you, but I knew the only way to ever get back my life was to deal with it. You can stay here, Andrei. You can forget we ever talked. But it will never leave you-trust me. It will make you sick at night when everything is quiet and you remember her again.” Rick’s eyes were wet, as if this were how he had spent his own nights, but perhaps that was just the wind. “The only way to make some kind of peace is to know that you’ve done everything you can do.”
“Are you religious?” Andrei asked.
“I believe in the order of things.”
Andrei nodded at this, then tossed away his cigarette and got behind the wheel again. Rick rolled up his window. Andrei said, “You’re talking about revenge.”
Rick thought for a moment, then quoted: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
That had been six days ago. Now, as he switched trains in Brooklyn, examining the signs above his head to make sure he didn’t lose his way, he repeated that verse. It was busy here, and he was just another speck in the mass of many nations that poured through the New York transportation system every day.
Until Prospect Park, everything had been predicted, for he had sat down with Rick and gone over each moment in his journey westward. He’d made his illegible notes on the map Rick supplied, and circled the corner of Garfield and Seventh Avenue. First, though, he had to go to the park.
He’d taken an early flight, and with the change in time zones it was still only a little before three in the afternoon. The day was bright but chilly, and as he settled on a bench he saw couples and people with dogs, some on leads and others running loose. Dogs of a confusing variety of breeds. There were also businessmen on cell phones. It was, he realized, much like Germany, and he wondered why so many Moldovans he knew were desperate to come here. He thought of Vasile, another taxi driver, who would be sick with jealousy if he knew where Andrei was. But no one knew. Rick had been insistent about this. “Not even Rada.”
Poor Rada, who woke up that morning and couldn’t help but dress in black again, despite the end of the official mourning. This man, Milo Weaver, hadn’t just killed Adriana. He’d killed Rada. He’d killed Andrei, too.
So when he left that morning with his small bag he’d explained that he was taking over Vasile’s morning shift. As if she knew, she’d asked him to call someone else to take it over. She wanted him at home, with her-she had already called in sick again. She wasn’t sure she could bear the empty apartment alone today. He’d had to be firm-“Calling in sick like this, you’re going to lose your job. Someone has to earn money”-but he’d given her the kindest kiss he could manage.
“Andrei?” said a voice with an accent that skipped over the rolled r in his name.
He looked up to find another Chinese man. A skinny man, taller than he’d expected, wearing a trench coat. He carried a paper shopping bag with
BARNEYS
NEW YORK
written on it.
“Ja?” he said, then remembered where he was. “Yes. I am Andrei. You are Li?”
“About time,” the man said, then launched into a stream of English Andrei couldn’t understand at all and set the bag at his feet. He ended with “Okay?”
Andrei nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”
For a second the man stared at him, his face full of doubt, then turned and walked away.
Andrei waited, breathing through his mouth because his nose had become stopped up, and watched the dogs racing across the park, stumbling and jumping over one another and chewing on each other and pinning each other down. Tongues lashed against their faces as they ran, and their eyes were huge with pleasure.
15
She recalled Venice. After all, it was the three of them again-the three of them and a strange man. Angela Yates was the only missing actor, and she was dead. She’d been dead for eight months.
That was later. At the moment it occurred, she recalled nothing. It was a moment unto itself, with no past or future, and her instincts took over: She reached for Stephanie and pulled her close.
They had just left the apartment. It was nearly seven-they were running late for their reservation at Long Tan, and Little Miss was talking. “If you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway, then…” She didn’t finish her sentence. Not because of what happened, but because she couldn’t find the words to express how much the English language had let her down. A minute later, Tina would share her inarticulateness.
He didn’t stand out. In a city like New York few people stand out, but the small man in the soiled, waist-length jacket sitting on their stoop with a leather bag and a shopping bag from Barneys looked like any number of visitors in this city of visitors. Beyond him, a black couple pushed a baby carriage along the sidewalk, and across Garfield the Vietnamese florists were checking on the breathtaking variety of flowers arranged on the sidewalk outside their convenience store every day. The man, hearing them come out, turned to look. He had a round, flabby face and deep-set eyes, and besides the stubble that went nearly up to his eyelids he had plenty of hair. The hair on top of his head looked oily.
Tina turned to lock the door while Milo told Stephanie, “Language doesn’t always make sense. Take Russian, for example-”
He stopped because he, too, had noticed the man now staring at them. With a hand that moved as if
it were a separate creature entirely, Milo grabbed Stephanie by the arm and pushed her behind him, placing his own body between this man and his girls.
“It is you,” the man said in heavily accented English.
With a voice harder than any she’d heard in her life, Milo said, “Go back inside, Tina.”
Tina had already locked up and pocketed the key. “What?”
“Inside. Take Stef.”
“Milo Weaver,” said the man on the steps.
“Inside, Tina.”
Her hands were shaking, but she got the door open and pulled Stephanie, who knew better than to ask questions right now, inside. They shut the door and watched through the window as Milo took a step down and began to speak softly to the man.
The window was thin, and they could catch phrases:… should go home… can’t solve anything… not at my house… Then they switched to German. The word “Stanescu” came to them, and Tina realized with an unsettling shift in her stomach that Stanescu was the name of the Europe an girl who’d been killed.
Then she recalled this man’s face (it looked so different in reality) from some video on CNN, with the weeping mother. The poor man, Tina thought, looking down at him over Milo’s shoulder. Then the poor man reached into the Barneys bag and removed a small pistol. All the air left her and she reached for Stephanie, who was glued to the glass, saying, “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!” Tina pulled her tight to her stomach and tugged her backward. “Stop, Mom!”
Tina wouldn’t stop. She understood enough about bullet trajectories to know that if that man tried to shoot Milo and missed, the bullet would come at them. She wouldn’t have her daughter in the way of that. Nor would she have Stephanie watch her father get shot. Tina had watched that before, in Venice, and knew how horrible it was.
She was hardly thinking as she lifted Stephanie, kicking, onto her shoulder, and with strength she didn’t know she had carried her up two flights and used her free hand to unlock the door and get inside. Stephanie ran for the window to look down, and Tina took out her phone and dialed 911. “There’s a man with a gun,” she told the bland emergency operator as a single gunshot rang out. She dropped the phone and ran to the window, where Stephanie was screaming for her father. Tina looked down-the little man was rushing around the corner onto Seventh, and Milo was sitting on the front steps.
She rushed to the door and spun around, pointing at Stephanie, who had begun to cry. Frail girl, shaking hands. “Stay here!” Tina shouted, then fled downstairs, thinking, I’m a terrible mother. She couldn’t help it. She was what she was.
By the time she reached the front steps three people were standing over Milo, two with cell phones to their ears, one holding Milo’s arm and speaking calmly to him. Milo was hunched forward, a bright red hand clutching at his stomach. Blood was all over the three concrete steps, and he was making guttural sounds. She pushed the stranger aside and got close to Milo’s face. His lips were too red, and so were his teeth, and when he coughed, bloody spittle shot out onto her blouse. “Honey,” she said. “Hey, baby. Look at me.”
From somewhere in the sky, she heard Stephanie calling to her, and looked up to see her head poking out of their window. “It’s okay!” Tina called. “He’s going to be fine! Just stay there!”
Milo was speaking. It was a whisper, so she leaned close. “It’s okay,” he said, as if he were repeating her words.
“It’s not okay,” she told him, “but it will be. The ambulance will be here.”
“Ambulanza,” he said, smiling as a drop of blood rolled down his chin. It was the Italian word for ambulance, she realized, then remembered Venice just as he was remembering it.
When a fresh wave of pain hit him, he leaned forward and squeezed her arm so hard it hurt. He buried his face in her breasts. She was calmer now-panic had given way to shock-and she asked if anyone (there were now a dozen people standing around) could see the ambulance. Two stout men ran to the corner to look. She held on to Milo’s head as he whispered something into her cleavage. She tilted his head back. “What, hon?”
“I deserve this,” he said.
“No. No one deserves this.”
“You don’t,” he said. “Little Miss doesn’t.” He coughed up more blood.
When she looked down she saw that so much blood had come out that it looked as if they had both been shot, and she knew that wasn’t good. She took his face in her hands and made him look into her eyes. “Lover? Lover. Stay awake. Okay?”
He nodded, but closed his eyes as he did so, which terrified her. She slapped him once on the cheek, hard, and his eyes opened again. “Dominatrix,” he said, smiling. Then: “Push me back.”
“What?”
“To see her.”
She pushed his shoulders slowly, but when his face contorted in pain she asked for help from one of the men standing uselessly around. Finally, his back against the steps and his head leaned all the way back, he was staring skyward. Stephanie was still looking out the window, crying, and he gave her a smile and tried to call up to her, but couldn’t get the breath for it. So he told Tina what to say.
“Little Miss! Your dad’s going to be all right! He doesn’t want you to worry, and doesn’t want you to crack your knuckles anymore!”
Stephanie paused her tears to look at her hands, which were clasped together, cracking maniacally. She released them.
By the time the ambulance arrived, nearly two dozen people were standing on either side of the street in front of their apartment, and the driver had to shout at them to get out of the way. A pair of Latino medics got out of the rear with a stretcher, and while one examined Milo’s stomach the other talked quietly with him about the sequence of events that had led to his injuries. Sometimes Tina cut in with her own version-“I went upstairs, to protect our daughter,” she said defensively, and the medic waved her away. Soon Milo was strapped into the stretcher and Tina was telling him that they would be right behind him.
She then changed and found a new shirt to replace the one Stephanie had ripped on the windowsill, the crowd had dispersed, leaving only a few curiosity-seekers staring at the bloody front stoop, which Tina tried to distract Stephanie from. Though New York Methodist was just up the street, she still used the car, chatting away in what she thought was a calming voice while Stephanie sat silently beside her, peering out the window.
They had spent an hour in the waiting room, receiving occasional reports from a tired doctor who assured her that Milo would live, but there would be a long recovery time. The bullet had entered the small intestine. After she left, Stephanie sank into a disturbing silence, and Tina remembered something from their last session with Dr. Ray. Milo had begun to fade again, worrying her, but then he launched into a non sequitur. “Back when I was still working, I sometimes had these lapses. I’d be in some city, and some unexpected detail would throw me. A dog, a car, some music-always something different.”
“How do you mean, throw you?”
“Divert me. I’d suddenly feel a physical need to call home. To talk to Tina and Stephanie. I even called a couple times, but luckily they didn’t answer.”
“You never mentioned this,” Tina said.
“Because it was reckless,” he told her. “Which is why it disturbed me. I didn’t want to call, but I had to.” He looked at Dr. Ray. “Any idea what that was?”
Dr. Ray frowned, then shrugged as if the question were entirely preposterous. “Well, it sounds like love to me. Doesn’t it?”
The memory faded as a man in a gray suit with disheveled hair and pink hands stepped into the room. He looked around the crowd of waiting families, finally alighting on them, and came over. He gave Stephanie a smile and nodded at Tina. “How’s Milo?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. Alan Drummond. Milo used to work for me.”
“In the Department of Tourism?”
His face went blank. “I’m not sure what you mean.” Stephanie leaned against Tina’s arm and yawned.
> “I’ve finally made an honest man of him,” Tina said. “Not that it matters now. The department doesn’t exist anymore, does it?”
Alan Drummond moved his mouth as if he were trying to find a way to spit out his tongue. “Are you going to tell me how Milo is? I heard he was shot.”
“Stomach. He’ll pull through.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Are you?”
A flash of anger passed through his features; then he took the free chair beside Tina. “Yes, Tina. I happen to like the guy.”
“Then maybe you should be out catching the guy who did this.”
“As you pointed out, I’m unemployed now. But for the sake of argument, who did this?”
“A little man. His name is Stanescu.”
“You’re sure?”
“Milo said that name when they were talking.”
“They talked?”
“Not long. In German. I recognized the man from television. Then he shot Milo.”
Remembering, Tina looked down at Stephanie, whose eyes were closed. She was listening, though; Tina was sure of it.
She said, “The name-does this have to do with… you know. The girl?”
Drummond didn’t look like he understood, then he worked back in his memories and finally got it. “Oh, no. I’m sure it doesn’t.”
Christ, but these people could lie so well.
16
Though she picked up a bottle as usual and even exchanged a few words with Herr al-Akir, when her home phone rang at nine thirty-five, she hadn’t even opened the bottle. Instead, she was sitting at the kitchen table, her cell phone beside her landline, staring at the two phones. Waiting.
She had expected the call to come later, and when she heard Berndt Hesse’s hoarse voice-he’d never been used to long bouts of talking-she thought he sounded confused. “Can you get over to Schwabing?”
“If it’s necessary, Berndt. What’s wrong?”
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