The Boy Who Stole From the Dead

by Orest Stelmach

  The General appeared incredulous. “We had to evacuate the entire village. What did you want us to do? Let radioactive animals act as agents to spread the poison?” He laughed. “Old woman, you’re a proper little Ukrainian peasant, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” the babushka said, showing no signs of having been insulted. “And you’re a proper Soviet bastard.”

  She whipped the broom handle around and smashed both lanterns. Glass cracked. The lanterns crashed against the stone oven. Kerosene spilled. A flame erupted.

  “Fire,” said the rawboned man from Lviv.

  Marko leaped at him. He grasped the rifle with outstretched hands. The rawboned man pulled the trigger. Marko’s momentum pushed the barrel of the gun toward the floor. A shot rang out. The bullet went into the wooden floor.

  The General stood. He straightened his rifle. Nadia charged. She reared her right leg back and snapped her foot into his groin. He screamed. Doubled-over. Nadia grabbed his rifle. Tried to rip it out of his hands. He struggled to breathe but maintained his grip.

  A flame flickered in the corner of her eye. Nadia pulled. He wouldn’t let go. She pulled harder. His grip strengthened. She pulled her right hand away and punched his nose. A groan escaped his lips. He fell back. Fury crossed his face. He used his backward momentum to rip the rifle out of Nadia’s hands. He fell to the floor, gun in his hands—

  A deafening blast.

  Nadia turned. The rawboned man from Lviv lay on the floor with a hole in his chest. Marko was sprawled beside him. The fire spread toward them.

  A second blast.

  Nadia turned back. The General collapsed. Blood spurted from his neck. A third shot. A hole appeared in his stomach. His eyes were open. He held his neck, gasping.

  The babushka stood by a portable cabinet pointing a handgun, flames flying around her, still aiming at the General.

  “This gun belonged to one of your pet hunters,” she said. “Now you will die by the bullets you gave them.”

  She walked up to him and fired a fourth shot into his forehead.

  Marko coughed. Smoke filled the kitchen. Nadia helped him up.

  The babushka opened the front door. Nadia and Marko grabbed the rifles and hurried outside. The babushka told them to follow her to the back of the house. The white Lexus was parked around the corner from the garden.

  “You must take their car and go,” the babushka said.

  Nadia checked the ignition. “No keys,” she said.

  Marko ran back into the house. He came back ten seconds later coughing, keys in hand.

  Smoke oozed from the chimney and the window sills. There was no brush surrounding the perimeter of the house. No trees overhanging. The house would burn down but the fire wouldn’t spread.

  “Where will you go, Pani Hauk?” Nadia said.

  “I have some friends. Other squatters. They are close by. I will stay with them tonight. Tomorrow we will return and collect the bones. My friends have a root cellar, too.”

  “Can we drive you there?” Marko said.

  “No. It’s not too far down the road. Maybe there’s a flashlight in the car.”

  The trunk contained Nadia’s suitcase, bag, and two knapsacks filled with hunting paraphernalia including ponchos and canteens. Marko fished a flashlight out of one of them. He handed the babushka the flashlight and one of the knapsacks.

  “How is Adam?” the babushka said. “Does he love America?”

  “Yes,” Nadia said. “He loves America.”

  “And do Americans love him back?”

  Nadia realized that by now he’d told Johnny the truth. Whatever the details, he had to have been defending himself when he killed Valentin’s son. And now she knew why.

  “They will, babushka. They will.”

  CHAPTER 55

  JOHNNY PICTURED A woman with a rifle falling backward into water she knew to be radioactive.

  “Eva and me,” Bobby said. “We didn’t waste time. Once the woman fell in the water, we took off into the forest. We knew the rest of the hunters would be coming once they heard the shot. Because there was only one shot. But there were two of us. They’d want to know what happened. They may have had radios to communicate but she wouldn’t be able to answer. And sure enough, before we could take ten steps I heard a man’s voice shouting for us to stop. He must have been on his way to her already.”

  “Valentine’s father. That’s how you recognized him from the picture.”

  “Yes. He didn’t even raise his rifle because he was running to help his wife.”

  “How did you get out of the Zone of Exclusion?”

  “We figured they’d be expecting us to head for the scavenger trails. So we didn’t. We hiked to the main entrance instead. Last place they’d be looking for us. We climbed up a pair of trees that gave us cover but let us see the checkpoint. So we could see every vehicle that came in and out. An ambulance came flying in about half an hour after we got there. Went flying out ten minutes later. We stayed hidden until the car we saw in Pripyat left the Zone.”

  “When was that?”

  “The next day. In the afternoon. A young man and an old man.”

  “Valentine and his father,” Johnny said. “They hunted you through the night.”

  Bobby nodded. “I didn’t know their names at the time.”

  “I thought your father lived in an abandoned house in Chornobyl,” Johnny said. “Why didn’t you go there?”

  “I didn’t want to lead the hunters to him. Squatting is illegal. Squatters are criminals.”

  “They might have killed your father. What happened to Eva?”

  “She died nine months later.”

  Johnny detected the sadness in Bobby’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “She had thyroid disease,” Bobby said. “She left school early one day. She didn’t come home. Neither did Coach. Three days later Coach came back and told me to prepare for a funeral. She was gone. Sometimes it happens quickly. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye.”

  “How did Valentine find you in New York?”

  “He saw my picture in the paper and the YouTube video of my race against the Rangers in Lasker Park last year. He called me while I was with Iryna one night at her cousin’s bakery in Brighton Beach.”

  “He must have been in London. Promised his father to avenge his mother. Made the call then. How did he get your number?”

  “It’s on my Facebook page.”

  “Facebook? You didn’t hide it?”

  “Not until after he called. I’m an American. I wanted to make friends. I wanted to be like everyone else.”

  Johnny shook his head. Foolish kid. “What language did Valentine speak with you?”

  “English.”

  “Did he identify himself to you?”

  “No. All he said was that he knew me from Ukraine. That he knew who I was. Which was funny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he still called me Bobby. You’d figure if he knew who I was he’d have called me Adam. No matter. He said he’d be calling with instructions for us to meet the next day. That I was to follow those instructions to the letter. That if I didn’t or I told the police or anyone else about that call, he’d have Nadia and me killed.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What do you think? If it’s not for Nadia, I’m not here. So I did what I had to do to protect her.”

  “Which was?”

  “I followed the instructions. A man picked me up in a boat at South Street Seaport. It was starting to get dark. He looked like a fisherman. He took me to an island nearby. From the angle of his approach, it looked about one and a half kilometers long, half a kilometer wide.”

  “And this was Hart Island.”

  Bobby nodded. “I didn’t know what it was called until I got to prison. People talk
about it here. The fisherman dropped me off at one end of the island. He gave me an envelope. Said everything would be explained in the envelope. Then he took off.”

  “He have a Russian accent, this fisherman?”

  “No. He was American. He looked like a random guy. Someone for hire.”

  “What was in the envelope?”

  “A letter. It said, ‘Welcome to Hart Island, the forbidden burial ground of New York City. In the daytime, it’s off limits to everyone except the prisoners who do the burials. In the nighttime, it’s off limits to everyone. It’s a place New Yorkers can’t visit without special permission. It’s a place no one likes to talk about. Sound familiar?’ Then he told me who he was. That he’d had me in his sights, that he’d missed, and that as a result I’d killed his mother. He said only one of us was going to leave the island alive. The one who survived was to bury the other in one of the mass graves in the potter’s field. He said he was arriving at the southern end of the island at that very moment, and by the time I read his signature the game had begun.”

  “And the boat’s gone by now, right?”

  “One of them is.”

  “What does that mean? There was more than one?”

  Bobby shrugged. “As soon as I read the note, I knew Valentin had to have a boat waiting. Whether he had a man with him or not, I wasn’t sure. I was guessing not, that he was doing this alone. Out of some Cossack sense of honor, and to keep his witnesses to a minimum. But there was no way he was waiting to call someone to come pick him up if he managed to kill me. He wasn’t going to put his fate in someone else’s hands. And he wasn’t going to risk any delay. I knew I wouldn’t have. I knew there had to be a boat.”

  Bobby’s father had been a notorious con man, famous for his misdirection. If plotting was genetic, the kid had inherited his father’s insight into human behavior.

  “You had to be suspicious when you came?” Johnny said. “Did you bring any weapons? Anything at all to protect yourself?”

  “I had my screwdriver and my flashlight. I always carried my screwdriver and my flashlight. And I brought a bat. A baseball bat. Louisville Slugger.”

  “Better than nothing,” Johnny said.

  “I wouldn’t have known how to get a gun if I wanted one. It didn’t matter. I don’t like guns.”

  “So you’re alone on an island with a guy intent on killing you. He has a high powered rifle and a hunting knife. You have a screwdriver and a bat. You have no way of leaving the island except swimming. Are you a good swimmer?”

  “I don’t know how to swim. The end of the island where I got dropped off was open fields. There were a couple of monuments, but mostly it was one huge field. It turned out this is the northern end. They started the cemetery there, and they’re working their way south as they run out of room. There aren’t any headstones. Just mass, unmarked graves. But when I looked north I could see buildings and trees. And so I understood right away. I’d landed in an open field with no cover, while he was starting out with places to hide. To survive, I had to even the playing field. To even the playing field, I had to use the only advantage I had.”

  “Which was?”

  “Speed. My father once told me that most people are right handed, so when there’s a choice to be made between a left and right entrance—say, to a cinema—seventy percent of people choose the right one. Valentine’s right was my left. So I ran up the far right side of the island as fast as I could. There was a tree line and some buildings in the center of the island. I ran toward some brick buildings. I ran for about half a mile. Maybe a little more. Two and a half minutes, maybe a little less. There was no way Valentine could have been moving as quickly. No way. I knew that.”

  “The only question was whether he was playing the game fair or not.”

  “It didn’t matter. I needed to run for cover no matter what. There’s a main road that goes up and down the middle of the island. Then there’s a web of abandoned streets around. Grass growing through cracks. Just like the Zone. The first building I ran into must have been a place where they stored records. There were stacks of files. All over the place. Thousands of them. The second one was a chapel. The third one was a shoe factory. That’s where I hid.”

  “In a shoe factory?”

  “That’s what I thought it was. Turns out it was part of a woman’s psychiatric hospital. Something to keep them occupied while they did their treatment. There was a huge room filled with shoes. Huge. Every color and type of woman’s shoe you could imagine. They were piled more than a meter high. I took off my left basketball shoe and buried it in the pile far away from the door. And I put it in a place where it would have lined up if a person was hiding under the shoes.”

  “That’s why you were wearing one shoe when you showed up at the police station.”

  Bobby nodded. “I waited outside along the north side of the building, back against the wall. I could see north, east, and west. There was no way he could approach me without my seeing him. Unless he went into the building coming from the south.”

  “And you’d hear him coming.”

  “I did hear him coming. Once he went inside I could hear him moving through the shot-out window. The room with the shoes was at the back of the building. Once he was halfway in the building, I knew he’d go through the rest of it. And I knew once he saw the man’s shoe sticking out he’d spend some time lining up his shot. Then he’d have to plow his way through the shoes to see if he’d killed me. So I slipped away really quiet.”

  “Slipped away? Slipped away to where?”

  “The southern end of the island. My mission was to get past him and stay out of his line of fire. If I got past him, then I could use my speed to get to his boat.”

  “And he had a boat?”

  “Yes. A little power boat. He had it tied to a fence post on the south end shore. I took it to South Street Seaport. It had a glove box. Like a car. In the glove box was the rental agreement for the boat.”

  “Which had his name and address.”

  “It did. I took the subway to the Meatpacking District where he lives. What I’d done by escaping from Hart Island was give myself the element of surprise. And the last thing Valentine would be expecting was to run into me on the way home. So I found his apartment. I waited in a dumpster in an alley on a street that was the shortest route from the subway. Odds were high he’d have to pass it on the way home from the subway.”

  “What if he’d taken a cab?”

  “Then I would have been out of luck that night. But eventually he would have passed that dumpster. And I’m patient. I learned patience in the Zone, especially the night with the hunters. Eventually I would have gotten my chance. But I got lucky. He took the subway that night. It’s what I would have done. A cab leaves a trail. And he already did that with the two boat rentals.”

  “And then what?”

  “I surprised him. He had just enough time to pull his knife out to defend himself but then I tackled him. I used my screwdriver and that was it.”

  “So technically you pulled your screwdriver first?”

  “No. He aimed his rifle on me on Hart Island first.”

  “Good point.”

  Johnny’s conscience eased. If Victor Bodnar had convinced the witness to stretch the truth and swear that Valentine had drawn his weapon first, it was the truth in spirit.

  “What happened to the bat?” Johnny said. “The bat you took to Hart Island?”

  “I was actually hiding in the dumpster. I needed both hands to get out. To go up and over the top. There was no way I could have moved as fast as I needed to and gotten the bat out. I forgot all about it and left it there.” Bobby took a deep breath and exhaled.

  Johnny reflected on what he had just heard for a moment. “So you didn’t have a date with Iryna.”

  “No.”

  “And that’s why your only call from p
rison was to her. To tell her to back up your story you were meeting in the Meatpacking District on a date.”

  “Yes. To hide the part about Hart Island, for fear someone connected to Valentine from Russia would come after Nadia.”

  “Why would you be concerned about that? How did you know Valentine wasn’t just acting on his own?”

  “I didn’t. But when you grow up in Ukraine, you understand that powerful men work in packs. There’s never just one of them. They’re all tied together, and they all have connections to the government. So I had to be careful and assume the worst. I had to assume someone else might come after me and my family. And Nadia’s all the family I have.”

  The kid sounded sincere. His comments, heartfelt. “I’m going to do my best to keep your real identity a secret,” Johnny said. “Nadia’s been digging into Valentine’s background. If she found any evidence that he was a nutcase, a reckless guy with a history of violence, that’ll help. Where’s the letter you got when you landed on Hart Island?”

  “In the Long Island Sound.”

  “Good. Let’s review the truth, or our best guess of what it was, and then what we’re going to tell the district attorney. Truth first. Valentine saw your picture or video on the Internet. Probably the Gáborik race in Lasker Park. He went to the hockey game to see you in person. He probably followed you before and knew Iryna was your girlfriend, or maybe he figured it out from Facebook. Maybe he hadn’t talked to his father yet, didn’t have the orders to avenge his mother’s death. He just went to the hockey game angry and lost his cool. Then maybe he spoke with his father on his deathbed. Maybe not. Either way, he accepted responsibility to kill you. Then things got serious. Events occurred the way you described.

  “The district attorney doesn’t need to know any of that. All he needs to know is that Valentine hit on Iryna, she told him to take a hike, and he got pissed off. She said number four was her boyfriend, and he confronted you after the game. Why? Because he had that kind of personality. He called you from London and said he would hurt your loved ones if you didn’t agree to meet. You met outside his apartment. He pulled a knife, things got ugly. That part is true, mind you. We won’t get into any of the rest unless it becomes necessary. I’ll bet his boat rentals were cash transactions. He might have had to show ID but there’s no credit card record. No one’s going to find out about them unless they go to the docks looking for them.”