The Binding

by E. Z. Rinsky

  I leave the window. Tread over bags spewing T-shirts and city maps. The walls in here are orange and brown with water damage. The wood of the bunk beds is warped and moldy. Faintly salty smell of urine and strong disinfectants.

  This place is about as low as you can go, which makes it even more surprising that one of my bunk mates left his laptop case on his bed, concealed halfheartedly by a thin yellowing sheet. Does this kid think the simple fact that we’re sharing a room in a hostel is enough to foster mutual trust? Does he not realize that the only requirement for a bed here is a face and the same quantity of Hungarian Monopoly money that buys two vacuum-packed cheese and eggplant sandwiches? Indeed, this kid would probably wet himself if he knew he was sharing a dorm room with me—a suspected murderer on Interpol’s watch list. Based on the smell in here, maybe he was tipped off last night.

  Nobody is in the hall. I enter the bathroom and flip on the lights. Take a deep breath of mildew. Sweet privacy in here, finally. Coed bathrooms, much like the fugitive life, aren’t nearly as exciting as they sound. Freezing, cloudy water gurgles from the rusty spigot. I splash some water on my face. As has become a near daily ritual, I inspect my beard in the mirror and vow to buy a razor today on the way to Voci. It won’t happen.

  I steal a squeeze of toothpaste from someone else’s tube, and am brushing my teeth halfheartedly when the best part of my day ends abruptly: The few moments before I start worrying about my daughter.

  And now I’m back to thinking about how stilted our last phone call was; me consulting the notes I’d prepared, worried (justifiably it turns out) that another call might alienate her even further. Me refusing to tell her where I was—to protect her—then asking about school as if there’s no outrageous subtext to this conversation. Hanging up after five minutes sweating and shivering. Sadie’s getting old enough to question whether Dad is just a serious fuck-up; whether it might be in her best interests to cut her losses now and stop answering my monthly scripted calls.

  That was three months ago, and I haven’t dared call her since.

  The toothbrush is dangling from my mouth, the head clenched between my teeth like leather during an old-time amputation. I spit a wad of toothpaste foam. Some gets caught in my beard.

  My eyes feel droopy. I already want to go back to sleep. Sleep another few hours, pass another day. My brain again replays my conversation with Sadie, as it surely will dozens of times today, until I shut it up with booze. The last few years have been like sitting on a lounge chair that’s resting on a tar pit. Can’t feel the imperceptible changes day to day, but every time I bother to put down my Pilsner and look over the side I see I’ve sunk a little bit deeper.

  That’s the worst part. Being aware that my mind is fogging over, underperforming, and not doing anything about it. Used to be that picking up and moving hostels or cities would excite me a little bit, but now the routine is a well-worn groove. Still, assuming self-preservation remains a priority—that there’s any self still worth preserving—I gotta force myself to move periodically. And I’ve already been in this hostel for six weeks, and Budapest for ten months, which is definitely too long.

  I walk back to the dorm room, only now noticing how much it absolutely reeks of unwashed man. I’m sure I deserve at least a little credit for that.

  I pull my Velcro fanny pack out from under my pillow and count how much money I have left. Two thousand dollars, a little over a thousand Euros and about a hundred thousand in Hungarian funny money, which is only worth about three hundred bucks. Getting down there. I’ve probably got four more months before I have to do something drastic.

  I pull on my only pair of jeans, a Pink Floyd T-shirt on its last legs and clip my money belt around my waist.

  Voci for a few hours, then I’ll come back here, pack and go to the train station.

  The bunk across from mine has a few cans of cheap lager half hidden behind a suitcase. I grab two and head out.

  Per routine, I stroll around the city for a few hours before Voci. I tell myself it’s for exercise, but really it’s because Voci doesn’t open until six. I’ve already done all the museums; spent a few hours in each pretending like I was enjoying myself, picturing myself at some cocktail party a decade from now, recalling the entire Greta case and ensuing years for a rapt crowd of beautiful women. And when the women inevitably ask what Frank Lamb, professional hero, did in Europe, as he was hiding from the law, I’ll casually explain that I actually took the time to really get to know art.

  I’d divide my days between modern and classical, usually modern in the morning because it can be so stimulating that I find sleeping after it difficult. I guess I just figured . . . as long as I’m here in Europe, I should make the most of it, you know? Really be the best person I can be . . .

  I descend the concrete steps on the Pest side of the Megyeri bridge, and find a shadowy place to add a few ounces of Lamb-processed lager to the great blue Danube.

  The shallow climb back to the bridge leaves me embarrassingly out of breath. I pull my knockoff Ray-Bans down over my eyes and start the march over the bridge. A lot of families out; kids on summer break I guess. Some Scroogey part of me wishes for a spontaneous heavy rain, driving all these happy nuclear families indoors, where they can’t remind me how far I am from being a healthy, productive member of society.

  Instead the sun has no choice but to reluctantly bathe me in the warmth and light meant for everybody else. Parents chide kids spitting over the side of the bridge into the river. A young couple, of one mind, stops walking and embraces.

  I wish I’d taken three beers.

  I arrive at Voci ten minutes before it opens, and sit on a bench across the street. Someone left the sports page and I pick it up and pretend to read. I consider that since Hungarian uses more or less the same alphabet as English, I’ve always assumed that I knew how the words on the page sounded, even though I couldn’t understand them. But what if a Hungarian T sounds like an English B? Or some sound that doesn’t even exist in English? Hell, for all I know this newspaper is total gibberish, a joke that only locals are in on, and every time they see some schmuck pretending to read they elbow each other knowingly and snigger.

  That’s some seriously high level paranoia, Frank.

  I wait another couple minutes, so I’m not the first one into Voci, and then drop the paper and cross the street. Spirits slightly aloft with the promise of distraction. Comfort washes over me as I push through the heavy oak doors. Return to the womb type sensation. Familiar musk of tobacco, old leather and spilled beer.

  The gorgeous waitress who’s here every day besides Saturday smiles at me.

  “Hi Ben, welcome, yes,” she says with a thick accent, the kind that used to make my heart flutter. Her hair is so black that it’s almost tinged blue.

  “Hi Ruth.” I smile weakly, appreciating her pretending I don’t smell awful from the walk over here.

  “One here for you now,” she says, pointing to a balding septuagenarian, head pecked with liver spots, sitting across from a backgammon board expectantly. I think we’ve played before, but I can’t remember his name or his skill level.

  “Thanks,” I say, sitting down across from the man. He left me the booth, so I get to watch Ruth over his shoulder as we play.

  “Ötszáz frankot pontonként,” the guy says, half to himself, as he arranges the pieces. He’s got enough ear hair to knit a small blanket.

  “Angol?” I reply. “English?”

  He snorts and picks something out of his eye.

  “One point five hundred forints,” he says.

  “Right, right. Sorry,” I respond. Pretty standard stakes.

  “Hmf.”

  He doesn’t make eye contact with me once. Joylessly shakes his dice, rolls and moves. Collects his dice and readies himself for his next roll.

  I move. Ruth brings me an espresso and double vodka without me asking, and grins in a way that’s probably supposed to be flirtatious. Then swivels and retreats to the bar, hips
seemingly swaying on their own accord, like they’re their own distinct organism.

  So why don’t I feel anything?

  This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this. If I’m being objective, she’s absolutely gorgeous. Her blue eyes are the kind that inspire men to write symphonies. Her skin is like cream. But I only seem capable of appreciating her beauty in an abstract way. I feel nothing in my flesh, and this has increasingly concerned me.

  “Eh?” my opponent grunts with impatience, as he studies his yellow fingernails.

  “Sorry,” I say, and roll.

  We play for two hours or so. He’s an automaton. Only time he betrays any emotional investment whatsoever is when I get outrageously lucky. He’s up a few thousand francs when he looks at me for the first time. We’re in the midgame, and he’s slightly ahead. It’s my turn to roll, and I’m shaking the dice, trying to think what roll I’m hoping for.

  “Zugzwang,” he says, smiling cruelly.

  “Gesundheit,” I respond.

  “Zugzwang,” he repeats. “You have Zugzwang.”

  I squint at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “You also do chess?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Zugzwang . . . it mean every move you make . . .” He gesticulates moving pieces around. “Any move fuck you. Better not to move.”

  I stare at the board and suddenly understand what he’s saying. My current position is decent. But any move I make will compromise it, leave me horribly vulnerable. My best strategy would be to pass—to not roll at all.

  “Okay,” I say, without rolling. “Your turn then. I pass.”

  He shakes his head slowly, a yellow-toothed grin.

  “No, no. You must.” He pantomimes rolling the dice.

  I sigh, and oblige, ending up with a roll that’s particularly bad. He takes an impish glee in my reluctant move.

  “Every morning.” He smiles to me. “Every morning, another Zugzwang.”

  That’s the last time he acknowledges that I’m anything other than a backgammon piñata filled with Hungarian currency. We play another half hour. Eventually, after handing me a particularly bad beat down, he wordlessly collects his cash and tobacco pouch, sidles out of the booth and out the door.

  I linger in the warm depression in the booth my ass has been working on the last couple hours. I’m four vodkas and two espressos deep; about halfway toward a little fleeting bliss. I stare at Ruth, who’s grinning and tossing her hair for another customer, and feel my forehead start to burn. Lower my gaze to my hands, shaking slightly from the caffeine.

  I got exactly zero joy out of my backgammon session, and not just because I lost. Usually a game is accompanied by at least a little human interaction. But with this guy, I might as well have just played on the computer.

  I sit up straight in my seat.

  That kid’s laptop. He left his laptop lying in the dorm room.

  I haven’t checked my legal status at the library for at least a month; started getting paranoid about someone looking over my shoulder. But if that laptop is still there, I could check in private.

  I’ll check, then pack and leave right away, just on the off chance it raises red flags on the hostel’s IP address.

  I pay, ignore Ruth’s wave good-bye, and half jog past glitzy casinos, goulash depots, ads for bathhouses, currency exchanges . . . back over the bridge.

  It’s only eight thirty. The kids might still be out partying.

  I force a smile to the pimply girl at the hostel’s check-in desk, and in a frenzy I’m up the stairs and into the dorm room. Looks exactly as I left it this afternoon, including the carelessly concealed laptop. The door doesn’t lock, so I throw a few of someone’s bags in front of it, just to give me enough notice.

  I pull the laptop out of its case and open it. I grin. Login doesn’t require a password. Only bad news is everything is in French, but I find a browser easily enough. I lick my dry lips. This feels exactly like sitting down against a very good backgammon player, for very high stakes.

  First I Google “Frank Lamb Interpol Wanted.”

  My heart sinks. I’m still there, one of about 300 American fugitives on the watch list. There’s no good reason why that would change; no statute of limitations on shooting a woman to death in an NYC hotel room.

  Even if she was a serial killer who kidnapped your daughter and—

  I stop myself before running—for the thousandth time—through the events of that night five years ago. I know how that ends: Me pounding vodka until my eyes tear up, blacking out until I come to on the floor of the shower, some brave hostel employee kneeling beside my whimpering form, politely explaining that I’m going to have to check out.

  My driver’s license photo on the Interpol site looks as convincingly criminal as ever; easy to mistake that morning’s fury at the incompetence of the Brooklyn DMV for murderous intent. Only good news is that the site still says that I’m thought to be in France.

  I Google “NYC Murder Tower Hotel 32nd floor.”

  Old NY Post article I’ve read countless times. The details are correct, but taken—if I do say so myself—somewhat out of context. Yes, I shot Greta Kanter three times in the chest in a hotel room. They have a blurry picture of my face from the hotel hallway to prove it. And yes, I boarded a flight to Paris a few hours later with my daughter. But the Post gets the motive wrong. They speculate it was drug-related. In fact, Greta Kanter had hired me a few weeks before. Offered me 350k dollars to find a cassette tape for her. And when my partner and I weren’t finding it fast enough, she decided to kidnap my daughter to speed things up. Throw in the fact that it seems pretty clear she murdered at least two people, and that she was practically pleading for me to pull a Kevorkian in that hotel room, and I think my actions are a little more understandable.

  I briefly flirt with the idea of Googling Sadie’s name, but refrain just in case these searches are enough to draw Budapest’s finest to this room. I can’t imagine they would be, but am not confident enough in my knowledge of Internet surveillance to draw even the slightest attention to my daughter.

  I Google “Frank Lamb Cassette Tape.” Want to know if anybody’s figured out the true nature of that tape, or that it’s in my possession.

  I raise an eyebrow. Here’s something new. I glance at the door then back to the laptop. It’s a real amateurish site. behindthecurtain.com. A sidebar reveals that older articles are rather inconsistent in their reputability. It’s some kind of public forum that allows anybody to upload their stuff. Earlier entries include an “exposé” on a military complex in Alaska that can control the weather, a detailed explanation of how 9/11 was both perpetrated by the Bush administration and predicted by the Bible, and several articles concerning extraterrestrial life. But there’s also some stuff that sounds at least potentially plausible. Timothy McVeigh’s ties to a well-respected Cardinal in the Catholic Church; a fuzzy video of what might be Vladimir Putin receiving fellatio; hacked email accounts of politicians.

  The relevant entry was posted about four months ago (did I not Google “cassette tape” last time?), and was submitted by a journalist from a small-time online pub—the intro explains that his employer refused to print his “revelatory true crime piece” for fear of “ruffling feathers.”

  His investigation is the first to tie some things together about the tape. He figured out that I and an as-yet-unidentified partner were in Beulah, Colorado, just a few days before I killed Greta in New York. He speculated—correctly—that we were asking questions about the Beulah Twelve—the group that ritually sacrificed a kid and then disappeared. And he also caught up with enough people we’d badgered along the way to learn that we were after “some kind of tape that may explain why those twelve men became satanic murderers overnight.”

  But for every detail he nailed, he got at least three completely wrong. And then, to my great relief, the whole thing goes off the rails by the end as he tries to extrapolate meaning from various anagrams of “Beulah,” “S
atan” and “Tape” and combinations thereof.

  I’ve been searching and reading for almost an hour. Pushing my luck. And now I’m locked into leaving tonight; if anybody out there still cares about finding me, this sequence of searches will surely raise some eyebrows.

  I’m about to close the laptop when I remember there’s one more place to check. I don’t like to log into my old email account—it seems like a sure tip-off of my identity—but it’s really the only way to get in touch with me. And lately I’ve been entertaining the wholly irrational fantasy of receiving an email from Helen Langdon, ex-flame and NYPD Detective, both offering me hope for exoneration and a couch to crash on.

  And since I’ve decided to leave tonight anyway . . .

  Before I can really think through the consequences, I log into my email for the first time since arriving in Budapest.

  Fifteen new emails in ten months. I’d be depressed if I wasn’t so nervous. They’re all trash. Promotions. Except one. From Leonard Francis. The alias of Courtney Lavagnino, my partner from the Greta case.

  Fingers trembling, I open it. It says simply:

  We’re in the same city. I want to talk but can’t find you. Nice work. Every night from 9–10 I’ll be in the lobby of the hotel named after the spot where we once enjoyed some repulsive nachos. If you don’t show by July 15 I’ll try to find you wherever you go next.

  My first thought is that I have no idea what month it is now. The French kid’s laptop says it’s July 11th.

  My second thought is that this could quite conceivably be a trap. They found out that Courtney was an accomplice to the sundry crimes committed five years ago, but they’ll let him walk if he delivers me.

  My third thought is that Courtney figured out long ago that I have the tape, and a buyer contacted him because they couldn’t find me.

  I shut the laptop and put it back in its sleeve. It’s nine fifteen. Within five minutes I’m out the front door of the hostel, duffel bag containing all my worldly possessions on my shoulder. I don’t even have to rush to make it to the Ritz-Carlton Budapest before ten.