Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (12 page)

Sunday, March 30, 2003

I
woke up the day after the
show
at Chaplain’s and still felt off. My mind was foggy as if I’d drank too much. I remembered going to Chaplain’s, seeing Fizz and the horrible show, but the whole thing had a haze to it. I had images of the girl smiling and laughing in my head, but I couldn’t quite place them in the timeline of the evening.

Had she come out before and said something to the crowd? Greeted us in the doorway? I wasn’t sure. But that sense of her comradery was infectious. She knew it was all a game and was happy to play.
She asked for it. She enjoyed it
. Don’t let her acting fool you.

I went to the bar early. I’d learned that the best way to counteract a hangover was to simply start drinking again. When I walked into Blackberry Hill, Peaches wasn’t behind the bar. An open doorway cast cold gray light across the bartop, making it shine. I stood there, looking around the place, at a loss as to what to do with myself. Then the door was darkened by a plump figure and Peaches appeared, carrying a case of beer. Behind him, a man with a dolly pushed in more cases stacked high.

“Just unloading the truck,” Peaches called when he saw me. “You can help yourself if you like, or give me five.”

I decided to wait. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to pour myself a drink. But it felt wrong stepping behind the man’s bar. This was Peaches’ place.

Peaches grinned when he saw me and I didn’t have a drink in hand. “Sorry for the wait, B. You’re here early.”

“I was dreaming about your beer,” I said. “It couldn’t wait. Besides, anything with the word blackberry in it is suitable for breakfast, right?”

He pulled a mug from the cooler and opened the tap. “Darn right.”

I spent the next two hours sipping beer and trying to clear my head. I ordered a basket of French fries from the kitchen and watched the baseball preseason stuff on the large TV overhead.

I was dragging the last of the fries through a mound of ketchup when a man sat down beside me, the same man from the night before. “Shit.”

“Don’t run off just yet,” he said.

I didn’t bother to tell him that I didn’t have it in me to run anywhere. Again, I wondered about the scars on his face and jawline. A car wreck maybe? With all that glass cutting up his face? Or was he a boxer or something like that?

“I’m sorry if I pissed you off last night,” he said. “I meant no disrespect. I have nothing but admiration for guys like you.”

“Guys like me?” I grunted and washed down the salty fries with the last two inches of my beer.

“Peaches said you find people. That you’ve been looking for the ones who were swept up by The Great Panic and were never seen again.”

“Peaches needs to keep his mouth shut,” I said, just as the barkeep appeared to refill my beer. Peaches gave me a nervous, lopsided grin.

“I’m trying to say thank you,” the other man interjected.

“For what?”

“I was in the camps,” he said. “And let me tell you, no one was looking for us then.”

I stopped trying to get away from the guy and faced him. His eyes were soft. Sincere. He wasn’t lying to me for some kind of attention. There was no bravado there. No
ah, man, the shit I’ve been through
just beneath the surface, waiting for an invitation to wallow.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said because what the hell can you say when someone admits something terrible like that. “How long were you in?”

“About three years,” he said.

“That’s long enough to change a man,” Peaches chimed in. He’d been smart to keep quiet until now, giving me long enough to forgive him. But he’d made it clear that I would definitely have to be more careful as to what I shared with him.

Peaches went on. “I was locked up for just 18 months and believe me, I wasn’t the same when I came out as I was when I went in. And I was just in normal prison, you know? Not like the camps.” I’d heard Peaches’ incarceration story before. I didn’t care to hear it again. A petty drug charge and cost him almost two years of his life—and darkened his record just enough to make good employment hard to come by.

“When did you die?” I asked the other.

“1997,” he said.

I let my confusion show. “But the camps closed in 1997. How did you spend three years locked up?”

He scoffed. “Because the government always does exactly what it says it will?”

“You’re saying the camps stayed open?” My mind whirled. I thought back to the thin file folder on Sullivan. On the idea that Memphis was put on a bus and sent home but he didn’t hear from Eric—maybe because Sullivan wasn’t released?

“How many did they keep?” I asked.

“As many as they could,” the other man said and pushed his empty pint toward Peaches who filled it with a solemn face. “At first I thought they’d kept me because I didn’t have anyone waiting for me. But Peaches says your desk is packed with missing person cases. Maybe they kept whoever they could, regardless of the consequences. After all, whose door would they be able to bang on for answers? We were moved once the camps officially “disbanded” and it wasn’t like they left a trail for us to be found. Some buses went home, others didn’t.”

“Where did they send you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you think they told us where we were going?”

“Landscape?” I asked.

“Desert,” he said.

Arizona maybe, I thought. My mind swam with this information. The camps didn’t close. What if they still weren’t closed? It would certainly explain the pressure Charlie was getting from his higher-ups, but it wouldn’t explain the desperation to find Sullivan so quickly. And there was Maisie—I wasn’t over Maisie. Until I had a plan though, I might as well keep myself busy.

“Are they closed now?” I asked.

He paused. “You want my best guess? No.”

“So how did you get out?” I asked.

“They got tired of me.”

It was a lie and I knew it. But why? People lie for a lot of reasons. It could be something as simple as the fact he didn’t really know me, or trust me. Or it could be so much more than that.

I should’ve known it was so much more than that.

10 Weeks

I
drive to the cemetery again. As I pull through the gates, I see Kirk, tall, black, and bald, stepping out of the funeral home in his solemn suit, standing proud before the plantation-esque building. It rings sourly of darker times, when Kirk would’ve been little more than a butler for some arrogant white prick. He lifts his hand in a hello and I raise mine in return. I should talk to him. I’m sure Jackson will take my body here, and we should talk about that—as if the after is any of my business.

As the Impala chugs up the steep hill, an old and familiar dread twists my guts.

I’ve been avoiding my grave, I realize. As if in coming too close to this piece of earth with my name on it, the ground will split open and swallow me. As if by walking on my own grave I am asking for it, but it is more than that.

I park beneath the willow tree again and climb out. Long knotty tendrils swing in the welcome breeze as I cross the grass to the marker ahead. From my vantage point, I see Kirk’s hearse slide down the hill and out the iron gates, turning right onto the main road before disappearing.

I sink to my knees in front of the grave. The July heat is unbearable even this late in the day. The sun burns the back of my neck and a weak breeze pushes through my hair. Already I can feel the sweat trail over the skin trapped beneath my leather jacket.

Like armor, I won’t take it off.

I reach out and place a hand on the rough headstone. “Fuck, Charlie.”

I imagine the corpse in the box below—both corpses—entangled in each others’ limbs, where I so unceremoniously dumped them.

“Why did you do it?” I asked him. “Why would you ever help him?”

About ten months ago, Caldwell made his first strategic move against Jesse. A small cell of his killers, led by a man named Martin, used local prostitutes to set up fake death replacements. Jesse, believing she was doing her job and saving someone’s life, was tricked and attacked. Her head was almost fully decapitated while I was detained and questioned.

Realizing we were in trouble and in a shitty situation, I disappeared. But unless killing is the order of the day, I couldn’t work alone. So I asked two friends, two guys I trusted, to help me with my investigation.

What’s going on, Charlie?
I’d asked.
Is the FBRD corrupt? Is it someone else? We have to find out the truth.

Of course, Jim. I’ll help you. You know that.

I look up at the sky and feel the heat on my face, the back of my neck itching with sweat. My hands feel warm and swollen as I rock back on my heels.

I can still hear the way Charlie laughed, like he was out of his mind. He must’ve been to hand me over to Martin and Caldwell like that.

“Why Charlie?” I ask again and touched the granite. “I could never give Jesse or any of them up. How could you do it to me?”

I wipe sweat off my face with the back of my hand and sigh. I get up, brush the fresh cut grass off my knees and head back to the car.

I’m grateful I never told Charlie about the second boy in the desert.

Winter 2002

I
took Aziz home. His family had reported him missing two months earlier. They said he was walking the goats too close to the border in Kunar, the province of their home. When he did not return, an elder from his village went to collect the boy, but only found the goats.

I wrapped Aziz in a green military blanket and put him in the backseat of the car, sitting up like a swaddled baby.

I paid the driver 3000 Afghan Afghani, crisp red bills. “I’ll give you three more if you bring me back. Alive.”

I wore a uniform and held my assault rifle in plain sight. I did not want to scare him, but I did not want him to think he could screw me over and leave me on some hillside with the body of a dead kid either.

“I understand,” he said with enough conviction that I believed he did.

We drove away from the base out to the hills. You would imagine desert, I’m sure, but these hills were green. The road was narrow and steep, but the car got us to the village where Aziz lived.

“Wait here,” I told him. His black eyes regarded me warily as I climbed out and retrieved Aziz from the backseat.

I carried the swaddled boy into the village, toward a group of young kids wearing sky blue tunics, kicking a ball between them. I didn’t want them to see Aziz, so when I saw an elderly man propped against the building, one hand clutching a staff as he watched the children play, I went to this man instead.

Without showing him the stiff child in my arms I said, “Aziz Yusufzai.” I didn’t know much Arabic and really hoped I was pronouncing the name right.

The man used the staff to pull himself up to his full height which was still a good head and shoulders beneath my own. He reached out and placed a shaking hand on the scratchy army blanket.

When his hand cupped the boy’s head, his face crumpled and a low wail came from his throat.

Immediately, faces appeared in every door and window. The children stopped playing and turned. Women came toward us from the houses.

The man with the staff tried to pull Aziz from my arms and I had to lower him to the ground so that he wouldn’t be dropped.

A woman fell on Aziz, tearing at the blanket with such a ferocity that I was forced back by the growing crowd. More and more hands were on his little body, unwrapping him with a wild desperation.

When his face was finally uncovered, the noise became unbearable. Women screamed as if being gutted alive. Children began to cry and several men beat their chests in fury.

Someone grabbed onto me. The man with the staff, I realized, pulled me through a dark door deep into a house. We went through room after room until arriving at last in a shadowed inner chamber. He motioned for me to wait.

When I kneeled on the dirt, my hands resigned to my knees, he seemed satisfied.

I was left alone with the gray shadows stretching along the terracotta.

I don’t know how long I waited. The room only grew darker as the cries outside died away. I imagined Aziz being carried away to another room and laid lovingly on a floor where his father and mother would place their hands on his cold body.

I had been crying when someone finally came back. It was three men. The man with the staff was among them, an elder maybe, as all these tribes seemed to have them. The other two men were much younger, perhaps sons, one tall and the other short.

“I speak for my brother,” the smallest of the three said. His accent was thick but I’d heard worse. “What has happened to his son? How did you find us?”

I looked at the man in front of me. His eyes were red and his hair disheveled in a way that looked as if he’d been tearing it out. Looking into his eyes, I told him in English, of the first time I saw Aziz, wandering toward the base with the dummy vest strapped to his chest. I left no detail out, not even the fact that the vest was unarmed and his son died for nothing. The brother translated everything in Arabic spoken softly over my own, the music of the language almost hypnotic.

When I finished, I pulled my assault rifle from my back where it had been resting.

All three men stepped back, but I turned the rifle around and offered it to the father.

“Please,” I told him, looking up at him from where I kneeled. “For Aziz.”

He didn’t move to take the gun.

“Come on.” I screamed and shook the gun. “I killed your boy. Do it.”

The shorter and perhaps younger brother spoke over me again. He said so many words that the translation couldn’t have been direct.

When the father refused to take the gun a second time, I laid it on the floor at his feet and waited. I began to cry and did not hear them leave.

I waited there through most of the night until the sun came again. Someone had brought a plate of food but I didn’t eat it. I probably added insult to injury on that one, but I just didn’t have it in me to take anything from this family.

Hours passed and they didn’t return.

They didn’t want my life, but I had nothing else to give. So I left. I pulled myself up, stiff from kneeling all that time and headed back to the car. When I stepped out of the house, I saw no one. I heard a low, mournful hymn coming from somewhere and I saw firelight through one of the windows, but no faces.

I was surprised to find the driver was still there on the hill where I’d left him.

I immediately gave him several more crisp red bills from the pockets of my fatigues. “How long have I been here?”

“Eight hours,” he said and accepted the money.

“Why did you wait?”

“They pay me to wait,” he said. I climbed into the car but he didn’t drive.

“Let’s go,” I told him, thinking he was confused about my intentions.

“They pay me to wait,” he said again, pointing over the dashboard into the road ahead. At first I didn’t see anyone, but then two shapes, and a smaller third, emerged from the shadows.

I climbed out of the car, recognizing the smaller brother and the elder, probably their father. But I had not recognized this boy, maybe a year or two younger than Aziz.

“You must take him,” the brother said.

“Excuse me?” I stepped back as if he’d swung at me.

“His name is Aaquel and he is a good and smart boy. Take him with you.”

Anger rose fast and hot from my chest. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you really think you should trust me with another one of your children?”

The man with the staff asked something and the brother rapidly translated. Nodding, the old man replied in Arabic.

“He will be safe with you,” the brother translated. “You must take him.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t do that.”

Again the brother translated to the elder who replied.

“You would give your life, but not your protection?” the brother said.

“It isn’t a matter of protection. I don’t know what you’re thinking. It’s no better out there.” I jabbed a finger at the road stretching out behind the car. “The whole world is shit.”

Again the fevered Arabic translation was exchanged. The old man leaning on his staff gripped it more tightly. I turned to leave and he grabbed onto me.

His eyes met mine and I saw in the rising sunlight the blue ring of blindness eating at his vision. He spoke in soft, tremulous Arabic.

The brother translated. “The Taliban they come to our villages and they take our children. They feed false promises and anger to their hearts. They lead our boys away and make them soldiers. Soldiers like you.”

He released me but he kept talking.

“If the boys do not come willingly, they are taken. One year, maybe two and they will take Aaquel and we will only pray another good man will bring his body home.”

“Maybe the war will be over by then,” I said.

The old man smiled, a patient and sad smile, like the one you’d give a child who can’t comprehend something.

“The war never ends,” translated the brother. “A soldier should know that.”

I looked down at the boy for the first time. He was fairer than Aziz, pretty like a little girl, his hair curling by his ears and his eyelashes thick and dark. He had the pout of a starlet, those brown eyes as black as the tunic he wore.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” I said. “I don’t know how to help you.”

And I realized it was a sad fucking truth. I could kill their children and I could pay for that mistake with my life—but anything else—I had no clue.

“Get him out of the country. Educate him. He needs English and an occupation. See that he lives to be a man.”

I looked out over the horizon and saw the first fiery strip of sun there. I stared at the boy. He did not look any happier about this proposal than I did.

“Please take him,” the brother said again, as the old man’s hand shook against my arm.

“Get your things,” I said. I looked at the boy again. “I’ll be in the car.”

The men gave the boy rushed instructions in Arabic and touched his head in turn as if blessing him. He already had his things I realized, when he hefted a sack up onto his shoulders and then climbed into the backseat of the car.

“Thank you,” the brother translated and the elder touched his forehead.

“This is a mistake,” I said and I climbed into the car. The driver finally started to obey me again, reversing the subcompact and churning up dust around us. Both men stayed in the road and watched us go.

We travelled to the border in silence. The driver was blessedly quiet the entire ride, though I know he must have heard and understood more of that bizarre conversation than I did. If he had questions, he knew better than to ask them. Maybe he thought his silence would be rewarded with more crisp red bills.

The boy did not speak either. I watched him in the little mirror on the back of the visor as he rolled his window up and down. The wind blew back his curls and when dust swirled into the car, he rolled it up again.

The driver stopped in Khost as I instructed. I paid him more money than his time was worth and he took it.

We watched the driver disappear into the clotted streets before I headed toward the hotel. Call me a paranoid bastard, but the driver didn’t need to know where we were heading.

I told Aaquel to wait outside as I went into a hotel and got a room. I also asked to make a phone call, doing so with one eye on the boy with a pack slung over his shoulder.

Once I put the boy in the room, I told him to lock it behind me and open it for no one. I twisted the lock a few times, stepping in and out, hoping he understood. Then I went back out into the throngs of people and found a market where I could buy enough food and snacks to hold us until my contact came through.

Even after I returned with food, Aaquel wouldn’t talk to me.

“How old are you?”

“Do you want to watch TV?”

“Does your mother know that your grandfather gave you away?”

All my questions received no reply.

He fell asleep sitting upright, still wearing his tunic, with his little sack clutched to his chest as if I might steal it. I stayed awake through the night until a rough knock came at the door the next morning. I checked the window before opening.

“Brinkley,” Rakesh called out, his boisterous laugh followed him into the room. He wore a white shirt and pants, sunglasses hiding his eyes. “It has been a long time, my friend. When you called, I was so surprised.”

The boy in the bed sat up, watching us.

“Oh he is pretty,” Rakesh exclaimed, grinning at the boy. “It is good that you give him to me. If we close our eyes one minute, he will be a bacha bazi the next.”

I pulled my wallet from my pocket and handed the remaining cash over to Rakesh.

“No need, my friend,” the man said, pushing the dollars away.

“Just take it,” I told him. “In case he wants or needs something. Hell, in case you have to pay to keep someone’s mouth shut. I’ll give you more when we meet in New Delhi.”

Rakesh grumbled but took the cash as I knew he would. I may have saved his life in Marrakesh, but he liked money as much as the next man.

“OK,” Rakesh said and waved to the boy. “Let’s hit the road. We have a long way to go.”

When the boy didn’t respond, Rakesh spoke again in Arabic. The next thing I knew, little fists pummeled my back and side.

“Hey, hey,” I said, trying to snatch the hands furiously pounding me. “What the hell?”

“You sell me,” he said. “You lie and you sell me.”

“Oh he does speak,” Rakesh said, laughing.

I grabbed ahold of his hands and forced him to stop hitting me. “Stop. Stop.”

He tried to wrench away but I held him tight. “You lie and you sell me.”

“Do you understand English?” I asked him. When he didn’t reply I tried again, “Rakesh, can you translate?”

“Sure thing, boss,” he said, amused. “But in my country, we just whop these upside the head and move on with it.” Rakesh loved American movies and did not always use the expressions he learned from them correctly.

“Humor me,” I told him, then I turned to the boy. “I am not selling you. I know it looks that way because there’s money and he is taking you away, but that isn’t what’s happening. He is my friend. I trust him to take care of you. Do you know the word trust?”