Fire in the Blood Read online

  “How long you staying?” said Denis, turning his attention to a computer.

  “Not sure yet,” said Coop.

  “Rates are hourly, nightly, or weekly.”

  “Just tonight.”

  “Cool. That’ll be a buck ten.”

  “One hundred and ten dollars?”

  “And there’s no room service,” said Denis. “You gotta clean up after yourself. That cool?”

  The room smelled like sweat and poisonous chemicals, with a bed squeezed between four peeling walls and a single window. Investigating the bathroom, Coop found a weird scene: a dried-out bunch of centipedes on the floor of the shower, some still squirming, all coiled around a little black cylinder.

  Coop used the room phone to call downstairs. “There’s a fuck-ton of dead bugs in my shower.”

  “Sorry man, forgot to mention,” said Denis. “What you want to do is take out the poison, let the shower run for a bit. Just remember to throw the canister back when you’re done. See, they’re attracted to the moisture.”

  Coop unpacked his gear. Then sat for a while in the tiny room. He took out his wallet, a folding camo pouch he’d picked up at Jump School, and spread it open. Hidden under the laminated ID window was a deteriorated slip of paper, which Coop gently unfolded.

  He’d acquired the business card during Basic at Fort Benning, back in 2000. One night, after final formation, his drill sergeant had informed the company that an “old hippie” had been caught on post distributing subversive literature to recruits. Even though no one from Charlie had seen or talked to the man, the drill sergeant seemed personally insulted.

  “No need to be secret squirrels about it, men. You want to ‘know your rights,’ here you go,” he said, and slapped down a big stack of cards on the fireguard table. Then he’d left and turned out the barracks lights. By morning the cards were still untouched. Later, while doing a pre-inspection cleaning of the barracks, Coop spotted the cards in a trashcan, mixed among MRE bags and crumpled letters and empty cans of Gold Bond powder. On impulse he decided to snag one, a clandestine treasure, and for the last three years the card had remained in his wallet, tucked behind his ID card.

  The card said: Military Legal Assistance Center: Know Your Rights, followed by an 800 number. Now, sitting on the edge of his bed in a hotel room outside LaGuardia Airport, Coop picked up the phone and dialed.

  It rang twice before someone answered.

  “Legal Assistance, this is Jackie,” said a woman’s voice, surprisingly young-sounding.

  “Hi,” said Coop, caught off guard. He’d expected some kind of automated system. “Um, I had some questions.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” she said. “First off, can you tell me if you’re military, or calling on someone’s behalf?”

  “I’m Army.”

  “Great, that answers my next question—hang on.”

  Coop heard the clicking of a keyboard.

  “Are you taking notes?” said Coop. “I don’t want a record of this.”

  “Relax, it’s confidential,” said Jackie, in a brisk tone that Coop felt bordered on the dismissive. “So what’s going on?”

  Coop hesitated.

  “Still there?” said Jackie.

  “Yeah,” said Coop. “I had questions about being someplace I’m not supposed to be.”

  “Did you miss a major troop movement?” said Jackie.

  “No, it was just a transitional thing. I was waiting for orders, but I left before getting them.”

  “Got it.” Coop heard more clicking. “How long have you been absent without leave?”

  “Whoa, hang on,” said Coop. He stood up from the bed. “I thought that was only if you’re gone more than forty-eight hours.”

  “False,” said Jackie.

  “What?”

  “That’s false. You’ve been given bad information. A service member can be designated AWOL as soon as they abandon their duty station.”

  “I didn’t abandon…that can’t be true,” said Coop. “We had this one guy who was gone for a whole weekend—”

  “So here’s the confusion,” said Jackie, cutting him off. “A lot of this is under your commander’s discretion. But technically, based on what you’re telling me, you are in fact AWOL and you could be prosecuted accordingly.”

  No sympathy in her voice, barely a professional consolation. Coop had assumed these people were on his side.

  “Okay,” said Coop, his head racing. “Now listen, are you a hundred percent sure about that? I mean, have you dealt with other cases—”

  “Look man, I’m an L-3 at Berkeley,” said Jackie. “Want me to quote you the UCMJ?”

  Coop whipped the phone cord over the bed so he could pace the room. Jesus, he thought, I’m AWOL. A designation reserved for shitbags, pogues, and shammers, the Army’s lowest forms of life.

  “Motherfucking Moko,” Coop whispered.

  “What’s that now?” said Jackie.

  “Nothing.”

  “So how long have you been gone?” said Jackie.

  “Just since yesterday. And I’ll be back tomorrow, but here’s the thing,” said Coop, “see the paperwork for my leave got all fucked up—”

  “I’m sorry, but you don’t have to convince me. It’s up to your commander’s discretion, but you should know he could put you in for an Article 15, or even go for a court-martial.”

  Coop lowered his head, feeling a surge of nervous rage, the legal clusterfuck only highlighting the larger, cosmic betrayal of Kay’s vanishing.

  “Can I ask something?” said Jackie. “What’s so important you’d go AWOL for seventy-two hours?”

  “My wife’s funeral,” said Coop, and before Jackie could respond, he marched across the room and slammed down the receiver.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kosta sat at his kitchen table watching a kid named Edi peel surgical tape from a mummified canister. Edi was one of Luzhim’s runners, another migrant growing up soft under the old man’s protective wing. The kid worked at a slow, methodical pace, a cigarette pinned between his lips, brow knitted with concentration.

  “You’re not done yet?” It made Kosta nervous to have anyone in the duplex.

  “I like your watch,” said Edi as he tugged away another layer.

  The property belonged to Luzhim, but the old man had invited Kosta to stay here, rent free, ever since arranging for his emigration from Albania. Only one condition: the property should never be used for storing product, weapons, or anything else that might attract attention. Which made it stressful, having one of Luzhim’s kids here when just down the hall Kosta was keeping a prisoner.

  During the chaos following the accident, when they’d hit the girl, this was first safe place Kosta had thought of to bring Sean. They’d put him in a spare room and kept the kid sedated, feeding him a steady dose of Olanzapine wafers.

  And now Edi had arrived at Kosta’s door, saying Luzhim wanted to talk. All the way from his business trip in Macedonia, a rare occurrence. Meaning it was something important. But first Kosta would have to play the old man’s spy games.

  Finally Edi made it through the last layer of tape. He eased the blade around the rim of what appeared to be an old rusted coffee tin, and extended it toward Kosta. The tin was packed full of small brown paper envelopes.

  “We’re supposed to close our eyes,” said Edi.

  Kosta sighed and stuck his fingers into the tin, snagging an envelope and opening it while Edi dutifully looked away.

  There were two cards inside the envelope. The first had the words “Belmont Tobacco” carefully handwritten on it. The second card Kosta pulled out was cut from heavy black stock, with the words Crypto Dial embossed over a skeleton key logo. Under the key was a long series of numbers.

  “The greatest method of countersurveillance is u
npredictability,” Luzhim liked to say, though sometimes Kosta wondered if this was more about superstition than tradecraft. Putting the two cards in his pocket, he rose to get his coat.

  “You mind?” said Edi, holding up the cigarette.

  “Please,” said Kosta, through his teeth. He jerked open the window over the sink and waited as Edi took a last, measured drag of his cigarette, then dropped the ember into the tin of paper, setting it alight.

  * * *

  —

  An ancient Dominican man sat in the front room of Belmont Tobacco, rolling cigars on a rolltop desk. He had an empty tip jar on the table in front of him, along with several ribbon-wrapped bundles of torpedoes. The man didn’t look up from his work as Kosta walked past him toward the back of the shop, into an empty lounge with a tiled floor, a few scattered tables and chairs, and a pay phone.

  Now Kosta entered the string of digits from the Crypto Dial card and waited, listening to clicks and beeps.

  His eyes flicked around the room while he waited for a connection. The floor and walls of the lounge were decorated in a slightly crooked mosaic, the kind one saw throughout the older institutions of Arthur Avenue. As Luzhim had once explained, these artworks were built in the early 1900s by Italian immigrants, workers who had tunneled the original subway lines. The men had been prisoners of the padroni bosses, an arrangement of municipal serfdom (which, according to Luzhim, still existed in America, though in slightly modified form), and as a small rebellion against the killing conditions and low wages, these Italians would bring home materials from their underground worksites, smuggling a few precious tiles at a time. And over many years, sometimes even generations, they managed to assemble these complex mosaics, illuminating their homes with scraps of stolen marble.

  While he waited for the connection, Kosta wondered if there had been an agenda behind this parable; if Luzhim’s stories of the slow, plodding climb of fellow immigrants were in fact another method for him to assert his authority, each tidbit of knowledge designed in some way to remind Kosta of his station.

  Without warning Luzhim joined the call, his voice clawing through the payphone static. “Have you seen the newspaper?” he said.

  Not even a hello, and fuck, Kosta realized, he’d forgotten to check the obituaries.

  “Yes, I saw,” said Kosta.

  “Good, good,” said Luzhim. His tone sounded urgent. “So you know what we need to do?”

  “Well…” Kosta faltered. “Yes, I had an idea, but then I thought, better to ask you first. To be sure.”

  “Obviously you need to say goodbye to your associate,” said Luzhim. “Immediately.”

  “Okay, sure, that’s what I figured,” Kosta improvised.

  The old man wanted him to kill Sean. What Kosta didn’t understand was why.

  “So the family, you recognized them?” said Luzhim.

  Kosta didn’t respond. He was staring across the lounge, where crumpled beneath one of the tables he’d spotted a gray sheaf of newsprint.

  “What?” said Kosta. “I think the connection is bad.” Gently he left the receiver to hang, then quickly crossed the room and snatched up the newspaper.

  “Hello?” Luzhim was saying, when he picked up the receiver again.

  “Okay, it’s better now,” said Kosta, flipping through the soiled pages. “I hear you. You were telling me about the family?”

  Kosta rapidly scanned each headline, trying to make sense of the paper’s order.

  Luzhim was quiet on the other end.

  “Hello?” said Kosta.

  “Is something the matter?” said Luzhim, his voice careful now. A sharpness of suspicion.

  “All good,” Kosta murmured. He had found the article. Not even an obituary, the girl’s death had made the news.

  Bronx Hit-and-Run Kills Daughter of Prominent Banking Family

  Katherine Bellante, a 24-year-old social worker and daughter of Elizabeth Bellante, was killed in a hit-and-run incident in Tremont. Paramedics were called to the intersection of Valentine Ave. and E. 177th St. at roughly 7:20 a.m. She was pronounced dead at Montefiore Medical Center. The vehicle and driver have not been identified. Police are urging anyone with information about this incident to contact the NYPD’s Bronx Traffic Division immediately.

  “The family,” said Kosta. He spoke softly and deliberately, gripping the paper in front of him, his head awash. “You were telling me about the girl’s family.”

  Another long pause on the line. Finally Luzhim spoke.

  “It’s like the Falconaras, Kosta. The Falconaras. You understand?”

  “Yes,” said Kosta, though he didn’t. The name registered as something from before; from Albania, during the time of the uprising.

  “Don’t waste any time,” said Luzhim. “And stay low. We’ll talk more when I get back.”

  Kosta nodded to himself, his mind working.

  “When do you get back?” he asked. Too late. Luzhim was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sean waited in the low darkness of his captivity. He sat on a thin pad of foam, his hands fastened in front of him with zip-ties. Not that he needed the restraints. They’d given him something, a mighty benzo, Sean guessed, and the drug had knocked him from the orbit of coherent fear and into a spinning oblivion. Which he guessed he should be thankful for, except that for the last three months he’d been sober, and now he was deep-sixing again. Waiting through the gloom for his next high.

  The building was full of sounds, uncertain and muted through the cinder-block walls. Sometimes he heard voices, a man yelling, and Sean imagined he could hear whole conversations, only to wonder if he’d invented them.

  He didn’t want to be afraid about the future because there was nothing he could do about it. At first he’d been scared the Albanians would kill him, had even tried to get up and explore the outer dimensions of his prison, trying to devise a means of escape. But the drugs and injuries compounded each other and now he rested in a half coma of misery and paralysis.

  Sean didn’t hear or see the door open. He looked over and there was Kosta. Just standing there, looking in.

  “What?” said Sean.

  Kosta didn’t respond, just kept staring. A mountainous shadow in the doorway. Even doped up, just a glimpse at Kosta’s eyes reminded Sean of those moments hanging from the fire escape, and he felt the instinct to push himself backward, crabwalk toward the opposite corner of his prison.

  “Hey, listen,” said Sean. “Please, I know I fucked up. Just let me explain.”

  Kosta stared a bit longer, then replaced himself with the door.

  * * *

  —

  The kid wasn’t looking too good, and Kosta was surprised by his own sense of concern. Sean was weak, an addict, but also a loner; solitary and hungry, attributes Kosta could identify with. Except Sean was fixated on his wall drawings, the photographs and spray cans, things Kosta couldn’t make sense of. He intuited it was a kind of religion, like Buqa and her Bektashi pamphlets—except for Sean, all that mystery and power seemed self-contained, a thing he owned for himself.

  It was unfortunate, because things were going to end badly for Sean. No way around it.

  Kosta went back down the hall to the kitchen, where Zameer and Buqa sat at a small folding table covered in takeout detritus: Styrofoam containers, plastic cups of Russian dressing, crumpled balls of foil.

  “Your boy, he’s alive?” said Zameer, talking through one side of his mouth as he ripped off a hunk of lamb kebab.

  “I got you the chicken,” said Buqa, using both hands to push the container toward Kosta.

  Kosta pulled out a chair, used his hand to sweep away a clear spot. “You were right,” he said to Zameer. “Olanzapine is working good.”

  Zameer grinned, then took on a mock formal tone. “So, what you’re saying, the subject is not a f
light risk?”

  Buqa chuckled, as if it were much of a joke. Probably another stupid thing Zameer had heard in a movie. Kosta looked back and forth between his teammates, Zameer gnawing on his kebab like a starved dog, Buqa with her face smeared in oil. He hadn’t told them his new plan yet. The idea had come like lightning; he still felt it trembling through his nerves.

  “I have something I want you to deliver,” said Kosta, looking at Zameer.

  “A package?”

  “No, something else. It goes to a funeral.”

  “A church,” said Zameer with a grimace. He pulled a string of fat from his teeth.

  Buqa stopped chewing for a second, closed her eyes, and raised one finger. “Go not to the mosque,” she began, quoting from one of her little dervish devotionals, “but to the house of idols, with faithfulness, and attach your heart to God.”

  “You’re not going,” said Kosta. He turned to Zameer. “You have a suit?”

  “And with God rise,” Buqa finished, opening her eyes.

  “Fucking churches,” said Zameer.

  Kosta fished in his pants, unfolded a wad of cash, and counted out a thin stack of twenty-dollar bills, which he placed on a bare spot on the table. “Get yourself a nice suit. Black, you know?”

  Zameer glared at the money, his jaw working. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

  “Get Vadik to fit it for you. Your shit is too baggy.”

  “Why me?” said Zameer, eyes still aimed at the table. “Reason I make the question is Buqa was driving, she’s the one who hit the girl…”

  Kosta leaned slowly forward, resting his arms on the table. The weight shifted, and an overturned yogurt container rolled past Kosta, who ignored it. Finally Zameer looked up to meet the stare, leaning back with his bare arms crossed, undershirt hanging off his thin frame.

  Kosta stared level into the black of Zameer’s eye. So long as you can break a man’s stare, you will always have power over him. Another of Luzhim’s lessons. The trick was, if you looked close enough within the eye’s inner dark, you saw your own reflection.