'She have the surgery back when she is three. Last month I notice her shoes no fit again. The swelling . . .' Her hand circled. 'I do not want to believe. Then she have the breathing'--she mimed shortness of breath--'again on the playground. And yes, it is the heart valve again. She needs new. But it is hundred of thousand of dollar. I cannot afford. I am waitress. I already spend second mortgage on this house for first surgery. It will give out. This valve'--she spit out the word. 'Tomorrow or next week or next month, it will give out.'
The duffel sat a few inches to my side, nudged up against my shoe. What good was twenty-seven grand in the face of that kind of money?
My amped-up drive here had left me more emotional than usual; seesawing between dread and relief, fear and concern, I could hardly find my bearings. The girl peered up at me from the picture, and I recognized now that she had her grandmother's curly hair. The desperate conversations they must have had right here in this room. How do you explain to a six-year-old that her heart might give out? I swallowed, felt the tightness in my throat. 'I can't imagine.'
'Except I see in your face,' she said, 'that you can.' She plucked at the loose skin of her neck. 'A friend of mine back home'--a wave to cross the Atlantic--'lost his wife to Lou Gehrig. A cousin of my cousin lost her daughter and two grandson in plane crash five year back. On anniversary this year, my cousin ask her, 'How do you handle this?' And she say, 'Everyone has a story.' And it is true. Before we go, everyone has sad story to tell. But this child, this child . . .' She rose abruptly, crossed to one of the closed doors at the end of the room, and set her hand on the knob. 'You come see this beautiful child. I will wake her. You come see and tell me how I am to explain her this is her story.'
'No, please. Please don't disturb her. Let her sleep.'
Elisabeta came back and sank into her armchair. 'And now someone want to kill me. And for what? Who will take care of her? She will be left alone to die.'
'Don't you have . . . is there health insurance?'
'We are nearing lifetime maximum, they call it. I meet with--what do they call it?--finance committee at hospital. They are willing to make charitable donation for operating room, surgery. But even between their generosity and what is left on insurance, I am still left with more than I can . . .' She shook her head. 'What do I do?'
My voice shook with excitement. 'How much is left?'
'More than you can imagine.'
I leaned forward, put my hand on the table, upsetting the bowl of nuts. 'How much exactly?'
She got up and went into the kitchen. A drawer opened, jangling with flatware. Then another. She thumbed through a sheaf of menus and flyers, finally returning with a paper. She fluffed it out like a royal decree. 'Twenty- seven thousand two hundred forty-two dollar.' Her mouth tugged down in the beginning of a sob, but she caught it, transformed her expression to contempt for the figure.
'No one's threatening you. I misunderstood.' My throat closed, and I had to stop talking. A sheen rose in my eyes. I lowered my head, said a silent prayer of gratitude. I walked over to her and set the duffel on the floor at her feet.
She stared at me, shocked.
I said, 'This is for you.'
I stepped into my Nikes and left, careful to ease the screen door shut so as not to wake the girl.
Chapter 30
I was up again, pacing around Ariana, who listened, glazed, from the patio chair. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her sweatshirt pulled over them, the parka flaring out to either side. It wasn't raining, but moisture flecked the air. Two in the morning and counting, and my heart rate showed no signs of slowing down. 'The fear, then the relief--even fucking gratitude. And then it starts all over again. It's like a drug. I can't take it. I don't care that it worked out this time--'
'We don't even know that,' Ariana said.
'What do you mean?'
'Delivering cash to a woman in Indio? What if it was a scam?'
'How? It wasn't our money. I was just playing Santa Claus.'
'I'm not saying you were the target.' She watched her words sink in. 'What happens if someone shows up at that woman's door and asks a favor of her? A favor to be repaid?'
'I'm the one who gave her the money.'
'But it wasn't your money. She doesn't owe you.'
Nausea crept into my stomach, an ice-water trickle. I sank slowly into the chair opposite Ari. I could tell from her face that she felt bad. Her hand rooted in her purse and produced a roll of Tums. That purse was like the stomach of Jaws--she was always pulling out a pair of sunglasses, a new shade of lipstick, a waffle iron.
Chewing a tablet, Ariana double-checked the cigarette-box jammer and pushed forward--'If there are no strings attached to that cash, why wouldn't they just give it to her themselves? For all you know, that money puts her in danger.'
'I think she'd take that risk,' I said quietly. 'So her granddaughter wouldn't die.'
'But she didn't get to make that decision.'
'Because I made it for her.' I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, my groan turning to something like a growl. 'But what the hell was I supposed to do? Go to the cops? Thinking it might kill that woman?'
'Not then. But now. Why not now?'
'They'll find out. Given what these guys have shown us so far, do we really want to see how they retaliate when they're pissed off? Plus, are you forgetting that a seven-figure lawsuit might be hanging in the balance, pending my cooperation?'
'So you keep doing this?' she asked. 'Following orders blindly from an all-powerful boss you don't even know? Waiting around like some clown in a Beckett play? For how long?'
'Until we get the settlement agreement from the studio. Until I figure out an angle into this. Into them.'
'And in the meantime? These aren't your lives to tamper with.'
'It's not that easy, Ari.'
'There are probably thousands of kids in this country with that girl's heart condition,' she said. 'Millions of people with millions of problems. What makes her life any different from anyone else's?'
'Because I can save hers.' I could feel the knots up the back of my neck. Ari lifted her eyebrows, and I held up my hands, half in apology, half to slow myself. 'I know it sounds like this is some kind of God complex--'
'Not even, Patrick. It's a God complex by proxy.'
'But these people are hostages, even if they don't know it. That girl was entrusted to me, like Beeman. She's been made my problem, my responsibility. When I've been given a bag of money to save her life, how can I not leave it for her?'
'You don't show up to begin with, that's how. What's that line from WarGames?'
I cast out a sullen sigh. ' 'The only winning move is not to play.' '
She nodded solemnly. 'Look, we both agree we need to break through on this thing. And to do that, you can play your game all you want. Just don't play theirs.'
I stared over the sagging fence at Don and Martinique's dark bedroom window, the curtain at rest. A bedroom like ours, a house like ours. Our quiet little neighborhood, all of us with a story to tell. And yet the scale of what I was confronting, the danger, had gone suddenly out of whack. How had I come unhinged from this ordinary life?
'You're right.' I lifted my hands, let them slap to my thighs. 'As long as I keep taking the bait, they have me trapped. I'll stop. No more checking e-mail. No more following their instructions. Whatever that brings on, it brings on.'
'I'll be here for it.' She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. 'It's the only good choice left. You have to call their bluff.'
She rose and headed inside, her head bowed.
I sat for a few moments with the crickets, looking out to where the yard lost itself in darkness. I mumbled to the shadows, 'What if they're not bluffing?'
I lay beside my wife in the quiet dark of the bedroom. She'd fallen asleep maybe an hour ago, leaving me to study the ceiling. Finally I got up, went into my office, and unplugged my cell phone from its charger. On the built-in
