Die For You

because I have to, because I cannot do anything but this. I must metabolize my experience on the blank page, put it down, order it, control it in my way. This is how I understand the world. How I answer the question: Why?

I write about a boy who was abandoned by his mother to an orphanage in communist Europe. I imagine his frightening early days and lonely, miserable nights. I imagine his longing for the mother who left him, for the comfort of the bed to which he was accustomed. I know about abandonment, about loss, about fear. I know about longing to be anyone, anyplace else. This boy is not known to me. But his feelings are; I can manage compassion for him even if the man he grew into almost destroyed me, put a bullet in me, tried to end my life to save his own. It is on the page that I can answer the question: Why? And the answers I find here are enough. They have to be.

I hear Jack downstairs hammering. He is at work again on the house, building shelves for a room he calls my study. I tell him that we are not living together. That I am just staying with him until I can sell the apartment I shared with my husband and figure out how to move ahead with my life. Of course, he says. I know.

Kristof Ragan was never my husband, not legally, not in any way. Just someone I loved and thought I knew. I still hear his voice, the wisdom he had and shared with me. I have happy memories of him. I do.

The other morning I met Detective Grady Crowe for coffee in the East Village at Veselka’s on Second Avenue. I got there early and sat in the back watching the students, the goths and clubbers for whom it was late, not early, artist types, professionals-the typical New York City mix of people, not typical anywhere else.

He looked fresh, well and happy as he walked in, scanned the crowd, then made his way over to me.

“You look good,” he said, smiling, shaking my hand. “Don’t get up.”

He sat across from me. We’d been through all the professional stuff, the questioning, the accusations, the reprimands. I found I actually liked him in spite of what had passed between us when he thought we were on opposite sides.

“You look happy,” I said.

He held up his left hand, tapped his ring. “My wife. She came back. We’re having a baby.”

The information hurt more than it should, made my stomach bottom out with a powerful regret and sadness. He saw it.

“I’m sorry. I’m an insensitive jerk sometimes. A lot of the time.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You deserve to be happy.”

“So do you.”

I thought of Jack. “I’m getting there.”

We ordered some coffee and potato pancakes.

“So what’s up? Or did you just miss me?” he asked with a smart smile. He was a handsome guy, I realized. Much better looking happy than bitter and angry-like everyone, I suppose.

“I don’t know. I guess I just wondered if there’s anything I don’t know. Something you held back from that news show, from me?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I was wondering about the FBI. When they started their investigation, how Kristof found out about it. Why they didn’t act sooner.”

“Camilla went to the FBI about a month before Ragan disappeared. They started their investigation right away, but the feds are all about collecting evidence for their case. They take their time.” He took a sip of his coffee. “They suspect that Camilla told Ragan at the last minute, giving him time to get away before their raid. She felt guilty about betraying him. Maybe she thought he would forgive her. He didn’t.”

“But who was Camilla meeting in the park? The man I watched die? Why was she bringing those pictures to him?”

“The man who died that night was identified as Vasco Berisha, an Albanian thug with ties to Ivan Ragan, among others.”

“Why would they want those pictures? What use would they be? And if they were surveillance shots, how did they come to be in her possession?”

“They weren’t technically surveillance shots. Camilla Novak took them. She was following Ragan, using information Charlie Shane gave her about his comings and goings, working for the FBI. We found them on her digital camera, too. She turned over a set to the FBI and was apparently bringing them to Berisha. My personal theory is that after she confessed her betrayal to Ragan, and before he killed her, she realized she’d misplayed her hand. She knew he wasn’t going to forgive her and take her away after all. I suspect she didn’t think the FBI would be able to find Kristof Ragan, but his brother’s associates would. He killed some of their men; they’d want revenge. She wanted them to have it.”

I shook my head.

“What?” Grady asked.

“Then Berisha couldn’t have known where Kristof Ragan had gone. He was just a lackey. He was the reason I went to Prague. I thought he said, ‘Praha.’ Prague in Czech. But maybe he didn’t say that.”

“But Ragan was in Prague. Maybe Berisha-whatever he said-just gave you an excuse to follow your instincts. Or maybe he did know. It’s possible.”

“I heard what I wanted to hear.”

“Maybe. You knew where he would go, but maybe you didn’t trust yourself anymore. You needed something else besides your gut to follow.”

I thought about that night in the park. I am sure that’s what he said. But Detective Crowe was right, I didn’t trust myself very much about these things.

“Do you have a contact at the FBI who might talk to me about all of this?”

“It doesn’t much matter now, does it?”

It matters. How the pieces fit together. It helps me to understand what happened to me. But that’s the problem with life, as opposed to fiction; sometimes the pieces don’t fit. The waitress brought our order and I poured some cream in my coffee.

“I’ve been guilty, as you know, of not asking enough questions. Of seeing what I wanted to see and editing out the rest. I don’t want to do that here.”

He nodded his understanding.

“There’s nothing I haven’t told you. I promise. But I’ll put you in touch with Agent Long. He’s a good guy.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He gave me a sly look. “You’re not writing a book about all this, are you?”

I smiled at that but didn’t answer.

We chatted a bit. He told me he’d read one of my books and liked it but mentioned that I’d gotten some procedure wrong. I asked him if I could call with questions in the future. He agreed, seemed to like the idea.

“So-are you going to write about what happened to you?” he asked, again not letting me off the hook.

“Probably. One way or another, it will turn up. It doesn’t work the way you think it does. It’s more elliptical, more organic.”

He nodded, looking thoughtful, but he didn’t say anything else about it.

We said our good-byes on the street, shook hands and parted. I was a half a block away when he called me back.

“Hey, something you said helped me,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Remember in your apartment that time? You said, ‘Love accepts. Maybe forgiveness comes in time.’ That helped me.”

“I’m glad.”

He lifted a hand and then turned to walk away. I watched as he climbed into an unmarked Caprice where Detective Breslow waited at the wheel. I wondered briefly what was next for them.

LOVE ACCEPTS. FORGIVENESS comes in time. It makes me think of Linda and Erik. It makes me think of my father-the “why” I have never been able to answer in all my years trying.