"Yes," I answered, regretting it immediately.
"Good!" She looked somewhat relieved. "So I'm safe here in any case. I can stay here for a while."
"I'm sorry, ma'am," I responded quickly. "We close at five and you'll have to leave then." She gazed at me through the sightless mirror and appeared calmer.
"At least I'm safe until five," she said tranquilly. "Don't worry, I'll leave when you close." The trace of a smile showed through her tears.
I felt I had to consult with someone. I had no idea who. For the first time, I realized that I hadn't made any real friends during the months I'd been here. I looked behind me. There was no one else in the control room. I glanced at the battery of telephones. They were suspiciously silent. No ringing or buzzing, no new instructions, no more questions. I scanned the third monitor which covered the interior of the consulate. The video camera had been placed at the junction of two corridors, so I could see both the consular and the information sections. Pressing a button, I focused on the information section and switched on the microphone so I could hear what was going on there.
Steven, the local information officer, heard the lens shifting and waved at me. I followed him with affection and admiration: he'd been here for five years already and I couldn't understand how he held out so well. I knew he couldn't help me. Too cynical, afraid of getting involved, of getting hurt emotionally or losing his job.
He ran his department efficiently, although he ran roughshod over his two assistants. The public relations officer, in charge of special events, was busy mailing out leaflets to addresses she was taking from the Rolodex on her desk. The press officer wasn't in today. He was off on a week's junket to the towns and campuses of Vermont and Maine.
I turned the camera to the consular section. The clerks looked as gloomy and long-suffering as usual. It was hard to blame them for that. You can't get much joy out of stamping and filing death certificates and birth certificates, issuing passports and rebuking the errant tourists who had lost theirs. I went back to the newspaper I was still holding, attempting to absorb the possible solutions to Formula One's problems. I didn't have a hope in hell.
*
When everyone had left, around five-thirty, I began the routine locking-up procedure. I activated the various alarm systems and started through the reception area on my way out.
She was still there, sitting in the same chair. I locked the door behind me and leaned against it. There was a lily-like fragrance in the room. Again, I felt an odd weakness in the knees that worried me. I knew enough about security and fatigue to know I wasn't at my best. I felt confused and agitated - not the sort of agitation you feel in a crisis, but a different sensation; something was melting inside me. I wanted to stroke her - so beautiful and so miserable - try to console her, to relax her tense muscles, to wipe the tears from her face.
It didn't feel like the ordinary chat-a-little-jump-into-bed-chat-a-little-more-and forget-it-story. This time was different. The security guard part of me was still in control. I could hear the voice of my burly firearms instructor, Jack: "Keep your eyes open, man, keep your eyes open! You could get hurt! Expect the unexpected! You never know where it's coming from! Keep your eyes open, man, keep your eyes open!"The words echoed in my head again and again. According to the drill, I had to identify the nature, seriousness and direction of the danger immediately, determine the appropriate response - and act without delay. But my head was empty, nothing in it save for Jack's voice and a general fogginess. I stood there, seemingly calm, ignoring the warning lights flashing in my brain, steadied my wobbly knees, and looked directly at the beautiful young woman.
"I have nowhere to go," she said.
The consul hadn't given her a chance. He'd decided to toss her aside, like some wounded animal, as soon as she said she was being followed. I was convinced he had made a mistake. I wouldn't even do that to an animal if it was hurt or sick. If he'd just asked for more information, checked to see if she was merely a nut case...
She looked at me hopefully. If there was really someone out there waiting to nab her, I was the only one left who could help her. I remembered the engineer who had lingered by the stand of information leaflets and then vanished, and her request that we contact the UN ambassador. I sensed her sincerity. There was only one way to verify her story, and I was about to do it, with a clear head and in defiance of my instructions. I finished my final inspection of the floor and returned to the woman.
"Come with me," I said brusquely and headed for the elevator without looking to see if she was following. She started to obey automatically, but seemed to lose her nerve almost immediately. The elevator doors were closing behind me, and she was still standing in the corridor, looking uncertain and apprehensive. I put my hand out to hold the doors open. She didn't move.
Keep your eyes open, man, keep your eyes open!
I don't know how long I stood there, holding the doors and trying to ignore Jack's voice. Maybe ten seconds, maybe a minute. I had decided to leave her there when she suddenly started toward me. She stood next to me, staring at the closing elevator doors and shifting her weight nervously under my gaze.
The elevator stopped at the third floor and the young woman – what did she say her name was? Kate? - looked at me with frightened eyes. Two black boys in particularly high spirits got in, hollering fragmented sentences at each other in some incomprehensible argot. The woman huddled in on herself and moved closer to me, almost touching. The fragrance of lilies made my head spin. The boys got out at the lobby. It was empty. I took her arm and we followed close on their heels to the street. They parted from each other with thunderous voices and odd gestures. Quickly, I pulled her into the entrance of the restaurant next door. Under threat, never leave yourself open with no place to take cover. Several minutes passed without my spotting anyone suspicious. If someone was waiting for her out there, they had decided to hold fire. She held onto my arm like a life rope, her nails cutting into my skin.
"Let's get out of here now, before they show themselves," she whispered fearfully.
But maybe she was drawing me into a trap? For a moment I thought it might be a surprise security check of the sort the New York headquarters liked to pull on us - "Getting drawn into an ambush."
Abruptly I yanked my arm out of her grasp and began to follow the drill. "Show me some ID."
"Are you crazy? Let's get out of here, fast!"
She looked terrified. It was no act. Still, I kept at it. "For the moment, you're safe with me, and I'm not moving from here until I see some identification."
She took out a New York driver's license in the name of Kate Beaver.
"Show me your bag!"
As she thrust out her bag, which also smelled of lilies, she began sobbing soundlessly again. The bag held makeup, small toiletries and a wallet. The only other document in it was a Social Security card in the name of Katherine Beaver. If they were testing me, I thought, she was the best actress headquarters had ever found.
"Okay," I said. "There's no need to cry. The exercise is over."
She didn't know what I was talking about. "Let's get out of here. Please! If they show up, you won't be able to take them by yourself."
Across the street, a man suddenly detached himself from the wall he'd been leaning on, and she grabbed my arm.
"Look!"
The man gazed at us for a moment and then started down the street.
"Let's go, already," she whispered.
I could probably find her a safe place to stay the night, at least, in Brookline, where I lived. By tomorrow I'd find someone to look after her. If the consul had had any compassion, he would have solved the problem himself. I walked over to my car. She watched me silently while I gave it a superficial once-over from outside and glanced routinely underneath, by the book, before I opened the driver's door.
"Get in," I ordered.
Inside the car I felt safer. It's harder to spring a trap on me when I'm driving. She felt secure enough to take a brush
from her bag and use the visor mirror to touch up her hairdo. Briefly, she adjusted it so she could see the road behind us. We set off for Brookline. Traffic was heavy, as usual at this time of the afternoon. The woman crunched herself into the corner of the seat and didn't say a word; neither did I. We passed Kenmore Square and Boston University.
Then I figured out where we were going. I turned off the main road into a side street and from there to Clinton Road. I glanced in the rearview mirror. No one was following us. I parked opposite a small house. The blue serpentine letters on an Armenian-style ceramic tile on the door read:
ERIC ALBOTT
The tile, of the type generally sold in tourist shops in East Jerusalem, was somewhat misleading. Its owner had been born in Transylvania in Central Europe, before the region had changed hands so many times. He was brought up mostly in Austria, describing his life there as "a series of courses in desirable lifestyle, etiquette, and creative sex." Later he joined General De Gaulle and fought as a colonel in North Africa for a free France and a free world. He'd been married twice - what he termed "the temporary triumph of optimism over common sense" - both times unhappily. After spending some time in Israel, Kenya and the Ivory Coast, he had settled in Boston, the only place in the world where the local university was willing to pay him to lecture on his experiences. They called it "Empirical Philosophy." At the age of seventy-five, he still had an uncanny effect on women. He often said he enjoyed chasing them, but he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do if he caught them. I didn't doubt for a minute that he was lying.
I'd met him at a poetry reading in the Boston Public Library. During the evening, he got progressively soused on the wine served with cheese. He was still very congenial, although totally out of it. I helped him outside and drove him to Clinton Rd. "It's the… house… by the big… oak tree," he volunteered, before being overtaken by a peaceful oblivion. I woke him to find out his name was Albott. I stopped once more by a telephone booth to learn, finally, that the number of the house was 85. I got him home, and we'd been friends ever since.
He opened the door to us with his usual broad warm smile.
"This is Kate," I said. "I'd like her to stay here for a while. I've got to go, but I'll be back soon."
He didn't ask any questions, only called after me, "There's no hurry, my dear, no hurry at all." Then, turning to Kate, he said: "You must forgive his bad manners. The poor lad grew up in the street."
He examined her with his experienced eyes. As I hurried back to the car I heard him say, "Compared to the other visitors he's brought me, you are a true princess."
CHAPTER TWO
I drove toward central Brookline. Near the corner of Coolidge, right in the center, I turned into the lot of a taxi cab company with a large garage. There, in a small room inside, I could usually find my good friend, Danny. I'd promised to help him with some towing jobs sometime, but that wasn't the reason I was there. I needed some time out. Things were moving too fast, and I wanted to think and make some sense of it all. As I got out of the car, the picture was still not clear in my mind, but I knew that woman meant trouble - for me, for her, and for a lot of other people, maybe even the government. But I had no intention of washing my hands of it, at least not for the moment. Strangely enough, I felt pretty good about the whole thing.
"Hey, hunk, how come you show up when I really need you?" It was Danny trying to hide his glee.
"I like to hear you beg."
He pointed smugly to four ambulance carcasses he probably bought for peanuts from Beth Israel Hospital.
"You trying to tell me you paid for these?" I asked.
He shrugged. Typically, he was sure that he could assemble a respectable minibus out of the parts from the four wrecks, and in the meantime he was glad for the extra storage space for the countless number of parts he had already amassed.
There were close to twenty Dodge Diplomats on the lot. Sergio Delamesquita, the old man who owned the garage and the cab company, had bought up all the old inspection vehicles of the Florida Sanitation Department when it decided to purchase a new fleet of Ford Grand Marquises. "That's one good state," Danny liked to explain to anyone who asked. "Hardly any hills. The engines are in great shape." From the sixty cars Sergio had bought, Danny assembled close to forty cabs, half of which were always out of commission. Danny cared for them like an indulgent father.
Sergio, with his warm Italian heart, had taken Danny in and given him a small room in the back of the garage, which is not to say he didn't regularly rain curses down on his head. In return, Danny gave him utter loyalty and a rare technical skill and professional pride which didn't allow him to give up on any mechanical fault in the fleet of cabs or on any of the wrecks towed into the garage, once the people in the area learned of his reputation.
Danny had spent his three years in the army as a mechanic in the Valiant unit of the central military garage in Tel Aviv. There, he honed his special knowledge of eight cylinder American cars into an art. He also knew a great deal about the army generals whose cars he fixed and loved.
When he finished his army tour, he set out on a trip to the US with two of his friends. Their first stop was Boston, but as soon as he saw his first broken-down Valiant, he went no further. That was ten years ago.
The towing job Danny wanted me to help him with was fairly straightforward: a Chevrolet Caprice Classic, one of his favorite models, had collided with a lamppost in Dorchester, a sinister neighborhood populated mostly by blacks.
"Really scary," Danny reassured me on the way. "If you drive through it at night, you'd be wise to keep your windows closed. If you get a flat, just keep going till you're out of there. Even you, David," he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Danny was a walking gossip column, and he didn't stop talking for a second the whole time. Most of the Israelis in the area came to him to have their cars repaired. His room in the garage served as a refuge for those who were really down on their luck: girls who had gotten in trouble, Israeli au pairs who had fled from a tyrannical employer and were therefore no longer legally in the country, young women who had followed an American lover back from Israel and then found him in someone else's arms, and any number of other tormented people. Danny gave them all a shoulder to lean on and asked nothing in return, except that they feed his constant hunger to know all that was going on, who was doing what with whom, where and when and why. In dim light, he could be mistaken for the popular Israeli singer, Shlomo Artzi, and was very proud of it. Once, someone even took the trouble to arrange a meeting between them. Danny claimed they hung out together for half the night over a bottle of gin, but there are others who say that Shlomo Artzi took one look at him and left in disgust. After all, Danny didn't take much trouble over his appearance. He was invariably dressed in overalls - usually armored corps issue he'd filched from the army - and only changed them when it was absolutely necessary. On really cold winter days, he'd add a woolen cap with a pompom on top and drive through the dark streets at night bellowing his own unique version of Shlomo Artzi's greatest hits.
There wasn't much left of the Chevrolet Caprice. In the two hours between the accident and our arrival, it had been relieved of its tires, one door and the lid of the trunk, which had still been intact. The rest was wrapped around the lamppost. A nervous police officer sent by the city waited impatiently for us to collect the wreck so he could return to the relative safety of the police station, but, as usual, Danny was in no hurry. After unsuccessful attempts to inquire into the health of the lieutenant in charge of the Dorchester precinct, he set about roping the Chevrolet to the winch and fitting on tires he'd brought with him on the tow truck. Meanwhile, I maneuvered the truck until we managed to get them hooked up.
The two hours I spent with Danny were pleasant, and helped me unwind. I knew I was going to help Kate however I could, and as for the trouble it could get me into –I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. Danny drove back recklessly, totally disregarding the wreck hooked up to his truck. "The
re's not much more damage you can do to it," he explained with a straight face. He was paid a regular towing fee by the insurance company, and in the case of a total loss like this one, he knew he could keep the carcass for parts.
"Give me three months, and you'll see it back on the road," he predicted. And he wasn't just shooting off at the mouth. He'd breathed the life back into worse wrecks. An irritating rain began to fall. Danny remained unimpressed and kept his foot pressed to the floor, hollering off-key at the top of his lungs: "Again at night I dream of you." He was certainly in a fine mood.
"Tell me," I felt him out, "with all those lost souls, the refugees who come running to you, how can youtell which of them have a chance and which are just all fucked up?"
"That's a weird question," he stated after a moment's thought. "First of all, I can't tell. Second, what difference does it make? And third, it depends on me as a wreck fixer, or on anyone else who's willing to help them. What makes you ask?"
"Somebody I met, somebody special."
"Special ladies are my field of expertise. One of them stayed with me once for three weeks, cried all the time. Then she pulled herself together and left. Hardly said goodbye. Now she’s a very successful film director in Israel. A very special person, even though she barely said two words the whole time."
"Why do you keep taking those losers in? You always get involved with them in the end."
"Look who's talking," he shot back. "I've stopped counting how many winners have passed through your door, except that you never get involved with any of them." He paused for a minute before adding, "Maybe I like getting involved. Those `refugees,' as you call them, are like broken-down cars. I learn a lot from every one of them. Each one has a story to tell about life outside, in the big wide world. I like them a little broken down. When they're new on the road, they're not interesting. There's no story. By the time they leave, I'm glad they're running smoothly. It means I've done a good job, but I'm already thinking about the next crash that might bring them back to me. I learn a lot from the cars and the girls that show up here after they've been fucked up."