No Way Back (37 page)

They’ll watch me go, and when I stop moving, they’ll come and retrieve me.

I dig my cellphone out of my pants pocket. Steering with my left hand, I press the power with my right. The phone stays dark; it died when I jumped in the pool. But that doesn’t mean the
thing they put inside is dead too.

I toss the phone over my shoulder, and watch in the rearview mirror as it skitters across pavement, cartwheeling and breaking into pieces.

Now, for the car itself.

I can’t just park it. They’ll see little blinking Jimmy Thane has stopped moving. They’ll come and get me then.

What I have to do: I have to ditch the car, but somehow make sure that it keeps moving. Visions come to me now – preposterous visions, born of a million implausible movies: a brick
carefully placed on the accelerator, me jumping from the moving car, the Mercedes continuing its driverless progress, through the streets of downtown Fort Myers.

But no. Of course not.

I’m on Cleveland Avenue now, heading north. I see a sign for the Greyhound terminus. Which gives me a better idea.

The rain is tapering now, changing from apocalyptic to drizzle. I head downtown, following the signs to the Greyhound. Some of the hardier drunks have ventured back to the street. Two watch me
drive by from below the awning of a liquor store. Only weeks ago, I would have looked at them, standing there in the rain, with pity. Now they stare at me, curious, the roof of my convertible open
in a rainstorm, my hair dripping. Who’s pitying whom?

The Greyhound terminus is like every other bus station I’ve ever seen. It’s in the wrong part of town: the part that no one wants to come to, the part that no one can afford to
leave. The building is large, probably empty, with an angular cantilevered roof protruding over a warehouse-like interior. Three Hispanic men sit out front, crowding under the overhang to keep dry.
I stop the Mercedes in front of them, in the passenger drop-off circle.

‘Hey,
chico
,’ I shout.

The three of them look up at me. The one who’s probably their leader – head shaved like Mr Clean, tats running down his arms like inky cobwebs, a mesh shirt revealing muscled guns
– tilts his head and cracks his neck. He pauses, insect-like, as he evaluates whether I’m predator or prey. I feel sympathy for him, because surely it can’t be easy to know: a
white guy, out of shape, in an Oxford button-down shirt and chinos, driving a car worth more than all the crack he’s ever smoked; but then again, my convertible top is down during a
thunderstorm, and my clothes are soaked, and here I am in the middle of downtown, probably at the tail end of a binge that didn’t start very well, and likely won’t end any better.

‘Yeah, you,’ I call. ‘Come here.’

Maybe he’s not used to being spoken to in this way. He exchanges a can-you-believe-this-guy look with his two buddies, then slowly gets up from the ground. He sidles over to my car, his
body turned in profile, maybe to present a smaller target, should I whip out a gun and prove to be as insane as I look.

‘Yeah?’ he says, suspiciously. He keeps a three-foot distance.

‘When’s the next bus out of here?’

‘What do I look like, asshole, a fucking schedule? How the fuck should I know?’

‘I need to get to a very important meeting,’ I say. I stick the car into park. ‘I’ll be gone for a few hours. Do me a favour. Park my car, and keep an eye on it for me.
I’ll give you a hundred bucks for your time.’

I pop my door and get out. I toss him the keys. He catches them with a surprised swipe. He looks down at his hand, can’t believe what he’s holding.

‘I can trust you,’ I say, ‘right?’

In my wallet, I find five twenties, water-logged, but serviceable, and hold them out, across the car.

He takes them. He glances back at his friends, who smile at him and nod. He says to me, ‘Yeah, sure, homey. You can trust me.’

‘You have an honest face,’ I explain. ‘Just find a safe spot to park it. I hear this isn’t the best neighbourhood.’

‘No, man, it’s OK,’ he says, suddenly sounding like a real-estate agent. ‘It has good and bad, like every place else.’

‘Right on,
hermano
,’ I say. ‘I’ll be a few hours. You’ll be here when I get back, right?’

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Sure I will.’

Sitting by the entrance, his friends laugh.

‘
Hasta la vista
,’ I say.

For the first time since I arrived in this godforsaken state, luck is with me, because a taxi pulls up in the drop-off circle, just yards away. I hold open the door of the cab for a young
European-looking man, too pale to be native, clutching a metal-framed backpack, and a
Lonely Planet: Florida
guidebook in his hand. ‘When is train next to Fort Lauderdale?’ he
asks me in an almost impenetrable accent.

‘You’re in luck,’ I say. ‘Right now. But you better hurry.’

He hands the driver crumpled cash and scurries off without bothering with change.

I slide into the taxi he just vacated and pull the door shut.

The Haitian driver, glistening with sweat and wafting Technicolor BO, turns to me. ‘Where to, mister?’

I realize I have no idea where to. My house is bugged. My wife has been kidnapped. Russian gangsters chase me.

Probably I should go to the police. But not yet. Not until I figure out what’s going on, and what to do next.

‘Where to, mister?’ the Haitian asks again, with growing impatience.

‘You know Fort Myers Beach?’ I ask.

When he snarls yes, of course he does, but do I have money for the trip, I show him a wad of wet twenties and direct him to Amanda’s apartment.

When I arrive, Amanda is not home.

In the covered walkway of her apartment building, I lie down on her doorstep, exhausted and cold. I fall asleep. I wake to the sound of footsteps scuffing up the stairs, and then tinkling keys,
and Amanda is standing over me, looking not particularly surprised to see me – as if it’s perfectly reasonable to arrive home to find your boss curled in a foetal position at your
door.

‘Jim,’ she says, ‘why are you lying on the ground?’

‘No couch.’

She kneels down and takes my hand. Her voice is gentle. ‘Come inside.’ She helps me to my feet. She unlocks the door and shoves it with her shoulder. Inside, the room is freezing,
the way she likes it, the air conditioner churning in the window.

She deposits me onto the couch, where I collapse into the cushions. ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ I mutter.

‘I’ll turn it off.’

She goes to the air conditioner and turns it off. The room is suddenly quiet and still.

‘Lock the door,’ I say.

‘Yes, all right,’ she says, in that agreeable tone one reserves for the agitated or the mentally ill. She goes to the door, secures the lock, and returns to me on the couch. She
touches my shoulder. ‘Why are you so wet, Jim?’

‘I need a place to stay, Amanda.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Something happened to Libby.’

‘Libby?’ Then she remembers. ‘Ah, your wife. What happened?’

‘She was kidnapped.’

‘Kidnapped?’ I see the first glimmer of doubt in her eyes. ‘Jim, I don’t understand. Who…
kidnapped
your wife?’ She stumbles over the word
kidnapped
, as if she can’t bring herself to say it.

I take her hand. ‘Listen. There’s something I need to tell you.’

She lets me hold her fingers, but they stay limp. Uncommitted.

‘Tao Software is a front,’ I say. ‘It’s being used by a mobster. He’s laundering drug money. He’s taking cash from one place, and then he’s…
’

Here I stop. Now that I try to explain it, I realize I have no idea what I’m talking about. What exactly
are
the Russians trying to do? I can’t construct any conceivable
narrative – financial, legal, logistical – which makes any sense, which explains what the Russians are doing at Tao. Laundering money? Selling drugs? Neither is true, so far as I can
see. So then what are they doing? Why is the Russian named Ghol Gedrosian involved in my company? What does he want?

After a long silence, I conclude lamely, ‘Well, the point is, Libby is working for them. She’s working for gangsters.’

‘I see,’ Amanda says. But she doesn’t see. She sounds nervous. Her eyes dart to the door, measuring the distance to escape. I realize, too late, that she wonders if I harmed
Libby. She wonders if I killed her.

‘Amanda,’ I say, letting go of her hand. ‘I didn’t hurt my wife, if that’s what you’re thinking. There’s a man. A criminal. He’s a Russian. He
killed Charles Adams, and he killed Dom Vanderbeek. He’s framing me. He’s making it look like I’ve done these things. I’m not sure why. His name is Ghol Gedrosian. I
don’t know why he’s —’

But I stop. Amanda has become very white.

‘You know that name,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

‘How?’

‘He was the one.’

‘The one?’ But even as I say it, I know. He was the man who took Amanda when she was a child. The man who imprisoned her, who brought her to this country. The man who did unspeakable
things to her.

‘He was the one,’ she says again.

She looks at my hand. She takes it in hers, and stares. ‘Look.’

She places her hand on top of mine.

She has only nine fingers. Her pinky is missing. What remains is a grotesque red stub, scarred and mutilated, just like my own.

She has made hot tea for me, and I cup the ceramic mug in my palms, and I notice that my hands still shake.

She sits beside me on the couch. She has changed clothes. Gone is her daytime attire, replaced with a soft linen shirt and pair of worn jeans. The barrette that kept her hair in a severe bun has
disappeared, and her long copper tresses sit loose on her shoulders. Her make-up is gone, too, and her face is scrubbed. She looks older now. But somehow prettier.

‘I will tell you what I know,’ she says. ‘Some people say he is ex-KGB. Others say that he was a colonel in the army – the unit that interrogated prisoners in Chechnya.
I’ve heard other stories too, very strange stories.’

‘Like what?’

‘That he’s religious. That he thinks he’s god. Or maybe he’s insane.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘I never saw him. No one does. The men who took me – they never saw him. They worked for someone else, who worked for someone else, who worked for someone else still.’

She holds up the stub of her pinky. ‘This is how he marks property. Anyone who works for him, or who owes him money, or who receives a favour – he takes their finger. He keeps it
somewhere. It’s like marking cattle.’

She touches my mutilated finger. I pull it away. ‘No,’ I say. ‘This is not the same. Mine was done by a bookie. I owed money to a guy. His name was Hector. It happened years
ago.’

I stare at my missing finger. Now that I think about it, I’m not so sure. I don’t actually remember
what
happened that night. Libby told me a story about coming home with a
bloody dish towel wrapped around my hand, and insisting that she drive me to Jack in the Box for a hamburger. But I don’t remember it. Did it really happen like that?

‘You don’t remember,’ Amanda says.

‘No.’

She nudges closer to me. ‘You’re shivering, Jim. Come here.’ She leads me from the couch, into the bathroom. The sink and counter are filled with feminine bottles –
shampoos and rinses and facial scrubs. ‘I will tell you what to do. You need a hot shower,’ she says. ‘You smell very bad. You’ll feel better.’ She leans into the
shower, turns the knobs, adjusts the temperature, still holding my hand lightly, so that I can’t escape. ‘There,’ she says, satisfied with the temperature. She slides the sanded
glass door. ‘Go in. I’ll find some dry clothes for you.’

She disappears from the bathroom, closing the door softly behind her.

I undress and step into the shower. I let the warm water pelt my back, my neck, my bruised ribs, my scalp. I close my eyes. I think about what to do next. I’ll call the police. I’ll
talk to Agent Mitchell. I’ll find Libby. I’ll accept the consequences, whatever they are, and fight whatever crime they accuse me of. I’m innocent, of everything, except
stupidity.

The shower door slides open, and Amanda steps inside, naked. She presses up behind me, and her arms reach around my chest. She pulls me tightly. It hurts. I feel her breasts on my back, her
rough pubic hair, her toes pressing against the edge of my feet.

‘What are you doing?’ I say.

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she guides my shoulders, and turns me to face her. She pulls my head down, kisses me. I taste her, and the warm water, and her perfume, washing from her skin.
‘You see?’ she says, when she breaks off the kiss. ‘We are meant to be together. This is what he intended.’

‘
Who
intended? Jesus?’

‘No, silly,’ she whispers. She takes the stub of my half-pinky, presses it against her own, closes her hand around both, and squeezes. ‘You see? We’re his. He owns us
both.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘
He
wanted this. That’s why he led us here, together. That’s why he let me go. It’s no accident. This is what he wanted.’

I want to tell her that she’s crazy, but then she presses up against me, and slides me inside her, and so I shut up for about five minutes, which is all the time I need.

The drugs come next.

I suppose I should be surprised, that a girl who found Jesus in a church basement, who tattooed Cyrillic on her breast that He died for her sins, who protested too much that her life had changed
after she found Him – I suppose I should be surprised when she brings out a glass pipe and a butane lighter from the shelf in her closet, and when she leads me to her bedroom, and when she
starts the music playing on her computer, and says, ‘Can we do it, just once?’

There is no
just once
for people like me and Amanda. There is never a last time that you use. There are only pauses, and lulls, and intermissions. That is why restarting is always easy:
because using is as much a part of life as quitting. To the addict, these are not opposite poles of existence – quitting versus using, good versus bad – but rather different outward
expressions of the same single inner truth. Using, quitting. High, straight. It’s all the same – just an open field upon which we dance and play.