Chapter 71
“She’s in the next room,” De Soto said. “Look, if you want to wait—”
“I want to go in now. Are you going to record it?”
“We have to.”
“Not this time. Please. I think maybe I’m owed that much.”
Agent DeSoto paused, took out her phone. She turned her back and walked a few steps away in the corridor. She was back in thirty seconds.
“Go ahead,” she said.
When the door clicked behind him Chuck thought for a moment it was his own heartbeat. Because Julia was at the table, in shackles, just the way Royce had been. Her coveralls were blue. Her eyes, once beautiful to him in ways he could hardly express, were now empty rooms with the lights out. No electricity running through the house.
Her lips were dry and cracked.
And Chuck had to keep reminding himself that this was real.
He sat.
Julia tried once to make eye contact with him. He saw a flicker of candles in those empty rooms before she turned her head away.
And sobbed.
He had never seen her cry like that. She’d always had a command of her emotions, a strength. He’d admired that about her, even though it sometimes seemed like a hard shell. Now what? Here in a federal interview room? Should he comfort her? Why? After what she’d done to him? And Stan? Should he hit her with something sharp to make her pain match his?
How about walk out and leave her without another word?
And then he found himself saying, “You have a lawyer?”
Julia, head down, sucked in breath behind her sobs. There was a box of Kleenex on the interview table, the only other object in there. No doubt for times just like this, from suspect or witness.
Chuck snagged a couple. He reached over and gently tipped up Julia’s chin. She turned her head away. “No, Chuck.”
He turned her head back. “Let me.” He dabbed her eyes gently, then under her nose. He crumpled the Kleenex into a tiny ball and tossed it on the floor.
Julia took a few deep breaths. “Public defender,” she said.
“You need a good lawyer.”
“She already cut me a deal,” Julia said. And now she looked at him.
When she did, Chuck felt a wave beating against his chest. He wanted it to come crashing through and cover her and drench her with regret. Instead, he closed his eyes to dam it up, and said, “What happened, Julia? How . . .?”
Julia took in a deep breath. “How well did you know me when you married me, Chuck? We didn’t know each other at all. You didn’t know much about my past. You didn’t know what I was capable of.”
“I just knew I wanted to be with you.”
“And I thought getting married to you could save me.”
“From what?”
She looked down at her cuffed and folded hands. “I’m not a good person, Chuck.” She paused for a moment that stretched out until Chuck spoke.
“Is that it?” he said. “That’s your excuse?” He snapped the words with a whip-like bitterness. It felt good for half a second. Then he thought, maybe she deserved one click off the reel, one inch of slack. But only one.
Julia said, “You know that book of poetry I had? Edna St. Vincent Millay?”
“Oh yeah. Burned up in a fire. Sort of fitting, isn’t it?”
“I deserve that.”
“Who knows who deserves anything?” Chuck sat back in the hard chair and folded his arms. He felt like a piece of beef hanging upside down in a big meat locker. Powerless to move, to think, to do anything but wait for someone to unhook him.
Julia.
He had loved her powerfully, but maybe brokenly, too, and that was the tragedy of it.
“Can I tell you something about it?” Julia said.
“About what?”
“The book.”
“It’s your show.” He said this tiredly. His energy was fast draining, the way you crash after a caffeine high comes to a rapid conclusion.
“It was the one book that spoke to me when I was growing up,” Julia said. “Her sonnets were a lifeline for me.”
“I don’t know anything about your growing up,” Chuck said. “Or sonnets. You never let me in.”
She laughed then. Short, sharp, jarring.
“Why are you laughing?”
“There’s a sonnet in that book that’s my favorite one. I’ve got to tell you the first line.
This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing you are betrayed.
”
“Touching,” Chuck said, his mind chopping up the word
betrayed
into several mental pieces and scattering them around.
“That’s the way I kept you out, see?” Julia said. “I had this door I didn’t want you to open. I didn’t want anybody to open it. I thought it would drive you away. I thought if we got married I could keep the door closed. But there is a crack in the door, there’s a big crack and the door is flying off the hinges. You want me to tell you about it? It’s not particularly interesting. Other girls have been abused. It’s not like I’m unique. It’s not like I deserve any breaks. But I just want you to understand. I just want you to see . . .”
“See what?”
“That it wasn’t your fault. I don’t want you to go away thinking any of this was your fault. You don’t deserve that. And Stan doesn’t deserve that.”
“Stan especially.”
“I’m not in any way excusing myself,” Julia said. “I didn’t want to get involved with him.”
“What’s the matter? Can’t you say his name?”
Her eyes flashed for a moment, and Chuck saw in them something of that past she had hidden from him. He didn’t know what was in those murky waters, and he didn’t want to. He did not want to feel sympathy for her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate myself for what happened. He told me how much money we’d have. He told me we would get away from the whole world. Do you want to know something, Chuck? Getting away from this world is something I’ve wanted to do since I was six years old. The world is ugly. Reality is ugly. I wish I could have stood by you, but I’m not that good.”
They sat in silence. Chuck started to feel the talons grip his brain but he fought them back. He was not going to fold in front of her. He was not going to give her that.
But part of him saw the wreck she was, and was sorry for it, sorry for himself, too, because he had loved her and once felt like Fred Astaire in her arms. And all that was gone now, exploded like an IED on a dusty Afghan strip of hell.
The tears were coming down her face now, soundlessly.
Tears like those of some of the rough, tough soldiers he’d counseled alone on dark nights of the soul. Tears of hopelessness and fear.
“Julia,” he said.
She looked up at him. And then said, “I’ll miss you. And Stan. I’ll miss you doing those magic tricks, too. I’ll miss Stan’s laugh.”
Chuck felt a jarring in this head, like a drunk kicking a locked tavern door. But it opened. Light came out.
“What is it?” Julia said.
Astonished, wordless, Chuck stared at her, more light flooding in.
He stood.
“Don’t go,” Julia said.
“I have to.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I don’t know.” He tried to see the future. Couldn’t. “I just don’t.”
“Chuck!”
But he was out the door, calling for Agent DeSoto.
She came out of an open door and into the corridor. “What is it?”
“Get your team together, and somebody to record what I’m about to tell you.”
“What? What are you—”
“It’s going to blow your ever-loving federal mind.”
.
Ten minutes later they were in a conference room on the third floor: three FBI agents, an Assistant U.S. Attorney named Cheryl Magnussen, and a stenographer.
“It’s like this,” Chuck said. “There’s a truck with some untold millions of dollars in gold in it. Ditched. A soldier named Dylan Bly was dying, and told me where it was. He knew I did memory tricks.”
The faces in the room tried to look like they understood.
“Here’s the trick,” Chuck said. “Nolan Ryan has a rash on his tan line. He’s pitching to Mario Lemieux, who is holding a knob, a fish, and a kite.”
The faces in the room began to get restless.
“Listen, it corresponds to numbers! Nolan Ryan was number 30. And Mario Lemieux was number 66. I see their uniforms. That makes their numbers stand out. But then the crazy phrases are numbers, too. Each digit has a sound associated with it. A one is a
d
or
t
sound, because it looks upright. A two is an
n
sound, because it has two legs. A three is an
m
sound because it has three legs.”
“Is he serious?” AUSA Magnussen said to DeSoto.
“Let him finish,” DeSoto said.
“Four is
r,
because it ends in
r.
Five is
L
because when you hold up five fingers, your forefinger and thumb form an L shape.”
“He
is
serious,” said Magnussen.
“Six is a
ch
or
j.
Seven is
k
or a hard
g.
Eight is
f,
because it looks like a handwritten
f.
It can also be
v
sound, because it’s close. Nine is a
p
because it looks like a backwards
p.
It can also be
b.”
“Can we get to the point here?” Magnussen said.
“This is what it is,” Chuck said. “Nolan Ryan is 30. His phrase translates to 461252. Mario Lemieux is 66. His phrase is 298671.”
“So what?” Magnussen said.
“It’s latitude and longitude! 30.461252 by 66.298671. That’s somewhere in Afghanistan, ma’am, and it may just be a huge boatload of drug money in gold.”
A long pause clenched the room in its fist.
Without taking her eyes off Chuck, Magnussen said to the stenographer, “Did you get those numbers?”