In for a Ruble (39 page)

The food came and we ate in silence. The steak was tough and tasteless, but I was hungry. I took heart in the fact that he ate hungrily as well.

When he finished, he fell back against the sofa and said, “All right, you brought me to the middle of fucking nowhere. What do you want?”

CHAPTER
43

“Start with Uncle Walter.”

“Asshole. I don’t want to talk about him.”

“You’re going to have to. Sooner or later. To me or the police.”

He shook his head.

“You kill him?”

“NO! He was…”

He turned away.

“He was what?”

“I’m not going to talk about that.”

“He was what, Andras? Dead when you got there?”

He turned further until I was looking at the back of his head. The kid had spent his whole life overprotected by a rich father. The idea of vulnerability hadn’t sunk in.

“Listen carefully.” I put the telephone on speaker and punched in Nosferatu’s number.

“What the fuck now, dead man?” he said in English.

Andras faced the phone.

“Fuck your mother,” I said. “What are the ConnectPay servers worth to you, Karp?”

“Your life—maybe.”

“The kind of stupid answer I’d expect from a
pidar gnoinyj
. Try again.”

The slang translates literally as “rotten faggot,” but as with so many Russian expressions (this one actually originates in the Ukraine), the meaning is much stronger. I was accusing him of being a passive homosexual fuck-bag with an acute case of the clap. No reason he should have a monopoly on the insults.

“You pathetic
pizda
”—cunt—“I will make sure you swallow your own balls before I break your neck.”

“That what happened to Druce? You kill him on purpose, or did you fuck that up too?”

“I didn’t kill that
petuh
”—male jailhouse whore—“I didn’t need to.
Oy’ebis’l!
”—Fuck off!—“Why the fuck am I talking to you?”

“The servers,” I reminded him.

“I want them. And the kid.”

“What kid?”

“Don’t waste my time. You’re a
zek,
too stupid to live. The Leitz kid. Thinks he’s clever. Thinks he can fuck the girl and steal the money. He’s going to pay.”

The voice was like ice. Just above a whisper. Andras sat frozen on the couch. I looked at him and put my finger to my lips.

“Who do you want more, Karp—the kid or the girl? Maybe we can make a deal.”

“No deal,
zek.
I’m going to take care of everyone—you too—in my own time.”

“Guess I was wrong, then.”

“You’ve been wrong your whole life,
zek.
Fortunately for you, it’s almost over.”

A click and the line went dead.

Andras stared at the phone then back at me. “Who … Who is that guy?”

“The assassin. The one I told you about in the car. He means what he says. He’s been told to get rid of you and Irina both. He’s headed here—probably an hour or two away.”

“Here?!”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be long gone. Feel like talking about Uncle Walter now?”

Andras walked around the room, animated, not stopping. Karp had gotten his attention, maybe even more than sister Daria’s note. Up until now, it had been some sort of game for him. All played out long distance, anonymously, through computers and the Internet. He could stay removed, in his own world, protected by his technical expertise and his rich dad. After he made three or four perambulations, I had the feeling the shell of protectiveness was crumbling.

He was at the window when he turned back to face me.

“Why didn’t you let me jump?”

Cracking, not crumbling. He was still thinking about himself.

“I grew up in a tough place. Too many people died. For no reason. Kids, parents too. Other parents fought to keep themselves and their kids alive. Most failed. Kids were left to fend for themselves. Man eat man. Man eat woman. Most of us ate whatever we could. That was the deal, every day. You learn the hard way about the value of life.”

Blank stare.

“You study history at Gibbet School?”

“Sure.”

“World War Two?”

“Yeah.”

“Concentration camps?”

“Yes.”

“Russia? Soviet Union?”

He shook his head.

Another strike against American education.

“I grew up in a concentration camp, Soviet version. They were different, they weren’t about murdering Jews, but no less brutal. They were about murdering everyone. I saw more kids die than you have classmates. I’m one of the lucky ones. I made it.”

It struck me I was using the same technique Batkin had on me—to the same end. We were both Chekists. Whatever works.

“You were in a concentration camp?”

I had his attention—finally.

“That’s right. Labor camp. Gulag camp.”

“Irina said her stepfather…”

“Was too. Same deal.”

“But he’s…”

“He’s what?”

“HE’S A PIG!”

Maybe my history lesson was a mistake. He resumed his walk.

“Andras, tell me about Irina. She’s a beautiful young woman. What’s the deal between the two of you?”

He arrived back at the couch and fell backward on it, face held in bandaged hands. “She … We … Shit, you’ll never understand.”

“Try me. You have to know by now I’m trying to help.”

He shook his head. “No. You can’t.”

“I think I can. Uncle Walter—he abused your sister. That’s what the note meant, right?”

He looked up, pain penetrating every part of his face.

“Where’d you get that note?”

“It’s going to hurt worse if I tell you.”

“Can’t hurt any worse.”

I didn’t want to do this, but I needed him to trust me and open up. More pain, for him, was the price.

“Uncle Thomas was the first to get there, right? First to find the body?”

He snuffled. “I came in right after. It was…”

“Horrible. I’m sure. Daria wrote the note before she … she used the gun. Thomas took it. And used it for years to blackmail Walter.”

“Uncle Thomas? Blackmailed Uncle Walter? I don’t get it. What for?”

“Thomas needed money. He spent … He spends more than he has. It’s an addiction, like any other. People do bad things, even in families. Maybe especially in families.”

He shook his head violently. “I always thought Uncle Walter … I always thought … It was supposed to be…”

“Thought what? What was supposed to be?”

He shook his head again and buried it in the cushions.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to say it, but no avoiding it now. I told myself it was for the best and hoped I wasn’t rationalizing.

“He abused you too, didn’t he?”

I’d hit home. He sobbed into the sofa. I let him cry. There was no comfort I could offer.

After a while, I said, “It’s not your fault, you know.”

He raised his head and looked at me, face red and stained with tears.

“IT IS MY FAULT! I didn’t do anything to stop him.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that. Nobody else will.”

“You don’t get it. You can’t. He made me feel like I was special, you know. I realize it sounds sick now, but that’s how it works. It was our special thing. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t want it to stop, because then I wouldn’t be special anymore. I didn’t know about Daria. I didn’t.”

“It wasn’t your fault Andras. He manipulated you. The same way he manipulated your sister. And lots of others. It was his disease. Not yours.”

“NO! That’s not it. That’s not what I mean. You don’t know. YOU DON’T!”

I had a bad feeling. “Okay. I’m listening.”

His voice dropped to a whisper, as if he feared he’d be overheard.

“
Everybody knew. Mom and Dad. Aunt Julia. Everybody. Nobody did anything about it.
”

“That’s still not your fault.”

“
Yes it is—I didn’t make them.
”

CHAPTER
44

We sat in the rented SUV, heater running, while Andras finished his story. He’d got most of it out upstairs before I announced it was time to move. Two reasons. We had a destination now—back to Massachusetts—and we’d have visitors shortly. I’d made it easy for Karp to trace us. I didn’t have a plan, just the gamble that if he was focused on me, I could stay a step ahead and protect Andras while we kept moving, and he’d have a harder time hurting anyone else, like the girl.

As with many people who have held a secret for as long as he had—especially as painful as this one—it all came tumbling out once he started. The abuse, which had gone on for several years. The Christmas party when Julia had barged in, Walter’s hands in Andras’s underwear. The whispered arguments that followed, among his parents, his father and Julia, everyone but Walter. Andras was twelve years old. He understood they were talking about him, about him and Walter. What he didn’t understand was why nothing happened. Everything went back to the way it was before. Except he was no longer special to Walter. He hadn’t understood why, although he put it down to getting caught—and that was somehow his fault in his mind. He figured out some years later that Walter had been effectively exiled. He didn’t show up at holidays or family functions anymore, some excuse was made about how busy he was. That was how the Leitzes dealt with it. What Andras didn’t know, what no one apparently knew, according to him, was that Uncle Walter had already started on Daria and somehow managed to keep it up even after being banned. Andras suspected as much when Daria committed suicide, but there was no proof, and he kept his fears and accusations to himself.

The suicide led to his mother’s breakdown and his parents’ divorce. She never said so, but it was clear to Andras that she blamed Leitz for everything that had happened. Andras was confused and frightened—his own experience and his family’s response, or nonresponse—still weighed on his young mind, as did his guilt over Daria. He was glad to seek refuge in boarding school, far away from the whole scene.

It was a boy named Kevin, three years ahead of him at Gibbet, who introduced Andras to the world of online porn for a fee. Somehow he knew to seek him out. He’d been there too. In Kevin’s case, it was his next-door neighbor, a doctor, who initiated secret touches and more—and then a whole, huge world of men who were only too happy to buy computer gear, pay apartment rentals, and shower gifts and cash on kids like Kevin and Andras if they were willing to strip, jerk off, and do things with their friends in front of a Web cam. Turned out there were several kids at Gibbet with similar experiences. That didn’t make the school unusual, maybe just par for the course. One came up with the idea of the Oscar Wilde theme. Andras was the computer expert. He wired and equipped an earlier, two-room apartment in Crestview, before doing the same in the expanded playhouse above the liquor store. The clients paid for it all, then the kids started charging on a fee-for-service basis. No client complained. None of the kids took it that seriously. It was kind of a lark, a joke. They felt more pity than anything for these sad perverts who shelled out thousands to watch them prance and preen in costume before jerking off or jumping into the sack. Hooking up with monetary benefits. Andras hadn’t even focused that seriously on the money. He didn’t need it, but he kept opening new bank accounts to hold the growing stash of cash.

“So you were all abused kids?” I asked, just to be sure. “That was the common bond?”

“Yeah.”

“Usually family members?”

He thought for a moment. “Usually, not always … like Kevin.”

“What about Irina?” I asked as gently as I could.

“What about her?” he snapped, immediately on the defensive.

He shook his head violently from side to side. I got ready to grab him, in case he tried to run. But he only swiveled in his seat and looked out the window. Not the time to push it.

“Okay,” I said. “What happened next?”

What happened next was that he started to have feelings for Irina. She held him at bay, but relented with time, and they began going out as well as hooking up for the benefit of their growing Internet audience. He found nothing odd about this progression of events—I understand it’s the way it often works with kids today (minus the online show-and-tell)—but it still seemed odd to me. On the other hand, everything about his story was bizarre. He began to feel protective and wanted her to stop performing. She told him to mind his own business. I could hear her, and I guessed her language was more colorful. He couldn’t let it go. He began to monitor her online activities, especially her “private auditions.” He grew increasingly jealous of “frankyfun” as franky took up more of her time. He hacked into franky’s account at ConnectPay and was horrified—but not necessarily shocked—to find it belonged to a guy with the same address as Uncle Walter. It didn’t take him any longer than it had me to make the connection.

Andras started toying with franky electronically—inserting minor malware programs into ConnectPay’s servers, causing modest data corruption and periodic operating glitches. He confronted Irina again. She told him to back off, she could manage her own affairs. So he sent a message to franky, from Oscar, telling him bad things would happen if he continued to pursue Salomé. Franky didn’t believe him. Salomé kept performing. Andras hacked into ConnectPay’s servers, accessed the company’s bank information and moved three million dollars through several accounts into his own and Irina’s. He figured that was enough to get franky’s attention. Oscar sent franky another e-mail informing him of the “fine” for not obeying the rules and warning him the next one would be double. When franky continued to pursue Salomé, Andras hit ConnectPay for five million in November.

He told the tale calmly and precisely, without emotion. Except when I asked about Irina. Somewhere along the story line, we moved from fact to fiction. I let him keep talking. We’d go through it again, maybe more than once, and the inconsistencies would begin to show themselves.

Things stayed quiet through December, but franky was all over Salomé as soon as they got back to school. So Andras, using her e-mail address, made the date at the Black Horse. Only franky didn’t show. Irina did, and she was royally pissed off.