Out of the darkness the sound of feet running, and again I could not see, or move, everything black at the edges and I was falling even though I
wasn’t because somehow I was sitting on a low stretch of tiled wall with my head between my knees looking down at clear red spit, or vomit, on the shiny, epoxy-painted concrete between my shoes and Boris, there was Boris, winded and breathless and bloody, running back in, his voice was coming from a million miles off, Potter, are you all right? he’s gone, I couldn’t catch him, he got away
I drew my palm down my face and looked at the red smear on my hand. Boris was still talking to me with some urgency but even though he was shaking my shoulder it was mostly mouth movements and nonsense through soundproof glass. The smoke from the fired gun was oddly the same bracing ammonia smell of Manhattan thunderstorms and wet city pavements. Robin’s egg speckles on the door of a pale blue Mini. Nearer, creeping dark from under Boris’s car, a glossy satin pool three feet wide was spreading and inching forward like an amoeba, and I wondered how long before it reached my shoe and what I would do when it did.
Hard, but without anger, Boris cuffed me with his closed fist on the side of the head: an impersonal clout, no heat about it at all. It was as if he were performing CPR.
“Come on,” he said. “Your specs,” he said with a short nod.
My glasses—blood-smeared, unbroken—lay on the ground by my foot. I didn’t remember them falling off.
Boris picked them up himself, wiped them on his own sleeve, and handed them to me.
“Come on,” he said, catching my arm, pulling me up. His voice was level and soothing although he was splattered with blood and I could feel his hands shaking. “All over now. You saved us.” The gunshot had set off my tinnitus like a swarm of locusts buzzing in my ears. “You did good. Now—over here. Hurry.”
He led me behind the glassed-in office, which was locked and dark. My camel’s-hair coat had blood on it, and Boris took it off me like an attendant at a coat check, and turned it inside out and draped it over a concrete post.
“You will have to get rid of this thing,” he said, with a violent shudder. “Shirt too. Not now—later. Now—” opening a door, crowding in behind me, flipping on a light—“come on.”
Dank bathroom, stinking of urinal cakes and urine. No sink, only a bare water spigot and a drain in the floor.
“Quick, quick,” said Boris, turning the faucet full pressure. “Not perfection. Just—yeow!” grimacing as he stuck his head under the spout, splashing his face, scrubbing it palm down—
“Your arm,” I found myself saying. He was holding it wrong.
“Yes yes—” cold water flying everywhere, coming up for air—“he winged me, not bad, only a nick—oh God—” spitting and spluttering—“I should have listened to you. You tried to say! Boris, you said, someone back there! In the kitchen! But did I listen to you? Pay attention? No. That little fucker—the Chinese kid—that was Sascha’s boyfriend! Woo, Goo, I cannot remember his name. Aah—” sticking his head under the faucet again, burbling for a moment as the water streamed over his face—“—bloo! you saved us Potter, I thought we were dead.…”
Standing back, he scrubbed his hands over his face, bright red and dripping. “Okay,” he said, wiping the water out of his eyes, slinging it away, then steering me to the pounding faucet, “now, you. Head under—yes yes, cold!” Pushing me under when I flinched. “Sorry! I know! Hands, face—”
Water like ice, choking, it was going up my nose, I’d never felt anything so cold but it brought me around a bit.
“Quick, quick,” said Boris, hauling me up. “Suit—dark—doesn’t show. Nothing we can do about the shirt, collar up, here, let me do it. Scarf is in the car, yes? You can wind it around your neck? No no—forget it—” I was shivering, grabbing for my coat, teeth ringing with cold, my whole upper body was soaked through—“well, go ahead, you’ll freeze, just keep it turned to lining side out.”
“Your arm.” Though his coat was dark and the light was bad I saw the burnt skid at his bicep, black wool sticky with blood.
“Forget it. Is nothing. My God, Potter—” starting back to the car—half running, me hurrying to keep up, panicked at the thought of losing him, of being left. “Martin! That bastard is a bad diabetic, I have been hoping he would die for years. Grateful Dead, I owe you too!” he said, tucking the snub nose in his pocket, then—from the handkerchief pocket of his suit—drawing a bag of white powder which he opened and tossed down in a spray.
“There,” he said, dusting his hands off with a lurching back step; he was ash white, his pupils were fixed and even when he looked up at me, he seemed not to see me. “That is all they will be looking for. Martin will be
carrying too, all junked up, did you notice? That was why he was so slow—him and Frits too. They were not expecting that call—not expecting to go to work tonight.
God
—” squeezing his eyes shut—“we were lucky.” Sweaty, dead pale, wiping his forehead. “Martin knows me, he knows what I carry, he was not expecting me to have that other gun and you—they were not thinking of you at all. Get in the car,” he said. “No no—” catching my arm; I was following him to the driver’s side like a sleepwalker—“not there, it’s a mess. Oh—” stopping, cold, an eternity passing in the flickering greenish light—before wobbling around for his own gun on the floor, which he wiped clean with a cloth from his pocket and—holding it carefully, between the cloth—dropped on the ground.
“Whew,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “That will confuse them. They will be trying to trace that thing for years.” He stopped, holding his nicked arm with one hand: he looked me up and down. “Can you drive?”
I couldn’t answer. Glazed, dizzy, trembling. My heart, after the collision and freeze of the moment, had begun to pound with hard, sharp, painful blows like a fist striking in the center of my chest.
Quickly, Boris shook his head, made a
tch tch
sound. “Other side,” he said, when I, feet moving of their own accord, followed him again. “No no—” leading me back around, opening the front passenger door and giving me a little shove.
Drenched. Shivering. Nauseated. On the floor: pack of Stimorol gum. Road map: Frankfurt Offenbach Hanau.
Boris had circled around to the car, checking it out. Then, gingerly, he came back to the driver’s side—weaving a bit; trying not to step in blood—and sat behind the wheel and held it with both hands and took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said, on a long exhale, talking to himself like a pilot about to take off on a mission. “Buckle up. You too. Brake lights working? Tail lights?” Patting his pockets, sliding up the seat, turning the heater up to High. “Plenty of gas—good. Heated seats too—will warm us up. We can’t be stopped,” he explained. “Because I cannot drive.”
All sorts of tiny noises: creak of seat leather, water ticking from my wet sleeve.
“Can’t drive?” I said, in the intense ringing silence.
“Well, I
can.
” Defensively. “I
have.
I—” starting up the car, backing out with his arm along the seat—“well, why do you think I have a driver?
Am I this fancy? No. I
do
have—” upheld forefinger—“drunk-driving conviction.”
I closed my eyes to keep from seeing the slumped bloody mass as we drove past it.
“So, you see, if they stop me they will run me in and this is what we do not want to happen.” I could barely hear what he was saying over the fierce buzzing in my head. “You will have to help me out. Like—watch for street signs and keep me from driving in bus lanes. The cycle paths are red here, you are not supposed to drive on them either so help me watch for those too.”
On the Overtoom again, heading back into Amsterdam: Locksmith Sleutelkluis, Vacatures, Digitaal Printen, Haji Telecom, Onbeperkt Genieten, Arabic letters, lights streaking, it was like a nightmare, I was never going to get off this fucking road.
“God, I better slow down,” said Boris somberly. He looked glassy and wrecked. “Trajectcontrole. Help me watch for signs.”
Blood smear on my cuff. Big fat drops.
“Trajectcontrole. That means some machine tells the police you are speeding. They drive unmarked cars, a lot of them, and sometimes they will follow a while before they stop you although—we are lucky—not much traffic out this way tonight. Weekend, I guess, and holiday. This is not exactly Happy Christmas neighborhood out here if you get me. You understand what just happened, don’t you?” said Boris, heaving for breath and scrubbing his nose hard with a gasping sound.
“No.” Somebody else talking, not me.
“Well—Horst. Both those guys were Horst’s. Frits is maybe only person in Amsterdam he knew to call on such short notice but Martin—fuck.” He was speaking very fast and erratically, so fast he could barely get the words out, and his eyes were flat and staring. “Who even knew Martin was in town? You know how Horst and Martin met, don’t you?” he said, half-glancing at me. “Mental home! Fancy California mental home! ‘Hotel California,’ Horst used to call it! That was back when Horst’s family was still talking to him. Horst was in for rehab but Martin was in because he is really, truly nuts. Like, eyestabber kind of nuts. I have seen Martin do things I really do not like to talk about. I—”
“Your arm.” It was hurting him; I could see the tears glittering in his eyes.
Boris made a face. “Nyah. This is zero. This is nothing. Aah,” he said, lifting his elbow up so I could wrap the phone charger cable around his arm—I’d yanked it out, wrapped it twice above the wound, tied it tight as I could—“smart you. Good precaution. Thanks! Although, no need really. Just a graze—more bruised than anything, I think. Good this coat is so thick! Clean it out—some antibyotic and something for pain—I’ll be fine. I—” deep shuddering breath—“I need to find Gyuri and Cherry. I hope they went straight to Blake’s. Dima—Dima needs a heads-up too, about the mess in there. He will not be happy—there will be cops, big headache—but it will look random. There is nothing to tie him to this.”
Headlights sweeping past. Blood pounding in my ears. There weren’t many cars on the road but every one that passed made me flinch.
Boris moaned and dragged his palm across his face. He was saying something, very speedy and agitated. “What?”
“I said—this is a mess. I am still figuring it out.” Voice staccato and cracked. “Because this is what I am wondering now—maybe I am wrong, maybe I am paranoid—but maybe Horst knew all along? That Sascha took the picture? Only Sascha brought the picture out of Germany and tries to borrow money on it behind Horst’s back. And then when things go wrong—Sascha panics—who else could he call? of course, I am just thinking out loud, maybe Horst
didn’t
know Sascha took it, maybe he would never have known if Sascha hadn’t been so careless and dumb as to—Goddamn this fucking ring road,” said Boris suddenly. We had gotten off the Overtoom and were circling around. “Which is the direction I want? Turn on the Nav.”
“I—” fumbling around, incomprehensible words, menu I couldn’t read, Geheugen, Plaats, turning the dial, different menu, Gevarieerd, Achtergrond.
“Oh, hell. We will try this one. God, that was close,” said Boris, taking the turn a little too fast and sloppy. “You have some minerals, Potter. Frits—Frits was out of it, nodding practically, but Martin, my God. Then you—? Coming around so brave? Hurrah! I did not even think of you there. But there you were! Say you never handled a firearm before?”
“No.” Wet black streets.
“Well, let me tell you something that will maybe sound funny? But—is a compliment. You shoot like a girl. You know why is a compliment? Because,” said Boris, with a giddy, feverish slur in his voice, “in situation of threat, male who never fired weapon before and female who never fired
weapon before? The female—so Bobo used to say—is much more likely to drop her mark. Most men? want to look tough, have seen too much movies, get too impatient and pop their shot off too fast—Shit,” said Boris suddenly, slamming on the brakes.
“What?”
“We don’t want this.”
“Don’t want what?”
“This street is closed.” Throwing the car in reverse. Backing down the street.
Construction. Fences with bulldozers behind them, empty buildings with blue plastic tarps in the windows. Stacks of piping, cement blocks, graffiti in Dutch.
“What are we going to do?” I said, in the paralyzed silence that followed, after we’d turned down a different street that seemed to have no streetlights at all.
“Well—no bridge here that we can cross. And that’s a dead end, so…”
“No, I mean what are we going to
do.
”
“About what?”
“I—” My teeth were chattering so hard I could barely get the words out. “Boris, we’re fucked.”
“No! We are not. Grozdan’s gun—” awkwardly he patted his coat pocket—“I’ll drop it in the canal. They can’t trace it back to me, if they can’t trace it back to him? And—nothing else to tie us. Because my gun? Clean. No serial. Even the car tires are new! I’ll get the car to Gyuri and he’ll change them tonight. Look here,” said Boris, when I didn’t answer, “don’t worry! We are safe! Shall I say it again? S-A-F-E” (spelling it out clumsily on four fingers).
Hitting a pothole, I flinched, unconsciously, a startle reaction, hands flying up to my face.
“And why, more than anything? Because we are old friends—because we trust each other. And because—oh God, there’s a cop, let me slow down.”
Staring at my shoes. Shoes shoes shoes. All I could think, when I’d put them on a few hours before I hadn’t killed anybody.
“Because—Potter, Potter, think about this. Listen for one moment please. What if I was a stranger—someone you did not know or trust? If you were driving from garage now with stranger? Then your life would
be chained with a stranger’s forever. You would need to be very very careful with this person, long as you live.”
Cold hands, cold feet. Snackbar, Supermarkt, spotlit pyramids of fruit and candy, Verkoop Gestart!
“Your life—your freedom—resting on a stranger’s loyalty? In that case? Yes. Worry. Absolutely. You would be in very big trouble. But—no one knows of this thing but us. Not even Gyuri!”
Unable to speak, I shook my head vigorously at this, trying to catch my breath.