Blood Lies (12 page)

After the sun rose, the blinds in Kyle’s condo were all drawn, hiding me from the view of people in the nearby buildings, and Puget Sound from me. I paced the living room waiting for Kyle to return. He had left clutching a bag of hypodermic syringes, declaring it was his morning to pass out clean needles to the addicts in the neighborhood behind Pioneer Square. With a laugh, he said that his life wouldn’t be worth living if he screwed up the weekly distribution schedule set by the ex-addict who coordinated the volunteers for the needle-exchange program.

He promised to return within two hours and take me to Vancouver. I asked again how he planned to get me across the border, but he simply flashed a mischievous smile and told me I would have to wait and see. Though frustrated by Kyle’s amused evasiveness, I found his confidence reassuring. I even relaxed enough to focus on something other than self-preservation.

My stomach was still too unsettled to eat, but I craved more coffee, so I walked into the kitchen to refill my cup. Standing by the carafe, I found myself wondering in which of the many pale cabinets was Kyle’s stash of liquor. Remembering that Kyle had forsaken alcohol, I didn’t bother opening them. I topped up my coffee cup and headed back for the living room.

I stopped on the way to leaf through a stack of pamphlets on the countertop. Entitled “Faith Will Make You Clean,” the brochure was surprisingly well written and only minimally preachy. Presenting a firsthand account that bordered on inspirational, it described how a hardcore addict found God after an intentional heroin overdose.

I wondered if a single user would ever bother to read the pamphlet. I’d learned from experience that it’s impossible to coax anyone into sobriety. Our family butted heads against that wall with my father and Aaron too many times to count.

But when it came to Aaron and me, blood turned out to be even thicker than cocaine or crystal meth. Despite his chronic drug use, our bond persevered. Even our blowout (three years before his disappearance, when I’d pummeled him for sharing a crack pipe with Emily) didn’t drive the same permanent wedge between us as it had between Emily and me. Though I didn’t speak to Aaron for months after I’d called off the engagement, I eventually accepted his version of events. Emily had come to him seeking drugs. If he hadn’t supplied them then, by her own admission, she would’ve gone elsewhere. Within half a year of the fight, Aaron and I were as tight as ever.

Many of our friends and family had trouble understanding how an addict and a doctor could maintain such closeness despite monumental differences in their life choices. Even I didn’t understand it. The fact that we shared the same DNA down to the last gene must have played a role, but there was more to it. We complemented each other. We were usually there for one another in times of need. And more often than not, Aaron (as high-functioning an addict as I’ve ever met) ended up in the supporting role.

In the year before his disappearance, after he’d relocated to Vancouver, Aaron would still surprise my parents and me with unannounced appearances. I remembered his final visit vividly, and not only because it was the last time I ever saw him.

After a tiring afternoon shift in the ER, I walked into my house just before midnight to find Aaron sitting in my kitchen with the newspaper spread open on the table in front of him.

I was shocked by how much weight he’d lost in the four months since I’d last seen him. He’d never been overweight, but because of my cycling, I’d always been a few pounds lighter and a waist size smaller. Now the opposite was true, though I hadn’t gained an ounce. The rest of Aaron’s appearance alarmed me as much as his skinniness. His hair was long and unkempt. With a patchy beard, his face’s pallor highlighted the dark bags beneath his eyes. Even when he looked up from the newspaper and smiled, deep frown lines cut across his forehead and wrinkled his eyes. Rather than four minutes older, he suddenly looked ten years older than me.

He hopped up from the table and walked over to greet me with a hug, the grip of which was as forceful as ever. “Ben, you look as if you just saw a ghost.”

“Not far off. What the hell happened to you?”

“Jenny Craig,” he said with a tired smile.

I wasn’t laughing. “Come on, Aaron.”

“The last six months have been up and down for me.”

I stepped back and studied him. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror that distorted my own image. “Are you sick?”

“Not really.” He shrugged. “I’m a bit off my food and stuff. Call it career stress. Maybe even life stress.”

“What exactly is your career?”

“We’ve been over this.” He sighed a laugh. “I’m a day trader.”

“As in stocks?”

He shrugged again. “Yeah, stocks. Bonds and real estate, too.” Then, for the first time ever, he added, “But mostly I dabble in human misery.”

“You mean you sell drugs,” I said, having suspected it for years.

He nodded. “Indirectly,” he said with a sniff.

Aware of his bloodshot eyes and frequent sniffles, I said, “You’re coked up now, aren’t you?”

He stared blankly at me.

“Is the junk what’s making you look so ill?”

He shook his head and walked past me into the living room. “I told you, Ben. I haven’t eaten well lately. Speaking of, why don’t we order in? Not Chinese, though. I get my fill of that in Vancouver. You can’t beat the Chinese food up there.”

Despite his evasiveness, I sensed that the time wasn’t right to press him. “Do you need a place to crash for a while?” I asked.

“No thanks. I held on to my condo here in Seattle. It’s sitting empty now.”

“So you’re going to move back home?” I asked hopefully.

“Eventually, maybe.” He plunked himself down on the couch. “I have to go back up to Vancouver soon. Lots of loose ends to tie up.”

I followed him into the living room. “Aaron, if it’s money you need—”

He waved his hand to interrupt. His grin was a blend of amusement and gratitude. “I’ve got plenty, but thanks, bro.”

“Then what?”

“Some of my
colleagues”—
he emphasized the last word with disdain—“aren’t so easy…” His voice trailed off.

“Aren’t so easy to what?”

“It’s complicated. And messy.” He shook his head. “Like the last ten years of my life.” He bit his lip and then changed subjects again. “You know I saw Emily in Vancouver a few weeks ago.”

I stiffened, feeling both butterflies and knots in my stomach. I hadn’t heard Aaron mention Emily’s name in the three years since our blowout. “What was she doing in Vancouver?”

“We were busy catching up on old times. Something to do with a ski resort at Whistler.”

“Good for her,” I grunted.

“It might be.” Aaron sighed and his eyes drifted away. “But she’s still as messed up as I am. She gave me this whole song and dance about kicking her habit, but you don’t fool a fellow junkie that easily.”

“Why are you telling me this, Aaron?”

His eyes focused on the floor. “When she took off her jacket, her sleeve accidentally pulled up. In the moment it took her to push it back down, I saw the marks.”

“Track marks?”

He nodded. “She’s mainlining now. Even I am not that stupid.”

I knew Aaron never injected his drugs. Frankly, I thought his pride in that one act of “restraint” was misplaced. Aside from the risk of communicable diseases, I didn’t see much of a distinction between smoking cocaine and crystal meth and injecting them. Though I understood his point; intravenous drug use represented an even further tumble down the slippery slope for Emily. “What do you expect me to do about that?” I asked.

“Expect?” He chuckled. “I don’t expect you to do anything, except maybe rejoice at how smart you were to have called off the engagement.” He paused and his voice quieted. “I thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” I said, though I didn’t know exactly what I was thanking him for.

Aaron’s chin hung on his chest and his shoulders slumped. I began to wonder whether my brother was suffering from depression, which so often accompanies addictions. “Hey, how about we get that chow?” I asked, trying to lift the mood.

Aaron shook his head. He leaned forward and grabbed the edge of the table. “I’m so sick of this, Ben.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Remember that treatment facility you mentioned a few months back?”

“Sure,” I said, filling with unexpected hope. Aaron had never shown the slightest interest in treatment before. “My friend who runs it is a psychiatrist specializing in addictions. I can call him tonight, if you want.”

“Not tonight, but soon.” He looked up at me, his face flushed with uncharacteristic fierceness. “Ben, I am going to do whatever it takes to escape what my life has become.”

I rested a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Aaron, that’s great!”

“Whatever it takes,” he repeated as if steeling his resolve.

The door to the condo opened and the memory slid from my mind.

Kyle walked in without the bag of syringes he’d left with. He viewed me with a puckish grin. “Dr. Horvath, you ready to blow this Popsicle stand that we call America?”

I nodded.

“Grab your bag,” he said, turning back to the door.

I picked up the musty knapsack, double-checked that I still had Peter Horvath’s ID, and then followed Kyle out to the elevator. We rode in silence to the underground parking below his building. We stopped by a gray Lincoln sedan parked not far from the elevator. Kyle raised his hand and clicked a fob, making the lights on the sedan flash twice.

Kyle must have noticed my surprise. “What? Were you expecting us to sneak into a Canada in a Ferrari or on the back of a Harley?”

I smiled. “Not sure, but I’ll tell you this: I wasn’t expecting to see you drive around in Grandpa Jack’s car.” Jack was our paternal grandfather, who always drove a huge Cadillac or Lincoln, up until his second stroke, after which someone from the Department of Motor Vehicles finally wrestled the keys out of his hand.

Kyle laughed. “It’s the new me. Come winter, I’ll probably move down to Florida where I’ll eat dinner at four o’clock and then spend the rest of the day at shuffleboard or canasta.”

We loaded into the car and Kyle shot out of the parking lot. Despite his change in style and ride, Kyle still drove with the same reckless edge that almost got us killed a few times during our teen years. He darted through the morning traffic as he headed onto the I-5 expressway.

Once we’d driven twenty miles north of Seattle, Kyle ran out of traffic to weave through. We spent much of the remaining two-hour drive to the border reminiscing about Emily and Aaron. We swapped stories of my brother’s legendary lateness. Kyle reminded me about the time we were short one pallbearer at our grandmother’s funeral until Aaron caught up with us at the church doors. I told Kyle of how our high school graduation almost passed without a valedictory address because Aaron’s pre-ceremony nap had run long. “Maybe Aaron never disappeared,” Kyle said with a sad smile. “Maybe he’s just running
really
late this time.”

As the road signs began to indicate the approaching Canadian border, my anxiety resurfaced. “Kyle, how am I going to get across the border without a passport or a birth certificate?”

“Wouldn’t help if you had one, anyway. The border guards must have your photo. They’ll be watching for you.”

“So how am I going to get across?”

He pointed to a road sign that read
LYNDEN, NEXT EXIT
. “Not through any official border crossing.”

“What are you talking about?” I said impatiently.

He veered off the freeway onto the exit ramp. “In one year alone, Aaron and I did ten million dollars in international trade. Not one penny of that passed through an official border crossing.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re going to smuggle me through the border like a seventy-kilo bag of B.C. bud?”

Kyle’s smile grew wider. “Not through, Ben. Under.”

“Under?”

“You’ll see.”

He turned off the quasi-main drag we were following, and the country opened around us. Fields and farmhouses dotted either side of the street, which wasn’t much more than a glorified dirt road. At the end of the road, a low fence guarded the highway running perpendicular to our street. Beyond that, I saw a red-and-white flag waving in the distance. I couldn’t make out the emblem, but I knew it had to be the Canadian maple leaf.

My mouth went Mojave dry.

Kyle turned right onto an even smaller road running parallel to the fence. With my heart in my throat, we drove about a quarter of a mile further before Kyle turned off into the driveway of one of the farms. He pulled up to the chain-link fence in front of the yard and switched off the ignition. He turned to me slowly. “Ben, are you sure you want to do this?”

“Want to?”
I couldn’t keep the indignation from my tone. “What choice do I have?”

“You have one of the best defense attorneys in Seattle.” There was no playfulness in his expression now. “We could go back and see Michael Prince. Do all of this on the level.”

“The ‘level’ is not going to work, Kyle.”

“Okay. So what can I do in the meantime?”

I smiled gratefully. “
If
you get me across the border, that will be more than enough.”

“Give me a chance, Ben. I want to make amends.”

“For what?”

“What I did to your brother.”

I was definitely not the one who deserved retribution for that, but I nodded my understanding. “I need to know more about NorWesPac’s Whistler project and how Philip Maglio ties into all of this.”