Certain Jeopardy (7 page)

THE DARKNESS OF TH
E
alley threatened to swallow the dim light from distant streetlamps and a late-rising moon. It also threatened to swallow the man who sat on the concrete stoop behind his restaurant. To his left were two dumpsters. In front of the dumpsters, shrouded by the dark, was the blood-stained pavement where his son had died.

The restaurant appeared more tomb than business. A single light burned inside and dribbled through the open back door. The concrete stoop was hard and dirty, but Reuben didn’t care. The pain in his heart and mind was so fierce he could feel nothing else. Estella was inside writing thank-you notes for those who had sent cards and well wishes. She had paused to weep and that was when Reuben moved outside.

He needed air.

He needed to be alone.

He needed courage.

The latter was slow in coming. He knew what he wanted to do, what he longed to do. For the last ten minutes he had stared down the alley toward the street that ran in front of his eatery. The killer had come from that direction. He didn’t need to be a policeman to figure that out. He had walked down the alley, raised a pistol, and pulled the trigger three times. And a good boy, a smart boy, a loving boy,
his
boy had breathed his last.

Reuben prayed. He prayed God would send the man back down the alley. Perhaps to revisit the crime, maybe to gloat. Maybe to mock Reuben. He didn’t care, just as long as his son’s killer appeared.

The gun in Reuben’s hand felt heavy and cold. It wasn’t a fancy weapon, just a cheap .38 he bought at a sporting goods store. He kept it near the register in case someone thought he had a right to Reuben’s money. But the money didn’t matter now. The restaurant no longer mattered.

He looked at the weapon in his hand and wondered if it would hurt once he placed the barrel in his mouth and squeezed the trigger. He was close to doing it. The courage had at last arrived, but one thing kept his hands resting in his lap: Estella. She would hear the sound. She’d know what it meant. She would run to the back door and find her husband with half his head missing and lying in a pool of blood.

The thought of her losing a son and a husband in one week made the gun too heavy to lift, the barrel too difficult to point.

“Reuben?”

He didn’t look up. He knew every nuance, every unspoken message that rode on the notes of his wife’s voice.

Estella lowered herself to the stoop. Without looking he knew she saw the gun in his hand. At first she said nothing. Minutes passed like days.

“First, a favor.” Estella’s voice was soft, not much more than a whisper.

“What favor?”

“Put the gun to my head first.”

He snapped his head around. “What?”

“Before you kill yourself, kill me. I have no life without you and Ricardo.”

“I can’t. I won’t!”

“I know you, Reuben Estevez. I have lived with you too many years to not know what you are thinking. There are days when I know your thoughts before you do.”

He believed that. “This time you are wrong.”

“Am I? Before you put that gun to your head, you must first put it to mine. I deserve that much from you.”

“I could never do that. I am no murderer.”

“If you kill my husband, the last human being I love, then you will be a murderer. You will kill more than just yourself; you will destroy my soul. I will be dead one way or the other.”

The pistol in Reuben’s hand began to shake. Tears fell from his eyes onto the smooth metal.

He raised the handgun.

He put his finger on the trigger and felt its metallic curve beneath his rough finger. He withdrew his finger and pressed the safety to the on position. He then opened the cylinder and emptied the rounds into his hand. A short distance away rested a paper sack. He had seen the likes of it many times before. A few of the local homeless like to drink in the alley from time to time. Reuben rose, retrieved the bag and empty whisky bottle, dropped the gun in the bag, stepped to one of the dumpsters and deposited the bag.

Estella joined him. He handed the bullets to her, and she took them in her hand. Then they embraced and wept—wept together on the spot where their son had died.

* * *

SEVERAL DAYS HAD PA
SSED
since Reuben had found his son in the dark alley. The restaurant had remained closed in the days that followed. Reuben employed two managers he could trust to run the business, but none of that was important now. In a way, the restaurant he built over twenty-five years seemed more tomblike than the grave his son lay in.

After the police had left, Reuben sent his employees home, closed and locked the doors. Unwashed dishes lay in the large stainless-steel sinks, surrounded by dark, dirty water. Tables waited for an employee to clear their surfaces of dishes, coffee cups, glasses of beer, and silverware spotted with dried clumps of cheese.

Estella turned the knob of the faucet and hot water began to flow.

Reuben picked up a few cooking utensils and set them near the sink. “I promised Ricardo that I’d add a commercial dishwasher this year. He said it would clean the dishes better and make them more sanitary. I wish I had acted earlier.”

“He was right.” It was all Estella could say.

“Will things return to normal, Estella?”

She reached into the sink, unplugged the drain, let the water escape then replaced the specialized stopper. Hot water began to fill the basin. “Normal?” She shook her head. “No. Not normal. Not ever again. Everything will be different, but life goes on. The pain will become manageable but never go away. We go on.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You can, husband, and you will. It would disappoint Ricardo if we didn’t.”

“How can you be so strong?”

“Strong? I’m not strong. I’m broken. Time may patch the broken parts, but it will never heal them. We go on.”

“Everything here reminds me of him. Every memory is a knife to the heart.”

“I know. But I would rather have the pain than not have the memories.”

Reuben marveled at his wife. She had just saved his life. Like a fallen figurine she was shattered in myriad pieces, yet there she stood, washing dishes and reminding him that life goes on.

“I’ll clear the tables and bring in the dishes.”

Estella opened her mouth to speak, but no words crossed her lips. She nodded instead.

Reuben was a systematic man. As such, he chose to start at the most distant corner of the building and work back toward the kitchen. When he reached the private dining area, he stopped at the small bussing station where Ricardo had last worked. He pushed back the curtain and imagined his son there.

The station was cramped with just enough room for one person to fill water glasses, pour coffee, and do the other little things patrons seldom noticed. Colored paper on a shelf above the sink caught his attention. He reached for it: American comic books. Reuben smiled. He had felt the comic books were a waste of money, but they did help his son with his English. More than once Ricardo had said he wanted to visit the U.S. He didn’t say it in the restaurant and never to anyone but family. Reuben had insisted on that. These were not good days to speak of such things.

He started to put the comics back when he noticed some writing on the backside of one issue:
Hector Cenobio, nuclear, fast capture, airport, Iran
.

He had no idea who Hector Cenobio was, but the words
nuclear
and
Iran
caught his attention. Why would his son make such notes? He lifted his eyes from the comic book cover to the private dining room. He looked at the table and thought of who sat there the night his son died—and found a reason to live.

J.J. LOOKED AT MOYER,
who leaned against the small window of the Boeing 757, eyes closed, head back, mouth agape. Every so often a soft snore would rumble out of the man’s mouth. J.J. smiled. If his team leader got any noisier, J.J. would gently put an elbow in the man’s ribs. Not that it mattered much. Half the passengers on the aircraft were in some form of twisted, painful-looking sleeping position, something that made J.J. envious. He never could sleep while flying, no matter how late the hour.

On small screens mounted the length of the aircraft, George Clooney was wooing some actress, J.J. didn’t bother to find out whom. They were three hours into a slightly-longer-than-fivehour flight. Five hours didn’t seem right to him. Flying across the U.S. took as long if not longer. He reminded himself he should be thankful. A 757 was a good deal more comfortable than a military transport or doing a HALO—high altitude, low open—jump in the dark. Missing a little sleep wasn’t so bad.

Boarding the plane had proved an eye-opener for J.J. He knew of and had been briefed about the ongoing tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. What he hadn’t expected was the number of people flying to Caracas. Although the State Department had not blacklisted the country for Americans traveling abroad, its Web site info was far from complimentary of Caracas as a tourist destination, spotlighting robberies, kidnappings, and other forms of violent crime. Yet this aircraft was filled with Americans—men and women who could be his neighbors, sleeping, watching the movie, knitting, reading, or working on laptop computers.

J.J. leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He was having stomach trouble of his own. Not like Moyer, who just looked ill and worried. No, a different illness troubled him: a disease he caught on a mountain in Afghanistan. He never spoke of it, never let on that regret traveled with him wherever he went.

This was his first mission since the recon-turned-firefight on the snowy slope. He had told Moyer he was good to go, but there were moments—usually when he was alone, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling—that the ache of doubt burned. A thousand times he had returned to the mountain, saw himself pressed down in his hand-dug ditch, leveling his weapon at the chest of one of the men with AK47s. The Afghani pointed their direction. Someone on the team fired, indelibly tattooing the
fsst
sound of a suppressed round on his mind. A half second later instinct and training took over. The trigger of his weapon moved beneath his finger, recoil slapped his shoulder, and the man spun.

Had he delivered the kill shot? Everyone else on the team seemed to think Caraway had tapped both men. J.J. tried to convince himself that there was no way to know, but he did know his round punctured the Afghani’s sternum. If that wasn’t a kill shot, he didn’t know what was. J.J. had earned his nickname, Colt, for his love of and proficiency with weapons. He had many talents, but marksmanship was his signature skill.

When he relived that night, his heart broke over the shepherd he killed, although he gave no thought to the al-Qaeda fighters who tried to swarm their position. This dichotomy didn’t bother him. The AQ had chosen to attack, and they did so with deadly force; J.J. had done what he had to do for his team and for himself. When he joined the Army, when he determined to earn his Ranger tab, when he allowed the government to spend $100,000 to train him, he knew he would one day be called on to lower the hammer on the enemy.

But the shepherd had not been the enemy. He had been a simple working man in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the guy had been a carpenter instead of a sheepherder, he’d still be alive. Moyer had reminded J.J. that innocent men died in war. It was the way of the world. J.J. knew that—he just couldn’t feel it. What he could feel was that somewhere halfway around the world a shepherd and his friend lay in graves. And a young wife sat alone, a child wept, and another young man grew angry at the world.

“Are you okay?”

J.J. opened his eyes and looked across the aisle at a woman in her mid-fifties: brown hair with gray at the roots, thin, and wearing a lime-green pantsuit that made J.J. wish he were wearing his sunglasses. “Excuse me?”

She had a Ken Follett book on her lap. “I asked if you were feeling all right. You look a little pained.”

“I’m fine. Just resting my eyes.”

“If you say so. But if you were my grandson, I’d say you were having gas pains.”

“Wha—? How old is your grandson?”

“Six months. He’s a chunk, like his father. The kid is born for the NFL.”

J.J. chuckled. “Lots of fathers say that.”

“He didn’t say it. I did. He’s why I’m on this flight. My grandson, I mean. I’ve only seen pictures, and that won’t do. A grandmother can’t spoil a photo.”

“I suppose not.”

“My son works in Caracas. He’s been down there for two years now. I only see him at Christmas.”

“That’s rough. Being separated from family for long periods is no fun.”

“No, it’s not. What about you? You have family?”

“Just a brother. My parents are gone now.”

“Judging by your age, I’d say they died much too early.”

J.J. nodded. “It’s always too early to lose the ones you love.” “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

More often than you think.

“So why are you making the trip to Venezuela? Business?”

“Yes, ma’am. A few days of business and maybe a little recreation.”

“What business are you in?”

J.J. didn’t want to go down this path. He had his cover down pat, but there was always the chance of a mess-up. “I work for an oil company.”

“Really? What company?”

“Oklaco. They’re a firm in—”

“In Oklahoma. My son works for them. Maybe you’ve met.”

J.J. pushed out a smile, struggling to make it seem real. “I doubt it. It’s a big company, and I’m not a regular employee.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I do consulting work. Oil companies hire me for extended periods of time. After my contract is up, I move on.”

“That doesn’t sound right to me. It seems you could take company secrets to the competition.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Not a chance. That’s what nondisclosure agreements are for. First, I’m an honorable man. Trust matters a great deal to me. Second, the last thing I want is to find myself in a legal battle with a company like Oklaco. I know where my bread is buttered.”

“I suppose. So what do you consult the company about?” The woman wouldn’t give up.

“I review geological surveys and offer an outside opinion. That’s all I can say. Being something of an insider, you’ll understand.”

“I suppose I do. Maybe I could have your card.”

“I wish I could, but I wasn’t planning on talking business on the trip. My card holder is in my luggage, and I don’t think the pilot will pull the plane over for me to retrieve it.” He winked at her. She seemed to like it. “You know, I’ve never read Follett. Is he any good?”

“Oh, he’s great …”

She talked for the next half hour about the books she’d read.