Performance Anomalies (20 page)

10

The bench in the police headquarters was hard, but at least Cono’s backside hadn’t been bludgeoned. All the pain came from his front, as if he were a slice of steak that had been grilled on one side only. Someone had given him old newspapers so he could wipe the blood from his swollen face. He tried to breathe through the heavy fog of cigarette smoke.

“You’re lucky. We’re not going to hold you. Get lost.” The uniformed man who had spoken turned away before Cono could lift his aching eyes.

Cono rose with difficulty and hobbled outside. He looked up and down the block: the street was empty except for the trees loitering in the darkness, waving their branches in the light breeze, and a few dented squad cars parked on each side. He turned right and walked away from the light slanting out from the police headquarters. Every step caused a streak of pain to flash down his legs. He stumbled twice when his right foot refused to lift itself and scraped the pavement, but he compensated by lifting his thigh higher, despite the cramping of his muscles.

It was time to get out of Almaty.

Cono heard coughing from the other side of the street. He froze next to a tree and watched a stout man with a broad chest angle toward him at a slow, deliberate pace. Faintly illuminated by a street lamp, he looked like countless other middle-aged Kazak men Cono had seen on the streets of Almaty, dressed in gray dungarees, sturdy black shoes, a small visored cap, and a bulky woolen jacket that seemed unnecessary in the last days of summer.

The man coughed again as he approached the curb ahead of Cono, not looking his way.

“Hard to come by.” The man spoke in barely audible Russian. He coughed again. “Freedom.” He stepped onto the curb and continued to walk in the same direction as Cono. The Kazak man slowed his gait so Cono could catch up and hobble at his side. His eyes were quick, and they sized up Cono in a few glances, which Cono met with his own looks, as if the two of them were playing optical ping-pong.

“I know you are injured,” the man said. “But we must hurry. The Bureau will get wind of this and be here in no time.”

He reached into his coat. The motion immediately caused Cono to take three excruciating steps backward. A cap appeared in the man’s hand. Only a cap. It was like the one the stout man was wearing.

“Put this on. This too.” In his other hand he held out a dark-blue shirt spattered with beige spots, as if it had been worn while painting a house. It was large.

Cono had trouble lifting the cap to his head. The stranger grabbed it and planted it firmly, pulling it hard over Cono’s lumpy brow. The limpness of Cono’s arms made putting on the shirt a struggle too. The man took Cono’s wrists and plunged them into the sleeves.

“Unfortunately your build doesn’t let you blend in well here.” The Kazak man began to walk more briskly, and looked at his watch. Cono marched despite the pain.

“You are brave,” Cono whispered. “I thank you.”

“We do not have time for that.”

They reached the end of the long block of old buildings and turned right onto an avenue blinking with headlights. Just as they turned right again, into an alleyway, a Mercedes with a flashing red light on its dashboard sped up the avenue, followed by two black SUVs. The stranger stepped up the pace. The alley led to a lightless courtyard that Cono estimated was at the rear of the police headquarters. They had doubled back.

“Do you want to sit down?” the man asked.

“If I did, I might never get up,” Cono responded. “I’ll have to watch the show on my feet. I suppose that’s why you brought us back here.”

The man gave a partial nod. “Do you have any wounds that should be tended to immediately?”

Cono shook his head no. “My name is Cono. Yours?”

“I am Bulat. Miss Oksana calls me Teacher.” Bulat pulled a plastic water bottle from his coat. “The ones who are tortured are always thirsty, if they live.” He handed the bottle to Cono, whose eyes were fixed on the yellow rear windows of the headquarters. “Later comes the hunger.” Bulat placed a paper-wrapped sandwich in Cono’s other hand.

Cono sucked on the bottle in urgent gulps that left water dripping down his chin. “Why are you doing this, working with Miss Oksana?” he asked, taking Oksana as one of Katerina’s professional names.

Bulat hesitated. “Imagine taking orders all your life from people far away who think they own you.” He sighed, as if that was all there was to his story.

“Taking orders …” Cono prompted.

“We were all slaves to Moscow, to their system, their crazy ideas. And then, at last, when I am still not so old, when I still have a future, the Soviet hoax falls to pieces. Imagine the joy of that—of not being beneath that big thumb. Imagine no longer being a beetle, but being a man. Can you feel what I felt?” Bulat paused, waiting for Cono to finish another drink from the bottle.

Cono swallowed. “Go on.”

“So you think you are a man. You are very happy. You think you are now a citizen of a free country. And then …” Bulat sighed. “And then it all repeats. The local bosses of the ex-Soviet empire take over, the KGB gets a new name, the Bureau, but the faces stay the same, and the Politburo is now replaced by a few clans who think they own you and that all the riches of the country are theirs. You are a beetle again.”

“You look like a strong fellow,” Cono said. “Did you fight against the bosses?”

There was a deep rumbling in Bulat’s chest that faded gradually.

“I guess you didn’t.”

“No, I remained a beetle. But my brother started to fight, with words, with a small pamphlet newspaper. They took him away. I visited him once in prison. What they had done to him …” Bulat’s words faded; Cono stepped closer. “That was the last time I saw him, a few years ago. I hope he is still alive. Or maybe that he is not.”

Cono bowed his head slightly. “Does he have a family?”

“I sent them to the countryside. I lost my job after the visit to the prison, so I sent my family away too, to be safe, I hope. Two boys and two girls, and my wife. On a normal night, if there were any light, I’d show you pictures, but these are not normal times, and I cannot carry their photos with me anyway.”

“I hope Miss Oksana pays you for your sacrifices.”

“Yes, she does.”

“What was your job?” Cono feebly held the sandwich to his lips and bit into it.

“I was a math teacher, and I liked it. In truth, I like to solve puzzles, like the one you have presented today, and like the others Miss Oksana poses.” His speech became more formal, like an instructor giving a lecture. He looked at his watch again and peered at the window. “I also do it because I like to please Miss Oksana. She is exceptional, as you know. She compliments my work. She is strong, and reliable. Our situations are not so dissimilar. Both of us are stuck between high walls. And we share a dissatisfaction with her employer, which is ultimately my employer.”

“My father was a math teacher, of sorts,” Cono said. He drank again from the bottle. “Tell me about today’s puzzle.”

Bulat said he had been trailing Cono with some difficulty since the meeting at the swimming pool. “I would have liked to assist you when you were lying on the sidewalk outside the computer shop, but the exposure … I’m sure you understand,” Bulat said. “In addition, your sickness wasn’t at all expected.”

“I suppose the brick floating through the window was from you.” Cono’s swollen mouth formed a partial smile. “The timing was good, except that my face would have preferred an earlier rescue.” Cono’s hand shook as he tried to place the sandwich in his mouth again. Bulat held Cono’s forearm to steady it.

“The credit goes to an insider, a Kazak employee of the bank, who told us some weeks ago how that room is used. Blood in a bank is an unexpected finding, as I am sure you would appreciate.” Bulat helped Cono position the sandwich for another bite. “I wish I could say we placed listening devices in that chamber after the employee’s revelation, but the Americans have diplomatic sensitivities, as I understand. Yes, the brick was my idea. Methods are simple here in my country. Besides, I always wanted to play baseball, but never had the chance. I regret that I was instructed to wait until nightfall. But, as we see, you are still alive.” Bulat placed the diminishing sandwich into Cono’s mouth.

As Cono chewed, he asked why the police had released him. Bulat explained that he had paid a bribe, through a friend, with a message that the Far East Merchants Bank didn’t want to pursue charges. After all, nothing was stolen. No reason to stir the pot. And, anyway, where was the proof that the shoeless man they had found on the front steps had anything to do with the tripped alarm?

“Yes,” Bulat added, “the captain was suspicious about the paraphernalia in your clothing, but at least you had no weapon. And the bribe was generous for his rank. I think it likely that the money came from Miss Oksana herself, not from her employer. I suppose she thinks highly of you.” Bulat’s eyes swept across the yellow windows. “She may also want your help.”

Shouts came from the headquarters, muffled by the windows. There was a gunshot. The sound echoed against the buildings surrounding the void of darkness in which Cono and Bulat were standing. Cono looked at Bulat’s face, expecting some expression, perhaps a wince, but there was none, or it was simply too dark to see it. “The police captain?”

Bulat nodded. “I hope so. My friends say he’s a stooge for the regime. I was pleased to have the opportunity to set him up tonight, if indeed he was a good mark and if he’s gotten his due just now when the Bureau agents found out he’d released you. But one never knows for sure, not here. It’s a statistical problem.”

A siren’s whine drizzled over the barrier of buildings and was joined by another siren.

“The chase for you begins in earnest,” Bulat said. “Best to stay put here until they lose a little steam. And perhaps I can ask
you
a few questions. Why do you do this? And what is
this
?” Bulat tried to make out Cono’s face in the dimness.

“What do you mean by
this
?” Cono’s knees were wobbling, and he slowly lowered himself cross-legged on the weeds and propped his forearms on his thighs. Bulat sat with his haunches on his heels.

“This …” Bulat seemed to be searching for the proper phrasing. “Miss Oksana says that you have had experiences in these matters, and yet you don’t attach yourself to any government. She told me this to reassure me, of course. It all sounds very strange. Most people get tortured because of principles or resistance against a government. You … you seem like a puzzle piece out of place.”

“This time I just came to help a friend. I’m sure you have fought for a friend before.”

“Surely I have,” Bulat said after a long pause. “But friends are mostly family, even if somewhat removed.”

“Your clan, you mean. You fight for your clan. I have no clan.”

“You don’t have a family?” For the first time there were quaverings in the upper frequencies of Bulat’s voice that signaled suspicion or uneasiness.

“My parents died when I was young. I was on my own when I was about nine.”

“So perhaps you were like those feral children we read about, growing up with the animals in the jungle,” Bulat said with amusement.

“A bit like that. I had to make up my own rules.”

“And where are you from? What kind of rules are there where your people are from, before they all died?”

How could he answer this question? His childhood had been spent in Brazil, in a series of slum towns, each one poorer than the last. After that, he’d traveled alone for years—the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, especially China.

His father’s father was from Tianjin. His father’s mother was a half-Gypsy from the Mezzogiorno who had tried to convince people she was an Italian duchess. His mother’s mother, Antonina, had been born in St. Petersburg and had escaped the revolution only because her aristocratic parents chose to shove their youngest offspring onto a boxcar headed to Siberia under the protection of fellow White Russians. The chaos chased them all the way to Harbin, China, and then a lucky few, among them Antonina, were freighted away to Yokohama.

After years of barely surviving in Japan, Antonina left on a ship bound for South America. On board her belly grew, and she gave birth to Cono’s mother in the train station of the coastal city of Guayaquil, on a bench shrouded by the only blanket she had. Antonina never spoke of the father.

Cono’s parents eventually met in São Paulo. His father, tall and reedy in his youth, seemed to diminish in size with each move the family made, always north—to Rio, Porto Seguro, then Salvador, Maracaipe, and finally, Fortaleza—as he chased transient trading scams and teaching assignments, just as his own father had done, and with even less success. One day Cono was startled to notice for the first time, as his father walked through the doorway, that the man no longer had shoulders; his neck seemed merely to merge with a thin chest attached to spindly arms. Thereafter he appeared to dwindle day by day.

But Cono’s mother, Isadora, had a physical vitality that never left her until her death. She found waitress and dancing jobs in most towns along the way, but they became fewer and fewer, until the small family was playing an endgame of slum poverty on the outskirts of Fortaleza. At the time, Cono had no appreciation of how poor they were, except for the hunger that seized him and led him to learn how to fish and to steal.