No hello. Vadim is a businessman. He has product to move. He is a busy professional with a jam-packed schedule.
Vadim and I stand in the quiet of a small cafe down from the train station. Natalia told me normally Vadim would meet the girls somewhere near the station, buy them a tea or coffee and a roll, be charming, show them their passports, offer an advance on two weeks’ pay, say idle things about the fake hotel in sunny, delightful Greece where their non-existent jobs awaited. The coffee shop is warm but empty of customers, except for us. Rain hammers down, the sky looks chopped from lead.
‘Olia and Lizaveta are in the ladies’ room. Katerina is not here yet but she will be. She wanted to say goodbye to her grandmother,’ I say. The lie is so easy. But I worry that my voice shakes. I cannot betray myself.
‘You did well. The money?’
I hand him the envelope. He opens it, peels through the bills. The cafe owner, standing and brewing a fresh pot, does not look at me or Vadim as he refills my coffee and Vadim carefully counts the cash.
‘Nelly,’ I say.
‘I’ll bring her when I come back from Israel after delivering these three.’
‘You could be lying to me.’
‘I could. But I’m not.’ He cranes his neck toward the back where the restrooms are. Eager to see the girls face to face, to take the measure of their worth to him, gauge their personalities and beauty, the gleam in their expectant smiles – and see if they’re suspicious. That above all.
I glance at Vadim’s messenger bag. The flesh trafficker carries a man purse. It doesn’t make me laugh. ‘Do you still have that DVD of Nelly?’
‘Sure.’ He flicks me a smile and I think: you really do have no soul.
‘I’d like it back. I don’t want it showing up on the internet.’
‘Ah, schoolteacher. So proper. Ha. I wouldn’t put it up on the internet.’ He laughs. ‘That stuff is free nowadays.’
The restroom door opens. He cranes his neck further – past my shoulder. He wants to see what he’s buying.
I fling the hot coffee, kindly just poured into my cup, into his greasy bastard face. He shrieks and totters back in the leaning chair. Now he’s flat on the tile floor. I stand and I fire the shot down into his knee. I thought long and hard about this in the quiet temple of the winery, discussing with Ivan how best to proceed. About whether I should kill him with the first shot or get him to talk. I decided on the knee.
A horrid tatter of a scream erupts from Vadim’s throat. The cafe owner freezes. Then he tosses me a roll of tape from behind the counter. I catch it one-handed. The owner walks to the window, puts on the Closed sign, closes all the window blinds, and he walks out the back, as though he has seen nothing, as though he is deaf to Vadim’s shrieks.
He is Ivan’s cousin and he can keep a secret.
I drag Vadim behind the counter.
He writhes on the ground, red welling from his leg in hot splatters, black fury and pain in his scalded eyes. Rage and fear, dancing together.
I push the gun up under his chin.
‘Who do you meet in Bucharest?’ I ask.
‘Bitch, I’ll kill you!’ he screams.
‘Give me the name.’
‘You shot me! You shot me!’
‘Give me the name.’ I slide the gun, like a lover’s hand, from his throat to his crotch.
‘Boris! Boris Chavez!’
I search his pockets. Cell phone. Passport. Wallet. The train tickets for him and the three girls.
‘You stole my sister.’
I stare at him, this nothing wrapped in human flesh. For a moment, the fear wins out in his eyes and I feel almost sorry for him. Then the moment vanishes. He made his choices.
‘ Tu mori,’ I say. You die.
‘You’re dead, bitch! You’re-’ and I fire the bullet into his head. I don’t pause. I don’t think about it.
Do you think I am a bad person, Sam?
I walk out the back of the little cafe. I might be trembling. I don’t stop to see if I am. I stroll to the train station. Ivan and his cousin are going to make sure that no one will find Vadim, no one will know.
I walk fast and I board the train and find a place to sit alone. An old granny perches across the aisle from me and gives me a friendly smile. I nod back. I am such a polite killing machine. I take a deep breath. I will not falter. I cannot.
As the train pulls out for Chi inau (I will change there for the train to Bucharest), I find Boris’s name in the call log in Vadim’s phone. I go onto MySpace, using the cell phone to connect to the internet. Boris has a page. He is young, biracial, with a broad smile. He doesn’t look like a slaver. But he is and now I know who to look for at the train station.
Hello, Boris. And, soon enough, goodbye.
67
Bucharest, Romania
Gray smears the sky like spilled paint but the sun has woven its light in patches through the clouds. The air in the train out of Moldova feels stale and cloying. No one else seems uncomfortable, though. People read their newspapers and eat their snacks and spin their gossip. I sit far away from everyone, in a corner, watching the countryside unfurl, watching the rain thin and die.
Ivan told me killing would make me feel funny. I do. Did it change you, Sam, after you first killed? You seem so normal, like other people, while I feel like the woman who is different, who is marked, who maybe has no shadow. Maybe I breathe differently now. I wanted to throw up about ten minutes after I put the bullets in Vadim. And every rattle and bump of the train feels like God thumping at me. But then the weirdness passes, because I have no choice. I have done this and I will do it again.
Boris looks for greasy Vadim and three fooled Moldovan beauties. He stands on the edge of the station, wearing clothes that slid out of fashion two years ago. Jeans too baggy, a Real Madrid shirt, a cap too big for his head. He’s here to maintain control if the product gets antsy. I assume that he’s armed.
I walk to a counter and buy a steaming cup of black tea. I make sure to stand near a column, so he can’t see me watching him. Boris checks his watch, digs a phone out of the deep caverns of his pockets, thumbs the keyboard.
In my pocket Vadim’s phone rings. It chirps a ring tone of a Kanye West song. ‘Gold Digger’. How appropriate.
I answer it. ‘Hello, yes, this is Vadim’s phone.’
‘Um, where is Vadim?’
‘Oh. He is in the bathroom.’
‘He’s supposed to be on a train-’
‘We missed the morning train to Bucharest, we’re coming on the afternoon train.’
Boris gives an annoyed sigh. ‘Well, he could have called.’
‘Do you work with Vadim?’
‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘Olia. I guess I shouldn’t answer his phone but he left it here on the table. He took us to lunch.’
Boris is already heading for the exits. I follow. He hangs up without another word and I switch off the phone. He walks to a nearby car park and gets inside a van, older, dusty, that hasn’t been well cared for.
Of course, a van, I think, the product has to fit inside where no one can see.
I grab a cab and tell the driver to follow the van.
‘You want me to follow someone? Like in a movie?’ the cab driver asks. I am his most interesting fare all week.
‘Yes, like in a movie.’ I make it sound lighthearted. The cab driver is going to remember me now but that can’t be helped.
We wind through the crowded streets of Bucharest, the cab driver running lights a couple of times to keep the van, a few cars ahead of us, in sight. I hope Boris is not going to a movie to kill time until the later train arrives. I have not been to Bucharest in years and the city seems so much bigger, so much more… Western. I remember it was once called the Little Paris of the East, before Ceau escu the maniac nearly destroyed its architectural beauty, its spirit.
I shiver again and think: I cannot be afraid now. I had Ivan’s cousin to back me up before, I was on my own turf. This is entirely different, this is the dark unknown.