Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Cody

Cody took the day off to help Nik in whatever strange situation he had gotten himself into. He was already alarmed that a detective was looking into Nik’s affairs and felt responsible since Cody’s mother had clearly started that ball rolling. But he didn’t have the time or clarity to discuss this with his mother, especially now that this completely unrelated emergency needed to be dealt with immediately.

Nik picked Cody up and they headed straight back to Ajo, spending the entire trip in heated discourse. The thing about Nik… Well, Cody had no complaints about Nik in most areas. Nik was kind and brave and gallant and chivalrous and he’d fall on his sword to protect the innocent. But he was also a paranoid sneak who would go to any length to hide his itinerary from the general public but most especially from authority of any kind. Though Cody was twelve years the younger, today he felt he was the only grown-up in the car.

Cody saw things from a different perspective. He prided himself on his contacts and ability to work the system so he urged Nik to turn the entire affair over to the police or FBI. Nik said the police would show up too late and if there were locals involved they’d tip off the perpetrators. Nik thought that they needed to look into this before calling in a bunch of heavy handed cops who were most likely, either through bumbling or actual collusion, to allow the bad guys to remove their victims. Cody argued it wasn’t like that in America, the cops were smart, they were the good guys. They’d help.

But Nik was unconvinced. The consequences if he were correct were too grave and the younger man had no choice but to fall in with his plans.

By mid-day Nik had returned them to the scene. Counting mile-markers he slowed at a wash disappearing behind a rise. He steered the car off the road and there was the burro cart and it did not take a master tracker to see what had happened. Another set of footprints were now mixed with the scramble left by Nik and Chui and it was clear the owner of the feet had been very interested in the trail left by the boy and man earlier. The new imprints that surrounded and sometimes covered those left by Nik and the kid returned down the wash in the same direction from which Chui had earlier come.

Though the sun was fully overhead the temperature, now in the nineties, was not oppressive. Little breezes cooled Cody and Nik as they jogged down the dry creek bed and it was more than a mile though less than two when the triangle of a roof showed above the brush. They slowed at this sign of civilization and began a silent creep, using the creosote and spiny vegetation to cover them as they approached a rock outcropping that partially concealed the house. They stopped and peeked around for a view.

An argument was in progress, a woman spoke loudly to a man.

“They don’t think anything is wrong, you’ll just make things difficult!”

The man hit the woman’s face but she just looked at the ground and kept talking.

“Viktor, they’re drugged. They think they’re going to a job. But they’re not unconscious and if you let them know they’re captives we’ll have to restrain them.”

Cody was staring at the two, trying to memorize their features, when a soft gasp turned his attention to Nik crouching stiffly, his mouth stretched back in a grimace. Nik put a finger to his lips but Cody needed no warning. He could see now that the man carried a pistol and the woman, though apparently compelled by the other, did not look sufficiently cowed.

Nik led Cody silently backwards from the area until it seemed safe to break into a run, the peace of the spring desert clashing with Cody’s dread. The men did not speak until they were back in the car headed north.

Cody looked at Nik as he drove and finally spoke. “What?”

“I think that is my Viktor. The one from Moscow.”

Nik pulled into a filling station and restaurant in Ajo, wheeling the car behind the building to park beneath a looming cottonwood where it couldn’t be seen from the road.

Nik gave the café a thorough look as they entered and led them to a booth at the farthest end with a good view of the highway and the rest of the room. Cody responded to his mood, becoming aware of the room in crystal clarity: the waitress bussing tables, the man in a white apron behind the counter who looked up when they came in. Nik took the bench seat facing the door and Cody faced him, the back of his head feeling exposed. Cody had never seen Nik like this.

Over bacon and eggs Nik explained his distress. “I told you I was a prostitute when I was a kid?”

Cody nodded.

“That man was the head of us, a bunch of kids he swept up from the streets.”

“How can you be sure? He doesn’t look that old.”

“He’s only a few years older than me, but he’d gotten too old for the guys who like the littler ones. ’Course I didn’t know any of that at first. If he hadn’t found me I’d have died of the cold.

“My mother had broken a window to get us into the basement of an empty house but the door to the upper rooms was locked. She turned the knob and tried putting a nail she’d found into the lock to open it but her hands were cold and shaking and the door wouldn’t open and she sat on the basement step crying and I started crying, too.”

Nik said all of this in a rush and Cody struggled to sip his coffee and keep his face bland when he wanted to take Nik in his arms and comfort him.

“It was so cold and the broken window let in the air so it was no warmer than out of doors and it was getting dark. My mother staggered away and rummaged through the shadows until she found a pile of old rugs. She wrapped them around me and we laid down on a stack of papers set out to light the cold furnace before the light disappeared. I laid there, wrapped in her arms. I was too little, I didn’t know she was sick, but her skin was so hot that I was warm, for once, but when I woke up she was dead. The heat was gone, then, and my mother was stiff and cold and I shouted at her and shook her, trying to wake her up. It was the shouting, I think, that caught Viktor’s attention. That’s how he knew I was there.

“So he saved my life. He took me somewhere warm and fed me. There were other kids there and he organized us to sweep the streets for fuel and we always had good shoes and hats.” Nik ran down. “I loved him back then. He was like a mixture of father and brother and sweetheart.” He sighed tremulously. “It wasn’t until I came here that I look back on that time with such hatred in my heart. I’ve come to despise him. I try to tell myself that we were all victims of circumstance but I’m so angry about my childhood.”

“But you escaped from him.” Cody said. “You made your way here.”

Nik wasn’t soothed. “Seeing him now brings it all back. And to think he’s made this his life’s work... I should have smothered him in his sleep.”

Cody could see that Nik was traumatized but how could he be sure it was this man that he hadn’t seen for over twenty years? The guy could have been anyone: he was as non-descript as an old grey sock but Cody knew this wasn’t the moment to argue the matter.

“So, this is a bad combination.” Nik went on. “Viktor, drugged kids, more people hidden away…That must be where Chui escaped from.”

Cody was thoroughly sick of the anguish and anxiety that only increased as the day wore on. He wanted to turn this matter over to a trained professional. “We need to call the police.”

He was surprised to see Nik nod. “I know I’m always the paranoid one, Cody. But if this is an established operation the cops or immigration might be in on it.”

“Well then we’ll just have to march up to the door and demand to see who they have in the bunkhouse!” Cody said.

“Thanks for making me laugh.” Nik smiled and took a bite of his cooling eggs. “Call me a coward but I don’t want to confront an armed and dangerous man. It would be good to have help.”