Marked Man

2

The tattoo appeared on my chest at a rather inopportune time. I was just then in the middle of a delicate negotiation that had exploded in my face, hence the media storm and dire threats. But I should have known that trouble was brewing, what with the ominous way the whole thing started, a deathbed visit to an old Greek widow with gnarled hands and breath like pestilence itself.

“Come closer, Mr. Carl,” said Zanita Kalakos, a withered stalk of a woman, propped up by the pillows on her bed, whose every raspy exhale held the real threat of being her last. Her skin was parchment thin, her accent thick as the stubble on her jaw.

“Call me Victor,” I said.

“Victor, then. I can’t see you. Come closer.”

She couldn’t see me because the lights were off in her small bedroom, the shades pulled, the curtains drawn. Only a candle flickering by her bedside and a glowing stick of incense provided illumination.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Come to me.”

Standing at the edge of the room, I took a step toward her.

“Closer,” she said.

Another step.

“Closer still. Bring over chair. Let me touch your face, let me feel what is in your heart.”

I brought a chair to the side of her bed, sat down, leaned forward. She pressed her fingers over my nose, my chin, my eyes. Her skin was rough and oily both. It was like being gummed by an eel.

“You have a strong face, Victor,” she said. “A Greek face.”

“Is that good?”

“Of course, what you think? I have secret to tell you.” She glommed her hand over the side of my head and, with surprising strength, pulled me close so she could whisper. “I’m dying.”

And I believed it, yes I did, what with the way her breath smelled of rot and decay, of little creatures burrowing into the heart of the earth, of desolation and death.

“I’m dying,” she said as she pulled me closer, “and I need your help.”

It was my father who had gotten me into this. He had asked me to pay a visit to Zanita Kalakos as a favor, which was curious in and of itself. My father didn’t ask for favors. He was an old-school kind of guy, he didn’t ask anyone for anything, not for directions if he was lost, not for a loan if he was short, not for help as he struggled still to recover from the lung operation that had saved his life. The last time my father asked me for a favor was during an Eagles game when I made a brilliant comment about the efficacy of the West Coast offense against a cover-two defense. “Do me a favor,” he had said, “and shut up.”

But there he was, on the phone to my office. “I need you to see someone. An old lady.”

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Why does she want to see me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dad?”

“Just do it, all right? For me.” Pause. “As a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Think you can handle that?”

“Sure, Dad,” I said.

“Good.”

“As a favor.”

“Are you busting my chops?”

“Nah, it’s just this is almost like a real father-and-son thing. Calls on the phone. Favors and stuff. Next thing you know, we’ll be having a catch in the yard.”

“Last time we had a catch I threw a high pop that hit you in the face. You ran off crying.”

“I was eight.”

“You want to try it again?”

“No.”

“Good. Now that that’s settled, go see the old lady.”

The address he gave me was a small row house on the southern edge of the Northeast section of the city, my father’s old neighborhood. A gray woman, round and slumped with age, cautiously opened the door and gave me the eye as I stood on the stoop and announced my presence. I assumed this was the old lady my father wanted me to see, but I was wrong. This was the old lady’s daughter. She shook her head when she learned who I was, shook her head the whole time she led me up the creaky stairs that smelled of boiled vinegar and crushed cumin. Whatever the mother wanted with me, the daughter didn’t approve.

“I knew your father when he was boy,” said Zanita Kalakos in that crypt of a room. “He was good boy. Strong. And he remembers. When I called him, he said you would come.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Kalakos. So how can I help?”

“I am dying.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“I know, Victor.” She reached up and patted my cheek. “But it is too late for doctors. I’ve been poked, prodded, sliced like roasted pig. There is nothing more to be done.”

She coughed, and her body heaved and contracted with a startling ferocity.

“Can I get you something?” I said. “Water?”

“No, but thank you, dear one,” she said, her eyes closed to the pain. “It is too late for water, too late for everything. I am dying. Which is why I need you.”

“Do you have an estate you want to settle? Do you want me to write you up a will?”

“No, please. I have nothing but a few bangles and this house, which is for Thalassa. Poor little girl. She wasted her life caring for me.”

“Who is Thalassa?”

“She who brought you to my room.”

Ah, I thought, the poor little girl of seventy.

“Are you married, Victor?”

“No, ma’am.”

One of her closed eyes opened and focused on my face. “Thalassa, she available, and she comes with house. You like house?”

“It’s a very nice house.”

“Maybe you are interested? Maybe we can arrange things?”

“No, really, Mrs. Kalakos. I’m fine.”

“Yes of course. A man with such a good Greek face, you find someone with bigger house. So we are back to problem. I am dying.”

“So you said.”

“In my village, when death it walked into your house on tiptoes and tapped you on shoulder, they rang church bell so everyone would know. Your neighbors, your friends, family, they all came to gather around. It was tradition. A final time to laugh and cry, to hug, to settle scores, to wipe off curses” – she rubbed her lips with two fingers and spat through them – “a final time to say good-bye before the blessed journey. For my grandparents it was like that, and for my mother, too. I went over on boat to say good-bye when it was her time. It wasn’t choice, it was necessity. You understand?”

“I think so, ma’am.”

“So now the bell it is chiming for me. All I have left in my life is to say good-bye. But time, it is running fast, like wind.”

“I’m sure you have more time than you-”

Another wrenching, full-body cough silenced me like a shout. Her hands rose and shook in pain as her body contracted in on itself.

“How can I help?” I said.

“You are lawyer.”

“That’s right.”

“You represent fools.”

“I represent people accused of crimes.”

“Fools.”

“Some are, yes.”

“Good. Then you are just man I need.” She raised a finger and gestured me close, closer. “I have son,” she said softly. “Charles. I love him very much, but he is great fool.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Now I see. Has Charles been accused of a crime?”

“Has been accused of everything.”

“Is he in jail now?”

“No, Victor. He not in jail. Fifteen years ago he was arrested for things, too many things to even remember. Mostly stealing, but also threatening and extinction.”

“Extortion?”

“Maybe that, too. And talking with others about doing it all.”

“Conspiracy.”

“He was going to trial. He needed money to stay out of jail.”

“Bail?”

“Yes. So, like idiot, I put up house. The day after he left prison, he disappeared. My Charles, he ran away. It took me ten years to get back house for Thalassa. Ten years of breaking my back. And since he ran, I haven’t once seen his face.”

“What can I do to help him?”

“Bring him home. Bring him to his mother. Let him say good-bye.”

“I’m sure he could come and say good-bye. It’s been a long time. He’s way off the authorities’ radar.”

“You think? Go to window, Victor. Look onto street.”

I did as she told, gently opened the curtain, pulled the shade aside. Light streamed in as I peered outside.

“Do you see it, a van?”

“Yes.” It was battered and white, with a raw brown streak of rust on its side. “I see it.”

“FBI.”

“It looks empty to me, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“FBI, Victor. They are still hunting for my son.”

“After all these years?”

“They know I am sick, they are expecting him to come. My phone, it is tapped. My mail, it is read. And the van, it is there every day.”

“Let me check it out,” I said.

Still standing by the window, I reached for my phone and dialed 911. Without giving my name, I reported a suspicious van parked on Mrs. Kalakos’s street. I mentioned that there had been reports of a child molester using the same type of van and I asked if the police could investigate because I was afraid to let my children go outside to play. When Mrs. Kalakos tried to say something, I just stopped her and waited by the window. I expected the van to be empty, parked there by some neighbor, nothing more than an innocent vehicle left to inspire the wild paranoia of an old, ill woman.

We waited in quiet, the two of us, accompanied by the rasp of her breath. A few minutes later, one police car pulled up behind the van and then another arrived to block the van’s escape. As the uniforms approached the car, a large man in horn-rimmed glasses, a flat-top chop, and a boxy suit came around from the other side. He showed a credential. While one cop examined it and another cop engaged him in a conversation, the man looked up at the window where I stood.

I watched all this as it played out, watched as the man in the boxy suit retreated back into his van and the two police cars pulled away. I closed the curtains and turned to the old woman, still propped up by the pillows, whose eyes, glistening with the light of the candle, were staring straight at me.

“What did your son do, Mrs. Kalakos?” I said.

“Only what I said.”

“You haven’t told me everything.”

“They are hounding him for spite.”

“Spite?”

“He was a thief, that is all.”

“The FBI doesn’t spend fifteen years searching for a common thief out of spite.”

“Will you help me, Victor? Will you help my Charlie?”

“Mrs. Kalakos, I don’t think I should get anywhere near this case. You’re not telling me everything.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not after seeing that van.”

“You sure you not Greek?”

“Pretty sure, ma’am.”

“Okay, there may be something else. Charlie had four close friends from childhood. And maybe, long time ago, these friends, they pulled a little prank.”

“What kind of prank?”

“Just meet him, meet my Charlie. He can’t come into city no more, but he can be nearby. We set up meeting point for you already.”

“A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“New Jersey. Ocean City boardwalk, Seventh Street. He be there tonight at nine.”

“I don’t know.”

“At nine. Do for me, Victor. As favor.”

“As favor, huh?”

“You do for me, Victor. Work it out, make deal, do something so my boy, he come home and say good-bye. To say good-bye, yes. And to fix his life, yes. You can work that?”

“I think that’s beyond a lawyer’s brief, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“Bring him home, and you tell your father after this we’re even.”

I thought about why the FBI might be so interested still in Charlie Kalakos fifteen years after he fled his trial. Charlie was a thief, had said his mother. And long ago Charlie and his friends had pulled a little prank. That van outside told me it must have been a hell of a little prank. Maybe there was an angle in Charlie’s long-ago prank and the FBI’s strangely keen interest in it for me to find a profit.

“You know, Mrs. Kalakos,” I said after I did all that thinking, “in cases like this, even when I take it on as a favor, I still require a retainer.”

“What is this retainer?”

“Money up front.”

“I see. It is like that, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Not only a Greek face but a Greek heart.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“I have no money, Victor, none at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“But I might have something to interest you.”

Slowly, she rose from the bed, as if a corpse rising from her grave, and made her way creakily, painfully, to a bureau at the edge of the room. With all her strength, she opened a drawer. She tossed out a few oversized unmentionables and slid open what appeared to be a false bottom. She reached both hands in and pulled out two fistfuls of golden chains glinting in the candlelight, silver pendants, broaches filled with rubies, strings of pearls, two fistfuls of pirate’s treasure.

“Where did you get that?” I said.

“It is from Charles,” she said as she stumbled toward me with the jewelry dripping from her hands, falling from her hands. “What he gave me long ago. He said he found in street.”

“I can’t take that, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“Here,” she said, thrusting it at me. “You take. I have saved for years for Charlie, never touched. But now he needs me. So you take. Don’t spend until he is back, that is all I ask, but take.”

I let her drop it all into my hands. The jewelry was heavy and cold. It felt as if it held the weight of the past, yet I could feel its opulence. Like foie gras on thin pieces of buttered toast, like champagne sipped from black high heels, like tawdry nights and sunsets over the Pacific.

“Bring my son home to me,” she said, grabbing hold of my lapels with her hands and pulling me close so her foul, pestilential breath washed over me. “Bring my son home so he can kiss my old parched face and tell his mother good-bye.”