Y ou aren’t carrying identification,” the old man said, in English, turning off the small camera on which he’d been repeatedly observing a piece of video.
“No,” said Tito. There were two cheap, battery-operated plastic dome lights stuck to the truck’s ceiling, dimly illuminating the two of them on their uncomfortable bench. Tito had been counting the truck’s turns, trying to keep track of their direction. He guessed they were northwest of Union Square now, heading west, but was growing less certain.
The old man took an envelope from his pocket and passed it to Tito. Tito tore it open and removed a New Jersey driver’s license with his picture on it. Ramone Alcin. Tito examined the picture more closely. It seemed to be him, though he’d never posed for it, nor had he ever worn the shirt Ramone Alcin wore. He looked at the signature. He would first have to practice drawing it upside down, as Alejandro had taught him. It made him uncomfortable, having identification for which he hadn’t yet learned the signature. Though for that matter, he reminded himself, he didn’t know how to drive.
The old man took the envelope back, replacing it in his pocket. Tito took his wallet from within his jacket and slid the license behind the transparent window, noting as he did how someone had meticulously scratched the license’s laminated surface by repeatedly removing it from and replacing it in another wallet. He thought of Alejandro.
“What else do you have?” The old man asked.
“One of the Bulgarian’s guns,” Tito said, forgetting that a stranger might not know them.
“Lechkov. Give it to me.”
Tito produced the gun, in its handkerchief. A dusting of fine white salt spotted his black jeans as he passed it to the old man.
“It’s been fired.”
“I used it in the restaurant of the hotel,” Tito said. “I was about to be taken. One of the men who came after me was a runner.”
“Salt?” The old man sniffed delicately.
“Sea salt. Very fine.”
“Lechkov liked to suggest that he made the umbrella used to assassinate Georgi Markov. He didn’t. Like these, his work seemed to belong to an earlier era. Likely he began as a village bicycle mechanic.” He tucked handkerchief and gun inside his coat. “You had to use it, did you?”
However familiar this man might be with his family’s history, Tito thought, he would not know about the orishas. Explaining that it had been Eleggua’s choice to use the Bulgarian’s gun would not help. “Not in his face,” Tito said. “Low. The cloud stung his eyes, but they would not have been cut.” This was probably the truth, as Tito remembered, but the choice, if one had been made, had been Eleggua’s. “Water would relieve the blindness.”
“White powder,” said the old man, Tito deciding that the extra lines in his hatchet cheeks constituted a smile. “Not so long ago, that would’ve become very complicated. Now, I doubt it. In any case, you won’t be carrying this through the metal detectors before boarding.”
“Boarding,” said Tito, his throat suddenly dry and fear churning in the pit of his stomach.
“We’ll leave it,” said the old man, as if he sensed Tito’s panic, and wished to reassure him. “Any other metal?”
Crowded in the darkness of the tiny plane, curled against warm metal, clutching his mother’s legs, her hand in his hair, the engine straining against their weight. Moonless night. Barely clearing the trees. “No,” Tito managed.
The truck stopped. He became aware of a roaring, a drumming, deep and terrible. Suddenly louder as one rear door opened, sunlight slicing in. The one from Prada’s shoe department hauled himself quickly in. The old man undid his seat belt and swung himself back over the bench. Tito did the same, blank, terrified. “Union Square’s locked down,” the one from Prada said.
“Get rid of this,” said the old man, passing the other the Bulgarian gun, in its handkerchief. He took his camera from his coat pocket and removed the coat, the Prada man helping him on with a pale raincoat. “Take your jacket off,” the old man ordered Tito.
Tito obeyed. Prada man handed him a short green cloth jacket with something embroidered in yellow on the back. Tito pulled it on. He was handed a green cap with a yellow bill, JOHNSON BROS. TURF AND LAWN in yellow across the front. He put it on. “Sunglasses,” said Prada man, handing Tito a pair. He bundled Tito’s jacket into a small black nylon bag, zipped it shut, and handed it to him. “Glasses,” he reminded Tito. Tito put them on.
They climbed out into the sunlight, into the terrible roaring. Tito saw the sign on the chain-link, a few feet from the truck.
AIR PEGASUS VIP HELIPORT
Beyond the chain-link, the roaring helicopters.
Then Vianca was there, on her motorcycle, face hidden by her mirrored visor. He saw the Prada man pass her the Bulgarian’s gun, folded in its handkerchief. She shoved it into the front of her jacket, threw Tito a quick wave goodbye, and was gone, the whine of her engine lost beneath the thunder of helicopters.
Tito, his stomach full of cold heavy fear, followed the others into this VIP.
And when they had gone through the metal detector, and shown their identification, and had crouched, scuttling, under the whirling blades, and were belted in, and the roaring sharpened, until something seemed to pick the helicopter up as if on a cable, and bore it away, rising, out across the Hudson, Tito could only close his eyes. So that he did not see the city, as they rose, nor see it recede behind him.
Eventually, still without opening his eyes, he was able to pull his Nano from the front of his shirt, extract the earphones from the left front pocket of his jeans, and find the hymn he’d played on his Casio, to the goddess Ochun.