James Siegel - Detour

He hadn’t connected the address Miles had given him to Williamsburg, bastion of Orthodox Judaism. Clearly, that’s where they were.

At every traffic light, sweating, bearded faces stared at him through the windows.

Miles’ home was a handsome brownstone neatly festooned with pots of scarlet geraniums.

Paul paid the driver, then lugged his black bag out of the car, like your friendly neighborhood drug dealer.

He walked up the brownstone steps and rang the buzzer.

The door was opened by a stout, smiling woman who would’ve been pleasant-looking if it weren’t for the thick black wig that sat on her head like a helmet.

“Mr. Breidbart?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Goldstein and led him into a wood-paneled study.

“He’ll just be a minute,” she said. “Please sit down.”

Paul chose one of the leather chairs facing a desk buried in an avalanche of paper.

After Mrs. Goldstein had left, he wondered about the wig.

Cancer?

A sudden image of his mother came back to him, meticulously placing someone else’s hair onto her head before the dresser mirror.

Paul gazed at the crowded bookshelves that lined two sides of the den, where books and pictures fought for space. Most of the photographs were of Miles. Shaking hands, posing with various Latin American kids. There was a picture of Miles and María Consuelo standing together in front of the Santa Regina Orphanage. There were several framed citations haphazardly mounted on the wall. Latin American Parents Association Man of the Year. Sitting just below an honorary degree from a law school and a certificate of service from a local hospital.

When a man entered the room and turned around to shut the door, Paul almost asked him when the man in the pictures would be coming down.

But it was the man in the pictures.

In disguise.

Miles was wearing a black felt yarmulke. He was in the process of detaching a small black object resembling a box from his naked forearm, unwrapping a tangle of crisscrossing leather straps. He was wearing a jet-black jacket that fell all the way down to his knees, looking very much like someone who’d wandered out of a Matrix movie.

“They’re called tefillin,” Miles said after he’d shaken Paul’s hand and sat down behind his desk. He’d added the strange black box with trailing straps to the rest of the clutter on his desk, where it lay like some exotic sea creature, an inky octopus maybe, now dead. “They’re kind of indispensable to morning prayer.”

“It’s afternoon.”

“Yeah. I’m playing catch-up.”

“You’re an Orthodox Jew?” Paul asked.

“Hey—you’re good. ” Miles smiled when he said it.

“You didn’t dress like this at the office. I didn’t know.”

“Of course not, why would you?” Miles said. “Anyway, I’m modern Orthodox. And I’m kind of unorthodox about my orthodoxy. Wearing nonsectarian attire is a necessary accommodation I make for my career—it might frighten off the clients. Wearing a yarmulke at home is a necessary accommodation I make for my religion—if I didn’t, God might get angry. Got it?”

Yes, Paul got it.

He was eager to get off the subject of Judaism and onto the subject of his kidnapped wife and daughter.

“So,” Miles said, “you’re here. Welcome back. What’s the problem?”

“The problem ?” Paul repeated it, maybe because it was such a hopeful word—problems could be faced and surmounted, couldn’t they?

“Bogotá,” Paul said flatly. “It wasn’t safer than Zurich.”

“What?”

“I’m in trouble,” Paul said. “Help me.”

PAUL WAS SIPPING A CUP OF GREEN HERBAL TEA GENEROUSLY provided by Mrs. Goldstein.

Good for the nerves, Miles said.

Miles’ nerves were evidently okay—he’d declined a proffered cup and was instead sitting at the desk with his hands clasped against his forehead.

He’d pretty much reacted the way a concerned lawyer should at the news that his clients had been kidnapped, with one of them still in Colombia and the other forced to smuggle drugs past U.S. Customs. Maybe more so. His face had dropped, become a puddle of concern, anger, and empathy.

He’d come out from behind the desk and clasped Paul around the shoulders.

“My God, Paul. I’m so sorry.”

Paul allowed himself to be comforted, to soak it in like a parched sponge. Up till now, the only person who’d felt sorry for him was him. Miles wanted details.

“Tell me what happened—exactly what happened.”

He told Miles about the afternoon they came back to the hotel and discovered their baby gone. About the next day, when Joanna had matter-of-factly stated that she was certain that the baby sleeping next to them wasn’t Joelle. About the trip to Galina’s, the cries coming from the back of the house, followed by Pablo’s sudden brutality.

The boarded-up room. Arias. The man with the cigar. The burned-out house. Paul continued right up to the moment the taxi stranded him in Jersey City.

Miles listened intently, made a few notes on a yellow legal pad that magically appeared from the clutter on his desk.

“Pablo?” Miles asked him. “This man was your driver?”

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh. And he was contracted through Santa Regina?”

“Yes. Why? Do you think Santa Regina had anything to do with this?”

“Not a chance. I’ve known María Consuelo for years. The woman’s a saint.”

Paul peeked at his watch. “They said eighteen hours. That’s two hours from now.”

“Okay. Let’s think about this logically.”

Paul was going to say that was easier said than done. That it wasn’t Miles’ wife and child in the line of fire. That time was running out. He remained quiet.

“Look, I know it looks pretty bleak, but we’ve still got something they want,” Miles said. He peered at the black bag on Paul’s lap. “In there, huh?”

Paul nodded.

“Maybe we should lock that up in my safe. I have kids running around.”

“Okay.”

Miles walked around to Paul’s side of the desk. He unzipped the bag and looked inside.

He whistled. “I’m no expert on narcotics, but that looks like a lot of stuff.”

“Two million dollars.”

“I’d say that constitutes a lot. ”

Miles zipped the bag closed, then tentatively picked it up, holding it at arm’s length the way dog walkers carry their pets’ droppings to the trash can. He opened a liquor cabinet that wasn’t; there was a stainless-steel safe inside.

After he’d locked the bag in, he settled back behind the desk. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you manage to swallow all that?”

Paul was going to say that it’s amazing how much you can swallow when your wife’s life depends on it. You can swallow thirty-six condoms and your own fear and disgust.

“I don’t know. I had to.”

“Yeah, guess you did,” Miles said. “Okay, where were we?”

“The drugs. The something they want.”

“Right, the drugs. They’re not going to do anything to your wife until they know where it is. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Paul nodded.

“Of course it does,” Miles continued. “That’s two million dollars . Besides, I believe FARC’s been known to hold hostages a long time. Years, even.”

Miles offered that particular fact as a palliative. It had the opposite effect; it made Paul sick to his stomach.

Years.

Miles noticed. “Look, I was just making a point. They may have told you eighteen hours. I don’t think they meant it.”

“How do you know?”

“Call it an educated guess.”