James Siegel - Detour

“Friendly guys,” Miles said. “They love me.”

The parking lot faced a half-open loading door. They ducked underneath. The inside was astonishingly huge—the size of your average Home Depot. It might’ve contained just as much merchandise.

There were rows of washers, dryers, refrigerators, TVs, stereos, computers, and furniture. There were bicycles, basketballs, golf clubs, clothing, and tires. There were video games, books, lawn furniture, and gas grills.

A group of men were milling around the home appliance section. One of them turned and waved.

“That’s Moshe,” Miles said.

Paul thought he was slickly dressed for a warehouse. He was wearing what looked like a thousand-dollar suit, complete with blue silk tie and nicely buffed shoes that came to a distinct point. He had a goatee and thick eyebrows, which seemed to give him a look of perpetual amusement.

He walked forward and grabbed Miles in a bear hug, bestowing a kiss on both cheeks.

“Heyyyy . . . Miles . . . my favorite lawyer.” He had a smoker’s voice, husky and low, layered with a thick Russian accent.

After Moshe had put Miles back down—in his enthusiasm he’d actually lifted him a good inch or so off the ground—he turned to Paul and smiled.

“Paul?”

Paul nodded. “Hello,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

Moshe shook his head. “Not so nice, I think. Miles tell me your . . . situation. Catastrophe. My sympathies. Your wife and child, huh? Those guerrilla—” He uttered what must have been a Russian curse. “You know what we do to guerrillas in Russia, huh? Remember that theater in Moscow—those Chechen bastards? Boom—boom—gassed them to fucking hell.”

As Paul remembered it, the Russian authorities had also gassed about two hundred innocent hostages to hell as well. He thought it better not to mention this to Moshe.

Instead, he asked Moshe if he could help.

Moshe put a large arm around Paul. “Look, I know those bastards. Some of them. We see what we can do, okay? Sometimes things can be negotiated. They are about as Marxist as we were—everyone’s a businessman, okay? Listen—they won’t kill them. Not likely. I make some calls.”

“Thank you. Really.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done shit.” He smiled. “We see.”

He looked through the half-open loading door and shook his head.

“Hey, Miles, my fucking genius lawyer, how many times I tell you not to park there? You’re blocking the door.”

Miles said, “Oh, sorry. I’ll move it.”

“Give your keys to one of my guys. He move it for you, okay? We go to the office and talk.”

“One of your guys dented my fender last time they moved it for me. I’ll do it,” Miles said.

A man walked by, groaning under the weight of an enormous crate on his left shoulder. It looked in imminent danger of tipping over and smashing to bits. The man had CCCP tattooed on his arm—the letters of the old Soviet sports federation.

“Go ahead,” Miles said to Paul. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Park it on Rostow, okay, meshugener, ” Moshe said. “You park it on Ocean, they gonna ticket you.”

Miles said okay. He slipped back under the loading door.

“Paul.” Moshe motioned him to follow. They went through a side door and into a hallway where the walls were paneled in cheap imitation wood. Moshe’s office was down the hall— El Presidente, it said on the mottled glass. Paul assumed that was a joke.

“We wait for Miles, okay?” The office had a waiting room with two couches. He pointed to one of them. “Please.”

Paul sat down as Moshe slipped into the inner office.

RING.

Ring.

He’d fallen asleep. Apparently, his cell phone had jolted him awake.

How long had he been out?

His phone had stopped ringing—he remembered its ring like an echo. He fished it out of his pants pocket, flipped it open, and checked the number. An area code he didn’t recognize.

Where was Miles?

The inner door opened and Moshe was standing there smiling. He looked down at his watch—a shimmering kaleidoscope of gold and diamonds.

“What the fuck,” he said. “We get started.” He walked back into his office.

But Paul’s cell phone rang again.

“Mr. Breidbart?”

It was María Consuelo.

“Yes, hello.”

“I have been calling you for three days. Do you know that?”

“Yes, María. We’ve been—”

“I always make a follow-up call to the new parents. I told you and Mrs. Breidbart this, yes?”

“Yes, you did. We were . . . staying at a relative’s.”

“I was getting worried. We need to make sure our new families are settling in. How is everything? Is the baby fine?”

“Yes, she’s fine.”

Moshe was just visible through the half-open door of his office. He was pointing at his watch.

“Just a minute,” Paul said to him. But Moshe couldn’t hear him; he cocked his head and cupped his left ear like a comedian searching for laughs.

“What?” María said.

“No, not you. I was talking to someone else. The baby’s fine. I really have to run. I certainly will—”

“Can I talk to Mrs. Breidbart, please?”

For a moment Paul couldn’t bring himself to answer. “No,” he said. “She’s not here.”

“Oh? She is well?”

“Yes, she’s well. She’s just not with me. Not at the moment.”

“Can she call me? I’d like to speak with her.”

“Yes. She’ll call you.”

“All right. You’re sure everything is good?”

“Yes, everything’s okay. Couldn’t be better.”

“All right, then.”

Paul was going to hang up, was just about to, but he suddenly couldn’t resist asking a question of his own.

“María?”

“Yes?”

“I’m just curious. How long have you been using Pablo? How well do you know him?”

“Pablo?”

“Yes. The driver you gave us. Have you been using him a long time?”

“I gave you a driver? No.”

“No? What do you mean, no? I’m talking about Pablo . You hired him to take care of us in Bogotá.”

“No. I didn’t hire him.”

“Okay, someone from your staff. Someone took care of it for you.”

“Accommodations and transportation are not supplied by us. The contract clearly stipulates this, yes?”

“So who . . . ?”

“Who? Your lawyer. Mr. Goldstein, yes?”

Your lawyer, Mr. Goldstein.

“Miles,” Paul said.

“Yes, certainly. It’s his responsibility to provide accommodations and . . .”

“Transportation.”

“Yes.”

Moshe was still waiting for him in the office. He was still smiling.

“Mr. Goldstein called you two days ago, María,” Paul said, keeping his voice low. “Remember—he asked you for Pablo’s number.”

“Called me, no. Mr. Goldstein didn’t call me.”

“He didn’t call you. He didn’t call you and ask you for that number? Two days ago—Wednesday night?”

“No.”

A vision came back to Paul. Miles on the telephone—smiling, nodding, laughing, emoting for someone who wasn’t actually there in front of him. But someone was there in front of him.

Paul.

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Was there a problem with your driver?”

“No problem.”

“Please have Mrs. Briedbart call me.”

“Yes. Good-bye.”

He was operating by rote—the way you can steer your car left or right, stop at lights, and accelerate on highways, even when your mind is somewhere far away. Paul’s mind was far, far away, stuck in a place between terror and helplessness.

“Coming?” Moshe was suddenly standing right in front of him.