This Much Is True (43 page)

They go to commercial as if nothing matters more than choosing your car insurance premium. Thankfully, Sam turns the volume down.

He looks at me sympathetically for a moment or two while I seek out another painkiller and wash it down with the last of the Stoli.

This can’t be happening. If I say it often enough will it become true? That this can’t be happening? My mind fractures on one pervasive thought: Oh, but it is.

I close my eyes and only open them again when Sam touches my hand. I barely stop myself from screaming at his unexpected touch.

“That’s you,” he says in a low voice.

“Yes.”

“Who do you want to call?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know.” My head throbs. I put my face in my hand and try to think.

“They said the FBI.” He grimaces and shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says mysteriously.

I look up at Sam and eventually nod. “No FBI. Not yet.” I sound bleak and I don’t attempt to hide it from him now. My cell starts ringing. I can hardly answer it fast enough. My movements have become sluggish within the last five minutes. “No more Stoli. Marla,” I say dully. “What happened?”

In the minutes that follow, I let Marla do all the talking, while I solely focus on breathing in and out and attempting to control the pain that thunders through me like a relentless wave. I sip from the glass of water Sam slides my way, and with shaking hands, I take a few more painkillers.

I’m gonna run out. I’m gonna run out. Does it matter if I run out? Does it matter?

Marla’s talking and I’m trying to keep up with what all she’s saying. I gather that she and Charlie will be here as soon as they can. “Kimberley is already in Moscow. So is his lawyer. We’re catching a flight in the next two hours.
Do you have any clothes?”

Do I have any clothes? Why are we talking about my clothes?

“No. Not with me. Just what I’m wearing.”

“Let me guess. Black T-shirt and jeans,” Marla says sweetly, but I can’t do more than sigh. “Okay. I’ll bring you some. I have a suitcase already packed.”

“Can you call my mom and dad?”

“I’ve called them.” She hesitates. I want to ask her why, but the meds and the Stoli are working against me now. It’s hard enough already to actually follow what all she’s saying to me and forming words fast enough in response proves to be next to impossible. I close my eyes again in an attempt to focus on listening alone but that just makes me dizzy.

“Tally, are you okay?

“No.” I laugh a little because it’s weird to say the truth out loud. I conclude that the Stoli and the meds are finally working. “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know,” Marla says with a catch in her voice. “He called us once, a little over a week ago, but he warned us that they probably won’t let him call us again. Kimberley thinks he’s okay.”

“She’s great, isn’t she?”

“Well yeah,” Marla says, sounding confused by my question. “Geez, Tally. We’ve been so worried about Linc and
you
and what happened. My God. No one knew where you were. Not even Rob.”

“Rob wouldn’t know,” I whisper. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.
Really.”
I stop and take in air. “I’m fine. But Tremblay…took Cara.” The tears start again. “She’s gone, Marla. Cara’s gone. But then, everyone’s gone.”

“Put the bartender on the phone.”

“Sam. His name is Sam,” I lecture even as I hand Sam my iPhone.

Sam stares at me the whole time he’s talking to Marla. “Yeah. Okay. She’s a little out of it. About the kid.
This
. She just saw the news. Got it. I’ll keep her here.”

Sam hands me the cell phone back without a word and gives me this steely
I’ve-got-this
look. I just nod at him, but eventually I break his intense gaze because I just don’t know what to say nor am I able to explain how this last hour became worse than previous two. It’s just too hard to actually fathom. I make a point of digging into my bag to pay him for the drinks. I lay down two twenties and a five. “The debt’s paid, Sam,” I say slowly.

He pushes the money back at me. “You’re going to need it. Your friend.” He points to the iPhone, reminding me to pick it up. I vaguely hear Marla calling my name. “She’s coming for you.”

He slides over the thick envelope he’s been holding and looks at me intently. I open it with this sick sense of dread. It’s stuffed with cash.

“It’s from Tremblay.” The consolation in Sam’s voice almost makes me start to cry again.

“A payoff for Cara.” My head hurts worse in just saying this truth out loud. Marla keeps talking, but I can’t really register what she’s saying.

He nods. “There’s a hundred grand in there.” He leans down against the bar and intently gazes at me. “You’re going to need it to help out your friend—the baseball player. You’re going to need
all of it
, Tally. Russia isn’t a place to mess around in.” I wince at his words, having learned this lesson already. “Take it. Tell your friend that you have it because you’re going to need it.”

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t always been a bartender.”

My hands shake as I pick up the iPhone again. “Marla? I’ve settled up the bill with Sam. Tremblay left me…cash.” I struggle on the last word and irritably swipe at the fresh tears rolling down my face.
I’m going to be sick.
I struggle to fight off the waves of nausea that swirl through me. “When will you be here?”
Just breathe.
“I could just go to the hotel and pack up my stuff. Change.”

“No. No. No. Don’t do that. Stay put, Tally. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Where’s Elliott?”

“Gina’s got him. We’re good. He’ll be fine.”

“I should have been there,” I whisper. Now I’m sad because all at once it really bothers me that I missed out on Elliott’s birth. Elliott Lincoln Masterson. Six pounds eleven ounces. He was born August 7th right on time; and I missed it, like so many things. “She left me cash for…Cara.” I can’t help the mournful tone.

“Tally, hang in there,” Marla says. “We’ll find Cara; but right now we have to concentrate on Linc and on getting to Moscow. Now, eat some food. We’ll be there soon. Hang up the phone. Kimberley might try to call you.”

“Okay.”

Sam brings me a hamburger and tells me to eat the whole thing. He sets down a glass of water as well as a glass of milk and tells me to drink them both.

I decide there’s no point in going through the calorie count discussion with him because I can tell he’s prepared to win that one. I’m sure he had that same discussion many times with Allaire Tremblay. How I end up within just a few hours knowing so much about this guy is not something I can fully explain.

“Can you at least call Allaire, please?” I swallow hard, pleading with Sam. “And tell her that I
know
.”

Sam hangs his head and sighs deep.

He glances up at me and looks angry for a moment, but then it’s gone. “She didn’t tell me where she was going. She just left. She said good-bye and gave me that note for you and the envelope of cash because she knew I’d take care of it. And she just…
left
.”

I stare at him for a long while. My head starts to pound even more. Finally, I say, “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

“What’s sad?”

“To lose everything, everyone. To lose the people you care about the most. I mean death is so permanent, and that’s one way to lose them. But this?” My voice wavers. “When they just leave you and cut you out of their lives so completely…it ends up being almost the same thing, doesn’t it?”

He looks at me for a long time before nodding. “I’m sorry for what that guy did to you.”

“Which one?” I grimace and slowly shake my head side-to-side. “It’s not half as bad as what I’ve done to everyone else—Linc, Cara, Marla, Rob, my parents.” My voice shakes as I rattle off their names. “The list is so long, Sam.”

I can’t wait any longer for Kimberley to call, so I just start dialing.

Atonement begins with the first call. He picks up within two rings.

“I’m in trouble,” I say to Rob. By the time I’ve finished telling him what’s happened, Rob’s on his way to JFK. Knowing Rob, he’ll be in Russian airspace long before we hit the tarmac in Moscow.

Marla and Charlie arrive just as I end the call with Rob. After a hurried good-bye to my newfound friend Sam, they help me from each side and get me to their car. For once, I don’t bitch at Charlie for driving too fast. I really don’t care anymore.

For some reason, I can’t feel any of it—fear, sadness, remorse. It’s all gone from me now. I think if I allow myself to feel any of these emotions, I might fall down that abyss forever. And I’m burning up—inside and out—and just thinking about the fact that I’m returning to Moscow fills me with all kinds of newfound terror.

* * * *

CHAPTER FORTY

Linc ~ Either way

T
his isn’t the United States of America. I learn that pretty quickly—within the first few hours of spending time at the Moscow Police station. Russia seems to be still learning the ins and outs of due process and justice. They read me my rights, take my picture and fingerprints, and put me into a jail cell, and then seemed to have lost the key. Two days and nights pass before they let me make a single phone call.

No one talks to me, and they all speak Russian and the one connection to the detective I may have had is permanently severed. Apparently, his pleading my cause, in deference to the others, was construed as being out of line; and he’s been taken off the case. One of the other inmates in the cell next door passed me a note explaining in broken English that the note was from the detective himself. ‘
Sorry’
was all it had said. The guy in the cell next to me is apparently the sole connection I have to the outside world. And that’s how it works, here in Moscow.

During those first forty-eight hours, I decide the best call to make would be to Charlie and Marla because surely Tally’s best friend could track her down and this whole thing would just go away. Of course, by the time I got those two on the phone everything had started sliding down into this bottomless hellhole that is now my life.

According to Charlie, my coaches were calling; the Angels owner was calling; my father was calling. Charlie told me that Kimberley was doing her best to calm them all down and had already all but enlisted help from the National Guard to get me out of here; however, so far, no one has found Tally, and I’m still sitting here—accused, suspected of murder—in a Russian jail cell in Moscow.

“It doesn’t look good,” Charlie had said.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s all over the news, both locally and nationally. You’re the lead story on pretty much every sports page and news broadcast nationwide. Kimberley’s handling all of that, and she told me to tell you, just in case you called me first. Your dad’s flying in from L.A. this afternoon. We thought it might be best to congregate here in Palo Alto because that’s where Marla thinks Tally will show up.”

“You haven’t found her?” I’d sunk down to the floor and covered my eyes with my forearm. “Shit.”

* * *

Nine days in, I don’t even notice the filth on the floor or complain about the cold and the damp anymore. This place reminds of a cave without fresh water or sunlight or oxygen. And I’ve begun to wonder just how long I’ll actually be able to survive here. After strip-searching me on the third day, they finally let me take a shower under the watchful eyes of some prison guard. Now, I’m wearing this blue jumpsuit that I think they must wash in the harshest detergent possible because I itch everywhere. Dignity flows out of me like a stab wound to my heart that won’t stop. Meanwhile, humiliation takes its rightful place and burrows deep inside of me with every breath I manage to take in this place. Just yesterday, they changed tactics and decided to spend the entire day interrogating me all over again. I’ve begun to wonder if maybe I didn’t kill the guy because I said, “No, I didn’t do it,” so many times that even I am looking for a different answer.

My cellmate next door whistles through his teeth. That’s his signal that he’s got something for me. So far, these prizes have been the detective’s
sorry
note, a razor, an extra slice of bread, and a bottled water. I don’t even ask where he gets this stuff because, once he found out I was ‘de baseball player’, he’s done his best to help me out. Again, he whistles and; like Pavlov’s dog, I stick my hand through the bars and wait for his next
gift
to drop into my outstretched hand.
It’s a cell phone.
Holy shit
.

“Thanks, comrade.” That’s what they say here.

There’s a call on hold. I activate the button.

“Hey, Prez.” My gut actually clenches at hearing Kimberley’s voice.

“Hey,” I manage to say without totally breaking down. I move toward the back of the cell so no one can hear me. As agreed to days ago now, the guy in the next cell will keep watch and whistle when the guard gets close.
This is my life. This is what I do. This is how I survive right now from one moment to the next now.
“How much did this cost you?”

“Oh God, baby, let’s just say you’re going to need a bigger contract, pronto; or you’ll have to start investing heavily on Wall Street when you get back.”

I appreciate that she tries to make light of it. Some part of me deep inside must see this faint glimmer of hope; enough so that I actually take a breath and successfully pull myself together for the next couple of minutes. It’s been almost ten days. I was beginning to wonder if I was stuck in the place for all eternity. Just holding a cell phone makes me feel somewhat encouraged and normal again. “You found her,” I say with a deep, grateful sigh.

“No.” She pauses and allows that to sink in.

“Christ, Kimberley, what the fuck do I pay you for? My God, I’m barely hanging in here. Come on, dude, help me out here. They interrogated the shit out of me yesterday; and I felt like I needed to admit to
something
just to get them to stop.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“No. Not yet,” I snipe.
God damn. I’ve turned into a complete jerk in as little as nine days. Nine fucking days is all it took to change me from a nice guy throwing a baseball to talking like a regular gangbanger.

“Okay. Calm down. Listen to me. Okay.
Listen
. Take a breath.” Kimberley seems to take one for both of us. “Linc, hang in there. I know it’s tough. I am doing everything I can.
This will not stand.
We’ll find her. Now I need you to listen. Take a deep breath and listen. You’ve got to keep your shit together.
You’re all you’ve got.
I’m
here,
and I’m badgering the shit out of them and throwing a lot of money around to get you a cell phone like this, so I can talk to you; but they’re playing—pardon the pun—
hardball
.”

“Shit.”

“I know.”

“Well, what about Nika? She’s Russian. She’s got her family here. They’re affluent. Maybe they can help.”

She sighs in notable irritation and quietly says, “Nika bailed. She said you were too hot, and she needed to get out of Moscow before they started poking around into her own affairs. Literally, figuratively. Who the hell knows?”

“Wow.” I inhale deep of the stale air, while my mind tries to take in this staggering bit of news. “She
left
me?”

“Come on, Prez. You
knew that
was coming.”

“No. No. Not really,” I say with a grimace. My eyes sting. I rub at them hard. Then they’re more irritated by the God damn soap that I’m forced to use in this place. I suppose I should be happy that they even have soap.

“She was bad news,” Kimberley says.

“What about the baby?”

“I don’t think there ever
was
a baby. I told you that from the very beginning. And yet, there you were all giddy to marry her. It’s my fault for encouraging you to take up with her in the first place, and I’m—”

“The whole Mea Culpa thing isn’t helping me very much. Shut the hell up,” I say gently.

She laughs for both of us and then sighs. “I got the FBI involved. National treasure, great guy, baseball star, and hero all rolled into one; just know that’s all working for you. Just hang in there. I don’t want you to worry because we’re going to fix this. I promise. And then, we’re going to do the biggest press conference mankind has ever seen, and you’re going to soar out of here like a rocket into space proudly displaying the American flag along with apple pie in one hand and a baseball in the other.”

“I just want to go home. Just sit in some bar in L.A. somewhere and allow you to freely buy me a beer conveniently located near the stadium of the Los Angeles Angels of good ol’ Anaheim. I even
miss
L.A.; soon, we’ll be able to laugh this whole thing off like it never even happened.”

She’s silent.

“Kimberley?” I ask with rising fear.

“Let’s just get the hell out of Moscow, okay?” She all but chokes on the last word. “I truly believe this will be over, one way or the other, in the next forty-eight hours.”

It’s ominous the way she says this.

“What do you
know
?” My heart thunders away in my chest. She doesn’t sound right. That flippant, fuck-off tone of hers is sorely missing.

“They’re going to transfer you to a Russian federal prison until a trial date is set. In two days. That’s going to make a cell phone call impossible. And so far? They won’t let me in to see you since I’m not a lawyer, and they won’t let
him
in, either. Sleeping with someone and even larger amounts of cash may be involved.”

“Do what you have to do,” I say, attempting levity because the truth she speaks of is too hard to actually fathom. She doesn’t laugh. Neither do I.
“What are you saying? What are you
really
saying?” I ask.

“They think you did it. If they can’t find Tally, they’re charging you with the guy’s murder.”

“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t touch him. She acted in self-defense; I’m sure of it. I didn’t—”

“Listen to me, Linc! None of that matters, okay? These guys aren’t looking for the truth. They just need to solve the case, one way or the other; however they see fit. And just know that what’s gone on so far is preliminary shit, Linc. It’s going to get a whole lot worse, and I need deeper funding to even make a dent into stopping it from happening to you. We’re trying to track down Rob Thorn. He’s got access to the ready kind of cash; we may need to extricate you from this situation.”

I groan at the fucked-up circumstances and just the idea of needing help from Rob Thorn, of all people. “Find Tally,” I say bleakly.

“Yeah, working on it. Look, don’t freak out on me just yet. Give me two more days.”

“Sounds like that’s about all I have.”

“I’ll call you in another twelve hours with more.
Twelve hours
, Linc. Time it. Be ready.
”
Kimberley ends the call, while I dully note the time on the cell phone. I manage to put it on silent, cajole myself to just wait for her call, which will be at exactly four in the morning Moscow time.

Then I attempt to stop my body’s uncontrollable shaking and shut my mind off all together; because the truth is I’m falling apart in a way I thought would never happen to me.

Two hours go by.

Finally, I formulate and say a little prayer to God, and since we haven’t officially spoken since my mom and Elliott died that takes up quite a bit of my time.

The rest of it I spend on trying to determine what I think love really is and what I actually feel for Tally Landon at this point. Upon deep reflection, I realize that I must be at the edge of life’s abyss. This is me. All there is left of me; and yet, I’m looking over and contemplating its meaning on whether to jump or stay. I’m not sure this feeling for Tally Landon is made up of love any more than it is of hate. This must be a kind of purgatory—the in-between place—because these pervasive feelings of rage and passion for Tally are equalized and actually co-mingle together—like fire and water—each ready to extinguish the other. I’ve come to accept the truth. There may be nothing left for us. It could go either way.

* * * *