Matala (14 page)

D
ARCY SETTLED INTO THE OLD
cool leather and pressed herself against Justine. She did not want to be away from her, to be parted from her even by the space of a backseat. Justine lifted her arm and laid it over Darcy's shoulders.

“Please,” Darcy said.

“Shh. Quiet, pussy.”

The road was new and wide and black, and followed the shoreline at first. When it turned into the mountains, it rose steeply, and Karl dropped into a lower gear. The engine whined, and they could feel the vibration of the strain. The breeze through the partially opened window was warm, and Darcy smelled the sea and the Greek mountain air, and imagined how old this place was, how long there had been people here. Her head grew light with the thoughts of it. Then she closed her eyes, let her head fall back against Justine, and breathed in her smell as well, and everything still seemed possible.

“Tell me something,” Justine said. “When did you open the package?”

“Yesterday.”

“Why didn't you look sooner? I don't understand that. I'd have looked as soon as possible to at least know what the game was.” She was quiet and then said, “I hoped you'd look. Then maybe you wouldn't have come all the way here.”

“I probably still would have.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“When you found it was empty, why didn't you run?”

Darcy shrugged. “What's the difference?”

“You're a stupid girl,” said Justine. “I wanted you to come. I wanted to have last night. I've dreamt of that. But I didn't want you to. I wanted to think of you out there somewhere. Running. Stealing. Doing what you do.” She began to cry a little, for the second time in the few days that Darcy had been with her.

Darcy reached up, touched her wet cheek, and tasted the tears. “We can still go, you know.”

Justine shook her head.

After they had climbed for some time, the road turned back to cobbles and they came to a small village. They found themselves in the midst of a procession of some kind, with the men in black and white and the women and children following. Darcy thought at first it was a funeral, but there was no casket. Then she remembered it was Christmas morning. The children stared at them. The street in the town was so narrow and Karl had to pull so far over that she could have reached through the window and run her fingers along the rough façades of the whitewashed houses.

“Tell me why,” Darcy said. She touched Justine's hair, held it, pressed it to her nose.

“Just money.”

“Stupid old money. But you said you didn't care about it anymore.”

“No. I said I didn't want your father's money.”

Justine had stopped crying, but her cheeks were red with the wind and the wetness.

Darcy felt a heaviness in her belly, the near sickness of mortal fear, but she also felt a calm she had not felt in a long time. She didn't know exactly what was planned for her, but she found that she didn't care—at least about the details. It would be bad if it happened, and that was all she really needed to know. Even without looking in the package, she had known since Athens that something was wrong in all this, as Matthew had known. But this was not the end of the game, though it was the beginning of the end. She was excited for it to play out but was rendered nearly numb at the real possibility that it could end very badly for her. And yet she felt composed. She was as good as Justine at all this. She knew she was now, and soon Justine would know as well. Perhaps it would turn out that she would not win. But Justine would know. Perhaps, she thought, neither of them would win. In a way, that would be best.

After the village, the road immediately began to fall. Karl let it go, and Darcy felt her stomach rise as they dropped faster and faster until she knew that if he erred at all, they'd go over the edge. But she trusted completely in his sense of machines and mechanics and of controlled falling. She had never met him before, but she knew that he was very good at this.

At one point the road leveled out, and they passed along a high chain-link fence with rolled razor wire at the top and then a sign saying that it was a United States military establishment and the taking of photographs in the area was strictly prohibited.

Then they were dropping again. Justine hugged her tightly and leaned with her into the curves. Soon they were down, and the trees opened up and there was the sea again before them. Darcy felt as though they'd arrived at something she knew.

Darcy tapped Justine's leg and pointed at the high red cliffs. Even from that distance she could make out the rows of black openings. “What is it?” she said.

“You don't know about this place?”

“I saw it on a spoon.”

“Those are caves hewn into the sandstone. People have lived in them on and off for thousands of years. They were used as crypts, too. In the sixties, people lived there until they were forced out. That's all outlawed now.”

“We could live there.”

“Don't,” Justine said. “You'll only make it harder.”

“On who? Me or you?”

Justine did not answer.

They came to a small dirt parking area in a dense copse of cypress and evergreens at one side of the great arena formed by the cliffs and the sand running away toward the ocean. Karl shut off the car. He did not move or speak. Justine helped Darcy out and went around to the trunk. As Darcy stood beside the saloon, she looked back along the dusty road they'd come down. Another Mercedes, a new white one, was moving along slowly in their direction. Darcy looked at it for a long moment and then turned as Justine handed her her things. Justine was carrying the duffel. Darcy put her pack over one shoulder and her purse over the other, and slipped her arm through Justine's. They followed a narrow trail that led through the trees toward the hidden beach. When they came out, the caves were so close that she could see into the lower ones. There was something as ancient, as permanent looking about them as anything she had seen. Though they had clearly been made by men, they seemed as much a part of the landscape as the cliffs themselves or the mountains that formed the center of the island. She felt a strange, almost foreboding quiver when she looked into them. It was as if she could smell the smoke of the fires that had burned there or the odors of the people who had lived in them or the decay of the bodies that had been entombed.

They walked beneath the face toward the water. The small town lay to the south along the beach, and a lower outcropping rose immediately behind it, with houses climbing partway up its face. Several boats were moored just beyond the opening of the cove, and a little way beyond them lay a very large yacht. A hundred and fifty feet, Darcy guessed. Her father had a boat on Lake Erie, a forty-footer that they took to Sandusky or Put-in-Bay or Pelee Island, but he talked often and hungrily of the big boys that went out through the seaway to the ocean. It wasn't that he couldn't have afforded one. It was just that he knew he'd never have the time to make those kinds of trips.

Justine looked out across the cove, then said, “We have a little time. Would you like a drink?”

“A blue one? No, thanks.”

Darcy felt dizzy at the thought that it had come to this and how it might still turn out—how a man must feel on death row, on the evening of his execution. A kind of deadness in itself. An unreality.

A walk in the Roman sun, a little respite, and now she might be gone.

“You're strong,” Justine said. “Don't ever let that go.”

“That's it? I don't want to be strong. I've always been strong—until you, because of you. And I'm supposed to just let that go because you need some cash? How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I don't know,” Justine said. “I haven't thought about it.”

“Yes, you have. You thought about it all the way here. Even when you hated me, even when I was horrible and ruining your life, I bet it was the only thing you could think of.”

“I've never thought you were horrible.”

“I was, though.”

Darcy hugged Justine's arm, pressed her lips against her ear, and said, “Be selfish. One time in your life, do something just for you. Keep me.”

“Please. Stop.”

“I won't. Would you let someone do this to you?”

“But you're not me, not remotely.”

I am not you, Darcy thought, but I am your equal. And you know it. And if you think this is the end of it, then you've slipped from what you must once have been. But I don't think you've slipped. I think you know.

“No,” Darcy said, “I'm not you. I'm yours.
Siete la mia madre.”

“The real question,” Justine said, “is would I let someone do it to you?”

I
WOKE EARLY, JUST AT DAWN
, as I had each morning on the island. I had not felt like taking the pipe when we got to Maurice's house the night before. It had stopped sounding good to me, especially when I saw that other partiers were already here—two couples who were apparently friendly enough with Maurice that they felt comfortable letting themselves in and digging into his stash. Maurice didn't seem to mind. I had another beer and fell asleep in a room off the kitchen.

I put a kettle on the propane stove, and as I sat at the counter waiting for it to boil, I looked around the place. It was just a small cottage, really, with stuccoed walls, bare wood floors, and fixtures that had obviously been here when Maurice bought it. When the water was hot, I made myself a mug of tea and went into the main room, where Maurice was still sitting on the couch, awake and looking at me. One of the couples was there, too, asleep on a love seat.

“What're you doing?” I asked.

“Christ,” Maurice said. “They brought a couple of grams of the marching powder. Can't sleep on that.”

He offered me a cigarette, which I accepted. We smoked without speaking for a few minutes, then I made Maurice a cup and we moved out onto the plant-choked veranda. The cottage was at the edge of the town and above most of it. It clung to the lower slope of the hills, which formed the southern wall of the natural amphitheater that embraced the town and the beach and a small blue cove that was so perfectly formed, so perfectly charming, it almost made me laugh. Across from us, forming the northern wall, were the sandstone faces into which the famous caves had been cut millennia before. We smoked and sipped and looked out. Beyond the confines of the cove, out in the open bay, fishing boats and a few larger craft dotted the surface. The air was so clear that I could make out Galini, far up and around the westward curve in the coast.

“So where are they?” I said. “I thought they were coming here.”

“Did I say that?”

“Didn't you?”

“Don't think so.”

I dragged on the cigarette and stubbed it out. “Well, are they?”

“Justine should be around in a bit.”

“And Darcy?”

“I don't know, lad.”

“What do you mean? What happened last night?”

“I don't know. I was here, wasn't I?”

“But you knew.”

“Why would I?”

“Maurice, quit fucking around.”

Maurice looked at me. I saw a chill come into him and then fade. I felt that chill myself. Maurice was an old, strung-out, hopheaded waste of breath, and the man who'd been with him in the bar didn't seem to be around.

“I want to know where she is.”

“Lad—” Maurice said.

“Just fucking tell me.”

“You'll regret it.”

“I don't care.”

He looked at his wristwatch and then out across the rooftops at the beach. “She's probably still down there somewhere—for a few more minutes at least.” Maurice dragged on the cigarette and looked into the sky. “A place like this don't come easy,” he said. “You know? Even when I bought this years ago, it came dear. Foreign taxes, palms to grease, licenses, fees, permits. And then the cost of the place itself. I bought it from a recording engineer, another Brit. He'd had some success. He's the one who built it.”

“The point?”

“Takes a lot of money.”

“So?”

“Well, I found a business some time ago that made a lot for me. Still does, now and then. Not the most savory business.”

“Which is what? Drugs?”

Maurice laughed. “That shit's for wankers. I only handle the stuff so I can own people. It works wonders in that regard. They get so caught up in it, some of them, that they can't leave it. Can't leave you. And you have them then. That's one way.”

“What does that mean?”

“There are people in the world who are property, Will. That's what it means. And there are other people who own them.” Maurice made a face, finished his cigarette, and flipped it over the railing.

“I don't know what you're talking about, Maurice.”

“People own other people. Sometimes it's just an emotional thing. Sometimes it's a need they can't ever leave. And sometimes, Will, people buy other people—for a whole variety of reasons.”

“Are you talking about slavery?”

“You could call it that, but it don't tell you much. I mean there are all kinds of slaves, aren't there? Slaves for work, sex, transportation, companionship. And beyond that, there are other sorts of people that people want to buy. Children, for example. People want children and sometimes can't get them, so they buy. But whatever their reason, whatever sort of person they want to own, they need a broker, a finder. Someone to do the dirty work and the moving about and the covering up and the handling of funds and all the thousand shitty little details that go along with it.”

“And that's what you do?”

“That's what I do. And it's what Justine did for many years, and she was very good at it.”

“And me?”

“You were her first, Will. You were different. You belonged to her in a way none of the others ever did. You were family.”

As I looked at him, I felt the drafts rising up the face of the cliff as they'd warmed on the sand, and I could hear them moving in the scrubby trees.

“Your mum was her mum's cousin or something like that. It was fairly distant. But your mum and Justine were about the same age and had come up together. And she was, your mum, something of a fuckup. Knocked up, smacked up, strung out. The whole family wasn't much better. Her people, your people, were grovelers. Shit bags all. Scum of the earth. Justine's mum was gone more'n she was about, and her dad was dead. And then your mum squeezed you out and left as well, and somehow Justine, at the tender age of seventeen or so, had this wee one to deal with. What was she going to do with a naffin' baby? She had no money. But she couldn't see turning it over to the authorities. They'd likely shove you someplace as bad or worse as what you come from, and she'd be left with fuck-all. Anyway, she wasn't your mum, so she had no real authority. So she kept on with it, with you, for some time.

“It happened that I'd had a bit of a hand in this sort of thing, so when she started asking about, someone steered her to me. I, in turn, knew a man in London who knew other people, and so on, who knew a family of Americans who were desperate for a child. It further happened that they were living near London at the time. He was with the foreign service. Deputy attaché or some such. High up. And the long and short of it, Will, is that I put together a deal, laid it out for Justine, and she sold you. And for some flippin' nice coin, I might say.”

I stood up and went to the railing at the edge of the veranda and looked down at the rooftops. I suddenly felt ill and was afraid I would be sick, except that some part of me had known this before Maurice said it. Not this, of course, but something. How similar we were, how we looked, how attached we were from the moment she sat next to me in a bar in Roanoke and offered to buy me a beer. It was something between us, some unmistakable bond. I had taken it for love, and as it turned out, I had not been wrong.

“So why did she find me?”

“She missed you, boy. She'd missed you since the day she handed you over. She regretted it. It took her twenty years to come around, but she did. She had left the business by then, and I think that was part of it. It was some small redress for all the souls she bartered, to get back the one she never should have.”

“So why…” I began but trailed off. I knew now. I knew what it was all about. I felt a wave of nausea again, much worse than the first, but still I did not succumb to it.

“This is all about Darcy, isn't it? She's the package.”

“Well, it's not some piece of junk wrapped up in brown paper, is it?”

“Where's she going?”

“Don't know exactly, but it'll be mad hot there.”

“You don't even know who bought her?”

“I often don't. In this case, I understand it was one of the wives of some dune coon who actually placed the order. The girl's to be a Christmas present. New toy for the old man and whoever else he wants to invite over to play with it. I mean, what d'you buy for someone that stinkin'? It just worked out, you know. It does that sometimes. Girl shows up with you. Justine feels a connection. That was always her great strength, what made her different. She connected. 'Course it's also what made it impossible for her to stay in. Couldn't take no more.

“Anyway, she called me. I knew of some open orders. They float around. This one was particularly rich, and they were in a bit of a jam because it was fairly specific and time was getting short. So you brought her to Venice where I could see her, and so could they.”

“What?”

“You shocked? Anyway, she was perfect. A healthy, bright-eyed, big bapped American girl. It had to be an American. Some of them like it that way. Then, when they're fucking 'em, they feel like they're fucking the whole place, you know?”

“But why did Justine?”

“Sixty thousand quid, split three ways. Less your debts, of course. I didn't like that bit at first. It's always been fifty-fifty. But she insisted. So you're wadded up now, mate.”

“I don't want it.”

“You will,” Maurice said. “You'll want to go off on some quixotic quest to find her. And you'll need lots of folding for that, son. It's how the world works.” He pointed to a ship that had anchored just beyond the opening of the cove. “That's her ride. Nice, in'it?”

“Shit,” I said and broke for the door, but Maurice was up just as quickly and had me by the arm and the throat.

“Don't think you're gonna cock this up, lad.”

“You're sick.”

“Greedy, perhaps. Not sick. Now sit down.”

“I'm going down there.”

“To do what? Karl's there. He's armed. The men coming in are surely armed. And you're going to show up with what, your limp noodle?” He laughed. “It's over. It's done. Now sit down.”

He shoved me so that I stumbled back and fell into one of the deck chairs.

“You're a worthless shit, Maurice. She doesn't deserve this. No one does.”

“Deserve? What does that mean?”

The mug sat on the small table where I'd set it when it was empty. It was a heavy mug; it felt like clay. I threw it. I didn't think, and that is what's required at certain times. No aiming. No contemplation. Just a reaction. Let the old eye-hand have its way.

The mug hit Maurice square in the face, and I saw blood. Maurice put his hands up, fell to his knees, and gagged. It sounded like gagging anyway. I didn't stay around to hear much of it. I leaped over the wooden railing into the mass of greenery and found myself suspended in the mesh of branches and vines that had not been pruned for forever. As I thrashed, the dry, stiff foliage cut me, especially on the arms. But I was angry and pumped up enough that I hardly cared, and after a few helpless moments, I felt myself dropping and then sliding down the steep rocky slope into the town.