“We’re just getting old, that’s all,” Sister Peter said. “I’m just grateful we’re getting the vocations. Right now, I want you to pay attention to this. You didn’t read that article very well.”
“I didn’t? What did I miss?”
“It’s not what you missed. It’s what you mistook. Go back and look at it if you don’t believe me. She didn’t fall off a truck. She fell out of the back of a black van.”
Sister Margaret Mary sat bolt upright. “What?”
“A black van, Sister. It’s right there.”
“The same black van? Could it possibly be the same black van?”
“I only saw your black van for a second,” Sister Peter said. “And I didn’t see the van she fell out of and neither did you. But I think you’d better mention it.”
Sister Margaret Mary thought she would have done better to get the license plate last night, but she hadn’t thought of it.
3
The call came in at nine thirty. Tibor Kasparian knew who it was as soon as he heard it ring. He almost thought about not answering. His kitchen table was piled high with the endless paperwork that was the inevitable result of dealing with one government agency after another. The entire world was going digital and paperless, but government agencies would never leave it at that. Once you got on a computer and filled out the forms online, you had to print them all out and submit them again in “hard copy.” Tibor remembered when “hard copy” meant a newspaper story about something serious, like a world war. He also remembered when a world war was the worst thing he was worried about.
He picked up after five rings and then answered, reflexively, in Armenian. Then he cleared his throat and tried again.
“I am here, Russell. You are out of your schedule.”
Russell was breathing heavily. He was a young man, but ever since he’d gone to prison he seemed to be always out of breath.
“They all know Tommy was here yesterday. They think something’s up.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know. He tried to call me yesterday.”
I should have gone to the Ararat, Tibor thought. It would never occur to Russ to call him at the Ararat. Russ might call his cell phone, but probably not. Tibor didn’t understand why, but prisons hated the very idea of cell phones. Prisoners were not allowed to have them, and calling out to them caused all kinds of problems.
Tibor got his coffee from where he had left it on the kitchen table and took it over to his living room couch. The apartment was enormous, but it was still an open floor plan. He got some books off the couch and sat down.
“What did he call you about?” he asked. “What did he have to say?”
“I don’t know,” Russ said. “He called after lockdown. We aren’t allowed to get calls then.”
“What time was it?”
“I don’t know that either. They didn’t come and tell me about it. They just notified me this morning. I suppose I could have asked them. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Russell. I don’t know why I asked that. I don’t think it matters.”
“They would have asked him if it was some kind of an emergency. I guess it wasn’t.”
One of the books he had moved out of the way was a James Patterson novel he couldn’t remember buying. The other was Augustine’s Confessions.
“Tibor?” Russ said. “What happened last night?”
“Tcha,” Tibor said.
“It could just be him following up after yesterday,” Russ said. “But I don’t believe it. Lockdown is at ten. If he called later than that and from home, there had to be something up. If Donna’d found out about it, she’d have gone berserk.”
“Tcha,” Tibor said again. Then he sucked in enough air to inflate a balloon and tried to give a concise summary of the something that had happened. The news would have gotten to Russ eventually, even if Tommy had not called. It would have been in a newspaper or on a television program or on the Internet. It would just have taken longer.
Russ listened to the whole thing without asking questions. Then he said, “Jesus.”
“It was not as bad as it sounds,” Tibor said. “I’m just very tired and not speaking well. The woman was not dead. It was not a murder.”
“Is she dead now?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s the kind of thing where somebody ends up dead,” Russ said. “Why wasn’t it you who went out and looked at her? Why did you send Tommy?”
“I didn’t send Tommy, Russell. It was a fast thing. One moment we were walking on the sidewalk and then there were the sounds of a car coming too fast. Tommy pushed me out of the way and the car hit a lamp pole. I am speaking badly again.”
“So, who was this woman? Who is she? The woman in the garbage bag.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know her name or anything?”
“Nobody knows anything,” Tibor said. “I called Krekor, and he came. Tommy called 911. Then we all stood around while other people came and people went and people stood around. She didn’t have a handbag. The police looked through her pockets and her clothes and the bag and did not find any identification. Nobody knows who she is.”
“A white woman? A black woman? An Asian?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does for purposes of identification.”
“From what I could see, she was a white woman. She could have been Spanish. The place where we were was on the edge of a Spanish neighborhood.”
“I can’t stay on the phone much longer. They only give us three to five minutes.”
“It was an accident, Russell. It had nothing to do with us. It was an accident we were there. I don’t think you have to worry about Tommy being in trouble.”
“Jesus,” Russell said again. Then he sighed. “When I got here, I thought it was me. Because of the way things were. The way they happened. I thought I was the only one, cut off from everything and everybody, cut off from all connections. But it isn’t just me. Everybody here is like that. Almost everybody.”
“I think that is normal, Russell.”
“There’s nothing normal about it. It’s insane, trying to live like that. I don’t mean being locked up. I mean not knowing what’s going on, not knowing what’s happening to—people. There are guys in here, they don’t have anybody. No wives. No girlfriends. No children. I mean, they have them, but they don’t really have them. There’s no real connection. Even their mothers don’t come to visit.”
“It is a sad thing, Russell, yes.”
“I was never like that.”
“No, Russell, you were not.”
“I don’t want to wake up three months from now and find out Tommy’s in juvie and nobody told me anything about it. They haven’t shut down any of those places. We’re still running for-profit juvenile detention centers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
“Russell—”
“Never mind,” Russell said. “I’ve got to get off. But I meant what I said. I don’t want to wake up three months from now and find out God knows what has been going on and nobody’s told me about it. Don’t do that to me, Tibor. No matter what you think of the rest of it. Don’t do that to me—”