Damaged

James

The call comes a little after midnight. It didn’t wake me. I wouldn’t sleep tonight with all the scotch and benzos in the world.

I put on a black dress shirt, black suit, and a large silver ring on my knuckle that I save for such special occasions.

I peek into the bedroom to see Sophia sleeping in a slant of moonlight. I watch the sheets rise and fall. A movement as gentle as the girl they cover.

My jaw locks. My teeth grind against each other. I’d known we had company on this trip—Brock had told me—and I’d left her alone in the car to chase a new business contract.

My greed put her at risk. It does more than just fill me with white-hot rage. My heart aches.

I worry if she’s as unfazed as she seems.

But people surprise you. We’re hardwired to be stronger than we think, and I think Sophia will be alright.

But she nearly wasn’t. And it was my fault.

And leaving her in the car wasn’t my only mistake.

Last night I dismissed the Russian as someone we didn’t have to worry about. I did it on the basis that he was staying at the same hotel. I thought nobody would be stupid enough to show their face to me that blatantly and then try to kidnap an employee.

He paid for his mistake.

All it took to find him was Brock calling surrounding hotels and asking if a man by his description had checked in. Brock said he was a thief, and his perfect Arabic he’d learned from his time in the special forces helped let the concierge’s guard down.

I close the door slowly and leave Sophia sleeping in silence as I exit the room and board the elevator.

The hotel is silent at this time of night. The lobby is empty, apart from a custodian. I walk out past the driveway to where an old black sedan waits for me.

I get in the back seat. It smells of crime—cigarettes and spent shell casings.

Brock’s behind the wheel, and I sniff out the gunpowder in the air. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

Brock shakes his head as he lets out a plume of smoke. He smokes his cigarette and taps his knee with his index finger to indicate where he put the bullet, and then he puts the car in drive.

Karim knows of this little errand of ours. I asked him if he knew a good place to get rid of a problem, and he dropped me a pin to a bridge south of the city. It’s past the apartment complexes and pyramids and into the solid dark of the desert.

We don’t speak as we drive. It probably would’ve been smart to have some of Karim’s military attachés join us. That way we wouldn’t risk a run-in with any local law enforcement. But I figure if we’re quick, we’ll be fine.

I don’t want to owe Karim a favor when we’re about to buy the artifacts. Plus, he owes me one for not decking his pimpled son when he insulted Sophia.

The bridge he’s sent me to is obviously no thoroughfare, since we must take a series of rugged dirt roads to reach it. When we get there and it’s illuminated in the headlights, I see weeds sprouting from the concrete. Piles of sand have been blown onto it.

“Don’t park on it,” I say, not wanting us to fall through and into the river.

Brock stops the car right where the road meets the bridge and pops the trunk. We both step out, and the first thing I do is look up at the stars.

There must be thousands in this dry, cloudless sky. Stars beyond stars. Endless. It’s the kind of sky that living in New York makes you forget exists.

“Boss?”

“I’m coming,” I say, unhurried, and walk around to the trunk. The Russian is bound. His kneecap is red from where Brock shot him.

“We’re going to take a little walk,” I say. I take a knife from Brock. “Get some stones ready to sink him.”

Brock nods, and I cut this parasite’s ankles free and start to walk him down the bridge. He limps hunched over with his hands tied at the small of his back. He’s slipping in his camouflage Gucci loafers. His suit tail is blowing in the wind.

When we’re in the middle of the bridge with the river below us, I stop and push him against the hip-high railing. It takes everything in me to not plunge the knife through his eye right now. To not uncut his hands to let him try to stop me. To feel the life slowly leave his fingers as they grip feebly at my throat.

“Who are you working for?” I ask in Russian. I put the point of the knife against his bloody kneecap. I let him groan in pain before I slip the gag out of his mouth and ask again.

“Who are you working for?”

Silence.

I do have to give it to these Russians. Most are atheists, yet they’re ready to meet their end with more glee than a Jonestown Kool-Aider.

I’ve learned over the years how to loosen them up, however. “If you tell me and work with me against them, you live. I won’t offer you money, but if you double-cross them, you get your life.”

The Russian meets my eye, at least I think he does. It’s so dark, I can only see by starlight. “I don’t care if you know my boss or not. Lev Petrov only pays hires who don’t get shot.”

Lev Petrov. The Baltic mob boss. I’ve heard of him, but our paths have never crossed.

“And what was the plan? Why kidnap the girl?”

“We were tipped off that you were buying artifacts in Cairo, but we didn’t know from where. We were to follow your movements and then stake out and rob the place. But Karim’s is too secure. We changed the plan to ransom.”

The we makes my heart skip a beat. I look around, like this Russian’s backup could be lurking somewhere in the dark. But it’s not me I’m worried about.

The hotel is secure. No one is breaking into the presidential suite. Still, I have an urge to get this over with and race back as quickly as I can.

The only thing that doesn’t add up is him saying he didn’t know I’d buy the artifacts from Karim. We’ve been photographed at business dinners together. It’s well known that Karim is a customer of mine, my first on the continent, and an old friend.

He’s lying. The plan was always to kidnap Sophia. Brock and I have got to go.

“You touched the girl, you die,” I say with venom. I move the knife up to his chest.

“No, no. I’ll give him up. I was a guard to Petrov for years before getting a burglary job. I know his routes. His houses. He’s yours.”

“Tell me who else is with you.”

“Mikhail. He’s no threat. He’s the computer guy. The planner. Not the muscle.”

I don’t believe him. I see the knife in my hand and picture how this man tried to kill Sophia.

My hand grips the knife harder. I’d kill someone for looking at her funny. The punishment for swinging a knife at her will be far greater than just death.

The Russian must be able to see my rageful eyes better than I can see his small and beady ones, because he starts to shout and beg for his life. I move to plunge the knife, and he steps sideways and knocks something, a chunk of rotted wood from the railing, into the water.

It splashes, and just before I’m about to end this man’s life, there’s a much, much bigger splash.

Big enough to make us both freeze. It sounds like a car fell into the water.

I kick the Russian’s legs out from under him so he falls and leans over the railing. There’s a shape atop the dark water. Scaly and muscular. It stretches almost twenty feet.

It’s a Nile crocodile. Something else catches my eye. I look to the far riverbank to see a dozen boats have been dragged onto the sand. But my eyes adjust.

The boats move. One slides soundlessly into the water.

This is why Karim said this is a good place to get rid of a problem—the river here is infested with crocodiles.

I don’t bother with the knife anymore. I have a more suitable idea. I feel like a Bond villain. The Russian lies on the ground, and there’s space under the railing to push him in. I put my hands on his shoulder and shove him over the edge.

“No!” he yells, and he starts to fall, but to my surprise, he stops. He’s dangling over the water upside-down. His arms are outstretched several feet above the river. It takes me a moment to see in the dark that he’s wrapped his legs around one of the railing’s support beams.

I start to uncouple his legs while he screams. He gets mean, as thugs often will before death. “The bitch deserved it! Mikhail will skin you both! I swear that on my fathers!”

Suddenly, there’s a light splash. And then a crunch. It’s followed by a silence-shattering ker-plunk.

The Russian’s legs go limp, and I frown, leaning over the railing. Where most of the Russian should be, stars ripple, reflecting in the black water of the Nile.

A crocodile jumped from the water and bit him clean in two. His legs let go of the railing and sail down with another splash.

I step back a little farther to watch the water pulse and stew. It looks like it’s boiling from the feeding frenzy of the beasts below.

I walk back to the car a little slowly. I think I’m in shock. Did I just feed a guy to crocodiles? This is, strangely, a childhood dream come true.

I’ve always liked the villain with the shark tank in the floor. And this is as close as I will ever get to Hollywood.

Brock is stacking rocks near the trunk.

“Um,” I say, interrupting him. I scratch my head in disbelief. “You’re not going to need those.”

The next morning, I wake Sophia up at seven. “Come on. We’ve got the morning off.”

She blinks slowly and stretches. Her hair is wild over her face. She toys with it a little, trying to tame it back. I can tell she’s a little embarrassed by her morning appearance, but wrapped in the crisp white sheets, I think she looks like Aphrodite.

“If we’re free, then why wake me up?”

“To do tourist shit.”

“Really?”

“One day only.”

“Wait a minute. Is this like having a free pizza party for employees instead of giving them raises?”

“What?”

“Like so I don’t sue for emotional damages, you take me to see the Sphinx?”

“It’s better than the Sphinx. Totally worth a seven-figure settlement. Besides, you can still sue if you’d like.”

“Okay. Give me a half hour.”

“There’s a breakfast bar in the kitchen,” I say and make to leave. “And by the way. The Egyptian police made an arrest last night. I confirmed it’s the same man we saw at the bar.”

“Oh. That’s great. Do I have to… testify?” She suddenly looks nervous.

“No. Nothing like that. The justice system is different here. It’s taken care of.”

“Great.” Sophia nods. But I can tell she hadn’t remembered the incident with the Russian immediately upon waking and now it is all flooding back. I’m not being cute—it’s my job to make this right.

In an hour, the two of us are in the Rolls Royce and driving south. We’ve already passed the Pyramids. We’ll hit those on the way back.

Sophia is looking out the window. She’s got her bubbly mood back, but as we exit the city, a mixture of concern and amusement draws her brow tight. “Where are we going?” she asks.

“You’ll find out in fifteen minutes.”

I can tell she’s debating pressing me more but decides against it. Soon we’re walking with the morning sun on our backs down the same abandoned bridge as I did last night. Sophia’s eyes are ahead on the water. “Are we doing what I think we are?” She looks at me and walks closer to the railing.

“Not so close.”

I pull her gently back by the elbow. There’s a splash in the distance, and then we both stop and stare. There they are, about a dozen of them, some with their backs still wet from the water, sunning themselves on the sandbank.

“Oh my God.”

“I figured you deserved your crocodiles.”

Sophia’s mouth is agape. “They’re enormous.”

While I don’t say anything, I do admit she was right to want to do something like this over going to a museum. They’re otherworldly. Fifteen hundred pounds of muscle, scales, and teeth.

“How’d you find this place?” Sophia asks.

The question doesn’t faze me. “I asked around where the best place to see the crocodiles was.”

She marvels for a while, walking up and down the bridge to get better views. I stay as close as I can. Even though I spent the morning reading that crocodiles are ambush predators that wait for prey in the water and rarely pursue people on land, I’m still not letting my guard down.

“Wait, what’s that?” Sophia asks and points.

My heart stops. It’s obvious what it is. Lying washed up on the sandbank next to a monstrous crocodile is a camouflage Gucci loafer. Its distinct golden clasp glints in the sun.

Shit. Was the Russian wearing those shoes the first night in the hotel? Even if he wasn’t, it feels obvious what happened here. How I found this place.

“That’s strange,” Sophia says, staring at the shoe.

I cringe and close my eyes. I don’t think she’ll be flattered that I fed her assailant to crocodiles. She’ll run.

“I would’ve guessed they preferred Crocs.”

I pause, taking in her joke. I feel like the weight of the world just rolled off my shoulders, and I laugh. A genuine, hardy laugh.

Sophia is staring up at me with a smile. “I’m sorry. That was awful.”

“No,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “That was great.” I’m not even thinking as I playfully pull her in and kiss her on the forehead.

I’m not even thinking, but I’m glad I did it. I’m not sure what it meant, if anything.

It just felt right.