The Blue Zone

“Home?” Sharon squinted. She looked over to Kate. “I don’t understand.”

“Out of the country, Sharon. Back to Colombia.”

Kate’s mother’s hand flew to her cheek. “Oh, my God, Ben, what have you done?”

“Look, these people came to me.” Raab squeezed his hand around hers. “I didn’t know what they were doing or who they were. They were some export company. I did what I always do. I sold them gold.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Kate cut in. “How can they arrest you for that?”

“Unfortunately, it’s slightly more complicated, pumpkin,” her father said, shifting back. “I set them up with someone, in order to accomplish what they wanted. And I also took some payments, which makes it seem like I was a party to what was going on.”

“Were you?”

“Was I what, Sharon?”

“Were you a party to what was going on?”

“Of course not, Sharon. I just-”

“So who the hell did you introduce them to, Ben?” Sharon ’s voice rose, tense and alarmed.

Raab cleared his throat and looked down. “Harold Kornreich. He’s been arrested, too.”

“Jesus Christ, Ben, what have the two of you done?”

Kate felt her own stomach tie into a knot. Harold Kornreich was one of her dad’s business buddies. They went to trade shows together. He and Audrey had come to her bat mitzvah. It was like they were two stupid white guys who had walked into a scam. Except her dad wasn’t exactly stupid. And he had taken money-from criminals. Drug dealers. You didn’t exactly have to be a constitutional scholar to see that this wasn’t about to just go away.

“Now, there’s no grounds to prove I knew exactly what was going on,” her father said. “I’m not even sure they really want to focus on me.”

“Then what do they want?” Sharon asked, her gaze troubled and wide.

“What they want is for me to roll.”

“Roll…?”

“Testify, Sharon. Against Harold. The Colombians, too.”

“At a trial?”

“Yes.” He swallowed resignedly. “At a trial.”

“No!” Sharon stood up. Tears of anger and bewilderment flashed in her eyes. “That’s how we get to keep our life? By turning state’s evidence against one of your closest friends? You’re not going to do that, are you, Ben? It would be like admitting you were guilty. Harold and Audrey are our friends. You sold these people gold. What they did with it is their business. We’re going to fight this, aren’t we, Ben? Isn’t that right?”

“Of course we’re going to fight this, Sharon. It’s just that-”

“It’s just that what, Ben?” Sharon kept her gaze on him, razor sharp.

“It’s just that the payments I took from these guys all these years don’t exactly make me look i

His voice had elevated, and there was something in it Kate had never heard in her dad before. That he was afraid, and not entirely blameless. That maybe he wasn’t going to be able to make this come out okay. They all sat there looking at him, trying to figure out just what that meant.

“You’re not going to go to jail, are you, Dad?”

It was Justin, in a voice that was halting and tight. The question that was suddenly front and center in everyone’s mind.

“Of course not, champ.” His father pulled him close and stroked his bushy brown hair and looked past him. At Kate.

“No one in this family’s going to jail.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Luis Prado didn’t ask too many questions.

He’d been in the United States for four years now. His papers said he was here to visit a sister, but that was a lie. He had no family here.

He’d come here to do work. He was handpicked because of the way he handled himself back home. And what he did, Luis did very well.

He did jobs for the Mercados. Dirty jobs. The kind you did because of the oath you had sworn. You didn’t look into someone’s face. You looked through them. You didn’t ask why.

That’s what had gotten him out of the slums of Carmenes. What enabled him to send money back home to his wife and child-more money than he could ever dream of there. What paid for the fancy suits he wore and the private tables at the salsa clubs-and the occasional woman he met there who looked at him with pride.

It’s what separated him from the desesperados back home. A man with no worth. No significance. Nothing.

The driver, a cocky kid named Tomás, played with the radio in the customized Cadillac Escalade while he drove. “Ha!” He tapped his hands against the wheel to the steady salsa beat. “José Alberto. El Canario.”

The kid was probably no more than twenty-one, but he had already cut his cherry and would drive through a fucking building if he had to get out the other side. He was fearless and good, if maybe a little reckless, but that was just what was needed now. Luis had worked with him before.

They drove north out of the Bronx. Through the kinds of neighborhoods they had never seen before. Places that when Luis was just a kid back home were only hidden behind high fences, with guards at the gates. Maybe, Luis thought as they passed by, if he did his jobs and played his cards right, one day he might have such a home.

They followed the route from the highway carefully. They retraced it, making sure they knew the lights, the turns. They had to be able to retrace it, fast, on the way out.

It went back a long way, Luis thought. Cousins, brothers. Whole families. They all made the same oath. Fraternidad. If he died for his work, so be it. It was a lifelong tie. However long or short that was.

They drove down a dark, shaded street and pulled up outside a large house. They cut the lights. Someone was walking a dog down by the water. They waited until the person was well out of sight, checking their watches.

“Let’s go, hermano.” Tomás drummed against the wheel. “It’s salsa time!”

Luis opened the satchel under his feet. His boss had been very specific about this job. Precisely what had to be done. Luis didn’t care. He had never met the person. He wasn’t even a name to him. All he was told was that they could do harm to the family-and that was enough.

That was everything.

Luis never thought too much about details when it came to work. In fact, only one word ran through his brain as he stepped out of the car in front of the fancy, well-lit house and drew back the TEC-9 automatic machine pistol with an extra clip.

You do the family harm, this is what you get.

Maricón.

CHAPTER NINE

Kate decided to stay on at the house that night. Her mother was a mess and closed the door to her room. Emily and Justin just seemed shell-shocked. Kate tried her best to calm them. Dad had never let them down, not ever, had he? This time, she wasn’t sure if they believed it. Around nine, Em put on her iPod and Justin went back to a video game. Kate went downstairs.

There was a light on in the den. Her father was there, a magazine on his lap, watching CNN on the oversize plasma TV.

Kate knocked, quietly. Her father looked up.

“This a good time to talk about my rent allowance?” She hung in the doorway with a crooked grin.

That brought a smile to her dad’s face. “If it’s you, it’s always a good time, pumpkin.” He turned down the volume on the TV. “Did you do your shot?”

“Yes.” Kate nodded with a roll of her eyes. “I took care of my shot. I’ve been to college, Dad. I basically live with a doctor. I’m twenty-three.”

“Okay, okay…” Her father sighed. “I hear ya-it’s just reflex.”

Kate curled up next to him on the couch. For a moment they just avoided the obvious. He asked about Greg. How things were going at the office. “With the leuskophy…”

“Leukoscopophy, Dad. And it’s called a lab. Not an office. And one day you’ll be proud of me for what we’re doing. You just won’t ever be able to pronounce it.”