The residual aftertaste of the tablet lingered on Nadia’s tongue. Thirty seconds after she’d spit it out, she recognized the taste. It was aspirin! The kind adults took, not the baby kind her mother used to give her. She’d taken only one tablet about nine months ago when she’d had a terrible headache. Mrs. Chimchak had pretended to give her mints, but she’d filled the box with aspirin. It was a real wonder medicine, and Mrs. Chimchak cared about her so much she wanted her to have some in case she got sick. Either that or Mrs. Chimchak could already tell she was getting sick when she’d visited her camp. She knew things about people they didn’t even know themselves. She was a strange, bizarre, spooky woman. She was the best.
Nadia took a fresh aspirin and washed it down with some pineapple juice. Then she slipped into her sleeping bag to rest. Her mind wandered, and she began to get scared about being sick all alone in the wildness.
Marko had taught her how to deal with unpleasant situations like these. Don’t be scared of getting scared, he said. It’s normal to be frightened in unusual circumstances. Make fear your friend. Let the fluttering in the belly and the pounding of the heart remind you to be alert and not do anything stupid. Then focus your mind on something else, Marko said. Picture yourself doing something you enjoy, and imagine you’re really doing it.
And that’s what she’d trained herself to do when she got scared or nervous. She did it when she had to recite a poem in front of the entire Uke community on stage at the National Home. The community put on half a dozen banquets during the year to commemorate a person or an event like Uke independence day. Sometimes a Uke dance troupe would perform, other times a Uke choir would sing.
And then there was the obligatory Nadia Tesla poetry recital. That was her punishment for being the best Uke student in school and having the best Uke diction. There was nothing she hated more than being volunteered by her father to commit eight stanzas to memory and stand in front of five hundred people and perform. She didn’t even know what half the words meant or what she was getting all emotional about.
As the recital approached, her nerves got so tight she thought her head would explode. To ease the tension, she pictured herself eating her reward at McDonald’s, a cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla shake. The key moment was when she sipped the shake with a mouthful of food, and the sugar in the shake blended with the salt from the burger and fries. Except she didn’t get any reward after the last recital because she forgot a line and had to be prompted by her teacher from behind the stage. Her father got so mad…
But not as mad as he got when he learned Marko had doctored his report card, used a typewriter to turn an F into an A. As soon as he’d taken his belt off, Nadia had raced upstairs to her bedroom, hidden under the blanket, and covered her ears. Then she pictured herself reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the living room, her father smoking a pipe, her brother watching baseball on the TV as their mother pared apples for them to share. They were happy. So happy…
But there were times when the trick didn’t work. Like when her father and mother screamed at each other, when he told her marrying her was the dumbest decision of his life, and she said she regretted having had his children. There was one time in particular, when they went totally ballistic and her father picked up a kitchen knife and pointed it at Nadia’s mother, and Marko jumped in and stood in front of their mother to protect her. The anguish in Nadia’s soul had been so intense she thought she would never get out of the moment, that she would never recover from the incident, that she would be incapable of experiencing happiness again.
Much to her surprise, she did recover from that incident. And her family went on pretending there were no problems, that they were a normal family. And so she would survive her final night here on the Appalachian Trail, too, Nadia thought.
She drifted in and out of sleep for hours. When she woke up to the sound of spitting and cracking, she thought she was seeing things because giant orange flames were raging against the black of night. That was impossible, she said to herself, because she’d been sleeping and hadn’t fed the fire. Then she felt a gentle hand on her forehead and heard a voice that made her realize she was no longer sleeping and this was not a dream. It was the sound of a voice that might have instantly calmed other girls, but for Nadia it was the voice of holy terror.
It was the sound of her father’s voice.
CHAPTER 22
There is a paradigm in the financial markets called the greater fool theory. In such a scenario, a person buys an investment knowing she is paying too much for it, with the underlying assumption she’ll be able to sell it to someone else at an even higher price. In essence, the person knows she’s exercising poor judgment but thinks she’s smarter than everyone else. She believes she’ll unwind her investment in time.
Such was my current situation. I knew Donnie Angel and his organization were out there. Maybe they were tracking my every move, or perhaps they simply kept watch on the motel where I was staying. But there was no doubt they knew I was in Hartford and understood exactly what types of questions I was asking. I had no doubt of this because if that weren’t the case, I would have been already punished for breaking his leg.
I was certain this was the case as soon as I walked out of Mrs. Chimchak’s house. In fact, I probably knew it earlier, the moment she implied my godfather had dealt in stolen art or antiquities, and that he hadn’t trusted banks with his money. Those revelations meant that my godfather had probably left something valuable behind him. And by inquiring into my godfather’s death, I was providing Donnie Angel an invaluable service.
I was leading him to the prize.
I doubted there was any cash in my godfather’s home as Mrs. Chimchak had suggested. The house was protected with an alarm, but a criminal like Donnie Angel would know how to acquire a code or get past it, wouldn’t he? If he’d found what he was looking for, he wouldn’t have lifted me off the sidewalk in New York. It was as though he knew that my kidnapping assured him that I would continue to ask questions. I wondered if it were possible that Donnie Angel was so smart that he was playing me, or if I was simply thinking too much. Either way, there was no doubt in my mind that he was using me now.
The Uke community knew his reputation. People in the community wouldn’t answer his questions. But he knew they would answer mine. That was the reason I’d remained unscathed since breaking his leg, I thought. In fact, it suggested that Donnie wouldn’t have exercised his threat of breaking mine, that strapping me onto his leg-breaking machine was just a scare tactic. Why break my leg and risk that I would stop pursuing what he wanted?
Even if that were true, his mercy was calculated and temporary. Eventually, I’d discover what he wanted me to find or I’d cease to be useful. When that time came, he’d have his vengeance. By going on with my investigation even though I knew what awaited me, I was assuming that I would be able to extricate myself like the aforementioned person who’d overpaid for his investment.
As a result of my actions, I had become what I’d always deplored. I was playing the part of the greatest fool. Even worse, I was playing the role consciously and willingly, which surely made me the greatest fool of all. And yet I persisted. The thought of quitting was a nonstarter. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was so committed, nor did I care to stop and hyperanalyze my motives. I had a mission and I was determined to complete it.