Curt and Steve exchanged a disgusted look. The situation was going from bad to worse.
“Come on, woman!” Yuri yelled impatiently.
Finally, Connie’s silhouette filled the doorway. She was dressed in a monstrous pink bathrobe trimmed in sea-foam green. Her feet were stuffed into backless slippers. Her left eye was dark red and swollen shut. A dried trickle of blood came from the corner of her mouth.
Curt’s jaw dropped. Steve mumbled an expletive. Both were dumbfounded, and their expressions reflected their stunned bewilderment.
“These men want to ask you a few questions,” Yuri snapped. He then looked expectantly at Curt.
Curt had to clear his throat as well as organize his thoughts. “Mrs. Davydov, do you have any idea of what’s going on downstairs? What your husband is doing?”
Connie eyed the two strangers defiantly. “No!” she spat. “Nor do I care.”
“Do you have an inkling?”
Connie looked at Yuri.
“Answer!” Yuri yelled.
“I thought he was making vodka,” Connie said.
“But you don’t think that any longer?” Curt asked. “Even though those big silver tanks were borrowed from a brewery.”
“I don’t know about that,” Connie said. “But those other little glass dishes. The flat ones! I’ve seen them at the hospital clinic. They’re used for bacteria.”
Curt nodded imperceptibly to Steve, who returned the gesture.
“That’s enough,” Curt called over to Yuri.
Yuri tried to shoo his wife back into her bedroom, but she stood her ground. “I ain’t going back until you bring me your TV.”
Yuri hesitated. Then he ducked into his room. He reappeared moments later carrying a small television with an old-fashioned rabbit-ear antenna. Only then did Connie back out of sight.
“Can you believe this?” Curt mumbled.
“Yeah, I can,” Steve said. “And you wondered why I was voicing some concern this morning before we went into the federal building. This guy’s worse than I thought.”
“At least he did build a lab,” Curt said. “Obviously he knows what he’s doing scientifically.”
“That I’ll grant,” Steve said. “And the lab setup is more impressive than I’d imagined.”
Curt exhaled loudly in frustration. In the background the sudden sound of a TV sitcom burst from Connie’s bedroom. The volume was turned down immediately to be barely audible. The next minute Yuri reappeared. He closed the door behind him and came over to the living area. He sat down, took a drink, and eyed his guests self-consciously.
Curt didn’t know what to say. It had been one thing to learn Yuri was married, but quite another to find out he was married to a black woman. It went against everything Curt believed in, and here he was doing business with the man.
Curt had grown up in a tough, blue-collar, white neighborhood with a physically abusive construction-worker father who continually reminded Curt that he wasn’t as good as his popular, football-star brother, Pete. Curt found solace in hatred. He embraced the bigotry so prevalent in his neighborhood. It was comforting and handy to have a readily identifiable group to blame rather than examine his own inadequacies. But it wasn’t until he’d joined the Marines and moved to San Diego that his rather parochial bigotry was transformed into racial hatred with a particular abhorrence of miscegenation.
The transition had not happened overnight. It stemmed from an attitude that had its origins in a chance meeting with a man almost twice Curt’s age. It was 1979. Curt was nineteen. He’d recently finished boot camp, which had provided a dramatic boost to his self-esteem. He and several of his newfound colleagues, which included several African-Americans, had left the base to visit a bar on Point Loma. It was a bar frequented by armed forces personnel, particularly navy divers and Marines.
The bar was dark and smoky. The only light emanated from low-wattage bulbs inside old-fashioned, hard-hat diving helmets. The music was mostly from a band Curt later learned was Skrewdriver, and the man who was feeding quarters into the jukebox was sitting next to it, at a small table by himself.
Curt and his buddies crowded in at the bar and ordered beers. They swapped war stories about their recent boot camp experiences and laughed heartily. Curt was content. It was the first time he had felt at all like part of a group. He’d even excelled during training and had been selected as a squadron leader.
Eventually tiring of the thudding, monotonous music, Curt drifted over to the jukebox. He’d had several beers and was euphorically mellow. He looked over the selections and fingered a handful of quarters.
“You don’t like the music?” the man at the small table asked.
Curt looked down at the stranger. He was of moderate size with close-cropped hair. His features were sharp with narrow lips and straight, white teeth. He was clean-shaven and dressed in a T-shirt and ironed jeans. There was a small American flag tattooed on his right upper arm. But his most striking attribute was his eyes. Even in the semi-darkness, they had a piercing quality that Curt found almost hypnotic.
“The music’s all right,” Curt said. He squared his shoulders. It appeared as if the stranger was sizing him up.
“You should listen to the words, friend,” the man said. He took a pull on his beer.
“Yeah, what would I hear?” Curt asked.
“A message that might save the goddamn country,” the man said.
A wry smile crept onto Curt’s face. He glanced over at his buddies, thinking they should hear this guy.
“My name’s Tim Melcher,” the man said. He pushed an empty chair out from his table with his foot. “Sit down. I’ll buy you a beer.”
Curt looked at the beer in his hand. It was down to the dregs.
“Come on, soldier,” Tim said. “Take a load off your feet and do yourself a favor.”
“I’m a Marine,” Curt said.
“It’s all the same,” Tim said. “I was army myself. First Cavalry Division. I did two tours in Vietnam.”
Curt nodded. The word Vietnam made his legs feel rubbery. It meant real war instead of the play-acting Curt and his friends had been doing. It also reminded Curt of his older brother Pete, the Bensonhurst football star. Eight years older than Curt, he’d had the bad luck of being drafted. He’d been killed in Vietnam the year before the war was over.
Curt turned the chair around, threw a leg over it, and sat down. He leaned on the back of the chair and drained his beer.
“What’ll it be?” Tim asked. “The same?”
Curt nodded.
“Harry!” Tim called to the bartender. “Send us over a couple of Buds.”
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“Curt Rogers.”
“I like that,” Tim said. “Nice Christian name. It fits you, too.”
Curt shrugged. He didn’t quite know what to make of the stranger, especially with his intense eyes.
With a fresh beer, Curt began to relax again.
“You know, I’m glad I met you,” Tim said. “And you know why?”
Curt shook his head.
“Because I’m forming a group that I think you and a couple of your buddies ought to join.”
“What kind of a group?” Curt asked skeptically.
“A border brigade,” Tim said. “An armed border brigade. You see, the regular Border Patrol who are supposed to be protecting this country from illegal aliens are not doing their job. Hell, the Mexican border just ten freaking miles away is like a giant sieve.”
“Really,” Curt said. He’d not thought much about the border. He’d been much too preoccupied with the rigors of boot camp.