CHAPTER 2

Mulling it over, Aaron Krause always said, was a surefire way to never accomplish anything.

Jimmy wanted driving lessons? Sure, no problem—just hop in the car, stretch for the pedals, and stick to the back roads. No one would mind an eight-year-old behind the wheel if they didn’t know he was out there.

A BB gun? Why not? So what if Long Island was no place for weapons? It gave Jimmy a reason to visit his grandfather upstate, didn’t it?

A puppy? Hell, what kid didn’t love a puppy? Linda had grown up with a hound named Lucky, and she would just have to get over her carpet. Michael had calculated the cost of the wear and tear, the time spent walking the creature and cleaning up after it, the food and veterinary bills, and Linda had been persuaded that Jimmy should have another reason to get out of the City. Her father, she knew, would buy Jimmy a puppy regardless of what they said, and if it lived upstate, so much the better.

It was no surprise to Jimmy’s parents that their elder son spent every vacation he possibly could with Grandpa Krause—the old man found newer, crazier ways to spoil the boy, as if grandchild spoilage was some sort of extreme sport. Tima was following in his brother’s footsteps, now that he was old enough to no longer be scared of the white-haired man with the wide eyes and manic grin, but Jimmy and Aaron had always had a special bond—a conspiracy, Linda called it.

Aaron had first put a book of maps in Jimmy’s hands and traced the rivers and ranges, giving names to land and sea and explaining how the world fit together, when Jimmy was eight years old. The boy had listened raptly. After that, the old man had regaled Jimmy with stories of brave, half-mad explorers, their glorious triumphs and heroic failures, and Jimmy had announced, with all the solemnity an eight-year-old could muster, that he was going to be an explorer when he grew up. At this, his grandfather had leaned down and whispered, “Why wait?”

So Jimmy had passed his summers tramping through the woods and wading across streams, summiting hills and diving as deeply as he could into clear lakes, tying ten kinds of knots and pitching tents and finding his way home by starlight, running so as to beat the sheriff’s deputy his grandmother would inevitably send after him.

And then had come the endless days in hospital beds, sleepless nights of beeping machinery and the quiet footsteps of nurses, and Aaron had come down to the City to sit beside him and read the old stories when Jimmy was too weak to keep his eyes open. One long evening, when the last of his hair had finally fallen out and his throat was raw from vomiting, Jimmy rolled toward his grandfather and whispered, “I don’t think I’m going to get to be a real explorer.”

“Nonsense,” Aaron replied, shutting his book with a snap. “You’re going to be fine as soon as this mess is out of your system.”

Jimmy closed his eyes. “The doctor said…”

“Doctors are the consummate bullshit artists, and don’t you forget it,” he interrupted. “You’re not dying.”

He forced his eyes open long enough to see his grandfather shake his head. “You’re not dying,” Aaron repeated, as if making it true by sheer will. “Now, you tell me where you’re going to explore first.”

Jimmy sank back into his pillow and sighed, wishing his mouth weren’t so sore; he knew that his grandfather wanted to hear something, anything, reassuring. “The Nile,” he whispered.

“Good starting point, I guess. What part?”

“Blue. Headwaters. Tributaries.”

Aaron nodded thoughtfully. “Lake Tana. Gish Abbai, the river of Eden. Yes. I didn’t take you for a philosopher,” he said, “but if you’re looking for salvation out there…”

“Immortality,” he rasped, cracking one eye. “Gonna find a stream that’s not on the map. Get my name on it.”

His grandfather’s lips curled faintly, and Jimmy thought that he had been caught. They had run through this conversation years ago, when the old man explained to Jimmy that a place in history was a byproduct, an extra benefit, for real explorers. The thrill of the discovery was what pumped the blood in their veins, not the chance at seeing their names on pieces of paper. “They reached mortality by accident, and thank God for that,” the old man had said then. But Grandpa either didn’t remember the conversation or pretended not to, so Jimmy continued.

“That way, when I’m gone, I’ll still be here. Get myself on all the best maps. Lake Paterson. Mount James.”

“The Jimmy River.”

“Something like that.”

He lay back again, exhausted, and Aaron patted his hand. “You’ll find it,” he whispered, then stood and slipped out of the room while his grandson fell into fitful sleep.

When Jimmy regained his strength after the first bout of chemo, and four months before the second and last bout, grandfather and grandson began to put their scheme into motion. Jimmy worked on the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Disneyland, and somehow convinced his doctors and parents to let him go there alone. And Aaron took care of the logistics, tending to the tickets and hotels among the many details.

After twenty-six hours of travel time, however, business class notwithstanding, the only thing Jimmy felt like exploring upon arrival at Bole International was the hotel. Bed was a definite. Perhaps a side expedition to the shower was in order, perhaps not. They had changed planes in Johannesburg—logical for the airline, but unfortunate for the New Yorkers continuing north to Ethiopia—and the one good thing the stopover contributed to the plan was that he was able to send another text message about the plane stuck in Ohio. Still, even with his larger chair and leg room, Jimmy had woken every hour, trying to determine the best time to take his medicine.

The white-tiled modern airport was unexpected, and briefly he wondered what he had expected—a few tents and a landing strip? Jimmy stood against a potted palm and chided himself as he blinked, adjusting to the bright fluorescents, and took in the bustle of the arrival hall, the cacophony of voices and flashes of bright colors and smiling faces of relatives come to claim their own, even at eight o’clock at night. That, he mused, was the problem with basing one’s perception of a place on stories written by travelers who had visited centuries before one was born—times changed. The world moved on.

He swung his backpack around to extract the Lonely Planet guide Grandpa had brought him in August during his “home from the hospital” party. The transfer had been quiet, a covert affair between grandfather and grandson during a stolen moment of privacy in the laundry room, and when Jimmy had excused himself to run up to his bedroom and remove the book from beneath his shirt, he found his visa and a few hundred Ethiopian birr inside. That, he knew, was the real gift.

Now, however, realizing that most good explorers had not only an idea of where they were going, but how to get there, Jimmy cracked open his travel guide and began looking for a way to the hotel. Then he would think about turning his cell phone back on. Even with his texts about mechanical delays, his mother had been expecting a call hours ago, and that was one call he knew he couldn’t avoid forever.

He consulted his watch, then realized the time and began to undo his backpack’s snaps for his medicine pack.

But Jimmy was being watched. Eugene Homa was in the airport.

The polo shirt was the trick. They didn’t care how stained your chinos might be, or how much sand had been engrained into your tennis shoes, or how many days it had been since you washed your hair with more than airport bathroom hand soap—if you had a nice, clean polo shirt, preferably something with a recognizable logo and a neatly pressed collar, the American tourists would trust you every time. Something about the little man on horseback lent one an aura of respectability.

Unfortunately, laundry had been at the bottom of Eugene Homa’s to-do list for the past week, somewhere far below the pressing matters of paying rent and eating, and his only polo shirt looked as if it had actually been used in a polo match, possibly as a sweat towel for a pony.

He stood just inside the arrival terminal door—any further into the building often resulted in a quick exit with a little “assistance” from the police—and tried to look trustworthy, despite the dirt streak on his green shirt. Sometimes it worked—Eugene had never quite lost his baby fat, which had only just begun its slow migration to his midsection, and with sandy brown hair and large blue eyes, he could pass for younger than his thirty years if his best choirboy smile worked.

No dice tonight.

“Guide? English guide?” he called, keeping his voice upbeat despite the hour. “Sir, a guide? You don’t want to miss the National Museum, the Markato…” He sighed to himself as a fat American pushed past him without a second glance, then spotted an older woman in the crowd. “Good evening, ma’am—can I interest you in a guided tour of the city, the Lion of Judah? Or the countryside, perhaps…the Blue Nile, the crocodiles? No need to worry about your luggage…”

The woman, who had been cutting her eyes away from his as he spoke, smiled apologetically and quickly made her way to the hotel driver, who gave Eugene a look of disdain for his troubles.

He was about to call it a night—the last of the big flights had come in, and the airport was seldom a lucky place at this time of night, when he spotted the boy on the other side of the hall. A teenager, really—lanky, pale, sporting the uniform of the affluent suburbanite, with a Yankees cap pulled down low over his face. The boy pulled a bag from his backpack and began extracting vials, and Eugene watched as he threw a handful of pills down his throat and dry-swallowed.

A pro, this kid.

And alone.

There was money in those pills, and some of it, if not all of it, should be his.

Eugene thought quickly. The night wasn’t lost after all. If he played it right, he might be on a plane back to the States in the morning before this kid even woke up. For more than two years, he had been waiting for exactly such an opportunity, ever since he had been stranded in this godforsaken place with no money, no place to stay, and no friends. Time to move.

Jimmy tucked his pills into his backpack and swallowed, wishing for a water fountain to wash the medicine down. The other travelers ignored him—with the number of languages swirling around him, he hardly knew where to turn for assistance—which left the bored-looking young man in a uniform a few feet away. A guard, perhaps; the man carried no visible gun, but Jimmy couldn’t be sure, and he had no desire to talk to anyone who might somehow realize that he was supposed to be several time zones to the west. After a few moments of deliberation, thirst won out, and, sliding his travel guide under his arm, he approached the guard and smiled tentatively. “Excuse me, uh…English?” The guard nodded. “Can you tell me where a water fountain is?”

The guard pointed down the hall toward an alcove obscured by yet another palm, and Jimmy ran off before he could be questioned.

The water was cold, and after hours spent breathing the recycled air of a 747, Jimmy drank deeply, disregarding the fact that the water might upset his stomach. When he finally lifted his head and wiped his chin, he found himself face to face with a chubby young man in a stained knit shirt and stepped back to give him a turn at the fountain. The man shook his head and smiled more widely. “Hi, there. Saw you flipping through that thing,” he began, pointing to the travel guide. “Need some help?”

Jimmy’s shoulders sagged in relief. “You’re American?”

“Originally,” Eugene shrugged. “I’ve been travelling for a while now. Know my way around Addis Ababa, if you’re looking for a guide.” He lowered his voice and added, “I also know how to get cheap tickets. It’s not so much a matter of where you buy them in this country, but who you know.” Eugene stopped, aware that he was pushing too hard and too fast; he paused, but kept smiling at the kid.

“I’m not really here to tour the city,” Jimmy replied. “Going to Bahir Dar tomorrow. Lake Tana, you know?”

“Sure, sure. Going to see the monasteries?”

“Something like that.” Jimmy scratched the back of one leg with his foot. “Going to take a bus out there.”

His companion shook his head. “No way, man. Not you—you stick out too badly. The busses are more of a local thing. Besides, half the time, you get delayed because they want to convoy. Nah, not the busses. What you want,” he explained, leaning in conspiratorially, “is a minibus. Kind of like a big taxi, but not nearly as expensive. Your hotel can get you set up with one. Speaking of which, where are you staying?”

Jimmy opened his travel guide to the inside back cover and scanned his notes. “I’ve got a reservation at the Hilton…is that walkable?”

“Tonight?” Eugene exclaimed, encouraged. “Look, buddy, this is a city, right? It’s dangerous after dark, and you—I mean, come on, you’re a walking target. Come on, I’ll give you a hand,” he said, and began to walk toward the door.

Uncertain, Jimmy followed him, but said, “It’s okay, I can find it, I…”

Eugene turned with a friendly smile. “Kid, look, you’ve been on a plane God knows how long, you’re in an unfamiliar city…hey, one American traveler to another, let me help you out. No charge. I’ll even split the taxi with you,” he offered, “I’m going to that side of town, anyway.” He paused, then pushed open the glass door in invitation.

Eugene almost pitied the kid, but once again stopped. The fewer details exchanged, the less the kid would be able to tell the police in the morning.

He had taken it upon himself to carry Jimmy’s backpack—“Dude,” he had said, “you look beat, let me help you with that monster”—and had slid it onto the seat between them in the taxi. Jimmy had been too busy listening to the foreign pop blasting from the driver’s radio and watching the lights and the traffic to notice when Eugene quietly unzipped the backpack and stuffed the pill bag down his polo, where it sat nestled in the small of his back, held in place by his ratty belt.

“I appreciate this,” Jimmy said, still staring out at the city. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve never traveled before, but the jetlag…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eugene soothed. “This city—hell, this whole damn country—likes to prey on newbies. Guys who aren’t careful lose their shirts in their first hour on the ground. You stick with me, bud—I’ll take care of you.” He stopped—he was pushing again. The treasure was already under his shirt, and he tried to think of how best to disappear. He shifted in his seat, feeling the bag settle further down his back. “Hate to see a compatriot in trouble, especially someone travelling alone. You are alone, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

“Dude.” Eugene closed his eyes and sighed in exasperation. “Rule one: Never tell anyone you’re travelling alone. Crooks out there will take advantage of you if they think no one’s got your back. You’re always with a group. Got it?”

Jimmy had turned back from the window, and nodded with a sense of urgency that belied his earlier bravado. “Thanks.”

“Hey,” Eugene replied, spreading his hands in the dark car, “guys like us, we stick together. And we’re here.”

The taxi pulled up in front of the Hilton, and Jimmy stepped out to pay the driver—the kid had insisted—while Eugene pulled the backpack out of the car. There was probably a laptop in there, he thought, testing its weight, but he couldn’t risk riffling through the bag while the driver made change, almost assuredly ripping him off.

Poor dumb kid.

“Listen,” said Eugene, holding the backpack while Jimmy slid his arms through the straps, “I’ve got to run. I’m coordinating a tour for a group at another hotel—are you sure you’re not interested in seeing Addis Ababa before you head out?”

“I’m kind of on a tight schedule,” Jimmy explained, extending his hand, and Eugene gave it a firm squeeze. “Thanks again.”

“My pleasure,” he replied, and when Jimmy was safely inside, he slipped down an alley, removed the pills from their hiding place, and ran off into the night.

There was this for Grandpa Krause—the old guy knew how to travel.

Jimmy sprawled across the king-sized bed and sighed as he stared up at the ceiling. His grandfather had not only suggested the hotel, but had booked Jimmy in for his first night, and refused to take no for an answer when Jimmy looked up the place and protested that it was too expensive. “Not for you,” Grandpa had told him in a voice that discouraged argument, and Jimmy had been only too happy to acquiesce. He never paused to wonder how a Vietnam War veteran, a retired fireman and sometimes-hunting guide could afford the lavish gifts he had showered on him and Tima, but his parents did.

“He never spoiled me that much,” Jimmy remembered his mother’s comment one dinnertime.

“Because you’re a woman, and I’m not a Navy Seal,” answered his father, already bored by such comments, but could not resist adding, “Now he wants to shape Jimmy into one.”

Jimmy enjoyed the vast bed and the expensive room, and for a moment was sorry that he was alone. The moment passed and he closed his eyes, and quickly opened them wide. A phone call home was due. The radio-clock next to the bed showed 10:30PM, wow, am I in trouble, Jimmy thought, 3:30PM on Long Island. As his stomach began to knot, Jimmy reached for his cell phone and pressed the power button.

Ten missed calls and just as many voicemails. Shit.

He took a deep breath and began to dial.

When the kitchen phone began to ring, Linda jumped, then scrambled for the handset. “Hello?” she snapped, ignoring Michael’s reach for the telephone.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Jimmy!” she cried, momentarily lost in the exultation of relief, then remembered herself and yelled, “James Aaron Paterson, where the hell are you?”

There came a pause on the other end, long enough for Linda to lock eyes with Elaine Kimbell, who looked away guiltily, and then Jimmy said, “I’m at the hotel, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, but the flight was so delayed, and they had to send a special shuttle after me, and everything was just so mixed up…”

“What hotel?” she interrupted. “The Holiday Inn says you never checked in! We’ve been calling every two hours…”

“They double-booked. I moved to the Hilton—I hope that’s okay. It’s only a little more expensive, and I got a cheap room. I’m really sorry, Mom—honestly, I forgot to turn my phone on.”

“I don’t care about the hotel.” She could feel her face redden as Elaine’s two superiors looked on bemusedly. “You just forgot to call us for a whole day? Is that what you’re telling me?”

She waited, clutching the phone so hard her fingers ached, then heard Jimmy softly reply, “I got to Disneyland and stayed out until dark and it was so much fun…”

Linda sighed deeply. “Jesus, Jimmy, we called the police. You’ve been there all this time?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Are you just trying to give me a heart attack?”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

She drummed her fingers on the countertop and glared at the Foundation officials. “Okay. You made a mistake. But you had better damn well call me every day from now on, Mister, do you understand me? Or so help me, I’ll be on the next flight out there…”

“I will, I’m sorry…”

“Fine.” She shook her head, clearing the weight of the last day’s panic. “So how is it?”

“Sunny and warm. Not too crowded. I went back to the hotel to eat lunch—cheaper than eating in the park, you know?”

“Don’t worry about that,” she replied, feeling her blood pressure slowly drop. “Just have a good time. Be safe.”

“I will.” Jimmy hesitated, then asked, “Is Tima around?”

“Well, yeah, but he’s napping. We’re taking him to the movies tonight, remember?”

“Sure, sure. Tell him I said hi, okay?”

“Will do.” She paused, then said, “I love you, Jimmy.”

“Love you, too, Mom,” he replied, and hung up.

Linda listened to the dial tone for a moment, then dropped the phone back into its charger and looked at Michael. “He forgot to call.”

“Figures,” he shrugged, glancing at the others. “He’s a teenager, honey, he’s never going to remember everything we tell him.”

She sank into a kitchen chair, suddenly lightheaded. “I was on my way out there. One more hour and I was on my way…”

She looked up and found Elaine beside her, her thin fingers resting on the chair’s arm. “We’ll send someone to the Hilton tomorrow morning to check on him,” she offered, and patted Linda’s shoulder. “Jimmy seems like such a nice boy. I know he’ll be fine.”

Linda murmured a vaguely affirmative response, and looked up in time to see Tima standing just outside the kitchen, one hand clutching the wall and the other thumb in his mouth. “Jimmy’s fine,” she said, smiling too brightly for her mood. “He misses you. Go back to sleep, baby. It’s all okay.”

Eugene had been in Addis Ababa long enough to know how to stretch a birr, and in which restaurants his limited funds were likely to stretch the farthest—nowhere you would take your mother (as if he had given his mother two seconds’ thought in the last few years), but the kind of places that were mostly safe from police. The Queen of Sheba Bar and Restaurant was one such joint, a haven for the men of the tidy polo shirts where the beer flowed freely, even if it was of dubious origin.

He sat at the back table with Dick, a Texan with a tourist-friendly drawl, and Max, a former surfer who would have passed for an Abercrombie model, had he showered in the last week, waiting for their verdict. When they ignored him, he drained the last dregs of his glass, then slammed it down hard enough to shake the others’ drinks. “So what do you think, eh?” he grinned, wiping the foam off his lip. “Good shit or what?”

Dick smirked and dropped one of the four pill vials onto the table as if he had accidentally picked up a dog turd. “They’re shit, alright. Congratulations, moron, you’ve managed to steal some kid’s chemo meds. Hey, Steve!” he called, waving their waiter back to the table, “My buddy here’s asking ten bucks a pop for chemo pills. What do you say to that?”

Steve’s eyes widened fractionally. “Looks like Eugene hit the jackpot once again,” he replied, and laughed to himself as he returned to the bar; they loved to put down Eugene. When you laughed at a loser like Eugene, it made you feel richer.

Eugene felt his face begin to redden. “I swear, that kid was high when I found him. He had the look, he didn’t know where the hell he was…”

“Ever hear of jetlag?” asked Dick.

Max picked up another vial and read the label. “Says these belong to one James Paterson. Man, look at the stuff he was taking—that kid’s down to his last weeks on earth.”

Eugene shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable in the reed-bottomed chair. “Says who?”

“Says the scrips. The meds don’t lie.” He placed the vial back on the table and folded his arms. “My mom had a set just like this one. Swallowed every fucking pill the doctors gave her. Lost her hair, got the burns, could barely eat. Then she died in pain because the one thing they couldn’t give her any more of was morphine.” Max looked away briefly, then shook his head and turned back to Eugene. “So what makes a kid come halfway around the world to die, anyway?”

Eugene stuffed the pills back into their bag and slipped the bag back down his shirt, then stood and slapped a bill on the table. “No idea. But he came here for a reason, and if he’s really dying, I bet he’s carrying my ticket back.”

Eugene walked out while their derisive laughter rang in his ears. The streets were dark in that neighborhood, and he walked quickly. Too much like a lost tourist, he mused, but found himself unable to slow.

He was protecting the bag.

If Eugene had reflected on that night, he would have realized that this was the first time in years that he had thought about something other than from where to filch the next buck. If the kid was found dead in the hotel because of lack of medicine, his compatriot scum joint would sell him out to the police in a New York minute.

Wouldn’t be the first time, of course. Hell, that and the occasional beating had been his grade school experience—it was easy to make the new kid take the fall, and he had always been the new kid. But then that’s what the foster system did for you: You got to meet new people and see new places, whether you liked it or not. Again, and again, and again.

And if the kid were to die…if the police came snooping…

The best thing to do would be to stay low and keep away from the kid. But Eugene had seen the kid’s backpack—a nice model, the kind of thing overindulgent parents might buy. The kind of backpack that might have other goodies inside.

Credit cards, for instance.

Hell, he was staying at the Hilton, wasn’t he?

It wasn’t so much a question of hiding, then, but of not being seen.