The Blue Zone

Upstairs, Emily was freaking out. Kate tried her best to calm her. Her sister was lying spread-eagled on her bed, punching the mattress in tears.

She had her tournaments, her coach, her eastern ranking. This was the season all her friends were having their sweet sixteens. She was taking the SATs next Saturday.

“This is our home, Kate. How can we just uproot our lives and leave?”

“I know, Em.…”

Kate lay next to her and gave her sister a hug, like when they were kids and shared their favorite music. Em had her ceiling painted sky blue, with a canopy of Day-Glo stars that illuminated when you turned off the lights.

Kate looked up at them. “You remember when we were at the old house and gold was in the dumps? We didn’t go anywhere that year, and Dad was having a hard time. I was at the high school but you were at Tamblin. He kept you there, Em. Even when it was hard for him. He did it so you could keep playing squash.”

“That doesn’t make it okay, Kate.” Emily glared, wiping away tears. “What he’s done. You’re gone. You’re out of here. What are we supposed to say to people? My daddy’s a drug dealer. He’s in jail. We have to take off now for a few years. See you in college. This is our life, Kate …”

“And it doesn’t erase it, Em.… I know. It just …”

Em sat up and stared at her. “It just what, Kate?”

“You’re right.” Kate squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t make it okay.”

Justin was at his desk at the computer, leaning back with his feet up, like someone in a trance, playing a video game. Kate asked how he was doing. He just looked blankly at her and muttered back, in his usual way, “I’m okay.”

She went down to her old room at the far end of the hallway.

They pretty much kept it just as it had been when she lived there. Sometimes she still slept over on weekends or holidays. Kate stared up at the red bookshelves which still had a lot of her old textbooks and folders. The walls were plastered with her old posters. Bono of U-2. Brandi Chastain—the famous soccer shot of her on her knees when the U.S. team won the Olympic gold. Kate was always into Brandi more than Mia Hamm. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeremy Bloom, the mogul snowboarder. It always felt warm coming back here.

But not tonight. Em was right. It didn’t make it okay.

Kate rolled onto her bed and took out her cell. She hit the speed dial and checked the time. She needed someone now. Thank God, he picked up.

“Greg?”

They had met at Beth Shalom, her family’s Sephardic temple in the city. He just walked right up to her, at the kiddush after Rosh Hashanah services. She’d noticed him across the sanctuary.

Greg was great. He was a sort of Wandering Jew himself, from Mexico City. He didn’t have family here. He’d been in his last year of medical school at Columbia when they met. Now he was a second-year resident in children’s orthopedics. He was tall, thin, lanky, and he reminded her a bit of Ashton Kutcher with his mop of thick, brown hair. They’d basically been living together for the past year in her Lower East Side apartment. Now that they were getting serious, the big question was where he would end up in practice. What would happen to them if he had to leave New York?

“Kate! God, I’ve been really worried. You’ve been leaving these cryptic messages. Is everything all right up there?”

“No,” Kate said. She held back the tears. “Everything’s not all right, Greg.”

“Is it Ben? Tell me what’s happened? Is he okay? Is there anything I can do?”

“No, it’s not medical, Greg. I can’t go into it. I’ll tell you soon, I promise. There’s just something I need to know.”

“What, pooch?” That was what he called her. His pet. He seemed very worried about her. She could hear it in his voice.

Kate sniffed back the tears and asked, “Do you love me, Greg?”

There was a pause. She knew she’d surprised him. Like some stupid kid. “I know we say it all the time. But now it’s important to me. I just need to hear it, Greg.…”

“Of course I love you, Kate. You know that.”

“I know,” Kate said. “I don’t mean just that way.… What I mean is, I can trust you, Greg, can’t I? I mean, with everything? With me …?”

“Kate, are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m all right. I just need to hear you say it, Greg. I know it sounds weird.”

This time he didn’t hesitate. “You can trust me, Kate. I promise you, you can. Just tell me what the hell’s going on up there. Let me come up. Maybe I can help.”

“Thanks, but you can’t. I just needed to hear that, Greg. Everything’s okay now.”

She had made up her mind.

“I love you, too.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kate found him on the back porch, sitting in an Adirondack chair in the chilly late-September air, overlooking the Sound.

She already felt that something was different about him. His fingers were locked in front of his face, and he was staring out onto the water, a glass of bourbon on the chair arm beside him.

He didn’t even turn.

Kate sat on the swinging bench across from him. Finally he looked at her, a brooding darkness in his eyes.

“Who are you, Daddy?”

“Kate …” He turned and reached for her hand.

“No, I need to hear it from you, Daddy. Because all of a sudden, I don’t know. All of a sudden, I’m trying to figure out which part of you—which part of all this—isn’t some kind of crazy lie. All that preaching about what made us strong, our family … How could you, Dad?”

“I’m your father, Kate,” he said, hunching deeper in the chair. “That’s not a lie.”

“No.” She shook her head. “My father was this honest, stand-up man. He taught us how to be strong and make a difference. He didn’t look in my eye and tell me to trust him one day and then the next say that everything about his life is a lie. You knew, Daddy. You knew what you were doing all along. You knew every goddamn day you came home to us. Every day of our lives …”

He nodded. “What isn’t a lie is that I love you, pumpkin.”

“Don’t call me that!” Kate said. “You don’t get to call me that ever again. That’s gone. That’s the price you pay for this. Look around you, Dad—look at the hurt you’ve caused.”

Her father flinched. He suddenly looked small to Kate, weakened.

“You can’t just build this wall down the center of your life and say, ‘On this side I’m a good person—a good father—but on the other side I’m a liar and a thief.’ I know you’re sorry, Dad. I’m sure this hurts. I wish I could stand behind you, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at you quite the same way.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to, Kate. We’re all going to need one another more than ever now, to get through this.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Kate shook her head. “I won’t be going with you, Daddy. I’m staying here.”

He turned—his pupils fixed and widening. Alarmed. “You have to, Kate. You could be in danger. I know how angry you are. But if I testify, anyone who might possibly lead back to me—”

“No,” she stopped him, “I don’t. I don’t have to, Daddy. I’m over twenty-one. I have my life here. My work. Greg. Maybe Em and Justin, you can drag them along, and somehow I hope to God you can repair the hurt you’ve caused. But I won’t be going. Don’t you see, you’ve ruined lives, Daddy. And not just your own. People you love. You’ve robbed them of someone they loved and looked up to. I’m sorry, Dad, I won’t let you ruin mine, too.”

He stared at her, stunned at what he was hearing. Then he looked down. “If you don’t,” he said, “you know it might be a very long time before you can see any of us again.”

“I know,” Kate said. “And it’s breaking my heart, Daddy. About as much as it’s breaking my heart to look at you now.”

He sucked in a breath and reached out a hand toward her, as if looking for some kind of forgiveness.

“All I did was buy the gold,” he said. “I’ve never even seen a bag of cocaine.”

“No, you don’t get to think that, Dad,” Kate said angrily. She took his hand, but his fingers had changed from the ones that she felt yesterday—now foreign and unfamiliar and cold.

“Look around you, Dad. This was our family. You’ve done a whole lot more than that.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The following afternoon two people from the U.S. Marshals Service showed up at the house.

One was a tall, heavyset man with salt-and-pepper hair, named Phil Cavetti. The other, a pleasant, attractive woman of about forty named Margaret Seymour, whom they all immediately liked, said she’d be their case handler. She told them to call her “Maggie.”

They were from WITSEC. The Witness Protection Program.

At first Kate assumed they were merely there to explain the program to everybody. What lay ahead. But after talking to them for a few minutes, it became clear what was actually going on.

They were here to take her family into custody today.

They told everyone to pack a single suitcase. The rest, they said, including the furniture and personal belongings, would come along in a few weeks. Come along where?

Justin stuffed his iPod and his Sony PlayStation into a knapsack. Em mechanically collected her squash racquets and goggles, a poster of Third Eye Blind, and some snapshots of her closest friends.

Sharon was a wreck. She couldn’t believe the parts of her life she couldn’t take, that she was having to leave behind. Her mother. Her family albums. Her wedding china. All her precious things.

Their lives.

Kate tried her best to help. “Take these,” Sharon said, pressing folders filled with old photos into Kate’s hands. “They’re of my mother and father, and their families.…” Sharon picked up a small vase that contained the ashes of their old schnauzer, Fritz. She looked at Kate, her composure starting to fracture. How can I just leave these behind?

When their bags were packed, everyone came down to the living room. Ben was in a blazer and an open plaid shirt, not saying much to anyone. Sharon was dressed in jeans and a blazer, her hair pulled back. Like she was headed on a trip or something. They all sat down silently.

Phil Cavetti started to lay out what would take place.

“Your husband will be delivered to the U.S. Attorney later today,” he said to Sharon. “He’ll begin serving a prison sentence in a secure location until the trial. That could be eight, ten months. Under his agreement, he will have to be a witness at additional trials as they come up.

“The rest of you will be in protective custody until a final location is determined. Under no circumstance can you divulge to anyone where that location is.” He looked at Em and Justin. “That means not even an e-mail to your best friend. Or a text message. This is only for your own protection—do you understand?”

They nodded tentatively. “Not even to Kate?” Em looked over at her sister.

“Not even to Kate, I’m afraid.” Phil Cavetti shook his head. “Once you’re settled, we can arrange a few calls and you’ll be able to e-mail through a WITSEC clearing site. A couple of times a year, we can arrange visits with family at a neutral location under our supervision.”

“A couple of times a year,” Sharon gasped, taking hold of Kate’s hand.

“That’s it. You’ll be given new identities. New drivers’ licenses, Social Security numbers. As far as anyone will be concerned, all this did not exist. You understand that this is only for your own protection? Your father is doing something that will make him very unpopular with the people he’s testifying against. And you’ve already seen firsthand what these people will do. Agent Seymour and I have handled several similar cases. Even people within the Mercado family itself. If you follow the rules, you’ll be okay. We’ve never had a case that was detected yet.”

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