Every Man a Menace (20 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Hong. He dropped his eyes in such a sincere way that Moisey felt genuinely confused. But he needed to push forward.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Enough. We have a problem. I’m sure Nana has explained to you.”

Mr. Hong shook his head.

Bullshit,
thought Moisey. “I’ve been sent here,” he said, “to try and convince this gentleman and his partner to increase the size of their order.”

Mr. Hong shook his head again, as though he didn’t know what Moisey was talking about. His face looked curious.
Tell me more,
it seemed to say.

“He feels it’s fine to increase the order. Right?” Moisey felt like he was rushing things, but he couldn’t slow down. He
looked at Isaak, who nodded his head. “Our problem is we don’t think Semion will go for it. He’s stubborn, you know?”

“I’ve only had good experiences dealing with him,” said Mr. Hong.

“Fine. Look, he’s a good man, sure, but set in his ways. What I’m saying—” A cop car with sirens blaring sped toward them from the opposite direction. Moisey watched it go for a moment, then continued. “What I’m saying is that we believe he might be more open to
you
suggesting the increase, rather than us.”

“Me?” said Mr. Hong. He looked dubious.

Moisey felt impatient, irritated. He was tired of this man’s games. “Do you answer to Eugene Nana?” he asked.

“He’s an associate of mine,” Mr. Hong said.

“Do you answer to him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is what he wants.”

Mr. Hong thought about it for a moment. “Do you agree with this reading of Mr. Semion’s state of mind?” he asked, shifting his focus to Isaak. “Better for me to ask him, than you?”

“Yes,” Isaak said.

“Then fine, no problem,” said Mr. Hong in a happy voice, as though they’d reached the end of some kind of negotiation. He turned and faced forward again.

“Good,” said Moisey. His mouth had gone dry. One piece had fallen into place; the rest could follow. He felt exhaustion weighing him down.

They rode in silence for a minute. Moisey noticed when the driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror. What could
he want to see? The face of the man who speaks so freely to his boss? Or the face of a man not long for this earth?

“We have an expression in the business world,” said Mr. Hong, turning back to them. “In chaos comes great opportunity.” He handed a business card to Isaak. “When you need to contact me, call him,” he said, nodding toward his driver.

The next afternoon, Moisey woke from a dreamless nap to loud banging on his door. He was covered in sweat. For the first few seconds, he had no idea where he was: Bangkok? Pattaya? Trat? Then it became clear. The knocking continued. The thought that it might be Semion filled his belly with dread.

“Who is it?” he asked.

It was Isaak. When Moisey opened the door, his friend pushed his way into the room, then pushed Moisey back until he had to sit on the end of the bed. Isaak stood over him staring. Moisey’s fear bordered on outright panic.

“Tell me once,” said Isaak, holding his finger right in Moisey’s face. “Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“With what?”

“With this shit in Semion’s room.”

“What shit? What?”

“The blood, the girl.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Moisey.

Isaak slapped him. It was the second time he’d been slapped that week. He watched, shocked, as Isaak pulled his belt off. He held it up like he was about to whip him with it.

“The girl, the Brazilian girl. Tell me right now, or I will choke you out. I’ll fucking kill you.”

“I swear,” Moisey said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything.”

Isaak raised the belt up. “Fuck you,” he said. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“It’s not you?”

“Not me.”

“You don’t know anything about this?”

“No idea.” Moisey was afraid he might start sobbing.

Isaak shook his head, put his belt back on, smoothed his hair. The only light in the room came from beneath the drawn blinds.

“What is it?” asked Moisey. “What happened?”

Isaak told him what he knew. Semion had brought a woman home and woken up with his room covered in blood. He told him about the video from their hallway: the two men, the heavy bag.

“Fucking shit, man,” he said when he’d finished explaining. “We’ve been cursed.”

“Mr. Hong?” asked Moisey.

“My first thought. But no, I don’t think so. Not their style.”

Moisey’s exoneration had left him feeling strangely elated. He sat there blinking, imagined unzipping his friend’s fly, taking him in his mouth. Isaak had a big dick, he remembered. Everything could be solved if they could just do that. They could quit everything, run away. Sleep, dream.

They spoke with their eyes for a second, but then Isaak seemed to lose faith. “Semion has lost his shit,” he said.

Semion,
thought Moisey.
Fuck Semion.
He stared up at Isaak, wondered for a moment whether he was capable of
orchestrating this whole thing. Anything was possible. “How long has he been with this girl?” he asked.

“Not long. Less than a month.”

“So, if not us—” He studied Isaak’s face for signs, didn’t see any. “If not us, if not Hong, then …”

“An opportunist.”

“A well-timed opportunist.”

“Shit,” said Isaak.

“A typhoon and an earthquake in the same week,” said Moisey. Nana’s story about Cambodian tree spirits passed through his mind. Maybe they really had been cursed. “Shit in hell,” he said.

They called Mr. Hong’s driver and told them they had to see the man—that an emergency had come up. Mr. Hong arrived at Moisey’s motel an hour later.

He came in alone. The scent of expensive cologne followed him in. Isaak told him what they knew, and Mr. Hong, looking either furious or scared, sat on a chair shaking his head. Neither of them asked whether he had anything to do with it. What was he going to say, after all?

It was Mr. Hong who broke the silence. “Women here in Miami, they can be very manipulative,” he said.

“So what do we do?” Isaak asked.

Mr. Hong dropped his voice to a whisper. “Friends, you don’t want the Burmese to know how vulnerable you are. Please help me do my job. Get this new deal done, and we help you with everything else.”

He was pleading with them, Moisey realized.

“Find your friend,” Mr. Hong went on. “Mr. Semion. Tell him I’m looking for him. Tell him to come to the club tomorrow night. I will make him an offer. I’ll tell him the Burmese insist. I tell him we help him with all this bad stuff. Maybe all this trouble ends up being good thing for us.” He pointed at Moisey. “Maybe it makes Semion become more gentle.”

He rose from his chair, brushing imaginary crumbs from the front of his pants, and shook hands with both of them. “We get through all this bad time together,” he said. “Ten times more, you make ten time more profit. Not so horrible. Money make all the problems go away. It make us smile.” Then he left.

“You know what would make Semion smile?” Isaak asked, when they were alone again.

Moisey shook his head.

“Molly,” he said. “Molly, Molly, Molly.” He motioned like a man sipping tea. “That would turn him into a regular fucking puppy dog. Him and Mr. Hong will be giving each other massages. Fucking hugging. Saying,
I love you. I love you
.”

Moisey spent his time alone after that. The only occasion for leaving the motel was when he went to eat twice a day, and then he’d just drive down the road to a restaurant near the airport. Semion would never think of going to a place like that.

American waitresses served him french fries and hamburgers. He drank Diet Coke out of large red plastic cups. He watched sports on the television. He daydreamed about fucking the Latino busboys.

One waitress, a plump woman in her fifties, asked him if he was Italian.

“I’m from Israel,” he said.

“I’m Jewish!” she replied, smiling.

“I know. I can tell, because your name is Hannah,” he said, pointing at her nametag.
Do you want to fuck?
he wanted to ask, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned out of his seat and stared at her backside when she went to get him more Coke.

He felt like a refugee. At least in Thailand he knew where he stood. Here, what was he? A man who waited in a room. A fearful, quiet, tired man.

Late that night, after he’d spoken to the waitress, he got a call from Isaak.

“It happened.”

“What?”

“They met.”

The muffled sound of dance music came through the phone.

“And?”

“Semion left.”

“What’d he say?”

“Didn’t. Come here, Misha.” Isaak, for no known reason, used to call him that.

“Where?”

“To the club.”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“I’ll tell you something,” said Isaak. “No bullshit, everything’s going to turn out fine. I know this because—well, because I know it.”
Questionable logic,
thought Moisey.

“Don’t argue with me,” Isaak went on. “I’m smarter than Semion. Smarter than Mr. Hong. Smarter than these Burmese bastards. You know it, right?”

“Sure,” said Moisey, but he didn’t feel at all reassured. “Call me tomorrow.”

“I love you,” said Isaak. “Love you, love you, love you.”

The next day, unable to spend another moment in the motel, Moisey got in his rental car and headed north, toward Fort Lauderdale. Halfway there, his phone lit up. Isaak, sober now, sounding depressed, told him that Semion had become convinced Mr. Hong was behind everything.

“Maybe he is,” said Moisey.

“No, no, no. Not Hong. Trust me, this is amateur shit. They called him—didn’t I tell you that? They called Semion and asked for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. They think we’re fucking club owners. I told Semion, ‘I’ll fucking pawn a watch for you, man.’ It’s bullshit. I said, ‘We’ll pay, no problem. Fix it; it’s done.’ I could fucking kill him.”

“I have to call you back,” Moisey said. He didn’t want to listen anymore.

He drove past a harbor filled with white sailboats, surrounded by green trees and black water.
The reality I know is the one I see,
he thought.
I’m in a car, on a freeway. I can see blue sky. I can feel the steering wheel in my hand. The only thing I can control is the present moment, and right now, in this present moment, I am not in trouble. Fucking hell. Breathe.

A memory from when they were fifteen, or sixteen: Isaak, standing in the doorway of his house, berating him.
None
of my friends like you. They all say you don’t know how to have fun. You never have anything nice to say. You’re not helpful. You piss everyone off, and nobody wants to hang out with you.
Moisey had walked all the way home, thinking:
I’m fucked. My parents are fucked. The world is fucked.

He didn’t hear anything over the next few days. Apparently, he’d been taken out of the loop. He continued his television watching, his morning calisthenics, his beer drinking, his drives around Miami. Occasionally a foreign kind of optimism made advances on his mood. Maybe Semion would come around. They could deal with his little bribery problem. They’d get through it. And then, when it was done, he could make an exit plan. Start a new life. Move back to Israel, turn himself into an actor. His face—rough with years of hard living—looked authentically criminal. He could get the parts. He could write a memoir. Write a thriller. Screenplays. He could bartend. A simple life. A chef, if not an actor. Thai food. A falafel house in Vancouver.

His phone rang.

“I need you to come to my apartment,” Isaak said.

“I can’t do that,” Moisey said. “What if I run into Semion?”

“You won’t. Take a taxi. Come now. The doorman knows you’re coming.”

Numbly, he took a taxi to Isaak’s. He imagined meeting Semion in the lobby.
Hello, friend! Just passing through town.
The driver listened to talk radio, but Moisey caught only every third word:
Agenda … spending … downward spiral.
The muscles in his shoulders felt like steel ribbons.

They pulled into a roundabout in front of a large white tower. Moisey had never seen the building before; he sat staring up at it for a moment, and then paid the driver with cash. Inside, a tired-looking young Cuban man in a khaki suit sat behind the front desk. He called up to Isaak’s apartment and announced his guest.

“Take the elevator to twenty-eight,” the man said, when he’d hung up the phone. “Mr. Raskin is number twenty-eight fourteen.”

The fear in Moisey’s stomach increased with each passing floor. He had no idea what was waiting for him. Perhaps his partners would greet him with champagne.
We did it! We’re done! Ten times more money! Ten times more fun!
Maybe they’d go out to one of their clubs and celebrate.

The building was silent. He walked down a clean, carpeted hallway and rang the bell on Isaak’s door.

Isaak’s clothes, when the door swung open, registered in Moisey’s mind as an expensive beige and pastel blur. He tried to read his friend’s face, but it was blank—weary around the eyes, maybe, but free of any other emotions. Moisey stepped into the living room—brightly lit by the sun—and felt immediate disappointment upon seeing Mr. Hong and three other Chinese men sitting there.

“Misha,” whispered Isaak. “Sit down. Would you like a drink?”

He did want a drink, but he shook his head. He noticed himself sniffing repeatedly—something he did when he was nervous—and tried to stop. He looked at the four Chinese men, one by one, and then at his friend.

“Over the years,” began Isaak, “Semion has proven to be a difficult partner. You know this. He’s become stubborn. Intractable. His Russianness—it’s real, you know, he’s thoroughly fucking Russian. He’s really fucked everything up for us.”

“Did you pay them?” asked Moisey, trying to steer the conversation in another direction.

A look of annoyance flashed across his friend’s face. He waved his hand—a stupid question. “Yes, they’ve been dealt with,” he said. “But we have other problems now. I mean, fuck, Misha, you’ve brought bad luck with you like a fucking bedouin. Semion has decided he’s going to discontinue our relationship with—” He gestured at Mr. Hong. “With them. He’s done, he says. He’s all decided. It’s over.”