The Defense: A Novel (22 page)
He answered quickly. “You’re good. Nobody is listening. What’s up?”
“I have four million with your name on it. Got a job for you, and it’s easy money. Somebody needs to keep their mouth shut,” I said.
“We’re usually pretty good at keeping people’s mouths shut. When you coming in?”
“Got to pick up the cash first; shouldn’t take long.”
“Come at six a.m. I’ll throw in breakfast. There’s a shift change around that time. Got a lot of bird watchers in the area, all different kinds of agencies. So you gotta take the long way around. Side entrance, knock three times. Smile for your picture. See you soon, bub.”
The call ended.
Jimmy and I had gone our separate ways when I went straight. We more or less agreed upon it. The feds, NYPD, the Justice Department, the IRS, and God knows who else all had their eyes on the Mafia. It would make straight life difficult for me and possibly put a target on my back if we were seen together. We’d called each other occasionally, but that hadn’t lasted too long. I’d forgotten that meeting Jimmy in secret could be tough. Taking four million dollars to him without any one of those agencies clocking me would be just about impossible. Just as I thought I was beginning to climb out of this hole, I suddenly had a whole new set of problems. I was about as tired as I’d ever felt in my whole life. I swore and kicked the empty suitcase on the floor, sending it across the room and into the door.
“There’s a problem,” I said.
“What? He wants more money?” said Arturas.
“No. He has company. FBI, ATF, DEA, take your pick. Somebody’s camped out at his place. We need to approach carefully. If I’m seen hauling a huge bag of cash in there, I’ll be arrested within seconds, along with most of the New York Mafia.”
“So leave it. There is already too much risk. We take our chances with Benny. I’ll call Olek and tell him it’s off,” said Arturas.
“Wait. I said it would be tough. Not impossible. I’ll figure something out. Don’t you think I want to get out of this without killing a witness? Don’t you think I want my daughter back? I’ll do whatever it takes to get Volchek off without killing Little Benny. I can do this. Your boss needs it to happen this way.”
This set off another argument between the Russians. Except this time I thought I recognized a few words here and there; I heard “Benny” a few times. That was what sparked my interest. Arturas was wild with anger; his neck and chest flushed red, and spittle hung from his lips as he bellowed at Victor and I caught, “Benny” then “
nyet, nyet, nyet.
” I was pretty sure “
nyet
” meant “no.” Then “Benedikta,” and something I couldn’t quite pick up before Arturas bellowed, “
Moy brat
.” This last phrase echoed around the room. They were talking about Little Benny, but I couldn’t understand them.
Victor became quiet. Arturas seemed to have won the argument.
“All right. We’ll go pick up the money. You will come, too. Then we will go straight to Jimmy’s,” said Arturas.
Four a.m. Two hours to get the cash and get to the restaurant.
Getting out of the courthouse was a lot easier than getting in. The lobby was pretty busy with the families and friends of those who’d been arrested and were trying for bail. A bunch of cops were blowing the steam off their coffees at the bottom of the staircase while they shared a joke. I didn’t recognize any of the security guards on night duty. Not that it mattered—you don’t get searched leaving the courthouse.
Outside, the wind was picking up, and I was glad of it. I was wired on adrenaline, but it was beginning to wear off. The cold air felt invigorating. Gregor had stayed in the room upstairs. It was just me, Arturas, and Victor who were headed for the limo across the street. I got in first. Victor came afterward and sat opposite me. When Arturas got in and sat down, I leaned toward him, banging shoulders, pretending to drag the bottom of my overcoat out from under my legs.
Arturas grumbled.
He hadn’t felt the lift or the plant.
I’d taken the detonator, the real one, from his coat pocket and dropped in the fake that I’d lifted from him earlier and the new fake that Harry got for me from Paul. Arturas now had two detonators, like he’d had earlier that day, except that both of the detonators were now fakes. The real detonator felt a little heavier to me as I held it in my pocket, but then I’d become adept at sleight of hand twenty years ago. I could judge the half-a-gram difference in a phony dime just by holding it. Arturas wouldn’t notice the difference in weight between the detonators. At least I hoped he wouldn’t. I’d noticed that he kept the real detonator in his left pocket, and the fake in his right, to make sure he didn’t mix them up.
As the limo pulled out, I saw that it had been parked outside the little tapas place where Harry and I had first met and had lunch. In that meeting, Harry had basically offered me a job. I’d never had a straight job before. Didn’t need one or want one. My mom, on the other hand, thought I was working as a paralegal. The day after I’d met Harry for the first time, I visited her in the hospital. In the years since my dad passed away, Mom had experienced a steady decline. I gave her money every week so she didn’t have to work, but that seemed to make her even worse. She rarely got out of bed before midday and had stopped socializing with her friends. She’d even stopped reading.
That day, that last day, she looked so tired. The skin on her face seemed so thin I thought that it might tear at any moment. Her lips were dry and broken, and her hair was damp and clung to her pallid skin. The doctors said they weren’t sure what was causing her weight loss, her pains, and her cough. They had gone from diagnosing MS to cancer and back again.
Deep down I knew exactly what was killing her.
Loss.
When my dad passed, she kept going, for me. She hadn’t cried much; she didn’t want me to see her pain. For all her efforts, I knew. I knew she had already died inside. As soon as I started making money and she believed I was in a good job, she just kind of stopped. It was almost as if she had done her job. She had raised me, and now she wanted to let go. So that she could be with my dad. She was slowly dying of a broken heart.
Her eyes brightened when I brought her the flowers. She loved flowers.
She held my hand, and I saw a tear glisten on her cheek.
“Are you feeling okay? Is there much pain today?”
“No. There’s no pain. I’m happy. I’ve got my big son, and he’s going to be a lawyer someday.”
Her smile hit me like a punch. I couldn’t tell her. No matter how many times I’d told her, she couldn’t understand that being a paralegal didn’t necessarily mean I would eventually become a lawyer. She didn’t listen. She wanted to dream for her son, and in the end I let her. If I’d told her that I wasn’t a paralegal, that I was a con artist pretending to be a lawyer so I could con insurance companies, what little she had left would’ve faded away. In some way, that lie made me feel responsible for her death. If she had known that I wasn’t really a paralegal, but a con artist, would she have given up on life? If I had told her the truth, she would have cried and wailed and ordered me to get out of that life, that my father had wanted better things for his son. Sitting by her bed, watching her slip away, I made a decision that I would be true to her memory of me. That I would give her a real reason to be proud.
Her hand fell in mine. I knew she wasn’t asleep. The heart monitor sounded its alarm. No one came for a while. Then, slowly, a nurse opened the door, turned off the monitor, stroked my mom’s head, and said, “She’s gone.”
I buried her with my father, paid off my crew, called Harry, who set up a place for me in law school, and until Arturas pulled that gun on me in Ted’s, I had never looked back. I had put my life as a hustler behind me. Now I was glad. Glad that I still possessed those skills.
Harry had saved me that day when he offered me a job. He had held my fate in his hand and changed my life. Somehow, I thought Harry felt responsible for me.
A blast from a car horn brought me back to my ride in the limo. The windows were so densely tinted that I had trouble seeing where we were.
After a few minutes, I figured we were headed south, toward Brooklyn, and it wasn’t long before we took the exit for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. I still call that tunnel the Battery even though it has been renamed as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in honor of the former governor of New York. My dad often spoke about Carey as a good Catholic man; that had to be true—Carey had fourteen children.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“Sheepshead Bay,” said Arturas.
I knew the Bay well. It wasn’t too far from where I grew up. The Bay separated Brooklyn from Coney Island and stretched back into quiet neighborhoods from the rowdy Soviet bars that had opened up along the shoreline. We drove for around thirty minutes before pulling into a lot behind an auto-repair shop at the corner of Gravesend Neck Road and East 18th Street. The lot fronted for an old warehouse.
“Come with me,” said Arturas.
We got out, and I looked around. The area was a mix of apartment buildings and businesses that mostly closed after five p.m. A quiet street at that time of the morning. The ground was slippery with frost, and we made our way to the steel door that served as a pedestrian entrance to the warehouse. The door led to a large furnished office. Two couches sat against the eastern wall facing a TV planted high on the opposite wall. The TV was on, fixed to a news channel. A news anchor talked over an image of the Hudson River. The banner headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen said that the harbor patrol had begun to bring up bodies from the cargo ship, the
Sacha
, which had sunk with all its crew on Saturday night. The headline said they had found the ship and some of the crew, but so far only dead bodies. According to the news anchor, the fact that they had found the ship was good news for commuters, as debris from the sunken ship ceased to be an issue and the Holland Tunnel could reopen. The anchor seemed more concerned with traffic than the families of the dead. He obviously wasn’t a New Yorker; we care about our own.
Two men silently entered the office from an adjoining room, each carrying a large duffel bag. They dumped the bags on the floor and left. I thought they might have been the van drivers that I’d spotted earlier from the ledge, but I couldn’t tell.
“Four million. Pick it up and let’s go,” said Arturas.
“I’m not going anywhere. If I walk in there and that four million turns out to be a dollar short, I’m dead. I’m not going anywhere until I’ve counted the money. I’ve told Jimmy I’m bringing four million dollars, and I’m going to make sure that’s exactly what I’ve got,” I said.
Kneeling down, I unzipped both bags and began to count out the six-inch-thick tightly wrapped bundles of cash within.
As I knelt, I kept an eye on Arturas and Victor while I handled the money.
After a few minutes, I had a pretty big pile of cash on the floor. Arturas gestured for Victor to follow him into the hall. Shuffling around on my knees, I could make out both men. Arturas stood with his back to me. Victor’s view of the office was blocked by Arturas.
The small black vial of liquid was easy to conceal and hard to find in a large pocket. The cap came off silently, and I hit the spray nozzle four times, sending what appeared to be a cloud of water vapor over the top piles of cash. Replacing the cap, I slid the little black bottle into my coat pocket.
Forty-five minutes later, I’d finished pretending to count the money. I stood, stretched my aching neck, swore in pain, and called Arturas.
“Say, does this guy Victor actually do anything?” I asked. “Ask him to give me a hand repacking the bags.”
Victor knelt down beside me. I made sure to keep the pile I’d marked close to Victor. Each time Victor picked up a wad of cash, he touched the vapor residue. That left a trace, a unique chemical signature that linked Victor to the money.
The limo ride from the warehouse to Jimmy’s restaurant took about thirty-five minutes in light New York traffic. Easily one of the worst journeys I’d ever experienced. I sat in the limo with millions of dollars at my feet, ready to pay the toughest man I’d ever met to go find my daughter.
As we sped through lower Manhattan, I saw the burrito vendors getting their carts set up on the corners and bundles of newspapers being opened as the city woke up to a new day. The sun threatened to crack through the buildings at any moment. I felt exhausted. Adrenaline carried me only so far. I hadn’t slept properly in twenty-four hours, and almost as soon as I realized it, a yawn grabbed me.
Jimmy’s was a great restaurant, one of the finest, set in the heart of Little Italy on Mulberry Street. I had an idea about how I could get into the restaurant without being photographed by every law-enforcement agency in the city.
“Take a right onto Mott Street,” I said.
“Why?” said Arturas.
“I need to distract whatever surveillance teams are watching the restaurant. I can’t just walk into Jimmy’s with the money. There’s a fish market in Mott Street. Stop there. I’ll talk to a few guys who can help us out.”
Arturas didn’t speak for a time. He exchanged quick glances with Victor before telling the driver to turn onto Mott Street.
“Listen to me, lawyer. If you are thinking about running, I want you to know that it is pointless. For a start, I will kill your daughter, very slowly. She will suffer. Then I will find you and I will kill you. You know the name Kruchkurr?”
“No. Should I?”
“Former Soviet commander. After the fall of the Soviet Union, I came here with Olek to start our business. Kruchkurr supplied us with transportation lines for weapons and drugs. During the purge of the old Soviets, he got arrested and he fled, along with most of our money and our shipment.”
He shifted in his seat and straightened his back so that he was now leaning over me.
“I found him in Brazil a year later. His wife and son died first. I made him watch. I tell you this so you know that there is nowhere on this earth that you can hide from me. Remember this.”