by David Grand
“May I ask why?”
“No.” Benny pointed out to the water in the direction of Long Meadow as the boat pulled away from the dock. “I know, for instance, that on the other side of the Westbend something’s about to happen, but I don’t know exactly what. Somehow I think you know, Mr. Brilovsky,” Benny said as he patted the briefcase sitting in his lap. “Somehow, I think whatever’s happening on that shore over there is the reason for why I been doing everything I’ve been doing. You understand?”
Brilovsky looked away from Benny and back out onto patches of clearing night sky.
“Obviously, you do understand,” Benny said when Brilovsky didn’t talk. “Why don’t I let you in on a little of what I been up to. After all, it’s only fair that before you let me in on what you know I tell you a little of what I been up to, of what I’m up to right now, in fact.” Benny leaned over to Brilovsky a little so that Brilovsky could smell the rotten breath coming out of Benny’s dying lungs. “For starters,” Benny went on casually, “this morning I had Johnny Mann and Jerzy Roth machine-gunned to death. You know who I’m talking about, right?”
“Yes,” Brilovsky said reluctantly.
“You heard about the hit?”
Brilovsky nodded.
“Last night, two men taking orders from me forced Mann and Roth to call the hit on Murray Crown. You know that name too, right?”
“I heard about it,” Brilovsky said through his teeth.
“This afternoon, Mr. Brilovsky, I got rid of a man named Shlomo Feldman. He I don’t think you would have heard of.”
Brilovsky didn’t move for a moment, then shook his head. His eyes were still as rocks, but Benny could see Brilovsky was thinking hard about where this was leading.
“Feldman, he was a syndicate man who double-crossed me and my boss. You know of the syndicate?” Benny asked as he scratched his temple with the muzzle of his gun.
Brilovsky nodded.
“You heard about Crown, you heard about Mann and Roth. . . . What about the disappearance of Elias Eliopoulos and American Allied Pharmaceutical?”
“Yes.”
“I took care of that, too,” Benny said as he trained his gun back on Brilovsky’s head.
Brilovsky’s eyes turned on Benny now.
“In the past month,” Benny said, “I helped influence a group of communists inside the Long Meadow Munitions Union to sabotage the plant, framed some of the union’s leaders for the job, bullied a Fief dispatcher into arranging a shipment of munitions,” Benny said, pointing back out to the water in the direction of Long Meadow. “Any of this ringing a bell behind that leaden look you got on your face, Mr. Brilovsky?”
Brilovsky didn’t respond.
“Would it surprise you to learn that to finish things off, I’m now supposed to get rid of you?”
Brilovsky didn’t flinch, but the recognition of his dilemma was apparent when he blinked his eyes a couple of times and let out some heavy breaths.
“That’s right,” Benny said, nodding his head, his broken voice trying to keep up with his thoughts. “There are two cold-hearted men waiting for you. Out there in a cemetery on the edge of the Palisades.”
“Tines, he gave the order to kill me?” Brilovsky asked as though he had just snapped to.
“Did I say anything about Tines?”
“I should have known,” Brilovsky grumbled.
“What kind of arrangement have you got with Tines?”
Brilovsky didn’t say anything.
“Well, you must have made some sort of arrangement with him, seeing that he sent you to me, and I’m taking you over to two of his most lethal goons . . . and despite these boys’ numbskull appearance, as you’ll soon see for yourself, they’re very clever, industrious men. Would you like to know what they’re working on up there?”
Benny waited a second to continue.
“They’ve dug up the grave of one of the union men that died and plan to bury you at the bottom of that hole. They then plan to lay on top of you the casket that was in the ground previous to your arrival.”
Brilovsky’s hand started fidgeting with a loose thread on the cuff of his coat. “What can I tell you to keep you from taking me out there?”
“You’ll tell me everything I want to know. You’ll tell me everything you know. You’ll leave nothing out. Not one piece of yourself. If I smell the smallest fib, there’s nothing stopping me from dragging you out there,” Benny said, pointing toward Long Meadow with his gun. “Understood?”
“What do you want to know?”
“You understand me, right?”
“Yes,” Brilovsky said clearly, “I understand.”
“Good.” Benny paused. “Why don’t you start by telling me why Tines wants you dead . . . and why don’t you tell me what you’ve got to do with all this while you’re at it.”
Brilovsky looked reluctant to start talking.
“Suit yourself,” Benny said with indifference.
The drone of the ferry’s engine filled the compartment of the car for a while.
“He wants me dead because he can’t imprison me,” Brilovsky said, turning to Benny so Benny could see his face clearly.
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve got immunity.”
“Immunity from what?”
“Fraud, money laundering . . . there’s a long list.”
“And who gave you this immunity?”
“The Department of State.”
“Why don’t you spell it out for me.”
“It’s complicated.”
“In a nutshell then.”
Brilovsky’s eyes turned on the gun pointing at him.
“Like I said, you don’t leave anything out,” Benny said.
“It goes something like this,” Brilovsky said after a moment. “I spent the last twenty years defrauding a lot of American businesses for the benefit of the Soviet Union. But Tines’s grudge against me and my family goes back a lot farther than that.”
“To when?”
“To when I worked alongside my father, when he was the head of the Brigade. You know about the Brigade?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“The Brigade used to run American Allied on the Southside Docks before Eliopoulos took it over. Before the syndicate you talked about was known as the syndicate, American Allied—run by the Brigade—was its supplier.”
“Before Eliopoulos, you supplied the syndicate?”
Brilovsky nodded. “The money we made we sent abroad to help fund the Russian Revolution. Tines knew it. And as I’m sure you’re aware by now, he’s quite vigilant when it comes to dealing with communists. Especially ones who manage to circumvent his authority.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t able to get an indictment against us for either the political activities or the narcotics. However, he did manage to get my father thrown in jail for something else, and with my father out of the way, he broke up the Brigade. When that happened, my father chose Eliopoulos to take over the business.”
“Why?”
“Because it made good sense. Eliopoulos had supplied Allied with its opium, from the Far East. My father and Eliopoulos had became good friends—they were sort of cut from a similar cloth, both radical in their own way. When my father bought up the Southside Docks in the teens, Eliopoulos agreed to let my father place the title in his name.”
“Why would your father want to do that?”
“For insurance. To keep the government from finding a reason to seize the property. At the time, Eliopoulos was clean.”
“And your father trusted this Eliopoulos character?”
“Yeah. He was a little unusual, sure, but as I said, he and my father had an understanding. When my father went to jail, I went to Russia to work for Lenin, and Eliopoulos, he took over the business. Which is when the REM syndicate became the REM syndicate.”
“What did you and your father get out of it?”
“Eli sent money to my father
to keep my family afloat and sent a percentage of the proceeds to me to reinvest in the Soviet Union. Look, it was never about the money for Eliopoulos. He was already very wealthy. It was an intrigue for him. He liked the danger of the life. He found the underworld glamorous.”
“He’s a fruit, you know that?”
“Sure, everyone knows it.”
Benny lifted the side of his face, then dropped it into a look of disgust. “So, if your father’s the true owner of the Southside Docks, what’s this I hear about Noel Tersi taking it over?”
“Eliopoulos sold the property to Tersi. Not sold, exactly. Gave.”
“Eliopoulos gave that property to Tersi.”
“That’s right. On my father’s wishes.”
“Come again.”
“It was part of the bargain,” Brilovsky said.
“With Tines?”
“With the Department of State.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Tines is working with the Department of State.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“He’s working with them to kill the labor movement in Long Meadow and get Fief onto the Southside Docks. Why do you think Tines hired a rogue like you to bust up the syndicate and help discredit the union, Mr. Rudolph?”
“To disgrace Shortz. To keep him from making trouble for Fief.”
“Sure, okay. But of equal importance is so the government could free up the Southside Docks for Fief. To help get him out of Long Meadow for good. In case we go to war, the Southside Docks would be all his. No syndicate, no retribution. No union, no questions of propriety or strikes. No government men seen, no union martyrs made. But in the end, it’s a land grab where there’s a shortage of land. Plain and simple.”
“But Tersi’s got the docks.”
“It’s a sham. For the same reason Tines set you up as a fall guy, they did it that way to make it look like Fief and the government wasn’t involved in acquiring the property. Tersi’s a real estate developer. They made him the front man for the transaction.”
“What do you mean, set me up as a fall guy?”
“Why in the world would Tines get you to do what he could have done himself?” Brilovsky said with a little vindictiveness.
Benny ignored him. He had thought of it himself, but he didn’t like Brilovsky thinking it for him. “What’s Tersi get out of the deal?”
“Nothing from the real estate as far as I know. But he’s getting paid off in another way.”
“With what?”
“When I left Moscow I had a collection of art worth a small fortune. The Department of State kindly suggested that I offer it as payment to help me get back into the country. The deal was that I could take a quarter of its face value.” Brilovsky pointed to the briefcase in Benny’s lap. “Tersi had the work appraised yesterday and gave me that tonight, just before the cab driver took his detour in your direction. Tomorrow Tersi’s going to hold an auction and get five times as much for the collection.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“The appraisal wasn’t exactly on the level, but I had no room to argue.”
“All right, so now I know how Tersi gets his, but how’s Fief get from Long Meadow to the Southside Docks?”
“As I was suggesting—with this so-called communist revolt you helped start over in Long Meadow when you got those men to blow up the machinist shop.”
Benny looked up in the direction of Long Meadow. “Yeah, but who’s that shipment of munitions going to? What exactly did you do for the Department of State to earn your immunity?”
Brilovsky reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette case and lighter. “I promised a few Soviet officials a shipment of American munitions,” he said as he slipped out a cigarette and lit it. “To be delivered by a Russian smuggler we both trusted.”
“You’re saying that shipment is going to Communist Russia?”
Brilovsky lifted the side of his mouth ever so slightly.
“You’re saying that Tines took part in a plot that had a shipment of American munitions falling into the hands of communists?”
“Who better to take Fief’s arms if you’re intent on proving that there’s a communist underground infiltrating the American labor movement?”
Benny grunted, then coughed up the sweet taste of blood in his mouth.
“What’s more interesting,” Brilovsky volunteered, “is how the Department of State went about it. While I was still in Moscow, they supplied me with the coordinates to find an abandoned American merchant marine vessel. The smuggler I spoke of, he took the ship a few months ago . . . and as we speak,” Brilovsky said, looking at his watch, “he is on his way through the Narrows.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s a setup, Mr. Rudolph. The shipment’s not supposed to make it. Tines is supposed to catch him and come out the hero, see.”
“What’s going to stop this smuggler once he’s got the munitions?”
“He’s supposed to rendezvous with a Soviet military transport waiting for him once he reaches international waters. But I managed to get the coordinates and handed them over to Tines. So when the ship is about to reach the rendezvous point, it’ll be seized by the U.S. Navy.”
Benny was quiet as he mulled all this over in his head.
“And what happens to you in all this if I let you live?”
“Me? I’ve got immunity. I leave the City. Go someplace where I can’t be found for a while.”
“Who will you be hiding from?”
“Why do you think I left Moscow, Mr. Rudolph?”
“To avoid this very situation you’re in right now?”
“Precisely.”
When the two men came to this, the ferry landed. As the boat settled into its dock, Benny turned to Brilovsky and looked at him for a long time.
“What is it?” Brilovsky asked after a while.
“How badly do you want to live?”
Benny Rudolph and Arthur Brilovsky got out of Benny’s car and walked upstairs to the observation platform and watched as the American merchant marine cargo ship Brilovsky had spoken of drifted into an icy slip on the Fief Munitions dock. Paulie Sendak was there as planned. He caught the ship’s moorings and tied them down. Once the ship was properly harnessed, the captain of the large vessel disembarked. Limping along behind him was a man with a clubbed foot. Behind him was a ruthless-looking lot of mariners armed with carbines. Paulie Sendak escorted these men dressed in worn hooded coats and dark knit caps to the pier manager’s shack at the foot of the docks. There, Paulie, the captain, two armed men, and the man with the clubbed foot squeezed inside the station while the mariners waited outside in the snow.
Captain Chubayev, a thick man with a strong jaw and an inward-gazing countenance, spoke first. “Where are munitions?” he asked in a slow baritone that purred like a lion at rest.
Sendak turned his round, pockmarked face to the shack’s back window and pointed to the service road that led to the armory’s loading dock. “You send a dozen men up that road. Quietly.”
“They will be quiet,” Chubayev said, biting into each word as if it were a cigar. “What of guards?”
“There’s no one up there.”
“Good,” Chubayev said.
“The munitions are all crated, the trucks are loaded. All you need to do is go get them and put ’em on board. Like you’re putting a baby into a cradle.”
“Do not worry. We are family men,” Chubayev laughed.
Sendak looked around the shack, at the dire whiskered faces. “Okay then.”
“What of your men?”
“It’s just me.”
In the most manly expression Paulie Sendak had ever seen, the Russian curled the left side of his lip up, the right side of his lip down, and winced his eyes at the man with the clubbed foot. The man produced a bottle of vodka from inside his coat and handed it to Chubayev. Chubayev placed the bottle on the table, then quietly purred out a long string of Russ
ian to this same man. When he was through speaking, Chubayev pointed to the door with his chin. The lame man relayed the orders to the mariners outside, and the men with the carbines stood outside the shack’s entrance.
Chubayev undid the top of the bottle and handed it to Sendak, and Sendak nodded to Chubayev and took a healthy taste of the liquor. As the two men sat watching and drinking, the Russians started marching up the service road, six at a time, up through the back of the town, along the Palisades to the thick steel gates and doors of the armory entrance, where a dozen large trucks were loaded full with mortars and bombs, projectiles and grenades. The two men watched the hulking figures of the sailors as their black coats were swallowed by the darkness.
“May I ask,” Chubayev said, “why you do this for Soviet Union?”
“I’m not,” Paulie Sendak said. “I’m doing it for myself.”
Chubayev frowned and took a drink and handed the bottle to Sendak.
“The men I work with are fools,” Sendak said. He took a long drink, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, then handed the bottle back to Chubayev. “They don’t know how to get what they want.”
“Sometimes a man needs to rise up for himself before his people rise up for him, eh?” Chubayev said.
Paulie was silent to this.
“I prefer to remain at sea,” Chubayev said with the bottle to his lips. “I prefer to rise up on the back of the ocean. It is rough, unpredictable, but much more safe than on land. Because, when at sea, I am the law.” Chubayev drank again. “Have you been on ocean in boat?” Chubayev asked Sendak through the corner of his mouth.
Paulie shook his head.
“Not for everyone,” Chubayev seemed to agree.
Paulie took the bottle from Chubayev and drank.
A few silent minutes later, the caravan of trucks was on its way down. The men drove the trucks onto the docks, and Chubayev’s crew, forming a fire line from the bottom of the gangplank to the cargo hold, started to unload.
When the last of the munitions were being loaded, Benny Rudolph, holding his gun on Arthur Brilovsky, disembarked from the ferry. The two men walked along the docks in the direction of the shack in which Chubayev and Paulie Sendak were holed up.