“Can I help?” said the oldest of the agents, who had a face more like a pumpkin than a potato. I ignored him.
“So?”
“Sit down,” Pettus said. “Sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down. Just tell me how many others there have been. I’m out watching them bury the guy from Penn Station in the public dump, someone says there have been others.”
“What the hell did you go there for?”
“I thought someone should, OK. OK? Don’t stonewall me, Roy.”
“It was before you were involved.”
“But you didn’t bother telling me.”
“That’s right”
“Why not?”
In the background, the pasty-faced agents shifted uneasily, pretending not to listen.
“You got to tell me something,” I said. “You’ve got to tell me if this shit ever came into New York before.”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t know. I’m not sure. That’s what I’m trying to tell you: I don’t know, detective. It’s all rumors. Conjecture. A whispering gallery. Except for you, of course, running around putting your nose in stuff you can’t fix. You know, Pat,” he said to one of the agents, “maybe we should call Sonny Lippert. Tell him who we got in here.”
When he got angry, Roy’s face wrinkled up like a violent old baby who was in awful pain but couldn’t cry. “You want to know? Here,” he said, grabbing up a sheaf of paper and waving it in my face. He threw it at me. “You want to deal with this? Should I tell you about all the nuts in New York with nukes on their mind? The schizo copycats just waiting for something to ape? Should I tell you about how we could have public panic on a twenty-four-hour basis, if people knew there’s nukes out there? You want to know why I do what I got to to suppress stuff like what happened in Penn Station?
“How about the nutbag I got who says he’s selling plutonium in the Penta Hotel? I got Black Muslim militants upstate doing errands for their pals in Chicago, who might be greasing the pipeline for stuff coming in through Mexico from Sierra Leone,” he said, and I thought of what Lev told Tolya. “I got Israelis who tell me we told you so, then sell nuke technology to South Africa. Nothing ever gets proved. You think it’s hard to get stuff across borders? You ever crossed the border from Juarez into El Paso? You’re a white guy in a nice Hertz rental, no problem, how ya doing, amigo, welcome to the USA.”
I got up and paced around, waiting to see if Sonny showed.
“Sit down, detective, I’m not through,” Roy said. “Any sign of nuclear terrorism, the government sends in the hotshots from the Nuclear Emergency Search Team and they are good. Sure they are, but so what? So they stop some two-bit terrorist. There’s plenty more. And some day they won’t even have to import it. One of these days they’ll break into one of our lousy storage facilities. Did you know this country is dripping with nuclear wastes?
“The government just lies like they always did. They contract companies to run the nuclear industry who hire PR people who lie. No, I apologize. Sometimes they don’t even have to lie. They just buy into the whole corporate message all by themselves.”
I had never heard Roy Pettus so angry. When Roy thought about this nuke stuff, he saw it like he saw the bombers in Oklahoma or the gas spill in the Tokyo subway or the explosion in the Paris Métro or Penn Station. He could see people dying like flies in a tunnel or on a bridge or a skyscraper and he saw himself, Roy Pettus, helpless to stop it.
“No one gives a pig’s dick, either. Radioactive materials are unpredictable, unstable, the statistics are unreliable, you know why? I’ll tell you. Because the information has been classified for too long. Because the populations subjected to it got railroaded. Got it? You know what they did to my family? Five generations served this country in wars, then the government stuck a missile in our back yard in Chugwater, Wyoming, you understand? Didn’t ask, just came on in and put it there. Now how about you level with me, detective?”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“It wasn’t your business. It wasn’t anyone’s business.”
“How many have there been like the bum?”
“We’re not sure. We’re not sure what we were seeing. I can’t afford any rumors.” Pettus looked down at me with hard eyes.
“What was in the package the bum died from?”
“We think it’s a thing named cesium.”
“You make bombs from that?”
“Mostly it’s used for medical stuff. Cesium 137, a little goes a long way. Doctor in South America opened the wrong shutter on a teletherapy device, he was dead in a week. It doesn’t matter what the stuff is, you raise the issue of radiation, unless there’s an emergency the public doesn’t really want to believe it. I got a country in denial, OK? That’s what I’m dealing with. Now you talk.”
I told Roy what I figured he needed to know when one of the agents called out to him, “Lippert’s on the phone for you.”
“Tell him I’m on vacation. Please,” I said. “Let me get out of here without seeing Sonny, OK? I’m asking you, Roy, please. You remember last week, by the river? You mentioned red mercury?”
Roy nodded. I walked to the window and Roy walked with me and we stared out.
“I heard there’s a guy who has some to sell,” I said.
Pettus told his men to take a break and when they had gone I told him the rest of what I knew about Lev.
“What do you want from me, detective?”
“Help me find Anatoly Sverdloff. I told you about him. He’s a Russian, probably on a legit visa. With a phoney address in Park Slope. Pick him up, but do it quietly,” I said.
Roy said, “I’ll call you.”
9
I was dreaming I was on a plane for Moscow that couldn’t land when the phone rang. I fumbled for a light and pushed over a glass of water. It shattered on the floor. I looked at my watch; it was six in the morning.
“Artie? Hillel. I been trying you almost two weeks. What’s a matter? You don’t like me any more?”
I knew Hillel Abramsky had been calling. “I’m sorry. I been up to my ass. Really.”
“I got this client I figure might interest you. OK? Come by lunchtime. We close early Friday.”
“Hilly, I got a lot on.” One more blind alley and I figured I’d freak.
“Come,” he said.
My best source in the diamond district, Hillel Abramsky’s a good guy. I could hear him singing even before I opened the door to a back room on the second floor of the shabby building on 47th Street. It was lunchtime and the workbenches were mostly empty. Only Hillel sat at his bench, face half covered by a pair of welder’s glasses, thick as Coke bottles, a diamond in one hand big as a walnut. He held it up to the light contemplatively. Meanwhile, he sang.
Abramsky saw me, pushed up the glasses onto his head, shook my hand and introduced me to a man in skin shoes. It was Tomas Saroyan. From The Teddy Flowers Show. The missing guest.
“A beauty,” Hillel said, looking at the diamond, and sang some more of his ecstatic diddle diddle diddle. Saroyan tried to restrain himself, but I could see the irritation. Saroyan did not become rich waiting around for Jews to sing folk songs and contemplate their art.
“How much longer?”
“I don’t know. Could be an hour. A day. A week. This is a big dollar item. You want I should chop it any old place, lose maybe half? It’s your stone, mister.”
“It’s been almost two weeks.”
“Look, mister, go eat. OK? You’ll feel better.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I’ll buy you lunch,” I said, as the other cutters began filing back from their meal. I like Hillel a lot; his wife sends me fabulous chopped liver, he has great Klezmer records and even though he can see around the sides of people, he’s always cheerful; for Hillel Abramsky, religion is better than Prozac.
“I’ll bring him back in an hour,” I said. “How’s the family?”
“Wonderful. The baby comes next week. Maybe in time for the holid
ays. You’ll come to the bris?”
“How do you know it’s a boy?”
Hillel shrugged. “I can tell.”
“Who are you?” Saroyan said warily.
“Go with him. Go,” Hillel Abramsky said like a housewife trying to get rid of vermin.
Outside on the street, more men in beards jingled millions’ worth of diamonds in their pants pockets along with quarters for the phone. With Hillel’s help, I had discovered crooks hiding out with the Hasidim. These evangelicals figured if some Russian hood was willing to trade in his chestwig and gold chains for a black hat and long curls, well, even the outward show of faith was a beginning. You could hide out easier in Crown Heights than Miami Beach.
Of this, ethically, Hillel did not approve. Deals on 47th Street had always been done on trust, by his father, his grandfather, millions in gems traded on a handshake, a whisper. So Hillel helped me. When Tomas Saroyan arrived with a diamond big as a walnut, Hillel figured I could be interested.
“You’re a cop,” Saroyan said sullenly.
“That’s right. And I want to talk about why Gennadi Ustinov was killed on a TV show that you happened to also be on. Maybe other things.”
Saroyan’s skin loafers must have cost five hundred bucks. Snake, probably.
“Nice shoes,” I said. I bought hot dogs from the cart on the corner and handed him one. He held it gingerly like he was used to better.
“I’m in a big hurry. I did not come to New York City to talk about shoes. This man there has been weeks preparing to cut this diamond.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’m not interested in your diamonds, for the moment, anyway. I don’t actually care if you are the expensively shod slimebag you appear to be. All I want is to hear what you saw on Teddy Flowers’ show, the night of the shooting, and what, if anything, you know about Gennadi Ustinov. Take me through it. How did you get on the show?”
Saroyan tasted his frank. “A friend in Moscow. English guy, Gavin Crowe. He said I could meet important people. Good for business.”
“What kind of business you in?”
“Import export.”
“What kind?”
“I help people get things they need.”
“You mean you’re a personal shopper,” I said and bought a cream soda. “You shop for Zeitsev?”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind.” He understood. “Go on,” I said.
“I told the police everything I know.”
“Tell me everything you know. Tell me something you forgot to tell them.”
Saroyan sized me up. He was a fleshy, handsome man, thirty-five, thirty-six, but he had a low forehead where greasy hair grew in curly tufts; he looked like a monkey.
“Cementing international relations is important to me.”
Suddenly the man oozed diplomacy. “You said you are Cohen?”
I nodded.
“Being Jew, you will understand. I am Saroyan. I am Armenian. I hate Soviet Union which destroyed my people.”
“I thought that was the Turks.”
“Ustinov was KGB. Someone kills him for revenge.” He peered at me. “What can I do for you?”
He would figure that like every cop he met back home, in America all cops were also bent, or could be folded. I let him gamble.
“What have you got?”
He was silent.
“Tell you what. Show me good faith, Armenian to Jew. Show me where you stash your goods.”
He twitched like a man shooting craps for high stakes.
“You don’t want your visa to run out before my pal Hillel finishes your diamond.”
“You know Helmsley Palace Hotel?”
A half hour later, Tomas Saroyan scuttled out of the hotel. “I have your word?” he said. “I have your word this is between you and me, if I show you this stuff?”
“Sure you have my word. You called Zeitsev, didn’t you? Didn’t Zeitsev tell you I was his friend?”
Saroyan slid silently into the station wagon, inspecting it with a certain contempt.
We rode in silence. Saroyan reached into the pocket of his Versace blazer and took out a Gucci notebook and a Mont Blanc ballpoint. He started clicking the pen’s mechanism. Click click click. Click click click.
“Do you mind? Huh?”
“Belt Parkway,” Saroyan said.
“I know how to get to Brooklyn.”
I got lost. In the tangle of roads and belts on the way to an area between Brighton Beach and the airport, I ended up in a nature preserve near Jamaica Bay. Some kind of crow or raven swooped down in front of the car and I almost crashed it. Saroyan looked smug and directed me to a garage on a busy street. A couple of guys sat out front and worked on a bucket of Kentucky Fried. One waved at Saroyan. He took me out back where there was a second shed. A half-dead mutt passed for a guard dog.
I gave the dog a piece of candy bar I found in my pocket; it looked grateful. “I hope this is good. I didn’t come here to view some sorry-ass chop shop.”
“Don’t worry,” Saroyan said. He was nervous. He was showing me his wares as a trade-off so I wouldn’t think too much about his other scams, and I wanted him by the balls in case he knew about the sample trade. But maybe he thought I could be had for a couple Rolexes.
Saroyan unlocked the door. He flipped a light switch. I looked around: it really was Aladdin’s fucking cave. Saroyan shopped to order and he bought good. He bought designer labels, gold, diamonds, Rolex, Cartier, Patek.
There were no windows; a powerful air conditioner hummed. Crates were stacked neatly against the wall and there were objects covered with quilted moving blankets. A large Chubb safe stood to one side.
“Show me,” I said. Saroyan looked over his shoulder and began pulling away the quilts.
Beneath the blankets there were three Steinway pianos, gleaming ebony grands. Persian rugs were bundled in neat coils. Dozens of top of the line stereos and TVs, Aiwa, Sony, Mitsubishi, stacks of Macintosh Power Books, IBM PCs and software, Gameboys and Nintendo. There were crates of china/glass, silver, toys, CD players and discs by the dozen. A whole container of bikes from Specialized stood near the wall. He pulled off more packing blankets and showed me racks of fur coats, neatly bagged in plastic, There were dresses, suits. Armani, Chanel, Versace. And Gucci bags, and Vuitton. On a shelf were cartons of small items by the gross: Calvin T-shirts, Hanes panty hose. He opened the safe and I walked in after him and he showed me boxes of gold jewellery, antique porcelain figurines, loose stones, rubies, emeralds, diamonds.
“Cars?”
“Another place. You want to see?”
“I trust you. All to order?”
“Sure. We are Russian shopping channel, so to speak. We got a lot of these places. LA. New Orleans. Put in order in Moscow or Petersburg, Mercedes, black, red, silver, new one, vintage, Rolls-Royce, Lexus, shop in New York City, ship back via Vladivostok, Odessa, the Baltics. It arrives as good as new. It is new, fully loaded, customized if you want. Antiques also. I got one client giving his kid a 1947 MG for his birthday.”
“You keep the stuff here all the time?”
“We move it fast,” he said.
“The cops aren’t stupid.”
“No,” Saroyan said. “But cops like shopping also.”
“It’s been informative,” I said.
“You like to do little shopping?” He was an oily prick; I had a vision of Saroyan in striped pants with a carnation in his buttonhole.
“Maybe later.” I looked around. “What’s that?” I pointed to a small crate by the door.
“Spare parts. You want to see?” He pushed it in my direction.
I said no. I had already seen the name. Sometimes you get answers in dull little boxes. Already I was wondering why Saroyan got spare parts for his fancy cars from a dump like Cosmos Auto Supply.
Saroyan was real pissed off when I dropped him at a subway stop and he walked down the steps right onto a wad of gum that stuck to the fancy shoes. Then I called Hil
lel Abramsky and told him about Saroyan; Hillel said it would be inconvenient for him to return Saroyan’s diamond for at least a couple of weeks what with the New Year coming next week and the baby also. Then I went to Brighton Beach.
Cosmos Auto Supply was a front. It was run by Johnny Farone, a skinny, affable Italian with half glasses, a nylon shirt with short sleeves and a club tie; his door was always open was his motto, he said.
The shop was small and dusty; cobwebs in the windows broke up in the light. The weather had turned cool for good, the sun shone, the ocean was blue and silky; it was painfully lovely all day every day.
Car parts in boxes were stacked everywhere. Farone also sold air conditioners and old-fashioned fans which gathered dust on the window sill along with order books and invoices and cardboard boxes. There were brushes, valves, cranks, pumps. A tire stood against the wall underneath a religious calendar and a plastic crucifix. I had checked Farone out with a guy I know at the Six Two and he said Farone was OK. He was one of the rare non-Russians on the Beach and he depended on the station house for his well-being and sometimes just for company.
Farone offered me espresso and we sat around shooting the breeze. I got around to asking what was new in the way of business.
He shrugged. Business was pretty good. He could export a lot of stuff these days, car parts, air-conditioning units, whatever. “Maybe this interests you?” he said, trying to please. Johnny Farone was the kind of guy who liked doing favors; it put him in the black. He reached into his desk and pulled out a file folder, and from it extracted a greasy xerox. It was an official letter and it was in Russian. He went to the toilet and I could hear him taking a piss while I looked at it. He came back.
“Can you read it?” I guess he assumed everyone around here could read some Russian.
I nodded, leaning on the doorjamb while I read it. I read it again. The subway rattled overhead and the beige plastic crucifix on the wall vibrated. The paper was slick and crumpled. Farone folded his hands calmly over his desk. It was an invoice for red mercury.
“What’s this stuff? Who knows? I got clients want something, I find something. I got people with stuff to sell, I find clients. You know? The guy comes in, he sick, man. Real sick. I think to myself this here one sick dude, you know? AIDS. He got the AIDS thing. Hair falling out. Teeth gone. Sores on the mouth. He can hardly sit he’s running to the bathroom all the time. Sores. He wants to sell me this stuff. You wanna see the video?”
Red Mercury Blues Page 15