by Todd Merer
I asked if any had ever been convicted of a crime. Eight heads shook as one. I asked if they all knew Bolivar, and in return got eight nods. I asked if they understood that should Bolivar skip, they would owe the government the amount of the bail.
The men answered: “Da. Da. Da. Da.”
“You’re still ready to pledge your property?”
They all nodded and replied as one: “Da.”
I turned to Andrey. “Bolivar’s passport?”
“His Colombian lawyer has it.”
“Who’s the lawyer, and what’s his phone number?”
“We’re in the process of speaking to him.”
They were wasting my time, not to mention their own. Without a US passport, I couldn’t prove Bolivar was an American citizen. On the other hand, Kandi had the burden of proving Bolivar an alien, and since his pretrial report had left nationality a blank, doubtful she had proof.
“I’ll arrange a bail hearing,” I said. “Let you know where and when.”
When we left the room, I expected to follow Andrey back down the stairs, but instead he knocked on the other door, the one with the Star of David and Hebrew lettering. It buzzed open. I went through, but Andrey remained outside.
The room was small. A couple of folding chairs and a table draped in burgundy velvet, atop which several throwaway phones and a half-filled bottle of vodka sat beneath a menorah. There was an opened cabinet housing an object that might or might not have been a Torah. I supposed the room was a synagogue, but the man seated behind the table was no rabbi.
“Hello, boy,” Natty said. His drawn face seemed fragile as a communion wafer, his black eye patch standing out in sharp relief. “Welcome to my shul.”
I had to laugh. Beautiful. I thought I’d seen every bail-condition beat scheme there was—from phony doctor visits, a la Tony Soprano, to sham marriage ceremonies—but this was genius. Natty was tracked by his ankle bracelet, but his bail conditions allowed him to attend religious services.
“The bail package is good?” he said.
“Very professional.”
“So, you going to win bail?”
I shrugged, although I was beginning to think it possible. The sureties were impeccable. The case was pot, not heavy drugs. The alleged crime took place six years ago, suggesting a lack of factual evidence. If there was a passport, bail was a winnable fight. Of course, there was the problem of Judge Trieant’s progovernment tendencies, but if he denied, I’d go up on appeal, and the appellate judges were fairer than Trieant.
“We need talk private,” Natty said.
“Aren’t we doing that?”
“Come.”
There was another door hidden behind the religious paraphernalia, and we went through it to an even smaller room: no windows, bare ceiling light, folded towels atop a table. Clothing hung from a peg. On the floor, paired rubber clogs. Natty was unbuttoning his shirt.
“We take schvitz.”
My nerves were jangling with that old familiar but not unpleasant feeling of being about to walk the fine line—the classic unwired conversation in the steam bath.
Disrobed, Natty revealed a pale, bony body. A tat of a satyr anally fucking a woman covered his chest. He must have been heavier when it was inked, because now the horned creature was shrunken, and the woman’s breasts drooped. He grabbed a towel, stepped into clogs, went through another door. I unpeeled my duds and did the same.
The steam was as dense as a foggy night in London. Draped in the towel, Natty sat hunched atop a tiled bench. I sat across from him. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t say anything. I wished he would get to whatever his point was because the steam was hot. Already, my body was oiled, and I felt my lungs heating—
Something landed at my feet. Leaves? Yes. I’d sweated out many a hangover and recognized a venik when I saw one. Someone laughed.
I turned and saw two more men. The smaller one was totally bald with a twisty smile. Kyril.
The other man had a towel draped over his head. He idly swatted a venik across his back as he spoke in short sentences whose syntax screamed foreigner.
“New oak leaves,” said the mystery man. “Smell like forest. Open pores. Remove toxins. Bring blood up. Cool body off.”
“Sure, why not?” I swatted myself, but the movement only made me hotter.
“I am businessman,” he said. “I want something, I buy it. What I want? For you to do what I ask. For that I pay you. Deal?”
I wiped sweat from my eyes. “Depends on what you ask.”
“For you to make free Joaquin Bolivar.”
“I’m already retained to represent him.”
“I want to be sure. So now I meet the master lawyer in person. But still I don’t know how smart he is. Is he smart enough to take our money, do the job, and keep his mouth shut?”
His towel lowered enough to allow a partial view of his face. He was fifty, give or take. Thin, but well muscled. A graduate of the Putin School of Masculine Ideals. I thought I’d seen him before, but where? Didn’t matter. I didn’t care if I never saw him again, either. This guy’s aura was quicksand.
He stood and pulled a chain, and water showered down on him. “Take care of yourself. Stay strong,” he said, and left the schvitz.
Natty and Kyril had left, too. I stood beneath the shower and pulled the chain. Icy water shocked me alert. I felt raw, inside and out.
When I left, they were gone. I went back down the stairs. The curtain was parted, and behind it, the Red Star was booming. A waiter blocked my way. For a moment, I thought there was a problem, then realized he was giving me something.
It was a frosted bottle of pale-green liquid. Bison Grass.
I started to ask a question, decided not to, and left.
In the Flex, I wondered: What did they really want? Who were these people? Russians, a Colombian, Jilly . . .
I needed to clear my mind. Nothing better than a long, slow ride through the stomping grounds of my days of yore, to view the world through my eyes when I was young and innocent. Hard to believe, but I was.
Once upon a time.
I told Val not to take the Belt Parkway back to Manhattan, but to drive the long way through the streets of Brooklyn. He started to say something, but I held up a palm.
“Not now, Val. I need to think.”
And drink. I opened the bottle and swigged. I wondered how these people knew I was into Bison Grass. What else did they know about me? What did they expect of me?
As I swallowed, I remembered the days when my life was simple.
CHAPTER 35
The Flex hummed along. Behind was the dark water of Sheepshead Bay. Ahead the long reach of Bedford Avenue, bisecting Brooklyn. There was Voorhees Avenue, where in the shadows beneath the Belt Parkway overpass decades ago on another cold night in a thirdhand car, I took and lost virginity. I don’t remember the girl’s name but still remember her scent, as if it had seeped into my memory, like permanent ink.
I took another swallow of Bison Grass.
We passed Brooklyn College, and I recalled a late afternoon: a professor’s voice droning, sun slanting through ivy-bordered windows, me sketching a nude girl.
I swallowed Bison Grass.
We passed a housing project on the very spot where Ebbets Field had stood, home turf of the original Dodgers: Jackie and Pee Wee and Roy and Duke and both Carls—Oisk and Furillo—and all the other lost boys of summer my father told me about before he, too, was lost.
I took another swallow.
I was fairly drunk now.
Wondering who I was.
Or not. I was not Joe Perfect. Not JQ Public. Not like anyone I knew. I was a loner, a master of the universe of the white-powder bar, possessed of a criminally oriented genius for solving problems, a manipulator who found seams between regulations, who oiled the hinges of sealed doors.
I drank deeply.
That direction led to my old hood. I thought of Ma and Bea and Billy. That direction lingered and slowly fell behind . . .
And there was the Brooklyn Museum, where I’d idled away so many hooky hours wandering the replicated Egyptian tomb, dreaming of becoming an archeologist.
I drank more.
There was Grand Army Plaza and Flatbush Avenue, and then we were crossing a bridge above black water, and then downtown Manhattan. That street there, third house on the left, fourth floor window? My first pad.
Midtown. A white-brick apartment-building penthouse where I discovered the joy of sex while high. Beginning to make good money then. Spending like a bandit with bandits’ money.
Uptown. Big apartment over there I bought when Mady and I got married. Good years. Then the apartment was gone. And Mady, too.
Question: How did I let such a thing happen?
Answer: I was way too high to notice.
Irony. Drug addict to drug lawyer.
“Mr. Benn?”
“What? Oh.”
I was home.
Usually, Val gets out and holds my door open, but now he just sat, waiting for permission to speak.
“Yeah, Val?”
“They say the Red Star is owned by mafia.”
I nodded farewell and stumbled to my place.
First thing inside, I pissed Bison Grass. Second thing, I unpeeled my clothing. Third thing, I fell in bed and closed my eyes. Fourth thing, I got out of bed and turned on my device and let my fingers do the walking.
And this is what I learned:
The Kursk Needle, whose lobby art was a bronzed T-34, the legendary tank that saved Mother Russia in the battle of Kursk, was erected by a man who’d renamed himself Kursk. Evgeny Kursk.
A long lens shot showed Kursk emerging from a private jet bearing an EK logo. Another depicted a liner-size yacht with the EK logo on its bow. Another a snow palace in Courchevel, the snowcapped French Alps beyond.
One close shot of Kursk showed a pale face, sandy hair—
I recognized the man who’d been with Jilly at Foto’s.
The same man in the schvitz, who’d offered an additional fee.
Where did Kursk fit in? With Bolivar? With Jilly? If he was hooked up with Natty, why hire me instead of Plitkin to rep Bolivar?
I called all of Foto’s phones. No answers.
I made another call to another man.
ALUNE
We are the Logui of the Kingdom of Tayrona. We are the fifth tribe of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the last family still unsullied by the outside world. We exist within the circle of life in which the past is the future present. Our life springs from the pure joy of being among Those Who Know More, of being one of the believers who follow The One Who Knows Most of All.
We are lovers and also warriors.
Long ago, when the whites came, we repelled their cruelties and resettled in remote Tayrona. When they followed us, we killed so many, they left us alone for the next half millennium.
Forty years ago, the whites returned to the Sierra.
They enslaved the other four families. Then they moved against us. So many of them. First the drug traffickers. Then the guerrillas, who spoke of good but did evil. Then the paramilitaries, who wanted the guerrillas’ treasures for themselves. Then the government soldiers, who were the worst of all.
We fought them all.
One day, a man appeared. This was forty years ago, a time when the Sierra Nevada was a major source of marijuana. The man was one of the traffickers who operated here, but unlike the others, he treated us with respect. He was a powerful man who protected us from other traffickers, the paramilitaries, the guerrillas, the army. At first, we thought him just another avaricious white, but over time, he became our friend and benefactor. Without him, we would have been exterminated before The One Who Knows Most of All existed.
After a long, bloody war, we prevailed. But then the other narco-traffickers killed our friend and protector. But using the weapons and tactics he’d gifted us, we fought on until our enemies left the Nevada.
All this I know, for I am Alune, The One Who Knows Most of All.
CHAPTER 36
The next day as I approached my office, a man got out of an idling taxi. I expected a visit from the man I’d phoned last night, but this man was rumpled and unshaven as if he hadn’t slept for days, pinned eyes and dried saliva in the corners of his mouth betraying a binge on stimulants. It took a moment before I recognized Raphael Borg.
“Benn, man,” he said, “I gotta talk to you.”
Without waiting for a reply, he accompanied me inside. The cage-elevator ride was short, but long enough for me to get a contact high. Once in my office, Borg set down a green-skin designer briefcase, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, fumbled with a match.
“No smoking here,” I said.
He put the match away but kept the butt between his lips. “I’m a little nervous is all. Freaked by what’s been going down . . . I can trust you, can’t I, Benn?”
“You asking or telling?”
“Hoping. Can I?”
“Give me a dollar.”
“What? Oh. Right.” Despite his present condition, Borg’s legal training kicked in; he recognized I was asking for a token retainer, making me his lawyer, so our conversation was privileged. He sorted through crumpled bills, set down a five spot. “That okay?”
I nodded. “You’ve got five minutes on my meter.”
“Jilly is crazy about you. She says you’re a rock.”
I would’ve liked to hear more about Jilly’s feelings for me, but the visitor I expected was due any moment. “Cut to the chase, Rafe.”
He looked around as if others were secreted in the corners, then leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “Certain people are threatening me unless I walk away from Jilly.”
“Which certain people?”
“I can’t abandon her. Without me, she’d be eaten alive. They’ve already ripped a fortune off her. She’s still wealthy, but they want the rest. If I don’t stand aside, they’ll kill me. Jilly needs me, big time.”
“I’m sure you charge her, big time.”
Borg wiped his hands across his face. Looked me in the eye. “I’m a good lawyer, Benn. I’ve got problems, but who doesn’t? I’m worth every cent Jilly pays me, because I really care about her. Not like those fuckers.”
“Which fuckers?”
“The Russians and the Colombians. All of them. All.”
“What is it you think I can do about it?”
“Call them off me. Christ, it’s like I’m being hunted. Tell them I’ll deal. Just let Jilly keep a decent-size piece of what her husband left her, maybe throw a crumb or two my way. That’s all I ask.”
“Why don’t you tell them yourself?”
“Because . . . where’s the bathroom?”
I pointed the way, and Borg beelined there. A minute passed, and then another. I figured Borg must be adding to the junk circulating in his system. But before I could knock on the bathroom door, the building entrance door buzzed, and I pressed the entry button—
Borg rushed from the bathroom, nostrils white-rimmed with coke, eyes wide with fear.
“You called them!” he cried.
“Take it easy, partner.”
“You’re with them.”
He ran from the office as the elevator cage opened. He let out a shriek, sidestepped around the man coming from the cage, and plunged down the stairwell. The man stood looking after him, then shrugged and entered my office.
His name was Traum.
“Friend of yours?” he said.
“Lawyer.”
“Figures.”
CHAPTER 37
Traum knew the way my mind worked; he knew all my ways and some of my secrets. Traum had put in twenty years as an NYPD detective before retiring and going private. Our relationship was based on a compact: in return for him keeping his lips zipped about a certain attorney crossing lines, no one got to see a security-camera video of Detective Traum being bribed by a bodega owner who sold grams on the side.
How it was, way b
ack when the bodega owner’s son was my client, a kilo dealer, the owner gifted me the video in case I wanted to extort the crooked cop. I had no such desire, but it was the kind of thing I kept around, just in case.
Sure enough, a few years later, Traum barged into my office, flashed his blue-and-gold detective buzzer, and said, “The other night you were observed entering a beauty parlor on One Twenty-Two and Lex, where you received forty-nine thousand dollars cash. A few minutes after you left, the beauty parlor was raided. Several persons were arrested, and three kilos of cocaine were seized. Three into forty-nine thou is roughly sixteen thousand. The same number as the wholesale price of a kilo. If one of the people arrested confirms you delivered the kilos, that’d kick off an investigation that most probably would lead to an indictment. Yours. I’m the commanding officer of the unit that hit a certain bodega a few years back. You following me?”
I was. The money had been for a case fee, and we both knew it. We also both knew that my fee had been fifty thou. A grand had magically disappeared, and I had no doubt my client would say anything Traum told him to, the truth be damned. I could easily go down on a dealing beef. And even if I beat the rap, the stain would remain forever. I didn’t reply, but my silence spoke volumes.
“I’m informed you have a certain video,” he said. “Give it to me, and your presence in the beauty parlor never gets to the file.”
I didn’t trust him, but I had no choice. Reluctantly, I gave him the video.
“I’m retiring,” he’d said. “Going private. Maybe we’ll do business.”
And so it came to pass. Whenever I had a problem beyond my reach, I called Traum. He was a natural networker who knew the right people to learn about wrong people.
I related what I knew about Jilly, Natty, Joaquin Bolivar, and Evgeny Kursk. “I want to know who’s hooked up with who, and why, and whatever else there is about them. This case is hinky.”
“Who put you into it?”
“Ah, Jacobo Velez.”
He smiled. “Foto?”
When I nodded, Traum belly laughed so hard, the floorboards squealed. When he was done laughing, he shook his head and looked at me as if I were a child.