by Robert Crais
Pike nodded. “Like the super notes from Iran.” Iran was rumored to be counterfeiting U.S. hundred-dollar bills that were so good they were undetectable.
“Exactly.” I looked at Clark. “Markov knows you’re good. What if we tell him that you’re as good as the Iranians?”
Clark was shaking his head. “But I can’t print anything like that. The Iranians use intaglio presses from Switzerland just like our Treasury. They use a paper just like ours.” He kept shaking his head. “I couldn’t duplicate that paper. I can’t get an intaglio press. They cost millions.”
Pike said, “Real money.”
Clark opened his mouth, then closed it.
I said, “We flash a few thousand bucks in real hundreds, only we tell them it’s counterfeit. We let Markov examine them, whatever he wants, and we offer to buy back the boy. All the funny money he wants for Charles.”
Clark said, “But when we give him the counterfeit dollars, he’ll know. He’ll be able to tell that they aren’t the same.”
“I know, Clark. That’s why we’ll need the police.”
Clark simply said, “Okay.”
Walter Tran, Jr., gasped, and Mon turned a dark, murky color. Dak said, “Why the police?”
“We need the police to get Markov off the board. Markov takes possession of the funny money, we get Charles, and the feds make the bust, taking down Markov both for the funny money and the kidnapping.” I turned back to Clark. “If we give Markov to the feds, they might be willing to let you print the dong.”
He stared at me.
“That way you still get your money from Dak.”
He nodded.
“For your kids.”
Clark looked past me at something far away. You could almost see an exit light come on a door at the far end of a hall in his mind.
Nguyen Dak crossed his arms, still looking dangerous, but now looking thoughtful, too. Maybe thinking about his own children. Or maybe just wondering how he could get out of this without losing everything he’d worked for.
I said, “I can call Dobcek and set a meet, but we still need the flash money. A few thousand in hundreds that we may not get back. Markov might want it. We might even have to destroy it to convince him that it’s fake.”
Clark rolled his eyes and made a deep sigh. “Oh, that’s great. Where can we get that?”
Nguyen Dak said, “Me.”
I was staring at him when he said it, and he was staring back. “All right,” I said. “All right.”
Mon looked happy, liking the idea of getting back at the Ruskies.
29
Dak made two phone calls to arrange for the money. After that, I called Dobcek and told him I thought we could work out a trade, but that we would have to talk about it. I didn’t mention the money, but I made it sound like Clark was willing to exchange himself for the boy. It was a classic bait and switch, promise them one thing, give them something else. Whether they like it or not. Dobcek said, “You will bring the father.”
“Right. And you’ll bring the kid.” Classic.
Somebody said something behind Dobcek. Background noise. Then he said, “We will not discuss the details now. Give me your phone number.”
“Why?”
“I will have to discuss this with our friend. I will call you tomorrow with the details.” Our friend. He meant Markov.
“Forget it, Dobcek. I’ll call you.”
Dobcek snickered. “You don’t trust us. You think we find you with the phone number?”
“I’ll call you.”
Someone spoke behind him again, then Dobcek’s voice hardened. “Call us exactly at nine tomorrow morning. Be ready to act immediately. Do you understand?”
“Dobcek, I am the master of understanding. Remember that.”
“Da.”
“I am also the master of vengeance. That boy better not be harmed.”
Dobcek gave a single raspy laugh, then hung up.
Clark, Joe, and the Viets were looking at me. “We’ll set the time and place tomorrow at nine. Will the money be here?”
Dak said, “Twenty thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills will be here in a few hours.”
Pike nodded. “You’re okay, Dak.”
I was climbing the stairs to see Teri when the phone rang. Pike answered, then held it out. “Lucy.”
“What happened?” My heart began hammering. Worse than with the Russians. Worse than when Mon was holding the AK on me.
Pike held the phone.
I ran down, took it, and said, “Luce?”
“We won.” Two words that cut through the adrenaline like a sharp edge. “Elvis, it’s over. We won.”
“You got the job.”
“Yes.”
Pike was staring at me. I nodded at him, and he gripped my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ve got time. Go see her.”
I looked at Clark. I frowned toward the stairs.
Pike said, “Jesus Christ. Go.”
Tracy Mannos lived in a small contemporary home on a lovely street off Roscomare Drive at the top of Bel Air. It was almost ten when I got there, but Lucy and Tracy were bright and excited and celebrating their victory with a bottle of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge Brut. Tracy opened the door, but Lucy almost knocked her down getting to me. We hugged hard, the two of us beaming, and Tracy laughed. “If you two start taking off your clothes, I’m calling the police.”
Lucy and I started laughing, too, as if someone or something had pulled a plug and an ocean of tension was draining away. Lucy said, “How long can you stay?”
I stepped back, and the laughter faded a bit. “Not long.” I told her about the money. I told her what we were going to try to do. “I don’t know how long this is going to take. I might be busy the next couple of days.”
She had one of my hands in both of hers again, squeezing hard. “I know. I’ll have to get back to Ben tomorrow.” Two ships passing. The price of adulthood.
“Yes, but you’ll be back.”
Her smile widened again. “You bet your buns I will, Studly.”
“Tell me about it, Luce. Tell me everything that happened today.”
They did, some of which they now knew as fact, and some of which was supposition. It was neither complicated nor elaborate, because such things never are. It was merely ugly. Stuart Greenberg wasn’t the evil, old-boy-crony that we’d suspected. When Richard had learned it was KROK that offered Lucy the job, he used his position at BM&D as an entrée to KROK’s parent firm, then suggested to them that Lucy was erratic in the workplace. When the parent firm, concerned that KROK was in the process of hiring an uncertain(not to mention, untested) on-air personality, passed along their concerns to Stuart Greenberg, Greenberg questioned this information, and was told to contact the source, namely one Richard Chenier, a highly respected partner at the Baton Rouge office of Benton, Meyers & Dane. Greenberg had only been reacting to what Richard reported. Tracy said, “When Stuart realized what had happened, he spent the rest of the meeting apologizing.”
Sometimes you just have to shake your head. “And that was it? You’ve got the job?”
Lucy smiled. “We agreed to agree. Stuart promised to phone David Shapiro and wrap up the negotiation as quickly as possible.”
Tracy leaned toward me. “She has the goddamned job.”
I said, “What about Richard?”
Lucy’s game face reappeared. “I’ve phoned his office. I’ve also phoned his boss.”
Tracy said, “I think she should sue the sonofabitch.”
Lucy’s mouth formed a hard knot. Thinking of Ben, maybe. Thinking how far do you take a war like this when some of the fallout might rain on your child. She said, “Yes. Well. We’ll see.” Then she seemed to force the thoughts away, and took my hand again. “I want to thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Of course you did. You supported my need to fight this without you.” She smiled and jiggled my hand. “I know you. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
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I shrugged. “No big deal. You said I could shoot him later.”
“Well, yes. I guess I did.”
Lucy glanced at Tracy, and Tracy smiled. Voiceless female communication. Tracy kissed my cheek, and handed me the bottle of Brut. There wasn’t much left. “You take care of yourself, doll.” And then she walked away.
I said, “Did you just send her away?”
“I did.”
“Good.”
Lucy and I sat in Tracy’s living room, holding hands. It was late, and getting later, but I did not want to leave. Lucy said, “I do wish I could stay, Elvis.”
“I know.”
She looked at me carefully, and then she touched my face. The bruise from Seattle had faded. “I’ll be out soon to find a place to live. As soon as Ben finishes school, we’ll move.”
I nodded.
“You damn well better still be here.”
I nodded again.
“Please be careful tomorrow.”
“Careful is my middle name.”
“No, it isn’t. But it should be.”
“I’ll be here when you move out, Lucille. You have my word.”
She kissed my hand, and we sat like that, and not very long after, I drove back to Studio City.
30
I let myself back into the safe house a few minutes after one that morning to find Mon hiding behind the door with his pistol. Mon shrugged when I looked at him, and said, “Can’t be too careful.”
Walter Junior was stretched out on the floor, sleeping. Dak and Walter Senior were at the dining room table, playing cards. Clark was sitting with them. “Money come yet?”
Dak was concentrating on his cards. “Soon.”
“Where’s Pike?”
Mon said, “He left, but he did not say anything.” His eyes narrowed.”I no like that.”
“He never says anything. Forget it.”
Clark’s skin seemed greasy, and if you looked close enough, you could see that his hands were trembling. “Clark?”
Clark shook his head.
“How’re the kids?”
“Sleeping.”
I joined them at the table and waited. No one spoke. The waiting is often the worst.
At twenty minutes after two that morning, someone knocked softly at the door and handed Dak an overnight bag containing twenty thousand dollars in nice neat hundreds. Real hundreds, printed by the U.S. Treasury on paper milled at the Crane Paper Mill in Dalton, Massachusetts. Dak probably kept them under his mattress.
Clark pronounced them too clean, put the bills in a large Ziploc plastic bag with a half pound of ground coffee and one pound of dried kidney beans, and put the bag into the dryer. It wouldn’t hurt the money, Clark said, but it would uniformly color the money as if it had been falsely aged.
Joe Pike returned at just after four. He gave Clark a small brown vial of prescription pills, and murmured something to Clark before moving to a dark corner of the living room. Clark looked at the vial, then stared at Pike for a long time before he went into the bathroom. A little while later he appeared to be feeling much better.
None of us formally went to bed; instead, we perched on the couch or in the big chair or on the floor, and drifted in and out of nervous uncertain catnaps, waiting for the dawn.
Sometime very early that morning, Teri came downstairs and moved between the napping men and cuddled against her father.
I phoned Dobcek at nine the next morning, exactly as I said I would. He said, “We meet you on the Venice boardwalk in exactly one hour.”
“Let me speak with the boy.”
He put Charles on the line, and I told him that everything would be fine. I told him to stay calm, and to trust that Joe and I would bring him home. Dobcek came back on the line before I was finished. “You know the bookstore they have there?”
“Yeah.” Small World Books.
“Wait on the grass across from that. We come to you.” Then he hung up.
I looked at Clark. “You up to this?”
“Of course. Charles is my son.”
“Then let’s go.”
Dak agreed to stay with Teri and Winona while Joe and Clark and I went to the meet. We used Joe’s Jeep, with Joe driving. Two long cases were on the rear floor that hadn’t been there yesterday. Guess he’d gotten them last night.
We used the freeways to get to Santa Monica, then turned south along Ocean Boulevard, riding in silence until we came to Venice. Pike turned onto a side street and stopped. He said, “What’s the deal?”
“They want Clark and me across from the bookstore on the grass. They’ll come to us. They’re supposed to have the boy, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Clark leaned forward. He was holding the overnight bag on his lap like a school lunch. “Why won’t they have Charles?”
“They’ll say that the boy is in a car nearby, and maybe he will be, but probably he won’t. They’re not coming here to trade, Clark. They’re coming here to kill us. Keep that in mind.”
“Oh.”
“They’ll say the boy is somewhere else to get us to go with them to a place they’ve picked out. It will be a private place, and that’s where they’ll do the murder. We in the trade call that the kill zone.”
Clark said, “You say that so easily.”
Pike shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“But how will we get Charles?”
“We’ll show them the money. Your job is to stay calm and convince them that you printed this money and that you can print more. That’s very important, Clark. Can you do that?”
Clark nodded. “Oh, sure.” Oh, sure.
“Markov wants you dead, but if he thinks he can get something from you before he kills you, he might go for it.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Pike said, “Then we’ll kill him.”
When we were two blocks north of the bookstore. Pike turned into an alley, got out, and slipped away without saying a word. He took one of the cases. Clark said, “Where’s he going?”
“He’s going to make sure they don’t kill us while we’re waiting for them.”
“You think they’d do that?”
“Yes, Clark. They would do that.”
I climbed behind the wheel, and at nine forty-two, I left Pike’s Jeep illegally parked in a red zone behind the Venice boardwalk. “Let’s go.”
I led Clark along the alley to the boardwalk, and then to the bookstore. It was a bright, hazy day, just on the right side of cool. Street people were already up and walking their endless laps of the boardwalk, and shop merchants were hawking tattoos and sunglasses to tourists come to see what all the excitement was about. Tall palms swayed in the breeze. Joggers and Rollerbladers and male and female bodybuilders with great tans moved through the streams of people with practiced indifference. Clark said, “Where’s Joe?”
“You won’t see him, so don’t look for him. The Russians will wonder what you’re looking for.”
He locked his eyes forward, afraid now to look anyplace other than directly ahead. “Do you see them?”
“No, but they’re probably watching us.”
“Oh.”
The bookstore had just unlocked its doors, and a dark-haired woman with glasses was pulling a wire magazine rack onto the walk. I walked Clark into the store and told him to wait inside with the bag and watch me through the window. I told him not to come out until I waved for him. The dark-haired woman eyed us suspiciously. Probably thought we were shoplifters.
I walked back across to the grass and waited. Three homeless men were lying on the grass there, one of them holding a fat dog. The man with the dog looked at me, and said, “Spare any change?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be cheap. It’s for the dog.”
I shook my head. “No change.”
The man smirked at his friend. “Cheap.”
I looked along the boardwalk first one way, then the other, then along the beach behind me, and into the parking lots and a
lleys, just another guy hanging around on the boardwalk wondering if he could get his gun out in time to save Clark Hewitt’s life, not to mention his own. I eyed the fat dog. “Looks like he could use a little exercise.”
The homeless man was affronted. “Mind your own goddamned business.” So much for small talk.
Six minutes after ten o’clock, Alexei Dobcek walked out of the bookstore’s parking lot and came directly toward me as if we were the only two guys on the beach. I said, “Where’s the boy?”
“Near. Let’s get Clark and go see him.”
I lifted the bag. “We had a different idea.”
Dobcek glanced at the bag, then past me and to both sides, like maybe someone might be coming up on him fast. He smiled like I should know better than to try anything like this. “We know Clark is in the bookstore. Why you want to get stupid like this?”
I dropped the bag at his feet. “Look in the bag.”
He glanced at the bag, but didn’t pick it up. The homeless man was eyeing the bag, too. Dobcek said, “Markov is near with the boy. We had an agreement, did we not?”
“Look in the bag. It won’t bite you.”
The homeless man said, “Can I look?”
Dobcek pasted the homeless man with dead eyes. “Leave here before I crush your dog.”
The homeless man gathered up the dog and scurried away.
Dobcek said, “Fucking trash.” All heart, these guys.
“Look in the bag, Dobcek.”
He glanced at me again, then squatted and opened the bag. He reached in, felt the paper, then closed the bag and stood. “So?”
“It’s Clark’s new project. Bring it to Markov, have him look at it, and tell him we’d like to work out a different arrangement.”
Dobcek stared at me, then shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“Bring it to Markov and have him look at it. I’ll wait here.”
Dobcek leaned close to me. “We’ll kill the boy.”
“Have him look at the money, Dobcek. I’ll wait and so will Clark. We’re not going anywhere, and Markov will want to talk about it. Tell him this is a sample.”
Alexei Dobcek looked one hard long time at the bookstore, then walked away with the bag.
I watched couples share coffee and breakfast at the little restaurant next to the bookstore, and I thought I might bring Lucy down here. She’d like the bookstore, and we could sit at one of the little outdoor tables and watch the street performers and enjoy ourselves. Read a little, eat a little. Be nice to do if I survived the next ten minutes or so.