A Town Called Malice

by Adam Abramowitz

  “Who lost everything in a fire.”

  “Tragic and true.”

  “Before BPD moved from Berkeley Street to Ruggles and digitized all the files.”

  “Poof,” Wells says with a flourish.

  Dr. Love discreetly drops her card on our table as she makes her way out the door. Wells ignores it. So do I because what are my chances? And anyhow, lately, there’s been a sea change in me; only one woman has been on my mind. It takes a lot of getting used to, especially because I haven’t done anything about it yet and I’m not sure I will. Or can.

  “I like men.” Wells winks at me and flips his brand-new fedora onto his head.

  FORTY-ONE

  “So this is a real date?” Anitra Tehran smiles at me across the candlelit table at the Franklin Cafe, the place usually out of my price range only Sam had resurfaced and given Zero the go-ahead to turn the casino poker chips over to Darryl’s men for forty cents on the dollar. Who then sold them for sixty cents on the dollar, flights to Vegas filling up fast with fools who think they can beat the house armed with house money.

  Zero took a cut. Sam took a cut and donated a third of it to a harbor cleanup fund; I’m not quite sure if Zero had a hand in that decision, but it sure points that way. Sam has never cared much about money. He’s an MIT grad with a goddamn doctorate, he can do whatever the hell he wants. The other thirds he split between an organization that assists homeless veterans and to directly secure an apartment for Charlie, back among his people in Medford.

  With my share I paid Brill for two years’ rent up front and figure I can get that up to three years with the sweat equity I’ve been putting in. The rest I donated to Alzheimer’s research.

  “I’ve been playing hard to get,” I say. “Had to give myself time to heal up.” I point to my face.

  “A month?” Anitra says.

  “I’m a slow healer. At least my face is.”

  “Which you busted up crashing your bike.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Even though you’re a pro.”

  “Boston,” I remind her. “We live in Boston.”

  “And how exactly does Boston pavement taste?” Anitra’s smile is there, but it’s a reporter’s smile, not a date’s. Though she’s wearing something fancier than jeans and a sweater tonight: a pencil tweed skirt and black sleeveless shirt. “Nowhere near as good as this meal,” I say. “But maybe it’s just the company.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty slick.” Anitra points her knife at me. “Definitely a step up from your ‘bad boy’ line.” Her hair is downright silly: twin ponytails that are more punk rock than anything else, a shiny part straight down the middle.

  “It’s not a line,” I say. “But enough about me, tell me about the files Sam unencrypted for you. I’ve been watching for your byline but you haven’t written anything lately. You still have a job?”

  “I do.” Her date smile returns. Brown eyes flicker in the candle flames. Something inside my chest hurts. A lot. I try to ignore it.

  “It basically comes down to this: Rambir was using the ransomware like we’d figured out before. He just had the dumb luck to encrypt and ransom the files of Visners & Miraglia, which Antti Voracek was a silent partner in. Files which included the holdings and titles of a half dozen Russian escrow accounts, all this big foreign money buying up Boston condominiums with price tags in the millions.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Why buy property or why buy Boston property? It’s really the same answer for both. It’s a safe investment, especially in this new city. The values of these properties will only go up over time, barring a nuclear war. And the current laws still allow ownership to be cloaked in secrecy, layers and layers of LLCs and holding companies that don’t have to report massive cash infusions like the banks do. It’s essentially the perfect way to launder money. Big money. This story is fucking huge and it’s not just a Boston story. It’s the same in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, all the super-expensive towns.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Do you know what deoffshorization is, Zesty?”

  “Yeah, I think I tested negative for it last year.”

  “Very funny.” She points the knife again.

  “Everything else came up negative, too, I’m just saying.”

  “TMI,” Tehran says, the knife still employed, this time with an extended arm, prompting me to back off. “And stay focused. I’m trying to teach you something here. Since Putin came to power, Russians have squirreled away hundreds of billions of dollars overseas. Even as the Kremlin was pushing a deoffshorization campaign, which is basically aimed at repatriating Russian capital. Just last year over a hundred billion dollars left the country and more is headed this way if the Russian economy continues to flop around like a dying fish. For wealthy Russians, these new Boston waterfront high-rises and condos, some of them selling for upwards of twenty, thirty million dollars, serve as a double parachute, a safe-deposit box of sorts, and a nice cushy landing spot in case the political climate back home forces them to run. You following me here?”

  “You have pretty eyes,” I say. “You don’t even wear any makeup, do you?”

  “Shut up. Even if these condos are empty, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like you’ll notice a huge influx of Russians around town or anything. At least not like in some hot spots in London where you can’t walk down the street and not hear Russian being spoken.”

  “Where did all this money come from?”

  “Great question. A lot of people got rich when Yeltsin privatized Russia’s massive state companies. The timing was perfect. Technology made it easier for vast sums of cash to flow unchecked across borders, shell companies were created in a day, whole colonies of the super-rich buying up property without ever having to put their own names on leases. Purchasers could legally register these companies in the names of accountants or lawyers, or relatives, or their fucking poodle, it almost seems. And these purchases at thirty, sixty million dollars at a pop can also be made by a group of investors, further obscuring the source of the money. And what’s more, get this: Ownership of shell companies can be shifted at any time with absolutely no indication in property records. And all this continued in the first years under Putin.”

  “The makings of the oligarchs,” I say.

  “Exactly. You’re pretty smart for a messenger.”

  “Ouch.”

  Anitra Tehran looks at me for a long time, starts to say something, but then pulls back.

  “What?” I say.

  “You were right, Zesty.”

  “About…?”

  “What you said about me and the men I dated. Pretty much all of them.”

  “There were a lot?” I wrinkle my face.

  “Shut up. And the women who I work with, too. And my former classmates. Almost everyone had something cruel or snarky to say when I told them I was going on a date with you.”

  “Oh.” I sigh. “Them, too, huh?”

  “Yeah. There really is a class divide in this city, in the neighborhoods. I didn’t look at it that way before I met you, but it runs deep. I see it now. It hurts you, doesn’t it?”

  “I just don’t know exactly where I fit in anymore,” I say. “Or if I want to if the city keeps turning like it is. I fucking love Boston, but I think I love it more for its scars and imperfections. Its rough spots. And all of that just seems to be getting smoothed over now. I dunno, maybe I’m just nostalgic. Anyhow.” I shrug. “What did your coworkers say? That I’d take you to Wendy’s, try to grope you in the alley behind JJ Foley’s?”

  “Pretty much. But actually, I like Wendy’s and JJ Foley’s is awesome.”

  “True, but you’ve never been in the alley. No bueno. Anyhow, I think we ought to finish up.” Without our noticing, we were the last table seated, the waitstaff going about their preps, folding napkins, making up tables. I signal our waiter.

  “Take your time,” he says.

  “That’s sweet of
him,” Anitra says. “But I’ll give you the condensed version. The files that Rambir encrypted and tried to ransom, as you know, belonged to Antti Voracek. Not directly, of course, but he had a substantial stake in Visners & Miraglia LLP. It was a legit business. Voracek could have just paid Rambir off in Bitcoin and be done with it, but he was afraid that Rambir might recognize all the LLCs, the names of some of these oligarchs, and then try to extort them directly or at the very least bring attention to them. The fact is he couldn’t be more wrong. There’s absolutely no incentive, in Boston at least, to identify the sources of this money tsunami. Hell, there’s not even a legal obligation.”

  “On who?”

  “Everybody who’s getting rich off this cash and driving up the prices of your more modest places around here.” Anitra switches to her fork this time, swirling around to indicate the surrounding South End neighborhood.

  “And by modest, you’re now talking only in that one-, two-million-dollar range.”

  “Exactly. Think about all the players involved: real estate agents, lawyers, accountants, escrow agents, title brokers, condo boards, contractors, building workers, construction companies—”

  “Politicians. Campaign donations. Increased tax revenue.”

  “It’s a perfect storm for those at the top,” Tehran notes, attached to weather metaphors, which will probably get edited out when the final version of the story comes to print.

  And Antti Voracek, as high in the Russian Mob as he was, still had the gutter’s view and dealt in violence and death. Karma, if you believe in such things, as I do, though that doesn’t really bode well for me in the long run.

  “So you’re no longer writing about Rambir’s murder?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t look particularly upset about it,” I say, the words not coming out like I’d meant them.

  “There goes your groping in an alley,” Tehran deadpans.

  “Is anybody on it?”

  “Not directly. But if Batista solves it, we’ll cover it. To a degree.”

  To the degree that MIT and the Boston Police Department and the FBI all put their stamp of approval on it. Call me cynical, but I’ve seen this show before. It will be radio silence followed by a brief news conference, a story, and maybe a sidebar on page fourteen next to an ad for Bertucci’s.

  “Wells will solve it,” I say. “Plus, Brill’s been reinstated.”

  “I heard. Should we have a drink in his honor?”

  “Let’s do it at Foley’s,” I say. “It’s practically around the corner.”

  Jeremiah is back working the bar when we get in and he pours us a couple of shots of Jameson, no beer chaser this time.

  “To Brill.” We clink glasses, throw the shots back.

  “May he be a benevolent and responsive landlord.”

  The side door to the alley is propped open, a trio of cigarettes flaring as we step outside into the darkness.

  “This here is—”

  “When you should stop talking.”

  Anitra Tehran pins me to the brick wall and beats me to the grope.

  FORTY-TWO

  Dinner at Brill’s means takeout from The Smoke Shop BBQ in Southie, plenty of napkins, and an outfit you don’t mind getting sauce on. Wells eats standing up because he doesn’t own anything he wouldn’t mind getting stained. If you didn’t know the four of us, you’d probably guess the apartment belonged to him since he was the only one who looked rich enough to afford it, restored as it was to its Victorian beauty: re-sanded hardwood floors by yours truly, repurposed window frames, the salvaged molding up and painted, built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcase, and an open kitchen divided by a pale granite slab countertop where the rest of us sit.

  Wells looks around admiringly and says, “It’s hard to believe this is the same place of a month ago. You guys went at it pretty hard the last few weeks, huh?”

  “I told you,” Brill says grumpily, back on the sharp ground of his partnership with Wells. “I used the money Zesty fronted me to hire a real work crew. With skills.”

  “For your floor, at least,” Anitra points out. “I still get to wake up with plaster dust in my hair.”

  “That’s your choice,” Brill responds gruffly. “Deal with it.”

  “He’s so sweet,” Anitra says. She means it.

  “Hope your insulation’s tight. It’s getting cold out there.” Christmas lights had started to go up and I can see a neighbor across the way dragging through his door a tree like an open green umbrella.

  “Those windows might look old, but they’re new,” Brill says. “Unless you’re talking about noise.” He points a thumb upstairs to my place.

  “Puh-lease,” Anitra says. “You don’t hear a thing from us.”

  “I better not.” He points a warning finger at Anitra, who doesn’t blush at all.

  “Quiet as a mouse,” she says. “Anyhow, it’s not like he’s getting any. I’ve still got my own place and I’ve been busy.”

  Still working on the money trail and condo boom story, though the paper had reversed itself, tasking her with the Rambir story again because it’s so juicy. After a few weeks Professor Yuki Fuji surfaced in Macau, the Las Vegas of Asia, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. Obviously, she had planned for the long game, her prior visits there to set herself up if she ever had to run. And run she had to.

  Fuji was implicated in the murder of Rambir Roshan and it was a sensational story but one that ended abruptly because there would be no trial unless she set foot back into the country, which was highly unlikely.

  Boston Police divers found the gun Fuji shot Rambir with as she tried to get ahold of the chips that Rambir had given to Sam for safekeeping.

  Rambir had told Sam that he was meeting someone, though he wouldn’t say who, and to bring the chips only when he called, the cautious approach of a poker player getting the sense something wasn’t right, that a bad beat was coming his way.

  He never called.

  That was the theory anyway. Fuji had planned the meeting meticulously, worn a long man’s coat sprayed with a heavy cologne, over a thigh-cut neoprene wet suit. The coat lacked any DNA evidence except the blood splatter, which was from Rambir, and the fabric from the coat that ended up on Roshan when Fuji shot him at close range without ever pulling out the gun.

  Rambir probably never even knew what was happening to him, the shot muffled enough that nobody nearby remembered hearing any loud noise or seeing flashes from the barrel. Fuji ditched the coat, dove into the still relatively warm waters of the Charles River, and using whatever strokes had garnered her all those swimming medals left in her office, swam in darkness to the other side, the flashing blues of the converging Boston and Cambridge cruisers probably already visible by the time she pulled herself out, laced up a pair of sneakers she’d stashed, and jogged her way to her rented home near the MIT campus, her reentry caught on university cameras.

  Cold. Calculated. Regret minimization theory to the nth degree. That’s about as far as the story went, MIT throwing in a little misdirection with some inane dissertation dispute gone wrong, never mind Fuji’s relatively large bank account cleaned out while Agent Lee, Rosalinda Worth, and I twiddled our thumbs in her campus office.

  Life goes on. Until it doesn’t.

  FORTY-THREE

  My father dies with Sid by his side. Unexpected, but expected. Which doesn’t make it any easier. Zero handles all the arrangements; he’d been preparing longer than I had. He’d rehearsed his role, studied and prepared. Steeled himself. And crumbled. And I crumbled with him.

  Memorial services are held at Temple Emanuel around the corner. It’s packed. I don’t know most of the people, but I know many, blurred as they are through tears that won’t stop. Martha, Wells, Brill, Anitra, Charlie, Otis, Cedrick, a massive Star of David bouquet in blue and white carnations with a card from Darryl, retired detective Peter Polishuk, Jerry and Jeremiah Foley, Sid, Van Gogh Capizo, and the other men who looked after my father,
too many movers and messengers to name, and I guess the usual congregants that frequent the temple. And family. Zero, Jhochelle, and Eli, who will have no recollection of this event at all, only stories that will one day take on the guise of memory.

  Rabbi Day officiates. I assume he left his crowbar at home. He speaks eloquently and fondly of my father and the words pass through me and I can’t remember a thing he says the second it’s spoken though he told me earlier he wrote it all down and I’ll read it when I’m ready. If I’m ever ready.

  We sit shiva, cover the mirrors, greet long-lost friends and acquaintances, meet new faces, share memories and stories and food and booze and bong hits and music, lots and lots of music—Etta James, George Jones, Aretha, Marcus Roberts, Miles Davis, Bonnie Raitt, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker—his entire vinyl collection of local Boston rock and roll—the Nervous Eaters, The Neighborhoods, the Cavedogs, Treat Her Right, the Lyres, Human Sexual Response—and poker. Endless rounds of poker for real, but not brutal stakes, chips stacked and then drained from wells, Lady Luck making the rounds; nobody getting hurt, losing more than they can afford to lose. That time has already passed.

  “There is no commandment to be consoled,” the Rabbi tells me after the seven days of shiva are over. “Or sober.” He notes all the empty bottles around me.

  “Those aren’t mine,” I say.

  “I know.” The Rabbi smiles. “I was seeing if you’re ready.”

  “He’s fuckin’ ready,” Zero says, coming in behind the Rabbi. He wears a crisp white shirt and a colorful yarmulke on his head.

  I wasn’t ready at my father’s gravesite, at the private ceremony we held on a small Berkshire farm that I hadn’t known Zero owned. We kept it small and private because the land wasn’t zoned for a burial, but it’s what our father wanted. We dug the grave ourselves, Sid, Zero, the Rabbi, Van Gogh, Jhochelle, and Karl Klaussen, who alternates between narcocorrido songs and those from his one and only album until Van Gogh complains that he’d like to “fuckin’ hear something I know, you know, somethin’ I can sing to.”