“Have you heard from Lucy?” Doug asked.
Levi shook his head. “Should I have? She left my place four days ago, just after your guys tore up most of Flushing—which somehow never made the news, by the way. I haven’t heard from her since. Why?”
Mason frowned. “Her phone has been offline since she left your place. Did she say anything before she left? Where she was going?”
Glancing at the spook or whatever he was, Levi wasn’t feeling a lot of sympathy for his plight. “Is she in some kind of trouble?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I’ve got her records completely expunged. She’s clean as a whistle.”
“And the triad? What happened to them?”
Mason grinned. “We’ve arrested nearly two hundred would-be purchasers and another fifty traffickers, and we’re tracking down another one hundred suspects, all domestic. The Hong Kong Security Bureau has put away nearly one thousand direct members of the offending syndicate, included the top echelon who ran the whole thing.”
“You cut off the head of the snake. Congrats.”
The fed nodded and sighed. “It’s a start. But where one trafficking organization ends, it seems like two sprout up. It’s a never-ending problem.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Anspach. We still can’t find him. You don’t—”
“Don’t have a clue.”
Mason stared at him. “You sure?”
Levi stopped and returned the man’s gaze. “Would I lie to you?”
Mason made an exasperated sound and muttered, “You probably ground him up and served him as a Bolognese sauce.”
Levi cocked an eyebrow. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”
###
Though his taxi cab driver cursed at traffic snarling the streets of Manhattan, Levi smiled contentedly. Nothing was going to wreck his good mood. He was done with DC. No baggage, no pseudo-girlfriends, no obligations, nothing.
The taxi rolled past East 86th Street and pulled up to the familiar building with two marble columns on each side of the entrance. It was still hard for Levi to get used to having a Park Avenue address, even if it was a mob building. The words “The Helmsley Arms” emblazoned in gold leaf above the ten-foot doors showed a little bit of Vinnie’s style, and it somehow all just worked.
It was home.
As Levi hopped out of the car, the cool damp of the city hit him. The muted scents in the air, the humidity, the cloud cover overhead … it was going to snow tonight.
The doors opened as he approached the building’s entrance, and Frankie greeted him with a smile. “He’s back!”
Levi gave him a quizzical look as they hugged and walked into the building. “Where else would I be?”
Frankie looped his arm over Levi’s shoulders as he walked him onto the elevators. As soon as the elevator doors slid closed behind them, he said in a lighthearted tone, “Vinnie was figuring after you got that Jap mob boss’s granddaughter back, they’d be trying to lure you away. You know, to work for them. Kind of half expected to get a ‘Dear Don Bianchi’ letter in the mail.”
Levi turned to face the security chief of the Bianchi family as Frankie pressed the button for the top floor. People in their type of business never joked about switching alliances. That’s how you found yourself at the wrong end of a bullet.
“Why the hell would you even joke about that?” he said.
His friend laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “He didn’t mean anything by it. You’ll see soon enough.”
Levi’s warning radar suddenly kicked into overdrive.
They stepped off the elevator and walked down a short hallway. Two more mobsters hopped up from their chairs and opened a set of double doors to Don Bianchi’s parlor.
As Frankie and Levi walked in, Levi’s heart thudded loudly. His senses were tingling. It was almost as if he could hear the crackle of the electricity running through each fiber of his muscles.
The room was unchanged since the last time he’d been there. The same two fireplaces, both lit and crackling. Vinnie’s large desk, wet bar, chairs, ornately-carved wood paneling, paintings, and even the replica of the Venus de Milo.
Nobody else was there.
Trying to keep his breath calm, he was half-expecting the worst when the door at the far end of the room opened.
Don Vincenzo Bianchi, head of the Bianchi crime family, and Levi’s lifelong friend, walked in. Their eyes met, and Vinnie’s smile told him everything he needed to know.
The man was nervous.
“Levi!” Vinnie walked quickly across the room, and they hugged and kissed each other’s cheeks. Like always, especially when the don was nervous, he poured himself an amaretto sour. “Can I pour you a seltzer?”
“No, I’m good.”
Frankie went to the far side of the don’s desk and came back rolling a large expensive-looking travel trunk. Levi’s anxiety shifted toward bewilderment.
“You know what, Vinnie, maybe I’ll take a spritz of seltzer.” Levi walked over to the bar just as Vinnie squeezed a CO2 cartridge into a large metal canister, and moments later the three of them were sitting around the fire, sipping their drinks.
Levi waited patiently, knowing that he’d been brought up here for a specific reason. Occasionally glancing at the shipping trunk sitting on casters between Vinnie and Frankie. It had no markings on it whatsoever.
“I know you delivered on your contract with the Tanaka syndicate.” Vinnie sipped at his amber drink and then pointed at Levi with his drink hand. “They were particularly pleased with you.”
“To be honest, I didn’t think we had an actual contract. All I ever promised Mister Watanabe was that I’d do my best in trying to find his boss’s granddaughter.”
Frankie uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his drink on the arm of the wingback leather chair. “Trust me, Vinnie set up a doozie of a deal. Lucky for us, you actually pulled through.”
Levi pointed at the trunk. “Is that part of the deal?”
Vinnie shook his head and cleared his throat. “I got a call from that Watanabe guy this morning. His boss was on the line and he was translating for him. Basically, the way this guy talked about you, it was like he was talking about his own son. Levi, I don’t know if he had a screw loose or something, but it was the strangest thing. Anyway, he asked me to grant him a favor for you.”
Puzzled, Levi pointed at himself “A favor for me?”
“Get this. He wanted to know how much it would be to buy you out of this thing of ours, set you on a path to being free.”
Levi didn’t understand. He and Tanaka had barely met, yet the old man wanted him out of the business. Out of danger. Why?
And then it made sense.
To Levi’s surprise, a warm feeling bloomed in his chest. He clamped it down and took a deep breath.
“Levi…” Vinnie’s voice was low, and had developed a sudden rasp. “It doesn’t matter what you do, if you’re cut, I bleed. I’d never hold you back from anything. When you left after Mary’s death, no questions. I understood.
“When you came back … no questions.
“You want to go, I’ll understand. No questions.”
Levi took in another deep breath and blew it out. He shook his and was about to say something when Vinnie motioned to Frankie.
Frankie rolled the heavy shipping trunk toward Levi.
“Open it, Levi,” Vinnie said. “Whatever’s in there, it’s for you. A gift from Tanaka, a sort of tip.”
Frankie snorted as Levi flipped open the metal latches holding the trunk closed. “Yeah, this morning, we had four of the biggest Asian muscle-heads I’d ever seen outside of a zoo bring that over.”
Levi flipped open the last latch and lifted the lid—and his mouth dropped open. Inside was a fortune in dollars, yen, and euros. Hundreds of pounds of cash. “That’s some tip.” He tried doing the calculation in his head, it was easily millions of dollars,
maybe ten million? Twenty?
Frankie whistled. “Man, that’s just not something you see every day.”
On top of the giant pile of money was a black lacquered wooden presentation box about eighteen inches long, held closed by a shiny gold clasp. Levi picked it up and opened it.
Inside was a scroll held closed by a red silk ribbon, and underneath it was an object wrapped in a green cloth.
Levi untied the ribbon and unrolled the scroll.
It held a freshly inked message in Japanese, drawn with precision, but without artistic flair. It wasn’t Ryuki’s handwriting. Tanaka’s?
Levi,
My plane has just crossed over US territory and we are to meet again within a handful of hours. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for all that you’ve done for me and for my granddaughter, who is more precious to me than anything I possess.
I have spoken to your Don Bianchi, and realize now that you and he are not truly kohai and senpai, junior and senior. At least, that is not how his heart knows it to be. He thinks of you as a dearest brother, even though that isn’t something he said. Ryuki translated, but I heard his voice. Felt his emotions, read his meaning.
Levi glanced at Vinnie and kept his breathing steady. Focusing on the paper in his hand.
As you can likely see, I have provided for your use a new start. I can only wish for you what I had hoped to accomplish for my son: the means to live a healthy, prosperous, and long life.
It is my most sincere wish that you consider an alternate path to the one which we’ve both chosen. With this, I hope you can. But, even if you continue in this business, know that you will have an ally and a friend in me and in those loyal to me.
I wish you only the best.
I have also included something that I think you alone will appreciate. It had been my son’s most precious possession from before he went to America, near the time you knew him. It is yours to use as honor would dictate.
Shinzo Tanaka
Curiosity flooded through Levi as he carefully unwrapped the green cloth. He gasped as he revealed a shiny dagger—a tanto.
With his heart racing, and nobody else existing in the world at that moment, Levi’s memories flashed back to a dozen years ago when he’d been given just such an item from Master Oyama, his martial arts teacher.
The balance was the same, the weight, and of course the maker’s mark, Jun’s knife was as near an exact duplicate of his as was possible.
Levi’s own tanto had been stolen over a year ago. He looked up at Frankie and Vinnie who were quietly watching him. He lifted the dagger to his lips, kissed it, put it back into its case, and closed the lid with a smile. “Well, that was definitely unexpected.” He set the box back on top of the money. “Any guesses as to how much money is in here?”
“It’s about thirty million, give or take.” said Frankie.
“So, what do you think?” Vinnie asked. “Off to Hawaii, buy a decent house and play with the hula girls for the rest of your life?”
Levi stood and rolled his eyes. “I got enough girls back at my mom’s place that need college educations, clothes, books, and other stuff when the time comes.” He stepped around the trunk and gave the don a bear hug. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Vinnie embraced him tightly and whispered, “You’ve always been my brother, never forget that. I’d die for you, Levi.”
“Right back at you.” Levi stepped back and looked Vinnie in the eyes. They were wet, and slightly bloodshot, likely from the emotion of the moment. “Remember when you called me an angel in wolf’s clothing?”
The don wiped his eyes. “I guess, maybe.” He patted Levi’s chest and chuckled. “Though that fits you to a T, my friend.” He turned to Frankie and pointed at the trunk. “You’ll need to talk to the Rosenbergs about getting this kind of cash into the system so that Levi doesn’t get the feds breathing down his neck for their share.”
As Vinnie and Frankie talked shop, Levi replayed in his mind Vinnie’s reaction to his mentioning the phrase.
There’s no way that Mason would have picked up on that same phrase, was there? Yet Levi couldn’t imagine Vinnie being involved with anything that had to do with Mason or any fed. Vinnie had always had a visceral disdain for all authority but his own.
Levi looked down at the cash. It suddenly dawned on him what such a staggering amount of money actually meant to him. He’d always had a nagging worry about how he’d take care of his mother and the kids, especially if something happened to him. But with this, he’d be able to set them up so that no matter what happens to him, they’d be fine.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled.
With no complicated relationships, no feds breathing down his neck, and nobody expecting anything from him at the moment, life was finally getting back to some semblance of normalcy.
###
Levi was sound asleep when the phone rang. He lurched into a sitting position, snatched up the phone from its cradle, and said, “Yes?’
“Sorry, Levi. It’s Tony from the front. We’ve got a lady named Lucy here. She says she knows you and it’s important, but she made it pretty clear that she ain’t letting us frisk her.”
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Levi saw it was only three in the morning. He chuckled. “Asian lady, right? Pretty hot, but if looks could kill, you’d all be dead?”
“Smoking hot, and ya. Exactly that.”
“Okay, send her up. I’ll talk to her.”
“You got it.”
Levi stumbled out of bed, and by the time he walked over to the door, he heard the first knock.
He opened the door, and there she stood, as lovely and statuesque as always. A few snowflakes sparkled in her jet-black hair.
She took a step toward him. “Remember, don’t touch me.”
Then she looped her arm around his neck, pulled him in for a kiss and pressed herself against him.
Before he knew what was even going on, she walked past him and took a seat in the same leather armchair she’d sat in before.
Levi looked at her with utter bewilderment. “What was—”
“I wanted to make sure I got your attention.” Her slight Russian accent became more pronounced. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh?” Levi stood by the coffee table. “Is this something I should be sitting down for?”
Lucy smiled—an unusual expression for her. She seemed excited about something. “Yes, you’ll probably need to be sitting.”
Levi sat, but couldn’t help but replay in his mind what had just happened at his front door.
“Okay, what’s up?”
Lucy leaned forward, her smile widening. “I think you and I need to start our own business.”
Author’s Note
Well, that’s the end of The Inside Man, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.
Since this is book two of a series, I’ll presume that I’ve introduced myself to you before and won’t make you suffer through that sort of tedium again.
However, I did want to talk a bit about my contract with you, the reader.
I write to entertain.
That truly is my first and primary goal. Because, for most people, that’s what they want out of a novel.
That’s certainly what I always wanted. Story first, always.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are all sorts of perfectly valid reasons to be reading, and in fact, I get a huge kick out of it when people tell me that they kept on having to look things up to see if they were real, and being shocked to learn that they were.
For me, I do take pride in trying to give people entertainment, while attempting to stay as true to the science and technology as possible. And if the novel is inspired by real events in some way, like this one, I try to provide verifiable excerpts that allow readers a bit more insight into the facts of the subjects covered in the story.
When my stories contain topics that have possible controversy o
r ones with potentially polarizing opinions associated with them (e.g. GMO) I never take a position as the author. I let the characters play out their roles and make no advocacies. However, I do endeavor to lay out the facts as they exist for the reader to ultimately draw their own conclusions.
So far, I’ve covered broken arrow incidents (See Perimeter for that), the potential disasters of uncontrolled genetic modification (Darwin’s Cipher), and in this novel, child sex trafficking.
Some have called my choices eclectic, unexpected, but the vast majority of feedback I’ve received to date has thankfully been positive. So, thank you for that. Posting reviews is, of course, the easiest way to let me and others know what you thought of this novel or any of my work. Word of mouth is precious to us poor authors.
However, even though I enjoy writing about events, history, science especially, my primary goal always circles back to entertaining.
I do hope you enjoyed this story, and I hope you’ll continue to join me in the future stories yet to come.
Mike Rothman
March 29, 2019
Addendum
I took an unusual approach with this novel in that I started with testimony given in front of a Senate subcommittee from a person named Tim Ballard. We’re very used to reading novels, especially thrillers, that blur fact with fiction, often making it hard to know where one ends and the other begins.
Well, let’s just say that the excerpts I listed are word-for-word true testimony, and I made sure to include footnotes for any data that was used.
I’ve always lived by the motto of trust, but verify, and I want to make it as easy on you, the reader, to do the same.
I chose not to excerpt more of Tim’s testimony, because frankly, some of it is particularly intense. However, I did use some of the facts from his testimony in this story.
And since I did use his testimony, it would be unfair for me to not at least mention Operation Underground Railroad, a non-profit that Tim founded whose goal it is to rescue victims of child sex trafficking. See https://ourrescue.org for more information.
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