And he was right. Dario did turn informant, no more than a half hour after he did. Even though his life in the witness protection program was pretty shitty, Ned often told himself, it beat twenty in supermax.
At least that’s what he told himself, until today. According to The Springfield Silhouette, Dario’s testimony had been declared inadmissible due to his “advanced psychosis and deteriorating mental capacity brought on by years of heavy stimulant drug use.”
Ned realized that if he had been a good soldier and kept his mouth shut like he had been taught that he’d probably have been out by now.
He remembered what happened when a member of the Sons of Satan returned from jail or prison. There would be a party in his honor, and anything he wanted—booze, drugs, strippers, prostitutes—was taken care of. And if he’d stayed quiet and out of trouble behind bars, there would often be a reward or a promotion for him.
But there would be no party for Ned or Eric or Jared or whatever name he was going by these days. Just another night of boredom, as it had been since they had brought him here.
The FBI hadn’t exactly lied to him, but they weren’t exactly on the up and up with him either. They did give him a house and a job and twenty thousand in cash like they said they would. But they moved him out of the house when a family of four from Nevada needed it (after all, he was a single man, why did he need that much space?), the job was the shittiest one in the world (but what could he, a high school dropout with nothing but drug sales on his résumé, expect?) and the twenty thousand was quickly eaten up when he had to replace pretty much everything he owned and buy that gift for himself—the Indian. As it stood, he had a dark, cramped apartment, a humiliating minimum-wage job, no friends, no girl and not much hope for a better future.
He called Chuck. “Yeah man, I’m ready to talk with your buddy.”
“It’s already done.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to talk in person,” Chuck said. “Go to the sandwich place in Hilltop.”
Just as he was getting out of the Kia in front of the restaurant, Ned heard the low, loud rumble of a customized Harley-Davidson. Reflexively, he jumped back into the car, and ducked down. Once it was clear the Harley had gone by, he sat up and looked around. There was a round-faced kid—maybe eight years old—looking at him through the passenger window. At first the kid looked mystified, and then he started to laugh before running away.
Ned couldn’t laugh at himself as he tried to regain his dignity. The nearest Son of Satan was a thousand miles away; that Harley was probably some rich old dude trying to look cool. Though why that kind of guy would be driving down the worst block in the poorest neighborhood of town raised a little doubt in Ned’s mind.
The restaurant was doing a comparatively brisk business. Chuck and Bob were in the back at a table. They looked different than they did at work. Instead of minor clues as to their wealth, like expensive watches, they were in full gangster wear with expensive shell suits and loads of gold. After sitting down and exchanging greetings, Ned asked why they had to meet in a public place, especially this one.
“We have nothing to say that is at all con-tro-ver-sial,” Bob said. Ned could tell Bob enjoyed using the word “controversial.”
“So what are we here to talk about?”
Chuck yelled something at shop’s owner, who nodded with resignation. “Our mutual friend in the Midwest,” he said. “He thinks he likes you, may have some part-time work for you.”
“What kind of work?”
“Nothing much, shipping and receiving, that sort of thing, no problem for you.”
“Where would it be?”
“Wherever you want—here in Wilmington, maybe—but with a few trips to nearby places like New Jersey and maybe New York City.”
“Sounds okay.”
“Okay? It’s a great opportunity!”
Ned tried hard to look unimpressed. “Maybe it is, but I need to know more.”
“Come into the back with me.”
As they got up and went behind the counter, Ned noticed Chuck was carrying a yellow envelope. He led Ned into a small room full of boxes and cleaning supplies. “Grigori has given you two gifts. Here, open this.”
Ned opened the envelope. Inside were a passport and a Minnesota driver’s license with his likeness on them. They were made out in the name of “Jared Macnair.”
Ned looked up at Chuck who was obviously proud. “Remember I took your pictures for security cards at work? I sent them to Grigori who has good friend in passport department,” he said excitedly. And another in DMV in Minnesota.” He laughed a little at Ned’s reaction. “And look, Macnair is spelled right, not McNair like many others,” he was practically gushing now. “And has correct birthdate and even hometown of Gila Bend, Arizona.”
Realizing it could be a test, Ned corrected Chuck’s pronunciation from “GUY-lah” to “HEE-lah.”
Chuck laughed. “English is the most strange language,” he said. “Do you want your other gift?”
“Isn’t this it?”
Chuck smiled broadly. “Do you remember the cop who was bothering you?”
“Yeah, Halliday?” Ned replied. “They didn’t . . . ”
“No, no, no, no harm will come to your boyfriend,” Chuck laughed. “No, but he did come across some very bad luck.”
“What happened?” Ned felt his throat dry up.
Chuck laughed again, but this time with less joy. “It seems a young boy, a young Russian boy, has accused the detective of—how do you say it?—molesting him,” he said. “Sad, very sad.”
“What? Really?”
“Well, nobody can say what happened for sure. But the investigation will, of course, take a long time, and your friend naturally will be suspended—maybe also for a long time.”
Ned paused. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say thank you.”
“Uh—thank you, and thank Grigori.”
“He is always good to his employees,” said Chuck. Then he sighed and said, “There is one little, tiny thing, though.”
Ned felt eerily cold. “What’s that?”
Chuck laughed, then grinned. “Nothing, nothing.” He paused, then shrugged. “All you have to do is prove you are who and what you say you are—simple.”
Ned hoped that Chuck couldn’t hear the terror in his voice. “H-how would I do that?”
“Is nothing, really,” Chuck’s smile had left his face. “You know the Lawbreakers?”
“Yeah.”
“They have small chapter in Ocean Beach,” Chuck said. “They—and you—have a job to do.”
“Lawbreakers? But I’m . . .”
“You’re what?”
“Well, I used to be a Sons of Satan full-patch . . .”
“And now you are man who stole from Sons of Satan, got away with it, lived and now works for Grigori, most powerful man in all Midwest.”
“If he is so powerful, why does he need me?”
Chuck’s face hardened. “He doesn’t need you. Don’t question him. This is just part of your job. You want him to trust you, right? Do what is asked of you.”
“Right, but I’m supposed to collaborate with the Lawbreakers? You want me to just walk in blindly to some situation?”
Chuck laughed. “You Americans, always with the worry, worry, worry. No, Grigori would never ask you to do something so stupid. The Ocean Beach Lawbreakers have a bar, you go there and they will welcome you. Remember, you fucked over the Sons of Satan, that makes you a hero in their eyes—and you can bring Semyon, he will help.”
Ned knew he didn’t have long to decide, and he knew the safest way out of the room he was in would be to agree to do what they asked. If he later decided he couldn’t do it, he could always tell Dave and see if the FBI could move him again. But then, of course, he’d have two sets of criminals who’d want to kill him and probably an even worse job. At least in Delaware he wasn’t that far from the beach. Then he remembered that Semy
on was the giggler and he let out a little laugh.
Chuck grinned. Ned took that to mean that Chuck was confident that he would go through with it. “Sure, sure, I’ll go see these guys,” he said, even though he still wasn’t sure if he would.
“Good, good,” said Chuck. “Semyon will pick you up at your apartment Saturday morning.”
“What time?”
“When he gets there,” Chuck replied a little harshly, then followed it up with a hearty laugh. “So, you want some sandwich?” He smiled broadly and led Ned back into the restaurant. Bob nodded and grinned when he saw them coming out.
Since they had started seeing each other outside the mailroom, Ned barely communicated with Chuck and Bob when they were at work. They initiated the little moratorium on contact, and he was more than okay with it. He started eating his lunches alone, and had found that he tended to find reading in the sunshine much more pleasurable than engaging in their inane banter that rarely wavered from women and cars. And he certainly didn’t like it when they would start talking to each other in Serbian, invariably ending up laughing at what Ned suspected was him.
By the time Friday rolled around, Ned was happy to put work behind him, but apprehensive about his weekend task and less than delighted to see Dave that evening.
As soon as he got to Dave’s office, he started asking him the familiar questions he had asked him every two weeks since Ned had been in the witness protection program. He gave the same answers he always did in what he thought was the same way he always did until Dave interrupted him. “You sound bored, Mr. Steadman; bored with your lot in life,” he said in the almost-friendly way he had. “Maybe you’re planning another road trip?”
Ned looked at him stunned. He hoped that Dave would interpret his surprise as him thinking the idea preposterous, not that he had read his mind. Ned laughed. “No, not looking to travel,” he said with a chuckle. “Looking for some of the other things young men enjoy.”
Dave sucked in a deep breath and sighed dramatically. Ned had suspected that Dave might be gay. But now, for the first time, he realized that his minder was also pretty attracted to him. “Hmmm, Ned, I have not forgotten what it was like to be young myself, you know,” he said, looking him in the eye. “Why can’t you find yourself a nice girl? It is girls you like, right?”
Ned smiled generously. “Yeah.”
“You’re a nice-looking, athletic boy; you should have no problem meeting girls,” Dave continued. “A nice girl should be able to get past the whole mailroom thing.”
Ned was desperate to change the subject. “So I can’t travel at all?”
“Not without my permission.”
“Even in-state? This tiny, tiny little state?”
“Well, I guess you can’t get into too much trouble in Delaware. I’ll look the other way in-state.”
“Philly?”
“No.”
“Jersey?”
“Heavens no! What kind of girl are you looking for anyway?”
Ned laughed. “Just checking. How about Ocean Beach?”
“What’s the matter with Reheboth?”
“Too many Jersey boys.”
Dave laughed and said, “You’ve got me there.” But then his face turned serious, even cold. “Listen, I know you were some kind of high flier back in the Midwest,” he said, trying to sound intimidating. “But now you are a mailroom clerk for a credit-assessment agency in Delaware, you got that?”
Ned tried not to laugh while he nodded.
“You may not be impressed by this office or my wardrobe or my car, but I represent the FBI around here, and we own you,” Dave snarled. “And bear in mind, young man, that if I get a hint of any criminal activity—or even if just don’t like you—I can get a court order removing your protection. You’d get your old identity back and I could even get them to force you to pay back the money we fronted you. Then where would you be? I’ll tell you. You would be broke, alone and sitting in plain sight with a big fat price on your head. How’s that grab you?”
Ned tried to look grave. Of course, he had already run the odds in his head, and Dave’s posturing struck him as silly and impotent. Ned couldn’t think of anything to say but “I’ll stay here.”
Dave smiled and apologized. “Don’t make me order a tracking bracelet.”
Ned knew only a judge could do that, but he chuckled amiably and said he wouldn’t make any trouble.
Ned woke up early on Saturday morning because he had no idea when Semyon was going to arrive. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d read everything in his apartment, he didn’t get enough TV channels to watch anything interesting, so he just put on a little music and puttered around his little place, alternatively cleaning, snacking and pacing around.
At around ten, Ned was washing his breakfast dishes when he heard a blast of music that shook his innards. He ran out into the street to see where the noise was coming from. In front of the building, he saw a bright green car—a ten-year-old Lexus with ridiculous spinning rims and gold trim—with all four windows open. The booming bass and high-pitched tweets of Euro house music were pouring out of it, and the whole car was shaking with every beat. Ned approached it cautiously. As he got close enough to touch the car, Semyon popped his head out of his window, grinned goofily and yelled, “Hey, Macnair. Get in.”
Ned couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He got closer to Semyon, but found he still had to shout to be heard over his gut-busting stereo. “I’ll be back in a second. I just gotta lock up,” he said to him. “But I’m not getting in that car until you turn that shit off.” Semyon laughed and nodded his head.
By the time Ned returned, Semyon had indeed turned his music off. “You really know how to be subtle,” Ned said as he got into the passenger seat.
“What is this word ‘subtle’?”
“Never mind, it would take a long time to explain and I don’t think you would understand even if I did,” Ned told him.
Then he paused. “Are we really going to do this, just show up and demand Grigori’s friend’s money from a bunch of Lawbreakers?”
“Sure, man, sure,” Semyon assured him. “It’s simple, they owe us, we go pick it up. It’s no problem, man.” Then he giggled his little giggle.
“Two guys, unarmed.”
“Who says unarmed?”
“Well, I am.”
“No you’re not, man; I have at least a dozen guns in the car, you have your pick—but we won’t need them.”
“We won’t?”
“We won’t.”
“You’re absolutely sure of this?”
Semyon just giggled.
Ned took a moment to size up his new associate. Semyon didn’t look like the other Russians he had met. He had darker skin, darker eyes and seemed a bit thicker haired. He looked more like Abdullah, the Palestinian guy he knew from the fast-food place he often bought dinner from, than the other Russians. He had a strange pop-eyed look that made him seem younger than he almost certainly was and his body never stopped moving. It was like every inch of him was nervous all the time.
Ned and Semyon engaged in small talk for most of the two-hour trip. Ned really didn’t want to hear any more of Semyon’s music, so he kept him talking. It was pretty easy, as Semyon really liked to talk, mostly about himself. He told Ned that he was not actually Russian at all, but an Uzbek. Ned didn’t know what an Uzbek was, so Semyon explained that his ancestors came from a Central Asian country called Uzbekistan that had once been ruled by the Russians as part of the Soviet Union.
“Isn’t that like where Borat lives?” Ned asked.
Semyon laughed. “That’s Kazakhstan—just north of Uzbekistan—they are assholes.”
Ned laughed. “So, what is Uzbekistan like?”
“I don’t really know,” Semyon told him. “I’ve never been there.” He went on to explain that he was born and raised in a south Moscow neighborhood that was mostly Uzbek with a few other nationalities that didn’t really register with Ned’s consc
iousness. Semyon’s grandfather had been a cotton farmer back in Uzbekistan before he was pressed into the Red Army. Apparently, the old man had quite a talent for machinery, so the Russians allowed him to move to Moscow and work as a truck mechanic. The family had been there ever since. “Just in time, too,” Semyon added. “The Muslims have since taken over and made Uzbekistan an even worse place.”
Because of the “-stan” in his native country’s name, Ned just assumed Semyon was a Muslim. “So how did you get over here?”
“Back in the nineties,” he told him, “America was letting in lots of lots of people from the former Soviet Union, mostly skilled workers. One was an Uzbek called Djamolidine who worked in pharmaceuticals. My family raised enough money to convince him to say he is my father’s brother. I got a Green Card.”
“It was that easy?”
“Back then, yes. But after 9/11 it became much more expensive, and the wait is much longer.”
Ned rolled his eyes. Semyon continued to prattle on and on about Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Russians, Moscow, Detroit and what made them all interesting to him. Ned was glad that Semyon was so content to hear himself speak, because keeping up the pretense of being Jared Macnair pretending to be Eric Steadman was taxing enough without having to come up with a detailed back story.
The tourist season hadn’t really revved up in Ocean Beach yet, but most of the roadside shops and restaurants were already open when they arrived. Semyon said how much he liked the place, how it reminded him of a resort his family once took him to on the Black Sea when he was a boy and even took some time out to follow two school-age girls until they noticed him and ran down a side street.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 27