Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “I’ll get that letter to the attorney,” he said.

  “Do that,” I said.

  “Four days?” he said.

  “Why leave it till the last minute?” I said. “If you want good planning, give me some room. If I were you, I’d have the thing done in two days, three at the most.”

  “Do you have the disc now? Come on, you can tell me.”

  “Lime, you left me there. In Vlad Kapek’s basement. With his Bulgarian goons. Jaroslav …”

  “I told Jaroslav …”

  “We both know you didn’t,” I said. “Jaroslav and my mother got me out. So the deal is just what we always said it would be. Hayakawa gets the disc, I get Hayakawa’s money and the pardon …”

  “Not exactly a pardon. A plea bargain.”

  “A plea bargain down to a noncriminal offense, no time, and an affordable settlement. Very affordable. You get the opportunity to take Hayakawa with the disc.”

  “What do you mean, the opportunity?”

  “I’ll set him up,” I said.

  He nodded. He stood up. He held out his hand to shake. “Done,” he said.

  If I was wrong, again, about the disc, at least I had stalled for four more days. The world keeps turning, there are avalanches and road accidents, bureaucrats get transferred, papers get lost, and even women change their minds. I didn’t shake hands with him.

  DOWN UNDER

  “PLEASE HELP ME,” ROBERT Tavetian said. “She’s out of control.”

  “What?” I said. The Bulgarian band was back. They were louder than ever. Doing a disco version of “New York, New York.” The time warp was swallowed by the culture warp. Only St. Belushi could’ve explained it to the beer-crazed Swedes and he was dead.

  “Look at her,” he said.

  She was on the dance floor. She was not the only woman in her late forties I’ve ever seen rocking like she was twenty with tight pants and a tight bra to make what was soft look firm and a lot of makeup and a general air of manic despair. Actually she was more typical this way than when she’d arrived as a suburban mother, neatly shapeless and formlessly attractive.

  “Do you know who killed our daughter?” he said. “That might stop Arlene.”

  “An avalanche killed Wendy—ten tons of snow and gravity.”

  “No, no,” he said. “Somebody did it. They were after that Japanese man who was with Wendy.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted.

  “Tell me who,” he pleaded, clinging to my sling.

  “If I find out, I promise I will.”

  “Was it that American, the little Mormon, or the Japanese guy? Do you think it’s one of those two?”

  “Robert, the best thing you could do is go home.”

  “Do you … do you know … do you know what she is doing? Arlene?”

  “No,” I said.

  “She’s f-f-f-fucking anybody she thinks our daughter had sex with. Then she tells me about it. She … that ski instructor. And another one, Luis. I thought I would be jealous of him the most. He’s so good-looking. She’s insane and she’s my wife. I have to stand-stand-stand by her. I have to stand by her. The Japanese man.”

  “Mike Hayakawa?”

  “Yes. She did it with-with him also. With him. He’s the only Japanese here. To find out why Wendy was with a Japanese. She only wants to understand. It can’t be understood though, can it. It is the way of-of-of God. You know, of fate. Or is it an accident? Do you know why our daughter was selected to be the one to be with the man who was murdered in an avalanche all the way across an ocean from where she was born? Do you know … do you know … what will be done to your daughter by-by whatever did this to us.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away.

  “Stop her—please stop her before she does something really bad,” he said. But I don’t think he really thought I could.

  I found Paul in back, watching the room, mentally counting his money. Chip Sheen, who had followed me in, was near the entrance, keeping guard and testing his Mormon soul with beer.

  “Have you noticed,” Paul said to me, “that nothing ever happens in St. Anton anymore. I’m bloody bored. How about you?”

  “Well, it’s been a bad season,”

  “What happened to your arm? Ski accident? Happens to the best of us.”

  “No,” I said. “Defenestration.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That can be tough.”

  “I’m looking for Carol,” I said.

  “I’m thinking of selling out,” he said. “You interested in being a saloonkeeper? There’s a lot of money in it. I’ll tell you what, mate. I could retire tomorrow and buy the biggest sheep ranch in New South Wales. Be a gentleman rancher. Fly over to New Zealand for heli-skiing.”

  “I might be moving on myself,” I said.

  “Bloody boring town,” he said. “Not what it used to be. But you know what I’m going do? I’m heading for the land of opportunity. You might be interested.”

  “Carol, is she still working for you?”

  “Dishwasher girl? Yeah, sure, mate. I want you to look at this.” He held out a brochure. “This is the future: the Soviet Union. They’ve got mountains that’ve never been skied. Heli-skiing. Miles and miles of it. No bloody Greens to tell you heli-skiing is bad for the environment.”

  “Is she around?” I asked him.

  “No, it’s her night off,” he said. “This is one place that won’t be too crowded to ski on the weekends. No lift lines. When you get powder it won’t get skied to death in four hours. Plus the opportunity—I guarantee you they need people who understand capitalism. There never was a Marxist-Leninist knew how to run a decent disco. Come with me. The punters’ll need Laundromats.”

  “This is in the Caucasus,” I said.

  “You got to hand it to Gorbachev,” he said. “He’s the first world leader to open up an entire new mountain range to skiing.”

  “There’s a war there—the Azerbaijanis and the Armenians.”

  “Yeah, but we’re skiers. They won’t bother us.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’d like to take another look at Carol’s room. You mind giving me the key?”

  “She was pissed last time,” he said.

  “I’ll be discreet,” I said.

  “Right, then,” he said. “You should think about it. Mount Elbrus, highest peak in Europe, five thousand six hundred thirty-three meters.” He gave me the key. I glanced over at Chip Sheen. When he was distracted, I walked into the kitchen and out the back door.

  Women masturbate in a variety of positions.

  Carol, on this occasion at least, lay on her side, covered from the hips down by her blanket. I could tell by the shape beneath that her top leg was drawn up, the bottom leg stretched out. One hand was hidden. Her other hand was at her face. She touched her cheek and her lips with light, wondering fingers, the way she might want a lover to touch her. On the floor beside the bed, where she had dropped it, was the page that had been torn out of the manga, Hiroshi Tanaka’s Japanese comic for adults.

  It was one of the climactic scenes of the story and a single picture filled the page. The heroine was tied down, spread-eagled, naked. Her pubis was hairless. The villain held a razor to her throat. He had made a shallow cut. The thin trickle of blood dripped in an artistic minimalist Japanese pattern suggestive of fine calligraphy. The villainess, a large-breasted, fatty, Western-looking woman with a lot of hair in her crotch, clutched the heroine’s thighs and leered.

  “Wendy, Wendy, Wendy,” Carol called out. The manga heroine, I now saw, did indeed look like the cartoon version of a generic Wendy.

  When Carol reached her orgasm she buried her head in the pillow to muffle her noises. When it was over she rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes.

  “You motherfucker,” she said. “Get out of here!”

  “Take it easy,” I said.

  “I’ll holler. I’ll holler rape. I’ll scream.”

  “You’re at Down Under,” I said.
“They couldn’t hear it if there were ten of you screaming rape.”

  “You stole my photographs, you motherfucker.”

  “I’ll give them back,” I said. “But you have to give me something.”

  “No. Don’t touch me.”

  “I won’t touch you,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you. If you try to rape me, I have a knife—I’ll use it.”

  “Get dressed if you want,” I said.

  “I just want you out of here!”

  I picked up a T-shirt from the pile on the chair and tossed it to her. “The night Wendy died,” I said, “you went over to Hiroshi Tanaka’s apartment. There were some private things you had over there. Some letters maybe. You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “It’s okay. Loving is good. I hope she loved you back.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

  “I know that.”

  “She was wonderful. I loved her. I’m not ashamed of that.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” I said. “But you went into Tanaka’s apartment. You had the key. You were the first one there. You wanted some mementos. Did she really look like the pictures in the comic book?”

  “Yes, sort of,” Carol said.

  “Did she shave?”

  “Yeah, she did. For Hiroshi. He wanted her even younger than she was. I loved her just the way she was. But she was exciting this way.”

  “That’s when you picked up the photos with Nadia and Wendy and Hiroshi. You tore out the page from the comic and maybe by accident you picked up something else, a computer disc. Right?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Let’s not fight. I don’t want to search. I don’t want to make trouble for you. I just want the disc.”

  “It’s in the closet,” she said. Then she picked up the T-shirt and covered her face with it and began to sob. “I miss her so much. I never loved anyone like I loved her,” she said through the cotton and the tears. It was the same one she’d worn the first time I’d met her, the one that said JUST BECAUSE I SLEPT WITH YOU LAST NIGHT DOESN’T MEAN I’LL SKI WITH YOU IN THE MORNING. The disc was in a paper sleeve. There were five names handwritten on it. Vlad Kapek was one. I didn’t recognize the other four, but if I had to guess, one was German, one Polish, one Hungarian, and the last was written in Cyrillic. I took the disc and left.

  FATHER GUIDO

  GODDAMN GUIDO HAD TO arrive in his clerical collar.

  He couldn’t travel like a normal person in jeans and a T-shirt or in ski clothes or in a suit and tie.

  Since my mother was going to the train to meet him it just seemed natural for me to go with her, Marie to go with me, and Anna Geneviève to go with Marie. Geneviève came with everyone else.

  I may not have been sure what Guido’s relationship to my mother was, but Geneviève was certain. So this was my mother’s “companion.” Her “special friend.” The French do a lot of reading between the lines—they regard it as a higher truth.

  Guido hugged my mother fondly.

  Geneviève was aghast. “Mais c’est scandaleux.”

  Guido hugged me, like a fond uncle. Or stepfather. “Let me see the baby,” he said. Marie Laure handed the infant to him. He beamed. Like a step-grandfather.

  “Ce n’est pas bien, ça,” Geneviève said.

  “Did you have to wear the fucking collar?” I said.

  “I get a clerical discount,” he said. “And they treat me better.”

  “C’est une abomination,” Geneviève said. Cloaking herself in darkness, she turned away and began a march through the town, back toward our pension. Her daughter ran after her.

  “Oh, dear,” Guido said, handing me the baby, “what have I done?”

  “I thought she was Jewish,” my mother said. “Didn’t she say that in Vienna?”

  “She said,” I said, “that her mother was Jewish by birth. But she was raised Catholic. In Algeria. Didn’t you notice her going to mass on Sunday?”

  “I thought that was for the music,” my mother, who is usually so smart, said. She was being willfully ignorant, as if that would take any blame for the fuss away from Guido, who continued to apologize.

  Now we had to organize the luggage. I only had one arm and that was holding Anna Geneviève. I thought it made sense for my mother to take the baby and me to carry the two suitcases. But there was still snow on the ground and my mother was afraid she would slip. So they each took one, but they were really too heavy for people that old and we made a sorry procession. There was much resting and more denying that there was a problem. Finally I made them stop and got a taxi to take us the six blocks or so.

  When we reached the house, Geneviève and Marie Laure were on the street yelling at each other. Geneviève had packed and was putting her suitcase into the red and black Citroën 2CV6.

  “Please don’t go,” my mother said.

  “Oh, dear, have I upset you?” Guido said.

  “You are a stupid old woman,” Marie Laure said, in French.

  “The acorn does not fall far from the tree,” Geneviève said, in French.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Guido asked. He didn’t look that good actually. Thin and hospital pale.

  “I think there’s a misunderstanding,” my mother said.

  “No wonder you are raising a bastard,” Geneviève said, in French.

  “You are a narrow-minded bourgeois,” said Marie Laure. “Go home! Go back to France! To your narrow-minded bourgeois friends and their petty stupidities.”

  And she did.

  DENOUEMENT

  WHEN ANNA GENEVIÈVE SMILED and laughed and shrieked with delight, the whole world lit up. She loved to stand, and if I held her up she thought she was. She was beginning to have conversations. Not with words that any of us were familiar with—and among us we had English, French, German, Italian, and Latin—but with the rhythm and the attitude of language nonetheless. Nor did she yet distinguish between listener and nonlistener. One of her most extended lectures was to my shoe. She had the build of the Michelin tire man, rolls and rolls of happy fat, all of it pure breast milk. Her cheeks were as round as a trumpet player’s. To my surprise, that wasn’t fat—it was muscle. She was the best of all those babies that show up in Renaissance paintings as cherubs.

  When Marie Laure was tense or unhappy it darkened my whole life. But no matter what bothered her, she was always Perfect Mom to Anna Geneviève. She still never got angry when the baby woke her at night, which she did several times every night. Anna Geneviève had done well for herself.

  I wanted them happy. Safe. Secure.

  As the clock ticked down and the four days passed, I kept looking at that feeling and playing with the baby to find the answers to what I was going to do. I guess I kept looking because the answer was both apparent and not what I wanted it to be.

  I liked Mike Hayakawa. He was opinionated, clever, fun, didn’t lie to me too very much, and had saved my daughter’s life. I did not like Harry Lime and Chip Sheen. They were blackmailing and bullying me. They’d left me to languish or perish without thinking twice.

  I liked the idea of being an exile, expatriate, outlaw, small-scale Byronic ski bum, and laundry scammer. I did not like the image of myself as family man, a careful-to-cross-the-street can’t-afford-to-be-out-of-work da-da doing what the mommy wants in life. Pussy-whipped we used to call it back in Brooklyn when we were young and macho studs.

  I liked the idea of going home—if I ever went home—on my terms, not theirs. I wanted someone to apologize and admit I’d been framed. This was childish in the extreme and I knew it. It didn’t carry a lot of weight with me. Not intellectually, anyway.

  I liked the idea of paying my debts—which meant doing right by Hayakawa and doing harm to Lime and Sheen.

  But if Hayakawa came through with the money and Lime came through with the letter to my lawyer, it was going to go down the way Lime wanted it
to. Because Marie Laure wanted it that way. Because my daughter deserved it that way. There was no way of looking at them and seeing any other answer. They had filled up the place in me that was full of shifting values and relative choices, they were as close to an absolute as I could get, and Anna Geneviève was my lucky star.

  Guido wanted to know what was going on.

  I told him, keeping in mind that there was a microphone in the room. I was certain that my listener was Lime because Lime acted on what we said and Hayakawa did not. The distant follower who I had sensed following Chip Sheen, following me, and who might have been the one to put the directional beeper on Sheen’s car had not reappeared. Perhaps the beeper had something to do with Hungary. After all, they still had some sort of police and secret police and their intelligence agency who could well have picked him out as CIA and wanted to keep tabs on him, even if the world was changing.

  In the version of the story that I told Guido I had not yet picked up the disc, but I had seen it, was certain it existed, and would pick it up just before the exchange. I said this so that Lime, who was listening, would not try to hijack me and cut me out of the action. It wasn’t in the apartment either. It was stashed near where I’d found it, Down Under.

  I could hear Mike Hayakawa through the door before I knocked. He was working out. When he opened the door his hairless torso had a nice sheen of sweat. Half naked and pumped up with exercise, he looked driven and intense. Not the somewhat ineffectual character he appeared to be when he wore his exactly correct brand-name clothes and masked his eyes with brown-rimmed glasses, a self-deprecating disguise, partly personal and partly a cultural affectation.

  “You have good news?” he asked.

  “Do you have the money?”

  His eyes appraised me, wondering who could take who if he said, “Yes, there’s a million deutsche marks in the room.” He noted my sling—I was a one-wing bird—but Americans are always running around with guns. “At the bank. Here in town,” he said.

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  “Really?”