Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “Really.”

  “What time? Where?”

  “It’s tricky,” I said. “I’d like to trust you. I’d like to think I could hand you the disc and you would hand me the money and we could turn around and walk away. Not even look back over our shoulders.”

  “You can trust me,” he said. “I want something and I am willing to pay for it. What do I care?” He giggled. Sort of. “It’s company money. Expense account.”

  “It’s easy for you,” I said. “You take back the deutsche marks, you have a million deutsche marks. I hold on to the disc, I have nothing.”

  “You pick the place,” he said. “I want you to be comfortable.”

  “I’ll pick a place we can both go in, look around, make sure we’re alone, unarmed. Then you get your money from wherever you want. When the money comes in, I go bring the disc. Is that all right?”

  “That’s fine. Where?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. After we meet at the bank and you show me that you have the money. I want to see it. Otherwise no meet, no nothing.”

  “I understand. I am sorry that there is so little trust.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  As I went out the door he was already back to his exercises. It was a martial arts series with exploding breaths and simulated blows. He did it with the floor-length mirror, admiring himself, seeing another Bruce Lee in the definition of his own muscles. We all do that—see tough guys in the mirror.

  Chip Sheen all but leapt upon me as I came out. His eye was in terrible condition—green and brown and puffy where I’d hit him. I’d split the skin and he had a little butterfly Band-Aid on the break.

  “You got him set up?” he said.

  “Why don’t you make yourself a little bit obvious?”

  “You got him set up?”

  “I haven’t heard from my lawyer yet.”

  “I wish you understood how important this was. We were in a war. Communism was the anti-Christ. That was easy to understand. They were godless atheism, we had God on our side. That’s why we won. But God does not want us to rest, to forget our mission to instruct and lead. God wants us to be tested. So He has risen up a new enemy—The Godless Orient. Shinto and Buddhism are other names for pagan atheism. We are very lucky, because America needs enemies. Our enemies make us strong.”

  “Listen, bow-wow, I have a deal with your master. It includes a letter to my lawyer. No tickee, no laundry, no diskee, no Hayakawee.”

  “You are out of line, mister.”

  “Listen to me, Sheen. I didn’t walk into your toy store—you walked into mine. I didn’t threaten your existence—you messed with mine. Go tell the man.”

  “If it were up to people like you, America would go down the tubes. You have no spiritual dimension.”

  At 11:00 P.M. in St. Anton it was 5:00 P.M. in New York and the day was done. We had cleared away the dishes long ago, had our after-dinner tea, and digested. My mother and Guido had gone to bed. The baby was asleep. There had been no phone call from the States. No message from my lawyer—no Gerald Yaskowitz saying the Feds say, “Come home, all is forgiven.”

  I took Marie Laure by the hand. I said, “Let’s go look at the moon.”

  She said, “But the baby.”

  I said, “I need some air. Let’s go outside.”

  She shook her head. “You go,” she said.

  “For once, just once in our post-baby life, do what I say, just because I ask.”

  That pissed her off, but she threw on a jacket and stomped out.

  “Listen to me,” I said, “I want you to be prepared for this. If I had my choice we would go with Lime. Set up Hayakawa. But it doesn’t look like the CIA or whoever the hell he’s with is coming through for us. I want you to understand that if they don’t, our one choice just may be to take the money and run.”

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “Let’s say that Lime really is a CIA agent and this is a real CIA operation and he really can make a deal for me with the Justice Department. He will only do that in order to get the disc and nail Hayakawa. He will not do it afterward, out of honor or gratitude. What he might do afterward is turn me in to the IRS anyway—for extra brownie points. That is the nature of the beast. That is the law of the jungle.

  “It’s time to face things. I don’t see it coming through—a verifiable deal, in writing. What I see is we take the money. Then we have two chances. One is we go underground again. Different country, different names—like I said, maybe a different sport. I mean if we’re underground we might as well be having a good time. Or we take the money and go to the States. We hire a high-powered, connected law firm and let them fight it down to the wire—six hundred thousand dollars’ worth. Maybe we can win.”

  “You don’t think they will send the letter?”

  “No,” I said.

  She was very sad. Neither of us slept well. We were both tossing and turning. My shoulder throbbed and there seemed to be no comfortable position for it. Finally at 3:00 A.M. I fell asleep. At four the phone rang.

  “Tony, Tony, is that you, Tony?” Gerald Yaskowitz yelled.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “Can you hear me?” he screamed.

  “I hear you fine,” I said.

  “Wow. All the way across the Atlantic Ocean and you hear me fine. That’s great.”

  “Softly, Gerry, softly.”

  “I can’t get over it. How the hell are you?”

  “Fine, Gerry, and you? You got the letter?”

  “You know about the letter? How the hell do you know about the letter? I call him all the way across the Atlantic Ocean with news about something that just this one minute happened. I’m talking not sixty seconds ago the messenger—he walked out the door of my home—and he already knows. Telepathy. I’m telling you, telepathy. Next you’re gonna tell me what’s in it? Right?”

  “Go ahead, read it to me, Gerry,” I said.

  “It says … uh … ‘To whom it may concern, Anthony Michael Cassella is in the process of doing a major service to his country. On the completion of this service and upon the verbal confirmation of same by this office, this office will require and recommend that any outstanding criminal or judicial charges involving Mr. Cassella be terminated as a matter of National Security.…’ Whaddaya think about that? I’m impressed—you and Ollie North. To continue … ‘The agency will appear as amicus curiae to speak for Mr. Cassella in any judicial proceeding.’ It’s signed by Jeffrey MacFarlane the Third at something called the Office of Economic Research, Central Intelligence Agency. Well, whaddaya know about that?”

  “It looks like I’m coming home,” I said.

  “It looks like you’re coming home,” Gerry said.

  “It looks like we are going home?” Marie Laure asked, stirring beside me.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said to her.

  “Wow, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and he already knows.”

  I had a flash of paranoia. “Gerry, you do me a favor—you call this guy and you find out if this letter is real.”

  “You think it might not be real?”

  “Gerry, do you know what time it is here?”

  “About lunchtime? Right?”

  “It’s about four in the morning.”

  “Hey, gee, I’m sorry, but it’s such great news.”

  “Yes, Gerry, good night. Thank you.”

  “I want a gun,” I said to Lime.

  “I can’t give you a gun,” he said.

  “Give me his.” I pointed at Chip.

  “What for?” Lime said.

  “I’m going to make this as simple as I can, but it’s very fucking complicated, and if you fuck it up and it goes wrong I want a sense of security.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “That’s what I call it,” I said.

  “I’m not giving up my piece,” Chip said.

  “You have the disc?” Lime asked.

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nbsp; “Does a bear shit in the woods? Do Austrians ski? Was George Bush head of the CIA? What are we sitting here talking for?”

  “Okay, I got it. Give him the gun.”

  “Mr. Lime …”

  “We’ll find you another one,” Lime said.

  I held out my hand. Chip slowly and reluctantly gave up his Glock. I took it. It was loaded. I put it in my pocket. Getting Sheen’s gun away from him was the point of my request. There was something fanatic and erratic about him and I had the feeling that the final confrontation might be a lot smoother if he was unarmed.

  “We will meet,” I told Lime, “at Down Under. They close early tonight. Two o’clock. I meet Hayakawa there at three. We each get to look around. If all is well and all is quiet, he goes and gets the money. This should take no more than five, ten minutes. Once the money is there I’m supposed to go get the disc. At three fifteen I step outside, you see me. When I go back in, you give me a minute, maybe two. That gives me time to give him the disc and put some distance between us. One of you comes in the front door. The other comes in the back. Do it quiet. Or bring the cops. I don’t know what kind of deal you have with the Austrian police, or what their neutrality means when it comes to arresting someone with stolen U.S. property. That’s your business.”

  “What if he’s faster about bringing the money?”

  “I can stall by counting it. Or by taking longer to get the disc. The point of making it three fifteen is that when he checks the place out he doesn’t stumble over you.”

  “Not bad,” Lime said. “Maybe not airtight, but not bad. Tell me something—where did you find the disc?”

  “Tell me something,” I said. “Who killed Hiroshi Tanaka and Wendy Tavetian?”

  “I can only make an educated guess,” he said.

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “I’ll see you at three fifteen.”

  “Don’t rush things,” I said.

  “Why am I letting you use my place?” Paul asked. “Remind me.”

  I gave him ten thousand shillings. About $850.

  “Right, mate, now I remember.”

  “You do some hunting, don’t you?”

  “Not too often,” he said.

  “You use a shotgun?”

  “Shotgun, rifle—depends what I’m after.”

  “Lend me the shotgun.”

  “Lend you the shotgun?”

  “If I use it, I’ll kick in another ten thousand. I don’t expect to use it.”

  “Bloody fucking Americans. You’re all bloody mad. You think the world’s a show on the telly and you can go around blowing each other away. Five thousand whether you use it or not. If you use it, just say you stole it.”

  “Done.”

  “Don’t lose those keys, mate, they’re the only extra set.”

  “Before you close up,” I said, “you put the shotgun up there, next to the animal heads. Like it was part of the hunting exhibit. Except make sure it’s loaded.”

  “You are a television show, aren’t you? I’ll do it now.” While he did that, I went and checked the disc behind the cases of beer where I’d left it. It was still there. I took it out of its dusty old sleeve and put it in a brand-new envelope with some cardboard for stiffening, wrapped it all in plastic, and taped it shut.

  I met Mike Hayakawa at the bank. He had an attaché case and there was a lot of money in it. I told him the version of the plan he was supposed to hear. He thought it sounded reasonable. He agreed to it.

  I went home. I rubbed my shoulder with Arnica ointment. It was supposed to encourage healing. The doctor said it worked but couldn’t explain how. Then I did my first set of physical therapy exercises. It involved rotating my arm in a circle. Then resting. Four times. It was stressful. I thought the list of names on the sleeve that had held the disc were important. I copied them over and hid the sleeve under the rug. Then I took a long hot bath, soaking my shoulder and arm. At least it had happened at the end of the season, not the beginning—and a bad season at that.

  After dinner I called Gerald Yaskowitz at the office and at home. He was out. Then I told Marie Laure the deal was going down that night, or rather early the next morning. She asked me where and when. I knew the place was wired, but since all the principals already knew where and when it didn’t matter who was listening. So I told her. She asked me if I knew who had killed Wendy Tavetian.

  “Her poor mother,” she said, “I would go mad if anything happened to our Anna Geneviève. Absolutely insane. I would kill myself, I think.”

  “My best guess,” I said, “is Chip Sheen. Because he’s a fanatic and not real competent. So I figure he had orders to stop Tanaka from making delivery. Or he misinterpreted his orders. Anyway, he stopped him. But he didn’t secure the disc first. Or after. So then, when Hayakawa showed up, Lime got the bright idea of making sure that the Japanese and the espionage are connected, unless, like I said, that was the idea in the first place, and Chip jumped the gun. Nothing else makes sense. Does it?”

  I got to Down Under early. I stashed the automatic in the cash register, a round in the chamber and the safety off. I didn’t expect to use it. But if I wanted it, it seemed like a good place to have it.

  At three, on the dot, Mike Hayakawa came in. He was tense, not as affable as usual. Me too.

  “I guess I should look around and search and make sure you’re unarmed?”

  “You should,” I said. “It’s the prudent thing to do.”

  “This has been fun,” Mike said. “Working with you. You are so independent and resourceful. I was really at a loss until you came along.”

  He walked around the room, looking under tables, up at the roofbeams, behind the Austrian stove. He looked right at the shotgun on the wall between the stuffed heads of the chamois. It was so much in plain sight he didn’t see it. Then he came over to me. I raised my arms and spread my legs and let him pat me down.

  “I have been empowered,” he said when he was done, “to offer you a job. If the disc is correct and everything. Musashi intends to make a very major investment in Europe. You could work here. Musashi pays very, very well and also has excellent benefits. This is something to consider now that you have a child and are perhaps planning another.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll talk it over with Marie Laure.”

  “I will go get the money now,” he said.

  He was back, according to my watch, which is an eighteen-dollar Casio, at three ten. “Let me look,” I said. He opened the attaché case. The deutsche marks were stacked thick and solid and rich-looking. There’s something about money—cash money—that gets the stomach churning, the blood flowing, the greed going.

  “Do you want to count it?”

  “No. I want to get this over with,” I said.

  “Me too,” he said.

  “I’ll be back in two minutes,” I said.

  I went through the kitchen and outside. I stood there. I breathed the alpine air. I said an unbeliever’s prayer and watched the moonlight of a quarter moon play with the snow and the peaks. Then I went inside, got the envelope from behind the beer bottles, and gave it to Mike.

  I took the attaché case and headed for the bar. “You want a beer?” I asked Hayakawa.

  He was tearing the envelope apart. He took out the disc. He looked at it.

  “Where’s the list?” he screamed. He was livid.

  “What list?”

  “The list!” he screamed. “The list! Where is the list!”

  “You wanted a disc,” I said “Not a list. You got a disc.”

  “Freeze, partner,” Harry Lime said, standing in the doorway, his gun pointed at Hayakawa.

  Hayakawa froze.

  “What’s this, Tony? No list?” Lime said.

  “What list are you talking about? The two of you have been raving about a disc. Now you’re screaming about a list. Don’t you know what you want?”

  I saw Lime’s face fall and fill with loss. Then I looked where he was looking, as did Hayaka
wa. The body of Chip Sheen, dripping blood, hanging limp, was moving into the room. The wider body of one of Vlad Kapek’s Bulgarians was behind him, holding him up. I looked back at Lime and before I could cry out the other Bulgarian, the younger one, had grabbed him from behind. He squeezed Lime until he turned pale and dropped the gun.

  “Is this yours?” the Bulgarian holding Chip Sheen asked in German.

  “Oh, what did you have to kill him for?” Lime said.

  The Bulgarian shrugged. “This is the way we found him,” he said. Chip’s body was soaked from the stomach on down. He’d been knifed in the belly, stabbed over and over. The Bulgarian dropped him.

  “I want the list,” Hayakawa said.

  “There is no list that I know of,” I said as calmly as I could.

  Hayakawa gestured to the Bulgarian holding Lime. The Bulgarian lifted Lime in a bear hug from behind like a kid carrying a big dolly and dragged him over beside me, in front of the bar. He let Lime go and moved over to Hayakawa, the three of them watching the two of us.

  “If he says there is no list, then he didn’t find it,” Lime said.

  The door opened. We all turned and looked.

  It was Marie Laure and Guido. She came rushing in, the old man following more slowly behind. “Tony, Tony,” she cried. Lime thought that Mike and the Bulgarians were distracted enough. He reached down for the gun in his ankle holster. But he was slow. The Bulgarians were faster. One swung toward Marie Laure and Guido and pulled his gun out. I watched in total terror. The other outdrew Lime and fired first. There was just one shot and we all froze.

  “Oh, shit,” Lime said, sad and sinking. “Gut shot,” he said, “fucking gut shot.”

  “Where is the list?” Hayakawa asked again.

  “What is the list?” I said. Though by now I knew. I just wanted to slow things down. Calm things and figure a way out.

  Lime laughed and choked. “The list is what it’s all about.”

  “Not the disc?”

  “The disc is just proof. Of ability. The list is … fuckin’ funny.”

  “What’s funny,” I said.

  “Unemployed secret … ha … ha … agents. All over East Europe. Going private. Get it. It’s all industrial these days, anyway. All about … money and high tech. Tanaka was taking all of East Europe’s spies and going private.”