by Paul Levine
Then I knew. Atlantic Seaboard Warehouse.
“Charlie, peel off, old buddy. I got him covered.”
***
A tractor-trailer with a supermarket logo on the side was pulling out of the gate when I walked up. I had parked the car in an empty lot a block away. With any luck, it would be there when I got back, hubcaps and aerial still attached.
I was feeling good. I knew the territory from preparing Crespo’s case. There would be two security guards, one on the river side, the other on the loading dock facing the parking lot. They worked twelve-hour shifts four days a week, seven guards rotating so that the place was always protected. I had interviewed all of them.
The asphalt of the parking lot shimmered green under the mercury vapor lamps. Foley’s gray Chrysler was in the lot. So were a black Mercedes and a white Cadillac. I took the steps two at a time to the concrete loading dock.
“Hey, Carlos,” I greeted the guard. If he wasn’t collecting social security, it was only because he’d been paid under the table for the last thirty years. He was stubby and emaciated, with a narrow face that had run out of room for its fleshy nose. He wore a white shirt with epaulets, gray trousers with a black stripe, and a .357 Magnum on his hip. The trousers kept sliding down from the weight of the handgun. He had white hair swept back, and a bushy white mustache tickled his oversize nose.
“Doctor Lassiter. El jefe is in the traffic office if you’re looking for him.”
“Thanks, Carlos.”
I walked straight through the open front door, which was one foot wider than a tractor-trailer. The traffic office sat on an orange steel catwalk thirty feet off the floor of the warehouse. Metal stairs led from the floor to the catwalk. The traffic office was divided into two rooms. You walked into an open area with metal desks, old typewriters, and a couple of new computers. During the day, three or four clerical workers sat there, pushing paper, keeping track of inventory and shipments. A conference room with a walnut table and eight chairs was tucked inside. I had conducted my interviews there.
What appeared from the floor to be a mirrored wall of glass on the outside of the office was a window looking out from the conference room. I couldn’t see in, but whoever was inside could see out. I ducked into the first row, which was marked Foodstuffs. Canned tomato paste from Italy and pickles from Poland were stacked twice as high as an NBA center.
From behind me, I heard a buzzing. A worker on a forklift whizzed by me into the next row, swinging the wheel hard. He deftly touched a lever, and the fork dropped to just a few inches off the floor. I watched the blade. Three-inch-thick steel at the base where it was bolted to the lift, tapering to maybe a quarter inch at the tip. The driver slid the blade under a pallet of fertilizer bags, shifted gears, backed the lift out, wheeled around, and whirred toward the loading dock and a waiting trailer.
I stayed put, wondering what to do now that I was here. Who was in the office overhead? Foley and Yagamata, el jefe, for sure. Why? Was the CIA buying a load of Polish pickles? The catwalk surrounded the office on three sides; the conference window only faced the front, but that ruled out going up the stairs. If I did, I would be in plain view from the office window. I needed to get to one of the sides.
I looked at the stack of containers on the side facing me. Not high enough. Even if I climbed to the top and stood on my tippy-toes, I’d be several feet too short.
Outside, an air horn tooted three times. The Second Avenue Bridge was going up over the Miami River. Inside, workmen were beginning to drift toward the dock, removing their gloves. I looked at my watch. Nine P.M. End of a shift. Twenty yards away, a forklift sat empty.
Why not?
When I turned the ignition, there was a whoosh of propane and the little motor jumped to life. How hard could it be? I fooled around with what looked like a gearshift and stepped on the pedal that should have been a clutch. I hit the gas, found myself in reverse, and crashed into a stack of hundred-pound dog food bags. I found the forward gear, hit the gas again, turned the wheel, and whirled three hundred sixty degrees like Dorothy Hamill on the ice. Damn thing steers with the rear wheels.
After a couple of minutes, I could drive semi-straight. So there I was, an ex-football player, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things ricocheting a forklift around a corner and trying to get the blade into position to lift a ton of applesauce ten feet off the ground. After several tries, I figured it out. I slid the fork under the pallet and lifted it cleanly, locking the blade into place. Then I climbed up the pallet, and standing on top, reached the floor of the catwalk with my hands stretched over my head. I hoisted myself up, swinging first one leg then the other to the floor. In a moment, I was on the catwalk, out of view of the conference room window.
I looked down at the warehouse. No workmen were visible. I eased around the corner, ducked underneath the mirrored window, and made it to the front door. I listened for voices but heard none. Quietly, I turned the door handle. Inside, the outer office was dark. The door to the conference room was cracked open, the light spilling out. I duck-walked inside and closed the door behind me. A metal counter split the office in half, with clerks’ desks on either side.
I heard voices now but couldn’t make out the words. In the movies, your Indiana Jones types are always sneaking up on the Nazis and eavesdropping from a hundred yards away. It doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to be within spitting distance to understand anything, unless you’re equipped with sophisticated gear like Lourdes Soto carries in her aluminum case. I didn’t even have a pencil. I waddled closer to the open door, keeping my back pressed to the counter.
I tried to breathe slowly, my brain telling the rest of me not to sneeze, fart, or sing the national anthem. My various body parts obeyed, all except my right knee. Three feet from the door, it cra-cked, the sound of a dry twig snapping in two. I convinced myself that it sounded loud to me because, after all, it was my knee. I waited a moment to see if my elbow or ankle answered. Sometimes it happens that way, a symphony of sympathetic bones: snap, crackle, and pop. But they stayed quiet, and I held my breath, listening some more. I couldn’t see into the room, but now I could hear.
“. . . shameless exhibitionism. Carelessness. Inexcusable leaks.”
I recognized Robert Foley’s voice. He grew louder and angrier with each word. “What the hell is the Matisse doing in your—what the hell is it—your garage?”
“My study. You would not understand. To me, the painting is very symbolic.” A faint Cuban accent. Severo Soto. Oh, brother. What was going on here?
“Symbolic! We’re not talking art appreciation here. You guys are skimming. You’re treating the product as your own personal property. Security risks, both of you.”
Then another voice, at first too faint to understand. Then, “. . . but I take full responsibility. It was my decision.” A foreign accent, someone who had been taught the language by a Brit. Matsuo Yagamata.
“And speaking of exhibitionism!” Foley again. “At a public party attended by half of South Florida, you showed off some gold train that wasn’t made by Lionel.”
“Lionel?” Yagamata sounded puzzled.
“Never mind!” Foley shouted savagely. “If you two guys are the brains of this operation, I’d hate to see—”
“Please show me the rabbit again,” Yagamata said, quietly and politely.
It grew silent. I pictured them passing my little bunny around the table.
“An interesting piece from the House of Fabergé, probably the work of Fedor Afanassiev or Henrik Wigstrom,” Yagamata said. “Not especially valuable. Perhaps inspired by an egg-shaped pendant worn by Catherine the Great and stored in the treasury of the Hermitage at the time Fabergé’s artisans were at work there. So they could easily have been influenced—”
“Who gives a shit! How did Crespo get his hands on it?”
No one spoke, and I imagined a series of shrugs. “See what I mean?” Foley continued. “We knew the Russians couldn’t keep records to save their
ass. Completely incompetent. Give me the Germans, any day. They always knew where every bullet was stored. Great record keepers. But the Russians. Drunken, lazy bastards. It doesn’t matter if they’re commies or democrats or Rotarians. We expected inefficiency and pilferage at their end, not ours. It’s bad enough you guys are dipping into the trough, but now you got minimum-wage Marielitos running around with the crown jewels . . .”
Crespo’s not running anywhere, I thought.
“. . . Can you imagine the flak if Geraldo Rivera got hold of this? I gotta tell you, if word gets out, you guys are on your own. Common criminals. We wash our hands of the whole stinking lot of you.”
“A trinket, nothing more.” Yagamata again. “I have allowed various operatives to keep mementos of our successful activities.”
“Mementos!” Foley was screaming now. “Evidence is more like it!”
“Why do you worry so much?” Yagamata asked, calmly. “We have other, more pressing concerns.”
“El abogado, what about the lawyer?” Soto asked.
“He doesn’t know shit,” Foley said. “I told him the government is trying to help stop the theft of Russian artwork.”
I heard a laugh but couldn’t tell the source. “Isn’t that just like government everywhere?” Yagamata chortled. “A lie that is so close to the truth.”
“You have a problem with that?” Foley again.
“To the contrary,” Yagamata responded. “I applaud every aspect of your Operation Riptide. Until recently, I believed myself to be a master of deceit. But I am—what do you call it here—a small fish . . .”
“Small fry,” Foley said.
“. . . compared to the cunning of civil service employees in polyester suits.”
“Matsuo, you’re being too modest,” Foley said. His voice faded. I had the impression he was walking around the room. “. . . fact remains that the lawyer knows too much, even if he doesn’t know what it means.” The voice grew stronger and I heard the shuffle of his oxfords against the tile floor. “I’m gonna leave the lawyer up to you, but let me make something clear. You have no sanction to terminate him . . .”
Terminate? Why did I think he wasn’t talking about firing me as a legal eagle?
“. . . none whatsoever.”
Maybe I should thank my new buddy Foley. Okay, maybe he had pointed a gun at my crotch. But now . . .
“Do you forbid it?” Yagamata sounded peeved.
“We sanction nothing. We forbid nothing.”
Thanks a lot, buddy.
Just then, a new voice startled me. “It would not be discreet.” That sweet voice with just a trace of an accent picked up at quince parties and from giggling friends at the St. Christopher School for Girls. “First the Russian, then Crespo, now the lawyer. Do you really believe this would escape the notice of the prosecutor and the grand jury?”
That’s my Lourdes. Arguing for my life because it would be imprudent to kill me. At the same time, I wondered if her reasoning was influenced just a bit by the memory of the slow rhythmic grinding of our loins. Spare the infidel, and fetch him to my chambers.
There was murmuring at the table that I took to be agreement. There were also the sounds of chairs moving and people stirring. I thought it might be an appropriate time to put some distance between myself and four characters who were deciding if my demise was more trouble than it was worth. I duck-walked back to the door without tearing ligaments or knocking over any typewriters. I made it to the catwalk and turned the corner to get out of view of the window.
Damn. Someone must have decided that a fifteen-foot stack of applesauce violated a housekeeping rule. The forklift and my makeshift ladder were gone. I could risk it and try to get down the stairs. Or I could—
“. . . Tomorrow, then,” Foley said.
They were coming out the door. In a moment, they would turn the corner and face me on the catwalk. I ducked under the railing, dropped my feet over the side and hung there, my hands gripping the cool steel, my feet swinging gently below me.
“This Kharchenko,” Foley said, “can he be trusted?”
They were directly above me. The catwalk swayed slightly with each step.
“Completely,” Yagamata answered. “He is not as intelligent as Smorodinsky, but perhaps that is to our advantage. He follows orders without thinking about the consequences.”
No one was moving. My arms ached.
“When will he arrive?” Foley asked.
“Tomorrow from JFK. He is carrying a cardboard tube with a rather colorful poster of Temppeliaukio Square in Helsinki.”
“And?”
“Inside the poster is Matisse’s Girl with Tulips,” Yagamata said. “Even as we speak, he is on the train, the St. Petersburg Express. He will be in Helsinki in two hours.”
For some reason, I thought of Dr. Zhivago, and an old Russian steam engine belching smoke into a wintry night, red flags crackling in an icy wind.
“I’m only going to say this once, Matsuo. Any more slipups, the whole operation will be scuttled.”
Yagamata replied, but a factory whistle blasted twice, and I couldn’t make out his words. Between the blasts, I heard a name. “Sue Molaynen” maybe. Yagamata’s voice became stronger.
“She supervised the loading of the freighter in Helsinki last week and will pick him up at the airport here.”
“Freighter?” Foley sounded irritated.
“A Polish freighter under lease to one of my companies.”
“What are you doing, stealing the whole damn Hermitage?”
“In due time.” Yagamata laughed. “Perhaps a hundred years. For now, several trailer-size containers of objets d’art, the most we have ever transported. What did you think, Mr. Foley, that we are still carrying baubles inside Matryoshka dolls?”
“I don’t like it,” Foley said. “You take too many risks, and you exceed all authority.”
“Like all bureaucrats, you worry too much.”
My shoulders were on fire.
“I’m not kidding, the strictest inventory control on this shipment,” Foley said, sternly.
“Of course,” Yagamata said.
“I mean it.”
“Of course you do.”
“You are a real piece of work, Matsuo baby.”
“Thank you.”
“Boys,” Lourdes pleaded. “Please stop. We must work together. One misstep and—”
“Ouch!”
Her stiletto heel dug deep into the flesh between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. Suddenly I was hanging only by my left hand, my body swaying as if in a breeze. For some reason I pictured a paratrooper caught in the trees, the enemy about to spray him with automatic weapons fire.
Commotion above me. “What the hell!” Foley shouted. Severo Soto was yelling at someone. He leaned down and looked at me. “Maldito!”
This time it was a man’s foot, and it hit hard, crunching the fingers of my left hand. And then I fell.
I missed the applesauce jars and landed on the fertilizer bags with a thud. I didn’t break, sprain, or twist anything. It was no worse than getting blindsided by the tight end. I just clambered down and started for the loading dock. I wasn’t running. There would be something scaredy-cat about that. But I wasn’t walking either. It was more like the stiff-legged jog we used coming out of the locker room for pregame introductions. Almost a swagger to the gait.
Then the air horn blasted. Over the speaker, I heard Yagamata calling the security guards. Then, it was Severo Soto’s voice, saying something in Spanish I couldn’t understand. In a moment, I saw Carlos doing his best imitation of a cop, gun held in two-hand grip, edging his thin body along a pyramid of tomato paste cans, his back plastered to the wall. What had they told him?
I flattened myself to the floor and watched Carlos straining on tippy-toes to see on top of the pallets. A moment later, I heard the ominous rumble of the steel doors, lowering from overhead. Both loading docks—riverfront and parking lot—were sealed off. We were g
oing to be spending some time together, my art-loving friends and me.
Carlos turned a corner, raising and lowering his gun with arms locked straight in front of him as he doubtless had seen on TV. He had his left hand cupped under his right, rather than in front of it, where each hand could neutralize the other, steadying the gun. I started moving the other way. I doubted Carlos could shoot straight but would rather not test my theory.
The warehouse had no windows, and best I could tell, the only doors were locked tight. But the building was huge, and they had to find me first. I was near a raised cubicle at the intersection of two walls. A stenciled sign said: INVENTORY AND MERCHANDISE CONTROL. I took my own inventory. Nothing useful on the desk, not a telephone, not even scissors. What looked like a janitor’s closet was nearby. Maybe I could fight them off with a mop.
The door was unlocked.
Inside were wires and switches, the electrical controls for the building. I grabbed a handful of wires and yanked them out of their little sockets. On the wall was the circuit breaker panel. I opened it, reached in, and popped all the breakers. The heavy-duty air-conditioning wheezed and clunked to a halt. The lights blinked off; I was in total darkness.
Footsteps echoed on concrete, but in the cavernous warehouse I could not tell the direction. Yagamata would try to find the electrical room, so I kept moving. I tiptoed cautiously into the blackness, taking care, trying to remember the tomcat stalk an outdoorsman once taught me: high slow steps, heel down first, roll onto the ball of the foot. I was doing fine. I didn’t wake any sleeping bears or fall into any rushing streams. But then I smacked into something.