by Paul Levine
“Fine. When they crumble on cross-examination, maybe some folks will want to know why government agents are suborning perjury.”
Foley thrust the documents at me. “You can run, but you can’t hide, Lassiter. This isn’t over.”
“No. Not for you and not for me. But for Francisco Crespo, it is.”
I hobbled off, my arm around Charlie Riggs, who was muttering something about missing one of the better episodes of Quincy in order to run this errand. In the main terminal, we took the elevator to the bar in the airport hotel. It has a fine view of planes taking off and landing.
I ordered a beer to chase away the bourbon, and a bowl of conch chowder because I was hungry. The chowder was tomato-based the way I like it, heavy on the conch, light on the vegetables. I poured a few drops of sherry into it and munched some saltines while we talked.
“What now?” Charlie asked.
“A Russian named Kharchenko is coming to Miami tomorrow. He’s bringing a stolen painting with him, another Matisse. Plus there’s a freighter that left Helsinki loaded with stolen art.”
“Freighter?” Charlie’s bushy eyebrows arched toward the mirrored ceiling.
“That’s what Foley said, and just that way, when Yagamata told him. Like, ‘holy cow.’”
Charlie whistled. “They’re getting greedy. Even a valise filled with precious objects could be worth millions.” He was quiet a moment, his forehead furrowed in thought. “Did you say Helsinki?”
“Yeah.”
Charlie scratched his beard, then his head, warming up those brain cells. “Makes sense, geographically. Take a look.” He pulled out a pen, grabbed a cocktail napkin and began drawing what I took to be a map of Russia’s western border. “Here’s St. Petersburg,” he said. “It was Russia’s Window to the West during the time of Peter the Great, and it still is. Helsinki can’t be more than what, two hundred to three hundred miles due west across the Gulf of Finland, right here at the sixtieth parallel.” Charlie made a horizontal line connecting the two cities. “When Yagamata’s people get the art out of Russia, they’ve got to take it somewhere, a storage and distribution point, preferably in a Western country with a free flow of tourists and easy border crossings.”
That reminded me of something. “Severo Soto told me that Smorodinsky and his brother used Finland as an intermediate point.”
Outside the windows, a 747 was lumbering off toward a runway. Charlie nodded. “Russia is Finland’s largest trading partner. It wouldn’t be unusual to ship goods in that direction. Then the art could be hidden in shipments from Finland to the States. I’ll wager that the manifest shows glassware and wood products. There’s a great deal of trade going on with items about the right size for hiding contraband. There shouldn’t be much trouble with U.S. Customs. It’s not like getting goods from Colombia or Peru. Nobody expects anything illegal from Scandinavia.”
“So what do I look for?”
“In cauda venenum, the poison is in the tail.”
“What?”
“Watch out for the part you can’t see. Whoever shot Francisco Crespo was part of something much bigger than some art thefts, no matter how much money is involved.” Charlie dipped a spoon in my chowder, took a sip, looked appreciative, and ordered a bowl of his own. “There’ll likely be an interlocking network of Russian and Finnish nationals, a real international cast of characters if they’re using other countries for shipping.” Too hungry to wait for his chowder, Charlie slid my bowl toward himself and spooned out meaty chunks of conch. Between slurps, he said, “What else is there, Jake? What else do you know?”
“There’s a woman picking him up. Sue Molaynen, or something like that.”
After a moment Charlie said, “Suomalainen?”
“Yeah, you know her?”
“Jake, a suomalainen is a citizen of Suomi, or what we call Finland.”
Oh. Where does he learn this stuff? I felt like I was being sent into a game, and I didn’t know the plays. It was starting to overwhelm me.
“Look, Charlie, if anything happens to me, you know that graphite spinning rod of mine you’ve been admiring for a long—”
“Hush! Seek the truth and do what you have to do. When this is over, Jake, we’ll go fishing together.”
***
I could have gone home. Charlie would have given me a ride, or I could have taken a cab. But I didn’t go. I said good-bye to Charlie, took the elevator back to the terminal, ducked out an “Airline Personnel Only” door, and limped across the tarmac, weaving between a 727 about to taxi out, and a DC-9 easing up to the jetway. A guy with two flashlights and protective ear gear gave me a dirty look, but I kept going. The door was open at the foot of Concourse E, and I went up the stairs.
I put some coins into a machine and bought the local newspaper. I sat down at a departure gate and buried my head in the sports section. Baseball and golf. What a lousy time of year. The pro football draft was history, but the league’s summer camps hadn’t opened yet. Not a word about the Dolphins. Sports was so boring this time of year, I might be forced to read the business section. Why not? I had lots of time.
The airport is a sort of high-tech prison with air-conditioning and souvenir stands. It has its amenities, a decent raw bar in the terminal, countless taverns and ice cream stands, rest rooms and telephones. You can buy T-shirts with funny slogans as gag gifts or battery-operated toys that will never work at home. The airport is designed to make agonizing waits, if not pleasant, at least tolerable, while relieving you of the contents of your wallet. It is a modern way station between anywhere and home.
I wasn’t leaving town, and I wasn’t going home. The egress road from the airport is one-way headed east. A mile from the terminal, you can swing south onto LeJeune and head into Coral Gables, or take the expressway to Miami Beach. Go west, and you’re aiming for the Everglades. Take LeJeune north, and you’ll hit Hialeah. But it would only require one police car at the ramp to stop every car leaving the airport. I wasn’t leaving, not for a while. I wasn’t giving Foley a chance to come up with another stunt to get me out of the way.
Even if I made it out of here and buried myself somewhere, I’d have to come back to the airport tomorrow, anyway. As in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Purloined Letter,” maybe the best hiding spot is the most visible one.
Over the loudspeaker, a man named Milligan was being paged, and it gave me an idea. I had all night to think about it. So I settled back into the molded plastic chair by a Delta Air Lines gate and let my mind drift. I closed my eyes and wondered, first, what a man named Kharchenko was up to, and second, what the son of a bitch looked like.
***
The gun was pointed at my chest. A little gun that could punch little holes straight through my chest and out my back. Blood dripped onto the butt from the big man’s torn thumb. Silver, luminous smoke drifted toward the ceiling.
No one said a word. Not the beefy, beered-up lout with the gun. Not the open-mouthed patrons who drifted in a semicircle around us, eyes glistening with excitement. Not the young woman whose honor I defended and who now backed away, her shoes scraping the floor.
And not me. Jake Lassiter, reserve linebacker and second-string dragonslayer, was too scared to talk. Big Mouth was sneering, baring his teeth, daring me to make a move.
I didn’t.
Petrified. Each foot weighed a ton. My breathing was labored, my chest constricted. On the jukebox, the Doobie Brothers were singing, but no one was listening.
Finally, Big Mouth said something, the sounds dense and ponderous like a tape recording played a speed too slow. I strained to hear, the words echoing. “Who . . . who’s . . . gonna help you now, asshole?”
I tried to answer but was mute. I tried to move but was frozen. Then I saw him, silent as a shadow, moving toward the big man. Was he real or did I conjure him up? I hadn’t seen him in the crowded bar, but he’d seen me, and now, there he was, a guardian angel without wings or halo.
But with a knife.
Francisco Crespo.
For a second I lost sight of him, but then he materialized again a step behind and just to the left of Big Mouth. As the man’s fat thumb pulled back the hammer of his gun, I heard the cl-ick, and simultaneously, Crespo flicked his wrist, and a six-inch steel blade flashed out of a black onyx handle. Big Mouth heard the blade whipping into place, and his eyes widening, he wheeled to his left, the gun swiveling toward Crespo.
Crespo drove his hand forward, straight and hard, with no wasted motion. The blade struck between the sixth and seventh ribs and plunged straight into the man’s heart. His mouth opened, a startled look, and his eyes shifted from Crespo, to me, to the blade jammed in his chest. Crespo pulled out the knife with a wet, sucking plop, then watched the man crumple to the floor.
No longer an apparition, Crespo was a small, wiry agent of doom, his face devoid of expression. He leaned over, wiped the knife on the man’s shirt, straightened, folded the blade into its handle, nodded to me, and walked out. The bar patrons scattered as he left.
Then I saw it again, just as always, this time at dreamscape speed, the gun pointing at me, Crespo appearing in the crowd, and I heard the sounds again, the man’s raspy voice, the wailing jukebox, the cl-ick of the hammer, the snap of the blade, and the plop of punctured tissue. Over and over, slower and slower, until I chased the foggy ribbons out of my head and shook myself awake, realizing where I was and how long ago it had been.
Now I checked my watch. Three-thirty A.M. I stood and stretched. My shirt was clammy, my back stiff. I curled up again in the molded plastic chair created by a noted designer who was a distant cousin of the Marquis de Sade. As I groped for sleep that eluded me, the rest of it emerged from deeply etched memory.
Two patrolmen were there in seven minutes, the homicide detective in another twenty. Everyone in the bar suffered from either myopia or amnesia. Except me, and the best I could do was recollect a six-foot-five, husky Anglo with a knife, a guy with short red hair and a flag tattoo. Looked like a marine, I told the cops.
***
The day began with the roar of floor polishers moving down the deserted concourse. My head was filled with sand and my back needed half a dozen spinal twists to work out the crinks and knots. I bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a ninety-five-cent razor in the sundries shop, rinsed my face with cold water, and went to a counter to borrow the Official Airline Guide, international edition. Sure enough, a Finnair flight would arrive at JFK nonstop from Helsinki just after noon. I switched books to the national edition and tried to figure the connecting flight.
Easy. American Airlines had a two o’clock nonstop, JFK to Miami. Enough time to clear customs in New York and climb aboard. The clincher. Finnair and American shared terminal space. No need to hop the bus and go round the horn from terminal to terminal.
I had the day to kill, so I bought a couple magazines, a Travis McGee paperback, and a bag of jelly beans. When a Metro policeman eyed me at midday, I sat still until he passed, then changed concourses.
The American flight from JFK was an hour late. The plane was supposed to do a turnaround, and the gate area was crowded with angry folks who couldn’t board because the aircraft wasn’t here yet. Some businessmen in suits, ties loosened, already dreading yet another delay. Tourists with bawling children going home, carry-ons stuffed with presents and mementos. A blond boy of about seven was playing with one of those remote-control cars, zooming it across the tile, banging into walls, getting the hang of the steering. Nearby, a few tourists lingered at the magazine stand. A young couple shared one chair. Newlyweds, probably, or maybe they always groped each other at airport gates.
I tried to blend in with the crowd. Finally, a scratchy public address system announced the arrival of the flight, and a few minutes later a 727 pulled up to the jetway. I walked across the corridor to a pay phone that had clear line of sight to the arrival gate and dialed the airline’s number. After a “Please hold,” and “I’ll transfer you now,” and then a repeat of both messages, I told the clerk my problem and asked for a teensy-weensy favor. Then I hung up and waited, watching the counter.
Passengers were already disembarking, but nothing happened. The counter clerk, a young man with a frizzy mustache, seemed preoccupied with a family of six who must not have liked their seat assignments. More passengers streamed out, a mix of tourists and businessmen. I watched a middle-aged gray-haired man in a blue suit. Did he look Russian? A body-builder type in blue jeans and a leather jacket walked out. Was that Kharchenko? A round-shouldered man in wire-rimmed glasses could have been an art expert. No one was carrying a cardboard tube, but it might have been in the luggage. Then again, maybe this was the wrong flight. I looked down the concourse at a mass of humanity, realizing the difficulty of my task.
A moment later, the counter clerk lifted the microphone, pushed the button, and solemnly announced, “Arriving passenger, Mr. Kharchenko. Please report to the counter and pick up the red courtesy telephone.”
I waited some more, aware I was staring, catching a few curious glances back from the passengers. I picked up the pay phone again and pretended to talk to my Granny, complaining loudly about the sorry state of bass fishing in Lake Okeechobee.
The plane must have been nearly empty by now. Again, the clerk picked up the microphone. “Arriving passenger, Mr. Kharchenko …”
The man stopped dead, but just for a second, his head swiveling left and right. Then he resumed walking. A thick-necked, burly man in a brown suit, beige shirt, and brown knit tie. He carried a soft leather bag that could have held a cardboard tube. He was one of those toe walkers, not bouncing along, but gliding, his heels never touching the floor. The man had graying short hair and was close to six feet, and though the suit was baggy, I could see the outline of broad shoulders.
“… Please report to the front counter and pick up the red courtesy phone, Mr. Kharchenko.”
He never stopped. He walked right by the counter. Just as he did, the little blond boy’s race car turned a corner and headed right for the man. When it was nearly at his feet, he skipped over it.
It was an odd sight, the sturdy man giving a little hoppity-hop over the car, without breaking stride, landing on his toes. It took a second for me to figure it out, why it seemed so peculiar. He hadn’t been looking down. He had been scanning the gate area and the concourse and the bank of phones where I stood pretending to talk to my Granny. He’d been watching everything around him, his eyes fixing on me momentarily as he covered the expanse of the concourse, the magazine stand, the duty-free shop, the soft-pretzel stand, the candy wagon. He gave the impression that his every sense was primed and alert. He was cautious and agile and strong, and as I laughed at some imaginary joke, I knew it was him.
He didn’t answer the page because he had been trained not to. His ticket probably was not in the name of Kharchenko. No one would call him here, at least no one he wanted to speak to. But I had found him just the same, and as he turned the corner and headed toward the terminal, I was busy congratulating myself. Falling in behind him, staring at his broad back, I realized that I had seen him before. I had never seen his face, or if I had, it hadn’t registered. But I had seen him. I had chased him through a trail of lawn chairs and hibachis. I had watched him duck low and scramble effortlessly under a clothesline.
Sure, Kharchenko, I know you. I just missed seeing you kill Francisco Crespo.
17
RENDEZVOUS
Kharchenko toe-walked the length of the concourse, stopping once at a water fountain. It gave him a chance to look back to see if any bozos were following him. Best I could tell, there was only one.
I kept walking, passing him at the fountain, but slowing down just a bit. Then, I stopped at the newspaper machines, studied the front pages of the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale papers, then opted for The Wall Street Journal to check on my ten shares of I.B.M.
My delay let Kharchenko leapfrog me, and I fell in step again. At the juncture with the main terminal, passengers stream
ed toward us through the metal detectors. Behind glass doors, waiting friends and relatives craned their necks, peering down the concourse, eyes searching for familiar faces.
Kharchenko wended his way past a horde of South Americans wheeling Sony TVs and Mitsubishi CD players toward their flights. He passed by the escalator that would have taken him down to baggage claim and headed straight toward the exit on the upper level. Carrying his soft leather bag, he stepped outside. I followed, a blast of warm air greeting me, the glare of the late afternoon sun making me wince.
He grabbed the first taxi in line, and I hustled toward the second, elbowing past a family with three kids and Mickey Mouse stickers on their luggage. “Can you follow that cab?” I asked the driver.
“Sure, mon.” He was a thin black man who sat on a beaded cushion and kept his radio tuned to a Creole station.
We headed east, taking the expressway above the streets of Liberty City, crossing the bay on the Julia Tuttle Causeway, a high, looping six-lane bridge built on landfill and pilings and lined with towering palm trees. The sun was behind us now, glinting orange sparks off the windows of the oceanfront hotels on the Miami Beach side of the bay. The causeway, jammed with taxis from the airport, hits Miami Beach just north of the Sunset Islands and dumps traffic onto Arthur Godfrey Road. After touching the shoreline by Mount Sinai Hospital, Kharchenko’s taxi swung right and headed south on Alton Road along the municipal golf course. Some late-afternoon hackers were still out, flailing away.
Near Convention Hall, at the intersection of Dade Boulevard and Meridian Avenue, Kharchenko’s taxi slowed, then pulled into a diagonal parking place between two tour buses. A stream of Japanese tourists poured out of one bus, heading toward the Holocaust Memorial.
My driver, Jean-Claude Saint Martine, according to his photo ID, stopped, too. I paid him, gave him an extra ten to keep him there, grabbed my newspaper, and fell in with a group of well-dressed, middle-aged Japanese couples. I was as inconspicuous as a moose among kittens.