by Frank Zafiro
I stood up and walked around my desk. “C’mere,” I motioned to him. He stood up, the look on his face questioning and a little fearful. I drew him into an embrace and gave him a few hard slaps on the back. Meanwhile, I checked him for a wire. I doubted he was in league with the feds or the local cops, but you can never be too careful.
Once I was sure he was clean, I smiled at him. “For you, Pete, I’ll do this. But it will cost you thirty large. In advance.”
Pete didn’t hesitate. He nodded his agreement and held out his hand. “Thank you, Dom.”
I took his hand and he shook it, clasping our handshake with his free hand.
“Thank you,” he repeated.
I stepped back and patted his cheek roughly. “Just bring the money, Pete. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“What for you want this papers?” Val asked me.
The small Russian coffee shop was mostly empty. Val and I sat in the corner. All of the tables around us were empty. I wasn’t certain, but I was pretty sure Val owned a good stake in the place. It made sense. Coffee in the Pacific Northwest was bigger than cigarettes.
“That’s my business, Val,” I said, sipping the strong brew from a small espresso cup. “Can you get them?”
Valeriy Romanov shrugged. I called him Val, because whenever I tried to say his full name, it always came out like the woman’s name, Valerie. I know it’s supposed to be pronounced vuh-LAIR-ey, but whenever it comes time to say it, I fuck it up. So I just call him Val.
“Of course I can,” he said, grinning wolfishly. “Anything inside that building, probably I can get.”
Val and his crew had been at work in River City since the mid or late ’90s, about the same time Uncle Angelo shipped me out west. We’d spent a year or two avoiding each other, then a few months of cautious sparring before we figured out we could just as easily be allies.
The Russians were a hard crew, but they didn’t get emotional. For them, it was all business. Val’s predecessor, Sergey, had killed a cop back in ’98 and got himself killed in return. But the crew survived because of the business.
“The stuff might be in the garbage,” I told him. “It’s not high security info. But if it’s not in the trash, they might have to get it out of a shred bin or off a computer.”
“Garbage? That work good.”
I knew he had a cousin or something that ran a janitorial service. This cousin of his had the contract to clean the police station every night. He played it mostly straight, but the place was a gold mine for information. I also knew it would cost me. Cleaning the police station was a large contract, as government contracts tend to be, and his cousin didn’t like Val going to the well very often.
“How much do you want?” I asked.
He waved his hand. “Let’s see if I can get it. Then we talk money, okay?”
I drained the last of my harsh Russian coffee and stood up. We shook hands and I left.
Back at Angelo’s, Isaac was hooking up a new DVD player in my office.
“You’ll love this, boss,” the twenty-year-old kid said. “It’s got progressive scan.”
I shrugged. “What’s that?”
He looked at me like I was retarded.
“Don’t give me that fucking look,” I told him. “I’m running fucking businesses here. I ain’t got time to be some kind of mechanical whiz kid.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “No look, no look.” He went back to connecting the wires.
When he was done, he handed me an envelope. I opened it and quickly counted the bills inside.
“Fat week,” I commented.
Isaac nodded his head absently and used his fingertips to check that his hair was still perfectly gelled into place.
“You’re still beautiful,” I told him. “You vain fuck. Get out of here.”
He smiled at me. “I’ll let you know how that thing goes tonight.”
“The casino thing?”
“Nah,” he said. “The thing out in the Valley.”
He meant dumping some electronics from a Circuit City truck he and Joe Bassen hijacked a month ago up on Highway 395. In fact, I realized, that was probably where the new DVD player came from.
“Be careful on that,” I told him. “It’s been a while, but not that long.”
“It’s cool,” Isaac said, and left.
I watched him go. The kid may not be paisan and he was certainly one vain motherfucker, but he did good work.
I took Pete’s DVD out of the drawer and put it in the DVD player. The video began without any preamble.
The recording was surprisingly well done for the most part. The PI got a number of shots of Officer Kahn and Pete’s wife at dinner. I could see why the cop was interested. The woman was a looker.
After dinner, there was a change of scene. It was a little darker out and the PI was parked across the street from the Las Playas motel. He zoomed the camera in on the motel sign, then zoomed out and panned over to the cop and Pete’s wife going into a room together.
Another break, and the PI was right next to the same door they’d gone in. Room number six. The camera microphone was picking up the faint sounds of heavy breathing and a few moans. Then the lens found a crack beneath the Venetian blinds and zoomed into the room. Suddenly her face took up the full screen, eyes closed and moaning. The camera panned up to his shoulder, then down the length of their bodies as he thrust into her and she dug her heels into his ass.
“Hey, what are you doing!” came a sharp voice from off-camera.
The picture trembled, swayed, dropped to the ground and then shut off.
I pushed stop and ejected the disc. I thought about keeping it in case things went south with Pete, but I realized it would do me more harm than good. I lit my lighter and melted the disc over the top of my garbage pail.
Pete, I thought, you were right. You didn’t want to see this.
Two days later, Val called and asked me to meet him near Joe Albi stadium. The stadium was closed, but the huge parking area was open. True to form, it was an unpaved field with trampled-down weeds, gravel, and dirt. A few paved lanes crisscrossed throughout the field, but all of the parking stalls were in the dirt. Not exactly Giants Stadium.
Val was already there when I arrived, sitting in his black Lexus, smoking filter-less Camels and listening to heavy metal. He turned the music down when I pulled up next to him. Wordlessly, he handed an envelope out the window.
I took it and opened it up. The paper was folded in thirds. It had obviously been crumpled into a ball at some time and then smoothed back out before it was folded. It didn’t matter. I could read what was printed on it just fine.
“Is right?” Val asked.
I nodded. It was. All of the uniform patrol assignments were there, listing the officers, their districts, the shift, and days off. A few had letters next to their names and a few were lined out. The date on the bottom of the page was yesterday’s date.
“It’s exactly what I wanted,” I told him.
“Good.”
I took a moment and found James Kahn’s name. The markup showed him working on the north side, graveyard shift. He had Fridays and Saturdays off. That made sense, if he liked to play the ladies.
“I need one hundred fifty,” Val said. “My cousin say his man have to break into shred bin for this.”
I pulled my cash out of my pocket and peeled off three fifties. “Your cousin is full of shit,” I said, handing him the money.
“Why for you say that?”
“The sheet of paper was balled up and thrown away,” I told him. “People don’t do that to papers they plan on shredding. They do that to papers they plan on throwing in the trash.”
Valeriy shrugged. “Maybe so. But one hundred fifty is fair money, no?”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Thanks.”
Valeriy gave me an icy smile, showing his yellow teeth. “Always. You need something more, you just call. Okay?”
The Lexus spun its tires on the loose
dirt and gravel before finding purchase on the strip of asphalt that passed for a lane of road. I watched as he drove away.
“I might just do that,” I muttered.
The next day, Pete brought a package to my office.
I embraced him again, did some back clapping and wire-checking, then motioned for him to sit down.
“Thirty,” he said, handing me the thick manila envelope.
I took the money and put it in my drawer. I’d count it later, but for now I put on a show that I trusted him completely. Besides, he’d always made good on his gambling debts, so I suppose he was honest for the most part.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” I asked him again, even though if he backed out now, I’d hit him for five grand just for wasting my time. “Once you leave here, there’s no going back.”
“I’m sure.”
“Your call,” I said and walked him out.
Once I had the thirty grand sitting in my safe, I started giving things some careful consideration. The problem I kept coming up against was that I didn’t want to risk having this thing come back to me or anyone on my crew. I wasn’t exactly raking it in over here in the Pacific Northwest when compared to back east, but life wasn’t so bad. And the air was clean, too. I didn’t want to fuck all that up by bringing unwanted attention from the cops. Besides, I’d never get called back to Jersey by Uncle Angelo if I couldn’t handle things out here in Hicksville.
In the end, I kept coming back to Val. I knew he was hard-core and could do it. Isaac probably could, too, but then he’d most likely have to lam it and then I’d lose my best worker.
Using the Russians would put another layer between me and the job itself. The downside was, I’d have to pay them. I just hoped they worked cheap.
I’d expected Val to be surprised or shocked when I floated the idea past him the next day. But he just sipped his Russian coffee and nodded his head.
“What?” I said. “This isn’t a big deal to you?”
“Oh, yes,” he told me. “Is big deal, but only if I take the job.”
“You don’t want it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Business is good. We mostly do our work with the cars now. Not so much the violence, you know?”
“I know. It’s the new fucking millennium.”
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“A kinder, gentler world,” I said.
“Maybe not so gentle.” He took a sip of his coffee and sighed. “But things go easier that way, no?”
“Well, if you don’t want the job, I’ll take it to the brothers.”
Val scowled. “You will save money there, da. But you pay in the long run when some stupid cherniy makes a mess of things.”
He was right. I was bluffing. Some things haven’t changed since New Jersey. I’d never trust blacks with anything important.
Val sighed. “Is just very dangerous, you see? Too much attention. Bad for business.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. That is why you are here, trying to hire me.” His tone wasn’t harsh, but he didn’t smile either.
I tried a little flattery. “I just figured since you guys handled that thing before that you might be up for this one.”
“That was very bad for business. Only thing worse was to not do it. Not show the cops that we do what we want here.”
“That Sergey had some balls,” I said, trying to schmooze Val a little. “Clipping a cop and all.”
The Russian snorted. “Sergey no kill anyone.”
“But I thought—”
“When he die from cop’s bullets, it make good sense to put the gun in his hands.” Val watched me closely as he spoke. “Who cares if he is convicted of murder? Sergey doesn’t care. He is dead. See?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Smart.”
He shook his head. “No. Stupid. It take a year to get the heat off us.”
“What if there wasn’t any heat?”
He paused, looking at me. We both took the moment to light up, me sharing my Camels with him. After the first deep inhale and a breath out, he asked, “How?”
“What if this friend of ours died by accident?”
“Accident?”
“Yeah.”
“You want for me to push him down from ladder? What you mean, accident?”
“If he was a painter, I’d say a fall from a ladder would be right.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “But this guy’s not a painter. He’s a police officer. So he’s apt to have a different kind of accident, don’t you think?”
Val thought about it for a moment, then nodded his head. “Is possible.”
“Cuz, if you think about it, what happened in ’98 was kind of an accident for that guy, too. I mean, I’m sure workers’ comp would cover it.”
Val smiled at me, cold and wide. “I never think of it this way.”
I leaned back and shrugged. “I’m just sayin’.”
Val took another drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly, contemplating. “Yes. Is possible.”
“Good.”
He looked over at me. “How much you pay for this?”
I shrugged, nonchalant. “If it were just some mope, I’d go two. Maybe twenty-five hundred. But since this is a special-type person, say five thousand.”
“Bullshit,” Val said. “I want ten.”
I thought about countering with seventy-five hundred, but decided not to. Instead, I made a show of thinking about it, then nodded in agreement. “Fine,” I said.
I slid an envelope toward him containing Officer Kahn’s picture and the crumpled markup I’d purchased from him just two days ago. We shook hands.
“When will it be done?” I asked him.
“You pay five thousand. Then, within two weeks.”
I paid the five thousand later that day and set the remaining five aside for when the job was finished. I felt pretty good about the whole thing, clearing twenty large and getting some cushion in the bargain.
They say the waiting is the hardest part. And this was like waiting for Christmas, but not knowing what day it will fall on.
Christmas for Pete came about four days later.
I was sipping a glass of red and trying like hell to get into the pants of the new waitress at Angelo’s when it came across the news.
A little blonde newsgirl was holding her microphone and chattering silently into the camera. The caption below her read, “5-Live: Police Officer Slain.”
“Turn that up so I can hear it,” I told Roger, the bartender.
He hit a button on the remote and sound spilled out.
“—teen year veteran of the River City police force. Detectives are on the scene in the Hillyard neighborhood and they are investigating, but preliminary reports do confirm that Officer Kahn has died from his wounds.”
Holy shit, Val, I thought. Nice work.
“Details are sketchy,” the little blonde reported, “but we were able to obtain a statement from Lieutenant Crawford of the Major Crimes Unit.”
The camera cut away to a large cop in a bad suit. He was balding and what hair he had made up black streaks against his scalp. His full, dark mustache drooped down at the corners of his mouth. The clip caught him in mid-sentence.
“—stopped the vehicle. The passenger ran and one officer pursued him on foot. Officer Kahn attempted to take the driver of the vehicle into custody, but was shot during the struggle.”
There was a clamor of questions off-camera.
“No,” the police lieutenant said, “there have been no witnesses located at this time, other than the deceased officer’s partner. He did not see what occurred.”
Another clamor of questions, dominated by a male voice asking about the vehicle.
“I’ll have a description of it shortly,” Lieutenant Crawford told him, “but it appears that the license plates used were false plates.”
The clip ended and returned live to the little blonde reporter. “We’ll keep you updated as this stor
y develops. For News-5, I’m Shawna Matheson.”
I sipped my wine and looked around the cocktail room. The waitress I was working on had tears in her eyes.
“That’s so terrible,” she said.
I shrugged.
“I wonder if he had children?” she asked me.
Right then, I decided not to fuck her.
Val didn’t even wait a full twenty-four hours before asking for his other five thousand. I met him at his coffee house and we sat down at his corner table.
“Feeling any heat?” I asked him as I slid the fat envelope across the table to him.
He shook his head and slipped the envelope inside his jacket. “It goes like clockwork.”
“How’d you handle the partner?” I asked.
Val grunted. “Easy. We have two plans. One if with partner, one if alone.”
“That was smart,” I said, “sending one person running to draw off the partner. But what if he hadn’t chased after your guy?”
“Cops always chase,” he answered, and snapped his fingers at the waitress. “Katya, two coffee!”
“Not always,” I said.
“Eh?”
“They don’t always chase after people who run.”
The Russian scowled. “Bah. Cops like dog when he see rabbit. Always chase.”
“What if he had stayed in the car, though? Did you have a plan?”
“Sure,” he said. “There be two dead cops. And I no charge you extra.”
I thought about that for a moment, and I believed him.
“What if the cop ran your guy down right away?”
“No chance,” Val said with a proud laugh. “I send Yuriy. Yuriy very fast. He can outrun even KGB, huh?” He laughed again at his own joke.
I joined him, chuckling. “I guess that’s pretty fast.”
“Very much fast,” Val said. “But why you ask so many questions?”
I met Val’s stare. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you pay and I do. Now you ask so many questions. Why?” Val’s eyes were hard flecks of iron. His gaze bore right into me. I knew he was probably thinking the same kind of things I thought when I checked Pete for a wire. He was probably wondering if he was going to have to dig a hole somewhere for me.