The White Van

by Patrick Hoffman

  The “opportunity” Benya had taken the loan for, the deal for the Red Sun cigarettes, had been brought to him by a man named Huang Pei Tian. Benya had had previous dealings with Mr. Huang, albeit much smaller ones, and he felt he could trust him.

  Mr. Huang was in his early thirties. He was balding, and he usually wore clothes that suggested an active nightlife, a thick gold chain, or a fancy watch. He lived in Oakland’s Chinatown, and Benya had been inside his crowded house before to pay for merchandise. He had bought goods from Mr. Huang on half a dozen occasions. The profits were derived from a simple evasion of U.S. taxes and discounted prices for lost or stolen products.

  Mr. Huang had called and explained the terms of the deal to Benya in a giddy English a week earlier. He’d said it was a “once-in-a-year deal, man, top-line China smokes, can’t beat it.”

  As soon as Benya had the money, he called Mr. Huang and told him he could come right over. When he got to the house in Oakland, Mr. Huang, who had been waiting outside his front door, jumped in Benya’s car and shook his hand in a way that suggested regret.

  “Man, you went too slow,” said Mr. Huang with a smile. “They left—sold those cigarettes cheap and took off.”

  Benya couldn’t believe his ears. Why had he driven over here? Why had he borrowed the money? “You could have told me,” he said, trying to be amicable.

  “Man, they move too fast. That deal was so good, it just sold up,” said Mr. Huang. “They coming back in two weeks, though.”

  “Who are they?” asked Benya.

  “They Chinese from Taiwan, they got a good line, man, really nice.”

  “Then you call me when they come back,” said Benya, attempting to sound professional. Depression had descended.

  Two days later he got the call. They were back. But they could only do it for a bigger shipment. Forty thousand dollars for five thousand cartons. “Fucking Camels, no Red Sun shit, man, real Camels,” said Mr. Huang. “That’s seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth, easy. I can put ten thousand dollars down, for a quarter.” His voice muffled through the phone with excitement.

  Benya called Yakov Radionovich and set up a meeting. He explained the situation and asked for another loan. Radionovich asked all the relevant questions and eventually agreed to Benya’s request. He’d give him another $15,000, but he explained that he would need to be paid back within two months or Benya would be charged an additional “fee” of $10,000, bringing the total to $40,000. Benya agreed. Yakov Radionovich hinted that Benya would not have problems moving the cigarettes.

  After that Benya asked if Radionovich could possibly provide a few men for protection. He didn’t want to seem unsavvy, but he was used to dealing in thousands, not tens of thousands of dollars. Radionovich agreed to provide two men for backup.

  For the next day or two Benya went back and forth with Mr. Huang about how the money would be exchanged, how the cigarettes would be examined and tested, who would be allowed to come, and where the deal would happen; Mr. Huang’s tone during all of these calls suggested that Benya’s questions were those of a neophyte. It was finally agreed that they would do it right at the port in Oakland, berth 21-70, at nine o’clock the following Sunday morning.

  On Sunday, Benya—carrying $30,000 hidden in the trunk of his car—picked up Yakov Radionovich’s two men (they were young and quiet), drove to Oakland, picked up Mr. Huang, and was directed to the Port of Oakland. A driver with a truck was waiting for Benya’s call on Dolphin Street, near the port.

  At the gate Mr. Huang popped out of the car and talked to the guard sitting inside the booth. They then drove to the far side of the port and pulled up to a trailer, where they were waved into a parking spot. Before they could even open the doors, two Chinese men were bearing down on them with AK-47s. Benya was naive; at first he thought this must be part of the procedure. It became clear that it wasn’t when the two men were joined by five others and Mr. Huang was pulled from the car and beaten with a baseball bat. The two Russians never even had a chance to pull out their guns (if, in fact, they even had them).

  Benya and the Russians were ordered down on the ground. It took about twenty seconds for the Chinese men to find the money. They were gone ten seconds after that.

  The next day Benya went to visit Mr. Huang in the hospital. He had checked out. Benya found him at home. Mr. Huang, bandaged and limping, did not invite Benya in; he spoke to him through the doorway and said there was nothing he could do. He had lost $10,000 of his own money, he reminded Benya. Benya insisted Mr. Huang tell him who the Chinese men were; surely Yakov Radionovich could help him get the money back.

  “They’re Zhu Lien Bang,” Mr. Huang said. “United Bamboo. We’re fucked, man.”

  When Benya went to Radionovich he was told there was nothing he could do except offer another loan. “Live in the black market, die in the black market,” Radionovich said in Russian.

  The loans went up: fifty thousand, sixty thousand, eighty thousand. Benya Stavitsky was ruined.

  At the time of the initial loan, Benya lived by himself in a clean two-bedroom apartment near the end of Cabrillo Avenue, deep in the Richmond District. By the time the loan had grown to $120,000, he had moved to a new apartment. His car had been repossessed, and he was surviving on a diet of potatoes, pasta, bread, tea, and cigarettes.

  The new apartment was in the nice part of the Tenderloin—near Nob Hill—and while his building didn’t have a name, it was within sight of buildings like the Steinhart, the Mithila, the Granada, and the Hotel Carlton. The exterior of the building looked like it had been stained by tobacco smoke.

  Benya had enough sense and common decency to let Radionovich know he had changed addresses. He had handwritten a note on stationery, saying he was moving and that he had every intention of repaying the debt. He included his new address (1007 Sutter Street, apartment 717) and a few words expressing how kind Radionovich had been.

  The truth was Benya was angry at Radionovich. He couldn’t help thinking Radionovich knew the Chinese men. He must have known them. The world was small.

  One day Benya Stavitsky was lying fully dressed on his bed in his new studio apartment, trying to come up with ways of making money and dreaming about being a boy in Moscow. There was a knock on the door. He figured it must be his neighbor who was always asking for cigarettes.

  He was surprised and embarrassed to see Radionovich—dressed up as usual in a coat and tie—standing at the threshold with a very sad look on his face. Benya stood frozen with the door open, embarrassed mainly over the state of his current living situation. In his mind he was at least an equal to Radionovich in terms of being a businessman; and yet, here he was, standing in his small studio apartment with no prospects. It was clear, they were not equals.

  They spoke in Russian. “Yakov Radionovich, I am so happy to see you,” Benya said.

  “Thank you, my friend,” said Radionovich, leaning in a bit to look into the room. “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Of course, please come in,” said Benya, opening the door and stepping back to make room.

  The apartment was tiny, but neat: the bed was made; a few books (business books and a self-help book, all in English and all from the library) were stacked on a nightstand. There was a metal kitchen table with Benya’s keys on it a few feet from the bed; the kitchen was just beyond the table.

  Radionovich walked into the room and sniffed around as though he was searching for a foreign scent. He slipped his shoes off.

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you. I’m only here for a minute.”

  Benya pulled out one of the two folding chairs from the table and awkwardly set it down near the window. He did not know what he was doing. “Please, sit,” he said.

  Radionovich took off his coat, folded it, sat down, and set the coat on his lap. The man looked very tired. He stared at Benya, searching for words.

  “The debt,” Radionovich finally said, shaking his head, “is out of my hands.”<
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  Benya didn’t understand what the words meant, but he understood the tone. He felt nauseous.

  “I have done all that I could,” continued Radionovich. “I have given you chance after chance. But I have my own concerns and my own problems, and I have been forced to trade your debt to someone else.”

  For a brief moment Benya felt relieved. This was the bad news that necessitated such formality?

  “I am sorry,” continued Radionovich, and then, in English: “It is out of my hands.”

  “So who—surely I can make arrangements with . . .” said Benya in Russian. He couldn’t finish his thought.

  “I understand. I came to tell you. You are my friend. They will come and explain things. But please, Benya, please, listen to me, please do not disappoint them. I am nice. These things happen. Unfortunately, they may not see things the same as you and I.”

  Benya felt a wave of dread and anger rising in him. His face was hot and he was ashamed to think he may have been blushing. His forehead was damp. The world seemed organized against him. Radionovich sat and stared.

  “Are they Russian?” asked Benya. Maybe he knew them. Maybe they would agree to extend the loan, or even loan him a little bit more to get him out of this damned hole he was in. If he just had time.

  “They will speak to you,” answered Radionovich. “They will speak to you.” He nodded his head, signifying that the conversation was over. Benya didn’t want to acknowledge this; he sat there blank-faced and stared at Radionovich’s lap. After a few seconds Radionovich rose to leave. He put his shoes back on, balancing his ankle on his shin. At the door he turned back to Benya, shook his hand like an American, gave a final shrug, and left the apartment.

  Benya grabbed for his cigarettes on the table and knocked a spoon to the floor; the superstition that a woman would be visiting passed through his mind, and he dismissed it as absurd. He stood by the window and smoked and looked down on Sutter Street and contemplated what Radionovich had said. Surely they would be open to extending the loan. Why didn’t he ask that? What was this business about trading the debt? He only owed Radionovich $80,000 in actual cash if you got rid of the “interest.” Radionovich must have sold the debt for between $80,000 and $100,000. Would it really be worth it to pick up the debt for a profit of $20,000? What kind of person trades a debt? Benya decided he would go at them hard and firm and demand he only pay on the actual loan and not the so-called interest. You can’t charge “interest” on a loan that was never written down in the first place.

  He thought about leaving San Francisco. He had been here for six years. He had no real connections. He could go anywhere, Brooklyn, Florida, Tel Aviv, Paris. Surely these debt collectors wouldn’t follow him wherever he went. He was forty-five years old; he could start over. He flicked his cigarette out the window and watched it spin down to the sidewalk. No, he wouldn’t run, he was a businessman, he could make the money back. He had run from Russia and things had only gotten worse. He would meet with this new man and together they would come up with a plan.

  Three days later, at seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, Benya heard three knocks on his door and knew instantly that they had come. He was already dressed and drinking tea and looking at Facebook when they knocked. He closed his computer and stared at the door wondering if there was any way to avoid what was waiting out there.

  Without asking who it was, he unchained, unbolted, and opened the door. He was surprised to see a motherly-looking woman. She appeared to be in her fifties, or sixties. She wore a plain, woman’s pantsuit. Benya felt a moment of relief—it must be the wrong door. But no, she lifted a hand that was holding a card and said in an accented Russian, “Good morning, my dear. My name is Sophia Kamenka and I am the holder of your debt.” Benya glanced at the card. He didn’t know what to say.

  “May we come in?” she asked.

  Benya opened the door wider and saw a man standing behind her. The man was looking at his own shoes as if he was shy. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He had a military-style haircut, he wore combat boots, jeans, and a black bomber jacket. He didn’t look particularly frightening, but he seemed ugly—his brows were swollen, and he had blue and bugged eyes. Benya measured the man’s shoulders and looked at his jaw and his skin and decided that even if he wasn’t large there was something a bit menacing about him. Benya opened the door and let them pass.

  “So . . . I,” began Benya in Russian. “Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you,” said Sophia. She walked through the small apartment, looking at everything. The man with her stood by the door and watched Benya.

  “You are Ukrainian?” asked Benya, hearing her accent. She looked Jewish.

  “My family was from Odessa,” said Sophia. “But I lived all over the Black Sea.” She continued: “And I lived in Moscow for a few years.”

  She walked over to Benya, stood within a foot of him, stared up into his face with a questioning look, and said, “You owe us quite a large sum of money.”

  “And I will pay it back in full, all eighty thousand dollars. I just need six months to put a few ideas into motion,” he said to her.

  She smiled and took his hand in her own. “It’s not eighty thousand, Benya Stavitsky, and you know it; you know perfectly well it’s more than that.”

  He decided not to argue and stayed silent.

  She ticked her head to the side and the young man at the door came into the room and walked to Benya’s computer. Benya tried to step toward the man, but the woman positioned herself between them. The man opened the computer and stared at Benya’s Facebook page. He clicked on Benya’s friends’ icon and scrolled through the list of friends, staring as though he were memorizing them. He then pulled the plug from the wall, closed the computer, and set the power cord on top of it.

  The man moved to Benya’s writing desk and pulled open the drawers. Benya again tried to step to the man, but Sophia again blocked his way. The man took out papers and looked at them. There wasn’t much there. He took his time with each document. The papers he wasn’t interested in were dropped to the ground; the good ones were set on the desk. He found Benya’s old maroon Russian passport, opened it, looked through every page, and then put it into his own back pocket.

  Benya could not believe what was happening. It was rude. He could not have dreamed up a scenario where this type of behavior would be considered acceptable. His blood pressure rose. He was a man of principles and manners and this young man was looking through his personal belongings. It was like he was back in Moscow: the mafia was everywhere. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. Sophia continued to hold his hand. He tried to pull it back, but she only tightened her grip and smiled up at him. The room spun. The sound of honking came incessantly from the street below.

  “It’s fine,” she said in English, reaching up and touching his shoulder with her free hand.

  The young man went to Benya’s bed and pulled the mattress off the frame and the sheets off the mattress and examined the seams on all sides. He felt the mattress methodically. He spent a good few minutes doing this.

  “What do you want?” Benya finally managed to say.

  “We just want to look around. We want to meet our new client,” said Sophia, finally releasing his hand. “Intake interview,” she said, switching to English and stressing the sound of the t’s.

  Benya had to sit down. He put his hands in his pockets.

  The young man set the mattress to the side and began examining the metal bed frame. He looked inside the nightstand next to the bed. He leafed through the pages of Benya’s books and even seemed to read the back of one of them. He lifted the nightstand up and examined the bottom and then the inside of it, running his fingers along the edges. He set it right again and put the books back on it.

  “You are good with people?” asked Sophia, waking Benya from a trance.

  “I don’t know,” said Benya.

  “You are. I know. I see you and I know. People persons are handso
me or gentle, you know what I mean; you are both. In Russia you were a . . . ?”

  “I studied engineering,” said Benya (he was a liar).

  “And here you are a . . . ?”

  “I am a businessman.”

  “A salesman?”

  “A trader,” said Benya, looking down at his feet.

  The woman smiled ambiguously and looked around the room.

  The young man had been walking a small circle, studying the walls. Benya could not imagine what he was looking for, so he sat there and smoked; he had shown them his pack of cigarettes before he lit one, asking for permission: dog! The young man went to an air shaft near the kitchen, moved a chair, took out a Leatherman from his pocket, unscrewed the grill, removed it, and looked inside with a small flashlight.

  Sophia sat down across from Benya and stared at him with her head cocked slightly to the side, like she was appreciating a piece of art. The tip of her tongue showed on her lip.

  The young man walked over to the closet and looked through all of Benya’s clothes, checking every pocket, even appearing to look at the labels and sizes of things.

  Benya looked at Sophia. She was making a sympathetic face, like she too was mystified by what was happening.

  The young man studied all six of Benya’s pairs of shoes, tossing them with thuds onto the floor as he went. Next he found two large cardboard legal boxes at the back of the closet and carried them to the table. He set them down in front of Sophia, who began to look through them.

  Benya was fuming. “Perhaps I can help you?” he said, his voice shaking.

  “Shhh . . .” said Sophia, not even looking up from the papers.

  The young man disappeared into Benya’s bathroom. He came back out and went to the kitchen, where he noisily began taking out all of the pots and pans and dishes and looking into the cabinets with his flashlight. The noise he was making now seemed intentional; dishes and silverware clanged on the floor.