Lauren continues. More softly now: “He said he’d track me down. Then he’d kill me.”
“And so you want to steal all his money.”
She smiles. “I’m no angel. I never said I was. But I need that money. To get away. You don’t know my husband. He’s a monster.”
“How can that be? People magazine named him one of the Sexiest Men Alive.”
“Not to me,” she says, dreamily, as if remembering some of the instances when he acted less than sexy. “I need money to get away from him. I’ll go someplace, maybe back east. Maybe Paris. I’ll start somewhere new. I still have a long life ahead of me.”
“How much do you want me to steal?”
“I don’t know. Twenty million dollars?”
“Oh, sure,” I say. “That sounds reasonable.”
“But he’s worth billions . . .”
“So let’s see. I steal twenty million. And I get to keep a hundred grand. That’s mighty generous.”
She waves her hand. “Fine. What’s fair? I mean, in your . . .” She thinks about it. “In your line of work?”
“Think of me like a waiter. You know, the guy that brings your dinner in those fancy restaurants? How much do you tip him?”
“Ten percent.”
“Come on. The waiter at Evvia.”
“Twenty percent.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“On twenty million dollars . . .”
“Right.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s a delicious dinner.”
She smiles. She has big white teeth, perfectly straight. She takes off her sunglasses, snaps them shut. Finally I see her eyes. Blue and yellow, feline. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“Not hard enough,” I say. “That’s always been my problem.”
“Will you do it?”
“You know, I could take his money and not give you a cent.”
“But then you’d never have a chance with me.”
“A chance? For what?”
Our eyes lock, and for the first time, I realize I’m infatuated with her.
CHAPTER FIVE
In a con man’s lingo, the roper is the person that interests the mark in the story. The roper ropes the mark into the con. Usually this happens by appealing to the mark’s greed, or vanity, or genitals. Or all three.
CHAPTER SIX
Pulling off a Big Con is like climbing Mount Everest. It’s all about logistics. Whether you succeed has little to do with how you climb; it has everything to do with preparation. Once you start the ascent, your success or failure has already been determined. Did you stock your base camp adequately? Did you hire the best sherpa guides? Are you in good health? Is your equipment top-notch? Can you trust your fellow climbers to guard your lines?
So before I steal twenty million dollars, I need to make sure things stay copacetic at base camp. I can’t have my son beaten up or killed while I’m in the middle of the con. Before anything else, I need to make sure Toby is safe.
How do you convince a gangster not to kill your son? Easy. Make it worth his while. The first step is to get face time. In the case of Andre Sustevich, the Professor, nothing can be simpler. All I need to do is ring his doorbell.
Sustevich lives in an estate in Pacific Heights. He settled in San Francisco, he told a reporter once, because it reminded him of Moscow: cold, gray, and depressing. This afternoon, when I drive up to his compound, I think that, living here, I would not be depressed. The house was built by one of San Francisco’s railroad barons in the 1890s and escaped the earthquake and fire of 1906. It occupies an entire city block. The house is a Queen Anne Victorian, with elaborate wooden gables, a circular corner tower, and ostentatious ornamentation. The exterior wood is painted lemon yellow, perhaps to ward off the depression that must come when you live in a sixteen-room mansion with unobstructed views of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
I park my car at the end of the block and approach the house. It is surrounded by formal gardens with topiaries shaped like animals—a swan, a boar, an elephant—all things you want to kill or eat. The gardens are separated from the street by a black wrought iron gate. A bruiser of a man, dressed in a suit that fits him like a sausage skin, stands guard. He wears a delicate featherweight headset with a microphone. The getup looks out of place, like a linebacker with a tiara.
“Hello,” I say to him. “I’m here to see Andre Sustevich.”
“Do you have an appointment?” He speaks with a thick Russian accent.
“No,” I say, “but could you kindly tell him that my name is Kip Largo. I’m the father of Toby Largo and I want to pay Mr. Sustevich one million dollars.”
The man nods as if this sort of thing happens all the time: a stranger stopping by offering a million dollars. He lowers the headset microphone to his mouth and says something in Russian. I hear the names Kip, Largo, and Toby, but am not sure if they are attached to Russian words for ridiculous old man and hopeless load of a son.
After a moment, the Russian bruiser lifts the microphone from his mouth and turns to me. “Mr. Sustevich will see you,” he says. “Please come with me.”
He pulls the black gate and it creaks open. I step inside the garden. From the house another big Russian emerges. He has short blond hair and shoulders like ham hocks. I feel like I’ve stumbled into Goldsky’s Gym on the Dnieper.
The blond man says, “Please lift your arms.” I raise my hands above my shoulders. The blond man pats down my shirt, my rib cage, the small of my back. He gingerly cups my testicles. I feel like telling him not to worry—now there’s a weapon I haven’t used in about six years. Satisfied that I’m not packing heat, or wearing a bomb vest, the blond man escorts me into the house.
First stop, a huge foyer, two stories tall, with alternating black and white square marble floor tiles. Because—for two months of my former life, when I was rich, I shopped for a house like this—I know that these tiles are Italian Carrera, $13 per square foot. A grand circular staircase sweeps up to the second floor, where a balcony with a sitting area overlooks the entry.
The blond man stops in the foyer and turns to me. “Do you have a cell phone?”
At first I think he’s asking to borrow it, maybe to make a personal call to Minsk. Then I understand. Cell phones can house all sorts of electronics. Bugs, homing devices, cameras. I take out my Motorola, hand it to him. “I’ll return it when you leave,” he says.
Damn right you will, I think, recalling the two hundred dollars I laid out for it, back when it was the latest model.
I follow the blond man into a large living room, with panoramic windows that look onto the garden, and then, further out, past a steep hill, onto the San Francisco Bay. Through the fog I can see the Golden Gate Bridge.
The blond man gestures to a couch and leaves. I sit down and stare at the walls. They’re stark white, hung with large canvases that I find inscrutable: shapes and colors, black and white, splatters of red. These are either pieces of modern art or police sketches from a crime scene.
After a few minutes, I hear footsteps behind me. I turn to see a middle-aged man—thin, bespectacled, with closely cropped gray hair—stride into the room. The first thing I think is that he really does look like a professor, and that the only menace he can muster is the threat of giving me a D on a final exam. The second thing I think is that he is responsible for roughing up my son, breaking his leg, and scaring the shit out of me.
The man strides toward me with an outstretched hand. “Mr. Largo?” he says. I rise from the couch, shake his hand. He says, with a Russian accent, “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I was in the neighborhood,” I say. “So I thought I’d drop by for blini and caviar.”
He looks genuinely surprised, as if I really did want refreshments and he had rudely neglected to offer them. “Oh? Would you like something? Really? Perhaps tea?”
“No,” I say, “I’m just kidding.”
“I see.” He gestures
for me to sit. He remains standing. “Now, let me see. You are who exactly?”
I have a feeling that he knows who I am. Exactly. Surely a Russian so obsessed with security that he demands to have your balls fondled and your cell phone confiscated would not let a complete stranger walk into his house without an appointment, on the strength of a vague promise of a million-dollar payoff.
But I play along. “My son is Toby Largo,” I say. “I understand he owes you some money.”
He shakes his head and waves his fingers around, as if these petty details were literally buzzing around his face like gnats, annoying him. “So many people owe money,” he says. It’s unclear if he is apologizing for not knowing my son, or is lamenting the shiftlessness of society in general.
“My son dealt with a gentleman that works for you. Sergei the Rock.”
“Sergei the . . .” his voice trails off. He seems puzzled. Then he understands. “No ‘the.’ Just Sergei Rock.” He says it Roke—like egg yolk. With the Russian accent, it doesn’t sound quite so ridiculous.
“Yes,” I say. “Sergei Roke.”
Sustevich turns to the doorway behind him. Without raising his voice, he says quietly, “Dmitri.”
The blond man who got to third base with me appears in the room. Sustevich speaks quickly in Russian. I hear the word Sergei.
The blond man nods and disappears.
“I will get him,” the Professor explains to me, as if I am a simpleton and cannot possibly understand what has just happened.
After a moment another man enters the room. It requires great effort for me not to laugh. Which part of what I see is most ridiculous? Is it that the man wears an expensive Armani suit, despite being shaped like a weightlifter, as squat and wide as he is tall? Or that a purple scar runs down his face, from chin to forehead, like a cheap Halloween appliqué? Or is it the scene in general: that a Russian mobster called the Professor—who is quiet and effete, with Modern Art–bedecked walls, elegant spectacles, and a view of the Bay—is surrounded by beefy knuckleheads out of a Soviet gangster film?
Sergei the Rock, or Sergei Roke, or whatever he calls himself, trudges toward me. The Professor says, “Sergei, this gentleman is named Key Largo.”
“Kip,” I say. “Kip Largo.”
Ignoring me, still addressing Sergei: “You do business with his son?”
Sergei smiles. He reveals a set of chipped teeth like a hacksaw blade. “Yes.” He seems to have fond memories of yesterday’s business meeting with Toby.
Sustevich turns to me. “Apparently you are correct.”
“Good to hear.”
Sustevich asks Sergei something in Russian. The huge gorilla answers in English: “Sixty thousand.”
Sustevich nods. He says something to Sergei in Russian. Sergei grunts and leaves the room.
“Why have you come here?” Sustevich asks me. “Do you dispute this debt?”
“No. I’m sure my son owes it.” I can’t help myself: As I say it, my mind shuffles through memories of times Toby has disappointed me. Failing biology, summer school, dropping out of UCSC, the arrest for selling pot. “But I want to propose a business deal with you.”
The Professor nods. “Ah, business,” he says. He seems to like that idea. “Then let us walk in the garden.”
He leads me across the living room, his footsteps echoing on the twelve-foot-tall ceilings. He opens a sliding door, and steps down onto the grass. We walk into the topiary garden. The afternoon is cool and overcast. I follow him for a few yards and then I am face-to-face with an elephant formed from English box.
“Do you know what this is?” Sustevich asks me.
I think he’s talking about the topiary. “An elephant?” I say.
“No, I mean this.” He sweeps his arm grandly, taking in the garden, the mansion, the view of the Bay. “Do you know what all this is?”
“No,” I say. “What?”
“This is the result of very many business deals, all of them wise.”
“Ah,” I say. “I see.”
“So what kind of business do you have for me?”
I sense a presence behind us. I turn and am surprised to see another beefy Russian, this one with hair as dark as the Moscow River. He hangs back, trailing us discreetly by ten yards. He wears another feather headphone. I did not hear him come from the house, nor see him in the garden when we entered.
“My son owes you sixty thousand dollars. I’ll make good on it, and then I’ll pay you several million more.”
Sustevich has the look of a professor considering a novel academic theory. Yes, it might shake the foundations upon which the entire discipline is built, but he will have to consider it all the same, gentlemen! He keeps his face blank as he weighs the evidence, pro and con. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a Marlboro hard pack. He removes a cigarette and strikes a paper match. He lights the cigarette, takes a drag, and then throws the match, still burning, into the grass. It flares out and dies.
To my surprise, the dark-haired Russian goon scrambles over, bends down, retrieves the match from the grass, and then retreats to his spot ten yards away.
Sustevich sees me watching this. He looks amused. “You see? The science of economics at work. Comparative Advantage. David Ricardo. I am better at thinking about business than poor Hovsep is. Even though Hovsep is not particularly good at picking up matches from the ground, indeed doing a very incompetent job at it”—he shoots the dark-haired goon a dirty look—”he is less bad at it than I am. And I am better at using my brain.” He says something in Russian to Hovsep. The words sound angry. Hovsep, with a frightened look on his face, scuttles back to the Professor’s feet, sinks to his hands and knees, and searches the grass, separating the blades with his fingers as if hunting for a dropped diamond. Finally he finds what he is looking for: a tiny nub of the match—just the head, now a black cinder. He shows the Professor the match head in his fingers and backs away once again.
“Fascinating,” I say.
Returning to my business proposition, Sustevich says, “And why this generosity to me? Why offer me millions of extra dollars?”
“Because I’m going to ask you for two things in exchange.”
“Yes,” he says, as if he had expected that I would say something like this. “Economics is all about exchange, isn’t it?”
“Right,” I say. “Whatever.” I walk on ahead, toward the swan topiary. I admire the level of detail: the thin beak, the raised left wing, as if the boxwood is about to take off in flight. I run my hand over the graceful, arched neck. I turn to Sustevich. “I think you know who I am.”
I expect Sustevich to deny it, to keep up the charade that I am a random visitor off the street. But he is too smart for this, and his time is too valuable. He says, “Yes. You are Kip Largo. You are a con man. I know all about you.”
“Then you know what I do for a living.”
“No different than what I do. No different than what Gucci does, or Steven Wynn, or Ralph Lauren. Yes? You take people’s money, in exchange for an illusion.”
“I appreciate your kind words,” I say, not completely certain they were meant to be kind.
“And so, my con man friend,” Sustevich says, “what do you want from me?”
“It’s what you want from me,” I say. “I’m going to give you the chance to invest in one of my . . . business deals.”
“I see.”
“In exchange, you get a share of the profits.”
“And what kind of business deal is this?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you that the returns are expected to be quite significant.”
He nods. “Ah,” he says. He thinks about it. “I received a call the other day. A venture capitalist, investing exclusively in e-commerce deals. You know, books over the Web. Wine over the Web. Shoes over the Web. Toys over the Web. Web, Web, Web. Everything over the Web.”
“I hope no vitamins.”
Sustevich ignores me. “Anyway, this ven
ture capitalist promised me thirty percent per year, minimum.”
“I can beat that,” I say quickly.
“Oh?”
“I’ll double your money in two months.”
“Double my money? In two months?” He turns to Hovsep, who is still pale and trembling from the match fiasco. “Hovsep, do you hear that? Mr. Largo offers to double my money in two months. Would you invest in such a deal?”
The Russian looks uncertain. Is this another test? He thinks about his answer. Finally, quietly, with uncertainty in his voice, he says—more like a question than an answer: “No?”
“No?” Sustevich asks, as if to a stupid student. “No?”
“No,” Hovsep repeats. I know what he’s thinking: that with a man like Sustevich, confidence in your answer is more important than the answer itself. So Hovsep repeats, trying to sound confident, “I say: Do not invest in this business deal.”
“No?” Sustevich says again, raising his voice. “Come here.” He gestures for the dark-haired Russian to approach. Hovsep sidles over, looking frightened.
The Professor puts his face just inches from Hovsep’s. “You would not invest in a deal that promises to double your money in two months?”
“Well,” Hovsep says, now sounding uncertain. “Maybe I would.”
Big mistake. With a quickness that surprises me, the Professor swings his hand and slaps Hovsep across the cheek. The flesh makes a loud snap. “Are you stupid?” the Professor asks. “You would not invest in a deal that doubles your money in two months? Do you not understand? That is a six hundred percent annualized return!”
“Yes,” Hovsep says. His cheek has a big red handprint. “Now I understand.”
“Ach,” Sustevich says, disgusted. He waves his hand, dismissing Hovsep. “Go away. This is why you pick up matches and I do the thinking.”
“Yes,” Hovsep agrees. He looks relieved that he has been given his walking papers. He backs away, like a nervous courtier from an insane king.
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