by Todd Merer
The harbor sparkled in the sun. A mile across it stood the concrete block that was MCC. By design, isolated from the rest of Brooklyn. All alone on a few acres of land jutting into the harbor; its land side hard up against the de facto wall that was the Gowanus Expressway. A jail within a jail.
4:45 p.m.
A speedboat appeared, its motor a distant hum. Same boat four thousand miles south would be crammed with kilos. Here, it carried party people. It left a white wake like a demarcation line between me and the distant jail. The wake slowly faded until the water was again smooth, unbroken. Nothing between me and jail now.
Despite the heat, I gave a little shiver.
4:50 p.m.
I got into the Mini and drove to the MCC.
The bulldog wasn’t there. Only a handful of cars in the visitor spaces. No activity at the entrance, so the count was still on. I U-turned up 29th Street and drove onto the pier and stopped there, looking at the brackish-green water beneath which rotted evidence of the last of Jilly’s inherited fortune.
Which made me wonder again:
Gold? How much? Where?
I drove back to the jail. No one was allowed in or out during the count, but now a lawyer was emerging, so the count was clear. I’d seen the lawyer before: one of those from Plitkin’s stable representing Natty Grable’s codefendants. He got in his car and drove away. I took the Mustang from my waistband and shoved it under my seat. Then I parked the Mini in the spot he’d vacated and hurried into the jail.
Bonesy was grinning. “The lawyer that just left? Said he couldn’t take it anymore. Was going home to kill his wife.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You’ll see.”
I filled out a visit form and stashed my keys in a locker. I went through the metal detector, and Bonesy stamped my hand. The legal-visit book was turned to a new page. Blank. When I signed in, I started paging back to see who’d been visiting whom, but Bonesy slammed the book cover down hard.
“I’m caught letting you do that, I’m in trouble,” he snapped.
“Sorry.” He was right, of course. Which was why my snoopings were always surreptitious. But this time, I’d done so openly. I’d been sloppy, inexcusably so. Time to stop the funny business and get serious.
I entered the air lock and put my hand beneath the black light. The daily password was a smear of green fluorescence. I stood there waiting for CONTROL to verify me. Behind its dark glass, I could see instruments glowing, the dim profile of a guard seated at a console, a bank of screens. I coughed loudly. No response. A minute or three passed. I tapped on the dark glass. No response. I was being reminded that I might be a rich lawyer, but that he was CONTROL.
This was a big reason why I hated jails so much, the total dependence on others: Bonesy, CONTROL, the entire damn correctional cadre. Another long minute passed. Another . . .
“Go,” CONTROL finally said.
When I entered the visit room, a few guards clustered around the high desk were laughing. They went poker faced when I approached. I handed up my visit form.
“Your guy’s already down, Counselor,” said a guard, pointing at the visit rooms.
Fucking CONTROL had kept me waiting so long, Bolivar had gotten there before me.
I walked past empty visit rooms. One of Plitkin’s flunky lawyers carried a vended coffee into the last visit room at the end, where he sat with another lawyer. Obviously, they and the lawyer who’d just left had stayed over the count. Hmm. Natty Grable’s trial wasn’t coming up soon, and I wondered what was so important that they were working over the holiday.
In the smaller adjoining room, Bolivar was seated with his back to me.
He turned when I entered. And I stopped short, staring at him.
He’d transformed for the worst yet again: his hair was now shaved to his skull, his posture stooped.
“You all right?” I said.
He made a dismissive motion. “I’m hungry. Get me something from the machines.”
“How about a chicken sandwich?”
“Whatever. Get something now.”
I felt like decking him, but the man was in bad shape. Looking into his future and not liking the view. I went to the machines like the good boy I wasn’t. While I fed bills into slots, I looked into the big visit room. Two inmates and the two lawyers were drinking coffee and nodding while looking at a third lawyer who was obscured by the cartons. The way they were sucking up made me think it was Morty Plitkin himself. Working on the holiday?
I carried food and drink back to Bolivar.
He ignored it. “Who’s out there?”
“Codefendants and lawyers next door.”
“Besides them?”
“No other visits. A bunch of guards up front, laughing about something. Aren’t you going to eat?”
He glanced at the greasy food and wrinkled his nose. He said, “What time it?”
“We got maybe another five minutes. If I hadn’t got jammed in the air lock, I’d have been here earlier. What’s on your mind?”
He snorted, then made a face as if doing so was painful. Probably it was. I thought his eyes would be glazed, but they looked hard as petrified rocks.
“You know what my friends are thinking?”
I did: that if he lost, he’d rat on them. A subject I didn’t care to discuss. I’d given all the advice I had, and what came next was Bolivar’s choice.
“Tell them whatever happens, I’m cool,” he said. “Tell them to have faith in The One Who Knows Most.”
I nodded. Codes. Crimes. Betrayals. I wasn’t having any of it . . .
Bolivar was looking past me. I turned and saw the codefendant meeting in the big visit room had ended: the lawyers and inmates were passing by our glass wall. Bolivar stood and went to the glass and peered down the visit area until they disappeared by the front guard’s desk.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
He remained silent.
I got up and joined him at the glass. As when I’d entered, guards were clustered at the front desk, surrounding a person I couldn’t see. One guard motioned the two codefendants toward the inmate door. It opened. They went through; it closed. The departing lawyer waited at the air lock door. Another guard motioned, and he left.
Bolivar hesitated, listening. Then came the echoed sound of the air lock door closing. Now, he opened our door. “Too claustrophobic here. Come.”
The big conference room was marked off-limits to those not connected to the gas-tax case, but Bolivar was already entering it. Up front, the guards were still chattering happily, so I figured no one would make a fuss. I followed Bolivar inside, and we sat amid the stacked cartons. The space was even more claustrophobic than the smaller room, a point not worth discussing. It smelled stale . . . of men and old cardboard.
“I left your food next door,” I said.
“Fuck the food. Sit down.”
I held my tongue and sat. From my seat, I could look down at the visit area. The guards were now turned in my direction, watching someone my angle precluded me from seeing. Then the person appeared on the other side of the glass wall.
It was Jilly.
CHAPTER 90
Now I understood the show Bonesy was talking about—why a lawyer would want to kill his wife—and who had the guards’ rapt attention.
Jilly entered our room looking more beautiful than ever. Tall, blonde, curvaceous. Sheena in a concrete jungle. A wild thing who ignored rules. Her being in a room with an inmate other than the inmate she was visiting was a gross violation of BOP rules. And she couldn’t be legally visiting Bolivar because, as his lawyer, I decided who his paralegal was.
Yet Jilly seemed strangely unperturbed. Her eyes were fixed on Bolivar, as if she was a puppy waiting to be cuddled. I wondered what kind of drug her Alpo had been spiked with.
I said, “Jilly, you can’t come—”
“I left my briefcase,” she said.
So she’d been with Bolivar before I arrive
d. I didn’t want any part of this. “Find it, and get out. Now.”
“Shut up,” Bolivar said to me.
“That’s it,” I said. “I’m done.”
Sombra or not, he was just a drug dealer who was going to be locked up for a long time. Much as I’d been paid, it didn’t buy his disrespect. I’d prep the case without him.
I gathered my file and stood to leave.
“Sit, motherfucker,” Bolivar said.
“Be nice, Joaquin,” said Jilly.
“Shut up, bitch,” Bolivar said.
“See you Monday,” I said.
My chair was wedged between two rows of cartons, and I had to step between them to get around the table. I was doing so when a hand snaked around my neck and clamped my mouth, and something sharp pressed against my throat.
A man spoke into my ear: “Sit back down, boy.”
Natty Grable. He must have attended the codefendant meeting but remained in the conference room, hiding between the stacked rows of file boxes.
I said, “You’re making a mistake—”
The pressure against my throat increased, and I froze. I felt blood running down my neck. I heard a zipper opening, felt Natty moving. His trousers flew past me to Bolivar, who had unbuttoned his prison jumpsuit. Quickly, Bolivar stepped out of it and put on Natty’s pants. Natty’s shirt came next. Bolivar caught it, put his arms through its sleeves, and buttoned it up quickly.
“Briefcase?” he snapped at Jilly.
Jilly smiled vacantly. “Don’t worry, I brought it, honey.”
“I know that,” Bolivar snarled. “I’m asking where the fuck is it?”
Jilly pointed to a briefcase on the floor, and Bolivar bent to it.
I felt Natty moving behind me as he tossed his loafers to Bolivar, who kicked off his jail sneakers and stepped into the loafers, then tossed his jumpsuit and sneakers past me. As Natty caught them, his movement increased the sharp pressure against my throat, and I gasped.
“So sorry,” Natty murmured. He yanked me farther back between the stacked cartons. I felt him moving and twisting behind me, then we faced each other in the narrow space. He had on Bolivar’s orange SHU jumpsuit. It hung from his skinny frame, and with his shaven head and white skin, he looked like a skeleton. He slipped off his eye patch. The eye beneath bulged whitely, its pupil the size of a match head.
He tossed the eye patch to Bolivar, who put it on.
I understood now. It was such a simple plan.
Natty tossed his yarmulke to Bolivar, who placed it atop his shaved scalp. I was impressed. Their newly exchanged identities were convincing. At a glance, each looked exactly as the other had moments ago. And a glance was all the guards would get, what with their preoccupation with Jilly—
The PA squawked: “Visiting ends in two minutes.”
Natty spoke into my ear. “So do you, boy.”
From the briefcase, Bolivar took a plastic vial of liquid and a cotton swab. He opened the vial, wetted the cotton, then dabbed it on the back of his hand. I caught a whiff of the liquid. The same chemical odor as that of the invisible ink with which Bonesy applied the day’s password: the final touch for a paint-by-numbers escape.
The PA squawked: “One minute.”
Bolivar looked at Natty. “Done?”
Natty nodded. “Kiss my brothers for me.”
Bolivar snapped his fingers at Jilly. “Ready?”
She nodded dreamily.
Bolivar opened the door. Jilly went out first, and he followed behind, concealing himself in the penumbra of her radiance—
Natty yanked me deeper between the cartons. For a brief moment, his weapon left my throat, and I saw it was a sharpened comb handle, plastic so as to pass through the metal detectors. Then it touched my throat again, and Natty whispered:
“A little longer, boy.”
CHAPTER 91
Keeping the point against my throat, Natty shifted, peering down the visit area to the visitor’s exit. I looked, too.
The air lock door opened. Jilly and Bolivar went through it, and the door closed.
“Count to sixty, boy,” Natty said. “Another minute until they’re passed through the air lock. Then all over for you.”
“Kill me, and you’ll never get out,” I said.
The comb point jabbed deeper. “Get out? Look at me.”
He allowed me to turn slightly in his arms so I could see him, and I realized just how ill he was. My revulsion must have showed, for he laughed.
“I have a spider in my brain. It devours me. I have a week, a month perhaps, but no more. The Colombian means nothing to me, but to my brothers from Murmansk-54, he is the key to everything. His life is my gift to them.”
“A gift they will never receive,” I said. “The police are outside, waiting for Bolivar and the girl.”
His good eye narrowed. “You lie, lawyer.”
“It’s true. Kursk and Kyril were arrested.”
“No!” He gave a little start and—
I grabbed his wrist.
For a moment, we struggled. Despite his condition, he was strong. He pulled me toward the sharpened point of the weapon held between us. I used the momentum to head-butt his face. I felt cartilage crunch; blood jetted from his nostrils. He tottered, opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, and he slumped.
I didn’t know whether my blow was fatal, if it had driven shattered bone into his brain or simply rendered him unconscious. I didn’t wait to find out.
I stood, gathered my file, and left the visit room. Blood trickled into my eye. I ducked into the restroom and splashed water on my face. My mirror image was a person I’d never seen before: a conspirator, a criminal, a killer. I left the restroom.
One guard remained at the desk. “Where’s your client?”
“My client? I dunno. I was in the bathroom. I believe he already went upstairs. At least, I think.”
I feared the guard would go to the room and find Natty, but he was too busy peering through the exit-door wire-glass into the air lock.
As I had been earlier, Jilly and Bolivar were stuck in the air lock, waiting for CONTROL. Jilly’s hand was under the black light, her body bent, perfect ass jutting.
The guard sighed, appreciatively.
I was about to blurt out what was happening, but paused. If I foiled Bolivar’s escape, the Russians and Colombians would compete for the pleasure of killing me slowly. As weak as the explanation seemed, I could claim I was in the bathroom when the switch and Natty’s beating took place—
As if Jilly somehow sensed my presence, she turned and looked at me, her expression fearful, anxious, as if begging me not to ruin the escape. Her lips moved, but the door was wire-glass. I couldn’t read her lips, but her face was soft when she uttered them. Soft as the Florida night when she’d offered herself to me. I’d refused then. Now?
“She don’t look so happy,” the guard said. “Probably ain’t getting any. I’d sure like to help her out.”
CONTROL’s voice was muffled. “Next.”
Jilly stepped aside as Bolivar put his hand beneath the black light. I wondered if his smeared password would fool CONTROL. It must have, for the outer air lock door opened, and Jilly and Bolivar walked through it.
A moment later, the inside door unlocked. I entered the air lock and put my hand beneath the black light. Please don’t make me wait, please—
But at least two minutes passed before CONTROL said, “Go.”
The outer door opened, and I entered the lobby.
Empty except for Bonesy. He shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry I went off on you, but this job gets to a person. Except for nights like tonight. Some kind of show. You missed the final act.”
“What?”
“The one-eyed Russian guy puts the blonde into the back of this weird stretch limo with a front grille looks like teeth. Mexican guy, or some kind of Indian, at the wheel. Another woman inside, dark hair. The blonde takes one look at her and gets out, screaming at the Russian.”
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br /> “About what?”
Bonesy shrugged. “Something about him lying, I think. Whatever it was, the blonde was freaking hysterical. She runs away. The limo does a U and starts after her, but by then, the blonde’s at the car of this lawyer for the Russians who just walked out . . . you following me?”
“Yeah, yeah. So then?”
“She opens his car door and yanks him into the street—the sucker’s so surprised, he lets her do it—and she gets behind the wheel and burns rubber. The limo takes off after her.”
“Which way?” I figured Bolivar’s original plan was to head for the pier, where a boat would transport him to a ship anchored in the harbor. But Jilly had clearly thrown a wrench in the works.
Bonesy pointed up the street toward the Gowanus Expressway. “She ran a red light under the highway. The limo ran the light, too, but she had a head start. Hey, where you—”
I didn’t hear the rest of what Bonesy said, because by then I was in the Mini, replicating what Jilly and the bulldog had done: accelerating through the red light beneath the Gowanus Expressway and racing into Sunset Park.
I didn’t know if the bulldog would find Jilly, but I was damned sure that I would.
I knew where she was going.
CHAPTER 92
The main entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery is a pair of massive iron gates hung between two ornate towers that house offices and security. On either side of the gates stand ten-foot-tall spiked fences that run the length of the avenue. The gates were locked. Security was unlit. I drove past the entrance and down the avenue a quarter mile before turning up a side street bordering the cemetery. Here, the fence was chain link. I slowed so as to study it.
A smart guy named Wolfe once opined that only the dead knew Brooklyn. True as to those sleeping in Green-Wood. Me, I grew up in the last great years of the borough, after the Johnnies marched home from ’Nam, before their kid brothers shipped to a who-cared place called Iraq. I was a street rat whose pack prowled obscure places. How we cavorted. Life was a rave. What was considered harmless trespassing then triggered jail time now. Wolfe was wrong.
Not only the dead knew Brooklyn.
My eyes scanned the gate. There’d be other gates. Small entrances for workers. Side gates. Locked? Maybe. A side gate was just ahead. I stopped and got out.