by Todd Merer
Just follow the chains of command and demand:
Richard’s boss calls a senator who calls the New York County District Attorney who notifies a line prosecutor that a certain homicide indictment is to be dismissed, forthwith.
Half an hour after Richard and I finalized things, Billy’s public defender called me, sounding shell-shocked. Given that her name was foreign sounding—Latifa Mohammed—and that she represented petty criminals, many of whom were aliens, she probably didn’t have many cases that ended happily. “They just offered Billy a disorderly conduct. An offense with no criminal record. Sentence is time served.”
“Tell him Benn said to take it.”
The final touch was that I was given the right to resign from the bar rather than be publicly disbarred, and I received blanket immunity from any prosecution having to do with Bolivar’s escape, or Natty’s death. And, best of all:
Kandi’s investigation of me was terminated.
Of course, there were collateral consequences. Although they didn’t affect me personally, I was greatly pleased.
One week after my deal was finalized, Kandi Kauffman left government service. I wasn’t surprised when a month later, she reemerged as a defense attorney.
Another month later, General Uvalde abruptly retired.
Nelson Cano was accorded a memorial ceremony and posthumously promoted, and his wife was awarded a pension for life. For once, Richard—I assume it was him—had done a decent thing, for an anonymous someone had me invited to the ceremony.
As for me? I was broke but not busted and for once not disgusted.
Incredibly, for the first time in years, I found myself happy.
SIX MONTHS LATER
BENN
I moved to a small apartment in a marginal Brooklyn neighborhood. The very same hood in which I’d grown up. At first, I wasn’t a happy camper, but slowly I accepted coming home. I’d deal with its shortcomings. I still knew people who knew people. Things would come my way. Call me Mr. Patience. With nothing but time on my hands, I walked the city. Saw it from a different perspective. Upside down and sideways now. Like, standing in the cold rain, gazing through steamed-over windows into a splendid restaurant that shortly ago I’d dined in several times weekly.
One day on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, I bumped into a lawyer I somewhat knew. I remembered him as another anxious face rushing through the city. We’d never spoken but after a few years had graduated to nods in passing. For years, it seemed. Then he’d disappeared from my life, or maybe I’d disappeared from his, but what the whatever, here we were.
Just two guys, recently retired.
He’d aged poorly. I remembered him as sleek, a sharp dresser with a magic mouth and a knack for making money. Now he moved as stiffly as a fat man wearing tight shoes, although his slit eyes darted like a pigeon searching for a morsel.
“Jesus,” he said. “The years went fast. You good?”
I wondered how he viewed me. Please God, not as his contemporary. I gave him a nod, like: Are you kidding? I was touchy about people knowing I was down-and-out. I shunned company and didn’t want sympathy.
He sighed. “Boy, those were the days . . .”
I nodded. Across the river, lower Manhattan was as beautifully unreal as a movie set. It was nice sitting there, facing it with the breeze in my face; besides, the guy had a need to talk and just maybe I had a need to listen to a human voice.
He paid lip service to his wife and kids and grandkids, and then shoptalked: relating some weird case, ranting on this fucking dumb judge, admiring that prosecutor with the great ass, who was doing what to whom and why.
Two tidbits made me smile.
One was that Morty Plitkin was under investigation in connection with the July Fourth escape from the Metropolitan Detention Center.
The second was that Kandi Kauffman and William Dreidel had partnered up and already were co-representing a big guy. A doomed partnership, I knew. You can get away with some things, but uncool avarice is fatal. Gets the client to thinking: My fucking whole life is falling apart, and all this fucking lawyer wants to talk about is his fee. So the new partners would make some scores until their old character weaknesses emerged; then they would be the broken dream team.
“What’s their client’s name?” the lawyer wondered aloud. “On the tip of my tongue. Ah. Fernando Ibarra, aka Fercho.”
I shrugged and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Nice seeing you again.”
Unbelievable. Me, a smiley face. My body had changed, too. Instead of nursing my joints, I took to jogging, and lo and behold, my aches and pains receded.
One evening, I was running along Prospect Park Drive when I became aware of a car directly behind me. I left the roadway for the grassy shoulder, but the car still followed.
I ran into the trees. Behind me, I heard the car’s door open. I burst from the trees onto a lawn sloping upward. I ran hard, but when I glanced behind, the man in the trees was gaining on me. I cut back onto the roadway—
Another car cut me off. A guy got out, blocking my way. The guy behind caught up. They looked like each other. One was hardly more than a boy; the other, a man in his prime. Loguis? Probably. Experienced hunters. Spook me from behind and into a pincer maneuver. I was their prey.
I froze. My turn now?
The older Logui was the one who’d escorted me to and from Sombra’s mountain stronghold, the same who’d brought me the third thumb drive.
He had something else for me. From a pocket, he drew and fanned three photographs. Held them in front of my eyes. Three close-ups of dead men, each with a bullet hole placed between eyes wide open. I recognized them all.
General Uvalde.
Evgeny Kursk.
Enano.
The Logui put them away. Looked at me, brow arched.
“I understand,” I said.
He did not acknowledge me. Just stood there for a long moment with his head cocked, as if he were having a conversation with himself.
Then he and the younger man drove off.
But did I understand? Those who’d known Sombra’s identity were dead. Yet Sombra was dead, and his identity was public knowledge on both sides of the law.
So, why the murders?
I walked the park. The Long Meadow was deeply shadowed. On the far side a few cars were on the roadway, behind the roadside fence their lights just winks in the darkness . . .
I flashed on the night I’d first met Laura Astorquiza.
And what a night it was. Benn’s last party. Money and women. Jilly’s exquisite beauty. The extraordinary Laura; she and I in sync, one-upping wordplay. What did my middle initial T stand for? Nothing. A letter like the S in Harry S. Truman.
Laura hadn’t believed me. She said T was short for a name.
She’d been right. I’d been lying for no reason except that I never used my middle name. T was short for Ted. An obscure fact no one knew except Mady . . .
And one other person.
I’d thought all of Nacho Barrera’s family had been murdered. I’d thought wrong. One relative had survived that awful night of the long knives:
Nacho’s daughter. Sara.
Sara with the large, dark eyes of a child in a Keane painting; the same eyes as Laura Astorquiza. The child Sara Barrera had grown into the woman Laura Astorquiza.
How could I have not known?
My eliminating Laura as a possible Sombra had largely been because no Colombian mafioso would take orders from a woman. But there was always another way into a locked place. The Logui were the key to this lock, for they were the buffer between Laura and the macho narco-trafficking world. The Logui loved Nacho Barrera. And worshipped his daughter.
Meaning Laura was Alune.
And Alune was Sombra.
Laura had been her father’s constant companion when she was little Sara. Possessed of the patience of a natural leader. A master who saw the moves ahead and deployed her pieces accordingly. I was just a pawn, and yet . . .
<
br /> She had spared my life. And now only I can tell the tale.
As I said at the very beginning of this tale, a person needs but four things to tell a story:
A beginning, a middle, and an end . . . Also, you can’t be dead.
I have no illusions. I know why I’m alive and talking.
Because Laura doesn’t know that I know who she is.
ALUNE
Benn doesn’t know I know he knows. He doesn’t know the real reason he’s still alive is because, in all the world outside Anawanda, I trust only him. Not only because of our shared past, but because he is like family now. I think one sister has a crush on him. I don’t blame her. I do, too.
Because he has become one of Those Who Know More.
I have big plans for our future . . . together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My ultimate thanks to Gracie Doyle and the team at Thomas & Mercer for their trust.
A benediction for Soraya, without whom this book would have never been written.
A big shout-out to my agents, David Hale Smith, and Liz Parker at Inkwell.
My endless gratitude to Ed Stackler, editor nonpareil.
And of course, to my readers: thank you.
Benn Bluestone hopes to return soon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Luis Alicea Caldas
In his thirty years as a criminal attorney, Todd Merer specialized in the defense of high-ranking cartel chiefs extradited to the United States. He gained acquittals in more than 150 trials, and his high-profile cases have been featured in the New York Times and Time magazine and on 60 Minutes. A “proud son of Brooklyn,” Merer divides his time between New York City and ports of call along the old Spanish Main. The Extraditionist is his first novel.