Afterburn

by Colin Harrison

  I'm not interested.

  What?

  I'm not interested.

  You haven't heard the good part, how much it—

  I really don't want it.

  Bring her some more iced tea. Let me tell you about another job.

  I doubt I'm interested in that, either.

  Let me try it on you. For Christ's sake, we're talking opportunity here. See, we buy phone cards from the phone companies, using a little dummy company. We buy like nine million dollars' worth. That's what they will sell for. Maybe we pay eight million for them. Buy for eight, sell for nine. It's big money, and so we syndicate that across five or six investors. But selling the cards involves real costs. You got to advertise, you got to staff an office, all that. It's a competitive business. The actual profit margin is down around seven percent. Steady but not great. Takes a long time to make big money at seven percent. So we do that awhile, six, eight months, get our credit looking good with the phone company. Then we place a huge order for cards, maybe thirty million dollars' worth that we negotiate a price for. We negotiate hard, too. Let's say we agree we are going to pay twenty-five million for the cards. Okay, at the same time, we begin to advertise a special. We're going to sell those thirty million of cards for maybe twenty million. Sounds like we're going to lose money, I know. Word goes around that a certain card is a better deal. The customer is very price-sensitive. These are not wealthy people. You start the deal just a little bit early. You advertise, you get people excited. All those Cubans and Brazilians calling home. You have to build it up and then pop it at the right moment, usually maybe around Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, sometime when everyone is calling. You try to collect in cash as much as possible. Then, just as demand is spiking up for the cheap cards, you take delivery of the big new order by the phone company. Your credit is good, they don't suspect anything. You get the thirty million worth of cards and you sell them fast for twenty million. At the same time you—

  You don't pay anything to the phone company. You give them a bad check, pocket the twenty million, fire the whole staff, and declare bankruptcy.

  Exactly. It takes about a year to pull it off, start to finish. What we do is, we set you up in an office in Florida. Your name is never on a piece of paper—

  No. I'm sorry.

  That's no good?

  No.

  We're talking easy money.

  I don't care.

  You know how cement contracts work?

  I'm not interested, I'm really not.

  This is a big opportunity. This is not these little jobs with Rick, bunch of fucking Jap motorcycles.

  I know, but I don't want it.

  Why?

  Because it kept her involved with Rick. Because she would rather sit and read in the Columbia library. Because she was a girl. Because she was twenty-two years old. Because none of this was exciting to her anymore.

  You love him?

  What's that got to do with anything?

  You're too good for him, you know.

  I don't know about that.

  What is it about Rick, the way the women love him? What is it, the muscles?

  He's got a sad face.

  What?

  He's got a sad face. There's something about it.

  I don't understand women. I fucking don't. I been married forty-two years and I got three sisters and two daughters and I don't know the first goddamn thing about how women think. All right, how about a restaurant? Want to run a restaurant?

  How's it work?

  Well, the whole idea is to run a restaurant that looks like it's making money when it's not.

  Usually it's the other way around.

  Usually, yes. Usually you want to hide your profits. In this case, we want a restaurant that is a good, decent place that makes almost no money. We got a couple in Little Italy and one up on Fifty-sixth Street. We found out that Mexicans can sound like Italians. You teach them a few words—buon appetito, whatever—and the tourists can't tell. The restaurant has a private room where it throws a lot of big parties. We make sure it gets used legit from time to time. We take payment in cash only for this room, that's the policy. This income is reported, incidentally. Except that the room isn't used much. The payment for the room is cash that is coming in from another part of the business, like the numbers operation. We take this money and we pretend we threw a big party at the restaurant. Two hundred people, music, food, expensive wine, the whole thing cost sixty, seventy thousand. Except it didn't. It never happened. But the cash came into the restaurant. The only record of the party is like Thursday, 6:00 p.m., private party, Mastrangello. Some name, any name. They paid in cash and the cash was reported. Looks very good. Then that cash gets spent buying legitimate stuff.

  Except you don't really buy it.

  Right. You pretend you're buying fish and olive oil and booze and whatever else. That cost is written off. We're washing the money here. See, Christina, one of my biggest problems, believe it or not, is handling the cash. I got to know where it is, where it isn't. The stuff takes up space. You put it in a box, then that is a goddamn heavy box. I got boxes and boxes of cash that I have to move around, get rid of, make disappear. You can't just put it in your checking account. I'm not crazy about sending it to the Cayman Islands, or one of those places . . . I'm old-fashioned, I don't trust that . . . So, anyway, the restaurant buys the food from other operations we run. Those operations are legitimate businesses. They're just selling olive oil or whatever. You keep the cash inside the operation this way, but it gets cleaned. You lose a percentage to overhead here, but that's your cost of washing that money. When it comes out, it's untraceable to its original source. The one hundred dollars from the numbers becomes an order for a bunch of fish and booze for a party that never was. You run twenty parties a month, maybe ten are real, ten never happen. You can make half a million or more disappear. The waiters don't know what's going on, because they don't see the paperwork. They may wonder why the room is empty. Well, okay. But you never explain. You also vary your pattern. We also got a couple of yuppie restaurants. You can do it there, too. The waiters and waitresses in these places don't pick up on it, because you only hire kids who are spending most of their time drinking and fucking and won't remember anything in a year anyway. It's unbelievable the way they fuck each other in restaurants. They do it in the restrooms and the kitchen. I mean, one of my managers once saw a girl getting popped as she was lying down on a frozen side of beef. The guy that was doing it still had his chef hat on. These are mongrel kids. They don't remember what's going on. They're doing drugs. You hire them and fire them after a few months. The turnover in the restaurant business is incredible. How you going to know how much bread got eaten here, how much there? We know because we're running it, but some cop, he can't. He don't know how much fish got eaten some night two years ago by thirty people. He can guess, but he don't really know. It's detail work. What do you think? That would keep you in Manhattan, be a nice quiet—

  I can't. I'm sorry.

  And then, sitting there in his floral shirt, Tony Verducci had sipped his iced tea and looked at her with confusion. He wasn't used to such disrespect. She'd wished he would just forget about her. And maybe he had, maybe not. He'd certainly never contacted her after she'd been arrested, or while she was in prison.

  A wooden nightstick rattled between the cell bars.

  "Welles!"

  "Yes?" she called into the gloom, breathing fearfully.

  She heard the guard's keys, and when she lifted her head, two immense prison system matrons stood over her, one black, one white. Big women, with bull necks and thick legs.

  "Get up," the black matron announced. "Taking a trip."

  "Where?" Christina asked. "What did I do?"

  "You supposed to know that."

  "Where am I going?"

  "Just get dressed." The matron watched the blanket fall away from Christina's leg.

  "People keep moving me around, not telling me where I'm
going."

  "You're making a trip this morning, missy. Get up." The matron sunk a meaty hand beneath Christina's armpit.

  "Get your clothes," ordered the other matron. The guard held the plastic bag Christina had packed in Bedford.

  "Green?" Christina pointed at her uniform.

  "No," said the matron. "Free world."

  "Can I just—"

  "No! We in a hurry."

  She got up and peed in the toilet; they watched dispassionately, familiar with the sight of women relieving themselves. She dressed in front of them, pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her nipples were hard in the cool air, and it bothered her that the matrons saw this. They shackled her hands behind her, then pushed her out of the cell. Some of the other women stood clutching their bars, curious about any activity along the hallway. Yo, they taking you to the electric chair, white bitch? Maybe the Dep was moving her to another prison, but that would not explain why she'd been told to dress in free-world clothes. It was hours before any courthouse would be open; perhaps she was being transferred upstate to another prison.

  "Where am I going?" she asked again.

  "You'll know soon."

  They took her directly to a blue-and-white Department of Corrections van parked outside; before she got in, her feet were cuffed, and then she was helped up on the bench seat, where they ran a loose chain through her leg cuffs. She was the only prisoner being transported, which was strange, given that the prison system, so overcrowded and pressed for funding, usually crammed prisoners together.

  "Where am I going?" she screamed at the window. No answer came back. The van pulled through the heavily fenced entrance, where a guard closed a gate behind the vehicle before opening the gate in front of it. Through the tiny caged window she could see the looming rise of Manhattan, a bright veil of glass and steel and stone. How forbidden and marvelous it looked! Maybe the D.A.'s Office really was releasing her. Either they had been fooled or possessed some reason to reverse her verdict—discovered some advantage in it. But she didn't like either scenario. It put her inside other people's plans, it was an if-then formula, and all branches of supposition arrived at people whom she didn't like having some reason to see her out of prison, especially Tony Verducci.

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER the van bounced up in front of the massive Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street, and the matrons took her into the north tower, the Tombs. On the twelfth floor prisoners were segregated into a series of holding pens; most had been arrested recently and were awaiting their arraignments. The bridge connecting the twelfth floor to the rest of the court building was known as the Bridge of Sighs, and she was taken across it with a couple of prostitutes, who clattered awkwardly in their high heels and handcuffs, to a small holding cell next to a courtroom on the thirteenth floor. Two new matrons flanked her, one of them clutching her plastic bag. A wall phone rang and the matron picked it up.

  "Let's go," she told Christina.

  It was the same courtroom in which she'd been convicted four years earlier—same high ceilings and deep bank of benches, same green walls. And the same assistant district attorney who had prosecuted her sat at a table. The judge, a middle-aged man with half-glasses, appeared through an open door, dropped into his chair, and picked up a telephone. He noticed Christina.

  "You may sit."

  A few minutes passed. Another man came in and whispered to the assistant district attorney. The detective, she thought, the guy who testified at my trial.

  "Your Honor," said the young prosecutor, "Detective Peck has been told that Miss Welles's lawyer is somewhere else in the building."

  The judge did not look up from his paperwork. "Fifteen minutes, or I'm adjourning."

  Detective Peck disappeared from the room.

  "Miss Welles," said the judge, "we're trying to find your attorney."

  "Oh," she said. "Why?"

  "This is a formal proceeding, and you need representation."

  "Okay."

  "Your attorney is not an 18-B lawyer?"

  "What's that?"

  "The state pays their fees."

  "No. I don't think so."

  "It's Mrs. Bertoli?"

  "It was."

  "Did Mrs. Bertoli contact you?"

  "No."

  "Well, perhaps the district attorney's notice was mislaid amongst Mrs. Bertoli's voluminous paperwork," the judge concluded wearily. "Perhaps that is plausible. Then again"—he raised his eyebrows, his hairline lifting upward—"she may have seen said notice and not perceived its import." The judge looked at Christina. "Its importance to you, I mean."

  "Yes," agreed Christina uncertainly.

  "Mrs. Bertoli is well known to this court," the judge continued. "Her professional demeanor is well known and her habits are well known. That she has not contacted you is inexcusable. Yet she has been and no doubt will continue to be excused. She is a pack mule of excuses working in a pit mine of societal disinterest. We release unaccountability and irresponsibility from its natural ore, and we carry it to the surface and smelt it into the coin of chaos." The judge sighed. "I will stop there. The court officers have all heard my speeches. I will let that be my day's protestation. The court should not characterize the quality of defense counsel, it is true, but—"

  "But we're among friends," piped in the assistant district attorney.

  The door opened and Mrs. Bertoli entered, followed by the detective. She flicked a cell phone shut and dropped it into her briefcase and walked officiously up to the front of the courtroom. "Is this really a 440.10?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Bertoli," answered the judge. "Let's go now." He picked up his phone and muttered a word or two, and a court reporter entered and sat down at her steno machine. "All right, then, Mr. Glass, I've read your statement. Your detective, Mr. Peck, is sure that he made a mistake with the identification?"

  "Yes, Your Honor," said the prosecutor.

  "After more than four years he mystically realizes he made a mistake?"

  "He was involved in ongoing police work," answered Glass, "and realized that there were several lost subjects in the undercover case involving Miss Welles. By that I mean unnamed targets of surveillance, and he realized that it was one of them in the truck on the day in question, and not Miss Welles."

  Christina cut her eyes at Peck. This was bullshit. Of course she'd been in the truck—that's where she'd been arrested. Peck blinked but did not change his expression.

  "Miss Welles never confessed?" the judge asked, flipping over a sheet of paper.

  "That is correct," said Glass.

  "There was no plea bargain, in fact?"

  "That is also correct."

  "Has the lost subject from the original case been arrested?"

  "Detective Peck informs me that an arrest is expected shortly."

  "What was Miss Welles's role, then?"

  Glass looked directly at the judge. "She was the girlfriend of one of the principals. That's all."

  "Your summary referred to some confusion over the method of communication used by the gang."

  "We thought she had something to do with it."

  The judge paused, then winced at some private thought. "There was no confession, no familiarity with the line of questioning?"

  "This was more than four years ago, Your Honor, but the answer is no. She never confessed to anything the whole time."

  "There was no prior record?"

  "No."

  "No arrests at all?"

  "Nothing."

  "Prison record was what?"

  "Exemplary."

  "Is Detective Peck ready to answer a few questions?"

  "Yes."

  The detective was sworn in. He had spent some time with his hair and necktie that morning.

  "All right, explain this to me," barked the judge. "I'm surprised the newspapers aren't here. It's a good story."

  "That's because they never sent me any notice," protested Mrs. Bertoli hoarsely. "If they did, then I would have raised holy hell."


  The judge ignored her. "Go ahead, Detective."

  "It's simple, Your Honor. We made a mistake in the identification. There was another woman involved in the smuggling—same weight, same coloring, height a little shorter. We didn't get much of a close look at her. We never heard her name. When we arrested Miss Welles, we thought that was the same woman. Miss Welles admitted she was the girlfriend of Rick Bocca, whom we suspected of masterminding the whole operation, but that was it."

  "Just the girlfriend?" the judge asked.

  "Yes."

  "How much did she know?"

  "She may have known a few things in a passive way, Your Honor, but she was not part of the planning. These were very professional people. Experienced, tough people. Bocca was well known to us. She was a young girl at the time, not a principal."

  I'm actually insulted, Christina thought, but she said nothing.

  "Sort of a hanger-on-er, a girlfriend, something like that?" the judge summarized.

  "Bocca had a lot of"—the detective hesitated—"bimbos, you could call them, I guess."

  "One of those appellations that are demeaning by their accuracy," noted the judge. "And though your terminology is vulgar, it is useful for its clarity. I believe I understand."

  I never got less than an A-minus in any of my courses at Columbia, Christina thought angrily, but then she remembered that Peck knew this, had even taunted her with it during the interrogation. Girl like you gets perfect grades, how'd you end up with Bocca? He was smart, this Peck, looking at the judge with a face full of contrition.