by Reece Hirsch
“So, Will, did you have fun tonight?”
“Not really, no.”
An almost-genuine look of hurt crossed Yuri’s face. “I thought you said you wanted to see how the criminal element conducts its business.” Yuri made air quotes around the phrase criminal element.
“You know I never said that.”
“Look, I’m sorry you got roughed up back there, but you didn’t have to grab that girl’s titties . . .”
Will waited for Yuri to tire of his comedy routine.
Yuri pounded down his drinks and began searching for the waitress. Will watched the girl under the lights executing a complicated maneuver. She was supporting herself off the ground with her legs wrapped around the pole, arching her back as she leaned toward the audience. They could hear the amplified squeak of her thighs as they slid slightly down the pole, straining to support her weight.
The stripper was wearing a piece of heavy plastic jewelry around her ankle, which fell halfway down her calf when she was upside down.
“What’s that thing she’s wearing on her ankle?” Will asked.
“You don’t recognize it? That’s so the police can track her. She’s under house arrest.”
“That is so depressing.”
“Hey, at least they turn it off during her work hours. She gets to earn a living.”
Will studied the stripper’s glum expression with new understanding.
“Is Nikolai still doing his collections?” Will was afraid that Nikolai was going to join them later, but he didn’t want to ask the question directly.
“How the fuck should I know?” Yuri said, his brow furrowing as he studied the dancer’s unsuccessful efforts to gracefully extricate herself from her upside-down position. He added, conspiratorially, “You know, I don’t know why everyone thinks Nikolai is such hot shit.”
“What do you mean?”
Two vodkas were set before them by a waitress. Yuri tossed his down immediately.
“Valter treats us as if Nikolai is the man and I am the sidekick. It is not fair. Not just. Sure, Nikolai had his grocery racket in Moscow, but consider this.” Yuri was half drunk and in a mood for sharing confidences, which made Will worry that he was going to hear something that he shouldn’t.
Yuri thrust an index finger in the air. “First, Nikolai is Chechen. They have their own organized crime, which has nothing to do with mafiya. He is not a Russian. I am Russian!”
He raised a second finger. “Two. As you must have noticed, that unassimilated motherfucker doesn’t even speak good English. How can you expect to do business in this country if you can’t put two sentences together? Without me to act as his fucking UN interpreter, he wouldn’t be able to get any of his ideas across.”
While using his other hand to signal the waitress for more drinks, he jabbed three fingers at Will. “Third, and I’m sure you have noticed this, as well—Nikolai is no great thinker. I am not saying that the man is simpleminded, but he has not had the benefit of my education. Sure, he is big, and that is good if you are busting balls and collecting the dan. But organized crime is a complex business these days. Do you think that Nikolai could have come up with the idea of insider trading? That was my idea. I will not always play second fiddle to Nikolai. Someday, they will see my value. Someday, I will become a vor.”
“A vor?” Will made a mental note that he might be able to use Yuri’s grievances with Nikolai to divide the Russians if the opportunity presented itself.
“Vor v zakonye, it means a thief within the code, a godfather.”
“Sounds ambitious.”
“What is life without ambition, eh? Many steps up the ladder. Right now, I am at the bottom. If I do a good job on collections, then I’ll become a patsani, a soldier. If I’m a good earner, I become an underboss, a pakhan, like Valter. Then, maybe, years from now, if I play my cards right, a vor.”
Will considered the fact that in all lines of work, including his own, being “a good earner” was usually paramount.
“I’ve already decided on my klichki.”
“Klichki?”
“Nickname! I’ve already told you that once. When you become a vor you go through a naming ceremony. You get to choose a new name for your new life.”
Will sipped his vodka.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what my klichki will be?”
“Okay. What will it be?”
“The Dagger. See, I’ve already got the tattoo.” Yuri opened his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a long knife on his chest, the blood dripping from its tip rendered in bright red ink.
Because some response seemed to be expected, Will nodded appreciatively.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have ambitions,” Yuri said, his eyes still on the stripper.
“Yeah, sure. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Yuri said, smiling triumphantly as if Will had just proven his point. “There is nothing wrong with that.” His gaze wandered drunkenly for a moment, and then he snapped back into focus, adding, “I’ll bet there’s somebody at your firm you fucking hate, somebody who’s standing in the way of all that ambition of yours.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“I’m just trying to have a conversation with you. Me, I’ve got somebody standing in my way.”
Please don’t tell me his name, Will thought.
“His name is Gregor. Ever since Nikolai and I came around, he makes jokes at my expense. He never fucks with Nikolai, only me. I’d like to take that prick out, and maybe someday I will. But there are rules about these things. He would have to fuck up. And I would have to be in a position to do something.”
“In a law firm, we also have rules about those things,” Will said, thinking of the vote to fire Claire.
Now Yuri was staring gloomily at the stage, pondering his own troubles. Will watched Yuri eyeing the stripper and felt a hard, bright hatred for the Russian. Yuri was as thoughtless and destructive as a virus. Will resolved that he would not allow this stupid goon to destroy the life that he had worked so hard to build. His life was not a consumer item.
“So what happens if you fuck up?” Will said, trying to push Yuri’s buttons.
“I can’t fuck up,” Yuri said. “That’s why you should never doubt for a second that I will do whatever is necessary.”
Yuri downed another vodka and set the glass down on the round Formica table with a click.
“How do you get to work in the mornings? Yuri asked. “You ride the BART train?”
“Sometimes—it depends—why?”
Yuri seemed about to say something, then decided against it. “No reason. Forget it.”
“Wait a second. Why did you ask me that? You had a reason.”
Yuri downed another vodka. “Look, I’m going to tell you something, something that could save your life, but you can’t let Nikolai know that I told you.”
“Sure, I won’t say anything to Nikolai.”
“We know that there’s going to be a terrorist attack on the BART trains. Many people are going to die.”
“When is this going to happen?”
“Not right away. But soon.”
“How? A bomb?”
“That’s all I’m going to tell you. Just drive to work, okay? Take the bus. But stay off the BART trains.”
“Are you and Nikolai behind the attack?”
“No, no, of course not! Not directly, anyway. We are businessmen, not fanatics. But we are in a position to know.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because we need to keep you alive so you can help us. Nikolai thought it was too risky to tell you this, but I disagree. I think you are smart enough to know not to fuck with us.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Will thought. Yuri’s drunken slipup was just the opportunity that Will had been waiting for, a glimpse of the Russians’ larger plan. If Yuri thought that he would remain silent while they enabled some sort of terrorist attack, then Yuri had misjudged him. Will would do
everything that he could to stop the BART train attack, even if it meant sacrificing his career or his life.
On the stage, it was becoming apparent that the stripper needed to work on her conditioning. Her act, which had begun with crisp, dancelike movements, now looked more like the cooldown of an aerobics routine, her feet shuffling wearily forward and back, her arms vaguely swaying from side to side, the electronic surveillance bracelet bouncing on her ankle.
As they lurched up from the table and headed for the door of the club, Will thought he knew just how she felt.
SEVENTEEN
Tuesday morning. It had been more than a week since Ben Fisher had plummeted to his death on the sidewalk below. Will’s stomach turned over as the elevator made a rapid ascent to the thirty-eighth-floor offices of Reynolds Fincher. As soon as he entered the reception area, he detected a subtle disturbance in the daily routine of the law office. Was it the fact that no one said hello to him in the hallway? The way the receptionist skipped her customary smile? Perhaps it was just the queasy hypersensitivity of the hangover.
When he reached his office, Maggie’s worried expression confirmed his suspicions.
“What?” Will blurted. “What is it?”
“There are two people here to see you.”
“Okay. Who are they?”
“They’re from the SEC and the Department of Justice.” Will felt the sudden urge to throw up all over Maggie’s desk.
“How long have they been here?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“You should have put them in the reception area, or a conference room.”
“They asked to wait in your office. They seemed so official, I just didn’t know how to say no to them.”
“Okay. I’ll just go see what they want.”
“They’ve been interviewing everyone who’s been working on the Jupiter deal. It’s not just you, so there’s no need to worry.”
“I’m not worried, Maggie.”
Will took some small solace from the fact that Detective Kovach from the SFPD wasn’t joining the welcoming party in his office. From that, Will assumed that the SEC and DOJ were not yet aware that he was also the prime suspect in Ben Fisher’s death.
He decided he needed coffee to stimulate some activity in his alcohol-sodden brain. He wished that he had stopped at the coffee shop downstairs and bought a creamy latte that might have settled his stomach. Instead, he was forced to rely on the firm’s house brew, known to the associates as Black Acid.
When he entered his office, coffee mug in hand, a man and a woman in suits were standing at the window with their backs to him, admiring the view of the Bay Bridge.
“Hello there,” Will said.
“Oh, hi. I hope you don’t mind us making ourselves at home,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m Dennis Tyler, Securities and Exchange Commission.”
Dennis looked more like a young lawyer than a federal agent in his dark gray suit, white button-down shirt, and red power tie. Dennis was medium height and weight, with dark brown hair and regular, plain features, accented only by a neatly groomed mustache and an outsized square jaw. He looked like something that the federal government was capable of producing in mass quantities, like metal desk chairs.
The woman stepped forward and shook his hand. “Hi, Will. Mary Boudreaux, Department of Justice.” When Mary said Hi, the tiny word elongated to embrace a multitude of vowels. Will guessed that she was from Mississippi. She handed him her business card. Will registered only an elaborate government seal and the word Enforcement.
Mary was slender, with shoulder-length brown hair and the slightly doughy complexion of a girl of the Deep South who had been cultivated in air-conditioned rooms. He felt a small shock, like static electricity, when he looked into Mary’s eyes and realized that they were processing information about him at a very rapid rate.
“We were just admiring the view,” Mary said. “It’s a whole lot nicer than what we’ve got over on Geary Street. How’s it compare with your view over at the SEC, Denny?”
“It’s better,” Dennis said, grudgingly.
“Please, have a seat,” Will said.
“Will, we’re here to talk to you about the Jupiter-Pearl Systems transaction,” Mary said. “We understand that you’re heading up the team of attorneys here.”
“That’s right. Is something wrong?”
Dennis smiled grimly. “I think this is where we say, ‘We’ll ask the questions.’”
“He thinks he’s funny,” Mary said. “We’d like to know what you do to protect the confidentiality of a transaction like this one.”
“The usual drill for deals involving public companies. We used a code name. We—”
“What was the code name for the deal?” Mary asked.
“Zeus.”
“The Greek name for Jupiter. Cute, but not too difficult to figure out. What else?”
“I gave a short talk to the attorneys working on the deal about the importance of confidentiality, the dangers of insider trading. Standard procedure.”
“Has everybody been following the rules? Anyone seem a little too interested in how the market is going to react to the announcement?”
“No. Not to my knowledge.”
“Not to your knowledge. Nice. I can tell someone’s been to law school.” Will wondered if Mary smiled with such unrelenting cheerfulness at everyone.
Despite the mild needling, Will was growing more comfortable with the interview. If they had anything incriminating, they wouldn’t be asking such mundane questions.
Then Dennis leaned forward in his chair and asked: “You wouldn’t happen to know any Russians, would you, Will?”
It took a second for the panic to begin rising. “Russians?”
“Yeah, you know. Citizens of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They drink vodka. Play hockey.”
Did they know about his night with Katya? Worse yet, did they know about his connection to Nikolai and Yuri?
“Why Russians? There are no Russians involved in this deal.” The stupid question would buy him at least a few more seconds.
“Remember what I said about the questions?” Dennis looked over at Mary to see if he could get a smile out of her, but her attention was fixed on Will.
“Yeah, right.” Will knew that a lie to federal agents could be as bad as the offense itself, but he could see no other way out. “No, I don’t think I know any Russians,” he said.
Dennis narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure? That was kind of fast. Why don’t you take a second to think about it.”
They clearly knew something, but how much? He suddenly understood why so many criminal defendants confess—he felt an overpowering impulse to tell the two agents everything. He managed to resist the urge because he realized that they hadn’t really said anything that suggested they knew what he’d done.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Of course, I don’t know the family history of everyone who’s working on this deal.”
“Will, you understand that we can’t tell you much about what we’re doing here, because that could compromise our investigation.” Dennis looked over at Mary to confirm that she concurred with this new tack. “But we’re going to tell you a little so that you understand what the stakes are.”
“I’m certainly curious.”
“Uh-huh,” Dennis said. “We’ve detected some unusual trading activity in Jupiter. It’s occurring here in the Bay Area, which suggests that someone directly involved in the deal is talking.”
“That’s very troubling.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you think that the leak is coming from the firm?”
“We’d rather not tell you what we think about that right now.” Now Dennis and Mary were both making hard eye contact with Will, neither smiling.
“The thing is,” Mary added, “a lot of the people purchasing the stock have Russian names.”
Will tried to control his expression. “What do you think that means?”
&
nbsp; “We’re not sure,” Mary said. “But we ran the names and found that several of them have connections to the Russian mob. Nobody who has an actual criminal record in this country, but a few who are known associates of mafiya members. Weren’t you curious about why a DOJ agent was here along with the SEC?”
“You told me not to ask questions.”
“I’m with the Department’s Corporate Fraud Task Force,” Mary said. “We’re running a parallel investigation with the SEC because this appears to be more than just insider trading. Whoever is responsible for the leak may be dealing, directly or indirectly, with members of the Russian mafiya. That person is in a great deal of danger.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Mary inched her chair closer to Will’s desk. “You’re leading the team of attorneys. We thought that you would be in a good position to spot someone who might be involved if you knew what to look for.”
Mary removed a series of six wallet-size photos from a leather portfolio and laid them on the desk one by one like playing cards. “Do any of these faces look familiar?”
Will immediately recognized a candid shot of Valter that was probably taken with a telephoto lens, followed by mug shots of four other similarly thuggish-looking Slavic types. The last was a photo of a police sketch artist drawing. There was no mistaking that it was Aashif, Valter’s guest that night at Dacha.
“Who are they?” Will asked.
“Five of them are pakhan, midlevel members of the city’s Russian mafiya. Mary pointed at the photo of Aashif. “Homeland Security tells us that this guy is a terrorist who they think has been meeting with local mafiya.”
“A terrorist? What’s this got to do with the merger I’m working on?”
“We don’t know. Maybe nothing. But if you recognize any of these faces, or if you see any of them later in any context, we need to know about it immediately.”
Will made a show of examining Aashif’s photo. “What sort of terrorist is he?”
“His name is Aashif Agha. He’s the leader of a radical Muslim cell based in North London. Could be al Qaeda, we don’t even know that much. DHS was getting ready to take him down for buying the makings for sarin nerve gas when he went to ground. Now they think he’s here in the Bay Area.”