“Unless you got hold of the computers themselves.”
“Right. So in this second scenario, the computer calls you wherever you want to be and generates a fax. What does it fax? It faxes an Italian takeout menu.” She paused to light another cigarette. “Looks like nothing. You get it and you say, So what. But it’s the number of times that the computer faxes it which is the message. You get the same fax three times and three is the message. Somebody grabs that piece of paper, what does it mean? Nothing.”
“But you said that this Rick guy thought this wasn’t working?”
“No, it was working fine, but they had tapped in somewhere,” Christina said. “They were monitoring, probably through the first phone. They weren’t catching the pass along cell call. I don’t think. Maybe they knew about the computer and the cell phone and were waiting, using it like a trap. Rick was worried. Had to cancel a couple of things. He got edgy about stuff. But he was right, as it turned out.”
He wasn’t sure how the phone trickery connected to her truck story. “So at this point you have a hell of a problem,” Charlie summarized. “You’ve got the bad guy with the heroin. You want to get out of the relationship. Lot of stuff happening.”
“Sure. I was angry that Tony was making such huge money off of my risk. But the other thing was that this was going to be my last job, forever. I was going to do this one very bad thing and then I was going to do nothing ever again. I wanted to just get free of Rick and the rest of them. And frankly, the best way I could think of to do that was to make the job get fucked up. Get the police to arrive and find and arrest people.”
“Hang on.” Charlie got up to go to the bathroom. It had a phone on the wall next to the toilet so guys like Sir Henry Lai could call for help as they crapped out on the crapper. Not me, thought Charlie, I’m still banging around. Ellie asleep, dreaming of rosebushes. He let loose a blissful stream, then in the light over the sink he looked at his penis. Pubic hair almost all gray, the flesh under it soft. It hung there, bent left, currently of no use. All those mysterious little veins, red and bluish, thin and thick. I’ve been staring at this thing my whole life, he thought, still don’t know what it is, exactly. Gave her a pretty good shot, by the feel of it. A good shot for him, at least. Fucking substandard sperm sample. It was embarrassing, even if he only had one testicle. But how many guys who’d had an M-16 round hit their scrotums actually had sperm samples? You survive to prosper, you live so that you can fuck. Melissa—he meant Christina—was much more vigorous than Ellie, not even close. He was out of practice, by about twenty-five years. Admit it, he told himself, you like this girl, even though she is dishonest and scares you a little. He rubbed his finger against his penis, touched his nose, and smelled her. Life keeps surprising me, he thought.
“Go on,” he called, as her cigarette smoke reached the bathroom. He looked in the mirror at the gray hair on his chest and stomach, drank a glass of water, then filled it again. “I’m listening.”
“So I was meeting Rick outside Philadelphia at a mall and we were going to drive into New York,” she continued from the bedroom. “If I couldn’t get out of driving those boxes, then at least I wanted to see them, see what it was that I was carrying. It bugged me that I didn’t know. There were two chances to get at them. One was on the drive up, and one was when we arrived in New York at the loading dock in Chelsea. I thought it’d be better if I could get at the boxes before we arrived in New York. My mother and father used to live outside Philadelphia, in Chester County. I know all the roads out there. It was farmland when I was growing up …” Her voice sounded sad. “Anyway, I planned it with Rick that we would stop for lunch. Just pull the truck in.”
He handed her the glass. “Wouldn’t that be sort of suspicious for the neighbors?”
“No, not really.” She sipped the water. “It wasn’t exactly the high-rent district, you know, sort of the edge of the suburbs. A big rig pulled up next to their place was nothing special. My mom and dad were going to move soon anyway—someone could think it was a moving truck. So we pulled into their house and they gave Rick a big welcome. My mother made a big meal for us and everything. Afterward I told Rick that I wanted to have sex, so we went in my old bedroom and had sex, and then he wanted to sleep, which is what I expected. I told him I’d wake him in a little while. My dad was watching television. He wasn’t feeling great. He was worried about money and moving down to Florida. He’d just retired. So then I went out to the truck and unlocked it. We had the keys in case we got stopped by the police. Less suspicious if they can look at the load and compare it to the paperwork. The truck was parked so that the back faced into our yard. I jumped up and took a look. The air conditioner boxes were all the same, of course. I hadn’t seen how they’d packed the truck. Frankie would expect his ten boxes to be in a certain spot, but they wouldn’t necessarily be the first ten boxes you’d naturally take out.” She sat up and pulled on Charlie’s button-down shirt, the tie still threaded through the collar. “I couldn’t find the pattern, so I just started opening boxes. What the hell, right? I opened about eight or nine and then I found one of the special boxes.”
“And?” Charlie asked. “Drugs?”
She looked at him. “It wasn’t heroin.”
“What was it?”
“Cash.”
“Cash?”
“Old hundreds and fifties. Two-inch stacks with red rubber bands. Kind of smelled. I carried my mom’s bathroom scales out and weighed a box and one of the regular boxes with an air conditioner in it. They weighed the same.”
“What did you do then?” Charlie asked, beginning to worry.
“I totally freaked out, what do you expect?” Christina said. “I thought about my dad sitting in there, worrying about how they were going to make it on his pension in Florida. He was sick and had worked his whole life and all he had to show for it was me, who’d dropped out of Columbia University, for God’s sake, against his wishes, against his hopes, you know, and I thought I could just do something for him for once.”
Suddenly she was crying, and despite his wariness, he pulled her toward him. “Oh, Charlie, it was so stupid, so incredibly stupid. I sort of panicked, which isn’t like me! I just thought how much I’d disappointed them. I mean, I was the girl who got a five on her goddamn AP history test, and now I have some boyfriend in there with huge arms and an earring, you know?” She coughed, voice thick. “My mother didn’t care, she liked Rick, she made a puddle whenever a man smiled at her, she’s probably the orgasm queen of all time, but my father was actually sort of classy in his quiet way. He used to sit in his old chair and read books on the Civil War and everything and I—”
“Okay, now,” Charlie said.
“—I was his only child, his only daughter, and I’d already disappointed him so much. And I was so afraid that he was dying and that he wouldn’t have—I haven’t told anyone this, I just couldn’t—it took me a long time in prison to understand what I did—I was so, so stupid. I didn’t want to cause any trouble … I’ve just always had this streak of something, anger and defiance and feeling that I would do everything my way, and my father was always so gentle with me, like you, so caring, he never got angry, he let my mother be the one who got angry, I guess. So all these things were in my head, and I was standing there with this big box of cash and not thinking like I should have been.”
“What’d you do?”
She stood up nervously and edged toward the window. “I found another box with cash in it and put the two of them down on the driveway. Then I arranged the outer rows of boxes in the truck to make it look like nothing had been disturbed. You wouldn’t be able to tell there was a problem until you removed a complete row of boxes. Then there was a gap.”
“You were out of your mind.”
“I know,” Christina said, touching a fingertip to the glass. “I carried the boxes to the garage. My father had this old Mustang convertible that he fixed up. The upholstery was still original, with the thin steering wheel. My
mother wrote me in prison that after my father died her boyfriends wanted to fix it up but she’d never let them.”
“Like a shrine.” Ellie’s closet for Ben.
“Sort of, yes. I knew they were planning to have it taken down to Florida with them. I knew they’d just roll it into the garage down there and leave it. My father was going to be too sick to actually fix it up again. The back was full of spare engine parts. I took them out and put in the two boxes. I don’t know how much was there.”
“Could be a million bucks,” Charlie said, thinking of the forty thousand he’d given Lo in Shanghai, how he’d been able to slip that into his breast pocket. “Easily, in fact.”
“Could be more,” she said. “I think it is.”
“You never counted it?”
“No, I never had the chance. We had to go, we had to deliver the truck. Rick woke up, said we’d be late … so on the way back to New York I’m worrying about what to do. If Tony finds out, then—I don’t know, we’re in trouble. The delivery was going as planned, though. I could have the truck arrive, but this guy Frankie was going to be the first to unload and would figure out two boxes were missing within a few minutes. First thing he’s going to do is call Tony, right? So I’m thinking about it and smoking a million cigarettes and looking out the window and thinking, How am I going to do this? I have to get out of this somehow … I realized that if the police arrive, then Tony can’t do anything to me. I actually want the police to arrive. I want us to get busted, but I don’t want myself to get arrested. I want to get away at the right moment. The problem with that is that there would be other guys from the crew there, and if they get arrested and I don’t, one of them will talk. The police will come right after me. I’m not controlling the situation that way.”
He was listening anxiously now. “You wanted it the other way?”
“Exactly,” Christina said. “I realized that I had to get myself arrested, not the other way around. I get myself arrested and the others go free. And if I don’t talk, at all, maybe Tony calls the whole thing square. Maybe I’m okay. I could wait a few years if I knew I was safe from Tony and my parents would have the money. It seemed like an okay trade-off. I mean, it was stupid to think that, but I was desperate. We were going to drive in there and everything was going to be fucked up. I’d rather deal with the police than with Tony. He has a sadistic streak.”
“But if you got yourself arrested—”
“And no one else, then I am controlling what is going on, right?” Christina asked rhetorically. “If I could figure out a way to get arrested sometime during the job, then actually I’m in pretty good shape, right? This is what I’m thinking, at least. Because if I don’t identify anyone else, they can’t get anyone, not if I plan it right. And maybe I only get eighteen months or two years, something like that. I know that sounds like a lot of time. But it’d get me out from under these people. I’d just read a lot, so I thought. My mother could send me books and I’d read a lot. It doesn’t make sense now to think about it, but this is the way I was thinking. Maybe I also knew my dad was going to die and I couldn’t face it. Also, I really was scared of these people. Tony had somebody killed every year or two. It was a fact. Prison sounded like the safest place I could be.”
Charlie got up and opened the minibar. He took out a sealed jar of cashews and a can of orange juice. “Anything?”
“Juice?”
“Got it.” He sat back on the bed. “You want anything else, room service or anything?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Do we have all night?”
“Yes.” He opened the cashews. “I have to call my wife at about 8:00 a.m., but that’s fine, I can do it at home.”
She stole a cashew from his hand. “I’d like to sleep with you, Charlie—real sleep.”
“What if I fart up the bed?”
She laughed. “You should try prison.”
“I thought women didn’t fart.”
“Women fart, believe me.”
He nodded. “They just try to hide it.”
“And men make it louder, which is worse.”
“Very nice conversation, I don’t think.”
“Maybe we could have an early breakfast?”
“It’s a deal.”
“You don’t mind walking out of here with me at seven in the morning or whatever?”
“No.” He ate a handful of cashews. “So.”
“So … we were due to begin the drop-off at 4:00 p.m. at a warehouse at Twentieth and Ninth Avenue. I’d scouted the street maybe a dozen times. Actually drawn diagrams of all the businesses along there. It was tight backing up into the loading dock, and once you were in, you weren’t going anywhere. Rick was very good at handling the truck. The plan was that we backed in, Rick would talk to the guys, I stayed in the cab. We had this worked out with the others that if you saw something you didn’t like you hit the horn three times, hard. I knew that was how I’d get rid of everyone. But I also knew that if I hit the horn Rick’d come get me first. He would do that, no matter what. He’d pull me out of the cab before the police could get me.”
“Loyal guy, this Rick.”
“So we were on the New Jersey Turnpike—”
“I was there today myself—”
“We stopped at the Vince Lombardi Plaza at about three o‘clock. I said I had to pee badly, and I went in and used the pay phone. I’m freaking out, actually. We’re due to be dropping off in about an hour. I know that we have to get the truck in, get it set up. Now, if I call in to some police station or something, there’s not much chance they’ll react. Like, ‘Hello? Some guys are smuggling air conditioners at four o’clock.’ That won’t work. Even if it does, it has to go through a lot of police bureaucracy, I’m guessing. They get crazy calls all the time. I can call in a bomb threat on 911 to some building across the street, but that means we don’t actually get the truck into the block, start the unloading, because of the fire trucks. It has to really, really look to Tony Verducci’s people like the job is going smoothly, that we were surprised, were under surveillance the whole time. The problem is, I don’t want the phone call to be revealed later, at a trial or something, to show that I was the one who made it. And Rick is outside in the truck, looking at his watch. I know he’s worrying about the traffic, getting into Manhattan, angry that I’m slowing things down.”
“What can you do?”
“My only hope,” she continued, “is that Rick is right about the phone drop being tapped. If it is, then I have a chance. First, I call the computer phone, bypass the crazy menu and message option, and reprogram it so that the cell phone, the one that makes the next call, will dial information the next time the first phone gets a message. Five-five-five-one-two-one-two. Remember, I have to do this because the computer is going to take whatever next message comes in and use the cell phone to relay it—I don’t want my message sent on to the usual second number, where the other machine is, because maybe Tony gets that message later somehow and listens to it and finds out it’s me. So I fix that. The next call that comes in is going to be relayed to an information operator who’s going to think it’s a screwed-up home answering machine and hang up, after which the first machine is going to erase its message. I’m doing this real fast. Rick is outside in the truck. A couple of guys will be waiting to help us unload at the drop-off. The fences are going to arrive at just the right time.”
“You have to call back, though,” Charlie said.
“Right. Exactly. So then I call the first machine back and say something like ‘Hello, it’s me. A good load. Today, 3:45 p.m., Twentieth Street and Ninth Avenue. Middle of the block. Full rig. And the big man will be there at 3:45 sharp. Be there or be nowhere.’” Christina laughed dismissively. “Something incredibly straight-on like that. So straight-on you can’t believe it, but if they’re listening, they are going to be curious. They have to check it out, they—”
“Wait,” Charlie interrupted. “You said the drop-off was supposed to be at 4:00. Wh
y say 3:45?”
“I have a good reason. I want them waiting. We’re going to pull in at four sharp and I have to time it perfectly. I want to make sure they’re there when I need them. So we pull in through the Holland Tunnel and work our way up to Twentieth and it’s real hot—you know how it gets in the late afternoon—and I’m just sitting all slouched in sunglasses and burning up, the sun in my face, and really worried that maybe I’m just completely fucked here. I don’t know if anybody was listening to the phone message or, if they were, what they’re going to do. Rick is relaxed. We’re back on schedule. He doesn’t know anything, he’s listening to the radio, shifting the gears. He’s having a great time. I’m sitting there praying that the police are, right then, setting up to grab us. If they aren’t, then Frankie will find out about the missing cash within a few minutes and call Tony, who will immediately send over a car. I’m scared. Really scared. I’m smoking and trying not to jump around in my seat. But okay, what can I do? We get to Twentieth Street and pull along the block. The loading dock is empty, like it’s supposed to be, nobody blocking us. We pull in, everything is fine. Nothing looks bad. We look like a bunch of ordinary people. A truck making a delivery, you know. Not a big deal. One of the unload men, this guy Mickey Simms, is there. A big fat guy with no hair. He says everything looks great, the fences are waiting. Frankie says he’ll take his boxes into the building and out the other side into a van. Fine. I’m looking all over the place hoping to see some undercover cops. If they’re going to be there, they’re there already. Sitting in front of me. Down the block somewhere. Watching with binoculars and radios, the whole thing. But I can’t see anyone. And Rick is not nervous, which gets me even more nervous. So after about five minutes, when Frankie is almost done loading, I ask Rick to go get me some cigarettes. The deli is way down the block. He says, Now? And I sort of just beg him with my eyes and he smiles and says okay and I ask also, How about a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato and onion—something that will take a few minutes to make, you know—and then he tells the others he’ll be back in a minute. Mickey Simms goes with him. When I see Rick’s gone into the deli, actually gone inside so he can’t hear the street, I hit the horn three times, loud as I can, and watch the guys get freaked out and run away through the back of the building, all these ways we’d thought out ahead of time as we always did, and about five seconds after that, the cops are pulling up and all over the truck. They were there, after all! I kept my hands up so they wouldn’t shoot me. They pulled me out of the cab and put me up against the door and they were pretty pissed off, like why did I signal, where did everybody go and everything, but I felt so good. I was safe! Rick was still in the deli and I knew he’d see the police cars and just disappear. Later I heard that he came out of the deli and saw the cops and was going to run get me, but that Mickey Simms stuck a gun in his face and wouldn’t let him.”
Afterburn: A Novel Page 44