The Hard Stuff

by David Gordon

  “Officer! Officer!” Joe yelled in his most panicked voice, pressing forward with Yelena by the hand. “Please, you have to help us. My wife is about to have a baby!”

  *

  “It’s showtime, folks!”

  Cash shouted happily as he strode onto the subway car. Josh jumped around beside him, holding up his player. A few people idly looked over. Most did not.

  “I know ya’ll are stuck here and prolly feeling grumpy,” Cash chattered on, undaunted. “But have no fear! The Jam-It-Up Twins is here to lighten your load, brighten your day, and show you the way, by providing some free entertainment while you wait for the popo to do they thing. And by free, I do mean that donations will be gratefully accepted. God bless you, respect to all, and have a safe journey.”

  “Bless!” Josh yelled, kissing the first two fingers of his left hand, holding it out like a benediction, and then tapping his chest with his right fist and yelling, “’Spect!” He reached for the box and hit Play. He was letting Cash do the talking because of his noticeable and possibly memorable accent, but as the music came thumping and ringing, he began to move with the rhythm, shaking his hips and waving his arms in snaky patterns.

  “Take it, baby,” Cash told him. “Show them how we do it in New York City!”

  Then Josh began to dance. He did the robot, then started popping and locking, sending waves up and down his arms and legs while his head jerked around on his neck. He moonwalked down the car backward and then did a split. A few blond children, French tourists, burst into applause and an older couple from Korea took a picture. He shook like a rag doll, letting his head loll while his arms flew crazily and his legs flopped in and out at the knee like he was double-jointed and greased. He jumped up, right over a French kid’s head, and grabbed the bar, then swung his legs over and landed back on his feet. More people clapped and a black man who’d been playing a game on his phone shouted: “You got it! You got it!”

  Now people were clapping along to the beat as Josh skipped up and down the car, turning a cartwheel and then, for his big finish, ran straight at the closed rear door and summersaulted himself over backward, landing in a crouch with his crossed arms showing two peace signs.

  “Peace!” he and Cash shouted in unison and the crowd went wild. People shook Josh’s hand while Cash walked up and down collecting the money. They got twelve dollars in singles and a handful of coins.

  Then a cop stepped on.

  “Hey!” he called to them. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “Just working officer,” Cash said, looking innocent. Josh smiled sheepishly.

  “You can’t be doing this here,” he told them. “It’s illegal.”

  The crowd stuck up for them. Several people booed the cop and others started telling him how the dancing had cheered them up, relieving the tedium, bringing everyone together.

  “Okay, okay, whatever,” the cop said, not wanting to deal with this. A real criminal investigation was happening, a big-time case, and here he was stuck dealing with kids. “I’ll let you off with a warning this time. Let’s go.”

  He led Cash and Josh off the train and over to the nearest exit. “Hey,” he told the officer standing guard. “Let these two by. I cleared them. They’re just hassling passengers.”

  The second cop nodded absently, not really listening, and let them by.

  “Thanks officer,” Cash said. “Have a blessed day.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the cop said. “Just don’t let me see you here again.”

  *

  “Having a baby?” the cop asked, incredulously. “You mean like right now?”

  “Yes, sir. I guess it was all the noise and people yelling. But she thinks she’s going into labor.”

  “My contractions are three minutes apart,” Yelena said, holding her belly in both hands. “Oh, my God, here comes one.” She started to moan loudly, grabbing Joe’s hand hard with one hand and clutching the cop’s hand with the other.

  “Holy jeeze,” he shouted and instinctively pulled his hand away.

  “Don’t you know how to deliver a baby?” Joe asked him, making his voice high and panicky. Yelena moaned louder.

  “Sort of,” the cop said. “They showed us a video. But it was hard to watch.”

  “It’s coming …” Yelena groaned.

  The cop grabbed his radio. “Let me call an ambulance,” he said.

  “We did already,” Joe said. “It’s upstairs. But no one will let us out.”

  “Come on,” he said and made his way through the crowd, with Joe behind him and Yelena waddling along, holding Joe’s hand. “Step aside folks. Let us through.”

  They made it upstairs to the sidewalk, where cops had a barricade across the entrance and more barricades closing off the sidewalk and street. Across the avenue, Joe could see the ambulance waiting. He waved to Liam, who waved back.

  “There it is,” he told the cop.

  “Right,” he said, with the tone of a man eager to unload a problem. “Let them through,” he told the cops minding the barricade. “This lady’s having a baby.”

  The cops quickly moved the sawhorses back, letting them hurry by, Joe holding Yelena and helping her along. Juno came running around the side of the ambulance, cap on and stethoscope dangling, and opened its back doors. He helped Yelena up, and then, after Joe climbed on, he pulled the doors shut behind them. Liam hit the siren and slowly pulled out, as the cops lifted the barricades and waved them through.

  Liam drove east, killing the siren as soon as they were a couple of blocks away, and when they reached the quieter stretches east of Lexington, he turned into the empty loading dock of a gigantic building and stopped. Meanwhile, Yelena had peeled off her dress and removed the belly. Down to her bra and panties, she grabbed her cutoff jean shorts, which were waiting in the ambulance, and pulled on a white tank top through which the red straps of her bra could be discerned. She kept the sandals. Joe changed, too, back into his jeans and black T-shirt, and he changed the sneakers he had on for his usual Chucks. Yelena picked up a small purse she’d brought along, and Joe gave her the sack with the diamonds to stash in there. When Liam knocked on the interior wall of the ambulance, signaling all clear, they climbed out and walked off together, headed east. Juno, now in a long white T-shirt over the blue uniform pants and a Brooklyn Nets cap, climbed out, too, a backpack full of computer gear slung over his shoulder. Looking like a college kid on his way from class at Hunter, he walked west toward the train.

  Liam waited for them to go, then pulled out and went to return the ambulance. With the decals removed and the interior cleaned up, the real owner would never know a thing.

  Joe and Yelena walked toward the river. On First Avenue, they had a car parked and waiting, a nondescript Toyota Corolla. Joe got behind the wheel and Yelena got in beside him. As he started the engine, she rolled her window down and lit a smoke.

  “Put your belt on,” Joe said. “And do you have to smoke that in here?”

  She blew it at him. “Relax,” she said. “I’m not really pregnant.” But she did put on her belt. Joe got on the FDR Drive and was immediately stuck in rush hour traffic. It took them over an hour to get home.

  PART III

  24

  As soon as Donna got the call, she knew she was in for a long night.

  “Armored car heist in Midtown. All hands on deck.”

  She grabbed her gun and her bag and her FBI windbreaker and texted her mom as she ran, asking her to feed Larissa and stay with her until she got back. There were some downsides to living across the hall from your mom, but this was one of the perks. She rode uptown in a Chevy stuffed with agents, but the scene was pretty much covered by the time she arrived, and the carnival was in full swing. News crews with their satellite-equipped vans jockeyed for camera space, so all the reporters could look like they were right there first on the scene while really they were lined up beside one another. Crowds of gawkers buzzed around, especially since this was a tourist hot zone, making
it one more stop on the ride. In fact, actual tour buses were trying to drive by and get as close as possible to the action. The traffic was apocalyptic. A crime scene that meandered over a dozen city blocks with various bits of evidence scattered about and a shut-down subway station, in Midtown, during rush hour: it was the perfect shit storm. While FBI agents and NYPD detectives were mainly puttering about looking puzzled or bemused, the uniforms—regular NYPD, traffic, transit—looked about one honk away from total freak-out.

  In the subway station, they’d set up lights, and the wrecked truck, sprawled facedown on a staircase, had the unreal feeling of a movie set. It would be towed away to a lab eventually, but for now gloved and bootied agents climbed all over it, taking pictures and scrapings. Evidence was being laid out on a tarp to be measured, photographed, and packed for transport to forensics. Donna squatted down next to Janet Kim, a forensic pathologist whose lab was down the hall from her own basement den.

  “Finally get out of the office and we’re back underground,” she told Janet.

  “I know,” she said, pausing to take a photo. “Then I take the PATH home to Jersey City.”

  “What’s that?” Donna pointed at a nasty-looking item, some kind of gas-pressured sharp metal spring. “Some new kind of weapon?”

  “We think it might be a corkscrew.”

  “Oh.” Four handguns were lined up. “They left these behind?”

  “Yup. Two in front, two in back. All wiped clean and untraceable. All fully loaded, too. Not a shot fired.”

  “Pros then.”

  “Total pros. The people who did this, they’d never be dumb enough to get caught walking around with an illegal weapon. You can always get a gun when you need one. Unfortunately.”

  “Witness statements?”

  “Nothing or less than nothing. The guards on the street were knocked out from behind. The driver …” She looked around, then called to a short, Latino man with a thick black mustache: “Hey Ernesto, show Donna that sketch of the suspect.”

  Frowning, he held up a sketchbook. It showed a head covered in a black ski mask, with just holes for the eyes and mouth. “You’re looking for a man with brown eyes,” he announced.

  “Roger that,” Donna told him.

  “Now the guys in back,” Janet said, checking in both directions and then hitting her slender vape pipe, “that’s a different story.”

  “Good descriptions?”

  “Oh yeah. And they mostly agree. It was Hasids.”

  “Hasids?”

  “Right. Two Hasidic males in the black coats, hats, the whole deal. Both heavily bearded. A big one who seemed older and a littler one who they both thought sounded like a teenage boy.”

  “Like a father and son team of Hasidic bandits?”

  “Exactly. But that’s not even the weird part.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Wait for it. The son …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is a hunchback.”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “I shit you not.”

  Donna shook her head. “That’s pretty nuts.”

  “The whole caper is nuts. What about the chase? They just drove around the neighborhood in circles, at speeds up to maybe thirty miles per hour at most. Then crashed. What kind of getaway plan is that?”

  “Maybe the only one possible in Midtown traffic?”

  Janet nodded. “Maybe so. That would fit with the inside-job theory. Look at this.”

  She led her to the next tarp, where a strongbox sat open. The inside was scorched but the outside looked undamaged.

  “It looks like they opened it with the combination, took the diamonds, then used it as a burner to destroy evidence.”

  “Clever. And it was intact?”

  “Oh yeah. They relocked it. We had to contact one of the owners to get the combo. No way they could cut it open anyway, under those conditions. A box like this would take a welding torch, acetylene tank, a special saw, masks, safety gloves. You’d never get that all onto the truck fast enough. You’d have to steal the whole thing and do it later.”

  “So you’re thinking they knew the combination.”

  “Right. That’s the theory. Someone tipped them off. Although the Shatzenbergs claim only two people know the combo.”

  Donna peered at the mess of burned items that had been removed from the safe.

  “What about all this?”

  “We’re just getting started, and I’m going to have to get it all back to my lab, but some of that looks like black fabric.”

  “So maybe disguises after all? To blend in maybe? But I mean, then why dress as a hunchback? Unless that part’s real?”

  Janet shrugged. “Beats me.”

  “What’s that?” Donna pointed at a short piece of curved metal with a metal disc in the center. It was covered in black soot with charred matter at the tips.

  Janet moved it closer with tweezers, then took a photo. “I don’t know. A tool? A weapon?”

  Donna leaned in and peered at the mysterious object. “Maybe it’s another corkscrew.”

  *

  As they headed upstairs, Donna and Janet noted some new arrivals: two men in dark suits, one taking photos, and a woman in a skirt and jacket taking notes on an iPad, while the older man spoke in hushed tones to the bureau’s agent in charge, though unlike everyone else on the scene, they wore no credentials of any kind.

  “Son of a bitch,” Donna muttered.

  Janet nodded and took out her vape pen. “Spooks. I wonder why. There’s nothing here to suggest anything but a straight-up, old-school heist. It’s refreshing actually.” She drew on her pen. “Guess they’re just sniffing around.”

  “Not him. If he’s here, something stinks.”

  Janet raised an eyebrow. “You’ve crossed paths before?”

  “Yeah,” Donna said. “In divorce court.”

  *

  “Agent Powell,” she said. He turned from his colleagues and smiled.

  “Agent Zamora,” he answered, smiling at his ex-wife. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Wish I could say the same,” she said, as his companions wandered discreetly away. “Why is the CIA here? Last I checked, New York City was still in the United States. I know it doesn’t feel that way sometimes.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’re not interfering. The investigation is local PD and FBI. But we are looking at a possible overseas connection.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like organized crime cooperating with Middle Eastern terror groups.”

  Donna frowned. “How does that figure? It’s cheaper and easier for them to rob someone over there than here.”

  Powell shrugged, showing his empty palms. “Maybe you’re right. Like I said, we’re just following up on a lead.” He smiled again. “Believe me. If it pans out, you’ll be the first to know. Or one of them anyway.”

  25

  They had the celebration at a Korean restaurant, a fancy barbeque place located in the penthouse of a tall building in the Korean section of Flushing. The possible attention—and curiosity—that such a mixed bag of villains all partying together might draw made a secret, neutral location desirable. So Gio, after checking in with Uncle Chen out of respect, got in touch with Mr. Kim, the Korean crime boss whose domain they were in, and arranged for this private dining room and a personal assurance of absolute discretion among the staff.

  After scattering to handle their final tasks, the crew arrived separately, Cash and Juno each wandering in through the downstairs shops—a sporting goods store, a couple of clothing places, nail and hair spas—Liam and Josh in separate taxis that pulled right into the building’s parking entrance. Joe and Yelena had stashed the diamonds, then driven their clean car here, parked it inside, and rode the elevator to the top.

  Mr. Kim had gone all out. The private dining room commanded a grand city view, and a team of robed waitresses moved constantly, preparing the open grills, laying out what seemed to be a hundred d
ifferent metal bowls full of delicacies, and keeping glasses full of soju or scotch. Joe had a Coke. Mr. Kim, a handsome man in a black suit with his steel-gray hair combed back, appeared to make a toast and thank Gio for the honor of choosing his place, and Gio made a toast thanking him. Kim also announced that they were all comped at the spa a few floors below, which offered everything from massages and body scrubs to elaborate wraps and straight-razor shaves in the barber shop. Then he politely faded away to let them party in peace without the bosses present, as did Gio, though he pulled Joe onto the balcony first.

  “About that other thing,” he said.

  Joe nodded. The others had all dressed for the occasion, Liam and Josh in suits, Cash in a new leather jacket and three-hundred-dollar jeans held up with a Gucci belt buckle; even Juno was in head-to-toe Bathing Ape. Yelena wore a simple but slinky black dress that showed off her shoulders, with a slit up the side revealing her stocking top and her hair down for once. Joe was in the same black T-shirt and jeans he’d been in that afternoon.

  “I heard from my guy on the police force,” Gio told him. “There’s already word out about the heist.”

  “Like what?”

  “An OC connection. My name mentioned or my family anyway.” Gio gritted his teeth. He had an overwhelming urge to kill something, so he strangled the straw from his gin and tonic, twisting it into contortions. “We’re leaking like a fucking sieve.”

  “Yeah. Though it occurs to me …”

  “What?”

  “For the moment, maybe that’s not so bad. We had Carlo tell the seller he was getting the stones, right? So a high-profile diamond heist from a legit dealer, lots of talk on the street about it, and the law talking about a crime family’s involvement. It all just helps lure the seller out into the open, right? If he’s al Qaeda or another terror group, then his main fear is Homeland Security or some other kind of sting. From his point of view, it’s far less likely to be a setup if the law’s own snitches are putting it on gangsters.”

  Having tied the straw into torturous knots, Gio dropped it in his empty drink. “You’re saying it’s like a disinformation campaign.”