by David Gordon
“No worries,” Joe reassured them. Felix held a gun on Yelena while Armond unlocked the cage and pushed her in. She glared silently. Then, at Heather’s signal, Vlad and Armond took hold of Joe, gripping him by the arms. Immediately, she kicked him in the solar plexus with the toe of her boot, and when he lurched forward, she spun and landed a roundhouse kick to his face. He flew back, but the two men held him, and he stood, blood seeping from a cut lip.
“How pretty,” Heather said. “Is it real blood this time?”
“Taste it and see,” Joe told her.
She leaned in, slowly, while the men held Joe still. She held his face in both her hands. She looked deep into his eyes. Then she kissed him, abruptly and hard, and bit his lip, squeezing it between her teeth. She let go, smiling wildly.
“Sweet,” she said. “No wonder the Russian bitch likes you.”
“Come on,” Felix said. “Let’s just kill them all and go. This is a waste of time.”
“This is my time, Felix,” Heather told him. “You and your boss can have the diamonds. I don’t need your money. I told you that. This is what I want. Just a few minutes or who knows, maybe an hour with our friend Joe.” She picked up the knife. “Can you last an hour, Joe? How long did they train you to hold out under torture before you talk?”
Joe licked the blood from his lips. “I’ll talk now. What do you want to discuss?”
“I want to hear you beg. I want you to beg me to let you live, knowing I won’t. I want you to beg me to let you die.” She began slicing the buttons off of his shirt.
“Hey, I just got this shirt.”
“Sorry. Just testing the blade. It’s really very sharp.” She ran the tip over him, like a pointer. “What should I cut off next? An ear? A ball? Maybe I will cut your eyes out and make Yelena eat them. Or maybe just slice the eyelids off and make you watch while Felix here does what he likes to do to girls. What do you think, Joe? What should I cut?”
“I’d say cut my hair. I’ve been meaning to for weeks.”
She laughed. “That’s funny, Joe. You’re a funny guy. I like you. Hey …” She pushed his shirt back and exposed the star branded on the side of his chest. “Here it is. I heard about this. So they really did it. Made you their little sheriff?”
“That’s a birthmark.”
“You know, I think I’ll cut this off first. Or no, I know what I’ll do.” She got very close to him, close enough to kiss again, and pressed the knifepoint into his chest so that a drop of blood swelled like a small red berry at the tip. “I will carve my husband’s initials into your flesh, so that as you suffer, you will know why.” Joe winced as she slid the blade over his skin, drawing a large A. The blood was just beginning to flow when Donna came down the stairs.
“Freeze,” she yelled. “FBI.”
*
Donna didn’t really expect anyone to freeze. She expected them to move. Nor was she sure if she was really there in her official capacity as an FBI agent. But she needed the woman with the knife, whom she recognized as Heather Kaan, widow of the terrorist, who was carving up Joe, to move. She was too close to Joe for a clear shot. So Donna yelled, and the woman spun around to face her, stepping a crucial foot or two from Joe, and with the path cleared, Donna took her shot and killed her, just like she’d been trained to: with a bullet right through the heart.
By then, everyone was moving. The moment Donna fired, the two men had let go of Joe and dashed for cover, and Felix, standing by the cage, had raised his own pistol to shoot at Donna. She swerved to take him out next, but by then he’d dropped his gun. Yelena had leapt up, grabbing the top of the cage, and swung her legs through the bars to close around Felix’s throat. Now she had them crossed under his chin, with her thighs clenched around his neck, pressing the carotid arteries. And from the way his eyes bulged and his arms flailed, it was clear that she was squeezing the life out of him. Donna swerved back toward the other men, but it was too late. Vlad, moving with surprising agility for a beast of his bulk, the way grizzlies run down hikers and snatch salmon from rapids, had loped over the small space, grabbing Donna and flinging her across the room like a child. She flew back, knocking her head against the wall, and dropped to the floor unconscious.
Joe had moved, too. The second he heard Donna’s voice he had stomped Armond’s instep with his heel, causing him to flinch and let go. Vlad’s grip was too strong to break, but when Donna fired and Vlad moved, Joe was able to drop to the floor. Heather fell, dropping the knife, and he grabbed it up as he rolled out of the line of fire. It was, as Heather had pointed out, very sharp and perfectly balanced. A well-made tool. Holding it loosely and with his forefinger along the spine to guide it, Joe launched it in a short arc that ended between Armond’s shoulder blades, a few inches below the base of his neck. Armond fell to his knees and pitched forward, gurgling.
Using his momentum, Joe now sprang back to his feet, but it was too late. Vlad was already coming for him after knocking out Donna, drawing a Glock from his waistband, the gun like a toy in his massive paw as he raised it to fire. Rising on one foot, Joe kicked straight out, clipping the gun, and sending it flying from Vlad’s grip, but that was all he could do. By then Vlad was on him, wrapping his arms around him, closing Joe in a bear hug and slowly but surely crushing him, as the giant’s arms coiled about his neck and chest like twin boa constrictors.
Joe couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see, face pressed as it was into Vlad’s shoulder, his bicep like a vise sealing off Joe’s windpipe, while the other arm, clamped under his rib cage, crushed his diaphragm. Vlad squeezed Joe close, holding him tight like an eager suitor at a ballroom dance, lifting him to his toes as they waltzed. Joe tried kicking, but Vlad had his legs planted correctly, far apart and solid, like stone columns, and it was hard for Joe to do more than thump his feet weakly like a bored kid on a plane, annoying the person in front of him. His arms were up in front of him, elbows bent, pinned uselessly between his own body and Vlad’s. All he could move were his wrists, like little flippers that he flailed pointlessly, as though he were a drowning man, weakly waving for help. Which he was. He was sinking into unconsciousness and then death, drowning in the giant’s embrace.
From the cage, Joe’s friends were watching him die, and they couldn’t do a thing. Cash and Juno were on the ground frantically trying to reach Felix’s gun, which had fallen out of reach. There was no way. It was too far, but they kept trying, as though their arms might suddenly grow. Yelena, too, could see him fading out, feet dangling, being hugged to death, but she herself was strangling Felix, and if she let him go too soon he’d get the gun. She could see the old, heavy key to the cage on the table with the diamonds, and the sight was infuriating. She knew she could pick this lock in minutes, seconds maybe with the right tool, but she didn’t have seconds or tools. She had nothing. She could do nothing but watch Joe die.
Joe, too, felt like he was watching himself die in his own mind, which was yelling at him to do something, anything to save himself, to buy himself one more precious breath. Moving his fingers on his left hand, he felt Yelena’s mechanical pencil where he’d clipped it to his pocket, pressed now between his body and Vlad’s. Slowly, with his index and middle fingers, he drew it out, then closed his other fingers around it, taking great care not to let it slip. Then, millimeter by millimeter, he began to turn his wrist, using the tiny bit of movement he was allowed to raise the pencil higher. He shifted his right hand, too, and, reaching with all his strength, managed to get his hand on the side of Vlad’s head. Not that he could do anything to injure that massive block. But he gripped the flesh on Vlad’s neck tightly with his fingers and stuffed his thumb in his ear, for leverage. Annoyed, Vlad shook his head, like an ox shaking off a flea, but Joe held on. He was close now, face-to-face. He could feel Vlad’s breath. Then, with his right hand holding himself steady and the fingers of his left hand wrapped tight around the shaft of the pencil, thumb on the eraser, he drove the point into Vlad’s right eye.
At
the last moment, Vlad saw the pencil coming and instinctively flinched, but that only gave Joe another quarter inch of free space to work with as the tip of the pencil punched through the outer membrane of the eyeball and sank into the socket with a sickening feeling, like a toothpick piercing a grape.
Instantly, Vlad released his grip, and Joe gasped for air, but now he was the one hanging on as the giant tried to throw him off. Joe grasped him tighter, with his whole right arm clutching Vlad’s neck and his legs wrapping his hips, like a baby gorilla hugging his mother. Vlad pounded Joe’s back with his fists, and the pain made him grunt like he was being beaten with mallets, but he clung on, and as he got the whole of his upper arm free, he bent from the elbow and rammed the pencil home with all his strength.
Vlad howled—a high, piercing screech—and began to flap his arms wildly, as though desperate for flight. Joe fell back, staggering and wheezing as he watched the giant flail. Like a fish on a hook––a shark flopping on a deck or a speared marlin thrashing at the end of a line––he flung himself around the room, knocking the table over and flattening the chairs, limbs working convulsively, sending his huge body careening mindlessly like a runaway train, nerves still driving him despite the pencil sticking out of his brain.
Barely able to move, Joe limped across the room to where the others in the cage now watched in silence. Only the giant roared and screamed, making terrible high-pitched sounds like a baby or a dolphin. He didn’t sound human anymore. Joe picked up Felix’s gun and fired, putting a single bullet through his other eye. The giant dropped. Then Joe swung to Felix, taking aim, but saw immediately that it wasn’t needed: Felix’s eyes were bulged now and full of broken vessels. His face was blue, his tongue squeezed between his purpled lips. He was dead. Yelena unclenched her legs and let him go. He fell.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cash murmured quietly.
“You two are hard fucking core,” Juno added, finishing the thought.
Still cramped and aching, Joe got the key and opened the cage. “You guys better get going,” he said to Cash and Juno. “Make sure to get your phones. We’ll hook up later.”
They stood there, still staring at the dead bodies: Vlad on his back with the pencil poking up and Felix slumped against the cage. “Let’s go,” Joe said, louder, as he rushed over to Donna. “Time to move.”
“Right, sorry,” Juno said. And then to Cash: “Let’s go, man.”
They grabbed their belongings and Cash quickly said, “Thanks Joe,” as they went. He crouched over Donna and checked her pulse and breathing. She was okay, just knocked out. Yelena retrieved her gun.
“You can have your pencil back now if you want it,” Joe told her. “I know it’s your favorite.”
“Keep it to remember me by,” she said. “I will keep the knife you gave me.” She drew it from Armond’s back and wiped it carefully on his shirt. She smiled at him. “It really is a very nice knife.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Joe said. She headed to the stairway.
“Yelena,” he called. She paused and looked back, but he didn’t know what to say.
“I will see you again, Joe,” she said finally.
“I know it,” he answered.
And she went. Joe watched her move swiftly up the steps and she was gone. For a second he felt the urge to go after her, but of course he could not. There was too much to do here, and then Donna started to moan and mumble in his arms.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he said softly, bending over her. “Time to rise and shine.”
Her eyes opened, and seeing him she smiled. “Hi,” she said, looking up at him.
“Hi there,” he responded, brushing her hair back, his mouth just a breath away from hers.
Then she yelled, “Fuck,” and she sat up, as consciousness returned and she remembered where she was. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she repeated, looking around, and then: “Ow, shit,” holding her head at the rapid movement.
“Easy, easy, it’s all over,” Joe told her.
“For you maybe. Fuck,” she said one more time, getting to her feet, one hand braced on the wall. “Where the hell’s my gun?”
“Here,” Joe said quickly, picking it off the floor by the barrel and handing it to her.
“This is bad,” she said looking around, her eyes narrowing at the sight of Vlad and Felix. She shook her head. “I’m not even going to ask.”
“Don’t worry, Donna. We can handle this.”
“Joe, I shot someone. Off duty. For no reason. At least none I can explain. To aid you in the commission of … God knows what. How are we going to handle it?”
“That’s not the ‘we’ I meant,” Joe said. He leaned closer. “You showed up and you helped me and I thank you for that. Now you’re going to have to trust me. Get out of here, get some aspirin, and wait for my signal. An hour, maybe less.”
She hesitated, wanting to ask questions but not wanting to know the answers.
“How will I know when the signal comes?”
“You’ll know. Now hurry the fuck up and go.”
And with that he turned his back on her, found his phone in the mess on the floor, and made a call. Seeing no other choice, Donna went up the stairs and through the club—which was packed now and louder than ever, with no one even glancing her way—and then back out to her car.
“Gio,” Joe said when his call went through. “It’s me. I could really use some help getting rid of a little problem over here.”
“You and me both, brother,” Gio said, his voice quiet. “I was thinking about a ride on the boat.”
“Sounds good,” Joe said, wondering why Gio’s voice seemed strange. “I also need you to make a couple of calls.”
45
Five minutes later, the phone in Rebbe’s house rang. He was sleeping, but they woke him when they heard it was Gio calling with an emergency. Rebbe listened to Gio, and ten minutes after that, long enough to make a cup of tea, Rebbe called Hyman Shatzenberg, the senior brother. He told him that someone who had reliable knowledge of the stolen diamonds’ location had contacted him through an intermediary. They were willing to turn the goods over to the authorities in return for a finder’s fee of 10 percent, if Rebbe would broker it. Shatzenberg eagerly agreed.
Half an hour after that, Donna’s phone rang. She was sitting in a diner drinking coffee. Amazingly, she had been famished and had just put away a cheeseburger and fries, eating with the hearty appetite of one resigned to her fate. The call was from her work line, patched through.
“This is Special Agent Zamora, how can I help you?” she said as she watched the waitress walk by. A man with a heavy Hasidic accent—Brooklyn meets Vladivostok—said he had a tip but wanted to remain anonymous. There was information relating to the diamond heist. Then he gave the address of the crime scene she had just left and told her to check the basement.
She guessed this is what Joe meant when he said she’d know. Paying quickly, she drove back and now went in officially, badging the manager, a fellow named Mohammed, and asking to be led to a supposed basement storage room, with his permission. He gladly agreed and also gladly waited while she went down alone.
In some ways the scene was the same. The huge man still lay on his back with a puncture wound through one eye and, forensics would show, a bullet through the other. Armand’s corpse was facedown on the floor. Drug smuggler and suspected multiple murderer Felix Habibi lay slumped dead against the cage, a gun near his body. No other bodies were in sight. Heather Kaan was gone. Joe was gone. All evidence of Donna’s own presence was gone.
However there was a small plastic baggie containing heroin flung on the floor near Vlad’s corpse. And on the table, which was back upright, sat a velvet bag that when she checked was found to contain diamonds.
Donna couldn’t help smiling as she called it in.
*
Agent Mike Powell was not having a good night. First, an operation that he had personally initiated and for which he’d provided the intel, had gone to hell and the
NYPD was dumping the blame in his lap. His insistence that the actual info was good, that the meet did indeed happen as he said, did not seem to be mollifying anyone. It had also been his idea to circumvent the FBI because of “suspected” leaks, and this, too, was being thrown back at him. The FBI was demanding an apology and insisting, moreover, that the whole reason they blew it was because the FBI should have taken the lead. Nonsense, of course, but how could he argue? It was definitely not the moment to reveal that his main suspicion was that his ex-wife was boning one of the diamond thieves. His station chief had been eating shit with a smile all night and he knew, once he’d digested it, a fresh, steaming pile would be waiting on his own desk in the morning.
And now his “assets,” transformed like bad stocks into liabilities, had disappeared on him. Pat White had vanished. His phone was dead. His family claimed he had not come home for dinner and no one at his usual haunts had seen him. People on the street were already talking about a shake-up within his crew, a shift of power from him to the Madigan brothers, Tim, Sean, and Liam. People in Powell’s office were saying he’d fled, gone rogue, if a gangster who was snitching on his comrades in order to preserve his own power could ever be anything else. He might have gotten spooked, worried his double-dealing was about to be exposed, or it might have been his retirement plan all along—to escape with his offshore millions, beyond the reach of the law and of Mrs. White.
And now, as he redialed his other source, Nightcrawler—his man inside the Caprisi family—that, too, was going straight to voice mail, and his texts were going unanswered. It was possible of course that he would turn up any minute, that they both would, but Powell didn’t think so. He thought they were dead. Sitting at his desk, with his bright reflection staring back at him from the wide window, he suddenly felt exposed, as though someone out there were spying on him now, aiming at him. He shut the light. He told himself it was just to get quiet and think for a moment, but in the dark, staring out at the empty street and the silent buildings, all he felt was alone.