The Hunted, page 36
Hanrahan asked, “How’d he get that nickname?”
“Short for ‘bitchmaker.’ Ol’ Beatty misses all those groupie sluts something awful.” A broad smile at the faces in the room. “Guess you’d say his cellmates are his surrogates.”
Two special agents leaned against the wall and joined in the laughter, halfheartedly, little more than forced chuckles. They stopped as soon as it seemed polite.
This was the third prison inside a year. And the third cocksure warden who swore he would break Konevitch like a swaybacked pony. Konevitch had adapted to each new facility quickly, with surprising ease. Go figure.
As a prisoner in the federal system, though, he enjoyed one protected right they badly wished they could withhold: monthly visits from that pretty little wife, who appeared like clockwork. No matter where they moved him, no matter how closely the secret was kept, she somehow learned where he was. The Feds monitored his mail, an easy task, as there had been no mail—none coming in, none going out. That nosy lawyer of theirs peppered the system with requests for his location, but none had been answered. Somehow, though, she always knew where he was.
He attacked the library with curious regularity. The FBI accessed the records and followed his literary pursuits with their own deep interest. The law stacks were a common destination. Little surprise there. All prisoners fashioned themselves Clarence Darrows, able to outdo all those esquired incompetents who screwed up and got them in here. Every other day, it was books on computers, computer languages, FORTRAN and COBOL, and that new thing called the Internet all their kids were raving about. A few times a week, he hopped onto the library computer and typed away at blazing speed, nearly burning up the keyboard. Why, they had no idea.
Hanrahan turned away from the warden and, talking maybe at the wall, maybe at nobody, emphasized, “You know how important this is to us.”
“Guess I do. I got a call from Fielder at headquarters. Said your guy, Tromble, wants this real bad.”
Still looking away, like this wasn’t a conversation. “Find a way to scale back his liberties. Turn up the heat as fast and hard as you like.”
The warden, also now talking, not at Hanrahan but at some invisible spot on the ceiling, hypothesized, “Yeah, well, he could, I dunno, maybe misbehave or somethin’. I’d have to come down hard with a few necessary disciplinary measures.”
“Yeah, but like what?”
“A few more weeks in solitary will get his attention.”
“Don’t. Believe me, don’t. That was tried at both previous prisons. He folds himself into some kind of yoga posture and goes into a trance. Actually, he seems to enjoy the solitude.”
“Two…? Hey, I thought this guy was a cherry.”
“Sorry, no, you’re the third. The other two prisons he’s shown a talent for building coalitions and finding people to protect him. He’s clever. We have no idea how he does it.”
The warden leaned back in his chair and threw his hands behind his head. “Well, your boy ain’t met me yet,” he boasted. “Ask around, fellas. The state always sends me the biggest hardasses. I got my ways of making ’em crack.”
The two agents on the wall shared quiet smiles. It was the same speech, almost word for word, they had heard from both previous wardens. And in each prison, inside a few weeks, Konevitch was hanging out with the biggest badasses in the yard, getting extra food helpings in the mess hall, the recipient of all kinds of special largesse and favors, even from the guards.
As much as they hoped and plotted otherwise, somehow, some way, they feared Alex Konevitch would find a way to upstage this wingtipped, overconfident ass as well.
Bitchy missed football like crazy. All in all, though, prison wasn’t all that bad, or even all that different. He more or less spent his time just as he did back in his cherished NFL days, eating voraciously, hoisting enormous weights out in the yard, and bashing heads whenever the impulse seized him. He had packed on another forty pounds of bad mood to the 350 he arrived with, all hard muscle.
Bitchy had scraped by with terrible grades in college, not because he was stupid, because he was smart. A full ride, with all the cute little cheerleaders he wanted, and bright little volunteers to stand in and take his tests. What dork would hide his nose inside books with all that fun to be had? Like many football hotshots, off the field Bitchy had always been spoiled rotten; it shouldn’t surprise anybody that he now had a few serious impulse control issues. Anyway, the college was determined to graduate him phi beta pigskin, no matter what, even if he never went near class, which he seldom did.
The new boy was lying on the lower bunk with his nose stuffed inside a book, something about Web site construction. He was cute, real cute. A bit tall for Bitchy’s usual taste maybe, but what the hell, variety was supposed to be spicy. So why not? He shifted his vast weight to the side of his bunk and peered down.
“Hey, I heard you’re a transfer.”
“Third prison this year.”
“How come they moved you to this shithole?”
“Mutilation.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“I mutilated a man. I didn’t kill him. Afterward, though, I suppose he wished I had.” Alex absently flipped a page and continued reading.
Bitchy scratched his head. “That’s a new one on me.”
“In the statutes it sits between first- and second-degree assault. You see, in your American laws, it boils down to intent. I didn’t want to kill him.”
“What are you, a lawyer?” Bitchy hated lawyers. He’d been screwed royally by the five-hundred-buck-an-hour suit he’d hired to defend him, a pompous prick who barely protested when the judge doubled his sentence. He would dearly love to screw one back.
“Hardly.”
Bitchy bounced off the top bunk. With incredible agility, both feet hit the floor at once, almost catlike. He was so damned big and blockish, his opponents habitually underestimated his speed, balance, and dexterity. But not after Bitchy got his huge paws on you—suddenly, everything about him came into terrifying focus.
He placed a hand on his zipper and was about to introduce his new cellmate to Mr. Johnson.
Alex calmly closed the book and looked at him. “I castrated a man,” he informed Beatty simply, coldly. “He attempted to rape me in the shower. That night, after he fell asleep, I chopped it off. While he howled in pain, I cut it into small pieces. You know why, Benny?” He paused long enough to allow Benny time to consider this intriguing question. “It made it impossible to sew back on.”
Bitchy’s hand left his zipper and entered a deep pocket.
Alex said, “I hear you were a professional footballer.”
A strange way to put it, but Bitchy answered, “Yeah. So what?”
“Did it pay well?”
This was getting weird. “Not well. It paid great.”
“How great?”
“A five million signing bonus. Three million a year in salary. Why you askin’?”
“Where is all that money now?”
“None of your business.”
Alex put the book down and leaned his back against the wall. “I suppose your legal costs consumed most of it.”
Bitchy also leaned back against the wall. He was in the mood for a little man-love, but this guy seemed to want to chitchat a bit before they got down to action. At least he wasn’t hollering and bouncing around the cell like his last cellmate. The Russian accent sure sounded cool.
“I got millions left. When it hits three mil, the lawyers can go screw themselves. The appeals stop.”
“Smart. So how is it invested?”
“In the bank. Where else would it be?”
“Did nobody advise you that’s stupid?”
Bitchy bounced off the wall. The hand came out of the pocket and suddenly balled into a beefy fist. “Watch your mouth. You’re stupid if you call me stupid.”
“Relax, Benny. I never said you were stupid. I said leaving the money in the bank is stupid.”
“It’ll still be there when I get out. How stupid is that?”
“A lot more of it could be there. Is that smart, my friend?”
“All right, Mr. I-know-so-much, what’s smarter?”
“In the right stocks, it will multiply enormously. Real estate is a fairly good and safe investment also.”
“That’s not my thing.”
“Have you ever heard of Qualcomm, Benny?”
Bitchy laughed. “Sure. I get it from the pharmacy whenever I get jock itch.” He laughed harder.
“We’ll look into jock-itch providers if you’d like. It’s certainly a market you know well. That’s more of a slow growth, long-term investment, though,” Alex replied, very seriously. “It’s a company that invented a brilliant new way to send sound and information down a wire, or even fiber-optic cable. The stock is set to quadruple. Do you understand time-division versus code-division encoding?”
Not a chance.
“Well, let me explain the deal. If you want me as a lover, I probably can’t stop you. Of course you’ll have to sleep with one eye open. When will that crazy Russian guy cut my dingee off?” Alex waved his hand up and down in the air. “He will, most definitely, he will… but when?”
It was said so matter-of-factly, Bitchy took no offense. Shifting to the third person helped; it took a little personal edge off the threat.
“Or,” Alex pushed on, “I can be your investment advisor. I’ll double or triple your money. That’s a lowball estimate, incidentally. I know a great deal about the Russian market also. A little cash in the right ADRs would be very smart. Derivatives are doing quite well these days also.”
Alex patted the mattress. Bitchy’s broad rear landed on the bunk beside him and he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s why you need me, Benny.”
“Just for not raping you?”
“There are many attractive men in this prison. Do whatever you like, just not with me, okay?”
“Do I have to protect you?”
“That’s not part of the deal, no.”
“Make me that kind of dough and I’ll slaughter whoever comes near you.”
An indifferent shrug. “Probably a wise move on your part.”
“So how’s this work?”
“Easier than you might think. There are probably fifteen or twenty contraband cell phones in the block, am I right?”
Bitchy nodded. Fifty was more like it. The guards were always hunting for them, but as they grew smaller they became so much easier to conceal. Bitchy knew of at least four tucked away in the prison laundry, another six in the kitchen. Twist a few arms, and he’d have all he wanted. No was not a word Bitchy heard very often.
“Get me three of those phones, Benny. The batteries wear down quickly and can’t be recharged inside our cell. You’ll handle the expenses. Believe me, you’ll be able to afford it. I use the phones to manage your money and whoever else I decide to call.”
“And what if you mess up and lose my money?”
“I’ll be on the bottom bunk. If I fail to keep my end of the bargain, you’re not obligated to keep yours.”
Bitchy crossed his arms and stared off at the far wall. Of the vast multitude of “investment advisors” at the pro draft who pounced hungrily on the newest batch of twenty-two-year-old, undereducated millionaires, not one of those greedy blabbermouths had offered a deal remotely resembling this. And if they lost it all through their own utter ineptitude, it was tough luck, pal, sayonara.
Really, how many investment advisors promised outright that if they failed in their promises, they’d bend over and take it, like they just gave it? “All right,” Bitchy said, hands back in his pockets.
“Another thing. I’m going to teach you how to do this. If I make you all that money, I don’t want you to turn around and lose it afterward.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Only a little, Benny.”
Benny laughed.
“One last thing,” Alex said, returning to his book.
“Name it.”
“Spread the word. The last two prisons, we pooled our money and increased our buying positions enormously. The more the better for you.”
The day that marked the anniversary of eleven months since the Konevitch trial, Kim Parrish threw her long-overdue fit.
The team of state prosecutors had arrived from Russia six months before, four of them in all, all men, all wearing blockish suits made of a cheap, indescribable fabric. Only one spoke any semblance of English—just please, thank you, yes, but mostly no, and a dismaying variety of filthy curses.
The FBI paid for the works and put them up in the downtown Hilton. They immediately raised hell about the lousy accommodations. To shut them up, they were bounced a few blocks over to the Madison, a decidedly more upscale lodging. The complaints did not abate until the Madison succumbed and switched them each to thousand-dollar suites.
They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the most expensive Georgetown restaurants, rented two Mercedes sedans, a snazzy black Corvette, and a shiny red Maserati. They spent their five-day weekends raising hell in California and Florida, before they fell deeply in love with Las Vegas and the legalized brothels nearby. They billed it all to the FBI—the first-class airfares, the whores, the gambling losses that quickly turned mountainous. Everything was billed directly to the Feds. They drank from dawn till dusk, got in fistfights in bars, picked up four DUIs, smashed up the Maserati, trashed one Mercedes sedan, and billed all that, too, to the FBI.
They arrived with two dozen large crates stuffed to the lids with documents. Everything in Russian. Everything, every word and comma, had to be meticulously and painfully translated into English.
Two more weeks were lost while Kim scoured the city for a competent translator. As the documents proved to be a thick maze of Russian legalese, not any translator would do. Kim interviewed a dozen candidates. Several American college graduates whose levels of fluency weren’t nearly as impressive as their résumés. Five Russian émigrés who utterly failed the English test. A retired book editor who had translated two complete Tolstoy novels had seemed like her best bet. That one took a brief glance at the two dozen crates and bolted.
Eventually, Kim drove across to the river to the leafy, sprawling CIA headquarters at Langley. She had called ahead and was met by man from the Russian analysis section. Downstairs, in the large marble lobby, she briefly described her problem. Mr. Spook smiled reassuringly and claimed he knew the perfect guy. On a sheet of paper he wrote the name and number of a Russian expat, a man named Petri Arbatov, a major in the KGB before he defected to the U.S. Petri had a law degree from Moscow University and in the fifteen years since his defection, he had also picked up an American JD from Catholic University. Petri demanded $600 an hour, a price that would’ve impressed the most expensive firm in New York. He insisted he wouldn’t translate “da” to “yes” for a penny less. The price was outrageous, far beyond what she had intended to pay. She promptly agreed.
What the hell: Petri, too, could send his rather impressive bills to the FBI. If the Fibbies could blow through all that dough on a bunch of Russian cowboys whooping it up like rich Arab playboys, they better not even blink about all-too-legitimate legal expenses.
Kim rented a small, furnished fourth-floor apartment on Connecticut Avenue, they hauled up the boxes, rolled up their sleeves, and dug in. Petri proved to be a rare combination, an unemotional perfectionist—a short, thin, sad-faced man of few words who concentrated deeply and absolutely on his work. He consumed only one meal a day, always a thin broth he brought from home that he carefully spooned into his mouth. On such little nourishment, it was a miracle he stayed alive, much less endured the backbreaking load of work. He surrounded himself with both Russian and English dictionaries and waded through each document, word for word. He dictated. Kim typed. At six hundred an hour, he and Kim avoided expensive banter. They made it through three-quarters of the crates at a furious pace because they wasted nothing: neither time nor words. After four months and twenty days of eighteen hours each, she had no idea whether Petri was married, had cancer, children, was rich or poor, or even whether he lived on the street.
Thus she was hugely surprised when he slammed down one of the documents and turned to her. “You and I need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Do you know what I did for the KGB, Kim? You’ve never asked.”
“You were a lawyer?”
“More or less. I was the KGB’s idea of a lawyer.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“I worked in a legal section that specialized in what were termed special cases.”
“So what? Specialization is the name of the game. I specialize in immigration law.”
“Ask my specialty.”
She decided to humor him. She smiled. “What was your specialty, Petri?”
“Framing. I framed people, Kim.” He let that nauseating confession sit for a moment, then pushed on. “Only high-value targets. And I was the best, Kim, a remarkably talented lawyer. I could build a seamless case against anybody. A general secretary, a highly decorated marshal of the Soviet Union, a poet with a Nobel Prize, it didn’t matter. Literally anybody, Kim. They gave me a name and I went to work. When I was done, any jury or judge would believe the accused was a capitalist pig with ten million in a Swiss account who had sex with his own children and lived only to destroy the motherland.”
“Is this why you defected, Petri? Conscience.”
He looked away. “Oh, I wish I could say yes.” He seemed to sink in his chair. “I’m not so noble, I’m afraid.”
“What happened?”
“One day, I went to visit another man in my section, a good friend of twenty years, who worked only three doors down from my office. He had slipped out to go to the latrine. He did something incredibly stupid, he left his door unlocked. This was totally against procedure, you must understand. Inexcusably sloppy. So I walked in. Documents were strewn everywhere. On his desk, his floor, everywhere. He was obviously well along.”
“With what?”
“With me, Kim. He was building a case against me.”
“Short for ‘bitchmaker.’ Ol’ Beatty misses all those groupie sluts something awful.” A broad smile at the faces in the room. “Guess you’d say his cellmates are his surrogates.”
Two special agents leaned against the wall and joined in the laughter, halfheartedly, little more than forced chuckles. They stopped as soon as it seemed polite.
This was the third prison inside a year. And the third cocksure warden who swore he would break Konevitch like a swaybacked pony. Konevitch had adapted to each new facility quickly, with surprising ease. Go figure.
As a prisoner in the federal system, though, he enjoyed one protected right they badly wished they could withhold: monthly visits from that pretty little wife, who appeared like clockwork. No matter where they moved him, no matter how closely the secret was kept, she somehow learned where he was. The Feds monitored his mail, an easy task, as there had been no mail—none coming in, none going out. That nosy lawyer of theirs peppered the system with requests for his location, but none had been answered. Somehow, though, she always knew where he was.
He attacked the library with curious regularity. The FBI accessed the records and followed his literary pursuits with their own deep interest. The law stacks were a common destination. Little surprise there. All prisoners fashioned themselves Clarence Darrows, able to outdo all those esquired incompetents who screwed up and got them in here. Every other day, it was books on computers, computer languages, FORTRAN and COBOL, and that new thing called the Internet all their kids were raving about. A few times a week, he hopped onto the library computer and typed away at blazing speed, nearly burning up the keyboard. Why, they had no idea.
Hanrahan turned away from the warden and, talking maybe at the wall, maybe at nobody, emphasized, “You know how important this is to us.”
“Guess I do. I got a call from Fielder at headquarters. Said your guy, Tromble, wants this real bad.”
Still looking away, like this wasn’t a conversation. “Find a way to scale back his liberties. Turn up the heat as fast and hard as you like.”
The warden, also now talking, not at Hanrahan but at some invisible spot on the ceiling, hypothesized, “Yeah, well, he could, I dunno, maybe misbehave or somethin’. I’d have to come down hard with a few necessary disciplinary measures.”
“Yeah, but like what?”
“A few more weeks in solitary will get his attention.”
“Don’t. Believe me, don’t. That was tried at both previous prisons. He folds himself into some kind of yoga posture and goes into a trance. Actually, he seems to enjoy the solitude.”
“Two…? Hey, I thought this guy was a cherry.”
“Sorry, no, you’re the third. The other two prisons he’s shown a talent for building coalitions and finding people to protect him. He’s clever. We have no idea how he does it.”
The warden leaned back in his chair and threw his hands behind his head. “Well, your boy ain’t met me yet,” he boasted. “Ask around, fellas. The state always sends me the biggest hardasses. I got my ways of making ’em crack.”
The two agents on the wall shared quiet smiles. It was the same speech, almost word for word, they had heard from both previous wardens. And in each prison, inside a few weeks, Konevitch was hanging out with the biggest badasses in the yard, getting extra food helpings in the mess hall, the recipient of all kinds of special largesse and favors, even from the guards.
As much as they hoped and plotted otherwise, somehow, some way, they feared Alex Konevitch would find a way to upstage this wingtipped, overconfident ass as well.
Bitchy missed football like crazy. All in all, though, prison wasn’t all that bad, or even all that different. He more or less spent his time just as he did back in his cherished NFL days, eating voraciously, hoisting enormous weights out in the yard, and bashing heads whenever the impulse seized him. He had packed on another forty pounds of bad mood to the 350 he arrived with, all hard muscle.
Bitchy had scraped by with terrible grades in college, not because he was stupid, because he was smart. A full ride, with all the cute little cheerleaders he wanted, and bright little volunteers to stand in and take his tests. What dork would hide his nose inside books with all that fun to be had? Like many football hotshots, off the field Bitchy had always been spoiled rotten; it shouldn’t surprise anybody that he now had a few serious impulse control issues. Anyway, the college was determined to graduate him phi beta pigskin, no matter what, even if he never went near class, which he seldom did.
The new boy was lying on the lower bunk with his nose stuffed inside a book, something about Web site construction. He was cute, real cute. A bit tall for Bitchy’s usual taste maybe, but what the hell, variety was supposed to be spicy. So why not? He shifted his vast weight to the side of his bunk and peered down.
“Hey, I heard you’re a transfer.”
“Third prison this year.”
“How come they moved you to this shithole?”
“Mutilation.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“I mutilated a man. I didn’t kill him. Afterward, though, I suppose he wished I had.” Alex absently flipped a page and continued reading.
Bitchy scratched his head. “That’s a new one on me.”
“In the statutes it sits between first- and second-degree assault. You see, in your American laws, it boils down to intent. I didn’t want to kill him.”
“What are you, a lawyer?” Bitchy hated lawyers. He’d been screwed royally by the five-hundred-buck-an-hour suit he’d hired to defend him, a pompous prick who barely protested when the judge doubled his sentence. He would dearly love to screw one back.
“Hardly.”
Bitchy bounced off the top bunk. With incredible agility, both feet hit the floor at once, almost catlike. He was so damned big and blockish, his opponents habitually underestimated his speed, balance, and dexterity. But not after Bitchy got his huge paws on you—suddenly, everything about him came into terrifying focus.
He placed a hand on his zipper and was about to introduce his new cellmate to Mr. Johnson.
Alex calmly closed the book and looked at him. “I castrated a man,” he informed Beatty simply, coldly. “He attempted to rape me in the shower. That night, after he fell asleep, I chopped it off. While he howled in pain, I cut it into small pieces. You know why, Benny?” He paused long enough to allow Benny time to consider this intriguing question. “It made it impossible to sew back on.”
Bitchy’s hand left his zipper and entered a deep pocket.
Alex said, “I hear you were a professional footballer.”
A strange way to put it, but Bitchy answered, “Yeah. So what?”
“Did it pay well?”
This was getting weird. “Not well. It paid great.”
“How great?”
“A five million signing bonus. Three million a year in salary. Why you askin’?”
“Where is all that money now?”
“None of your business.”
Alex put the book down and leaned his back against the wall. “I suppose your legal costs consumed most of it.”
Bitchy also leaned back against the wall. He was in the mood for a little man-love, but this guy seemed to want to chitchat a bit before they got down to action. At least he wasn’t hollering and bouncing around the cell like his last cellmate. The Russian accent sure sounded cool.
“I got millions left. When it hits three mil, the lawyers can go screw themselves. The appeals stop.”
“Smart. So how is it invested?”
“In the bank. Where else would it be?”
“Did nobody advise you that’s stupid?”
Bitchy bounced off the wall. The hand came out of the pocket and suddenly balled into a beefy fist. “Watch your mouth. You’re stupid if you call me stupid.”
“Relax, Benny. I never said you were stupid. I said leaving the money in the bank is stupid.”
“It’ll still be there when I get out. How stupid is that?”
“A lot more of it could be there. Is that smart, my friend?”
“All right, Mr. I-know-so-much, what’s smarter?”
“In the right stocks, it will multiply enormously. Real estate is a fairly good and safe investment also.”
“That’s not my thing.”
“Have you ever heard of Qualcomm, Benny?”
Bitchy laughed. “Sure. I get it from the pharmacy whenever I get jock itch.” He laughed harder.
“We’ll look into jock-itch providers if you’d like. It’s certainly a market you know well. That’s more of a slow growth, long-term investment, though,” Alex replied, very seriously. “It’s a company that invented a brilliant new way to send sound and information down a wire, or even fiber-optic cable. The stock is set to quadruple. Do you understand time-division versus code-division encoding?”
Not a chance.
“Well, let me explain the deal. If you want me as a lover, I probably can’t stop you. Of course you’ll have to sleep with one eye open. When will that crazy Russian guy cut my dingee off?” Alex waved his hand up and down in the air. “He will, most definitely, he will… but when?”
It was said so matter-of-factly, Bitchy took no offense. Shifting to the third person helped; it took a little personal edge off the threat.
“Or,” Alex pushed on, “I can be your investment advisor. I’ll double or triple your money. That’s a lowball estimate, incidentally. I know a great deal about the Russian market also. A little cash in the right ADRs would be very smart. Derivatives are doing quite well these days also.”
Alex patted the mattress. Bitchy’s broad rear landed on the bunk beside him and he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That’s why you need me, Benny.”
“Just for not raping you?”
“There are many attractive men in this prison. Do whatever you like, just not with me, okay?”
“Do I have to protect you?”
“That’s not part of the deal, no.”
“Make me that kind of dough and I’ll slaughter whoever comes near you.”
An indifferent shrug. “Probably a wise move on your part.”
“So how’s this work?”
“Easier than you might think. There are probably fifteen or twenty contraband cell phones in the block, am I right?”
Bitchy nodded. Fifty was more like it. The guards were always hunting for them, but as they grew smaller they became so much easier to conceal. Bitchy knew of at least four tucked away in the prison laundry, another six in the kitchen. Twist a few arms, and he’d have all he wanted. No was not a word Bitchy heard very often.
“Get me three of those phones, Benny. The batteries wear down quickly and can’t be recharged inside our cell. You’ll handle the expenses. Believe me, you’ll be able to afford it. I use the phones to manage your money and whoever else I decide to call.”
“And what if you mess up and lose my money?”
“I’ll be on the bottom bunk. If I fail to keep my end of the bargain, you’re not obligated to keep yours.”
Bitchy crossed his arms and stared off at the far wall. Of the vast multitude of “investment advisors” at the pro draft who pounced hungrily on the newest batch of twenty-two-year-old, undereducated millionaires, not one of those greedy blabbermouths had offered a deal remotely resembling this. And if they lost it all through their own utter ineptitude, it was tough luck, pal, sayonara.
Really, how many investment advisors promised outright that if they failed in their promises, they’d bend over and take it, like they just gave it? “All right,” Bitchy said, hands back in his pockets.
“Another thing. I’m going to teach you how to do this. If I make you all that money, I don’t want you to turn around and lose it afterward.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Only a little, Benny.”
Benny laughed.
“One last thing,” Alex said, returning to his book.
“Name it.”
“Spread the word. The last two prisons, we pooled our money and increased our buying positions enormously. The more the better for you.”
The day that marked the anniversary of eleven months since the Konevitch trial, Kim Parrish threw her long-overdue fit.
The team of state prosecutors had arrived from Russia six months before, four of them in all, all men, all wearing blockish suits made of a cheap, indescribable fabric. Only one spoke any semblance of English—just please, thank you, yes, but mostly no, and a dismaying variety of filthy curses.
The FBI paid for the works and put them up in the downtown Hilton. They immediately raised hell about the lousy accommodations. To shut them up, they were bounced a few blocks over to the Madison, a decidedly more upscale lodging. The complaints did not abate until the Madison succumbed and switched them each to thousand-dollar suites.
They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the most expensive Georgetown restaurants, rented two Mercedes sedans, a snazzy black Corvette, and a shiny red Maserati. They spent their five-day weekends raising hell in California and Florida, before they fell deeply in love with Las Vegas and the legalized brothels nearby. They billed it all to the FBI—the first-class airfares, the whores, the gambling losses that quickly turned mountainous. Everything was billed directly to the Feds. They drank from dawn till dusk, got in fistfights in bars, picked up four DUIs, smashed up the Maserati, trashed one Mercedes sedan, and billed all that, too, to the FBI.
They arrived with two dozen large crates stuffed to the lids with documents. Everything in Russian. Everything, every word and comma, had to be meticulously and painfully translated into English.
Two more weeks were lost while Kim scoured the city for a competent translator. As the documents proved to be a thick maze of Russian legalese, not any translator would do. Kim interviewed a dozen candidates. Several American college graduates whose levels of fluency weren’t nearly as impressive as their résumés. Five Russian émigrés who utterly failed the English test. A retired book editor who had translated two complete Tolstoy novels had seemed like her best bet. That one took a brief glance at the two dozen crates and bolted.
Eventually, Kim drove across to the river to the leafy, sprawling CIA headquarters at Langley. She had called ahead and was met by man from the Russian analysis section. Downstairs, in the large marble lobby, she briefly described her problem. Mr. Spook smiled reassuringly and claimed he knew the perfect guy. On a sheet of paper he wrote the name and number of a Russian expat, a man named Petri Arbatov, a major in the KGB before he defected to the U.S. Petri had a law degree from Moscow University and in the fifteen years since his defection, he had also picked up an American JD from Catholic University. Petri demanded $600 an hour, a price that would’ve impressed the most expensive firm in New York. He insisted he wouldn’t translate “da” to “yes” for a penny less. The price was outrageous, far beyond what she had intended to pay. She promptly agreed.
What the hell: Petri, too, could send his rather impressive bills to the FBI. If the Fibbies could blow through all that dough on a bunch of Russian cowboys whooping it up like rich Arab playboys, they better not even blink about all-too-legitimate legal expenses.
Kim rented a small, furnished fourth-floor apartment on Connecticut Avenue, they hauled up the boxes, rolled up their sleeves, and dug in. Petri proved to be a rare combination, an unemotional perfectionist—a short, thin, sad-faced man of few words who concentrated deeply and absolutely on his work. He consumed only one meal a day, always a thin broth he brought from home that he carefully spooned into his mouth. On such little nourishment, it was a miracle he stayed alive, much less endured the backbreaking load of work. He surrounded himself with both Russian and English dictionaries and waded through each document, word for word. He dictated. Kim typed. At six hundred an hour, he and Kim avoided expensive banter. They made it through three-quarters of the crates at a furious pace because they wasted nothing: neither time nor words. After four months and twenty days of eighteen hours each, she had no idea whether Petri was married, had cancer, children, was rich or poor, or even whether he lived on the street.
Thus she was hugely surprised when he slammed down one of the documents and turned to her. “You and I need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Do you know what I did for the KGB, Kim? You’ve never asked.”
“You were a lawyer?”
“More or less. I was the KGB’s idea of a lawyer.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“I worked in a legal section that specialized in what were termed special cases.”
“So what? Specialization is the name of the game. I specialize in immigration law.”
“Ask my specialty.”
She decided to humor him. She smiled. “What was your specialty, Petri?”
“Framing. I framed people, Kim.” He let that nauseating confession sit for a moment, then pushed on. “Only high-value targets. And I was the best, Kim, a remarkably talented lawyer. I could build a seamless case against anybody. A general secretary, a highly decorated marshal of the Soviet Union, a poet with a Nobel Prize, it didn’t matter. Literally anybody, Kim. They gave me a name and I went to work. When I was done, any jury or judge would believe the accused was a capitalist pig with ten million in a Swiss account who had sex with his own children and lived only to destroy the motherland.”
“Is this why you defected, Petri? Conscience.”
He looked away. “Oh, I wish I could say yes.” He seemed to sink in his chair. “I’m not so noble, I’m afraid.”
“What happened?”
“One day, I went to visit another man in my section, a good friend of twenty years, who worked only three doors down from my office. He had slipped out to go to the latrine. He did something incredibly stupid, he left his door unlocked. This was totally against procedure, you must understand. Inexcusably sloppy. So I walked in. Documents were strewn everywhere. On his desk, his floor, everywhere. He was obviously well along.”
“With what?”
“With me, Kim. He was building a case against me.”
