The Russian Heist, page 10
“Nothing’s free,” he said glumly, the spell broken.
He noticed a couple secretaries staring at him and whispering behind their hands. The heist was either a yellow-brick road straight to prison for life or his curtain call to paradise far from this snow and cold. He saw his exesstupefiedwhentheylearnedwhathehaddone.Nomoremockerynow,you bitches three.
Comingbackon680fromtheuniversity,heknewSmithhadplayedhim from that first night in the bar and had been setting the hook with a combination of lust and avarice that had him flopping on the boat deck like a bigstupidfish.Itwasastunningrevelation,therolesreversed,thebiterbit. He grimaced as if the wind shearing over his windshield were penetrating the glass and wetting his skin. He bared his teeth right back at it, and drove wildly, too fast, weaving between holes in traffic where even teenagers would have hesitated. Drivers threw nervous glances at him as he shot past oblivious of their faces, curses, and gestures.
He sat for a long time in his driveway overcome by his adrenalin rush and the ennui too great to get him out of the car. Tod lay asleep curled on the radiator, a failed sentry at his post. A few juncoes and starlings pecked along the bushes at the side of the house. He sat quietly, morose. He wondered what kept one from fleeing when one had the chance like those befuddledcitizensof Pompeii,grippedbyaterribleennui,watchingacolumn of hot ash rise all day long until it was fifteen miles high before it dumped on their heads.
Even closer to Vesuvius’ maw, Herculaneum was spared because offshore winds blew the poisonous cloud toward their neighbors. At this moment, he didn’t feel lucky; he felt like one of the populace gaping up bovinely at the blackening sky, too low on the social scale to even call himself a citizen; he was a slave to a pigheaded master, a little tyrant about to ensure that the household was going to be sealed up in foamy lava.
Whenhisheartstoppedthumpingagainsthisribs,hesuccumbedtothe lassitudeof despair,ablackholeintowhichnolightpenetrated.Something flickeredintherecessesof hisburiedmemorylikethelastkicksof adrowning man, a straw of hope. Maybe, just perhaps—a lifeline. Something the laureate Mann once wrote: A man may pluck a laurel leaf from the tree of art without paying for it with his life.
Might the same not go for a heist, he reasoned.
Chapter 9
New Year’s Eve: Carlos de la Torriente Macbride puttered in the kitchenwith a nerve-shot restlessness as the time for the meeting drew near. He paced in his kitchen while sleety rain pelted the window and spoke to the cat.
“What, pray tell me, does one offer white trash to drink? What kind of hors d’oeuvres does one serve to the canaille of this godforsaken burgh?”
But the old tom wouldn’t answer; instead, he reached out a lazy paw to swat the catnip toy Macbride bought him for Christmas. The cat’s motor started up and he walked out, tail high. “Et tu, Tod.”
He popped a couple more antacid tablets and downed them with stale ginger ale. Siobhan, a devotee of Tai Chi, had forced him to make a few half-hearted efforts to join her inthe morning and evening with the promise of sex as bait. His basic idea of greeting the sun was with a cocktail at sundown preferably from a verandah overlooking a beach. He had forgotten all the moves she taught him except for “opening the gate.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He rolled his shoulders back and immediately felt the tension begin to thaw. He concentrated on the chi centerinhissolarplexus.Herotatedhiships,blewoutairandslowly,slowly stretched one leg out. He felt himself recomposing—
Agratingvoicepiercedhimlikeanarrow.Hethrusthishandsouttothe sink to keep himself from falling to his knees.
“You’d look great in a tutu.”
Macbride flushed crimson. His shins were throbbing from the collision with the cabinet doors. There the little wretch stood with a bemused, sardonic smirk on his face. Behind him leered the gaudy wife—albeit dressed down, if not demurely, for once—and two more figures. Why should he ever have expected anything less? Siobhan would have laughed at him and called it kismet.
“Clean the shit out of your ears, man, my knuckles are blue from knocking.”
Macbride felt the blush reach the top of his head.
“Come on,” Smitty said, “and meet the team. You can dance for us later.”
Macbrideheadedintothelivingroomlikeamanwalkingtheplank.The smallerof thetwostrangerswasamereboy,agum-chewingteenagerfrom the looks of his acne-scarred face, but the spitting image of Smith père.
He heard Smith say, “That’s why this is never going to happen twice again.”
He was seated in Macbride’s La-Z-Boy, a simian king on an excelsior throne. The so-called team surrounded him, the son wandering about touching articles hither and yon, and a slender man with olive skin, who wasundoubtedlythehomosexualCarlos,stoodfartheroff.Smithresumed, taking them all in with his bulging eyes. “The Air Force is demanding changes in security procedures out there after New Year’s . . .”
Macbride looked at them scattered about his living room.How did the stars ever align to make this possible?
“WellsFargo,TotalArmored,Brinks—they’dhaveshitfitsif theyknew we took a contract this way.” As before, Smith began in medias res, so one had to infer the beginning from the middle.
“Like, whoa, Pop, how can you be sure there won’t be lots of them guards?” Sonny was dressed in the bizarre fashion of urban youth, baggy pants and buzz cut up the sides with a clump of dirty blonde hair growing outof theleftsideof hisheadandhangingoverhisfacelikeanincomplete scalping job.
“Twenty-three years on the job, that’s how come.” He glared fiercely at his boy.
Carlos piped up that companies routinely sent hundreds of thousands in the mails.
“Doesn’t that tend to attract . . . thieves?”
Macbride’squestionfelltothefloorwithanaudiblethud.Bobbichirped to the others and jabbed a thumb his way, “Captain Obvious.”
“Lookit,”herhusbandsaid,ignoringMacbridecompletely.“I’mwatching the maintenance guys like a hawk picking up their scuttlebutt. I know their cargo operations, flight schedules, their managers, supervisors, drivers—the military’s bitching because they don’t have their surveillance cameras up yet and their security’s nothing but a girl with a tin badge.”
“You said you were recruiting, uh, ‘muscle,’ I believe is the word,” Macbride said.”
“That’s right, professor, and thanks for piping up while I’m doing the talking.”
“IsTony—”Macbridepersisted,undaunted,driventoidentifythemystery man. He felt hope sputtering down like a cheap candle. “Is Zulinsky what? Will you get your mind back on the subject? God damn, we got us a heist to plan and not much fucking time to do it.” His sarcasmunveiledagainforthegang’smirth.YoungSonnylaughedandCarlos smiled. Bobbi’s lips held a smirk and her yellow eyes were mocking.
“Withalittlepolish,Tonycould—”Macbridesaid,sweattricklingdown his back.
“—Tony could what? You don’t polish a turd, professor. Damn it, you needyouoneof themrulesyou’realwaysspoutingaboutnotmakingasimple thing complicated.”
“Stealing millions of dollars is not simple.”
“You worry about your part, and everything will be cool. And sit back down. I’m getting a stiff neck following you around the room.”
Macbride looked around. Their faces were keen, attentive nocturnal animals. Something had changed. The air held the electricity.
“Other reason if you’d let me finish. Zee’s got ‘jailhouse shitbird’ writtenalloverhim.Igotabadfeelingabouthim,isall.Now,you,Igotagood feeling from.”
“You said we had little time to surveille the hangar.”
“That’s right. This goes down next week.”
“Good Christ, that’s Monday, the day after New Year’s.”
“Yougotanymorequestions,professor?I’monmidnightsandweneed to get this party started.”
“Iwon’twastemybreathpointingoutIammeetingthegentlemanthere for the first time, as well as your son.”
“They’re my business, both of them. Fact is, Sonny’s going to get us the layout.”
“No offense, Mister de la Torriente, I hope—”
“Oh, call me Carlos, please.” The man simpered and actually flapped his hands as if he were shaking off water drops.
Effeminate and bitchy males were the norm in academe, but Carlos all but floated out of his shoes.Was Smith demented?How could he possibly thinkthisCarloswasgoingtostrikeanythingbuthomosexualpanicinother males? It was a TV sit-com, Igor with a basket of brains, a carnival of grotesques, a Cirque de Soleil skit with clowns on stilts hitting each other with rubber bats. Macbride almost collapsed in his chair. Fear gripped his spine with an icy claw. What did it feel like to be shredded by hot lead projectiles from automatic weapons?
“The ‘muscle,’” Macbride said.
“Huh,” Smith said. His eyes bulged wider than ever.
Macbride nodded feebly at Carlos. “You said he was ‘crowd control,’ I believe is the, uh, expression you used.”
“You’re making about as much sense as a rat fucking a grapefruit.”
Thecrimechief scratchedhisheadandlookedathiswife: “He’scuckoo, babe.”
Macbride stood up, unable to control his emotion. He loomed over Smithandwaggedafingerathim.“Ihaveaninety-year-oldneighbordown the road who might want to get in on this.” Then he dropped onto the couch so hard that the cushions wheezed under him and edges fluffed up, levitating around his vast bulk.
Gutless wonder Macbride might be, but he wasn’t going to be bullied in his own house. He stared at them—what hopeless miscreants they were, this band of miscreants: the homunculus and his slut, his gum-popping spawn, and now a doe-eyed homosexual.
Three sharp raps on the door; then another tattoo of three.
All eyes turned to Macbride as if he had cued the newest arrival. For one dizzying moment, Macbride thought this was an elaborate hoax.
“Yougonnaanswerthegod-dangeddoor?”Smithysaid.Hisharshtone percolated above a suppressed knowledge, the sadism of the moment beforetheguestsallyellsurpriseatthestartledhonoree.“Bytheway,yougot the balls, you can tell Mister Byko he’s not coming in for a full share.”
So this was the final piece of the mad puzzle.
The only question that burned within him now was one of extrication fromthisloomingdisaster,adashforthehillsbeforethetsunamirolledup anddrownedthevermin.Itwasamatterof hisowngracelessexitfromthe farce—andhowtoaccomplishthat,asherecollectedhisShakespeare,without being chased by bears.
The man standing there was big. So big and wide across the shoulders that Macbride involuntarily took a step backward, which was just as well because the man would have bowled him over if Macbride had hesitated another second.
Hewouldlatertrytomakehimself seemsmallerbytuckinginhisshoulders and looking harmless, friendly, but it was futile. His face was rugged inthewaythatHollywoodprettyboysmighthaveenviedbutabrokennose and a torn ear lobe marred it a few beats beyond handsome no matter how soft-spoken the accented English. His black jacket stretched tight across his girth, which made an impression on Macbride, on all of them except Bobbi, who seemed unfazed and aloof throughout.
He didn’t strike Macbride as a man with a lot of friends. He smiled at each of them but it never went as far as his eyes, and that smile was the warmest thing you could say about Mister Dimitri Byko.
Carlos practically did a nervous jig in front of the stranger. Macbride wondered what the tattoos on Dimitri’s hands boded—nothing good he was sure. Below the tattoo of a dagger’s outline at the base of the thumb was something in Cyrillic.
The surly-looking boy was introduced to Dimitri as Faron, who paused long enough to snap at his sire for revealing an apparently odious birth name.
SmithtoldthemSonnyhadausefultalent—whenhewasn’toutwithhis friends being a complete fuckup, that is. It was called “free running.” Macbride, baffled by youth as by most contemporary fads, did not understandwhyonewouldchoosetorunalongledgesandjumpoff buildingsfor sport. He assumed it was nature’s way of ensuring self-selection from the gene pool. Eugenics might have been given bad marks by historians, but Macbride felt there was something—well, utilitarian—to be said for the doctrine of “life unworthy of life.”
Bobbi mostly sat, borrowed gum from her stepson, and was sent by Smith into the kitchen for drinks. The Russian finished his Amstel in three swigs and looked on, leaning intently toward Smith’s map, prognathous brow wrinkled like a grizzly concentrating on Smith’s tiny x’s like insects scattering from beneath an overturned rock. His arms were as big as the sculpted ones attached to the Wing Ding bartender’s.
Macbride kept his sarcasm in check, for he had a long history of being pushed around by alpha males. Bobbi sat near the boy and fussed with his hair from time to time, but Faron, or Sonny, as he demanded to be called, ignored her and popped his gum.
Dimitri’s dialect spoke the street slang of big cities and he wasn’t withoutacrudeintelligence,Macbridecouldseethatatonce.Exceptforaquick shake of the beer bottle dangled by his fingertips between his knees every once in a while, he showed no emotion or reaction to Smith’s many itemizedinstructionsfromtheplaybookhealoneseemedtounderstand.Buthe acknowledged the Russian’s massive presence in the room—they all did. It wasobvioustotheblindthatDimitriBykowasideallyscriptedforanypart that required controlled mayhem. Minus weapons, he was still formidable, butwatchinghimfondleagun,hewaspuremenace.WhenSmithgavehim pointed instructions about keeping the airport workers quiet, Macbride thought it ridiculous and grimaced—a Chihuahua telling a rabid mastiff how to bite a leg.
It was past one in the morning when Smith checked the time and called ahalt.Sonnyhadfallenasleeponthecouch.ThedapperCarloshadn’tspoken a word in the last hour, but Macbride watched his Adam’s apple bob above his collar like a nervous tic. Smith had easily connived the rotation to ensure his assignment for New Year’s weekend. He and Dimitri needed time, he said, for the tricky part, which was getting practice time with the van. Carlos would provide fake tags for the cars.
As they were wrapping up in their coats, Smith drained the last of his beer—anunfillablereservoirof alcohol.Macbrideproposedmeetingsomewhere else.
“Why?” asked Dimitri quietly turning to face him. It was the first time he had looked directly at Macbride since they almost collided at the door. He gave him the identical razor slit of smile.
“I should have mentioned this before,” Macbride said as casually as he could manage without his loathing surfacing, and not sure how to begin. “One of my neighbors has decided to form a neighborhood watch. You see, I found a flyer in my mailbox—”
He looked around at the others with one of those what-can-you-do looks he had used a thousand times on students asking to change an exam time.
“What does this mean,” Dimitri asked, “neighborhood watch?”
“It’s, well, neighbors looking out for one another’s welfare—you know, in case of vandals and . . .” He almost said thieves. They were gapingat him. Bobbi’s vapid stare was captured between a yawn and a snicker.
“We meet here,” Dimitri said without looking up. He gently rapped his knuckles on the coffee table but it had force enough to move it. “If this neighbor of yours becomes a problem, I’ll deal with it.”
“I was just thinking of our need to be, uh, discreet, Dimitri. All these cars in the driveway might arouse her curiosity”
“Pro-fessor Mac-bride.” Dimitri spoke slowly and smiled at him, not the slit but a wolf grin. “We are not children engaged in a prank. You understand that?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“Good. Because you will understand me, Mac-bride, that if anything your neighbor does causes me any concern at all, anything at all, I will rip your balls off.”
“Don’t go gettin’ all Brando on us with all that method-acting shit at the gatehouse neither, big boy,” Smith said. He rubbed salt into Macbride’s wound in a belated attempt to reclaim his role as top dog. He placed one hand between Bobbi’s shoulder blades to steer her out. Sonny slapped his father’s hand in a high-five: “Good one, Pops.”
The last to leave was Carlos. He wished Macbride a solemn good night and shook his hand with a couple quick pumps. As he did, he winked conspiratorially at him and whispered one of Smith’s colloquialisms from the meeting: “—‘crazierthanatwo-headeddoginameatmarket.’Isn’tthatthe pits?”
Macbride stood alone in the middle of his living room listening while they got into their cars. Smith and his woman drove separately; both of themhavingarrangedfornightshiftsinpreparationfortheheist.Heheard Carlos’ high tittering out there in the darkened porch—talking to the boy, he supposed. The room reeked of the effluvia of human beings gathered too long in a single space. body odor (Dimitri), perfume (Bobbi), cologne (Carlos), human gas (Smith), and acne medicine (Sonny)—all of it mixed with the stale exudation of alcoholic fumes.
He looked out the black windows as the last sounds of cars in the distance faded away and expected to see flames out the windows—a holocaust devouring an upside-down, post-medieval world.
Carlos watched the stepmother and son drive away. He worked with women,likedbeingintheircompany,butthatonewastrouble;shegaveoff vibes. On the other hand, he wouldn’t mind having a go at her stepson before he left town for good.
Carlos was an expert at cloying, overprotective mothers. He could have taught Michael Jackson lessons about getting boys away from their mothers. When he came out, his mother spurned him for good, but thanks to early onset Alzheimer’s she left him in her will her rundown farmhouse in Austinburg.
Alekseipaidhim“todohisthing,”withanymaleinthestorehefancied. It was risky fun, and he had always cheated on his lovers. When he saw a good-lookingone,evenastraight,he’dapproachhimandask,shyly,if he’d like to go into a booth with him and “get busy.” Not many did, some were insulted, and some even threatened him. Aleksei would pretend to be shocked by what he was hearing from the angry customer, but not one intended to stick around to file a complaint to the police. No respectable citizenwantstoseehisnameinthepaperlinkedtoasleazysexualproposition in an adult bookstore.
Tuesday afternoon changed everything, the day Dimitri showed up at his office with a stack of tapes and threatened to leave copies with everyone on the premises. Thank God for little dead babies. He had stomped aroundcemeteriesinhalf-frozenmuckalloverthreecountiesuntilhespottedoneneartheshoreof LakeErieupnorthinNorthtown.Asacrilegious twingenotwithstanding,resurrectingthedeadbaby’snameintohisnewlife out west was an homage of sorts. One thing was clear, however; as long as the Russian had the tapes, he had Carlos by the short and curlies. Carlos couldn’ttoleratethat,notwithFelixactingmoreandmorelikeapossessive bitch on wheels.
He noticed a couple secretaries staring at him and whispering behind their hands. The heist was either a yellow-brick road straight to prison for life or his curtain call to paradise far from this snow and cold. He saw his exesstupefiedwhentheylearnedwhathehaddone.Nomoremockerynow,you bitches three.
Comingbackon680fromtheuniversity,heknewSmithhadplayedhim from that first night in the bar and had been setting the hook with a combination of lust and avarice that had him flopping on the boat deck like a bigstupidfish.Itwasastunningrevelation,therolesreversed,thebiterbit. He grimaced as if the wind shearing over his windshield were penetrating the glass and wetting his skin. He bared his teeth right back at it, and drove wildly, too fast, weaving between holes in traffic where even teenagers would have hesitated. Drivers threw nervous glances at him as he shot past oblivious of their faces, curses, and gestures.
He sat for a long time in his driveway overcome by his adrenalin rush and the ennui too great to get him out of the car. Tod lay asleep curled on the radiator, a failed sentry at his post. A few juncoes and starlings pecked along the bushes at the side of the house. He sat quietly, morose. He wondered what kept one from fleeing when one had the chance like those befuddledcitizensof Pompeii,grippedbyaterribleennui,watchingacolumn of hot ash rise all day long until it was fifteen miles high before it dumped on their heads.
Even closer to Vesuvius’ maw, Herculaneum was spared because offshore winds blew the poisonous cloud toward their neighbors. At this moment, he didn’t feel lucky; he felt like one of the populace gaping up bovinely at the blackening sky, too low on the social scale to even call himself a citizen; he was a slave to a pigheaded master, a little tyrant about to ensure that the household was going to be sealed up in foamy lava.
Whenhisheartstoppedthumpingagainsthisribs,hesuccumbedtothe lassitudeof despair,ablackholeintowhichnolightpenetrated.Something flickeredintherecessesof hisburiedmemorylikethelastkicksof adrowning man, a straw of hope. Maybe, just perhaps—a lifeline. Something the laureate Mann once wrote: A man may pluck a laurel leaf from the tree of art without paying for it with his life.
Might the same not go for a heist, he reasoned.
Chapter 9
New Year’s Eve: Carlos de la Torriente Macbride puttered in the kitchenwith a nerve-shot restlessness as the time for the meeting drew near. He paced in his kitchen while sleety rain pelted the window and spoke to the cat.
“What, pray tell me, does one offer white trash to drink? What kind of hors d’oeuvres does one serve to the canaille of this godforsaken burgh?”
But the old tom wouldn’t answer; instead, he reached out a lazy paw to swat the catnip toy Macbride bought him for Christmas. The cat’s motor started up and he walked out, tail high. “Et tu, Tod.”
He popped a couple more antacid tablets and downed them with stale ginger ale. Siobhan, a devotee of Tai Chi, had forced him to make a few half-hearted efforts to join her inthe morning and evening with the promise of sex as bait. His basic idea of greeting the sun was with a cocktail at sundown preferably from a verandah overlooking a beach. He had forgotten all the moves she taught him except for “opening the gate.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He rolled his shoulders back and immediately felt the tension begin to thaw. He concentrated on the chi centerinhissolarplexus.Herotatedhiships,blewoutairandslowly,slowly stretched one leg out. He felt himself recomposing—
Agratingvoicepiercedhimlikeanarrow.Hethrusthishandsouttothe sink to keep himself from falling to his knees.
“You’d look great in a tutu.”
Macbride flushed crimson. His shins were throbbing from the collision with the cabinet doors. There the little wretch stood with a bemused, sardonic smirk on his face. Behind him leered the gaudy wife—albeit dressed down, if not demurely, for once—and two more figures. Why should he ever have expected anything less? Siobhan would have laughed at him and called it kismet.
“Clean the shit out of your ears, man, my knuckles are blue from knocking.”
Macbride felt the blush reach the top of his head.
“Come on,” Smitty said, “and meet the team. You can dance for us later.”
Macbrideheadedintothelivingroomlikeamanwalkingtheplank.The smallerof thetwostrangerswasamereboy,agum-chewingteenagerfrom the looks of his acne-scarred face, but the spitting image of Smith père.
He heard Smith say, “That’s why this is never going to happen twice again.”
He was seated in Macbride’s La-Z-Boy, a simian king on an excelsior throne. The so-called team surrounded him, the son wandering about touching articles hither and yon, and a slender man with olive skin, who wasundoubtedlythehomosexualCarlos,stoodfartheroff.Smithresumed, taking them all in with his bulging eyes. “The Air Force is demanding changes in security procedures out there after New Year’s . . .”
Macbride looked at them scattered about his living room.How did the stars ever align to make this possible?
“WellsFargo,TotalArmored,Brinks—they’dhaveshitfitsif theyknew we took a contract this way.” As before, Smith began in medias res, so one had to infer the beginning from the middle.
“Like, whoa, Pop, how can you be sure there won’t be lots of them guards?” Sonny was dressed in the bizarre fashion of urban youth, baggy pants and buzz cut up the sides with a clump of dirty blonde hair growing outof theleftsideof hisheadandhangingoverhisfacelikeanincomplete scalping job.
“Twenty-three years on the job, that’s how come.” He glared fiercely at his boy.
Carlos piped up that companies routinely sent hundreds of thousands in the mails.
“Doesn’t that tend to attract . . . thieves?”
Macbride’squestionfelltothefloorwithanaudiblethud.Bobbichirped to the others and jabbed a thumb his way, “Captain Obvious.”
“Lookit,”herhusbandsaid,ignoringMacbridecompletely.“I’mwatching the maintenance guys like a hawk picking up their scuttlebutt. I know their cargo operations, flight schedules, their managers, supervisors, drivers—the military’s bitching because they don’t have their surveillance cameras up yet and their security’s nothing but a girl with a tin badge.”
“You said you were recruiting, uh, ‘muscle,’ I believe is the word,” Macbride said.”
“That’s right, professor, and thanks for piping up while I’m doing the talking.”
“IsTony—”Macbridepersisted,undaunted,driventoidentifythemystery man. He felt hope sputtering down like a cheap candle. “Is Zulinsky what? Will you get your mind back on the subject? God damn, we got us a heist to plan and not much fucking time to do it.” His sarcasmunveiledagainforthegang’smirth.YoungSonnylaughedandCarlos smiled. Bobbi’s lips held a smirk and her yellow eyes were mocking.
“Withalittlepolish,Tonycould—”Macbridesaid,sweattricklingdown his back.
“—Tony could what? You don’t polish a turd, professor. Damn it, you needyouoneof themrulesyou’realwaysspoutingaboutnotmakingasimple thing complicated.”
“Stealing millions of dollars is not simple.”
“You worry about your part, and everything will be cool. And sit back down. I’m getting a stiff neck following you around the room.”
Macbride looked around. Their faces were keen, attentive nocturnal animals. Something had changed. The air held the electricity.
“Other reason if you’d let me finish. Zee’s got ‘jailhouse shitbird’ writtenalloverhim.Igotabadfeelingabouthim,isall.Now,you,Igotagood feeling from.”
“You said we had little time to surveille the hangar.”
“That’s right. This goes down next week.”
“Good Christ, that’s Monday, the day after New Year’s.”
“Yougotanymorequestions,professor?I’monmidnightsandweneed to get this party started.”
“Iwon’twastemybreathpointingoutIammeetingthegentlemanthere for the first time, as well as your son.”
“They’re my business, both of them. Fact is, Sonny’s going to get us the layout.”
“No offense, Mister de la Torriente, I hope—”
“Oh, call me Carlos, please.” The man simpered and actually flapped his hands as if he were shaking off water drops.
Effeminate and bitchy males were the norm in academe, but Carlos all but floated out of his shoes.Was Smith demented?How could he possibly thinkthisCarloswasgoingtostrikeanythingbuthomosexualpanicinother males? It was a TV sit-com, Igor with a basket of brains, a carnival of grotesques, a Cirque de Soleil skit with clowns on stilts hitting each other with rubber bats. Macbride almost collapsed in his chair. Fear gripped his spine with an icy claw. What did it feel like to be shredded by hot lead projectiles from automatic weapons?
“The ‘muscle,’” Macbride said.
“Huh,” Smith said. His eyes bulged wider than ever.
Macbride nodded feebly at Carlos. “You said he was ‘crowd control,’ I believe is the, uh, expression you used.”
“You’re making about as much sense as a rat fucking a grapefruit.”
Thecrimechief scratchedhisheadandlookedathiswife: “He’scuckoo, babe.”
Macbride stood up, unable to control his emotion. He loomed over Smithandwaggedafingerathim.“Ihaveaninety-year-oldneighbordown the road who might want to get in on this.” Then he dropped onto the couch so hard that the cushions wheezed under him and edges fluffed up, levitating around his vast bulk.
Gutless wonder Macbride might be, but he wasn’t going to be bullied in his own house. He stared at them—what hopeless miscreants they were, this band of miscreants: the homunculus and his slut, his gum-popping spawn, and now a doe-eyed homosexual.
Three sharp raps on the door; then another tattoo of three.
All eyes turned to Macbride as if he had cued the newest arrival. For one dizzying moment, Macbride thought this was an elaborate hoax.
“Yougonnaanswerthegod-dangeddoor?”Smithysaid.Hisharshtone percolated above a suppressed knowledge, the sadism of the moment beforetheguestsallyellsurpriseatthestartledhonoree.“Bytheway,yougot the balls, you can tell Mister Byko he’s not coming in for a full share.”
So this was the final piece of the mad puzzle.
The only question that burned within him now was one of extrication fromthisloomingdisaster,adashforthehillsbeforethetsunamirolledup anddrownedthevermin.Itwasamatterof hisowngracelessexitfromthe farce—andhowtoaccomplishthat,asherecollectedhisShakespeare,without being chased by bears.
The man standing there was big. So big and wide across the shoulders that Macbride involuntarily took a step backward, which was just as well because the man would have bowled him over if Macbride had hesitated another second.
Hewouldlatertrytomakehimself seemsmallerbytuckinginhisshoulders and looking harmless, friendly, but it was futile. His face was rugged inthewaythatHollywoodprettyboysmighthaveenviedbutabrokennose and a torn ear lobe marred it a few beats beyond handsome no matter how soft-spoken the accented English. His black jacket stretched tight across his girth, which made an impression on Macbride, on all of them except Bobbi, who seemed unfazed and aloof throughout.
He didn’t strike Macbride as a man with a lot of friends. He smiled at each of them but it never went as far as his eyes, and that smile was the warmest thing you could say about Mister Dimitri Byko.
Carlos practically did a nervous jig in front of the stranger. Macbride wondered what the tattoos on Dimitri’s hands boded—nothing good he was sure. Below the tattoo of a dagger’s outline at the base of the thumb was something in Cyrillic.
The surly-looking boy was introduced to Dimitri as Faron, who paused long enough to snap at his sire for revealing an apparently odious birth name.
SmithtoldthemSonnyhadausefultalent—whenhewasn’toutwithhis friends being a complete fuckup, that is. It was called “free running.” Macbride, baffled by youth as by most contemporary fads, did not understandwhyonewouldchoosetorunalongledgesandjumpoff buildingsfor sport. He assumed it was nature’s way of ensuring self-selection from the gene pool. Eugenics might have been given bad marks by historians, but Macbride felt there was something—well, utilitarian—to be said for the doctrine of “life unworthy of life.”
Bobbi mostly sat, borrowed gum from her stepson, and was sent by Smith into the kitchen for drinks. The Russian finished his Amstel in three swigs and looked on, leaning intently toward Smith’s map, prognathous brow wrinkled like a grizzly concentrating on Smith’s tiny x’s like insects scattering from beneath an overturned rock. His arms were as big as the sculpted ones attached to the Wing Ding bartender’s.
Macbride kept his sarcasm in check, for he had a long history of being pushed around by alpha males. Bobbi sat near the boy and fussed with his hair from time to time, but Faron, or Sonny, as he demanded to be called, ignored her and popped his gum.
Dimitri’s dialect spoke the street slang of big cities and he wasn’t withoutacrudeintelligence,Macbridecouldseethatatonce.Exceptforaquick shake of the beer bottle dangled by his fingertips between his knees every once in a while, he showed no emotion or reaction to Smith’s many itemizedinstructionsfromtheplaybookhealoneseemedtounderstand.Buthe acknowledged the Russian’s massive presence in the room—they all did. It wasobvioustotheblindthatDimitriBykowasideallyscriptedforanypart that required controlled mayhem. Minus weapons, he was still formidable, butwatchinghimfondleagun,hewaspuremenace.WhenSmithgavehim pointed instructions about keeping the airport workers quiet, Macbride thought it ridiculous and grimaced—a Chihuahua telling a rabid mastiff how to bite a leg.
It was past one in the morning when Smith checked the time and called ahalt.Sonnyhadfallenasleeponthecouch.ThedapperCarloshadn’tspoken a word in the last hour, but Macbride watched his Adam’s apple bob above his collar like a nervous tic. Smith had easily connived the rotation to ensure his assignment for New Year’s weekend. He and Dimitri needed time, he said, for the tricky part, which was getting practice time with the van. Carlos would provide fake tags for the cars.
As they were wrapping up in their coats, Smith drained the last of his beer—anunfillablereservoirof alcohol.Macbrideproposedmeetingsomewhere else.
“Why?” asked Dimitri quietly turning to face him. It was the first time he had looked directly at Macbride since they almost collided at the door. He gave him the identical razor slit of smile.
“I should have mentioned this before,” Macbride said as casually as he could manage without his loathing surfacing, and not sure how to begin. “One of my neighbors has decided to form a neighborhood watch. You see, I found a flyer in my mailbox—”
He looked around at the others with one of those what-can-you-do looks he had used a thousand times on students asking to change an exam time.
“What does this mean,” Dimitri asked, “neighborhood watch?”
“It’s, well, neighbors looking out for one another’s welfare—you know, in case of vandals and . . .” He almost said thieves. They were gapingat him. Bobbi’s vapid stare was captured between a yawn and a snicker.
“We meet here,” Dimitri said without looking up. He gently rapped his knuckles on the coffee table but it had force enough to move it. “If this neighbor of yours becomes a problem, I’ll deal with it.”
“I was just thinking of our need to be, uh, discreet, Dimitri. All these cars in the driveway might arouse her curiosity”
“Pro-fessor Mac-bride.” Dimitri spoke slowly and smiled at him, not the slit but a wolf grin. “We are not children engaged in a prank. You understand that?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“Good. Because you will understand me, Mac-bride, that if anything your neighbor does causes me any concern at all, anything at all, I will rip your balls off.”
“Don’t go gettin’ all Brando on us with all that method-acting shit at the gatehouse neither, big boy,” Smith said. He rubbed salt into Macbride’s wound in a belated attempt to reclaim his role as top dog. He placed one hand between Bobbi’s shoulder blades to steer her out. Sonny slapped his father’s hand in a high-five: “Good one, Pops.”
The last to leave was Carlos. He wished Macbride a solemn good night and shook his hand with a couple quick pumps. As he did, he winked conspiratorially at him and whispered one of Smith’s colloquialisms from the meeting: “—‘crazierthanatwo-headeddoginameatmarket.’Isn’tthatthe pits?”
Macbride stood alone in the middle of his living room listening while they got into their cars. Smith and his woman drove separately; both of themhavingarrangedfornightshiftsinpreparationfortheheist.Heheard Carlos’ high tittering out there in the darkened porch—talking to the boy, he supposed. The room reeked of the effluvia of human beings gathered too long in a single space. body odor (Dimitri), perfume (Bobbi), cologne (Carlos), human gas (Smith), and acne medicine (Sonny)—all of it mixed with the stale exudation of alcoholic fumes.
He looked out the black windows as the last sounds of cars in the distance faded away and expected to see flames out the windows—a holocaust devouring an upside-down, post-medieval world.
Carlos watched the stepmother and son drive away. He worked with women,likedbeingintheircompany,butthatonewastrouble;shegaveoff vibes. On the other hand, he wouldn’t mind having a go at her stepson before he left town for good.
Carlos was an expert at cloying, overprotective mothers. He could have taught Michael Jackson lessons about getting boys away from their mothers. When he came out, his mother spurned him for good, but thanks to early onset Alzheimer’s she left him in her will her rundown farmhouse in Austinburg.
Alekseipaidhim“todohisthing,”withanymaleinthestorehefancied. It was risky fun, and he had always cheated on his lovers. When he saw a good-lookingone,evenastraight,he’dapproachhimandask,shyly,if he’d like to go into a booth with him and “get busy.” Not many did, some were insulted, and some even threatened him. Aleksei would pretend to be shocked by what he was hearing from the angry customer, but not one intended to stick around to file a complaint to the police. No respectable citizenwantstoseehisnameinthepaperlinkedtoasleazysexualproposition in an adult bookstore.
Tuesday afternoon changed everything, the day Dimitri showed up at his office with a stack of tapes and threatened to leave copies with everyone on the premises. Thank God for little dead babies. He had stomped aroundcemeteriesinhalf-frozenmuckalloverthreecountiesuntilhespottedoneneartheshoreof LakeErieupnorthinNorthtown.Asacrilegious twingenotwithstanding,resurrectingthedeadbaby’snameintohisnewlife out west was an homage of sorts. One thing was clear, however; as long as the Russian had the tapes, he had Carlos by the short and curlies. Carlos couldn’ttoleratethat,notwithFelixactingmoreandmorelikeapossessive bitch on wheels.
