The Russian Heist, page 32
It would look hilarious from ground level—this bizarre tandem of a boy and a woman in a dangerous game on the rooftops of these decrepit buildings.Shelostcount—eight,nine,ten.Howmanymore,shewondered, before he slowed—Faron was almost invisible by now. She was not in her best shape, but if she were able to reach him, she had already worked out the end game in her mind.
Then this flea-hopping madness ceased abruptly. She saw him carom off something and jerk about in a flat-footed dance as if he had accidentally walked into a mass of spider webs. He sat down on one of the crenellated fascia bordering the building’s ledges. Rushing up, she saw it was the lastbuilding: acresof clearedland,theopensea.Betweenpantedbreathes, “No more hopscotch, Sonny.” No more buildings left to jump, you little weasel. “The end of the line.”
She walked toward him, the lunatic chase over. Let him call her a bitch now and she’d kick his teeth in.
Hewasn’tpantinghard,buthisnostrilwingsflared.Despiteherself,she was impressed; it took her years of power yoga to build stamina like that and he was cranked up when he did it.
“Face down—right now!” She tried to stifle the gasping wheeze in her command. She also feared he was gathering his wind for another romp across the rooftops, just reversing direction.
“Forget it, kid. SWAT’s coming right behind me.”
He frowned at her, not seeing any gun to go with her threat.
She relaxed the tension in her muscles and breathed out—one good long exhalation.
“Come on, Sonny. It’s all over now.”
“Yeah, you’re fucking right about that, bitch. It’s all over.”
She held out her hand and waved him toward her. At least this part of it would be easy. He looked at her with a wan smile. Then sheknew. She reached desperately for his clothing to hold him back.
“No, Sonny, don’t—”
“Sayonara—” He leaped over the side in a tuck position as if he were in gym class hopping over a pommel horse.
She saw the tuft of blonde hair lift briefly in the sunlight, flash evanescent—and then he was gone. She squeezed her eyes tight.
She stepped to the ledge, not wanting to look, but before the shock set in too deep feeling that she owed him that much for sharing his last moments on earth with her. He lay far below on the sidewalk, arms and legs akimbo, no more grace, just a broken swastika of shattered bones and exploded organs. A halo of blood blossomed around the smashed figure below.
Gauging the distance below, she estimated they were four times higher thanthebody’smaximumsurvivalchancewhichpeakedatfortyfeet.Concrete or water, he’d be just as dead from this height.
She sat on the ledge and waited for SWAT. She focused all her thoughts on Faron’s stepmother. Was Bobbi learning from the Russian? They both discarded people when they became useless. One of her CIs in Little Odessa was a welterweight who trained in Gleason’s in the Bronx. He stitched his illegitimate babies’ names on his trunks in macho, gangbangerdaddy style. He fought pit bulls when he could afford to bet, and he told her once that, whenever his dog lost, he wouldn’t wash it off and put it backinthecage.“Fuckno,man,Ijusttakeoutmypieceandshootitinthe fuckin’ head right there. I got no use for a motherfucking dog that can’t fight.”
She wondered if the professor was anywhere to appreciate that kind of bottom-line logic.
InthedistanceshecouldseeKirranamongtheclusterof policeofficers making their way slowly toward her. They used a small metallic extension ladder to cross between buildings. Their backs hunched like pack animals astheycrossedthegaps,eachmanropedtotwoothermenstandingbythe side of the building. It was a laborious process, but it was safe and they would get to her eventually.
Shewatchedthemwhilewindblewherhairacrossherface.Sheignored thefactthatherrightbreastwasexposedandbledfromtheimpact;herbra strapdangled.Shesatthereforalongtime,breathing,notthinkingorlooking at anything much except the harbor activity and the boats gliding throughthewaterwiththeirbowscuttingfrothyswellsandtheirsternsflattening them out to bell-shaped wakes. When she felt men staring at her, she looked up to see Kirran, the lieutenant, and several SWAT members look away and then, when they thought she wasn’t looking, cut their eyes back to her—without anyone saying a word.
Shehadalwaysdislikedtheanonymityof Americanairportsandtheirfalsehappycolors—“forcedjollity,”herfatherusedtocallitwhenhedeignedto speakinhisfracturedEnglish.Itwasnotagoodlanguage,notreally,hetold her often enough—too imprecise with time, not metaphorical enough for nuance, and phonetically unpleasing. “It grates on the ear like drunken Mongolians haggling in a yurt.” Yet he spoke one of the rare mountain dialects fluently. Speaking several languages, she had no true language to be free in; none she was comfortable enough to cry or curse in.
Sea-Tacwentforshadesof tangerineoverburntorangeasif thatwould instillinpassengersaperceptiontheyweren’treallystuckinanairporthovering between two destinations but a kind of funhouse where people wanted to meet. People stood with blank stares or chattered into cell phones, looked pained in front of arrival-departure monitors hooked to the ceiling. Parents and businessmen abused tired airline personnel at the desksandteenagerstext-messagedtheirfriendsorlistenedtoCDsontheir headphones. It was waiting in purgatory for release.
Kirranwasslightlydisheveledandobviouslywantingadrink.Allmorning long he was politeness personified. He scratched at the crossword on hislapwithastubbypencilandfurrowedhisbrowfromtimetotime.Now and then he asked her what the answer was to something down or across. Hebrushedatapeskylockof dustyhairthatwouldn’tstayinplace.Sherealized she was not judging him as a male against the stereotype for the first time in a long while.
She was trying to reach Alex. Finally, after twenty minutes, Marge located him at a deli downtown and told him to call her from there.
“Hey, man, what happ’nin?”
She thought some cabbie had broken into her connection until she realized he was just being cute with his island accent.
“I’vecrackedthecode.Iwascelebratingbymyself sinceHarryisoff the hard stuff for the time being.”
She brought him up to speed but left out all the details of the rooftop. It didn’t matter anyway. Alex’s interests revolved around codes and cryptograms, jazz piano, and foreign films, not human beings.
“I just needed one more string to complete the set. I looked for deviations in the character strings, intervals, bit repeats—”
“Alex, English, if you please.” She waited for him to calm down.
“OK, like I said, the Bank of Budapest came through like a charm.”
She had been so distracted by other events that she couldn’t recall a shred of their past conversation on this subject.
“Harry said it’s like carnie—you know what that is?”
The Aryan Brotherhood used it in prisons to communicate when the guards are listening. “It’s a simple script code based on Bacon’s biliteral cipher with two distinct alphabets—”
Sir Francis Bacon—what was he going on about?
She gave up. “Tell me about it when I get back.” She told him what she wantedhimtodoandwhomtocallinNewYorktoseeaboutgettingitdone.
“Whoah, whoah. That sounds like an illegal trace. I’m not looking to check back into the Graybar Hotel, thank you very much.”
She knew it would make her feel cheap. She despised women for manipulating men.
“I need this favor, Alex.”
“OK, if you’re sure. I could do it with duct tape and a coaxial.”
“Thanks.” She could see him smiling at the conspiracy, but she was revolted by her lowdown tactic to achieve it. Ends and means, she was reverting backwards in moral time now—from Bacon to Machiavelli.
She had other matters to worry about. She was throwing regs out the window faster than the FBI revised them. She wondered if those blows to herheadchangedherwiring.Frommisfitstopsychokillers,shewasunsure of her ground and her prey. In some ways, Bobbi was worse than her Russians—at least their malevolence was predictable.
She looked at Kirran fighting his crossword with impatience. He perforated the paper with his pencil and jabbed himself in the palm. He swore, balled it up, and said to the indifferent passersby, “Kiss my Irish ass.” He would be easier to persuade than Alex, however. She knew the detective wouldn’t balk at flouting rules. Kirran was different from most cops, some of whomactuallycherishedareverenceforthebureauand,unbelievableas itseemedtoher,givenhisbyzantinepersonalhistory,forold J.Edgarhimself now sanitized, dipped in bronze, and mythologized for the ages.
Chapter 43
Two Months and Two Weeks after the Heist: BobbiQuincunx Her husband brought her into the Rare Cherry back in Youngstown from time to time when they were out trolling for a third. Once in a while she ached for a woman’s touch, but she never thought of herself as a real lesbian. Most of the girls she worked beside in the clubs with were closet lesbians or openly bisexual. Nelson used to love watching her get it on with another girl as long as she wasn’t too butch.
This place was three or four rungs below that one, but she had no choice. The girls standing around on the corners at the Interstate 5 offramps and bus stops looked like sharks trolling the shallows for the wounded. She wasn’t desperate enough yet to go back to hooking.
Thedriverof theloggingtruckwhodroppedheroff outfrontgaveher ten dollars for her sob story, didn’t even ask for anything for it or even try to feel her up. He had religious paraphernalia all over the extended cab and knew she had picked one who would either be psycho-scary or just a boringJesus-lover.Foronce,themanwasdecenttoher.Shethankedhimwhen shegotoutof hiscab.Heofferedtodrivehertohissister’shouseinPeEll so she could get cleaned up, have a bite to eat—but she thanked him, said no, and said she had something to do first; she realized she had laid on the sob story about her kidnapped baby too thickly.
The owner looked her over for the tenth time, up and down, same way. She knew her looks were shot and slapping her cheeks to bring color and then combing her hair with her fingers wasn’t how you auditioned for the poleinahigh-classgentleman’sclub.Shewasgladtobefarfromdowntown right then—police sirens told her the net was closing in on Sonny.
Hewasalreadyfadingfromhermind.Shecouldrememberfewerthings about her husband as time passed. She guessed it was the incredible stress of being on the run, looking over her shoulder, trying to survive in the streets after so many years of marriage and—what was the word the fat bastard used?—domestication. She must have been living in a dream all those years—crappyfurnitureinatumbledownhousewithaTVsetalwaysonthe blink, her low wages for eight hours of stench and whining from incontinentpatientsandbossysupervisorsthathatedherbecauseallthemaledoctors, and even a few of them as far as that went, desired her.
Back to this joker . . . she needed the money.
“Ya’ll on anything, darlin’?” he asked around the cigar.
“I don’t use,” she said.
He nodded but the skepticism showed in the gap-toothed smile. “You wanna give me a look at the goods?”
They were standing opposite each other at the bar. She knew if he wasn’t interested enough to come out from behind it, she wasn’t going to get hired, so she began unbuttoning right there. He moved the cigar around to the other side of his mouth. She folded her sweater and laid it on the bar stool next to her. Five or six customers at the end of the bar suddenly interrupted their conversation about the Seahawks’ crappy special teams to watch what was going on with the new broad.
She stepped out of her jeans with a wiggle of hips meant for them. She wasn’t wearing panties. Her pubic ruff was thick, unruly. She reached behind her to undo the hook-and-eye clasp and let her breasts slip free from the cups. This was the way she used to do it when she danced inCleveland. She was awkward, at first rusty, like the first time she danced—half-scared to death and goose-pimpled under the mauve lights. Some of the moves came back to her. She reminded herself that male hardons were no different out here.
A cone of smoky blue light haloed the bar’s old-fashioned cash register where a stack of cocktail napkins with goofy sayings were placed between plastic trays. She sidestepped into it and grabbed the tops of the chrome arches,swoopeddown,herlongmuscularlegsspreadwide,andarchedher back, gave her breasts a jiggle for the man a couple feet away. She improvised an old-time bump-and-grind, added a few quick turns so the breasts swung and settled with momentum—that always got a loud appreciative reaction from the black customers in the time before Nelson. She finished with her hands on her knees, her ass high in the air. She was light-headed from not eating in two days.
The cigar made a wet, plopping sound in his mouth. He cleared his throat. “You’re hired,” he said.
“Fucking-A,Burt!”shoutedoneof theregularsattheend.Thenoneof them began clapping and the rest joined in with louder claps and whistles. She left every night at the same time, headed straight back to the Ethelton HotelnearPikePlaceMarket.Inthestreetsheheardthehootsfromthebar chanting her stage name, the shouted offers to buy her drinks, and as she did every night, she ignored them all. Like her shabby hotel populated by dope fiends and runaways from every state in the union, the Korean grocery store around the corner didn’t ask for I.D., just money. She saw the extrafiftyBurtaddedtohercheckandignoredhiscrudeinnuendoforhow she might show gratitude. She was leaving both dumps in a week. She gave her description of her “father” to every cab driver, cafeteria dishwasher, andhotelmanagerinSeattle,butnoone,anywhere,sawanyoneresembling the fat bastard.
The bar was booming, rocking with a new clientele—first, the construction and city workers came, then the fraternity houses in Tacoma and Seattle had word of the new dancer, and lately, a higher-class male, obviously slumming, had discovered her. They all came to see her, the electriciansandplumbersandthesurgeons.Shewasindifferenttothemregardless andspurnedattention.Itonlymadethemviehardertobenoticedamidthe wolf-whistles and catcalls.
Her hair was back to its natural chestnut color. She had forgotten how hairyshewasdownthereandhadtotrimherbushtokeepthepubiswithin hertinybikini.Sheheardtheircommentsaboutherprominent“cameltoe” when she first got up on stage and danced in the languorous way that always started her set before the dated rock standards she used later. She wanted to laugh at their glowing moonfaces seated around the bar and the stage that Burt had built especially for her. Only one man’s face mattered. She had earned enough money, more than enough, thanks to one of the new patrons, a married executive from one of the big software companies. He thought nothing of writing a check for a five-hundred dollar blowjob. One of the bikers dealt Ecstasy laced with heroin, so she often passed the time in a stupor between performances staring at her ceiling, seeing Macbride’s face up there in the stains and watermarks.
He was in tonight, again, sitting at the end of the bar with the same guy shenoticedbefore.Somethingaboutthisothermanstruckafamiliarchord and put a catch in her breath. If her dancing was off, no one noticed and the applause thundered after every song. This guy was bigger, more muscular, and bald as a cue ball. He barely looked at her—which was odd, just stared straight ahead and drank his whiskey neat; he didn’t say anything except to his friend. When she danced her last number down the bar, doing that pouty country number, she almost had it. She was afraid he was someonefromherpastinOhioandthethoughtimmediatelysentripplesof fear down her back.
“Hey, I know you.” A lot of men tried to pick her up outside after her set. Something about the voice—from the Wing Ding, the one who made her husband nervous. She didn’t see him leave the bar.
“I don’t know you.” She matched him in height, eye to eye. As she stepped off the curb, he said, without much concern, cupping his hands around a match to light his hand-rolled cigarette:
“Yeah, you do, Bobbi.” Shestoppeddeadinthemiddleof thestreet.Sheworetennisshoesoffstage and had memorized escape routes just in case some off-duty cop looked up from her snatch long enough to recognize her face. Something told her she could not outrun this one.
“You’re worth a lot of money.” Blowing smoke out his nostrils. The air was warm and moist off the ocean—spring in the Northwest.
“I been looking a long time for you.”
“What do you want . . . Tony?”
He laughed, pleased. “I didn’t think you’d remember me.”
“It was a long time ago.”
They were out together, she and Smitty, as usual looking for a little bedroom fun. Their ads kept turning up losers and they had exhausted most of theprospectsinthearea.Smitty,drunkandhorny,wantedawomanbut she talked him into letting her have a second guy this night. But something about the bartender made him change his mind. Behind the smile and chitchat was a feeling, Nelson said, he didn’t like. They drank boilermakers and tequila shots at the bar and then left, way too drunk even to have sex themselves. She looked at Tony and smiled as she thought of the Russian, gagged and bound, sweating like he’d been cooked in a microwave, blood and pus oozing—
“Not so long,” he said. “You looked great up there.” He smiled his big smile for her, vain enough to think her smile was meant for him. She hesitated, unsure whether to try to break for it down some alley, and let him catchupwithher;sheheldherhandtightaroundthewoodenhandleof the onlyweaponshecouldobtain: ashort-bladed,curvedlinoleumknifefrom Walmart.
“I know people who know people. You know somebody with a lot of money. Money that don’t belong to him.”
Her eyes brightened. “What do you know about him?”
“My sources can tell me where he might be, where he could be hiding out with his money, things like that.”
“What do you want?”
“Half the money.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Comeon,Bobbi,ahundredpercentof shitisstillshit.Half of fivemillion ain’t so bad, is it?”
“I can find him on my own.”
“He ain’t here, that’s for Got-damn sure.”
“I’ve sucked my last cock.”
He smiled right up to his incisors. “It ain’t about sex, bitch.” The smile again. Saying it like a street thug with a lot of topspin.
