The Russian Heist, page 36
The woman selling mangos in the market who directed her shook her headseveraltimes,uncomprehendingherSorbonneFrench,butfinallyshe understand “un homme gros,”as she mimed a big stomach, and added a gratuitous“Yanqui.”The woman answered in the Kwéyòl French spoken in theislands,andpointedbeyondthemarkettown’spedestrianthoroughfare upward to a series of stalls and a sinuous track winding up into the hills. “Ah,lamaisonriche!”shesaid,“Treskil’meter,la,la.”Thispokedherfingerup high into the verdant jungle.
The rum was working on his tongue, loosening it, adding some fervor to his running commentary on the island’s poor. His idea ofnoblesse oblige. He reminded her why the guillotine was invented. The rum sat like hot oil in her stomach. The island’s thick heat gathered itself like a basking viper. HesaidsomethinginbadFrenchtothehousekeeper-mistress,whostopped her labors in the dirt, shading her eyes from the sun. She noted her big stomach outlined by her smock. What kind of father was he going to be?
Apropos of nothing, Macbride suddenly expressed regret for clubbing her senseless back in Ohio.
“Grisly,” he said. She thought the long pause was prelude to a confession; however, it was merely prelude to a puffed-up aphorism. “Homo hominis lupus est.”He was still playing at professors in his mind.
Manis a wolf to man—but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a rejoinder. He acted as though he were a mere witness. She had taken seventeen stitches and a final, stern warning from her doctor that another concussion like that could result in unprovoked migraines or much worse: she could wake up blind one day. She hid the damage and lied to the doctor at the physical, but her migraines were intensified. Even fluorescent lightblindedher,herskinturnedclammy,andanysoundmagnifiedtoseismic ripples that crashed and collided inside her skull. Flying became a real hardship. The small Cessna that brought them over bounced from turbulence, and it was enough to cause her to vomit into the bag so hard she could feel the force of it exerted at her hands where she gripped the sides. Michael dabbed her pale face with a towelette and looked at her, his expression asking the question for him, but she wouldn’t reply. Macbride parried her questions about the money—any hint might help. He talked expansively about his family roots in Canada, about his greatgrandfather, a lumberjack, who arrived in a railroad encampment called McBride in British Columbia where tracks of the Grand Trunk were being laid from Yellowhead Pass on the way to Vancouver.
“The rails weren’t all that was being laid,” he said. “Some women came out to service the men in the wilderness.”
“Camp followers.”
“Youknowtheterm?Mygreat-grandfatherstayedbehindwhentherailroad when on toward Vancouver, adopted the name. They had a son, my grandfather,whowasbornoutof wedlock,eventhoughI’mtoldtherewas a marriage ceremony later.”
“There’s a point to your family genealogy, I’m sure.” His languid demeanorwaspartof hisparvenu’smaskof feignedindifference;shewasthe boreatthepartytowhomthehostmustpolitelylisten,butbeneaththesurface she sensed a keener alertness. It was the end game, check and mate. “Every great fortune begins with a crime.” He mouthed the platitude as if it were an original and compelling truth. “My grandmother was a saloon dancer in the settlement before it became a town. They immigrated to San Francisco.Shediedinthefirestormaftertheearthquakeof 1906.Mygrandfather got himself shanghaied out of San Francisco, thanks to a Mickey Finn, and woke up aboard a trading schooner for South Africa. The first mateknockedouthisfrontteethwithabelayingpin.Helaterkilledtheman in the Indian Ocean. He jumped ship in South Africa and fought with the Boers.WhenIwasaboy,heshowedmealongjaggedscaracrosshisthigh.” She wondered if this braggadocio, too, were going somewhere. Reading her mind, he said with smug pride, “The double helix of buccaneers and risk-takers run in my bloodlines.”
“What does this have to do with the murders of innocent people, Macbride?” She raised her sunglasses over her brow and leaned her elbows on the glass table.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“It wasn’t my intention.”
“Mygrandmother’sfamilydisownedherformarryinganAmerican.She went to America to settle in Youngstown where he went to work in the steel mills. My own father was born and raised in Youngstown, you see.”
His tale of the prodigal son returned had a point, myth-making to justify evil. She heard a howling chorus of screeches from distant hills; monkeys lived there.
Macbridewasundauntedbyhersarcasm.“Heabandonedus,mybrother andme.Wewerekids.Mymotherhadabreakdownandcommittedsuicide. He was adopted by a family there and I went to live with a foster family in Seattle.”
“Yet you returned to Youngstown after your marriage,” she said.
Macbridefrowned,peevedatherinterruption,tryingtohurryhimalong.
“It was fate. Cherchez la femme.”
Beneath her calm, she winced; they had missed the brother. “So what does your brother think of your midlife change of careers?”
“Nohelpforyouthere,I’mafraid.If Imaycontinue?Mybrotherfound me while I was attending Stanford on one of those ‘Jude the Obscure’ scholarshipsforsmartbutpooryouths.Hesentmeacopyof hisfamilyresearch before he blew his brains out in a motel.”
“That’s when you changed your name to Macbride.” “It cost me five hundred dollars, a sentimental gesture, but he asked me to do it in his suicide letter.”
“I’m waiting for the part that connects this to the airport heist. Specifically about what you intend to do now.”
“What do you expect, Agent Cheng? A full confession? ‘Here’s the money,I’mterriblysorry,nowpleasewon’tyoutakemebackinmanacles’?”
“That would make a nice start toward your redemption.”
“You’re not serious. Is this some kind of Chinese hoodoo?”
“You assisted in the murders of three people.”
“Don’tlaythatRussiananimal’smayhematmydoorstep,if youplease.”
“The law doesn’t care, Macbride.”
“I sleep well at night.”
“Do you see de la Torriente in your dreams? How about Nelson Smith, gutted like a deer from a branch, or the boy splattered on the sidewalk?” “Ah, that wretched boy. I followed your investigation from afar. The EnglishpapersinRiolovesordidAmericancatastrophes.ButIdigress.The foolish lad made his choice like my brother. We’re all existentialists in our fashion.”
“Fashion—you call it that? You’re lucky I’m not an existentialist.”
He enjoyed her disdain but contained some of his glee. She obviously came here to put a real FBI-style scare into him. Unless America planned to annex the Antilles, his money was safe as houses. She had to know that, too,sothiswasentirelypersonalwithher.Anothercrazy,subjectivewoman who supplied emotion where reason was expected.
He switched subjects and talked vaguely about the money—in conjecturaltermsbuthewouldnottellherhowwealthyhewas.Sowealthy,infact, that he had enough to indulge his morbid revenge fantasies against all his three ex-wives—maybe Siobhan too, that bitch. Why not? His money and power could reach them easily. An arson job for Helena, burn everycollectible she owned—
Macbride looked at the petite woman across the table. If one were to glance at her, one would mistake her for an anorexic college girl, one of those sexless international students his colleagues loved to exploit as grad students. This one, however, didn’t stink of the lamp; she had a reservoir of calm that intrigued him. He wondered whether he should offer her money to forget him, leave him in peace. America was a sick and rotten corpse sinking to ruin—surely the FBI had plenty to keep itself occupied without harassing him. Sunglasses couldn’t hide what he saw in her intelligent, dark eyes. She was basalt, nothing pliant in the features, that unnerving stillness in her composure. He knew how to tell the dullards and the dimwits, the plodders from the quick ones. He thought of his former studentRochelle,thelazy-brightgirlundoubtedlygonetoseedbynow,knocking out babies and counting her WIC coupons to last out the month.
Macbride looked furtively though the shades of Annie Cheng’s sunglasses.Heregainedhiscourage,chidedhimself foramomentof panic.He was overestimating her. She was obviously one of those demure types who tried to be masculine and feminine by turns. Probably a latent lesbian. He wanted to lift her chin, ever so tenderly, and hold her exquisitely oval face in his hand and say to her, “Nature doesn’t care. Neither do I.”
All those years of courses of making do on less and less, cramming, alwayscrammingforthedaythishard-earnedknowledgewouldpayoff.Here was real nature—survival of the fittest, nature red in tooth and claw. He rose from the muck of the ebb tide, watched his ex-wives sail off into the sunset—to other men and better lives than he could offer them. Like the shadowpuppetsof Eurasia,theyhadmockedhimandsunkhimintohopelessness. Now, by God, it was his turn to gloat.
“WeknoweverythingthathappenedbeforeandafterDimitri,”shesaid. “You left a paper trail a mile wide.”
“Tell me if that thug’s death troubles your sleep much.”
“You knew he was going to kill you, so you offered him your financial skills.”
“Greed doesn’t respect IQs. He wanted more and I told him how.” He raised his glass in a mock toast: “To Dimitri Byko. You might say I’m still keeping up my end of the bargain. He just isn’t around to benefit.”
“So far,” she said, her voice deepening as she leaned forward. “But you wringyourhandsandtouchitemsonthetable,lookbehindyouconstantly. I’d say you have the nervous tics of a compulsive-obsessive with paranoid tendencies, wouldn’t you? Your money is out there, Macbride, and it’s attracting men smarter than you and more violent than Byko.”
“They’re your problem, not mine.” He didn’t mean to snap at her quite so rudely.
“You’re on a tiny island, professor. The first person I asked knew you and told me exactly where to find you.”
Macbride’sfingersdancedinfrontof hisgirth,morebodylanguagethat said he wanted to change the subject. “Dimitri was all agog about one thing—exporting ‘Natashas’ for prostitution. Many women are alive and unharmed today because of me.”
He let her ponder that for a moment. He recalled his summons to that Lubyanka of a basement as if it were yesterday (“Come with me, professor. I seek your advice . . . ”). Standing alone, trembling in that filthy coal cellar, while particles of ash fell lightly between the cracks of the planking like bones calcined in air, he knew he was going to die. Dimitri’s kindness was more terrifying than his abuse.
In his nightmare he watched him work the slide on his automatic and screwonasilencer.Macbrideurinateddownhisleg.Hislungsbecameabellows and he summoned every ounce of speech he had to convince the Russian not to kill him—he told Dimitri he could make him more money, tons of it. He begged the Russian to listen to him for just two minutes— one minute. Dimitri barely looked at him, then he pivoted suddenly and shot a huge Norway rat with red eyes lurking behind the furnace. Its fat body twitched sanshead. Macbride had vomited at the sight.
“AmIboringyou,Macbride?”Herquerystartledhimoutof hisreverie.
“Please continue,” he said but she saw his hand tremble.
She resumed, “Bobbi Smith has teamed up with Burdo.”
“What, pray tell, is a Burdo?” He knew the quaver betrayed him. The image she seeded of other Dimitris seeking him out clutched at him.
“Anthony Patrick Burdo. Weren’t you listening?”
“My apologies.”
“We know this. He bartended at the Wing Ding. He was calling himself Tony Zulinsky or ‘Zee’ when you knew him. He borrows the names of his victims. It’s his way of taking trophies. We’re not sure that’s his real name.”
“Your point?”
Butshesawtheflinch,knewshehadfinallyruffledhisfeathers.Hetook off his shades and wiped his glistening brow. The collar of his shirt was drenched. She saw fear register in his eyes before he covered them behind the opaque lenses.
“He kills for the Aryan Brotherhood”.
She wondered if telling him this much were going too far. Kirran said it was worth the risk to shake the tree. He tracked a prison snitch in Mesa, Arizona who said Zee was high up in the AB echelon. He killed on orders from the Brand inside or outside prison. He followed the custom of gettinghimself transferredtotheircellsandatnighthegarrotedthemintheir sleep or found a way to get close to them in the yard to shank them. She remembered Elizabeth Bhargrava lecturing her once: It isn’t easy, medically speaking,tostabamantodeath.OnewaspipedintheheadonhiswaytoaculinaryclassthatBurdosignedupfor.Thewifeof thisvictimwaslaterfound dead in her house with a screwdriver through her eye. Yet he kept eluding murder charges, a snake shedding his skin before his jacket ever caught up with him. He kept getting out on bail, this amiable psychopath, who even charmed parole boards in seven states. Kirran, who did five years in robbery, told her about some burglars possessed of a natural gift of charming guard dogs inside their own houses while they robbed the owners.
Macbride squirmed in his chair. She wanted him to picture the muscular man with the China-blue tattoos around his biceps.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.
He wanted to slap the smile off her face. His own words came back to himlikebittercandy:cherchezlefemme.ItwasBobbiwhoterrifiedhimmore. “I was thinking,” he said with bluster too evident, “that law enforcement, like everything else in America, is overrated.”
“We had Burdo in Trumbull County for failing to register but the bail wassetlow.Hemadeitandskipped.Thenwe’vetracedhimtotheYucatan Peninsula but we lost him in Cancun.”
“Then I suggest you go back to look for him there.”
The black flies performed their whirling dalliances around his face and ears. He insisted on wearing expensive cologne despite her warning it attracted insects. He simply had not reckoned on the sheer proliferation of insect life in the tropics—the black flies that bit, the Chagas bugs that speckled the walls with blood where Maryse exploded them with her sandaldespitehispleadingwithhernotto,theparasiticalwormsthatburrowed intoyourfleshandmadeeverysmallinfectionadangertosepsis.Themean truthwasthatheoftenmissedthebracingcold—wouldhappilygiveahundred thousand dollars of his money for a single month in a New England cabin in autumn—or even humdrum, rainy Seattle, as long as that dervish from the backwoods was wearing a jump suit in leg irons in some maximum-security prison five states away.
“The last sighting we had of him was with a woman who fits Bobbi Smith’s description.”
“At the risk of over iteration, why don’t you and your colleagues find them to ask them, not me?”
“You needn’t be snide, professor. We’re having a polite conversation.”
“I apologize, Miss Cheng. It’s the heat.” He dabbed at his forehead with a laugh and waved his fingers about, flustered and uneasy. “My blood still hasn’t thinned sufficiently.”
Macbrideactuallydespisedhimself forevenmomentarilyyearningtosee once more the white fluorescence of hoar dappling every surface of every building and blade of grass on those frigid Ohio mornings. He never expectedsuchrelentlesswarmth—attimes,anunforgivingfurnaceheatlikethe sun’s fist on his skull, which injected a torpor into the very bloodstream, made one as lazy as the populous. Besides that, one’s olfactory senses were continuallyassaulted—inthemarketwherehehatedtogowithMaryseonce a week. The foul-smelling tobacco—mundungus—the stench of putrefaction,of foodof animalcarcassesleftinthestreet,allof itroilinginhisnostrils; it lurked beneath the scented surface and made him downright queasy sometimes. He was constantly on guard against diarrhea. Nature was indolent subterfuge here, a teeming stew, a syrupy crust hiding her business.
“Doyouhaveanyideawhythesetwomighthaveteamedup,professor?”
“That’s an a prioriassumption, isn’t it? Have a safe trip back, Ms. Cheng. Now you are beginning to bore me.”
He drained the last of his rum but his poise was evidently shaken, for he dribbled some of it out of the corner of his mouth and hastily wiped it with the back of his hand. She saw that his face was flushed crimson, rivulets of sweat poured down his chubby cheeks and his shirt was completely damp below his neck. He turned his wrist where a thin gold Presidential dangled.
“There’s a cross-island ferry that leaves in an hour,” he said. “The hydrofoil won’t be running until sundown.”
“Thanks, but I’m on vacation. I’ll stick around the island.”
“Tant mieux. I can recommend a good restaurant, cozy, not too pricey, if you’re not on expense.”
She stood up. She decided to stop playing games and put a final burr under his saddle. She placed her card on the table and hastily scribbled the hotel phone on the back.“We tracked her to Marie-Galante.”
How she savored his shocked face.
“Youcancallmeatthatnumber,”shesaidassheadjustedhersunglasses. She tied the hat beneath her chin. He said nothing but his face had blanched.
“How—how do you know that?”
“A fisherman on a jetty down below recognized her from a photo lineup.” Macbride was in Brazil then, but they lost him in São Paulo. He remained silent, determined not to give her anything more to read.
“Your timing was lucky.”
“If Ineededluck,”hesaid,“I’dlookovertherewherethestarsrise.My lucky star rises there each night. But I don’t need luck, Agent Cheng.”
“We all need luck, professor.”
Heroseshakilytohisfeet.Hetoweredoverher,andhisshadowblocked thesun.“I’mfree,Cheng,finally.Leavemeinpeace.”Heloomedtooclose. TheRussianwouldhavestrangledheranddumpedthebodyinthehillsbehindthehouse.Natureknewhowtohandledeathinthispartof theworld.
She read his mind and didn’t mind lying. “I’m not carrying a gun, but I came with someone who is waiting below for me.”
“How fortunate for you.” He gave what he considered his most becomingclassroomsmile.Patchesof sweatnowdarkenedhisshirtfrontand made half-moons under his arms. He looked old and gray, blinking in the sunlight, a man fighting indigestion and a bad case of nerves. A Beethoven cadenza started up from the house. She recognized Glenn Gould from Leningrad, 1957. By some crazy associational logic, she pictured young Sonny’s brave tuck into space, the long fall.
