The Russian Heist, page 39
“Ah,itdoesn’tmeananything.Ineverforgavemymotherfornamingme Haroldanyway.”
All families have codes, secrets the members keep from one another. Because Harry was, in all senses but flesh-and-blood, her family, it would havebeenaviolationof thecodetoaskhimwhyhishouseneverheldasingletokenormementoof hiscareeranywhere.Noteventheacademyphoto, de rigueurfor all graduates, or even the one Michael swore he saw with his own eyes before it too disappeared: Harry looking into the camera on a brightdayandshakinghandswithHooverintheRoseGardenof theWhite House. Harry could have been mistaken for a shoe salesman for all the clues his home revealed about his profession.
Hispapersweresigned,hisbankcasewrappedup,althoughotheragents would have to see it through to its official denouement in the courts. The last deposition had been taken and the documents readied for the federal courts and the state’s attorneys. One more tentacle of organized crime had been lopped off. All that work, Harry mused, and it was now on a separate course from him—following its own gravitational path, out of his hands. “It’s how it is,” he said with a wink, taking their last elevator ride together. “Nothing’s ever resolved. There’s no resolution. Just a different archives.”
Out in the street he concluded his rhapsody with a dismal observation. “We’reonlymemoriesinotherpeople’sheads.”ThiswasadifferentHarry; she didn’t know what to make of this mawkish philosophe-manqué, but sheunderstoodtheneedtocoverhisemotionsaboutretirementwithabenign triteness. Maybe some acolyte would be at her side when it came time to retire. What sort of inanities would she utter then, she wondered. What do you say when oblivion first shows you its real face?
Alex was already seated at the table of the Blue Note when they arrived at a quarter to six. The fuggy smell of wood rot and tobacco met them at the door. Down front under stage lights an alto sax and a jazz piano found the secret in a bold harmonic.
He got up to shake Harry’s hand. “Kudos on your retirement, Harry.”
“Thank you, Alex.”
The cuisine, like the décor, was chic, peppery, California-disguised, but her appetite had waned long before dessert. Alex would insist she have somethingsweet;healwaysdid,nomatterwheretheydined.Itwashisway of erasing guilt for his self-indulgence. Her thoughts were split between Harry’slast-seconddecisiontocometoNewYorkfortheceremonybefore going home to Duluth. She knew his decision to accept the award from the director himself was a kind ruse. Hewas there to show her he had fully recovered from the heart attack and to say goodbye.
They drank and raised glasses in toast. The last was Alex’s. Taking them both in, glass aloft, he said, “To us, the Musketeers.”
It was a rueful toast. She required sixteen thousand dollars in dentistry since her return from the Caribbean. There was a spiderweb of faintly bluish scars below the eye where Bobbi’s fist had fractured a cheekbone. A patch of hair behind her left ear had started to go white. She wondered what her ex would say to see her now with all her battle scars.
Part of her mind lingered on Michael back in Ohio. She was concerned about his falling off the wagon. Last night’s phone call was troubled by some word-slurring but more so by what he didn’t say than by what he did. She wanted him to get here soon so they could talk. The island haunted him. He killed a man who needed killing, but he was struggling with it.
ShebroughtHarryuptodateonherRussians.Shewasmakingprogress in some areas, but they were resilient, adaptable, able to scuttle off in the dark before they could wallop them, leaving behind the murine smell of theirabandonednestsandburrows.Alexgrewboredwiththeshoptalkand turned to take in the band. Harry listened intently while she talked and where she seemed to be asking for it, he gave her advice. It was like no other conference they had ever had before. Neither had ever revealed so much character to the other. When she told him about her latest setback, he resorted to one of his favorite analogies, whack-a-mole. Kill one, another popped up to take its place. But she craved and demanded resolution,climax—something.Reggieleftheraseven-pageletterwhenhewalked out; he called her names and accused her of being temperamentally “Gothic,”“ananchorite,”andworst,orsohethought,“asibylwithadeath wish”—but she took that as a compliment. Sibyl was mythology’s original vampire; her crime wanting to live forever, for as many years as the grains of sandsheheldouttoApollo,butforthattheman-godwouldpunishher bitterly: she would remain deathless but age relentlessly and ask of all she met a single question: “When can I die?”
Hewasmostlysilent,smilinginthatsilly-crookedwayof his.Sheswirled thesodainherglass.“Allthatwewentthrough—you,I,Michael—whatdid it amount to except paperwork? Different faces, the same killing goes on and on.”
Harryplacedbothhandsoverhersandlookedather.“Intheschemeof things, no, it doesn’t matter, but you have to believe me, nothing good can die.” He squeezed her hands.
“Look at me,” she said finally. “Your celebration but I’m the one who needs cheering up.”
Harry struggled to find the words. “I always thought of it as a border between two darknesses.”
It: the fight, Gotterdämmerung—the end-all battle between the forces of light and dark. But there never would be that, she knew. A dirty bomb in a subway, anthrax in a letter, famine, strife, death squads, assassinations, political murder ad nauseam. No Twilight of the Gods, no Day of Doom. She was heart-sick and weary from being nibbled to death.
“Thanks, Harry. Thanks for everything.”
“De nada. You will come see me in Minnesota. I have a cabin—”
Ahusky,middle-agedwaiterwithastylish,pencil-thinbeardleanedover her shoulder and handed her a folded envelope. Annoyed by the interruption,shetookit,glancedtotakeinthefactthatithadnotbeenfranked,and felt her heart quicken. She placed it on top her purse beneath the table.
While she buttoned up against a mean wind, a harsh ventacciofunneled between the tall buildings, they prepared their good nights. Alex was raving ecstatically about the bass guitar in the band’s last set, his fingers doing theirowncrazyriff onthenightair.Sensinghisfifth-wheelstatus,hekissed her on the cheek and gave Harry a final wave and smile, and he was off in a half-trot to meet some friends from the theatre crowd. A towheaded boy, she thought him, and he always would be to her. It was an awkward leavetaking, as they knew it would be, because the number of times she would see each other was trickling down to zero.
“Take care of Kirran,” Harry, clearing his throat, trying to break up the tension that hung like a vapor between them.
“I will.”
On impulse, she rushed forward and hugged him to her for a long time. She breathed in his cologne, his man smell, and knew she would hold it, an olfactory keepsake. Taxis whipped past in blurs and glazed streaks, horns blared in the polytonal scramble to get the fares as the last of the Broadway shows ended. After the drab Midwest, Times Square was a peacock’s tail of glowing iridescence wherever the eye looked.
“You know how Pisces men tend to be.” Embarrassed by the display of her affection but inwardly, she knew, deeply pleased. For the first and only time she could remember, Harry was shy about delving into her private life so blatantly.
“You mean ‘sensitive’ and ‘mysterious,’” she said pulling away but holding his elbows with the same passionate grip and looking deep into his craggy,handsomeface.Alexwasright: hedidlooklikethenoiractorRobert Ryan.
“No,” he said with a serious expression, “I mean hot-tempered, unstable, pig-headed—”
“Like all the men I know, except you, Harry.”
“I will miss you, Agent Cheng.”
“Me too.”
She insisted he take the first cab because she didn’t want to prolong the farewell. Inside her own, arriving just as Harry gave a final salute from the backseat,shehadaneeriefrisson,anunsettlingchillinherbonesandshivered. Harry was the only agent she knew besides herself who had faced real physical danger—a hired thug once attempted to murder him in his own kitchen with a butcher knife after his automatic jammed—and it was not a fortuitous sign of things to come. Something made her fetch the letter from inside her purse where she had crammed it.
Dear Ms. Cheng (Monsieur Beaubien’s letter began): I suppose you expect my heartfelt thanks for saving my life that night. You won’t get it. We now both have reason to stay permanently away from each other. I think we are finely balanced exactly where we are—two rogue planets that need to keep each other at a distance so as to ensure equilibrium of the heavens. Cleaning up that mess cost me a million dollars. I lost eighteen inches of intestines and gained a colostomy bag. But I have my life, I have plenty of money, and be assured I will use it to maintainmypresentandfuturesafety.Mysourcestellmethatyouhave kept your career intact with what I suspect are less than accurate reports about how your time was spent in my part of the globe. I take that as an encouraging sign. Let it remain thus. I mention it in case you are contemplating more unofficial vacations to the islandswiththatpoliceofficer.Leavemealone,Cheng,andI’llkeep my extensive dossier on you both out of the newspapers.
He closed the letter with a florid signature beneath his nom de plume, added his Ph.D, and beneath that, a handwritten postscript in his elegant, precise hand:
Youmightenquireof acabaretonGratiotAvenueinDetroitcalling itself Circus & Sideshow. Another source informs me of a dancer there using the sobriquet ‘Misty Canyon.’ The establishmentbillsitself thusly: ‘ComeSeeYourWildestFantasyCometo Life.’ I leave it to you to determine whether that is ham-handed sexual innuendo or the answer to your dreams, Agent Cheng— that is, if you’re still looking for a certain woman. And do note, please: I use that term very, very loosely.
Acknowledgments and Afterword about Nothing Much The Russian Heist was first published by Moonshine Cove Press on 19 June 2019. My gratitude here goes to Ryan Thomas of GMP for keeping faith with me.
The characterization of Harry St. Angelo is based on real-life FBI agent Bob Kroner, who fought the Lenny Strollo mob throughout the Mahoning Valley of in Youngstown, Ohio, from “Crimetown USA” by David Gann. The New Republic, July 10 & 17, 2000: 23-31.
Alex Gumataotao’s cyber activities against corrupt banks and money launderinginChapter7isbasedonnumerousFBIoperationsthatbeganinthe mid-1980’s and has continued through the present.
“La Casada Infiel,” the subheading of Chapter 11, is a reference to Garcia Lorca’sla casada infiel, “The Faithless Housewife.” Chen’s recollection of the line in Chapter 15 is from Rilke, “Every angel is terrifying,” is from “The First Elegy” of the Duino Elegies. Trans. Robert Hunter.(Eugene,OR:Hulogos’I,1987):l.14.“EinjederEngelistschrecklich.”
Harry’sfavoritefilm, Rashomon,isAkiraKurosawa’s1950masterpieceabout the rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband recalled from several perspectives.
Abouttheverisimilitudeof theairportheistitself,wherevastshipmentsof money, shrink-wrapped and bundled on pallets for flying to the Middle East in the chaotic days of the Iraq War, for example, occurred as early as 2003 when some hostile regions around Baghdad were still not under control, the Associated Press began circulating reports of fraud and mismanagement of the $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi money for reconstruction projects that commenced almost as soon as the fighting in some areas ceased.ByMayof 2005,reportsaboutthegrossmismanagementof funds in Iraq had become widespread. The figures are staggering. This “river of cash,” as one reporter calls it, includes everything from hundreds of millions for contracts to “tiny cash payments” to pay workers and pensioners in the effort to rebuild that country’s infrastructure without a banking system. Planeloads of footlockers containing bundles of US currency in denominations of fives, tens, and twenties are stacked on pallets and flown into Iraq to be distributed to “division level agents,” who then have carte blancheto distribute the money. Arab News, citing a syndicated AP report in May of 2005, notes that US auditors could not account for $96.6 million. Considering the $8.8 billion provided to the Iraqi interim government altogether,thatseemsatrickleintheflowof moneytoacountryitdescribed as “awash in billions of dollars in cash.” Similarly, Aljazeera’sEnglish home page headlined a piece: “U.S. Mishandled Millions of Iraqi Money – Audits.” Not only do these agents operate without auditing controls but they often do not even procure a signature for the vast amounts they distribute. Allegationsintimatethataccountsarebeing“washed”solelytomakethem balance—for instance, one of these agents had his authority revoked, yet he continued to manage huge sums of money for three weeks afterward. When informed his account was short by $1,878,870.00, he promptly delivered precisely that amount to the dollar to his supervisors, which suggeststhatheturnedinonlyenoughtobalancetheaccount.Thenumberof these agents is not known. These unorthodox money shipments were investigated by the GAO years ago and supposedly stopped.
Of the many fatuous academic literary references and allusions from Professor Macbride, the average reader will know most; the typical English major will get them all and recall unfondly the hours wasted in classrooms listening to these self-important dullards.
Finally,AnnieChengismyowncreation,inspiredbyawonderfulandpleasant young student of that name at Beida, the elite Peking University (“Beijing University”), whom I met on a goodwill trip from my university in 1999. She spoke three languages and told me she planned to enroll in Cornellasanarthistorymajor.AnnieChengfirstappearedinashortstoryand later in Special Collections(New River Press, 2014). Her spiritual “cousin” is Jade Hui, main character in Perfect Killer(Crowood Press, 2018). About the author
Robert White has published several crime, noir, and hardboiled novels. Many stories have appeared in magazines like Switchblade, Yellow Mama, Down & Out, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Mystery Weekly, and Close to the Bone. Nominated for a Derringer for one crime story, another was selected for BestAmericanMysteryStories2019.White’stwohardboiledseries featuresprivateeyesThomasHaftmannandRaimoJarvi,whodebuted in Northtown Eclipse. Murder, Mayhem & More cited When YouRunwithWolves(2018)asaFinalistforitsBestCrimeBooks. Perfect Killer earned a similar distinction in 2019. Waiting on a Bridge of Maggots, a noir thriller set in New Mexico, is available from Grand Mal Press.
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