Mask Market b-16 Read online

  T he next morning, the newscaster said Amtrak was taking the Acela out of service for a few months. Something about the brakes not being trustworthy.

  Another man might have taken that for an omen.

  T he restaurant was Japanese, not far from the old tennis stadium in Forest Hills. The hostess had a treacherously demure smile, too much rouge, and glossy black agate eyes. She showed me over to a corner booth shielded from the rest of the place by rice-paper screens.

  Charlie saw me coming, stood up, shook hands like we were business friends.

  “Hello,” the dark-haired woman next to him said. Polite smile, wary eyes.

  “John, I’d like you to meet my wife,” he said. “Galina, this is John Smith.”

  She reached up and extended her hand. It wasn’t so much cold as neutral. Inanimate.

  I sat down across from them, noting that Charlie had set it up so that I was facing the entrance, my back to the wall.

  “Do you know my husband a long time?” Galina asked, as the waiter placed bowls of miso soup in front of us.

  “More years than I care to remember,” I told her, smiling to show I wasn’t being hostile, just regretting my age.

  All the way through the meal, we talked about everything except what I’d come for. A New York conversation, ranging from superficial to fraudulent. Taxes, real estate, crime.

  “Dessert?” the waiter asked.

  “Let us think about that,” Charlie told him, handing over some folded bills.

  “He won’t come back until I call him,” he said to me.

  That was my cue. Turning to face Galina, I said, “When I came by your house the other day, you told your husband I was there, then you went back inside. While you were there, you made a phone call.”

  Her face was a mask of polite interest.

  “Your husband promised you would explain that to me,” I went on. “I’m sure he told you how important…how very important this is.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, please…”

  She looked over at Charlie. He nodded.

  “I am Ashkenazi,” she said. “You know what this is?”

  “Jews born in Eastern Europe?”

  A quick flash of surprise registered in her dark eyes, opening them to a new depth. “It is more complicated than that, but yes. I was born in Russia. My family, too. And their family. My ancestors fought the Nazis. In the Red Army. Many died. Those who lived, maybe they thought things would be different for them when the war was over. But it was not.

  “To be a Jew in Russia was always dangerous. And so it is today. More than ever, maybe. The skinhead gangs, they say they are targeting immigrants, but their alliances are with their brothers in Poland. In Croatia, too. The fascists are there in strength.

  “The way we survive is the way we have always survived—we do not look to the government for protection; we look to each other.”

  My eyes never left her face. A faint flush rose in her cheeks.

  “You do not believe me?”

  “About what you just said? Sure I do. But I guess I don’t understand what all that has to do with the phone call you made.”

  “Because you are not a threat, so why should we need protection from you?”

  “You don’t need protection from me. I didn’t even know you existed until a few days ago. You made that phone call because you already knew whoever you called wanted to talk to me.”

  “So?” she said, raising her chin as if I was the butler, defying the mistress of the manor.

  “That’s it?” I said to Charlie.

  “No,” he said quickly. “Just have a little patience, all right?”

  I sat back, waiting. He looked at his wife.

  “The people I called are my family,” Galina said. “They ask; I do. This is always.”

  I didn’t move. She looked at her husband.

  “Yes, I knew they wanted to talk with you,” she finally said. “They are…crazy people. But they are my people. By blood. So if they want something from me…”

  “They want a lot more than phone calls from you, Mrs. Siegel,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember I said I didn’t even know you existed until recently? Well, your people knew I existed before that. They knew I went to a meeting. A meeting with a client. Nobody knew about that meeting but me and the client. Your people might have been following the client. Maybe that’s how they spotted me.”

  Her dark eyes never left my one good one.

  “But I don’t think so,” I went on. “I think they knew my client had a meeting. I think they were listening in on his calls. And there’s only one way they get his number to do that.”

  “We already talked it over,” Charlie said. “Galina was just doing—”

  “Please don’t say ‘what she had to do,’” I said, chopping off whatever speech he was going to make. So long as Charlie Jones stayed a lizard, he could survive in the desert world of middlemen. But if he tried to go warm-blooded, the climate would kill him.

  I squared up so I was right on Galina. “You understand what’s at stake?” I said.

  “Yes,” she answered. She put her left hand to her mouth, kissed her wedding ring. Her way of telling me the man next to her wasn’t some long-term meal ticket; he was her heart. Charlie had been right—this one was no “bought bride.”

  “I want to walk away from all this,” I said, just barely above a whisper. “That’s what you want, too. Your husband and I, we’re never going to do business again. You go back to your life; I go back to mine. If you ever see me again, feel free to call whoever you want. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Ice-cold, now, and at home with it.

  “Showing up at a man’s house without being invited, I understand how that could be seen as an act of aggression,” I said, rolling my shoulders slightly to include both of them in what I was saying. “But you understand…you understand now…I didn’t come for that reason, don’t you? You understand I had no choice.”

  “Yes,” they replied, as one.

  I shifted my total focus to the woman.

  “I will never need to do that again,” I said. “I know how to reach your family now. I met with—”

  “—Yitzhak, yes. He is my cousin.”

  “And I know how to reach him,” I repeated. “But that would be my choice, not his. If I see him again, if I see anyone connected with you, even by accident, everything changes. I have people, too. Ask your husband.”

  “I understand,” she said. “And it is fair.”

  “T hat’s not what we sell in our store, and you know it,” Pepper said, her voice a hard, tight ball of Freon.

  “It’s information. And you deal in—”

  “It’s information we can’t get.”

  “Yeah, you—”

  “We can’t get it,” Pepper said, as clear as spring water, and as cold. “Only she could do that. And you were already told—”

  “I’m not coming sideways, Pepper. There’s only one thing I want,” I lied.

  “Yes, one thing: You want her to take a risk. Worse, you want her to ask someone else to take a risk. More than one, actually. What you want, it’s complicated.”

  “I know.”

  “We came all the way down here,” she said, looking around at the restaurant, “because you said you had something very important. Too important to say on the phone.”

  “And it was, right?”

  “Important? I don’t have any idea. Important to you, maybe.”

  “It’s…Look, Pepper, here it is. I told you what I want. What I want to buy, remember? I’m not asking to meet with Wolfe. I got that message, all right? I just want your crew to do what you do. Not for me, for—”

  “Money.”

  “Not for that, either. This is something…this is something you’d want to do.”

  “Yes?” Skeptical-suspicious.

  “I can’t tell you any more than I already have,” I said, knowing I’d alr
eady blown it. But I’d had to try.

  Pepper exchanged a look with Mick. I couldn’t see a muscle move in his face, but she nodded like she’d just finished reading a long letter. Mick got up from the booth and walked out the front door. Max waited a few heartbeats, then moved out in the same direction.

  Pepper stepped out of the booth, took out her cell phone, and deliberately turned her back to me as she walked off.

  In a minute, she was back. “You have the best food in the whole city,” she sang out, as Mama passed by on her way to the kitchen.

  Mama held one finger to her lips, but she was smiling.

  One of the payphones rang.

  Mama came back over to my booth.

  “Police girl,” she said.

  “I thought we had an understanding.” Wolfe’s voice, through the receiver.

  “We do,” I said. “But this, what I need, you’re the only one who can get it for me.”

  “Even if that was true, why should I?”

  “I’m back to…what I was when you met me.”

  “When I met you, you were a lot of things.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds. Then: “Yes, I know what you mean. What I don’t know is whether you mean it.”

  “I swear I do.”

  “On what?”

  I stayed silent, waiting.

  “What does a man like you swear on, Burke?”

  I’d never said it before. Not out loud. And, probably, if I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have said it then. I was just reaching for one true thing, and…

  “I swear on my love,” I told the woman who had always known.

  “W on’t you have another slice, sugar?”

  “Slice?” I said, looking at the gaping empty wedge in the French-silk chocolate pie sitting on the kitchen table. “That was a slab, girl. Three normal pieces, easy.”

  “Didn’t you like it?”

  “It was the best pie I ever had,” I told her, holding up my palm in a “the truth, the whole truth” gesture. “I’m just not used to eating so much.”

  “Oh, I can see that. You’re way too skinny, Lew. You’re not one of those men who think skinny means high-class, are you?”

  “Come here, brat.”

  “M en are so lucky,” she said, an hour later. “Fashions don’t change for you. A big deal is when ties get narrower, or lapels get wider—stuff like that. For us, you can go from being just right to all wrong in a month.”

  “I don’t see what that mat—”

  “Do you like these jeans on me?” she said, turning her back and looking over her left shoulder.

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Uh-huh. Except nobody hardly even makes jeans like this anymore.”

  “They’re just regular—”

  “They are not. These are old-fashioned. See how high the waist is? The new ones, they ride so low on your hips they almost make your butt disappear.”

  “There’s no chance—”

  “Don’t you even say it!” she said, her voice caught between threat and giggle. “The point is, I’m not built for the new ones. Everything they make now is for those girls with Paris Hilton bodies.”

  I made a sound of disgust.

  “What? You don’t think she’s cute?”

  “I think she looks like a really effeminate man. And when she opens that lizard-slit of a mouth, she makes Anna Nicole sound like Madame Curie. I wouldn’t just kick her out of bed; I’d burn the sheets.”

  “Oh, you’re so mean.”

  “You asked me.”

  She came over to where I was sitting, turned, and dropped into my lap. “How about we go for another ride in that car of yours, big boy?” she giggled. “I’m all dressed for it.”

  “P eople around here don’t do this,” Loyal said, her shoulder just brushing mine. “Go for drives, I mean. They get in their cars to be going someplace, not just to be going.”

  “We’re going someplace,” I said.

  “Where, Lew?”

  “I don’t mean tonight. I just meant, you and me, we’re going someplace, aren’t we?”

  “You’re the driver,” she purred.

  “W here do you get all that music of yours?”

  “The CDs? A friend of mine mixes them for me.”

  “‘Mix’ is the truth,” Loyal said. “I never heard such a…collection of different songs before.”

  “You like any of them?” I asked her. Between the Midtown Tunnel and the Suffolk County line, the Plymouth’s speakers had gushed out a real medley: Little Walter’s “Blue and Lonesome,” Jack Scott moaning “What in the World’s Come Over You?,” Dale and Grace begging you to “Stop and Think It Over,” Chuck Willis pleading “Don’t Deceive Me,” Sonny Boy’s “Cross My Heart,” even a rare cut of Glenda Dean Rockits, “Make Life Real,” sounding like Kathy Young backed by Santo and Johnny.

  “That ‘Talk of the School’ one was so sad. Kids can be so mean, especially in high school.”

  “You know who that was, singing?”

  “No. But I’m sure I never heard him before.”

  “But you did, girl. That was Sonny James.”

  “The Sonny James?”

  “Yep.”

  “But he’s country, not—”

  “Not doo-wop? Roy Orbison had a doo-wop group himself once.”

  “For real?”

  “Sure. Roy Orbison and the Roses.”

  “My goodness.”

  She drifted into a sweet, connected silence. We were encapsulated, the Plymouth sliding smoothly through the night.

  “I loved that girl singer,” she finally said. “You know the one?”

  “Sounded like a young Patsy Cline?”

  “Yes! Can we play hers again?”

  I hit the “back” button until I found the cut. A driving, insistent bass line, the plaintive haze of a steel guitar hovering over the top. A nightingale’s voice cut through the steel like an acetylene torch:

  You say that was your cousin

  But I know what I saw

  And if that girl was your cousin

  You both was breaking the law

  “Oh, I know I should just hate that,” Loyal said, chuckling, “but that Kasey Lansdale is just too good! That child’s going to be big someday.”

  “Why should you hate it? The song, I mean.”

  “Well, it’s another of those stupid stereotypes, isn’t it? You know, rednecks and incest. Tobacco Road stuff. We’re supposed to be all kinds of bad, Southerners. To hear some of the people around here talk, we’re all Bible-thumping, ignorant racists with no teeth, living in shacks. Well, you know what, sugar? That’s just another kind of prejudice.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re not going to argue with me?” she said, lightly scraping her fingernails over the top of my thigh. “Or are you just making sure I’m going to be nice to you later?”

  “I can’t speak for the South. I haven’t spent enough time there to say. But anyone who thinks there’s no racism in New York hasn’t lived here long.”

  “I know,” she said, vehemently.

  “And anyone who thinks one part of the country—one part of the world—has got a patent on incest is in a coma.”

  “There’s good and bad people everywhere,” Loyal said, a schoolgirl, reciting a hard-learned lesson.

  I ’m a lifelong gambler, but I never go all-in unless we’re playing with my deck. Hedging bets is more my style.

  When I left Loyal’s apartment building, I drove downtown. I like the subway better, but this time of the year it’s a hermetically sealed disease-incubator, a particle accelerator for germs. Winter flu’s bad enough, but springtime flu can drop you quicker than a Jeff Sims overhand right.

  Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. New York is a city of streets. Five blocks away from where I stopped, ruptured-synapse zombies trembled in doorways, down to nothing but the prayer that the next rock they bought with blood-bank money would be a
sweet crackling in their glass pipes, not a tiny chunk of drywall pretender. But I was standing in that sparkling piece of Manhattan where they shoot those perky and precious romantic comedies. The block was lined with wonderful little shops and reeked of ambiance. The princes who lived there kept their organically grown marijuana in rosewood humidors.

  I used my cell phone instead of ringing the bell. Stayed on the line until I was buzzed in. Took the tiny little elevator cage to the top floor.

  The man who let me in was built like a jockey, all muscle and bone. He had a shaved and waxed skull, a ruby in his ear so heavy it had elongated the lobe, and a red soul patch under his lower lip, the same color as his tank top. His eyelids sagged, dark half-moons stood out against the bleached whiteness of his cheeks. He looked as weary as a platitude in a mortician’s mouth.

  “So?” he said, exhaustedly stepping aside to let me in.

  I walked over and took a seat at one end of a long, narrow slab of butcher block. He followed me languidly, sat down at the other end.

  I slid a copy of the CD Clarence had made over to him like I was dealing a card. It was an edited version of the one Daniel Parks had handed over.

  “I’d like to find that woman,” I said.

  “That’s nice,” he said. Like any good psychopath, he lived in the Now, and whatever ethics he had were long past their sell-by date. He knew that the only way the meek were going to inherit the earth was if the last predator to go left it to them in his will.

  “I’d consider it a big favor,” I told him.

  “Redeemable for…?”

  “The last job I did for you…”

  “You were paid for that, as I recall.”

  “I was paid to do one thing,” I reminded him. “The job turned out to be more than you said it was going to be.”

  “I never promised—”

  “You told me someone had something that belonged to you, and you’d pay me to get it back.”

  He raised what would have been his eyebrows, if he hadn’t shaven them off.

  “It wasn’t yours,” I said, placidly.

  “Well, that’s a matter of some dispute.”

  “The dispute turned into a bullet wound.”

  “So you’re here for more—”

  “I told you what I’m here for,” I said. “Be a good listener; that’s how people stay friends.”