Condemned (66 page)

“That's true,” Anna said, wincing with pleasure at the touch of Svetlana's fingers pinching her nipples, “but the Boss said if we kill you, he will forgive us.”

“You two whores are going kill me?” Uri said to Anna, his face streaked harshly with sudden anger.

“Don't be crazy, Uri,” Svetlana said, twirling, her large breasts distracting Uri momentarily.

“I be crazy or anything I want.” Uri picked up the bottle of vodka from the table by its neck.

Like a cat that had been poised to pounce, as she twirled, Svetlana pulled an automatic pistol with silencer from under the pile of clothing she had discarded.

Uri stopped, staring at the weapon.” You going to shoot me?” Uri scoffed. “You got no balls to do that.”

There was a flash and a whining ricochet as Svetlana fired the weapon slightly to the left side of Uri. “Balls, no, fingers for the trigger, yes.”

“You fucking crazy?” Uri was frozen in place.

“Maybe. Sit down,” said Anna. “We want to explain something better to you.”

“You fucking fired the weapon in here?” Uri said, looking to see what the bullet had pierced. ‘You're fucking crazy.”

“Don't worry about your wall, pig,” said Anna. “Sit!”

Uri sat, his eyes wide with vodka and fright.

“We could have killed you if we wanted, days ago. But like you say, we are in the same boat, as you,” said Anna. “How do we know, after we kill you, the Boss doesn't send somebody to kill us?”

“That slimy American bastard,” said Uri.

“One more slimy bastard, so what?” shrugged Svetlana.

“We thought it would be better to talk to you than to kill you,” said Anna.

“Instead of killing me? I agree very much.”

“We also talked to Tatiana Marcovich's boyfriend, the American lawyer,” said Svetlana.

“You talked to Tatiana Marcovich's boyfriend? An American lawyer? About what?”

“We talked to Tatiana in the ladies' room, over here, the night we came in from Romania—remember?” said Anna.

“Da, da.”

“And she took our numbers, in case she finds some American wants to get married.”

“Get to the point,” said Uri.

“Yesterday, she called us,” said Svetlana.

“She said she wanted to talk to us,” added Anna. “So we met with her, and, like, out of the blue, she starts talking about the night we came back from Romania.”

“What did you tell her,” asked Uri

“There was nothing to tell her,” said Anna. “She said she and her boyfriend already knew everything, about you, about the trip to Romania, about what we were carrying, about the black one, about the Boss, everything.”

“She knew?”

“Everything,” said Svetlana. As she was talking, Uri watched her naked breasts jiggling.

“Keep your mind on business, pig,” said Anna.

“I am keeping my mind on monkey business.” Uri burst with laughter.

Svetlana took a pillow from the couch and covered her breasts. “Tatiana said that the attorney for the United States, the prosecutor, was interested in the Boss, about when he was doing business in drugs in Leningrad, and now, here. She said her boyfriend, the lawyer, knows the Prosecutor and could help us out of this trouble.”

“She also said that she also wants to see the boss in jail, because he killed her mother,” said Anna.

“He killed her mother?”

“That's what she said,” said Svetlana.

“So we talked to her boyfriend,” Anna continued.

“And?”

“He said that if we helped the attorney for the United States with information about the Boss, we could help ourselves so we wouldn't have to go to jail.”

“And me?” said Uri.

“That's why we didn't kill you, pig,” said Anna. “You know the Boss from in Leningrad.”

“Can you point that gun in a different direction?” said Uri.

Svetlana lowered the weapon. “I don't point anymore. But I hold it.”

“They want us to tell information on the boss?” said Uri. “That is dangerous. He has many friends. We could be in big trouble.”

“We are already in big trouble,” said Anna. “The boss is a dangerous fuck. You, already, he wants you dead. Even we kill you for him, you think he's going to forget we were trying to work around him?”

“Never!” said Uri.

“That's what we think also,” said Svetlana.

“What does this American lawyer say we have to do?”

“He said we should talk to you, see if you would be interested taking a bath from your troubles.” said Anna.

“What's does that mean, take a bath?” said Uri.

“That's what I asked him,” said Anna. “He said if we talk to the Prosecutors for the government, we can wash away our crime.”

“You want to talk to him?” Uri said, looking from one to the other woman. “You think this is better?”

“What we have now, is we are all in line to be killed, you first, then after, us,” said Anna.

“This is true,” said Uri. “It's better to talk than be killed by a gun, even the gun belongs to a naked woman.”

“Much better,” agreed Anna.

Lower Manhattan : September 3, 1996 : 4:15 P.M.

Supervisor Michael Becker was seated behind the desk in his office reading activity reports when the phone rang. “Becker,” he said into the receiver.

“This is Sandro Luca, Mr. Becker.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Luca?”

“I'd like to meet to talk with you.”

“About?” said Becker.

“About Vasily Marcovich and Uri Mojolevsky in Leningrad, Anna Petrovski and Sascha Ulanov in Romania, Red Hardie in Scotrun Pennsylvania, Awgust Nichols in the Flash Inn, Tony Balls Spacavento in Chinatown, and a woman named Inga Marcovich on a deserted road near the border of Finland in 1986.”

There was stone silence on the other end of the phone.

“Hello?” said Sandro.

“That's quite an eclectic array of people and places, Mr. Luca. You mind telling me what you think they have to do with me?”

“I'm sure you know exactly what these people have to do with you, Mr. Becker. I have just finished speaking with Uri—Anna and Svetlana decided not to kill him—and he filled me in about you from Leningrad to Brighton Beach and back again.”

“I'm sure that must have been very interesting, but I still fail to see what it has to do with me.”

“I'm on my cell phone,” said Sandro. “I'm sure the caller I.D. on your phone confirms that.”

Becker glanced down at the numbers on the viewer. A 917 cell phone number was registered. “What's the significance of that?” said Becker.

“In case you thought I'd be on a compromised phone, trying to record you,” said Sandro.

“Doesn't matter what phone you call on, or if you record, or not. I have nothing compromising to say about anything.”

“I've made some very interesting recordings over the last two days,” said Sandro. “I'd like to play them for you.”

“Recordings?”

“All the people who I mentioned a minute ago,” said Sandro. “They've all had sudden career changes. They're all taking singing lessons.”

“What makes you think I have any interest in these people, their recordings, or anything else about them?” said Becker.

“Maybe I want to turn them over to you. It will be very private, just you and me. Anywhere you say. You pick it.”

“If I agreed to meet you, it might be construed that I know what you're talking about, Mr. Luca, when in fact, I don't.”

“Then I've made all these fascinating recordings for nothing,” said Sandro. “I thought you'd be very interested in having them.”

“I was just leaving the office,” said Becker. “If you want to have a drink—not to talk about the people you mentioned—just to have a drink, that'll be fine.”

“Fair enough. Where do you want to make it. Someplace you're comfortable.”

“You've been watching too many TV police shows, Sandro—may I call you Sandro?”

“Of course.”

“There's Ponte's or the Sporting Club. They're both near here. You pick it, Mr. Luca.”

“Make it comfortable for yourself,” said Sandro.

“I'll comfortable anywhere. Pick the place you have the most credit. You're buying. I'm only a government employee.”

“Ponte's. We can sit in the big couches downstairs,” said Sandro.

“What time?”

“Half hour, forty five minutes?”

“See you there,” said Becker.

Sandro closed his cell phone. He was seated across the desk from J.J. Dineen in the United States Attorney's Office. Two D.E.A. Supervisors who had been specially flown up from Washington after Sandro and Dineen met late yesterday afternoon sat on a couch behind Sandro.

“Ponte's is a perfect spot for a meeting,” said Sandro. “It's on the street level, next to the river. Everything is flat and empty around it. French doors, panes of glass from top to bottom all the way around the lower level. It's usually very quiet, almost empty, downstairs.”

“It's not far from here,” Dineen said.

“I know the place,” said the first Supervisor.

In order to avoid having agents who might know Becker, and forewarn him, a squad of Agents had been pulled in from Hartford this morning. To further insure against leaks finding their way to Becker, the Agents had not been briefed on their assignment, just told to stand by for instructions in the D.E.A. garage with two vans filled with surveillance equipment.

“You may have chosen the place, but Becker knows his stuff,” said the first Supervisor. “The place is hard to set up for surveillance—flat, surrounded by nothing much. It's on Desbrosses Street,” he said to the other supervisor. “No one can even pronounce the name, much less find it.”

“You think we get a bug in there?” said Dineen.

“Negative,” said the second Supervisor. “I don't know the place, but I know Becker—when he was with the C.I.A. You're not messing with a school boy. He'd never say a word inside. He might talk outside, in the middle of the street. He'd spot a van, a bug, even faster than he would a hard-on in a bathing suit.”

The first Supervisor nodded. “Pontes is the only building over there. There aren't even any rooftops.”

“Maybe you could videotape through the glass doors from across the highway?” said Dineen.

“Visual might be possible,” said the first Supervisor. “Audio would be nothing. All kinds of traffic sounds from the highway.”

“I doubt we'll even be able to use our radios,” said the second Supervisor. “Dollars to doughnuts he has a hand held with him, to monitor the channels.”

“If you folks don't mind a suggestion,” said Sandro, “I think we should use the obvious to our advantage.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is everybody here?” Sandro said to Dineen, rising from his chair.

Dineen nodded. “In the conference room.”

“Good,” said Sandro, “let's go in and see them. I think we can put our plans together and then I'll go over to the restaurant to meet Mr. Becker.”

Just as the Supervisors in Dineen's office had predicted, Becker brought a hand held radio to Ponte's with him. He placed it in the middle of the low cocktail table in front of a thickly upholstered couch. Sandro sat in a matching armchair, at a right angle to the couch where Becker sat. Sandro's back was to the glass doors and the traffic outside. Across the room from Sandro, a stairway led from the entrance doors to a low platform landing, then another staircase rose from the platform to the restaurant above.

“You want to search me, make sure I'm not wearing a wire?” asked Sandro.

“No need,” said Becker calmly. “I have nothing to say that would be the least bit interesting on a wire. And you are too smart, Counselor, to wear a wire, knowing that I might search you—especially since you've offered to be searched. A Stoli, double, chilled, no rocks,” Becker said to the waiter who had come to take their order.

“I'll have a Kettle One, stem glass, tonic, lemon,” Sandro added.

Becker studied the waiter as he took the order. As Sandro took a hand held radio, practically identical to Becker's, out of his pocket, Becker's face twisted with curiosity. Sandro placed the radio on the table.

“What's this?” asked Becker.

“Just in case we have to order another round.”

Becker snickered. “Where are your interesting recordings?”

“I left them in the car. You said you weren't going to be very impressed, so I left them. If you want, I'll get them.”

“We can wait. Let's have our drinks, first,” said Becker.

“
Na zdorovye
,” said Sandro, raising his glass.

“Mud in your eye,” said Becker, glancing around the lounge, out to the street through the panes of glass in the French doors. He knew a game was afoot, he just wasn't sure which game or who was playing.

“I'm glad you came,” said Sandro. “At least you're interested in my friends.”

“I told you, I'm not,” said Becker.

“Especially one of them.”

“Which one is that?” said Becker.

“Vasily Marcovich. You remember Vasily, and his daughter, Tatiana, from the night they escaped from Leningrad in 1986, don't you? You were with the C.I.A. then, right? You drove them almost the entire way to Finland.”

“What I remember about Leningrad is that it was fucking cold all the time,” said Becker. “I don't recommend it.”

“Don't you remember supplying Marcovich with heroin in Leningrad?”

“Counselor, if you're going to talk horseshit, and think that I'm going to buy into that horseshit, let's just finish our drinks and we'll be on our way.”

Sandro picked up his radio, switched it on, and said “Vasily and Tatiana.”