Crooked (7 page)

“How about a Bud. Anybody else been in here? A guy in a tweed suit?”

“Happy Hour: Two-fifty. Not that I recall. Guy got a Rolling Rock little while ago.” Wax pointed at a speaker. “Go, Jimmy, go.”

Maureen slid three dollars onto the bar and watched as Wax started to roll a joint behind the bar. When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she took another look around the room and saw Nicholas tucked in the corner. She approached him. She smoothed her skirt at the hips and he looked away, grinning to himself like an alley cat willing a passerby to pet him.

“How do you find these places, Nicholas?” Maureen slid next to him in the booth. “I mean, every time you get a new dive, I think I’ve seen the lowest…”

“Hey, at least the name is the address. Easy to find, easy to remember.” Nicholas smiled, admiring the cut of her power suit. “Not a bad neighborhood either.”

Maureen’s lips twisted up one side of her face. She kicked off her shoes.

“I saw our friend Drummond Yager this morning, spent the afternoon making inquiries. Wanna hear about it?”

“Been a while since we…”

“Took some buffalo wings up to your place and got sauce all over your sheets?” She gave him a sly look from under her red locks. “We going to talk shop, or what?”

“Maureen, what is it with us?” Nicholas slid a hand down her thigh. She shuddered. “Animal magnetism?”

“Yeah, like animals, I guess,” she said breathessly.

113 was dark, the music was loud, and the bartender was thoroughly preoccupied. Nicholas blew out the candle.

Booty Wood did his thing on muted trombone. Matthew Gee Jr. chased his licks as first trombone. And by the finale of “C Jam Blues,” Duke’s band was rocking full force to the insistent wails of Jimmy Hamilton’s clarinet. End of Side 1.

Nicholas and Maureen headed back to his place to play the flip side. And eat a little chicken.

C h a p t e r                           8

 
D
rummond Yager stepped out onto the balcony of his Upper East Side high-rise. The night was chilly, and he fastened his quilted satin robe over his silk pajamas to guard against the cold. Smoothing his silver hair, he took a pack of Dunhills from a side pocket. With hawklike intensity, his predatory eyes surveyed the river, snow-dusted rooftops, and the overcast sky. The clouds glowed a dull orange from the city’s sodium streetlamps. To his right, tramway gondolas bound for Roosevelt Island whirred and rattled past. From his shadowy perch, Drummond tracked them, rabbits unaware of his presence.

The flickering, humming expanse of the Queensboro Bridge loomed just beyond. Across the East River lay Queens, and to his left, upriver, he could just make out the bulk of the Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital on Ward’s Island. Where Barney would soon be drilling every night. Where Drummond’s coup de grace lay buried. Yes, the view from his corner balcony was commanding, which was precisely how he felt. This job was the decisive one. It had been a long, rough road. Time to cash in.

Drummond had been away from the civilized world more than twenty years. As a dying expatriate once confided, the nether reaches of the planet have a way of “picking away y’soul like so many bloody ants.” Drummond hadn’t understood what the man meant. As he’d sat in moldering Vietnamese hotels, dank ship galleys, and guano-carpeted caves, he’d idly wondered how you’d know if your soul, being a rather flighty thing, had been picked away by ants or not?

Cambodia, the Gobi Desert, Irian Jaya, Somalia—in search of “lost assets” he’d traveled to harsh, inclement outposts so isolated from the civilized world that they seemed utterly devoid of compassion or empathy. He’d been witness to bizarre human, animal, and societal cruelties the likes of which newspapers rarely dared report.

When Drummond first began his travels, he’d regularly taken respite in civilized company, relating his bizarre travels in hushed tones to plantation owners and diplomats over brandy and cigars. But as the years waned, his gruesome tales turned into rollicking dinner table anecdotes that made the ladies blanch. The soiree invitations waned too.

Shunned by polite society, he immersed himself in back-to-back assignments. After two straight years in jungles, swamps, and war-torn wastelands, a fateful expedition “went bad.” His guide was dead from a snakebite to the eye, the bearers had deserted with the supplies, and Drummond found himself alone, lost, and jaundiced from yellow fever. At his wits’ end, he sat cradling a heavy golden Buddha on a muddy riverbank, where he hoped death would somehow be swift. Mosquitoes thick as fur covered the back of his sun-burned neck, and he was hypnotized by the blinding sun rippling on the undrinkable water he craved. Perhaps the bearers were right—the fat little statue had been cursed.

It was then that Drummond responded to a tugging at his sleeve. It was a small boy, a stringer of fish by his side and a dugout canoe beached nearby. The boy smiled and held out a plastic bottle of clear water.

The water, fish, and canoe saved Drummond’s life that day, though the encounter proved fatal for the boy.

That’s how Drummond discovered the ants had picked away his soul.

Not long after his recovery from yellow fever, Drummond’s tour of duty was ended abruptly by the home office in a cryptic dispatch commending him for his tenure. He knew a scaffold for what it was, and an assignment to New York could only mean one thing. They’d given him this one last assignment to keep him busy while they debated how to retire him. And with all that he knew, and all that he’d done in the name of Newcastle Warranty, they certainly wouldn’t trust him to live out his days quietly as a pensioner.

“Maybe I’ll be shot by a mugger, or be run down by a lorry, or have a fatal overdose of heroin,” Drummond whispered to himself. Leaning on the balcony railing, he scrutinized the next batch of people rattling by in a gondola. Was one of them an operative from Newcastle, keeping an eye on him?

“Drummond, it is cold here.” Silvi, his slinky Argentine protégé, slipped out onto the balcony. She’d thrown on a full-length fox coat instead of a bathrobe. Turning up Drummond’s collar as he lit a smoke, Silvi took his gold lighter and fished out a Dunhill from the pocket of his robe.

“You laugh again in your sleep.” Silvi tried to blow smoke in his face. “Never I see a man so laughing in bed.”

He put an arm around her waist, gave her a quick, edgy smile. “Barney’s on his way over.”

“Who do you think he calls today on the phone? Barney has maybe a double cross?” Silvi inhaled deeply, squinting at Drummond.

“Perhaps I should ask him who he was calling,” Drummond said dryly. “Although I rather think we’d do best not to tip our mitt, not just yet. You’re sure he didn’t talk to anyone?”

“No. Maybe he speaks only five words, he waits, he hangs up.”

“Do keep an eye out for that redhead I mentioned, the one who came to my office asking about Barney. I’m unsure of that one.”

From the living room, a buzzer sounded.

“It is him.” Silvi pushed away from Drummond and disappeared into the living room.

Moments later, Barney stepped out onto the balcony, looking from Drummond to the nightscape. “Nice view.”

Silvi reemerged with two sifters of cognac.

Barney took his drink with a nod and waited for her to retreat to the warm apartment before he continued. “We’re all set with the Pazzo brothers.”

“What have you told them?” Drummond’s eye flitted from Barney toward Hell Gate.

Barney dug his free hand into his pocket and leaned on the railing. Drummond looked at him, waiting for an answer.

“That the Department of Environmental Protection was concerned about the buried boats leaking fuel oil into the water table. Told them we have to drill at night because during the day the Fire Department uses the area. Their training center is right across the way. Said I was hiring the Pazzo brothers for a small kickback.” Barney took a sip of cognac.

“Are these Pazzos reliable, Barney?”

Barney cocked his head in thought. “Drillers are a pretty erratic bunch; they take a lot of stupid risks. But if they didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to pull this off. Not like this. We’d have to cut them in.”

“Did you stake out the boats?” Drummond finished his cognac. Barney took another nip at his own and winced.

“I found the boats. All a matter of which is the
Bunker Hill
.”

“Found?”

“Pretty sure.”

Drummond considered Barney’s furtive grin. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. He looked at him until Barney finally raised his eyes to his. The ice blue eyes didn’t tell him anything either.

“Let’s say these drillers, when they hit the
Bunker Hill,
bring up gold on their drill bit. What then?”

Barney put his snifter aside. “Told them there used to be a smelting plant on Ward’s Island, that there’s liable to be a lot of stray brass in the substrate.”

Drummond looked away, out to the river. “These Pazzo brothers had better not find out what we’re on about, Barney.”

“If they do?”

“Then I’ll expect you to take care of it.” Drummond gestured to a plain black box on a lawn chair. This would be the test, a gauge of Barney’s mettle. Yager still had doubts about this specialist Swires. After all, he was a technical person, a blueprint and yardstick man, who from what Drummond knew had no direct experience in criminal enterprises. Then again, LAD listed Barney as “recommended” on their freelancer database.

Barney turned to the box, pursing his lips, thinking.

“This what I think it is?”

Drummond didn’t reply. Barney knelt, put a hand on the lid of the box, and opened it. Inside: a pistol. A big, silver automatic. He studied it a moment, understanding that he was in a bit of a predicament.

Drummond felt he’d made Newcastle’s goals clear, and this only made it clearer. Here was a giant multibillion-dollar insurer against the ropes. A series of poorly timed natural disasters around the globe had Newcastle near bankruptcy. A hurricane in Florida, fires in California, floods in Europe, a drought in California, a tsunami in the Far East, mudslides in California. Drummond’s job was recovering sunken assets. Only he had to do it clandestinely. Why? Because as soon as “lost assets” hit ocean bottom they became treasure, and out came the government’s paw looking for the lion’s share. Barney was to find the boats covertly and figure out a way to quietly extract the gold. And to keep the operation secret by whatever means necessary.

Had Barney realized that Drummond’s idea of expedience might extend beyond the drillers? That Barney himself might be expendable once the gold was recovered? Did he suspect that Drummond might be working to his own ends? If he had such suspicions, Drummond didn’t detect them.

Barney lifted the big silver gun out of the box and looked down the sights at a passing gondola. Then he resumed his place at the railing and grinned casually.

“This should do the trick.”

Drummond arched an eyebrow—such a cavalier attitude with a gun indicated that there was more to Barney Swires than fifteen years of mapping tunnels for the city. But then, Drummond had surmised as much. Otherwise Barney wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with insurance work.

“Extra clips are in the box.” Drummond dragoned smoke from his nose. “It’s loaded.”

Barney cocked his head. “I can tell, by the weight.”

Drummond still wasn’t completely sure if his bravado with the gun was part bluff. “Take it in the box,” he said, flipping his cigarette off the balcony with his truncated hand, his simmering demeanor intensifying. “The number has been filed off; it’s virtually untraceable. When you’re through with it, dispose of it immediately. If you throw it in the river, there won’t be any fingerprints. Best to drop it off a bridge, into deeper water. But get it as far away from you as possible, as soon as possible after use.”

“Uh huh. And when do I get the van, the containers, the industrial collector, and generator?”

“Silvi will deliver them to Randall’s Island the night you find the boat, after the drillers leave. Or are dispatched.” Drummond lit another Dunhill. “I expect a report every night when you finish, no matter what the time. If I don’t hear from you…”

Barney turned and carefully fit the gun back in the box, closing it and tucking it under his arm. “I won’t double-cross you.”

“We’re talking about a great sum of money, Mr. Swires.”

“I wouldn’t be able to move that much gold by myself.” Barney rubbed his jaw pensively, then tilted his head toward the apartment. “What about her?”

“That’s not an issue,” Drummond hissed.

C h a p t e r                           9

 
B
arney exited the Quik Park on 61st Street and made a right onto First Avenue. He drove slowly and in time to the green lights, toward 125th Street, the Triborough Bridge, and Randall’s Island. He had an hour before the Pazzo brothers showed up at the drill site, so he was in no hurry.

He glanced at the gun box on the passenger seat, orange light from passing streetlights washing over it in waves. Probably not a good idea to drive around with a weapon on the car seat, and he had a notion to maybe make a right at 79th Street and toss the gun in the East River at the earliest opportunity.

But then he remembered something Mr. Faldo once told him:

“Riches are obvious, but the things of real value are those we often take for granted. Regret is remembering the precious things we threw away before we know they are precious.”

Well, he hadn’t been talking about big silver automatic handguns, Barney knew that. But still, Barney wondered if he should figure out some way to make the gun a resource instead of a detriment. Drummond had in mind that he kill Sam and Joey. But what else could he do with the gun?

Another Faldo saying came to him:

“Indecision is the mind’s inability to reverse itself, and to reverse circumstance.”

That one always confused Barney, but he got the idea that it was a suggestion to think outside the box, or try considering completely opposite options than those that seemed to make sense.

So what if he gave the gun to the Pazzos so they could kill him?

The Faldo episode had occurred when Barney was ten years old. It began when he stumbled upon a backyard Japanese rock garden. It was so strange and curious that he fancied it must be the work of gnomes or trolls, who would surely enslave him should he be caught trespassing. On his second visit, it was Mr. Faldo rather than any gnome who caught him sneaking into the garden. Mr. Faldo offered Barney some mint tea in lieu of a talk with the police.

While Mr. Faldo wasn’t Japanese, the white-haired old gent always wore bamboo sandals and a kimono. He proceeded to show Barney all the intricacies of his rock garden: the pond, the fish, the rock lanterns, the ancient, gnarled little trees. He said Barney could return to visit anytime, but that he must respect the rock garden as a place of tranquility—which Barney soon learned meant a place to goof off without a television.

Every day after school, Barney would slip through the bamboo thicket that surrounded Mr. Faldo’s house and watch the old man work in his garden. They didn’t talk much. Eventually, Mr. Faldo asked for his help digging a hole and Barney figured that was the end of that. If he wanted to dig holes, Barney could go home and help his father with yard work. But Mr. Faldo simply looked at him and waited. Barney finally capitulated. After a few spades of loam, the soil spilled away to divulge a pocket watch. Barney brushed it off and saw that there was an old train engraved on the cover.

Mr. Faldo marveled at the find and said that the train depicted was the Orient Express. Examining it carefully, he whispered to Barney that it was solid gold and made in Kathmandu, which was on Mount Everest, the final destination of the Orient Express. It was extremely valuable, he said, so valuable that you could never sell it for what it was worth because nobody would recognize its true nature, no matter what you told them. Anyhow, Mr. Faldo said, there were some things that had more value than money.

Barney didn’t believe that. Not until the man at the bike shop wouldn’t give him a Sting-Ray in exchange for the gold watch.

A week later, Barney was helping to clean out Mr. Faldo’s fishpond when he found a huge gemstone ring. Mr. Faldo gasped and said it looked like the Maharajah’s Serpent, a ring last seen when the Visigoths sacked Constantinople. The stone was about the size and color of a crab apple, but more purple. Mr. Faldo said he’d never found anything like these treasures while working in the garden before. He stroked his white hair thoughtfully and put a hand on Barney’s shoulder.

“You must be a very special person. These things—the watch, the ring—come from the other side of Planet Earth. They must have been trampled into the soil so hard by invading armies, or dropped so deep into a glacial crevasse, or have fallen with their owners into a fiery volcano so bottomless that they worked their way through the planet until they surfaced on the complete opposite side of the globe.

“What’s more, my friend, I think you may have a special life ahead of you. Why have I never found these things, old as I am? These are things both of the past and of your life’s voyage.”

Barney took the ring to a jeweler, who told him it was a worthless fake, and when he returned to the rock garden with this news, Mr. Faldo laughed.

“Do you expect a jeweler to know history when he sees it? Both the history of the ring and yours that has yet to unfold? For that is the value of this ring.”

Barney thought about that a moment before surmising there must be many more valuables in the garden. He proposed some major excavations and mining operations, but Mr. Faldo held up a hand.

“You come to my garden for tranquility, which is knowledge of the self through diligence. A man must have balance of mind between his accomplishments, that which he desires, and that which he must be. Possessions are nothing of themselves, only the product of our own history. Our destiny. And destiny is who we are and ultimately will be.”

Barney spent several days thinking about that. He looked up the big words in the fat dictionary at home, but he still couldn’t make sense of it. And through his next several visits, he anxiously dug, scraped, and cleaned. Disappointment soon followed.

“You dig and scurry like a little dog. You have lost your tranquility and will not find the treasures until you get it back.” Mr. Faldo smoothed his white hair and wagged a finger. “Be happy with useful work and what you have now, for you will not always have either. It is the path to a life of truth.”

But it all came to an end one Saturday morning. Barney finished the latest
Phantom
comic book and decided it was time to escape the house before his father put him to work. He could hear his father down in the kitchen, probably dressed and ready for lawn work. Even since his mother had left them years before, his father’s pursuit of the perfect lawn, the flawlessly trimmed hedge, and razor-sharp edging of the front walk were all-consuming. He cleaned, dusted, and vacuumed the house late into the night. And for all his fastidiousness, the meals he prepared for them—including breakfast—were relegated almost exclusively to cold cut sandwiches and raw vegetables. Even at the tender age of ten, Barney wondered if his father had gone off the deep end.

In the downstairs hall, Barney tiptoed toward the kitchen doorway. He could picture Father’s curled lip and knit brow, a pipe clenched in little yellow teeth, the file scraping the clipper blades with a clang. He figured there wasn’t anything Father liked more than sharp pruning shears.

From past experience, Barney knew there was such a thing as being too cautious. Peek around the kitchen door too many times before making his break and Father would catch him. Look once, then go, and he cleared the first hurdle.

With a can of 3-in-1, Barney dimpled oil on the hinges, carefully pushed the screen door open, and let it shut quietly on a slice of Wonder Bread he’d swiped from last night’s sandwich.

Over the back fence, behind the neighbor’s near-perfect hedge, up a tree, and over a garage roof got him to The Gully, a wooded lot adjoining a concrete drainage channel and dry culvert. Barney liked the culvert, a long dark concrete box that went under the highway. He could look up and see light through manholes and side pipes above.

Once on the other side, he was in Creek Park. Crossing the creek on a single-strand bridge made from rope he’d stolen from the school gym, he clambered up the hill to Mr. Faldo’s house.

Barney pushed his way through the bamboo and into the rock garden. Mr. Faldo’s spade was lying in the middle of the path, and the goldfish skimmed the pond surface hungrily. He sensed something was wrong.

“Hey, whadda you doin’ here? A sneak thief!” a lean man in a tight brown suit shouted at him from the porch, stumbling down the stairs. “My father’s not dead two days and you kids come in here stealin’.”

A big woman in a black dress, sunglasses, and huge red lips came out after him waving a hanky. Pointing a finger at Barney, her big red mouth curled back and loosed a shriek that put Barney’s short hairs on end.

Bursting back through the bamboo, Barney tumbled down the hill to the rope bridge, certain that the man in the brown suit was on his heels. In his haste, he slipped off the rope bridge and into the creek, but he scrambled up the opposite bank and ran for the culvert. Hoisting himself up into a chute off the culvert, Barney crawled up in a drainage basin and hid, listening to tires roar on the highway until it was dark.

In his flight from danger, the ring and watch had been dropped in the creek, no doubt destined to wend their way to the jungled shores of Kalimantan and the treasure box of an orangutan potentate.

He wondered what had become of his destiny.