Dead Cat Bounce (23 page)

“No, you don't,” she said, and she slid her arm around his waist, giving his nervous system another jolt. He felt the pressure of her hand on his hip, urging him forward. They walked in silence a couple of steps. “I'll try to watch myself,” she said.

 

The makeup girl in the salon in Oradell said she was twenty-two, but she seemed even younger than Marisa. She giggled when he told her what he wanted. “Well, whyncha just go get 'faced?” she asked him. “I don't get it.”

“I don't want a real hangover,” Stoney told her. “I just want
to look like I got one. And it can't look like makeup, either. It has to be subtle enough to fool a very smart guy, up close.”

She shrugged. “Enkay,” she said. “No problem.”

It only took her a couple of minutes, but the effect was, when he walked into Emil Barton's office in Haworth for his meeting with Prior, he looked like a beaten man. His face was pale, his hair was not quite right, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His hands trembled, too. He had achieved that by drinking four cups of coffee. Barton came out, looking almost as bad, although Stoney figured that Barton's case of the shakes was probably well earned. Barton ushered Stoney into his inner office, where Prior and his guard were waiting. Prior was seated at a conference table. His guard stood against the back wall, silent, his hands crossed in front of himself.

Prior stood up, held out his hand. “We didn't have the opportunity to meet, last time,” he said. The makeup worked: Stoney knew from the look on Prior's face that the man saw him, not as a threat, but as someone who had accepted his lot in life and was resigned to the choices he had made. Prior's grip was fierce. Stoney returned the squeeze, but just barely. The first impressions are the strongest, and Stoney knew that from now on, Prior would think of him as a lush, a loser, a man defeated by life.

“No, we didn't,” Stoney said, and he sat down carefully, in the manner of a person whose bones were made out of chalk. I spent half my life feeling like this, he told himself. What a waste.

“So,” Prior said. “Does Gregory Ahn take his lawyer and his bodyguard with him everywhere he goes?” Prior was feeling it, Stoney was sure. The man was practically itching with the need to prove he had a bigger dick than all the other dogs.

“Generally,” Stoney said.

Prior continued probing. “Can you tell me why that is?”

Stoney leaned back slowly and sighed. “Gregory Ahn,” he said, “is a man of singular capabilities, but peaceful coexistence is not one of them. You don't need to like him, Mr. Prior. You only need to tolerate him. And he will make money for you.”

“So I'm told,” Prior said. “Is that what he's done for you?” His tone insinuated that the cost of Ahn's largesse, in Stoney's case, might have been too high.

“I do well enough,” Stoney said. “And I only have the one client to worry about.”

“What about Martin?” Prior said, speaking of Harman's character. “What's his story?”

“Martin is very good at what he does.”

“And that is…”

Stoney grimaced. “He defuses situations, when that seems possible. He discourages, ahh, the more impulsive among Gregory's business associates. And he keeps Gregory out of trouble and Gregory's name out of the newspaper. And he is very well compensated for his services.”

“He's the designated adult, then.”

Stoney managed a brief, painful smile. “It does seem that way at times.”

Prior stared at Stoney. “Please forgive the inquisition,” he said. “I like to know something about the people I do business with, and intel on Gregory Ahn is remarkably sparse.”

“That's not an accident, Mr. Prior.”

“I understand. Well, when I last spoke to Martin, I mentioned that I would need to get more liquid if I were to decide to invest with Ahn. In my case, for reasons we do not need to go into, that involves selling some diamonds.”

“Martin told me that,” Stoney said.

“Martin said not to do it,” Prior said. “He seemed to think that Gregory Ahn would be interested in buying my diamonds himself. Would you care to tell me why that is? Because I have to tell you, from what little I know about him, it seems a safe bet that I would come out on the losing end of any transaction I might conduct with Mr. Ahn.”

“That is a consideration,” Stoney said. “Martin mentioned the sum of five million.”

Prior nodded. “I thought I would start small, and see how things progressed.”

“Understandable,” Stoney said. “All right. Here's my suggestion: take your merchandise and have it appraised by someone you trust. Separate out the five million dollars' worth you were thinking of selling. Mr. Ahn, Martin, and myself will meet you in a diamond broker's office in Manhattan, who, acting in Mr. Ahn's interest, will appraise them as well. Once you and Mr. Ahn have mutually agreed on a value, you can choose whether to proceed or withdraw. Does that sound fair to you?”

Prior stared at him for a minute. “I have certain security procedures,” he said.

“Whatever,” Stoney said. “Do what you need to do to make yourself comfortable. There's just one other thing.”

“And that is?”

“This is more in the way of a suggestion. Mr. Ahn is going to be fascinated with your story. If I were you, I would resist the impulse to tell it. I would allow Mr. Ahn's imagination to fill in the blanks, that way he'll be less tempted to initiate a pissing contest. Dealing with Mr. Ahn can sometimes be problematic, and the more mysterious you are, the more pliable he is likely to remain.”

Prior leaned on the table. “I've seen his type before,” he said. “It's a sickness. Has nothing to do with how brilliant Ahn may or may not be, the fact is, his predatory instinct is so overpowering, he can't control it. If there's another living thing in his sights, he can't rest until he's killed it.”

Stoney nodded. “Killed it or fucked it.”

“And the more time you spend with him, the more he tears at you.”

Harman was right, Stoney thought. This guy already hates Cho so much, he can't keep from engaging. Why is it, he thought, that the moth always winds up with his wings on fire…? “You could look at it that way,” he said.

“How do you stand working for him? Is the money he's paying you worth the damage he does?”

Stoney closed his eyes, pretending that his head was throbbing, then he opened them and looked at Prior. “It's just a job, Mr. Prior. When it ends, and however it ends, I'm sure I'll find another one.”

“Lawyers,” Prior said. He stood up, looked at Stoney with a half smile on his face. “I could never understand the way you people think. All right. I can have five million in diamonds ready to go tomorrow.”

“That soon?” Stoney massaged his forehead. “I'll try to get the meeting set up for tomorrow afternoon.”

 

Bernard Finbury stared at Stoney, a sour expression on his thin face. “Took you long enough,” he said, after a minute.

“Yeah, well, you ain't the only blip on the screen, Bern. I been busy. But you know, you got shit locks on your doors.”

“You went inside?” There was a hint of outrage in Finbury's voice. Stoney was sitting in a white plastic chair on the front
porch of Finbury's house in the exclusive East Hill section of Demarest, New Jersey. “That's breaking and entering! I got you for unlawful entry, I got—”

“You got
en gatz en a culo
,” Stoney said calmly, and the end of his cigarette glowed orange in the gathering dark. “That's what you got. Why don't you sit down?” He shoved one of the other plastic chairs in Finbury's direction. Finbury looked at it for a minute, then climbed up on the porch, pushed the chair around so it faced Stoney, and sat down in it.

“What does that mean, anyhow?” he said. “I always wondered.”

“A dick in the ass,” Stoney told him. “Listen, I don't know if I said it before or not, but I'm sorry about your mother.”

Finbury thought about that for a while. “Thank you,” he said finally. “Your parents alive?”

“No.” Stoney sucked on his cigarette. “I was a great disappointment to my mother,” he said.

“So was I,” Finbury said.

“You're kidding me.”

“No. She never understood why I wanted to work with my hands. She wanted what all Jewish mothers want, she wanted me to be a doctor. So I build houses, and I make more money than most doctors, but she could never get it. She only saw the work clothes instead of the suit. She tried not to show it, though.”

“You build this house?” Stoney had taken a quick tour of the place after he disabled the alarm. It was big, new, and it had all the modern conveniences, but it had the soul of a Holiday Inn.

“Yeah. After the divorce.” Finbury shook his head. “Just had to have a bigger place than the ex. Stupid. You come here about those two guys I had shadowing you?”

“Yeah. I'm guessing they were unofficial, right? Friends of yours.”

Finbury shrugged. “They're from the Tenafly PD. I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I gave them a few bucks to watch you,” he said. “I'm not sure how good those guys in Westwood are. You're all I got.”

“That's what I thought.”

“She didn't deserve to die that way.”

“No, she didn't.”

“I'll pull those guys off,” Finbury said. “They were getting pretty sick of you, anyhow.”

“You'll probably have to go bail on them, first,” Stoney said.

“What? What happened?”

“New York's finest showed up while your guys were out front and carted their asses away. I would guess weapons charges. Something like that.”

“Oh, fuck. How did you pull that off?”

“My partner knows this guy on the Job in Midtown. The guy's brother got bagged at a DUI checkpoint in Fort Lee a couple of weeks ago. He seemed to think all Jersey cops are a bunch of hard-ons.”

“Shit. Am I gonna have to try and do something about the DUI?”

“Probably.”

Finbury sighed. “What are those things you're smoking?”

“Kools.”

“Gimme one.”

Stoney passed one over, along with his lighter. Finbury stuck the cigarette in his mouth, lit it up, then inhaled, eyes closed. “God,” he said, exhaling. “God, I missed these things.” He inhaled again. “You know who did it, don't you?”

It was Stoney's turn to think for a minute. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I got a pretty good idea.”

“You gonna give him up to me? Look, maybe you look at me and you see ‘carpenter,' okay, but I got connections. You don't get to be a successful contractor in Jersey without knowing how to solve problems, if you get my drift.”

“You'll never find anybody good enough to take him down,” Stoney said. “You'll only get your guy killed. This dude is a pro.” He told Finbury a little about Prior's background, but without giving him a name. “Matter of fact,” he said, “you get the cops to investigate the guy, the feds will come in and shut you down. Then they'll move our boy, and neither one of us will be able to get him.”

“Why you after this guy?” Finbury said. “And don't tell me it's because you were such great friends with my mother.”

Stoney contemplated the dwindling end of his cigarette. “Let's just say I owe him. Okay? And I hired your mother to look into the guy. And for that, I am truly sorry. But I needed to know what I was up against.”

The veins stood out on Finbury's neck, the man clenched his jaw and stared at Stoney, and for a moment Stoney thought coming to this place might have been a mistake, but then Finbury swallowed whatever he'd been feeling. “What on earth could my mother have done that would justify him killing her?” he said.

Stoney shrugged. “Invaded his privacy, maybe.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“Not to you. Not to me, either. But it's hard to figure how this guy's mind works.”

“You sound like you feel sorry for the son of a bitch.”

“What can I tell you,” Stoney said. “I don't always trust
my instincts. You know what I'm saying? My first thought was like, just whack the guy, but then I started to wonder. You tell me, Bern. I mean, no offense, but you look like a regular guy. You got this house in the burbs, you got your business, and you build things for a living.” He glanced over his shoulder at the darkened house. “I'm guessing, some guy hires you to build him a house, you try to do the right thing by the guy. Am I right?”

Finbury exhaled as he examined his fingernails. “Pretty boring life.”

“You know what I'm saying. Suppose you know for a fact this guy did your mother, but he walks. Okay? Now you're out driving, you see the guy, he's walking down the side of the road, there's nobody else around, just you and him. What do you do?”

Finbury leaned forward and stared at Stoney. “He cut off her goddamned ear,” he said, his voice cracking. “He cut off her fingers! You wanna know what I'd fucking do? I'd run over the cocksucker, that's what I'd fucking do, and then I'd back up and do it again just to make sure. And you know what? If she was your mother, you'd do it, too.”

“Maybe I would.”

“Look. You give me this bastard's name, I don't care who the fuck he is, and I promise you he will never give you any trouble again. Word of honor.”

Stoney looked at Bernard Finbury. You never knew, just because a guy was on the small side, didn't mean the guy couldn't cut it. “I tell you what, Bern,” he said, wondering how far he could trust the man. “I got a better idea….”

S
toney decided to show up at the house early that morning. Tuco had beaten him there, clearly, because the Beemer was already parked at the curb. Unless the little bastard stayed the night…The hood was still warm, though, when he felt it on his way past. What are you worrying about? he asked himself. Donna is way tougher with the kids than you, anyhow.

He knocked on the front door. Donna didn't look surprised when she opened it and saw him standing there. “Morning,” she said. “Have your coffee yet?”

“No.”

“Well, you may as well come in.” She stood back out of the way and let him pass. “Go on in the kitchen, I'll get your coffee. Marisa's not ready yet.”

He preceded her into the kitchen and sat at the counter. “Where's Tuco?”

“He's upstairs,” she said, “playing Nintendo hockey with Dennis.”

“That right?” Stoney glanced upward, as though he ought to be able to see through the wood and plaster to confirm that Tuco was, indeed, sitting in Dennis's room, and not Marisa's. Donna saw him do it, and she smiled.

“Your turn to worry,” she said.

“You're not worrying? You sure there's nothing going on with those two?”

“Oh, there's something going on, all right,” she said. “You want to know what I think, Marisa's in awe. Whether it turns into something else, your guess is as good as mine, but I don't think anything's happened yet.”

“I see.” Stoney hoped his relief didn't show too much. “What do you think of him?”

She handed him a coffee cup. “Tuco? Well, he's an uneducated inner-city kid with issues, his English is not great, his Spanish is worse, he has no sense of humor, and he doesn't have a job. What's not to like?” She snorted. “Actually, he's a nice kid. He's polite, he's been good to Dennis, plus he gets along fine with Marisa, and you know what a trial she can be. Why do you ask? I thought he was your friend.”

“He is my friend. And he does have a job. It's just, you know, at his age, with the hormones and all that, I was just wondering.”

“Is that so.”

“Yeah. But Tuco's not like most kids. And he's got a few bucks salted away, how rare is that for someone his age?”

“How much?”

“Couple hundred thou,” Stoney told her. “I think Tommy helped him put it into some condos in Brooklyn.”

“Whatever,” she said. “The question with Tuco is, what is he going to do with himself? What kind of life is he going to put together?”

“I don't know,” Stoney said. “But this will all be over soon. Maybe today, I don't know for sure. Then Tuco can go back to Brooklyn, and you can have Marisa fitted for a chastity belt.”

Donna laughed. “I wouldn't dream of it,” she said.

“No?”

“Of course not. She's too smart, for one thing. If she really wants Tuco, I question how much you or I could do to dissuade her. Marisa is the oldest seventeen-year-old I know. I'm afraid she's already past the point of letting her parents make her decisions for her.”

“Maybe,” Stoney said. “Man, I'll be glad to get this thing wrapped up, I'll tell you that.”

“Today, you said.”

“Yeah. If things break right.”

“Come home, after,” she said.

His mind reeled. He struggled for words “Do you, ahh, are you sure that you, ahh, you want me back here?”

“I don't want to think about it,” she said, her voice husky. “I don't know what I mean. I can't believe I'm just making up my mind about this right now, or that I'm talking to you about it already, but I want you home. That's all I know for sure.”

“That's good enough for me.” He stood up, took an uncertain step toward her. She crossed the kitchen floor and hugged him, squeezed him until he thought he would crack.

 

The voice on the phone filled him with dread. “I know who you really are.” Harman felt as though he was going to throw up, and he rolled over to the edge of the hotel bed and hung his head over the side. It was Prior, and Harman could hear him gloating. “That hospital your sister is in has the worst security I've ever seen.”

Harman's head swam. “My sister has nothing to do with anything,” he said.

“For my purposes, it hardly makes any difference.”

Harman fought to regain control. He looked at his shaking hand. “I suppose not.”

“All right, here's what's going to happen. You're going to call in sick today. There's a diner on Lemoine Avenue in Fort Lee. There will be a car in front of the place in an hour. Be there.”

“And if I'm not?”

“If you're not concerned about your own safety, you should at least be worried about your sister. The one who hasn't done anything.”

“Okay. Okay. I'll be waiting.”

“Great. And if you're smart, Martin, or should I call you Nathan? If you're smart, you won't make any phone calls about this. If you keep this between you and I, you can still come out of this with a whole skin.” He was chuckling as he ended the call. Harman thought about calling Fat Tommy, but Prior's last statement kept ringing in his head, and he decided against it. You can always call him later, he told himself. What would I say to him, anyhow?

 

Harman looked at the approaching car and debated the wisdom of getting in. He was standing on the sidewalk in front of the diner on the main drag in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just as Prior had instructed him. I should have called Fat Tommy, he thought, I should have told someone what was going on…. You left it too late, he told himself, but then he shoved his hand into his pocket, feeling for the cell phone. Green button, he thought, all by itself, on the left side. He pushed the button twice, which would tell the thing to redial whoever he had talked with last. Too bad he couldn't remember who that had been.

Prior's car pulled up at the curb, and one of Prior's guards held the rear door open for him. Harman looked at
the guy. “Hey, what's happening,” he said, thinking that he had to make enough noise to keep his phone call going. Got someone's voice mail, he thought, because he didn't hear any noises coming from his pocket. “You Prior's guy?” I could never handle him, he thought, let alone him and the driver, too. Not that it mattered. I should have never listened to Bagadonuts, he thought, I should never have gotten involved in this. I should have stuck to the plan and taken the next plane back to Toronto. Should have caught the red-eye, should have flown out last night.

He got in.

The guard closed him in, walked around the rear of the car and got in on the other side. The man looked over at him and smiled. Yeah, up yours, too, Harman thought. “You enjoying this?”

“Not yet,” the man said.

“Well, you might as well take me to see Prior. Let's find out what's on his mind.” Harman wondered if the voice mail had cut him off yet, and then he wondered who it was he had called, and what they would make of his message, if anything. You gave it your best shot, he told himself. Put it out of your mind.

They drove him a short distance away, to a motel in Fort Lee that lay right in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, not thirty feet from the roar of traffic. The place was called the Toll Gate Motel. Big neon signs on the side of the building proclaimed
AIR CONDITIONED
! and
CABLE TV
! The place was two stories high, cut into the hillside. It had a second-floor veranda that served as an exterior hallway, which looked like it was threatening to fall off. There was a row of filled garbage cans between the end of the building and the ripped chain-link
fence that delineated the end of the property, and stacks of used two-by-fours and sheets of plywood were turning gray in the sun in the corner of the parking lot. The windows of the office on the first floor were boarded up, but the white door was open. The whole thing was a bilious yellow orange, something akin to the color of vodka sauce, with the trim painted a nice contrast of baby-shit brown. Amazing, Harman thought, the place was overshadowed by new office buildings, yet no one had torn this shithole down to build another one…. Always a market for a hot-sheet house. It was the kind of motel where most of the patrons generally got their business taken care of and got gone within a half hour of their arrival. From the parking lot Harman could see Prior leaning on the railing of the second-floor balcony. There were three other cars and a step-van parked in the lot. Prior's driver parked next to the step-van, then came around and opened the door for him. The man had a sick half smile on his face. “Right upstairs,” he said.

Prior watched Harman come down the hallway the way a cat watches a mouse. “I want to thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” he said.

“You didn't give me much choice.”

“I guess not,” Prior said. “Step inside. Room 202.”

Harman watched as Prior plucked a semiautomatic out of his pocket. “Is that really necessary?”

Prior didn't answer, he simply gestured with the pistol. Harman sighed and stepped into the room. It was standard motel issue: queen-size bed, television bolted to a metal bracket that was screwed into the ceiling, a bureau and a couple of chairs. There was something that looked like an automobile battery charger, the kind you bought at Sears, sitting in a corner. The room smelled faintly of vomit. Prior's second guard stood
in a corner of the room, impassive. The bald chauffeur came into the room behind Prior and stood with his back to the door, blocking the only exit. Prior remained behind Harman. “You ever do cocaine?” Prior asked.

“Cocaine?” Harman was surprised at the question. “I suppose I've done a lot of things that I regret.” Like coming here, he thought. “What's that got to do with anything?”

“Take a look in the bathroom,” Prior told him. “Go on, take a look.”

Harman walked over to the bathroom doorway and looked inside. Emil Barton, the stockbroker from Haworth, fully dressed, lay in the tub. His face was ashen gray, his eyes were open and so was his mouth. He had one sleeve rolled up, and the pale skin of his forearm was rotten with needle tracks. Harman tried to read the expression on the man's face, but it was impossible to say if Barton's last emotion had been ecstasy or horror.

“Terrible drug, cocaine,” Prior said. Harman turned and looked at him. Prior was pointing his pistol straight at Harman's chest. “When they can't snort enough to get high anymore, they start mainlining it. And the doses get higher and higher, until it kills them. Did you know that Barton was a cokehead?”

Harman shook his head. “No.”

Prior clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Sloppy,” he said. “That doesn't inspire confidence. You really need to check these things out.”

Harman's mind worked furiously. He found out who you are, he thought, but he can't know the rest of the scam. If he did, you'd be dead by now. Hang on to as much of the lie as you can, because it's probably the only thing that's keeping
you alive. “Not my department,” he said. “Mr. Ahn has other people to handle that sort of thing.”

“Well, he should have known, then,” Prior said. “I'm actually sort of sorry to see the man dead, but I suppose he's served his purpose.”

“He OD?”

“You might say that. He was kind enough to answer some questions, first,” Prior said. He gestured with his pistol again, directing Harman to one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”

The chair was too low to the ground to get out of quickly. Harman sat there with his feet straight out in front of him. I'm screwed, he thought, no way can I jump fast enough to even try for this guy. Prior's guard was behind the chair, out of Harman's line of sight. Well, play along, Harman told himself. It's your best option. Your only one, right now…“That why you were doing business with the guy? So you could whack him if you felt the need? Then dump him in a joint like this one?”

Prior snickered. “You catch on quick,” he said. “Another drug addict, overdosed in another cheesy motel room. What could be more natural?” He sat down on the bed a short distance away, looked around the room. “The cops will probably figure a hooker did him, shot him up, then walked off with his money and his dope. Hookers and cocaine go together like peanut butter and jelly…. Of course, I won't be able to use this place anymore. Pity. I've had a lot of fun in this room.” His pistol was still pointed at Harman's chest, and he caught Harman looking at it. “I'm very good with this thing,” he said, “so don't do anything stupid. If you stay calm, and if your employer, if that's what he really is, isn't trying to rip me off, then we'll all go home happy, soon enough.”

“All of us, except Emil Barton.”

“Emil's with God, now,” Prior said, and he snickered. “Listen, Barton was beyond happiness. He wasn't sorry to see the end, believe me. Anyhow, Gregory Ahn's lawyer gave me the green light to do this.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Completely. I told him I had certain security concerns, and he told me to go ahead and do whatever I needed to do to make myself comfortable. ‘Five million is not a fortune,' that's what he said yesterday, or was that you? I suppose it may not be to everyone, but it is a lot of money from my perspective, so I am taking precautions. I needed to find out what Barton knew. Now I need to find out what you know. So tell me, is Gregory Ahn aware of who you really are?”

You have to preserve the illusion of Gregory Ahn's omnipotence, Harman thought. “Yes.”

“Just out of curiosity, why did you agree to work for him? According to the copy of your rap sheet that I saw, you ought to be set for life.”

“Set for life,” Harman said, his voice bitter. “Yeah, sure, providing I don't live more than another five years or so.” The man's in the same position I am, he thought. He's made it out, he's sitting on his money, but it's all he'll ever have. Is he as bored, here, as I was in Toronto? Or is he running low? Is he watching those numbers come back lower and lower with every bank statement? Is he doing the arithmetic, figuring how long it will be before he has to start wondering how he's going to hang on to his new life? “Do you know how much was left, by the time I got to a safe harbor? Not enough, my friend. Not nearly enough. So when Gregory Ahn told me he could double it in three years, I listened. You bet your ass I listened.”