by H S Peer
“Cindy found out about the drugs,” he said. “She borrowed a set of keys and let herself into the warehouse. She wanted a copy of one of her films to give to a friend. The copy she found was one of our doctored tapes, full of coke. After that, she started to pump me dry.”
“She blackmailed you?”
“That’s putting it nicely. She was a shark and always wanted more. Ten grand here, fifteen grand there. Keep it coming, or I go to the cops, she told me. What could I do? I paid her until there was no money left in the company accounts.”
I wondered where Cindy had hidden all that cash, she couldn’t have spent it all. There were no large sums of money found in her apartment, according to the police, and nothing in her bank accounts. What had she done with it? I would have liked to find, a little bonus for me.
“That’s why you borrowed money from Carmine?”
“Yes. There was nothing left, and I had a film going into production. I needed something to finance it with.”
“What about your bearer bonds?” I asked.
He seemed to go a little pale. “You know about that?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “Now they’re mine, as is the videotape in your safety deposit box.”
“That was all the money I had in the world,” he said.
“What you skimmed off of the drug money,” I prompted.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Why Amber,” I asked.
“Because she knew,” he said.
“What did she know?”
“She was in on it with Cindy. I don’t know how she was involved. Cindy told her I guess. Damn women and their big mouths,” he said with ice in his voice.
“Cindy was bleeding you, and you put a contract out on her,” I said.
“Yes, it was the only thing I could think of. I couldn’t keep paying her.”
“How much did you pay?”
“$25,000”
“Why so much, you could have had it done way cheaper than that?” I said. He could have probably had it done for $1,000 from some mutt on the street.
“I wanted it done right and no traces back to me. That’s why.”
“So you hired Simon the hammer.”
“Is that who did it?”
“Yes. You didn’t know?”
“No. I gave Lenny the cash, and he arranged the whole thing.”
“You trust Lenny that much?”
“Lenny is a friend of Carmine’s, I knew he wouldn’t talk.”
“He talked to me.”
“Obviously.”
“Why so low-rent with Amber’s hit?”
“She was a nothing, a makeup girl. No one would turn the world upside down looking for her killer. Cindy, on the other hand, was a star, of sorts. I needed to pay big bucks to have her ticket punched right.”
The room was quiet. I could hear a ticking clock and a hissing radiator. “Tell me about the drugs,” I said.
“I thought you knew everything?”
“I lied.”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m signing my own death warrant here.”
“What do you think I’ll do if you don’t talk?”
He didn’t answer.
“The drugs,” I prompted.
“Yes, the drugs. The Moto family needed national distribution. I heard this from someone somewhere. I thought, why not in the videocassettes? There are no customs checks inside the US. It would be as easy as pie. I approached Mr. Moto with the idea.”
“Just like that? Moto doesn’t just see people,” I said.
“You know Mr. Moto?”
“Of him,” I responded.
“I guess all you criminals stick together,” he said.
“Criminals? What the hell do you think you are? You had two people killed? You’re not innocent anymore.”
He didn’t reply but continued with the story. “I had Lenny approach the family. He dealt with some underlings, and when the deal was underway, I met Mr. Moto.”
“And he was receptive?”
“Very.” Smith reached up and loosened his tie. He undid the top button of his shirt. All this confessing must have been making him hot.
“So what happened?”
“Every couple of weeks Moto’s men would drop off a shipment. Coke. Heroin. Whatever. I didn’t ask.”
“As long as he paid.”
“Correct. We’d pack up the drugs and a couple of cases of video cassettes and head to an abandoned building somewhere to load them up.”
“Why not just do it in your warehouse?’
“The company was involved, but I didn’t want it that involved. Understand?”
I told him I thought I did, but it was hard to follow his thinking. He was already in for a penny and in for a pound.
“After the tapes were doctored we’d shrink-wrap them at the warehouse, case them and ship them to where ever Moto wanted them to go.”
“Ship them how?”
“A private freight company we use.”
“And no one got suspicious?”
“Not until Cindy found out.”
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“Seven months.”
“And how much have you made?”
“Two and a half million.”
I whistled.
“I know, it’s a lot of money.”
“Then where is it?”
“I had to divide up some of it with the warehouse guys. They do all the grunt work.”
“That aside, where’s the rest?”
“I paid off my mortgage, started a trust for my daughter...,”
“Quit stalling. How much is left?”
“A million-five.”
“Where?”
“In a Cayman’s account.”
“Now it’s mine.”
He turned red. “I don’t think you have any right to tell me what to do. I owe you some money, what $80,000? Other than that I don’t owe you one red cent.”
“You’re forgetting,” I told him, opening my jacket, “I’m the one with the gun.”
“Please,” he pleaded, “That’s all I have left.”
“Get on your computer and do a wire transfer to this account number,” I told him. I jotted down the relevant information on a Post-it note.
“You can’t be serious?”
“I’m deadly serious Mr. Smith. Make the transfer.”
He typed on his keyboard and began to look sadder and sadder. He looked like a man that has discovered his wife is cheating on him with half a dozen men. After a few minutes, he turned away from the computer monitor and back to me.
“Done,” he said.
“Now we can be friends,” I said.
“I doubt that. I’ve just given you everything I have.”
“If you had all this money why didn’t you put it into the business? Why did you borrow from Carmine?”
“I did have the books to think about. A loan, even an illegal one, is easier to explain than a million dollar transfer.”
“You have a point,” I said. As much as I had been tempted I never laundered money through the Liar’s Breath, it was the only thing in my life that was completely legit.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, “You were paying Cindy out of business accounts? Why didn’t you just give her some of your Cayman money? You had loads, enough to keep her happy.”
“That’s my money,” he said, “This is my company. How I do business is my business.”
“Instead of paying her from your ample funds you have her killed? And Amber too. Instead of playing along you have implicated yourself in a murder-for-hire scheme,” I said.
“Decisions needed to be made and I made them,” he said without any force in his voice.
“Why didn’t you just tell Mr. Moto about Cindy? He would have taken care of that for you, and you wouldn’t have been out $25,000.”
“Mr. Moto is crazy where security is concerned. That’s probably how he has stayed out of jail while all his
competitors are arrested.”
“So you didn’t tell him about your security breach, you handled it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“He’s not going to like this,” I said.
“You mean you’re going to tell him,” said Smith, astounded.
“Yes,” I answered.
“He’ll kill me. And probably you too,” said Smith. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to go as pale as John Smith had and still remain conscious.
“Very probably,” I said. “But I’m not getting in the middle of this. Like you said, decisions have to be made, and I’ve made mine.”
“You can’t be serious. Don’t you know his reputation?”
“Yes,” I said, “And I don’t care. You and he can sort this out yourselves.”
He said a filthy word.
“Why the videotape?” I asked. “Why put all that evidence on tape?”
“Just in case the cops got involved. I wanted something to implicate Moto.”
How a tape of Rainbow employees stuffing drugs in videotapes implicated Mr. Moto, I wasn’t sure. I let Smith have his delusions. It was pretty obvious he hadn’t thought this whole thing through. It was greed, pure and simple, that got him involved.
“It was you that broke in here last week, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“Guilt,” I confessed.
“There was nothing here to implicate me.”
“Yes, there was. You had a deposit slip from the Greater Bank of New York in your drawer. I use that bank too, I know what they really are,” I said.
He shook his head again, chastising himself for being so stupid. It was an easy mistake to make. One little deposit slip can easily slip your mind. But, for people like me, you only needed one slip up to put paid on the account.
“What now?” asked Smith.
“Easy,” I told him, “You go on about your business. Make your movies, sell your DVDs. Do everything as if nothing happened.”
“But when Mr. Moto finds out...,”
“You can deal with that when the situation arises. For now, leave it me. Understand?”
“I guess.”
“Good. And not a word of this to anyone,” I said and stood. I stuck out my hand. Smith stared at it for nearly ten seconds before taking and shaking it. His grip was limp, and his palms were sweaty.
“You still owe me 80 grand,” I told him.
“But I already gave you all my money.”
“Think of that as your penance for living a bad life. The 80 grand is a different matter entirely. When can I expect to see that money?” I asked.
He looked stunned and then looked at his appointment book. He flipped a couple of pages, “We have a new feature coming out in two weeks if it’s on time. After that is live, I’ll have enough to pay you - in 30 days.”
“Good enough,” I said and left the office. The receptionist was talking on the phone when I passed. From the sounds of the conversation, it was a girlfriend. She was talking about a date she’d been on the night before.
“No personal calls,” I told her and took the handset away from her.
“Who do you think you are?” she asked after I hung up the phone.
“For the next two weeks, I’m your boss.”
“Impossible.”
“Do as I say honey or you’ll be collecting unemployment.”
She opened her mouth twice, but no sound other than a squeak emerged. I laughed to myself. That would teach her. I left the office.
I went to the Liar’s Breath for lunch. Biscuit, recharged after a day off, was back on station. He brought me a pint and went back to his other duties. So now I was part owner of a pornographic film production company. Would wonders ever cease? My list of accomplishment grew and grew. Last week I stole a hearse, this week I was in the dirty movie business. Where would it end?
I ordered a rare cheeseburger, fries, and coleslaw. It was perfect. The meat was cooked to a point where the juice was running freely and soaking the crusty Kaiser bun. I ate a French fry and thought about the Moto family.
They arrived in this country from Japan in 1976. There was Hiruki Moto, the patriarch, and his three American born sons, Devon, Kirk, and Christian. It was rumored that when the clan arrived here from Japan Hiruki had more than $10 million in his pocket. He went straight to work buying up old buildings and converting them into clubs. There were also stories about how Hiruki and his sons might be connected to the Yakuza. I didn’t know what to believe. On the surface, the Moto’s were a prosperous family in NYC real estate and as providers of alcohol to thirsty club goers. But if Smith hadn’t of been lying, they were also involved in narcotics, fairly heavily.
I finished my lunch and went to my office. I sat at the desk with my feet propped up. After three deep breaths, I began to relax. It was almost over, but there was still a lot to do if I lived through it all. You didn’t mess with the Moto’s. There had been enough bodies littering the streets from the family without mine joining them. They had a reputation for unparalleled cruelty. Even among the worst of the worst the Moto’s were frightening. There are just some people in this world you don’t mess with. The Moto’s were in that category. And here I was trying to broker a deal with them. If I was lucky, I might get out of this alive.
They came into the Liar’s Breath from time to time. But why pay to drink when you can get it for free at one the five clubs your own? I knew Devon, the second-in-command of his father’s empire. I checked my Rolodex and dialed the number.
“Club Throb,” someone answered the phone. I asked for Devon Moto. I gave the person on the other end my name and waited. It took ten minutes before someone picked up the phone again. I was about ready to hang up when Devon came on the line. I told him my name, and you could almost hear the wheels turning inside his head as he tried to place me. After a moment he greeted me warmly and asked why I was calling I didn’t want to go into it on the phone, so I requested a meeting for later in the afternoon. He agreed, and we hung up.
I finished my beer and had another. I couldn’t intimidate Devon or the rest of the family, pulling my gun would do little to further my cause. I would have to use my silver tongue for this meeting.
I went to the garage and pulled my Saab out. I drove through midday traffic and reached Club Throb just after 3pm. It was an old industrial warehouse. I’d been there once many years ago. There were three levels, each playing a different kind of music. It was a trendy club with the young people.
I parked the car and walked around back. The receiving door was unlocked. I was in a storeroom full of boxes of cigarettes, booze, and fountain soda canisters. I walked through the storeroom and passed through a second door. Then I was in the club proper. To the left, a bar ran along the wall, maybe a hundred feet long. On the right-hand wall were booths. In the middle, tables and chairs were flanking a massive dance floor. Devon was sitting in a booth with a calculator and a stack of bills. I approached and kept an eye on the two sumo wrestler types lounging at a table.
“Hello Devon,” I said.
He looked up from his paperwork and said, “How’s it going?’
“Just fine.”
“What’s so urgent that you had to see me right away?” asked Devon.
“Rainbow Productions,” I said.
“And what do you know about that?” he asked.
“I know they are your domestic distributor of various narcotics.”
“Where did you hear that?” he asked.
“A little bird told me,” I replied.
“Sure, we use Rainbow and have for six months or so. What’s the big deal?”
“No big deal. But it all stops as of today.”
“I don’t think so,” said Devon.
“Let me repeat myself,” I said slowly, “From now on no more drugs with Rainbow. You’ll have to find someone else.
“Poet, I can do anything I want. You can’t tell me what to do. If I want to use Rainbow, I will. No one’s going to stop me.”
/> “Listen,” I said to Devon, “The shit is about to hit the fan at Rainbow. You’ll want to get out and burn your bridges before that happens.”
“What are you up to?’
“You don’t know what happened at Rainbow?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
I explained Cindy’s blackmail scheme and the murders of her and Amber.
“Smith never told me any of this,” said Devon. I could see him thinking of what to do next. This had left his ass out in the wind. If Rainbow fell so could he. “What are going to do?” he asked.
“Burn it all down,” I told a-matter-of-factly.
Devon shook his head. “It was the perfect set up with Rainbow. It will take months to set up another distribution system like that.”
“Easy come, easy go,” I said.
Devon Moto swore and stood up. He started to pace. For him there was an easy way out; Kill Smith. I didn’t want him to do that, I wanted him alive, but I didn’t think Devon would buy it. He was more concerned with his family’s skin than about anything else. “You’re going to have him whacked,” I said.
Devon nodded.
“Can you at least wait until he pays me? He owes me $80,000.”
Devon laughed. “You may be out of luck, Poet. I think you’ll have to eat that 80 Gs.”
“Give me two days,” I asked. “I’m not done with this yet. I still need Smith.”
I could see him weighing the pros and cons. How much could the cops learn in a couple of days, he probably wondered. How exposed are we?
“You’ll keep us out of this?’ he asked.
“Yes,” I told him, “There won’t be a whisper of your name when this hits the papers.”
“You’re not going to be very popular” Poet,” he said
“Most likely,” I said.
Devon stopped pacing and sat back down in the booth. He thanked me for the information. Then he told me I had two days, starting right then. I let myself out the back door and found my car. I went back to my office at the Liar’s Breath. I called Lenny Apple. He wasn’t happy to hear from me and to tell you the truth, I was surprised he was still around. I had expected him to bolt right after our last conversation.
