Kill and Be Killed

by Louis Begley

  But Heidi had been to see me hours before that, right after I was moved from the recovery room to the room I was to occupy until discharge. She’d called my cell phone and landline numbers as soon as she woke up and was wondering whether she should next try the Southampton police, when her father, who was watching WLNY—I wouldn’t have thought that local news was of great interest to people like the Krohns, but I was wrong—came into her room and told her what he’d just heard.

  You’re providing my parents with the most excitement they’ve had since Bibi Netanyahu came to lunch in East Hampton three years ago—he and a truckload of Mossad gorillas. They’re so worked up that Father wouldn’t let me borrow his car unless his chief of security drove me. What’s going on, Captain? Two gunshot wounds? I thought you were invulnerable, that bullets just bounced off you!

  When she lay on a gurney in this very hospital less than twenty-four hours earlier I thought that a lot of squeak had gone out of her. Obviously, she’d gotten it back and hadn’t neglected her toilette in the rush to visit the wounded soldier.

  I did better than that, I said. I used to catch them on the fly and throw them back at the towelheads. This time I tried it, but it didn’t work. I must be out of practice. But this way I get to see you first thing in the morning in a glamorous red sweater that matches your running shoes!

  Tsk, tsk, she replied. If those friends of yours hadn’t run me off the road you’d have seen me this morning at your own house in my white silk pajamas! I might even have brought you breakfast in bed.

  Can I have a guaranteed rain check on that?

  Yes, as many as you like. But when will they let you out of here, Captain, and what are the next steps?

  The easy question first. The surgeon, who served with the army in Iraq and actually treated bullet wounds and knows what he’s doing, wants to keep me here till Wednesday. Both wounds are flesh wounds, there are no injuries to the bone, but he did have to dig out the bullet that hit me in the shoulder. Then I go home and follow up with a colleague of his at New York–Presbyterian. No problem. I’ll have Feng come out and drive me back to the city. But I’m afraid it can’t be in the Mini. The surgeon said the choice is between an ambulance and a car in which I can push the seat way back and stretch out.

  Don’t worry about the Mini, she said. Mr. Mahoney will take care of it. If Feng takes the Jitney or the train to East Hampton, Mr. Mahoney will also lend him Mom’s station wagon that’s in the garage here. Feng doesn’t have to return it. The all-powerful Mahoney will provide. He’ll have it picked up.

  I want to meet Mr. Mahoney. Can we put him on Abner’s case? Other steps. Once I get to New York, I can pretty much lead a normal life, except for running, which will have to wait some weeks, work with weights, and Krav Maga. No limits on martinis or pasta aglio e olio! More serious matters. Jovan is the guy who attacked Jeanette and the stand-up comic who used to call me. He won’t bother anyone anymore. I’ll be sure to offer my condolences to Abner, even though I’m not sure he’ll really miss Jovan. Something tells me he has other boys in reserve. I’ll call Martin Sweeney and see whether he and Lee have any news about Lena and Boris. If we nail Boris that will be mission accomplished so far as lowlife goons are concerned. That leaves us with the big decision: Do we keep looking for Kerry’s other file—and how long do we keep looking—before we take what you’ve got to Ed Flanagan? Or do we take what we’ve got to him on the assumption that it will be enough to bury Abner without more?

  She’d been nodding as I spoke and remained silent for a moment after I stopped. Then she said, Let’s give ourselves a week or perhaps ten days to see whether we can deliver the coup de grâce. I haven’t tried hard enough to find the other file. I guess I’ve tried to think logically about where it might be when I should have been free-associating.

  I’ll do the same, I said. Apropos of free association, I’m overcome by the feeling that you should come to dinner at the apartment on Thursday and sample Feng’s Cantonese cuisine. It’s good. Your cover—if you ever had one—has been blown. They know you and I are connected, so there’s no more reason for you to stay away from Fifth Avenue.

  Miss Krohn likes your instincts and accepts with pleasure, she told me, and put her hand on mine. It’s too bad you’ve lost the knack of catching bullets on the fly, but I’m so happy that the ones you missed haven’t done more harm.

  Good, I answered. Then we have a date. And there is one more step to be mentioned. That’s security for you. I hope your father will have his people on the job from the moment you arrive at your apartment. Abner is a murderous thug.

  He will. I promise.

  The floor nurse stuck her head in the door and said, Mr. Dana, the doctor was very clear. Short visits only. I’m very sorry, young lady, but the patient needs an injection and some rest.

  —

  Demerol is an old friend. I welcomed him. The wounds had begun to throb and hurt. Later that day Mary and Sasha came to see me.

  You saved my life, I said to Sasha. I didn’t call the police after taking the first bullet because I didn’t want that goon to get away. But I was cutting it too close.

  I’m glad for once I followed my instincts, she replied. If only I had the night when Harry was killed….

  I telephoned Scott and Martin. They both offered to come to Southampton. I said it might be better to plan to get together after I returned to the city. I also spoke with Feng and could tell that he had no doubt I wouldn’t have come to harm if he had been at my side.

  I saved Abner for dessert and called him right after the two policemen and the assistant D.A. departed. The only number I had was his office number, but what the hell! Don’t tycoons sometimes work at their private offices late on Sunday afternoon, especially tycoons who are elbows deep in crime? If he wasn’t there I’d leave a message. Wouldn’t bother me any if the honey-tongued Eileen listened to it before telling her boss there was a voice message he should hear.

  By golly! The southern belle came on. For the first time, I heard a tremor in her voice when she heard mine.

  I’ll see whether Abner is available, she cooed, Captain Dana.

  He was, and greeted me pleasantly: How do I get rid of you, asshole? Do you spend your life calling people who don’t want to hear from you? Who wish you’d never been born?

  It’s easy, I answered. Hire killers who can shoot straight. Not like the late regretted Jovan. But you’re on the right track. You gave me Jovan, and I give you my condolences. Now give me Boris.

  I can’t, asshole, nobody on earth can. Now fuck off!

  XII

  The dinner to which I invited Heidi at my apartment had to be postponed. The doctors suspected deep vein thrombosis, put me on heparin, and it wasn’t until Tuesday of the following week that Feng treated us to a feast that began with three kinds of dumplings and progressed through lemon chicken and spicy pork to a small but entire steamed bass in black-bean sauce and, finally, hot-and-sour soup. We drank martinis, prepared by Feng—I was obeying doctor’s orders and mostly keeping my leg up—and a dry Alsatian Riesling, a case of which Feng found in Harry’s wine cellar down in the building’s basement, a treasure trove that, to my shame, I’d left unexplored.

  While I was still at the hospital, Sasha and Mary, and, during the weekend, Heidi had come to visit and brought smoked salmon and roast beef sandwiches as relief from Southampton Hospital fare, and I had been in all-too-frequent telephone contact with Martin Sweeney. Still, sitting in my own library before an open fire, sipping martini number two and admiring, as I did each time I saw her, Heidi’s good looks and chic—that evening she wore black patent-leather pumps, black velvet trousers, and an ivory silk shirt, pleated like a man’s dress shirt, that she said had been made for her in Hong Kong while she was conducting the defense in a construction arbitration—I succumbed shamelessly to that most banal of self-congratulatory feelings. They made me want to postpone beyond that evening the inevitable discussion with Heidi of a new development. Let it wa
it, let it wait, I kept thinking, none of it can be repaired. Concentrate on remembering that it’s good to be alive, to know that my wounds will leave scars but no other trace, and to spar with that young woman, alternately so effervescent and acerbic.

  Feng had just served the fish when I told Heidi how happy I felt to be with her, at home, over dinner.

  I like you too, Captain, she replied, and Kerry was the sister I had always wanted. That’s why we have to talk about her even as we try not to swallow a fish bone.

  You’re right, I said. So I might as well give you the news. Martin and Lee were here yesterday afternoon, late; they marched in perhaps an hour after I arrived and told me about Lena. It’s not good. The cell-phone number Johnnie the Rat gave me was a good lead. Calling in various IOUs at the Bureau—Lee is also a retired special agent—they were able to get Lena’s last name. Radetska. A Russian immigrant, legal, green-card status. Presumably Jewish. They found her address, a studio apartment way east on Ninety-Seventh Street. The super told them he hadn’t seen her in a month. That makes it the beginning of this month—you see the significance—but he was unable to pinpoint the specific date on which he had last seen her. Pressed about her private life—was she, as Lee put it to him, a hooker?—the super said, A working girl. Masseuse or maybe manicurist. He was able, however, to direct them to her place of employment, a spa on East Forty-Seventh Street. The sort of establishment you’d expect. Up on the third and fourth floors, massage and bath and sex. Actually quite clean. There the owner—or perhaps manager—was more precise. The last time she saw Lena was on Thursday, October third. You see also the significance of that. Kerry was killed the following evening. The reason the manager was positive about the date is that Lena was owed money for Thursday’s work and did not turn up to claim it. Incidentally, she didn’t work on weekends, so that she was free on Fridays and Saturdays, the big nights at the Rat. Any knowledge of Lena’s family? None. Never heard the family referred to. The manager is Hispanic. Among the masseuses there are a few Asians. The rest are a potpourri of Eastern and Central Europeans. A couple of Moldovans, a Czech, a couple of Romanians. Lee went back there several times and talked to the girls. The idea that Lena might be Jewish provoked varying degrees of surprise or acquiescence. Yes, one of the Moldovans said, there is an aunt or maybe an aunt and an uncle living somewhere in Brooklyn. But she didn’t know the names. Didn’t think it was Radetska. On top of that, a check of White Pages or whatever else Martin and Lee consulted did not produce any Radetskas or Radetskys of interest. This much I knew already last week.

  That’s certainly a dead end, said Heidi.

  You’re making an unintended pun, I told her. That’s where they stopped, but, having listened to them I asked whether there wasn’t some sort of lost and found for corpses. You know, unknown and unclaimed civilians. People who are found dead, without ID, victims of attacks or dead from other causes. Yeah, they both answered, the morgue. Usually there’s something about it in the tabloid local news. So I said since we’ve gotten nowhere with the leads the super gave you, do you think it would be worthwhile to check on unclaimed dead? Our bad, Martin told me. We’ll get right on it. Well, I’m beginning to think I should have been a cop. Through their sources they discovered that on Saturday morning—the day after Kerry was killed—the body of a white woman in her twenties or early thirties, fully clothed, was found slumped in a doorway of a building on West Thirty-Eighth Street. Guess what! Overdose. Heroin. Now kudos to Martin and Lee. They slipped the super a hundred and drove him over to the morgue. There’s not the slightest doubt. They keep the bodies on ice for ninety days, you know. It’s Lena Radetska. Lena Radetska, whose face, Martin thinks, had been slapped hard.

  Whoa, the police didn’t do a fingerprint search? Heidi asked. If she was here on a green card her fingerprints must be in a thousand files. What’s going on here?

  I’ll tell you Martin’s view. There’s a huge flow of heroin into the city, and the price has fallen. Obviously use has picked up, and so have overdose deaths. Lena was dressed like a hooker, looked like a hooker. That she had no ID, in fact no pocketbook, means a companion or companions robbed her. Perhaps moved her from where she died to that doorway. Incidentally, that building houses no fewer than three spas that are more like brothels. So—says Martin—a dime-a-dozen case that didn’t call for the investigative effort of New York’s finest. And, continues Martin, what do you know? Who was in charge of the case and called it closed? Yes, your friend Detective Rod Walker. No doubt a coincidence, but still…

  Do you know what will happen to Lena now?

  You mean her earthly remains? After I don’t know how many weeks—I forgot to ask Martin—unless someone claims her, it’s Potter’s Field. Hart Island Cemetery, out in Pelham Bay.

  Poor thing. She came here from wherever it was…

  Ukraine, I interjected.

  Why not? Of course she came from Ukraine, like some of my ancestors, expecting better things. It’s awful.

  The tough white-collar-crime defense attorney and former prosecutor has a sweet, tender side, I said to myself, and poured her some more Riesling.

  Yes please, keep going, she told me. I feel sick. The kind of sick that gets better with good wine. And what do we do about Boris, Captain? Isn’t he next on our list?

  He is, I replied, and quite frankly I don’t know. Neither do Martin and Lee. All we have is the first name, which can be Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian—in fact, it fits all over the non-Greek Balkans. Or he could be an Argentinean tango instructor as well as a pimp! Assuming that Boris is his real first name! Anyway, Martin and Lee are searching arrest records, and obviously convictions, involving anyone with that first name. Anyone, not just pimps and pushers. But they’re discouraged. Have you any bright ideas?

  She looked gloomy and shook her head.

  I don’t either, I said, but I haven’t tried yet free-associating. Apropos of that, any progress breaking into Kerry’s email account?

  Again she shook her head. I try a different password every morning, hoping that one attempt a day isn’t enough for Google to lower the boom, but I haven’t hit the jackpot. Besides, I’m beginning to doubt that Kerry would have tucked the file away in her mail account. That was probably a silly idea. She would have come up with something more inventive and more secure. I don’t think we’ll ever find that file. We should just go to Ed Flanagan with what I’ve got, if only to end this nightmare, to stop that son of a bitch in Texas from doing more harm. I’d rather he didn’t kill you. You know that so long as he thinks you’re the one who has the file, he’ll keep trying.

  I agree, and I know it’s crazy, but that’s in part the reason why I’d like to wait a little longer. I’d like him to send another hit man. I’d like the chance to kill him. Particularly if he sent Boris!

  You are seriously crazy, she told me, especially considering your current condition. But let’s give ourselves another week. No more than that, because there is another side to this problem: Abner is a one-man crime wave. As citizens we have a duty to stop him. Now I have a question: how badly damaged are you?

  I couldn’t help laughing. If you’re buying, it depends on the intended use. I wouldn’t want to deal with Abner’s hit men tonight or tomorrow or the next day, unless I can do it sitting down. But there are better days ahead. The blood clot was caught so early, it was so fresh, that the doctors think it’s been dissolved or absorbed or whatever it is they call it. That part should be cleared up by the end of the week. The wounds are flesh wounds. I heal very well. In a very few weeks they’ll be just a memory.

  Will you give them a chance to heal, so you’ll be as good as new?

  I nodded. Don’t worry! Just like a certified preowned Mercedes.