by James Lepore
“You do?” Matt replied, matching the seriousness of her voice. “Who am I?”
“The grandson of a Mafia hit man.”
Matt smiled. “Hitt Mann,” was what she said, capitalized, as if she thought it was a proper noun.
“That’s true,” he replied. “Who are you?”
“Look around.”
“Look around?”
“Yes. This is me. This place that I am losing.”
“Do you have a husband?”
“Yes, but not for long.”
“A boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Where are you from? What is that accent?”
“Czech. I am Czech.”
“Are you having trouble with your husband? I saw the domestic violence papers on your fax.”
“He wants to kill me.”
“Is that why you have the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Can I send someone down?”
Silence again, the cocked eye again straining against itself, a sign, Matt was to eventually learn, of Anna forgetting herself as she concentrated.
“What choice do I have?” she said finally. “I cannot shut down. I have to stay in business.”
“His name is Sal Visco,” Matt said, thinking what business? “He’s a gentleman. He’ll be here tonight. He’ll bring a cot. He can sleep in the office.”
“It gets very hot in here at night.”
“He’ll survive.”
“You must tell me what is in the duffle bag. I have a right to know.”
Matt did not answer. He took a moment to look around, as if complying with what Anna had just asked him to do. Gazing up, he noticed for the first time a fan, motionless, hanging from the center of the room’s ceiling.
“Why don’t you turn that on?” he asked, nodding upward.
“It is broken.”
Matt took his wallet from the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out ten hundred dollar bills. “Take this,” he said, putting the bills on the counter. “Get the fan fixed. For Sal. The rest is for the gate out front.”
Anna stared at the neat stack of money. “It’s too much,” she said.
“And for your trouble.”
“The duffle bag is my trouble,” Anna said. “It must be money. How much? Or drugs, like on the television. Yes? No? I have a right to know.”
“I’ll tell you if you call me by my name.”
This brought a half smile to Anna’s face. Another surprise. That was another thing Matt was starting to learn, that Anna’s smiles were almost always surprises, and thus much more beautiful than ordinary smiles.
“I’ve seen you naked, don’t forget,” said Matt, seizing this small opening. “It’s Matt, by the way, in case you forgot. For Matteo.”
“Mott.”
“Not Mott, Matt.”
“What do your friends call you, Mott-Matt?”
“Matt. My sister calls me Teo sometimes. To tease me.”
“Tease you?”
“It’s a long story. We had an Uncle Matty who we called Uncle Teo. We think he was gay, in the closet.”
“How old is she, your sister?”
“Twenty-four.”
“And you, how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“What’s in the duffle bag, Teo?”
Matt smiled. “Explosives,” he said. “In case someone who’s not supposed to tries to open it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Matt said. “If someone tries to get into that duffle bag, they’re going to wish they had died instantly in an explosion.”
11.
Manhattan, August 23, 2012, 4:00 p.m.
“The passenger has a ski mask on too, Matt, flesh colored.”
“The license plate?”
“It’s covered.”
“They knew there’d be cameras.”
“Friends of the locksmith? Someone he told?”
“Why kill him?”
“He’s a witness.”
“I guess so,” said Matt. “What’s on the baseball cap? Can you make it readable?”
“Sure. Hold on.”
A few seconds later a near-perfect image of the passenger appeared on the screen, down to the fine weave of the nylon mesh of the ski mask covering the face.
“It looks like a pineapple,” Matt said, staring at the yellow and blue emblem on the front of the navy blue cap.
“No, it’s a soccer ball with a crown on top.”
“What’s it say?” Matt asked, looking at the italicized letters YKPAIHA spanning the middle of what he now recognized as a soccer ball.
“It’s Russian. Football Federation of Ukraine.”
“Thanks, Dee, I really appreciate this.”
“De nada. Any time.”
12.
Skopelos, August 24, 2012, 12:00 a.m.
“Who’s this Diego?” Chris Massi asked.
“Diego Lopez,” Max French answered. “Dee for short. He’s a friend of Matt’s from college.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a computer geek.”
“That’s it?”
“He was in the same honors program as Matt. He speaks Russian, Greek, Farsi and Arabic.”
Silence from Chris, then: “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Just for a few minutes.”
“Check him out.”
“I will.”
“Where’s Matt?”
“Home on Carmine Street. I’m having an espresso across the street.”
“Did he get the package?”
“I left it by his door.”
“Okay. Stay with him.”
“I will. Did Tess arrive okay?”
“Yes, she got here this afternoon.”
“Chris?”
“Yes?”
“You know the problems. It’s a big city, lot’s of traffic.”
“They won’t touch him.”
“Not if I’m around.”
13.
Skopelos, August 24, 2012, 2:00 a.m.
“We have the best Retsina in the world here,” Tess Massi said. “Shall I get us some?” She was slightly drunk. More than slightly, but not out of her mind, not yet.
“Of course,” said Patriki, or whatever his name was. His name didn’t matter. He was too handsome, his dark eyes too liquid and playful, his teeth too perfect, too white. He was too fucking sexy of a creature for his name to matter.
Tess went into the pantry that adjoined the kitchen and found a bottle of the resin wine made every year by Christina, her father’s hawk-eyed housekeeper, chef and all-around major domo. Before leaving the large and well-stocked room, she took a quick look at herself in one of the pantry’s glass-fronted cabinets. Her color was a glowing, reddish-brown from her three hours on the beach, her long black hair a bit frizzed from the humidity that pressed down on the island this time of year. A slight sheen of sweat remained from the dancing she and her new friend had done earlier on the waterfront deck of a local tavern but she didn’t care. She knew she looked good in her simple white, side-buttoned skirt and black cotton blouse, her legs long, her body at its prime at age twenty-four. The islands, she said to herself, the Aegean. I’m free here, away from my mother, away from the pseudo-elite at Georgetown, all that Washington self-importance, all that bullshit. Why am I even doing that?
When she uncorked the wine in the kitchen, she could smell the pine resin from the local forest, which Christina said she used exclusively to seal her small oak caskets. The smell was heady, like Patriki’s blend of Turkish cigarettes and subtle cologne, and the taste an acquired one. But there was no
need to acquire a taste for a vagabond as handsome as Patriki. This taste she had, especially in Greece. It was her way, once or twice a year, of blowing off the pressure that seemed to be a natural part of her life in the states. Smiling, relaxed, she poured two glasses and they drank.
“Christina says she makes it the old fashioned way,” Tess said, thinking, as she did, what a silly thing to say, like a schoolgirl not knowing what to say. I must be drunker than I thought.
“And who is Christina?”
“My father’s housekeeper.”
“I am going to fuck you the old fashioned way,” Patriki said.
Tess had arrived on Skopelos at 3:00 p.m. and gone right to the beach with a bottle of wine on ice and a book. Back at the house she had given her father his birthday present and then napped for two hours. It had been a long day of traveling. Rested, happy to be away from what she called the New York/Washington Circle Jerk Society, she had gone out for drinks and dinner with Christina’s niece, Calliope, an island friend of many years and often her partner in teenage adventures with island boys. Now she stopped her rambling thinking and looked at the waiter she had continued her evening with after bidding Calliope goodnight.
He was, with his long wavy black hair, perfect lips and black eyes, a Greek god. Or Turkish, perhaps. She was not stupid, her teenage years long gone. He was, she guessed, a drifter, rootless, but that made him more interesting, not less. The old-fashioned way, she thought, okay… But before she could form her next thought, Patriki was standing in front of her, his arms around her waist; then kissing her, arching his crotch into hers as he did, his hand under her skirt, which, with one motion he pulled straight down. Then, still kissing her, he used both hands to pull her panties down as well. Her skirt and panties draped around her ankles, he pushed her against Christina’s large butcher block table, went to his knees, spread her legs apart, and kissed and licked the inside of the thighs, and then her vagina, which was flowing with wetness. She arched her back against the edge of the table, pushing her clitoris against his darting tongue, delirious now, the Retsina adding fuel to her fire, in heaven.
No, she said, when he stopped licking, don’t stop… But her new friend was now on his feet, swiveling her around, undoing his jeans and entering her from behind, his large hands hard on her buttocks. Wetter than ever, she felt herself convulsing from the rush of his first thrust, wanting more, wondering why he had stopped—again. Don’t stop. She was about to turn to face him, when he grabbed her hair and twisted her head around so that they were looking into each other’s eyes. His eyes were no longer liquid or playful; there was a coldness in them, a meanness. She tried to turn away, but he pulled harder on her hair to keep her facing him. So hard it hurt. Then he thrust again, and again, and the pain was gone and she was swept away in a swift current of pleasure.
14.
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, August 24, 2012, 2:00 a.m.
I have gone out to get food and will be right back. The door is open.
xxxooo
Natalya
Matt read the note in the dim light of Natalya’s hallway and let himself in. When he got back to his apartment after talking to Diego, one of the messages on his cell phone was from the singer at Sabrina’s. “I must do a special show tonight, Matvey, at midnight. But it’s my only show. Come to my apartment at two. We will talk and dance, and…and watch the sunrise. But no pictures! And no Nico to distract us.”
Now he took a moment to glance around. The apartment’s living room and small kitchen were divided by a waist-high counter, on which sat a bottle of unlabeled vodka, two shot glasses, two fluted glasses and a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. A Supremes song, Baby Love, was playing softly on a boombox on top of the refrigerator. Matt went over to see if he could find different music. Dialing slowly, humming Baby Love despite himself, he noticed the bill of a baseball cap sticking out from behind the boombox. He pulled it out, turned it to face him, and saw the logo on the front: a crowned soccer ball in yellow and blue with the letters YKPAIHA across it.
Matt turned the boombox off and listened. He could hear an air conditioner humming in the bedroom, which, up until a moment ago, he thought would be his final destination tonight. There was no air conditioner in the living room/kitchen. Through the open windows he could smell and hear the ocean just a few hundred feet away. On his own kitchen counter on Carmine Street was the lightweight Glock 17 nine-millimeter pistol that a person named Max had left in a tightly taped, nondescript cardboard box at his apartment door, along with a box of extra clips and ammunition. This was the same model plastic, easy trigger, no-kick Glock that his father and he had shot at a firing range in Jersey once a week for the four years he was in high school and living with his dad in SoHo. He had laughed when he read Max’s note, but now wished he had the gun.
Out to get food, Matt thought, with a huge restaurant kitchen downstairs, owned by her cousin. The knock on the door did not startle him. He slipped the baseball cap back behind the boombox, then went over to the counter dividing the kitchen and living room and picked up the vodka bottle by its skinny neck.
“Natalya?” he said, flattening himself against the wall on the hinged side of the apartment’s entrance door. His voice was normal, casual, happy to have his new lover home at last.
15.
Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, August 24, 2012, 2:15 a.m.
Max French did not mind waiting for people and things to come to him. He had been doing it on and off since he killed a certain someone in Auburn, Washington in 1982 when he was eighteen. He had the feeling, though, that tonight’s wait would not be long, and he was right. A few minutes after crouching in the shadows at the back of the street-level entrance foyer to the apartment above Sabrina’s and screwing the silencer onto his Sig P938 pistol, the door swung open and two men in ski masks stepped inside. Max stepped out and shot them both, once in the chest and once in the forehead each. He pulled their masks off and saw that they were no one he recognized, just young men, in their mid-twenties, with classic Slavic features. Hungarian, he guessed. Magyars. Disposable pawns. Before replacing the masks, he took a picture of each with his cell phone.
Then he went upstairs to get Matt.
16.
Skopelos, August 24, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
“I couldn’t take a chance, Chris.”
“I understand.”
“I’m heading out to dump the bodies.”
“Where’s Matt?”
“In the kitchen. He almost killed me with a vodka bottle. I had to whack him.”
“Is he okay?”
“He was groggy for a while but he’s fine.”
“Take him with you.”
Silence. Then, from Max: “Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s started. There’s no going back.”
“Then what? “
“Call me tonight, 2:00 a.m. my time.”
Chris Massi sat on the balcony of his library at the rear of his house on the western side of the island of Skopelos, looking down to the fifty hectares of olive grove laid out below him. The terraced hillside on which the grove stood was blanketed with the spiky yellow flowers—King’s Spear his housekeeper, Christina, called them—that grew wild all over Greece. He had spectacular views of Panoramos Bay from the front of the house, but he liked to watch the sunset here because the sight of his thousand-year-old olive grove, with its gnarled branches and masses of gray-green leaves, settled his mind like nothing else he could look at or contemplate. A thousand years these trees had been standing here, thriving in winter cold and summer heat, oblivious of the joy and pain of the human beings who “owned” them, who harvested their fruit and pressed it into the dark green oil that had nourished them for generation after generation. Or were they? At night the leaves of his olive trees turned silver in the moonlight. When a breeze came up, they changed from silver to black, silver to black, and seemed to wh
isper to each other. Were they telling stories of man’s folly? Trying to send Chris a message?
You did the right thing, Max. They were about to kidnap him, or worse.
Tess was here and safe. She would stay for another week, then fly back to New York. For his birthday she had brought him a CD of Sufi devotional music sung by a person named Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan. He could hear it playing now on the large terrace on the north side of the house. He listened closely for a moment to the singer’s timeless, hypnotic voice, thinking of what Tess had said when she gave him the CD: you will think your olive trees are talking to you. Then he turned in the direction of the footsteps he heard on the tiled floor in the hallway that gave access to the library and the other rooms along this wing of the house.
“Come in Costa,” he said in response to the two short hard raps on the library door. Costa’s knock.
“Anadochos.”
“Yes, Costa.” Chris had risen from the cushioned rattan chair he was using on the balcony and went to sit at the scarred oak farm table he used as a desk just inside the room, his back to the open French doors behind him.
“The diamonds.” Costa had quietly shut the study door and now stood before Chris, his gnarled hands steepled in front of him, his slight but very strong body motionless. Like one of my olive trees, Chris thought, not for the first time.
“Yes. What about them?” he said.
“A young woman was found dead in her apartment last month in Moscow. She worked for Alrosa.”
“Russia’s diamond company.”
“Yes.”
“Did she steal some diamonds?”
“Twenty-five mid-sized stones went missing in 2009. They were part of a delivery from Angola. She was a sorter. She was suspected as well as several others. The stones were never found and they never appeared on the black market.”
