Foreign Exchange (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “Where will you look?” my mother asked.

  “That’s a funny next question, to my way of thinking,” I said. “I ask myself things like: ‘What’s going on here?’ ‘Is there just one criminal psychopath or am I stepping into something truly serious?’ ‘Being a new father, earning a living, doing a little skiing, making sure that strangers can get their clothes clean—isn’t that enough for me to do this month?’ Those are good questions.”

  “Where will you look?” Marie Laure asked.

  “Chip Sheen thinks that ‘the other Japanese’ might have this thing. Now he doesn’t bother to say whether or not this other Japanese has a legit claim to the dingus. He also fails to mention the Musashi Trading Company. Anyway, I already know that the other Japanese, Mike Hayakawa, is also very cagey about saying what this dingus is and he also wants me to look for it. That means he doesn’t have it. He thinks that maybe the Tavetians have it. That it might have been with the girl’s things. Franz, the gendarme, says no, not possible, only the girl’s things were passed on. All is correct. But maybe Arlene and Bob Tavetian do actually have it. None of which I mentioned to Chip Sheen, so I can take a week to discover it for him and look like I’m doing something.

  “But an even better question,” I said, “is, Who is Chip Sheen?”

  “What do you mean?” my mother said.

  “Is he IRS? Could he turn me in to the IRS? Yes. But is he IRS?”

  “It’s good to see you at work again,” Marie Laure said. “I like to see you think.” She moved close to me and put her head on my shoulder. From my neck to my waist, I felt the soft human warmth of her wash into me as if I had a special set of receptor cells just ready and waiting for that moment. It was the first time she had touched me in a womanly way since Anna’s birth. “He is a very smart man.” She said it to my mother, but I heard her in all the places where the message was really sent. I wanted her desperately.

  “But the best question of all,” I said, “is, Is it a good deal?”

  “You tell me, my smart man,” Marie said.

  “It’s a great deal,” my mother said. “All you have to do is find this thing, and everything gets fixed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Find one little thing and a quarter million dollars in interest and penalties—gone! Twenty-two counts of tax evasion—gone! Four hundred sixty-six counts of obstruction of justice—gone!”

  “It’s too good,” my mother said, the way she does when she figures out the plot before the hero and tells the television about it.

  “Right. And it’s too easy. A real cop, he would tell me he might recommend leniency to the prosecutor who would tell the judge I was a cooperative and valuable guy. But no promises.” I had to make them understand that Chip Sheen was willing to give away the store because it wasn’t his to give. “Even if this dingus is so important that they’re willing to drop all the charges against me, they don’t say so on the first date. Also, if he really is any kind of government agent, he’s got to consult—he’s got to get three, four approvals. Nobody takes that much responsibility on their own.”

  “Once you get the thing then you can make him give you a letter or something that will make him live up to the deal,” my mother said.

  “Mais oui, of course,” Marie Laure said.

  Anna Geneviève fell asleep.

  “What I have to do is string this guy along. To keep him from turning me in while we figure out some kind of game plan of our own.” Please understand, I said silently, that all I can get for us is time—time to get where we’re going next. Which is not at all bad. We have a good life. A good way to make good money—in any currency—clean air, safe streets, scenery. With a little better paper, a moustache, and some window dressing we can make it a permanent fix and have it on some other mountain.

  “This is my man. Enough of the laundries,” Marie Laure said. “I am tired of the laundries. I like ’im when ’e is a detective.”

  “I like him when he makes me a grandmother,” my mother said.

  LOVE DREAMS

  I DREAMT THAT NIGHT of America.

  Wayne took me by the hand. We were in Central Park. By the Shakespeare Festival Theatre. Blossoms were falling. We stepped carefully around the beggar with running sores and tossed some money to the scabby one. He muttered, “Tourist fuck” when he clutched the coins. We stepped off the curb and out of the park.

  “Hi, sweeties,” a guy said to us. I didn’t say anything.

  Wayne was small, like when I left. He clutched my hand tighter. A full-cleavaged woman in a red dress, high-heel sneakers, and Tina Turner wig turned her face from us.

  “You were supposed to be here, Pops,” Wayne said.

  “I left you a condominium.”

  “Fat city, Dads, fat city.”

  “Look,” I said.

  “Look at MTV,” he said. When he faced me, he’d grown. He was bigger than me and needed a shave. He was at least sixteen. And very gay. Then he laughed. “Do you remember what I’m supposed to do with my life?”

  “You wanted to be a fireman?”

  “Stick it up your ass. I never did,” he said, and walked away. It was true. He never did want to be a fireman and he never had that much attitude. He went off with some boys.

  Then his mother said, “Come on up. Just for a cup of coffee. I’ve changed. Let me tell you about it.”

  She put her hand in my pants and did fun things with my penis, which responded avidly even though I kept trying to say, “But I’m married now.” She bent over, raised her skirt, lowered her underwear. She had a more photogenic vagina than I remembered from real life and a shapely ass. Even if it showed her age, which I could see with mean X-ray eyes.

  “Do it,” she said. “Enough of the responsibility shit. Do it to me.”

  It sounded inviting and it had been a long time since my penis had been anywhere except hanging in my pants. The doctor had said Marie would be sore for two to three months. I could see where that would happen. And, being the late twentieth century semiliberated male that I was, I knew I had to accept the noninsertion rule until healing took place. There are so many other fun things to do and we had had so much fun doing them before, that it never occurred to me that birth would be the death of sex. But it had been. Her body currently belonged to another process. Her love belonged to another person. I understood. I sympathized. And it made my sexuality feel as welcome as a cockroach at the embassy ball.

  So I took my erection in one hand and with the other I stroked the first serious offer. The lips spread easily and inside they were coated with that thick moisture that is so symbolic of welcome. I put the tip of my cock up against it, just feeling the moist heat, ready to savor the insertion.

  “You know New York is impossible these days,” she said, “with the homeless, the crime, the AIDS, the crack addicts—the hospitals are overwhelmed. You can’t walk down the street to the drugstore. We have to move to the suburbs. But don’t worry about it now—go ahead and come first.”

  That woke me up. I had my erection beside me. It was alone. Marie Laure was across the bed, Anna Geneviève between us.

  It was dawn. The lifts wouldn’t start until eight. I put on my ski clothes and boots and grabbed my skis anyway. I decided that it was time to learn something about real backcountry skiing. Downhill skiing requires a stiff boot and a binding that nails your heel to the ski. Cross-country skiing requires a flexible boot and a binding that holds the toe down but lets the heel rise and fall for a gliding stride. Now they have special skis, bindings, and boots that will function both ways.

  That may be what it’s really about. Getting out into the mountains. No lifts, no pistes, no tracks, no crowds. No restaurants, no bars, no sex, no lies, no cops, no federales, no relationships, no property. Just being. Puritanical, cold, and in love with your own virtue. My mind is not a steady thing. It knows a story is just a story. That everyone mostly thinks they’re right. People need to be right. My mother, Marie, me, Anna Geneviève—four corners o
f one circle, and we each are certain that we’re right. Franz, the gendarme, his dog Rudi, this Chip Sheen, all the cops think they’re right. Hans Lantz, killer and suicide, thought he was right. He told me so.

  In the meantime, I put my skis on my shoulder and walked up the mountain. That’s for eighteen-year-olds. An hour walking uphill in ski boots is worth two Jane Fondas plus one Jazzercise. Sweaty and panting, I sat alone in the sunshine at the top of the Kandahar. Moonlight is a fragile thing. Most places it is washed away by the first sun that comes along. But in the valley there is an overlap, a slow crossfade, where, in the shadow of the mountains, the moonlight stays briefly brighter than the beginning of the day.

  I had a chocolate bar for the sugar rush. I put my skis on, the almost-new Atomics that once belonged to Hans Lantz, and charged down the hill. It was a good run. But not as good as I hoped it would be. Not as good as I wanted it to be. I had started thirty years too late to ever be a world-class skier.

  By the time I reached the bottom I knew what I was going to do.

  I found Mike Hayakawa in The Underground. He was drunk and thought it was a Karaoke bar. And who’s to say it’s not. There’s a microphone, there’s a piano if you want to play, and sometimes there’s a piano player to keep you company if you can’t. I’ve heard lots of people sing there. The quality varies from fair to worse, but it’s a friendly place and I’ve never seen anybody booed off or removed by force. There are seats around the piano. If anyone likes the song they sing along. Singing loud and in public is one of the things that people like to do when they’re far from home and drunk.

  Bob Tavetian was at the bar.

  Arlene Tavetian was at a table. With Kurt, the ski instructor. The one Wendy had fucked. Arlene was drunk. Arlene was putting the moves on him. Kurt was going for it.

  Hayakawa was singing Bob Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay.” He sang with heart. He knew all the words. He was very sincere and it made him look particularly Japanese.

  Bob Tavetian saw me looking at Arlene. He saw that I could see what was going on. A man might not give a damn where his wife lays her body down, but no man likes to be seen wearing horns. It’s not the sex—it’s the looks you get, and the sign you wear on your chest, loser where winner used to be.

  Hayakawa sang “Ballad of a Thin Man” which is the one about a Mr. Jones who doesn’t know what is happening here. Tavetian finished his drink and came over to me.

  “She can’t help herself,” he said. “Wendy was her baby. Her only baby. It hurts more than she can stand.”

  “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” was Mike’s next song. He was very serious about it and drank as steadily as his singing would allow. He drank Johnny Walker Black. I drank beer. I can’t say he had a good voice, but nobody ever said Bob Dylan did either. Then he started to sing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I would have thought it was a song that was owned by a particular time and place—memories of Martin Luther King, marching against the war in Vietnam and for the Pill. Yet everyone in the place—Aussies, Kiwis, Austrians, Americans, Swedes—seemed to know it and have some feeling for it. Two full tables, one of Brits and the other of Germans, sang along.

  When he was done I crossed through the applause to the piano. Hayakawa looked up, like he’d been waiting for me. “That’s my favorite,” he said. “Which one do you want to hear next?”

  “We have to talk about Hiroshi Tanaka,” I said. “And money.”

  “Okay,” he said. He stood up and stepped away from the microphone, staggering slightly. With a generous gesture he offered it to whoever wanted to share their music next. I took him by the arm and led him between the tables toward the door. Behind us an Australian had taken over the piano. He sang “The Dock of the Bay.” A lot of people seemed to know that one too.

  Like two inept conspirators, we stumbled through the night and the cold looking for a spot to converse. We went around the corner to the empty square in front of the post office.

  “Hey, Rick,” he said with a drunk’s smile. “Laundry man, my ass—I know better.”

  “This dingus that you’re looking for. I’m going to help you find it.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “The key question is not where it is. It’s what it’s worth.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing—it’s worth a lot.”

  “Would you like to name a figure?”

  “Musashi number one,” Hayakawa said, holding up his forefinger. “Musashi take care of everything. Not to worry. No problem.”

  “Mike, old buddy, old pal”—I put my hands on his shoulders, looked him in the eye, and matched my beer breath to his whiskey breath—“it’s time to cut the shit. You have to name a number. An actual cash figure.”

  “How about one million,” he said.

  “Dollars?” I asked, just to be sure.

  “Oh, no. Yen.”

  “Mike, you’re not even in the bidding.”

  “Bidding. Are there other people bidding? Then you have the piece?”

  “That’s what? Seven thousand dollars? I’m sorry, Mike, I made a mistake. We have nothing to talk about.” I started to walk away.

  “Okay, Rick,” he said. “Not yen. One million …”

  “One million what?”

  “Deutsche marks!”

  “Done,” I said. It was about $666,000. Not bad.

  “Good,” he said, and sat down in the snow.

  I hauled him back up and propped him up against a telephone booth. “Are you too drunk to know what you’re talking about?”

  “A Musashi man is always ready for business. Day or night. Drunk or sober. Work hard. Play hard. We are all one for Musashi and Musashi is number one for the world.”

  “And you can commit one million D marks?”

  “That’s our slogan,” he said. “But it doesn’t really translate. You have to hear it in the original. Musashi no motoni warera ha hitotsu. Musashi ha sekai no nambah wan!

  “Can you commit that much money? You, Mikio Hayakawa?”

  “Worth every dime,” he said, and slowly sat down again.

  I squatted beside him. “Now—what am I looking for?”

  He fell asleep.

  It was too good an opportunity to miss. I searched him. If Mikio “Mike” Hayakawa was a false identity, he’d really loaded up on it. Everything was in that name—international driver’s license, VISA, Eurobank card, company Diner’s Club and American Express Platinum cards, six golf club IDs from three different countries, company ID, medical insurance, personal checks. Swiss Air, Lufthansa, Pan Am frequent-flyer cards. He had about two thousand dollars in travelers checks on him, half in D marks, half in schillings. There was stuff in Japanese that I didn’t understand. He had enough receipts for me to believe he was turning them in to be expensed. I took his keys out of his pocket. They looked familiar. I assumed he was staying in Hiroshi Tanaka’s apartment.

  I got a taxi. The driver and I loaded him into the cab. Handling his body, I realized that he was hard and lean. He awakened briefly when we lugged him out of the car and into the apartment, but by the time I paid the driver he was passed out on the couch.

  I tossed the place.

  The second most interesting thing in the room was a manga, a thick erotic comic book. Presumably for adults. I didn’t know if it was Hayakawa’s or the dead man’s, if it was escapist dreaming like a Harlequin novel or had a more specific utility, like Penthouse or Hustler.

  I flipped through it. If it was typical, indicative of the Japanese mind, it would make Freudians twitch and anthropologists want to play with their theses. The female sex objects were more Occidental than Oriental. The sex was assaultive—either voyeuristic or heavy-duty S & M—the girl-women tied and whipped and stabbed. But, like those few Japanese films I’ve seen, the sex, the violence, and the combination of the two seemed ritualized, formalized to the point of being aphysical. In the West we make a lot of noise during big moments like orgasm, torture, and death by violence. Particularly in c
omic books. In the manga they were marked, at most, by a profound sigh or an eye-widening gasp of recognition. The leading lady was little more than a girl, her pubis as hairless as an infant’s, her lovemaking semiabstract and, judging by the expression on her face, predating the discovery of female orgasm. Although I prefer my sex hairier, wetter, noisier, and more mutual, I can’t say the comic was dull. There was one page torn out. But the story appeared to be simple enough that it probably didn’t matter.

  One side of the closet held Hayakawa’s things. Two suits, some ski clothes and casual wear. There was a gi for one of the martial arts. And a black belt to tie it closed. The other side of the closet belonged to the dead man. I don’t know why the difference was so completely and immediately obvious, but it was. Perhaps clothes that are hung unused, without the intent to be used agitating them, acquire additional inertia and solidity in their storage. Hiroshi Tanaka had been an avid skier. His ski wear had been the best that money could buy. There was a shelf of ski books and ski magazines. He wore sandals in the house and had a variety of them, including the kind that have a surface of rubber spikes that point upward at the feet. Most of the rest of his clothes had been packed in boxes. They sat there waiting for someone to decide what to do with them.

  Mike Hayakawa was not representing the family. Had he been, he would have sent the personal effects to some home somewhere. But I already knew that. Just as I knew that what he was looking for was not a family heirloom.

  I found an address book. But it was Hayakawa’s. I leafed through it.

  The most interesting thing and the really significant discovery was the police envelope with the cataloged personal effects. It contained sets of keys to places other than the St. Anton apartment. It contained Hiroshi Tanaka’s wallet. Credit cards. Receipts. A collection of business cards. I took the receipts and business cards. A surprising amount of cash. DM10,000, ÖS23,000. Combined, that was about $8,900. It surprised me that neither the police nor anyone else had seen fit to consider it found money. The address on Tanaka’s license was different from that on his business cards, though both were in Vienna. I took the license, a business card, and the keys. I left the money.