Barquette nodded. “How does any of this affect you and the D.E.A., Mike? It sounds like small potatoes.”
“Galiber is not on the D.E.A.’s list of favorite people.”
“Because of these financial things?”
“Because of the legislation to legalize drugs, which he’s sponsoring in the State Senate. Legislation like that sends absolutely the wrong message to the public and, particularly, drug traffickers who are heartened in their clandestine trafficking by support from supposedly responsible Government officials.”
Barquette nodded. “What can I do for you?”
“You know we helped you when your grandson …”
“You don’t have to remind me, Mike,” Barquette said. “I appreciate all you did for me. I definitely owe you guys one, more than one.”
“How is your grandson doing?”
“He seems to be straightening himself out. Starts at Albany Law School in the Fall,” said Barquette.
“I’m glad we were able to get that done for you, Ed,” said Becker.
“So am I. He’d never have been able to get into law school with a drug tin can hanging from his bumper.”
“It’s our view that the inquiry by the D.A. in the Bronx, coupled with some publicity about it in a newspaper as popular as the Post would cause the Mayor to reconsider his appointment of Galiber,” said Becker. “All we need is a pause. It’ll give us time to get some other guns in place, to really skewer Galiber’s appointment. We don’t think the Mayor will relish a controversy at this time.”
“At any time.”
“Particularly at this time. We think we might be able to make him change horses and appoint someone else.”
“After Dinkins, now Galiber, you think the Mayor’ll still appoint a black? He said he would, but how much can he take?”
“We have no problem with a black man, as long as it’s the right black man?”
“A white black man,” said Barquette.
“Just a decent, law-abiding one will do.”
“Same thing.”
“What the heck are you doing in Washington, Billy? You missed the swearing in ceremony?” Maurice Billups exclaimed into the phone. He was speaking to Billy Carelton. “You know who got the biggest hand of the day at Gibson’s swearing in? Our man, Dave Dinkins, that’s who. The Mayor introduced him and the crowd—mostly our friends—gave him a heck of an ovation.”
Paul Gibson, a black Vice President of American Airlines had been tapped by the Mayor instead of Joe Galiber to fill the position of Third Deputy Mayor in charge of Planning. The Mayor also announced that he’d be happy to reconsider Galiber for an appointment in his Administration once the Bronx investigation was resolved—which, the Mayor added, was sure to happen.
“That’s right, that’s right. Gibson is exactly the right man for the job: no political connections, no political aspirations. Just a wonderful, clean-cut man for the job.” Billups listened. “Both Dave and I were interviewed afterward. I indicated, individually, and on behalf of the Council of Black Elected Democrats, that I was saddened to see Joseph Galiber withdraw. I said, he is a man of the highest integrity and ability and would have served well as Deputy Mayor. I thought it had the right note myself.” He listened to Carelton again. “No, I know Merola said that he was going to impanel a Grand Jury, but it’s unlikely that the investigation will really go anywhere. I mean, after all, the law regarding corporate checks has already been changed. Too late for Galiber, of course.” Billups gave out a little chuckle. “Besides, we’re talking about a single corporate contribution. Galiber told the papers that it was for his Senatorial Office expenses, not for his campaign. So it wasn’t illegal at the time either. The thing’ll die by itself.” He listened. “No, me either. I wouldn’t want to see Joe have any real trouble.”
Bucharest: July 6, 1996 : 3:30 P.M.
Alexander (Sascha) Ulanov sat in a window seat just ahead of the wing on Touron Airlines, Flight 364, as the plane settled into its final landing approach to Bucharest Airport. Anna Petrovski sat beside him. Below, Sascha could see fields dotted with mounds of hay, horse-carts on roads pulled by narrow, bony, little horses, stone houses with terracotta roofs, curling chimney smoke that disappeared beneath the wings.
“Still a shit house,” said Anna, leaning across Sascha, looking down.
The wheels of the landing gear, port side first, squealed as they hit the ground. The plane bounced harshly, then settled to a roll toward the small building that housed Passport Control.
Sascha looked at his watch. It was still on New York time: 6:55 AM. He counted on his fingers to gauge Romanian time. He reached into an inside jacket pocket and took out an American passport. His photograph and the pedigree details of someone named David Pivovarova were all neatly and newly preserved under a plastic coating. He smiled. A lovely job they did on this passport. It was just as it would be if Sascha were really David Pivovarova, a newly naturalized citizen of the United States.
Anna had a new passport as well. The documents identified her as Anna Pivovarova.
After the plane rolled to a stop, Sascha remained in his seat, smiling pleasantly. Anna, like most of the other passengers, stood immediately, pulling her carry-on from an overhead compartment, crowding forward, waiting for the front hatch to open. As he sat, Sascha studied the baggage handlers through the plane window. They were pushing antiquated wooden wagons up to the plane to off-load the baggage. How ridiculous, he thought. They still have horses and carts in this backward shithouse.
As he watched the baggage handlers, Sascha was working an index finger into the left breast pocket of his shirt. In the center of a small fold of American currency was a twenty dollar bill folded into a small square. Inside the folded twenty was a small amount of white powder: cocaine. Sascha removed his finger, coated with some of the white powder, and placed it into one nostril, inhaling deeply. He put his finger back into his shirt pocket to service the other nostril, then did both again.
“You coming?” said Anna, pushing further into the crowded aisle.
“Go ahead, you’re so anxious,” said Sascha. “I’ll meet you outside.”
“If I meet my girlfriend, I’m going. I’ll call you. I know where you’re staying.”
Sascha shrugged indifferently. He had been a little high all the way across the ocean, not only from the cocaine in his shirt pocket. He had instantly become happy when Uri told him that it was time to go on another trip to Romania—he fingered the ten new hundreds in his pants pocket. His fondness for the American cocaine kept him constantly broke. But the main source of his joy came when Uri told him that this trip was the first trip on which he was buying heroin for themselves; that he and Uri—and the blacks, of course—were all going to make plenty of money. He vowed he would never be broke again.
Sascha originally met Taylor in one of the dance clubs on West 21st Street in Manhattan about three months ago. After meeting a couple of times, Taylor and Sascha shared a couple of lines of cocaine in the men’s room one night. When Sascha inquired if Taylor knew where to obtain more, Anton said he might be able to get him some, but it would be cash on the barrelhead. Which was all right with Sascha, just after he came back from a trip to Romania. Between trips, however, when Sascha was tapped out, he occasionally did some muscle work for Taylor in exchange for cocaine. He had to collect money from drug customers who were reluctant payers. Right about the time Uri told him another trip was required of him, Sascha was suffering a double tragedy: Taylor hadn’t needed any strong-arm services—he was busy with a court case, or something—and Sascha didn’t have any money.
When the aisle was clear, Sascha rose from his seat and moved to the front of the plane. After he exited, he strolled casually toward Passport Control. As he had suspected, with relief, Anna was nowhere to be seen when he arrived in the passport area. Good! He thought to himself, he wouldn’t have to be bothered with that bitch for a few days.
Although he had been born in the Ukraine, his mother
had divorced his father and married a Romanian butcher when Sascha was eight. For the next five years, before he ran away from home, back to the Ukraine, Sascha had lived in Brasov, Romania. As a result, once inside Passport Control, Sascha kidded the humorless Agent behind the window in fluent Romanian, telling him he ought to make the trip to New York, get a bright, shiny new passport himself. The Passport Agent smirked, a nod of his head indicating the direction of baggage claim.
“No baggage. I am an American,” Sascha said in English. “Only carry-on,” he smiled, holding up his small overnight bag.
The Passport Agent shrugged. “Perhaps in America, you went a little—” he twirled a finger in a circle at his temple.
“Because I am in good humor? You have to have good humor to fly on Touron. You should see the airlines in America. You would run from here like it was hell.”
“Stop breaking my eggs.” The Passport Agent reached for the passport of a woman behind Ulanov. She wore a tight kerchief on her head. Her two little girls also had kerchiefs on their heads.
Sascha hailed a cab and directed it to Brasov, an ancient medieval city on the old commercial trail between east and west. It was in Brasov, as a young man, that Sascha first learned to help a local crime crew by being the drop for pickpockets, secreting the loot as the booster moved away from the victim quickly. From there he graduated to mugging drunks; thence, after returning to Kiev, to strong-arm protection rackets. It was in Kiev that Sascha first met Uri Mojolevsky. Uri was raking in dough transporting drugs from Tashkent to Kiev for some Americans. He gave Sascha the job of bringing heroin to Vasily Marcovich in Leningrad. For this work, for the two years it lasted, Sascha was making fabulous money, until Uri told him that everyone had to lay low, that things were very hot from Kiev to Leningrad. After that, Uri disappeared, and Sascha was flat broke, as before.
Seven months after his departure from Kiev, Uri contacted Sascha from Brighton Beach. He told him that there was work in America, that the boss they were working for in Russia was now bringing the product to many old customers who had moved to the United States. Sascha obtained a Visitor’s Visa to America, then, with a forged birth certificate and other documents, he obtained an American Green Card—which is really pink—and joined a rotating crew of couriers, each making approximately one trip every two months to bring rock heroin from Romania to Brighton Beach. For Sascha it was like the old days again, only better, because the American police didn’t know who any of them were, what they were doing, and could not even speak or understand their language.
There were as many carts as there were cars on the road to Brasov; the carts were pulled by spindly, narrow horses. People in the flat fields on either side of the road were cutting wheat with hand tools. All their clothing was dark colored, coarse, the women wore kerchiefs on their heads.
“Christ, this is so fucking old-fashioned,” Sascha exclaimed aloud.
“You said something?” said the driver.
“Nothing, nothing.”
“You speak good Romanian.”
“I lived here for a while.”
“Vacation?”
“Seeing some old friends for a couple of days,” said Sascha.
Sascha felt the hundreds in his pocket again. He had been planning a jewelry store robbery in Queens, when Uri called and said that the Americans decided, after the meeting at the restaurant near the Yankee baseball park, to go into business with them, to finance a new operation of their own. In the future, Sascha was sure, he would be able to swap some of his end of the heroin trade for the American cocaine.
“I stop for gas,” said the driver, pulling into a fuel depot at the side of the road. On the way, so far, they had passed no gas stations. This depot was the single place to buy fuel on the road from Bucharest to Brasov. Old trucks of every description were in line, punctuated by cars, cabs, and all sorts of vehicles. Some people took tin-pails from their trunks, and made their way to the front of the line, to fill the pail with fuel while one truck pulled away from the pump and another rolled up. Then they carried the pails back to their vehicles and funneled the gas into their tanks.
“This is a joke. Can’t you pay somebody to let you go up to the front of the line,” Sascha said to the driver. “I don’t have time to wait like this.”
“It is a joke, for sure,” said the driver, “a bad joke. But it is also for real.” He opened his door and walked up the line, speaking to a man in charge of one of the pumps. He gestured toward the car, had a further conversation, and walked back. “It’s okay. I told him I had an American businessman, going to Brasov. He said come ahead. I have to pay him something, of course.”
“How much?” Sascha took some Romanian money out of his shirt pocket, careful not to spill any of his white powder.
“Twenty lei.”
That was roughly two dollars, Sascha calculated. “Here, here’s thirty. Take the rest for yourself.”
“Thanks, Boss. It’s nice being a big shot from America, no?”
“Not bad, not bad at all,” Sascha said with a grin.
Later that evening, Sascha sat at a table in a mountain inn near Poiana Brasov, a vacation area in the mountains a few kilometers outside of Brasov. Igor Fabusayvich sat across the table from him. Igor was young, with a fat, round face and slicked back hair. They were both drinking Bull’s Blood, a Hungarian red wine, as they waited for the food they had ordered—roast bear. Music was being played by walking musicians in gypsy costumes.
“Any song?” the violinist of the group said in Russian, bowing.
Sascha shook his head. “Anything you play, I’ll like,” he said indifferently. “When are we supposed to meet your man?” he said in to Fabusayvich.
“Soon.”
“Here?”
The violinist, still standing at the table, smiling toward Sascha, began to play soulful gypsy music. An accordionist backed up the violin with flourished chords. A dark-haired woman in Gypsy costume dramatically tapped a tambourine against one hip. Sascha carefully removed some bills from his shirt, stuffing a bill into the violinist’s jacket pocket. The musicians played louder, faster.
“That’s great, great,” said Sascha impatiently, affecting a smile. “Please, can you play someplace else?”
The violinist, continuing to play, bowed and moved toward another table. The others in the group followed.
“Yes, he’ll be here,” Fabusayvich replied to Sascha’s hanging question.
“Strange place to meet,” Sascha shrugged as the dinner plates were brought and set on the table.
“Not strange,” said Fabusayvich. “Good covering.”
Sascha shrugged again as he began to eat. “Mmm, good,” he nodded, savoring a bite of bear. “Tell me again. Everything is all set, da?”
“Da,” said Fabusayvich.
“How much does this stuff cost?”
“You paying?”
“For somebody else, da. I’m curious how much I have with me.”
“Each brick costs eleven, American.”
Sascha nodded. “The stuff, it’s good?”
“Why you ask so many questions?”
“Just curious,” said Sascha. “I like to know what’s going on.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know too much, you know?”
Sascha nodded. “Your people will hide it good, the stuff?”
“Nervous?” asked Fabusayvich.
“What for, I’m nervous?” said Sascha.
Fabusayvich shrugged now. “Have some wine.” He poured more of the deep red wine into Sascha’s glass, then his own.
“I just want this thing to go right. You understand?” said Sascha. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my days in some jail in this shit town.”
“Don’t worry, everything is going to go right,” said Fabusayvich. “They do this all the time. They know what they’re doing.”
“I don’t want it to be just my luck that something goes wrong now.”
Later in the evening, now back in
Brasov, Sascha and Fabusayvich sat at a table in a dim hotel bar, watching a magician do tricks with large, metal rings, hitting them together, making them connect, then disconnect, making a chain out of them, then individual rings again. Some men were sitting at the bar.
“Why the fuck are we watching this jerk-off magician?” asked Sascha.
“We’re meeting here.”
“I thought we were supposed to meet at the lodge in Poiana Brasov.”
“That was just to check things out. Make sure there were no police following,” said Fabusayvich.
“Now we’re being checked again, by this jerk-off magician?”
“No. This is where, tonight, we make arrangements to do the deal.”
“Here? You sure?” Sascha looked around.
“It’s perfect: loud, public, no one will think that anything important is going on.”
Sascha shrugged. Now the magician was making candy on a tray disappear.
“I don’t like this mystery shit,” said Sacha. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Just sit quiet, it’s okay.”
“Where are these smart people we work for? When do they get here?”
“They’ve been around us all night, watching. Wanting to be sure that everything is all right. Nothing wrong with being careful.”
Sascha rose. “I’m going to the men’s. Where is it?”
“Over there,” Fabusayvich nodded toward a passage near the bar.
Sascha went into the men’s room where, in a booth, after checking that there was no one else in the room, he snorted some of the white powder from the folds of the twenty dollar bill. He felt okay, he said to himself. He took a deep breath as he looked in the mirror, wet his hands, patted his hair, studied the mirror, buttoned, then unbuttoned the top of his shirt. He splashed cold water on his face, looking around for a paper towel. He had to go back into the toilet booth and take a few pieces of hard, coarse toilet paper to dry his face and hands.
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