Flash Crash

by Denison Hatch

  “Okay. So you’re a very smart, very logical man.”

  David didn’t respond.

  “Right?” Jake asked.

  “I wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement.”

  “Don’t get sharp with me, Mr. Belov. You wiped away billions of dollars of net worth across the globe. I’ve listened to your story, and even then I don’t have a semblance of an idea if the ends justify the means. You are definitely still sitting on the wrong side of the table. Your fingerprints are all over this, and guess what? There’s nobody else—just a whole bunch of ghosts. So why don’t you help me figure something out, instead of acting like you’re some sort of savant who’s above the gutter that you’re finding yourself in? A hundred and twenty million dollars. That’s like, dynasty money,” Jake said. “Right?”

  “It’s a lot,” David confirmed.

  “So if I’m the mastermind behind this job? I need at least a handful of guys. I need to steal a big crane, some real estate to prep and store it all, a programmer . . .” Jake pointed at David. “That’s you. And then after all that planning and all that time, I finally get my hands on the gold. Enough to move to Europe and eat the Rothschilds for dinner. Oh, and I leave no tracks at all. Except, I leave David. I leave David’s wife and kid—alive. I even leave your cell phones on so that the police can find you. Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Mikey’s in a coma,” David answered.

  “This wasn’t his fault, and I’m not saying that.”

  “But you’re going to stand there and tell me that because I’m alive . . . I’m suspicious?”

  “I didn’t say that either,” Jake replied.

  “You implied it—logically.”

  “Okay. I did.”

  “Are you here to arrest me or something?” David asked.

  “No, sir. But if you’re tied to this crime in any way—”

  David jumped in to interrupt him. “We were terrorized!”

  “If that’s true, then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Jake said.

  “If that’s true?” David thought about Jake’s response and then stood up. “I’m going to go take care of my son,” he said.

  “David?”

  David turned.

  “People get blinded by money and forget about the law. I am the law. I am going to break this thing open. I just hope you’re not there on the other side when I do,” Jake said.

  David slammed the door to Mikey’s hospital room in response.

  “That was not super chill, Jake,” Jake muttered under his breath. He was a human too and he knew he shouldn’t have been so confrontational, but sometimes—scratch that—most of the time, he just couldn’t help it.

  ■

  Back inside the hospital room, Mikey’s heart-rate monitor was steadily rising. He began to motion with his arms and his head slowly turned to the side.

  “He’s coming out of it!” Marina yelled with joy. Two doctors entered the room and conferred with one another. Mikey coughed. All attention was focused on the child in the bed as he opened his eyes and the world came into focus for the first time that afternoon. He stared at his parents for a minute or two before speaking.

  “Daddy?” Mikey asked shakily.

  “I’m right here, little man,” David said as relief washed over his body.

  “I’m so hungry. Can I have chocolate pancakes?” Mikey said.

  Tears streamed down David’s and Marina’s faces as stress released from their bodies. Mikey started to drift off again, holding his parents’ hands.

  ■

  Jake watched the reunion occur through the hospital window until he received a text on his cell phone. He checked it. Tony had sent him a photograph from the police lab. The strips of shredded paper from David’s trashcan had been matched and put back together by a scanning algorithm to reveal a Google Maps printout. A red circle was drawn around a random street intersection in Pelham, New York.

  “What’s this?” Jake muttered. He quickly tapped out a return text to Villalon and then leaned towards a cop guarding the hospital door.

  “Don’t let the husband leave without my permission, understood?” Jake instructed him. “The man in there with the kid . . . He’s my number one.”

  ■

  Jake rocketed towards Pelham on his bike. As he neared the exit, he could see four police helicopters circling above an area just off the highway. The police presence in the air was abundant.

  Jake pulled up and was astounded to find the flatbed truck, the magnetic crane rig, and the armored truck from the robbery. All three machines sat placidly along a lonely street. Jake leapt from his motorcycle and approached the scene. Although it was fortuitous that the recovery had occurred so quickly, the pit inside Jake’s stomach was not subsiding. It was growing.

  The side of the armored truck, where the gold had been located, had been cut through and replaced with a gaping hole. An abandoned gas-powered torch sat on the sidewalk next to it. This indicated a number of facts to Jake, but the first was that the criminals knew exactly what they were doing. An amateur would go for a door or window, not realizing that the portholes of armored vehicles were actually better protected than the side flanks. It was clear that this was not the work of first-timers, but then again, Jake already knew that. This simply cemented it. Jake’s mind had already raced a hundred steps ahead, as usual. But as he snapped back to real time, Jake realized that in addition to being the first detective on the scene, he was also the first responder.

  Jake sprinted towards the front of the armored truck and became nauseated when he noticed that the bank’s driver and guard were still inside the cab. Neither man was moving. Jake tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. He stepped back and pulled his standard-issue Glock from a shoulder holster. He shot the door lock. Nothing. The steel was impervious. Jake sprinted back to his motorcycle. He spied the power cutter on the ground. The irony was not lost upon Jake that whoever had perpetrated this crime had been better prepared to save a life than he was. But instead of reaching for the cutter, Jake retrieved his trusty crowbar. He had an idea. He’d piggyback off the work already done. Jake jumped through the hole in the armor, into the back of the truck.

  He tripped over a few pieces of electronic equipment lying on the floor, seemingly left behind. Glancing down quizzically, Jake noticed a portable device the size of a brick. The handheld unit was made of grey metal, with six identical walkie-talkie-esque antennas emerging from the top. He couldn’t identify what it was, but neither was this the time to do so. An access door inside the cargo hold of the truck separated him from the armored truck’s cab. Since Jake was already through one line of defense, the door was significantly less fortified. He used the crowbar to painstakingly lever the door open. He opened it a few inches, just enough to push his hand through and manually unlock the door. The small door swung open. Jake shuffled into the truck’s cab on his knees, leaning towards the driver immediately. The driver didn’t respond to Jake’s touch or yelling. He felt for a pulse on the driver but found nothing. Jake scrambled over to the passenger to see if the other man was alive. No. Both guards were dead.

  Jake shook his head and extracted himself from the truck. He could do nothing in this moment except sit down on the ground against the truck and try to control his emotions. His chest heaved. Not only was Jake chasing a gang of highly sophisticated and coordinated bank robbers—he was up against murderers as well.

  That wasn’t a huge surprise, in the sense that eighty or ninety thousand dollars could get a man killed on the streets in the current day. With eighty as the going rate, a hundred million could buy a citywide massacre. But the deaths did change the complexion of the case. They also stood in contrast to a specific set of humans—the Belov family—who ought to have been sacrificial lambs.

  Jake stood up and walked to his bike while police sirens rang out and multiple squad cars finally arrived on the scene. He’d made his decision. He reached for his police radio.

&n
bsp; “Arrest the quant—immediately,” Jake ordered.

  ■

  In Kings County Hospital, a large group of officers rushed down the hallway towards Mikey’s hospital room. The police officer at the door jumped to his feet and opened the door. But Marina stood in the way.

  “Out of the way, ma’am.”

  “No!” Marina screamed. “Not in front of my son!”

  “Mr. Belov! You are under arrest. Do not resist!” the cop yelled. Marina pushed back against the door as more cops piled on. She couldn’t hold them any longer. Inside the hospital room, Marina fell onto the ground, tears running down her face. The cops finally gained entry and discovered that David wasn’t there.

  ■

  David walked briskly down the hallway. He was wearing an extra set of scrubs that he’d found hanging in the room next door to Mikey’s. Luckily there had been an adjoining door that allowed him access to a hallway just around the corner from Mikey’s wing. For a brief moment, visions of Hollywood movies flashed through his head. He was like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive—on the run. David didn’t want to be a fugitive, but he had no other choice. He could already sense the overbearing crush of evidence pointing his way. The detective’s demeanor and hypotheses had said it all. It was also all fabricated, but why would the police believe that? Whoever had done this to him and his family had prepared their gameplan at a granular level. He knew that if he didn’t work outside the system, there would be no way of pulling himself back above the surface. The death spiral of coincidence and circumstance was poised to take him under—unless he could do something about it. Unless he could fight back. He couldn’t do that from a cell. Jail would cement his fate—not to mention the fact that Rivett obviously hated him. That really pissed David off. It fulfilled much of the stereotypes about the police from the old neighborhood he thought he’d left behind. It was all splashing up back around him in a form of psychological blowback that David wasn’t quite prepared to address. There was still a part of him that didn’t trust the police. He never just believed what they said. Sometimes they spoke the truth, and sometimes they didn’t. They did what they wanted—what was good for them. They weren’t on his side. No one was. It was David against the world.

  David pulled a clipboard off the wall when he noticed a pack of police officers walking his way. He ducked into a random patient’s room, emerging after the phalanx of cops had passed. They hadn’t noticed. A character inside his own narrative, David became acutely aware of his senses. His heart pounded on overdrive. His muscles contracted, ready for anything. The surge of adrenaline that accompanies survival kept him fully charged. He reached a set of service stairs. He popped into the stairwell and tore down the stairs.

  ■

  David emerged from the side exit of the hospital to encounter another squad car. He couldn’t help but engage in eye contact with the two officers in the car, then walk past them as calmly as possible. Once he felt that they weren’t looking at him any longer, David jackknifed across the street. Cars squealed their brakes to avoid him, honking loudly to display their displeasure. David checked the cops again. It seemed that his jaywalking had not raised the ire of the authorities. Such was the chaotic patchwork of everyday Manhattan. He turned a corner and peered over his shoulder again. Nobody was following him. Incredible. David concluded that he’d actually escaped. But he had to stay gone, which would prove much more difficult than slipping through the hospital’s security cordon.

  After a few blocks of quick pacing, David eventually spied a pay phone inside the vestibule of a McDonald’s. He stepped inside.

  David took a deep breath while he thought about the next step. The truth was that he ought to have made this move two days earlier. He comforted himself by remembering that it also might have killed his wife and child. But the situation had changed. Since Marina and Mikey were finally safe, he was ready to ask for help from the one person whom he knew without a shadow of a doubt would be there for him. The quarter rested above the coin slot of the pay phone. He decided. He jammed the change into the public phone and dialed a number.

  He reached Vlad Zhadanov’s voicemail.

  “It’s me. I need your help. I’m at the McDonald’s on Flatbush—south of Church. Can you pick me up? Please. It’s an emergency,” David begged his old friend.

  TWELVE

 

  THE FIRST TIME DAVID met Vlad Zhadanov was in fourth grade, when they were both ten years old. Their grade school, P.S. 128 on Twenty-first Avenue, was an institution in Bensonhurst. At five stories tall, the building towered over the two-story townhomes that constituted the majority of the neighborhood. It was regally constructed, primarily consisting of stacked brick but also accented and outlined by grand limestone bulwarks. David’s memories of the time were fleeting, as the fresh side of youth often is, but he would never forget the day that he met Vlad. It was in the bathroom on the second floor, and Vlad was conducting a peeing contest.

  At the time, the boys’ bathrooms in P.S. 128 were old enough to be considered antique. With aqua tiling from floor to ceiling and original bronze fixtures, the design would also be completely en vogue at a hipster gastropub in modern day. On one side of the bathroom, a long row of white porcelain troughs extended about four feet up from the floor, one after the next. When David opened the door, Vlad was standing about ten feet from the urinals, arcing his back and attempting to articulate his urine all the way into the latrines, like a human park fountain. A few other boys stood around, watching with admiration as Vlad yelled at them, “Bet ya can’t go any farther than I can!”

  David was unsure what he was witnessing. Soon the rest of the boys had lined up and were trying too. That’s when David realized that it was a competition. Vlad noticed that David was still sitting this little exercise out, so he made sure to turn David’s way and belittle him.

  “If you don’t try it, Belov, I’ll piss on you, too!” Nothing like the threat of an embarrassing afternoon soaked in urine to get David motivated. He reached down and unzipped, stepped back to the imaginary line, and joined in. At that very moment, their social studies teacher, Mr. Morgan walked into the men’s room with an incredulous look on his face. Morgan went berserk. He started screaming at the top of his lungs, letting them know in no uncertain terms that they were all a bunch of shitheads who would never get ahead in life if they spent their time and effort aiming sterile liquid into a urinal. Mr. Morgan wasn’t a puritan. He just couldn’t handle the preposterous nature of what he was seeing.

  The moment defined Vlad forever in David’s mind, and not only because he’d achieved the longest distance. Vlad was as consistently provocative as David was thoughtful. Deep down inside, Vlad did it all for the reaction. The competition wouldn’t have been complete, wouldn’t have gone down in history, without Mr. Morgan’s wide eyes and crazed demeanor. Vlad was always busy daring people, cajoling them, threatening them, and palling around with them. And from that day forward, Vlad’s relationship with David would simultaneously incorporate all of these aspects.

  ■

  The next four years of middle school were defined by the accelerating blur of adolescence. David and Vlad were quite different animal spirits, but they became fast friends. After Papa died, it had taken David a few years to come out of his shell and not feel as though he was floating along the treadmill of a muted dream. Middle school corresponded with David’s ability to finally socialize and get along with other kids. David wasn’t quite sure why a rascal like Vlad had even been interested in fostering a friendship with a boy like him in the first place. But there were a few obvious reasons and one deep, unspoken one.

  It wasn’t lost on David that Vlad consistently helped himself to a peek, or two or three, of David’s homework for about six or seven years running. But it didn’t really bother David. He didn’t feel used. Even though David was acing all of the aforementioned tests and homework, and Vlad was copying him, Vlad still only managed to scrape through school with a C-p
lus average. In both David’s mind and reality, he was actually just helping the poor guy survive. And what did David get out of the arrangement? Vlad had his personality issues, but he was a loyal friend. It was always a two-way street. He included David in the bustle of their burgeoning social life. David would have otherwise spent his lunches alone in the cafeteria if it weren’t for Vlad. And that’s exactly what David needed at the time.

  Vlad was a boy who seemed to have the world at his fingertips. But he was peaking early, and maybe he even knew it. He recognized skills in David that he desperately needed. David was smart—precociously talented, even. But more importantly, he was polite. Veronika had raised him right. Vlad’s main interest at the time had nothing to do with the classroom. It was all about what he could do in the wild world that was becoming both bigger and smaller at the same moment, every passing day of childhood. It was infinitely helpful for Vlad to have a buttoned-up friend like David next to him, with his clean shirt tucked in and his hair parted neatly. It was important to Vlad to have a guy by his side who already talked as though he was a studious twenty-year-old when he was actually thirteen. And the primary reason that a nerdy, serious, straight-talker like David was helpful to Vlad was that the police in Brooklyn didn’t take very kindly to juveniles with larceny in their blood.

  Vlad and David spent countless hours loitering in Coney Island. When they were bored with the sights and sounds of the boardwalk, they’d wander north and explore “Gravesend,” a huge municipal parking lot and subway terminus. David was the one who figured out that if they timed it just right, they could hitch rides on various subway cars and traverse them through the subterranean depths of the city to basically any destination they desired.