When one is fourteen years old and lives in New York, the oyster of the city is just beginning to open and reveal its secrets. One learns how to ride the subway without parents, discovers that turnstiles can be jumped if there isn’t enough cash for an MTA card, and begins to grasp what the effect of three or four beers at the Rockaways has on body function. A young man of that age stops using the deodorant that his mother has bought for him for years and begins to intensely study the various brands in the aisles of the convenience and grocery stores. The clear-gel deodorant, with the neon lettering printed on its packaging, becomes far more enticing than Old Spice. Of course, in ten years he’d be wearing Old Spice again. But that was neither here nor there. Ten years is a lifetime for a young teen.
Vlad was just like any normal fourteen-year-old at the time and so were all his friends. Baranowski, another one of the urinal offenders, was a constant presence in Vlad’s life by this point as well. But unlike a teenager growing up in an exclusive enclave such as Greenwich, Vlad had the specific disadvantage of not having any money at all. He couldn’t afford the choice deodorant he wanted. That’s the reason why Vlad, Baranowski, and their pal David started shoplifting.
At the highest level, shoplifting is a gentle art. But Vlad didn’t learn that the first time around or even the tenth. At its lowest echelon, the sport involves running away from a proprietor who’s swinging a hammer down the sidewalk and will stop at nothing to make you their newest lesson to all would-be thieves. All of the shop owners in Bensonhurst proper knew Vlad, and if Vlad had tried anything in their zones, they would have just marched over to his house and told Arseni. Vlad’s father Arseni was a hell of a man. He was masculine. He was from the old world. He was no nonsense. Had such an event occurred, Arseni would have given Vlad a whipping with his bare hands that inflicted much worse damage than a hammer ever could.
Ultimately that’s why the three of them would go into Brooklyn or if they were feeling particularly aggressive, all the way to Manhattan in order to find the stuff they coveted. The necessities—like energy drinks, or headphones, or the newest Eminem CD. At first David hadn’t been interested in partaking. But he also didn’t want to look bad in front of his friends. So he would grab little things from the aisles as well—a candy bar, a lighter—small and inconsequential items like that. Most of the time they got away with it.
■
One late spring day in Manhattan, Vlad noticed that David was wearing a bulky suede jacket. He decided that they’d be loading David up with the contraband that day, because his outer garment could practically fit a watermelon without looking unusual. Sherpa duty would be David’s. They entered a Walgreens in the East Village, and David followed behind Vlad and Baranowski as they surreptitiously grabbed whatever their little hearts desired. They would hand the items back to David, who would stuff them into the various pockets of his jacket.
As the three boys stepped out of the store, David tracked the eyes of the woman behind the cash register. She was fiddling with her nails and not paying him any attention. He thought that was a little strange, because most cashiers were hypervigilant and on the lookout for kids who came in, browsed, and left without any items. But David didn’t have much time to think about it, because there were already four cops standing outside. The officers picked up the three boys by their collars and flung them to the ground. All three were arrested. They later found out that a security guard had watched through a video surveillance system from an office in the back of the store as the “heist” occurred.
■
The flashbulbs of the mugshot, followed by the dark stain of fingerprints, greeted them at the police station a few blocks away. Vlad and Baranowski were released within hours, but David spent the night there. That wasn’t due to the fact that he was the only one with the jacket full of contraband; it was because Veronika refused to pick him up immediately. She wanted him to learn his lesson, and he did. The Walgreens experience was the last time that David ever shoplifted.
■
It took a year and a half for their case to work its way through the system. Arseni pulled a few strings. What that actually meant was that he either did a favor or bent someone’s arm in order to get a halfway decent attorney to represent the three boys. They received a nice talking to from the judge, a slap on the wrist, and a fine that would take another two years to pay off—but no time in juvenile hall.
As they were leaving the courtroom, Arseni tried to pull Veronika aside and speak to her. With a sharp word, Veronika twisted out of Arseni’s grasp and pulled David down the street in the opposite direction.
“Why’d you do that, Mum?” David asked. After all, Arseni was the reason that they were free and clear.
“He’s a bad man,” Veronika replied simply.
“What do you mean?”
“If your father had never met Arseni, he might be alive today,” she finally emoted. That was the end of the conversation. It didn’t take much detective work for David to figure out that Arseni and his own father used to run together in the same crew. Arseni was the boss—Papa, the muscle lackey. And the muscle always faded before the brain did.
The shoplifting incident didn’t become the final straw in David’s relationship with Vlad. But it did have a cooling effect. David spent more time in the math-and-science department. He saw Vlad less. After school let out, David started to go home instead of crossing the street to hang out with the boys. Vlad didn’t take it personally. He knew that David felt ashamed about what had happened. Even if they weren’t always best friends, their futures would always be bound together by their pasts. Anyhow, Vlad was real busy with other hobbies by the time freshman year in high school rolled around—getting drunk, smoking clove cigarettes, and learning to box with no gloves against the older boys in the park.
THIRTEEN
DAVID REMAINED INSIDE THE McDonalds. He was sitting at a corner table with his back against a grimy wall. He picked at a small bag of french fries, keeping his eyes low and regulating his breathing. He’d wiped his body down twice in the bathroom in an attempt to reduce the amount of sweat coming out of his pores. That had worked to some degree, although his heart rate was still high and would likely remain that way permanently—or at least until this was all resolved.
There was a small television in the corner of the restaurant. David froze as the words “Highway Heist” scrolled across the bottom of the screen. The news was out, and the media had started to sink their teeth into the FDR Drive robbery. An animated anchor chatted away with multiple “experts.” Always “former this” or “former that” from three-letter agencies, the specialists knew nothing except for the long-altered procedures from a decade before and were just happy to make their appearance fees.
As the minutes ticked by, David relaxed enough to observe the inhabitants of the McDonalds in their natural state. They all looked normal. Except for the ones who were obviously homeless, the rest of the people looked as they were—people. Each and every one of them had his or her own personal trials and tribulations. It was impossible to tell if they were eating lunch there because they didn’t have a job, were just taking a lunch break, or were the target of a manhunt. He realized that they were probably looking at him and thinking the same exact thing. Like the surface of a lake at sunset, all one can perceive is the peace of the steady plane. What’s under the surface might be very different. It’s impossible to know. The story of David’s last two days was incredible, but there was no one inside this McDonald’s who cared. With this theory as his psychological ammunition, David was finally able to calm down and avoid another lengthy trip to the bathroom.
The universal lesson of the prior forty-eight hours began to sink in properly. The surface was irrelevant. It hid everything and said nothing. Working for Montgomery Noyes had appeared to be the perfect goal—a career bullseye. But it wasn’t. Maybe Vlad had been right all along. Maybe perfect was impossible, acceptance was peace, and striving for something el
se the original sin.
David heard a car horn outside, and his heartbeat skyrocketed. He glanced up to notice a large black Mercedes swooping up to the sidewalk. The door opened. Vlad was driving. Without a moment’s pause, David rushed for the car and shut the door behind him.
“Turn your phone off and remove the battery” were the first words out of Vlad’s mouth as they accelerated away. “I got your message. Cat told me the police were all over your house. What the shit happened, David?”
“The gold—the FDR—the robbery—I didn’t do it . . . I didn’t. And it’s all on me,” David said as he tried to pull the battery out of his phone.
“Give me the battery,” Vlad said. David handed it to him. Vlad rolled down his window and dropped it onto the pavement. “So what you’re saying to me is that the pigs think my little peach, David Belov, who I know for a fact would never hurt a flea, robbed that gold truck yesterday?” Vlad asked inquisitively.
“Th-they’re coming for me,” David stuttered. “They had a warrant. What do I do? That’s what I need to know. I need help, Vlad. You always told me that I could come to you—that you’d be there for me. This is that time.”
Vlad thought long and hard as he drove out of the city. “Konstantin keeps some apartments for me. They’re safe,” he finally announced in silent acceptance of what was yet to come.
■
The apartment was a studio—a tiny pixel within a sprawling, labyrinthine apartment complex set back from Cropsey Avenue in Brooklyn. David paced back and forth across the room while Vlad sat on the bed with his hands in his pockets, watching him intently. David was, as always, racing to keep up with his brain’s anxieties.
“I can figure this out. It’s not unsolvable. No problem ever is. That’s the first assumption. Therefore it is possible to get to the bottom of this,” David said.
“Instead of skipping to the end, let’s start at the beginning. How much gold was stolen?” Vlad asked.
“I dunno. The detective told me a hundred and twenty million. What they said on the news was that the truck was completely loaded. Your average truck can hold about twenty-five hundred ounces. But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“The detective?”
“Jake’s his name—this blond guy—young. He was asking me questions and he said a hundred million plus.”
“Let’s say it was half the truck’s load . . .” Vlad pondered.
“That’s about eighty million dollars,” David said, calculating in his head.
“Okay. So it was probably more than that.”
“Sure. Could be,” David said.
“Over a hundred million dollars’ worth of gold?” Vlad whistled loudly.
“What’s the point? Who cares about the exact number?”
“The number doesn’t just matter—it’s everything. The ramifications are endless,” Vlad said as he slid his hand inside his jacket pocket. “Ambition, skill and experience all play together in this world. This was a high-line job. Only a few crews in the entire country could ever run it successfully, let alone get away with it after,” Vlad said.
“We don’t know that it was successful.”
“On the contrary, my peach. It’s been, what, twenty-four hours?”
“Yeah,” David said.
“A lifetime. You can’t steal that much gold without knowing what to do with it. Your average criminal is going to have trouble getting rid of fifty or a hundred thousand dollars worth of product. Anyone who successfully takes a hundred million dollars and leaves nothing behind? You’re talking about an utmost professional. I said only a few crews could do it. That’s true—statistically. But I don’t know them. I’d have a real major difficulty naming a single team that could pull that off.” Vlad thought through the logic further and then continued, “And they made it look like you did it all and know much more than you do. Right? So whoever they are, they’re very focused on you. If you go to jail, they’ll know. And they’ll keep moving the gold again and again—until it’s completely untraceable.”
Vlad finally removed his hand from his pocket. It emerged holding a handgun. Vlad gripped it by the barrel. He placed the gun into David’s tentative hand. “Don’t give it back to me. You need to feel how serious this is. Now listen. That’s a shit ton of metal that was stolen. You wanna dance down the yellow brick road, ya? But if there’s really that much gold at the end of it”—Vlad gestured to the gun—“lives will end.”
“I don’t care.”
Vlad paused upon hearing David’s response. “I’m your friend. I know you. A long time ago, you decided what your life was going to look like. Right?”
“This is different,” David said.
“Bullshit. What went down at the payday shop, my peach—years ago? It was because you made a choice. I was there. I watched you find yourself back then, and I’m watching you now. It’s not too different. Remember this. If you pace back and forth all night like I know you will and then make a decision to jump down the rabbit hole . . . You might never get out of there.”
David stared at the unfamiliar object in his hands. He knew that Vlad was right. But there were no alternatives. “I know. But if I can’t get the truth, then I’m in jail and my life’s over. All that matters is that I get the time to figure this out. I know what happened to me. I’m sure. Now I have to prove it. I do that, and everything goes back to normal. And if not . . . There’s nothing left for me anyways,” David said. He tossed the gun onto the bed next to Vlad.
“Ya,” Vlad said as he pocketed the gun again. “Well in that case, my business is just like your business. At the highest levels, everyone knows their competition intimately.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that while I may not know who did this, I know a guy who knows all the guys. If there’s so much as a whisper on the street, he’ll have picked it up. His name’s the Pie Man and he sells pizza,” Vlad said. “He may be able to help.”
■
Jake and Villalon stood aside the street in New Rochelle and observed their investigators going through the flatbed truck and remains of the armored car with a fine-tooth comb. Temporary light poles had been erected around what amounted to a second crime scene, aiding the police in their job. Tony’s gloved hands handled the unusual router-like device that Jake had first discovered inside the armored car.
“You want the bad news or the worse? I think I know what it is. Probably won’t make you very happy.”
“Do tell,” Jake commanded.
“It’s a signal jammer—six band. I’d have to test it, but I bet it could strike out 4G, GSM, 3G, and LTE—maybe more.”
“So it blocks cell phones?” Jake asked.
“And data,” Tony confirmed.
“What about radio?”
“These types of devices are completely off market. They’re illegal at the federal level. Because of that, some electrical engineer will just make ’em in their basement with standard parts. We don’t have full visibility on what they can do. But I’d make a strong bet that if you can block cell phones, it would be even easier to block radio.”
“That helps. Explains why none of the bank’s guards could talk to each other,” Jake said and then paused as he contemplated further. “Why leave it?”
“Only if they didn’t need it,” Tony said as he shrugged.
“To scare us?”
“You’re the wrong guy for that,” Tony said.
Jake grinned. “No prints, right?”
“No. Of course not. Not a single print across this whole scene. Maybe we’ll get a hair sample or two, but these guys took careful to the extreme,” Tony replied.
“All right. The jammer. Where do you buy one of those?”
“Nowhere in the United States. A couple dozen websites will sell them to you, label them as a router and risk it at customs—no questions asked. But those businesses and servers aren’t based in places that will respond to a subpoena with any alacrity.”
“Give that to me,�
�� Jake said. He turned the grey box around in the light, examining it from all sides. One of the plugs in the back had a few characters etched around the edges. “Did you see the etching?”
“Yeah. It’s Chinese—or Korean,” Villalon replied.
“That’s a lead . . .”
Tony shook his head. “I don’t think so. Like I told you, the device is made up of components. Those components are mostly made in Asia.”
“Yeah, well, our getaway driver was made in Asia, too,” Jake replied. “Maybe I need to go back downtown to the electronics marts.”
“Chinatown?”
“It’s not like anyone’s going to tell me anything of substance—not off the bat. But I have a rule for that too.”
“What?” Tony asked.
“The less they talk, the more they know.”
“Be careful down there, Jake.”
“I’m always careful,” Jake said.
“Yeah? And I’m always carefully cleaning up after you.”
■
Joe’s Pizza Pies was a hole in the wall, tucked into a corner of Little Italy. David eyed the classic, red-and-white checkered tablecloths and framed photographs of Joe with celebrities and other ultra-wealthy patrons on the walls. Joe and his restaurant were famous in their own right. Unlike a traditionally thin Italian pizza, Joe subscribed to the Chicago mold. His pizzas were an inch thick and actually resembled pies, filled with layer after layer of delicious dough, sauce, proteins, and vegetables. As David trailed Vlad through the establishment, he concluded that one of the best features of mobsters was that they really did know how to create incredible dining experiences. The authenticity shone through. It was a damn shame that the back offices were the real reason this business existed, especially when the pizza up front was so tasty. But then again, without what was happening in the back, there would be no food at all. Vlad and David approached the sixteen-year-old kid at the counter.
Flash Crash Page 9
