“What are you doing?” she asked. Her eyes peered deeply.
“Huh?” David replied in between mouthfuls of pancake.
“Your girlfriend called. She’s worried about you—says you’re taking too much risk. Doing what all the other kids are doing. What does she mean? Tell me.”
“Mum, I’m the good guy. I’m fine.”
“Marina doesn’t call me to exchange pleasantries, Davyd.”
“Let me worry about myself,” David replied.
“No. You deserve more. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out of the neighborhood. That’s the truth. And I’m not saying that just because you’re my blood. I tell you . . . because of who you are—who you can be. You’re not Papa. You’re different. I don’t know where it came from, or how. But I love Marina because she sees it too. You’re the one who’ll get out of here. You’ll excel. You can become something completely different from what’s going to happen to all of your friends.”
“If you’re so smart, Mum, what’s going to happen to them?”
“Same thing as your father. They’re going to blow out bright—be kings for a night, or a year or two. Maybe a decade if they’re lucky. And then, one by one, they’re going to start to disappear. They’ll die—in prison, on the streets. And if none of that happens, they’ll be miserable and paranoid. They’ll become freaks of nature. That’s what you want?”
“I’ll never let that happen.”
“That’s what Papa said to me every single night when he left. I’d sit back there on the porch and I’d wait. You don’t know how many times I’d wake up in the morning and he still wasn’t back. How horrible it feels to wake up and cry . . . And you know what? He was wrong. I was right. One night, when you were tiny . . . He just never came back.” Veronika’s eyes moistened in front of David. “But the police did—three days later. Know how they found him?”
“No . . .”
“Underwater—in cement up to his knees. He was murdered, and none of his friends would peep a word. The cops told me all about it . . .” Veronika began choking up. Both stunned and sorrowful, David moved across the table to comfort her.
“I kept calling the police, tryin’ to figure out what was going on. I had you to take care of. Had to figure out how to tell you that your daddy was gone. But I called over and over again, even though they had nothing to say. They were ‘still working on it, missus’ for weeks. Eventually this detective comes over. He tells me there’s an update. He sat right there at the table where you are. They tracked the barrel—the one full of cement. Came from a waste management operation on Cropsey. Guess what’s right next door? Arseni’s boxing gym. That was the only clue. And unless someone came in from the cold and told ’em the truth, that’s as far as they were gonna get. He didn’t say it, but I know why he was here. He just wanted me to know. He wanted to tell me that my husband was killed by his best friend.”
“Are you saying that Arseni . . .”
“I don’t know, Davyd,” Veronika said. She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter anymore. But the world’s full of liars and stocked with masks.”
David figured that telling him the story allowed Veronika to close the book on her past. But it opened a whole new page for David. And right then and there, he had made his decision about Cash & Loan Xpress.
THIRTY-FOUR
DAVID AND VLAD FINISHED loading up the box truck and exited the reservoir’s empty parking lot. They ripped through New Jersey and headed west on I-280 towards the wilderness of upstate. In a brief and rare moment of silence between Vlad’s rants of ecstasy, David found the time to ask the question that had been bothering him.
“Did you know Tyler Stanton was murdered?”
“No,” Vlad announced after a long pause. “When did you hear that?”
“Saw it on the news.”
“I know he was your friend. Sorry. Who knows what trouble he got himself into? Always more going on than anyone realizes, ya?” Vlad said as he put his arm over David’s shoulder. “We did it. We really shittin’ did it. Didn’t we, partner? Didn’t we!” Vlad screamed with delight as he held the steering wheel.
■
An hour later, the box truck careened along the Delaware Water Gap, a river running between dueling mountain ranges and delimiting the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Since he was a good ninety miles from New York, time finally slowed down for David. Whereas the entire heist had seemed to pass in a split second inside the vault, his body was beginning to regain balance, and his adrenal glands normalized. It was the first time in two weeks that he had a chance to take a breath and look around.
What he saw was downright beautiful. The box truck rolled down the country road, next to the clean rushing water of the Delaware River, framed by a luxurious patchwork of amber, red, and yellow fall leaves in the forests above. The sun glided over the surface of the immense mountain range behind them, illuminating the scene of what must have been a massive battle millions of years before as these geological formations took shape. Vlad craned his neck and searched for a particular driveway. He found it eventually and guided the truck onto an unmarked gravel road. They headed towards an old abandoned quarry situated next to the river.
Vlad slowed the truck down to a crawl in order to navigate the bumpy and uneven dirt road ahead of them. David eyed the iron ruins of a long industrial steel catwalk strung across the high cliffs leading down to a rocky bank below. After a few more minutes, David and Vlad finally arrived at a small gravel lot at the base of the quarry.
■
There was an eighteen-wheeler packed with bananas and parked there already. Working to create a space between all of the fruit, Konstantin waved from inside.
“You sure this is going to work?” David asked Vlad.
“Absolutely. The hard part’s over. What we’re doing next, I’m really good at. I got a long life to live. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.”
“I do too,” David responded.
“I know. You have to trust me, David.”
“I have.”
“And look where it got you.” Vlad smiled brightly.
“Don’t really know where that is yet . . .”
“Give it a rest. Relax.”
“All right.”
“It’ll all be over soon,” Vlad said.
Vlad parked the box truck. He and David disembarked and walked towards Konstantin. As they paced towards the banana truck, in which the gold would be smuggled across the country, David heard a sound behind him. He looked back. Baranowski was controlling an excavator with two huge chains wrapped around the scooper. But that wasn’t all. The chains were lifting up a light-green Honda Civic in the air and rotating the vehicle towards them.
David stared at the car. Something about it was familiar, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then he saw the license plate on the back and a logo printed on the plate’s frame: “Stony Brook Alumni.” It was David’s car.
“What’s going on?” David asked with alarm. He turned abruptly towards Vlad to find a pistol aimed directly at his face.
“This is where we end, my peach,” Vlad said solemnly.
“Vlad . . .”
“I’m not delighted about it.”
“What are you doing?” David asked plaintively.
“Right now?” Vlad shrugged. “Actually, nothin’. I’m sitting on my couch with Cat—eating pirozhkis. But you? I made sure the truck was rented under your name. You’re the only one on any of the building’s surveillance cameras. And your partner, Tyler . . . You murdered him to cover your own tracks, with a gun that only has your prints on it. Remember, when I tossed it to you in the safe house?”
The truth began to spread across David’s consciousness like an out-of-control wild fire. It all began to connect, and his gut tightened as if he’d had been slammed with a bat.
“You bastard,” David said. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”
“Shame of it all is yo
u got away with it—free and clear. But it was dark out. You crashed,” Vlad gestured to David’s car. “Your body will be found in the river, with a car full of gold. But not all the gold. I mean, shit. The rest must have went down the river. In the muck . . . Ya? Did you really think that we could do all this without puttin’ the crime on someone? That person is gonna be you. Come on, you knew there was no way you were getting out of this. I can—it’s in my blood—but not you. This ain’t who you are. That’s the way life really works, David. It’s just like your flash crash. What are those stocks floatin’ on? Nothin’—thin air—everything can be destroyed in an instant. It can happen to anyone, at any time.”
“I don’t deserve this,” David said. “We’re friends.” David eyed Konstantin and Baranowski, who were watching the interaction intently. “You’re going to let him do this? He could turn around and do you, too!”
“Don’t worry about them. They’re loyal. It’s you that’s the problem. You always thought you were better than me. But you’re not. We’re the same, David. We’re two poor kids from the neighborhood. The difference is I never forgot it,” Vlad responded.
“I never looked down on you,” David said.
“Right. You hated me instead. And you betrayed me—left me high and dry.”
“Don’t you get it? I didn’t hate you. I hated me. I didn’t want to be the smartest hood in Bensonhurst. You’re not doing all this because I stopped running with you, are you? That’s insane. I had to do that for me. It had nothing to do with you.” David grew angrier. “Just ’cause I got an education, got a job . . . What does that matter to you? What does it mean? We’re friends, Vlad. No—you were my best friend.”
“Three years in the pen because of what you did.” Vlad spit onto the ground in disdain.
“The Cash & Loan? I was a kid, Vlad. That was your plan, your bag—not mine. You had to hold the risk on that one. Told me so yourself. You know that. You never would have gone to prison if you hadn’t decided to up the ante and go after that business. I had nothing to do with it. Don’t lay that on me.”
“Wrong again, pal. I went to jail because you chickened out. And you didn’t even have the respect to tell me that you pissed your pants and weren’t going to cut the alarm. But the truth is . . . it’s not just prison, David. That’s not the worst part. This wouldn’t have happened if I was just angry ‘bout the pen. It’s what came next,” Vlad gazed hatefully at David. “The worst part is that you didn’t come. You didn’t visit. That’s when I knew for sure how you felt about me. You hated me for a long fuckin’ time. Shit. That’s why we didn’t talk for years—because you didn’t want nothin’ to do with me. Until Mikey came along and you and Marina decided he needed friends from the neighborhood. Right? I’m supposed to just take that? You want to turn me into your little errand boy? Life ain’t like the bank. You don’t get to just keep taking a little bit off the top—not for free. But the truth is that’s what I always was to you. And now you’re gonna be that for me.”
David didn’t respond.
“I’m not your goddamn convenience. You’re right, by the way. You were my best friend—until you weren’t. Until I realized you’d do anything in the world to not be like me. I had to mourn losing you. I cried.” Vlad paused for a moment. “So now you know it all. Story time’s up. Get in the car,” Vlad said as he gestured with his gun.
David watched as Baranowski lowered the car back down to the ground. Vlad opened the door. With no choice, David did as he was told and sat in the driver’s seat. Vlad pointed his gun at David, who scrambled to delay his fate.
“Well, if you’re going to do this, at least don’t keep me wondering,” David said. “It was you all along, wasn’t it? That was your mask in the incinerator? So there were no women at all—no Asians, right? The whole thing was you guys, from the very beginning—all of it. Marina told me the cops were looking for masks. I didn’t understand that. But I should have known. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it—couldn’t turn my brain that direction. I didn’t believe that you’d betray me like this. You . . . you kidnapped my family,” David finally said it out loud.
“You really were genetically blessed with a large lump of grey matter,” Vlad said, confirming David’s suspicions.
“You’re a piece of shit.”
“I enjoyed it,” Vlad said with a shrug. “Got to see Marina naked. Always wondered what she’d look like. Can’t fault me. I’m a man. You got a babe, bro. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her.”
“You’re going to pay,” David steamed.
“You’re right again. And I’ll have a hundred million dollars to do it.”
“But why the armored car? That’s way out of your comfort zone. How did you even know about . . . Why did . . . You don’t know what a flash crash is. You couldn’t have . . .” David trailed off as the endless possibilities piled up inside his mind.
“I should actually thank you,” Vlad opened up. “Gig came around. A middleman set me and Howard up. Because I knew you, that made it really easy. I terrorized your family and robbed that armored car. It was beautiful. But that’s not why I wanted to say thank you.”
Vlad opened a small black medical case that Konstantin had handed to him. Inside was a hypodermic needle and a vial of knockout agent. Vlad prepared the device in front of David as he continued to explain himself. “That penishead Howard Bergensen only paid me five hundred grand for the FDR job. So when you told me that the score was worth a hundred million, I became deeply, deeply offended. I hate being lied to. Only I get to do that, ya? So I had to steal it back. The perfect crime—take from someone who can’t report it. Now, of course, I needed you to pull it off. And to make everything just that much more refined, I’m going to use you to seal the deal.”
“Wait . . . Vlad . . .” David stalled.
“Nah. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. I’m done with all that,” Vlad said, about to deliver David his final fate via a needle prick.
“Hold on. One more thing. When we were teenagers . . . The Cash & Loan . . .” David said.
Vlad hesitated with the needle. “What?” he asked.
“The newspaper back then said all the bills were gone. You hid the stash, didn’t you?” David asked.
Vlad shook his head, “No. Fuckin’ pigs were always wrong about that. It was fine with me for the street to think it—”
“I thought that’s how you paid your debt down. What happened? Where’d you store it all?” David asked.
“I got in there, my peach. And the cash room . . . It was clean. Nothing was there. I guess my source was wrong the whole time. And I didn’t have any time to look around. ’Cause the alarms had gone off, thanks to you, and the police were already outside.”
“There’s a reason you never found that cash,” David said nervously as the needle vibrated an inch from his neck.
“What?” Vlad asked. The needle stopped shaking.
“How do you think I paid my way through college?”
Vlad’s eyebrows twitched nervously. Surely that couldn’t be. David was messing with him. All of a sudden, Vlad wasn’t sure if perhaps David was the type of man who looks like a sheep but acts like a lion.
“You were my first counter trade,” David said.
David’s hand rose abruptly. He was still holding the yellow taser gun that Vlad himself had insisted upon. David didn’t need to think. His instinct was to shoot, which he did. He aimed at Vlad’s face, and the two tasers impacted Vlad’s neck, diving half an inch into the flesh. Vlad’s body stiffened in a split second as thousands volts of electricity coursed through each vein simultaneously. He fell to the ground like a lump.
David kicked out the Civic’s door and reached down for Vlad’s gun, which was lying on the gravel next to him. Konstantin wasn’t armed, so he turned and sprinted back towards the eighteen-wheeler before David could swing the gun his way. Baranowski was scrambling to jump out of the excavator. David shot at the glass cab of the excavator, shatte
ring a window but completely missing Baranowski.
David sprinted away from the flat parking area and towards the top of the old quarry. He smashed his way through a wooden gate and hustled up a set of rusted stairs. Hearing a squeak at the gate, he turned and discovered that Vlad had recovered and was chasing after him.
After David reached the top of the stairs, he leaned over the metal gangplank. He saw Vlad coming up the stairs. He took another shot. Missed. David scampered along the metal walkway, hearing Vlad in rabid pursuit behind him. David turned again, pressing the gun trigger just as Vlad swung a piece of two-by-four wood at David’s hand. Vlad knocked the gun away and launched himself into the air, impacting David directly in the chest and holding on. David lost his balance on the metal walkway, his body flipping over the low railing separating them from the quarry. Vlad fell along with him.
The two men tumbled down the rough rock face, rolling about a hundred feet along a slope towards the sheer edge of the quarry proper. Neither of them had any weapons. David scraped his hands along the side of the rock quarry, his fingers ripping against the stone, before finally holding on to a piece of rock that held his weight. Vlad wasn’t so lucky. He couldn’t stop the fall. He rolled over the edge of the cliff, unable to gain equilibrium.
But at the last moment, just as Vlad was about to fall another hundred feet through the air onto granite below, David instinctively stuck his hand out. He wasn’t sure why. It must have been something deep inside his subconscious. He wasn’t saving Vlad; he was saving the little boy he used to know and love. Having caught Vlad and prevented his imminent death, David held him suspended in the air. The two men stared at one another, their eyes locked in a death embrace.
“Please. My peach. Don’t . . .” Vlad pleaded.
“Who was the middleman?” David asked angrily.
“Huh?”
“Who set you and Howard up?” David insisted. Vlad’s sweaty hand began to slip.
Flash Crash Page 24
