Criminal Conversation

by Ed McBain

  “Seven hundred, really?” Handelmann said, and reached into his sweater-vest pocket for a loupe. He was a man in his seventies, Sarah supposed, one of two brothers who’d been hurriedly shipped by their parents to London immediately after Kristalnacht, when any Jew in his right mind recognized what was about to happen in Austria and Germany. They had spent their adolescent years in a hostel on Willesden Lane and had come to America at the end of the war, after they learned that both their parents had perished at Auschwitz. Of the two brothers, Sarah preferred dealing with Max, but he was on vacation today, and she was stuck with Avrum.

  Loupe to his eye, he repeated, “Seven hundred, really?” and then fell silent as he turned the black ring this way and that, studying the band and the signet, and finally looking up at her and saying, “Mrs. Welles, you got quite a bargain.”

  “I did?” she said.

  She’d been hoping he would tell her she’d paid too much. Seven hundred dollars was much more than she would ordinarily have spent on herself.

  “Quite a bargain,” he repeated, looking at the ring through the loupe again.

  “How much do you think it’s worth?” she asked.

  “A Greek ring of this quality,” he said, “at least …”

  “I understood it to be Roman.”

  “No, it’s Greek, at least second century B.C. And in mint condition. I’d say it’s worth five to six thousand dollars.”

  Sarah was too startled to speak.

  “But, Mrs. Welles, I have to tell you something,” Handelmann said, and again the eyes narrowed. “I think this is a stolen ring.”

  “What?” she said.

  “Stolen,” he repeated, and handed the ring back to her as if it had suddenly turned molten in his hand. “I’m sure it’s listed on the IFAR list I got just before …”

  “The what?”

  “IFAR,” he repeated.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The International Foundation for Art Registry. They circulate a list of stolen art …”

  “Art? It’s just a …”

  “Well, admittedly it’s a minor piece. But some very important items were stolen as well.”

  “Stolen … where?” she said.

  “From the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, just before Christmas,” Handelmann said.

  “Well, I’m sure this isn’t the … the same ring. There must be hundreds of … of similar, rings. I bought it from a very reputable …”

  “Oh, yes, there are, many similar rings,” Handelmann said. “But not all of them show up on an IFAR list.”

  “What I’m saying …”

  “Yes, it could have been another ring,” Handelmann agreed. “Certainly.”

  “Because, you see, the shop I bought it from …”

  “But these things often slip by,” he said. “Stolen goods. They will sometimes work their way into otherwise reputable shops.”

  “Well … wouldn’t they have the … the same list you have?”

  “Not necessarily. We trade in antiquities. Which is why we subscribe to IFAR.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Would you like my advice, Mrs. Welles?”

  “Well … yes. Please.”

  “You’ve already purchased what I believe to be a ring stolen from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which has reported the theft to IFAR and undoubtedly to the Boston police, with the result that the piece now appears on a list that goes out to subscribers all over the United States. You have several choices, as I see it,” he said. “You can take it back to the shop where you bought it …”

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do,” she said.

  “. . . tell them you believe the ring to be stolen …”

  “Yes.”

  “. . . and ask them for your money back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which they may or may not return. Especially once you inform them that the ring is a stolen one.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes. Or you can go to the police and tell them you believe you purchased a stolen ring, and turn the ring over to them. The police here in New York. Not the Boston police, of course.”

  “That might be a good idea, too,” she said, and sighed heavily.

  “They’ll give you a receipt for it, and they’ll undoubtedly contact the Boston Museum, and that’s the last you’ll hear of it. Forget the seven hundred dollars you paid for it, that’s gone the minute you turn the ring in. The police don’t want to know from seven hundred dollars you paid for stolen goods. You’ll be lucky they won’t charge you with receiving.”

  Sarah sighed again.

  “Or what else you can do,” Handelmann said, and his eyes narrowed again, and she knew intuitively—even before his voice lowered—that he was about to suggest something at best immoral and at worst criminal. “What else you can do is keep the ring, forget I told you it was stolen—which, by the way, I may be wrong, you yourself pointed out there are many similar rings. Keep the ring, no one will ever know it appeared on some cockamamie list. You paid seven hundred dollars for it, did you know it was stolen?”

  “Well, no, of course …”

  “So forget about it,” he said. “You never came in here, I never saw the ring, wear it in good health.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and opened her bag and slipped the ring into her change purse. “Thank you,” she said again, and went to the door and opened it. Outside, she blinked her eyes against a fierce wind that nearly swept her off her feet.

  “Last time I was in this airport,” Rudy said, “it was this shitty little thing with maybe two, three airlines coming in, you walked over to this little cinder-block baggage claim area. Now it’s like any other airport in the world, look at the fuckin’ thing.”

  The Continental flight from Newark had landed in Sarasota at 1:45 p.m. Andrew and his uncle were carrying only the small bags they’d brought onto the plane with them, and were walking now through a glittery esplanade lined with shops. They had booked a pair of connecting rooms at the Hyatt; they planned to be here only overnight. As they’d been advised in New York, their driver was waiting for them just outside the baggage claim area, carrying a small sign that read FARRELL. He took the bags from them and carried them out to a white Cadillac sitting at the curb.

  “Where’s the fuckin’ bride?” Rudy said, and Andrew laughed as they got into the car.

  “You brought some good weather with you,” the driver said.

  “Been raining or what?” Rudy asked.

  “No, just a little chilly. Lots of wind, too.”

  “It’s freezing cold up north,” Andrew said.

  “That’s why I moved down here,” the driver said.

  “How chilly?” Rudy asked.

  “Fifties during the day. Upper thirties, low forties at night.”

  So why the fuck’d you move here? Rudy wondered, but said nothing.

  It took them some fifteen minutes to get to the Hyatt, where they registered respectively as Andrew and Rudy Farrell, and another ten minutes to get settled in their rooms. Andrew was already on the phone when Rudy came in through the connecting door.

  “. . . where we can talk privately,” Andrew was saying. “Without any interruptions.” He listened, said, “Um-huh,” listened again, looked at his watch, said, “Fine, three o’clock, we’ll be there,” and hung up.

  “Where?” Rudy said.

  “They’re sending a boat to the dock out back.”

  “What is it with these fuckin’ spies and their boats?” Rudy said, shaking his head. “I don’t like boats. A boat, they can throw you to the fuckin’ sharks,” nobody’ll ever know it.”

  “I think we’ll be okay,” Andrew said. “They were going to pull anything, they wouldn’t have asked for the sitdown to begin with.”

  “I
don’t trust spies as far as I can throw them,” Rudy said. “They know we done Moreno, now they want to meet us on a fuckin’ boat. What for? So they can do us?”

  “These are different guys, Uncle Rudy. They’re as happy as we are that Moreno’s dead.”

  “Still,” Rudy said. “Years ago, you got on a plane, you carried a piece in your luggage. Nowadays, these fuckin’ terrorists, you got to go places naked.”

  Andrew looked at his watch again.

  “Five minutes from now, you won’t be so naked,” he said.

  At two thirty sharp, the telephone rang. Andrew picked up.

  “Mr. Farrell?” the voice asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Got a package for you. Okay to come up?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Wilson.”

  “Come on up, Wilson,” Andrew said, and hung up. “The guns,” he said to his uncle.

  “About fuckin’ time,” Rudy said.

  Wilson was a black man in his late thirties, carrying an attaché case with two Smith & Wesson .38-caliber pistols in it. He did not touch the guns, allowing Rudy and Andrew to remove them from the case themselves. Andrew figured he didn’t want his prints on the pieces, just in case these dudes here were in Sarasota to dust somebody. When Andrew asked him how much they owed him, he said it had been taken care of already. Andrew wondered whether he expected a tip, but the man seemed to bear himself with such dignity and authority that he decided against it.

  “Happy hunting,” Wilson said, and walked out.

  As promised, the tender from the boat came in at three o’clock sharp. The name of the boat was lettered in gold on the tender’s transom: KATIENA. The same gold lettering marched across the big boat’s transom, KATIENA, and beneath that her home port, FT. LAUDERDALE, FL. Rudy had told Andrew that nobody met on the east coast of Florida anymore. Too much dope shit in Miami, too much local, state, and federal heat all up and down the coast. Sarasota, Fort Meyers, even Naples were quiet little communities convenient to the Colombians and the New Yorkers as well. A person could sit down for a quiet chat in any one of those towns without anybody breaking down the door. Nonetheless, Rudy and Andrew had the thirty-eights tucked into their waistbands.

  The man who greeted them as they climbed the ladder aboard was the ugliest person Andrew had ever seen in his life, his face a convoluted tangle of scars and welts that looked as if it might have been scarred by fire. He shook hands with both of them, and said in accented English, “I am Luis Hidalgo, I’m happy to see you.” Apparently he’d already scoped them as they’d climbed the ladder. “You have no need for the weapons,” he said. “Unless they make you feel more comfortable.”

  “They make us feel more comfortable,” Rudy said.

  “As suits you,” Hidalgo said, and smiled thinly. “Something to drink?”

  “Not for me,” Rudy said.

  “Thank you, no,” Andrew said.

  “Then come above, and we’ll talk.”

  The boat was a huge fishing boat. They climbed up to the flying bridge and sat in the sunshine. Hidalgo was wearing chinos, black low-topped sneakers, and a black T-shirt. A gold chain with a thick crucifix on it hung from his neck and lay against the black shirt. Andrew and Rudy were both wearing lightweight gray slacks and navy-blue blazers, white shirts open at the throat.

  “There’s lemonade in the pitcher,” Hidalgo said. “If you get thirsty.”

  “Thanks,” Rudy said, and poured himself a glass.

  “So,” Hidalgo said, “it’s interesting what happened to Moreno, no?”

  “A terrible fuckin’ shame,” Rudy said, and took a swallow of the lemonade.

  “May he rest in peace,” Hidalgo said, and smiled. When he smiled he looked even uglier. “But he leaves a tremendous vacuum, eh? Because he trained no one to take his place, do you see? For all intents and purposes, the organization is now finished, eh? Se acabo.”

  “Which is why we’re here,” Andrew said.

  “Sí, desde luego,” Hidalgo said. “But are you speaking to anyone else?”

  “Just you,” Rudy said.

  “Good. Because the others may try to achieve supremacy, you see, may even claim supremacy, but there is really no one else who can fill the vacuum just now. I’m the one you must deal with. If you wish Colombian cocaine, that is.”

  Andrew said nothing.

  Rudy sipped at his lemonade.

  “You came to the right person, señores,” Hidalgo said, and smiled again.

  Rudy was thinking he had a face could stop a fuckin’ clock.

  “You understand the plan we have in mind, huh?” he said.

  “It was explained to me, yes,” Hidalgo said.

  Willie Isetti had flown from the Caribbean to Bogotá to discuss the preliminaries with one of Hidalgo’s people. He had reported back to New York, that the climate appeared, favorable for a deal, his exact words. They were here to deal now. Hidalgo knew they had taken out Moreno in his own bed. His own fucking bed! They hoped this was impressive to him. They were certainly impressed by it.

  Cutting to the chase, Rudy said, “We offered Moreno forty percent of the gross. Instead of a third all, the way around. This reduced us and the Chinks by something like three and a third points each, which by the way we were both willing to go along with.

  “Still are,” Andrew said.

  “. . . because we recognize the existing market,” Rudy said, nodding. “What’s right is right.”

  Hidalgo nodded, too.

  “Moreno wanted sixty,” Andrew said. “Which may be why someone in his own organization had him eliminated.”

  “Mm, his own organization,” Hidalgo said drily.

  “Because they knew he was being fuckin’ ridiculous,” Rudy said.

  “Ridiculo, sí,” Hidalgo agreed, nodding. “But still, forty, you know,” opening his hands wide, lifting his shoulders in a shrug, “seems low, when one considers the existing market. As opposed to a market we merely hope to establish.”

  Son of a bitch is gonna stick to the sixty, Rudy thought. We’re gonna have to do him in his bed, too.

  “I have to talk to others, you see,” Hidalgo said, trying to look put-upon, a mere salaried employee accountable to the company’s stockholders. “I have to sell this to others, you see.”

  Bullshit, Andrew thought.

  “Okay, what’ll they buy?” he said. “These others. Just remember what sixty bought Moreno.”

  Their eyes met.

  Rudy wondered if his nephew wasn’t pushing it too far too fast.

  “My people are not as ridiculous as La Culebra was,” Hidalgo said at last.

  “So what do you think they’ll agree to? Your people.”

  His people, my ass, Rudy thought.

  “Fifty, for sure,” Hidalgo said.

  “No way,” Andrew said.

  “Quizá forty-five. But only perhaps. I would have to talk to them very strenuously.”

  Bullshit, Andrew thought.

  “Then talk to them very strenuously,” he said. “We’ll agree to forty-five, but that’s as far as we’ll go.”

  “Bueno, I’ll call you this evening, after I …”

  “Isn’t there a fuckin’ phone on this boat?” Rudy asked. “A radio? Whatever?”

  “Sí, pero …”

  “Then call them now,” Andrew said. “Your people.” Stressing the word again. “Tell them you have a firm offer of forty-five, which you’d like to accept. That is, if you’d like to accept it.”

  Hidalgo hesitated a moment.

  A grin cracked his ugly face.

  “I don’t think I will need to call them,” he said. “I think you can take my word they will accept the forty-five.”

  He extended his hand.

  Andrew took it, and they shook on the dea
l.

  “I’ll take that fuckin’ drink now,” Rudy said.

  “We figure he’s out of town,” Regan was saying.

  The three men were eating in a diner off Canal Street. It was Michael’s contention that most cops in this city would eventually die of heart attacks caused by smoking cigarettes and/or eating junk food. Despite the abundance of good, inexpensive restaurants in Chinatown and Little Italy, all of them relatively close to the DA’s Office, Regan and Lowndes, cops to the marrow, had chosen a greasy spoon they much preferred.

  Michael was eating a hamburger and french fries. He would have loved a beer, but he was drinking a Diet Pepsi instead. Regan and Lowndes were each eating hot pastrami sandwiches on rye. Lowndes kept dipping fries into the spilled mustard on the paper plate holding his sandwich. Regan kept frowning at this breach of etiquette. They were both drinking coffee.

  The diner at twelve thirty that Tuesday afternoon was packed with courthouse personnel, and clerks and secretaries and assistant DAs from the big building at One Hogan Place, and uniformed cops and detectives from the First Precinct and One Police Plaza, or for that matter any precinct in the city that had lost a man to testimony today. The noise level was somewhat high. This was good because they were talking about a surveillance presently known to just a handful of people.

  “He’s got maybe half a dozen girls he sees on a regular basis,” Lowndes said. “He calls them, they call him. If he’s not there, they leave messages on his machine and he calls them back.”

  “Two of them he sees more than the others,” Regan said. “One of them is named Oona. The other one, we don’t know her name yet, she just says ‘Hi, it’s me.’ He knows who it is, he says ‘Hi, come blow me.’”