Since it was only local news, meaning San Pedro news, that ever interested his mother, he asked her, “Anything happen worth reading about?”
She turned away from the stove and said, “My God, yes! Wait till you read about what they found yesterday in the container yard on Pacific Highway. I saw it on the TV news last night before I went to bed. It’s awful. Just awful.”
Dinko opened the newspaper to the terrible story of security guards finding a container containing thirteen dead Asians, all young women except for one older man. They had been dead for several days, and the odor of decomposing bodies inside the ovenlike steel container was what had alerted the security guards.
A spokesman at the container yard speculated that they had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. In the container they found small chemical toilets and five-gallon buckets full of human waste, as well as bags of clothing and blankets alongside the corpses. Ventilation holes had been drilled through the bottom of the container, along with a small trapdoor, but the container had been stacked in such a way that the trapdoor was blocked and the air holes were partially closed off. Still, someone had made the stupid decision to light a camping stove, and that had proved fatal.
It was estimated that the journey across the Pacific from a likely port of embarkation used by human traffickers would’ve taken about fourteen days. The number on the container did not square with the numbers on the manifest of the cargo ship that had delivered the container, but the ship was now back out at sea, in international waters. Of course, a spokesperson from Immigration and Customs Enforcement ended his terse statement with the inevitable but hardly reassuring promise: “An investigation is ongoing.”
After he’d finished reading the story, fleeting images passed through the mind of Dinko Babich, such as last week’s sighting of someone he thought was Hector Cozzo with a well-dressed Asian. And he recalled Hector’s search for “new talent,” and remembered Hector’s stupid story about involvement with a street gang that robbed containers full of goods from storage yards. Were they lies or only half lies? Had a container holding very special “goods” worried Hector and his Asian friend?
All of this passed fleetingly. He felt a sudden stab of anxiety and didn’t hear his mother say, “Two eggs or three?”
Hector Cozzo was surprised when he awakened to find two cell-phone messages, one from an Asian masseuse at Shanghai Massage. He listened to the singsong voice he had come to hate, even though he wasn’t sure which buckethead bitch it was. He lit a cigarette and saw there were also three calls from Mr. Kim, the hulking Korean who was a kind of assistant to the big boss, Mr. Markov. He was always calling to yap about something that Hector had nothing to do with. He’d check in with Kim later in the day and tell him his cell had died and he’d forgotten to recharge it.
He looked at the clock on the lamp table beside his bed and saw that it was only 9:45. That pissed him off. He hadn’t gotten to bed until 4:00 a.m., and he liked to sleep at least seven hours.
When he returned the call to Shanghai Massage, the Asian masseuse called Suki said, “Hector, Ivana need to talk with you.”
The phone was given to the Ukrainian masseuse and he heard Ivana say, “Hector, I got to see you. I am here at work because we got the cleanup to do for good clients. They are booking three rooms for all afternoon.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Hector said sleepily. “I’m glad business is booming, but why do I gotta hear about it now?”
Ivana said, “I think you got to know about trouble with a girl.”
“What trouble?” he said. “Which girl?”
“Not something for the telephone talking, Hector,” Ivana said. “Can you come in one hour?”
“Shit!” he said, taking a closer look at the clock. “Make it two hours.”
“Okay,” Ivana said. “Two hours. Big trouble, Hector.”
Always trouble, he thought. Bitches were nothing but trouble. He didn’t mind the risk involved in collecting from the massage parlor and from Club Samara, money that would never be reported to the IRS. But he also had to check and recheck the massage parlor’s records to make sure that the bogus set of documents prepared for the IRS was okay and that the set of records for Mr. Kim was accurate to the dollar.
He didn’t even mind the risk of pissing off some thugs from nearby Little Armenia who thought that the massage parlor would be better served by local “handlers” than by some “little guinea,” which is what they called him to his face. These were foreign-born Armenians and their sons who’d come to Los Angeles after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Many families had headed to the suburb of Glendale, others to Little Armenia, so close to Hollywood. The older ones were veterans of terrible times under the Soviets that had hardened them, and their offspring were just as ruthless. The “AP” graffiti tagged on the sides of buildings in Little Armenia warned all whose turf this was. This territory belonged to Armenian Power.
Hector often wondered if it was karma or Carmine that had sent him to Mr. Markov. The Mambellis owned significant property in San Pedro and, of course, lived “up on the hill” west of Gaffey where other wealthy Italians lived, and not down in the flatlands among the growing population of Latinos. Carmine Mambelli’s grandfather had part ownership in a Pedro bank, and everyone knew he’d been involved in bookmaking back when bookmaking was big business, before the 1980s, when betting went electronic.
It was Carmine who had found his former schoolmate sitting on the patio outside Utro’s Cafe, beneath the awning that boldly proclaimed, “Home of the Proudest People on the Coast.”
Carmine had looked at Hector that day and said, “This is a longshoremen’s hangout, dude. Are you looking for waterfront work? Will wonders never cease?”
At first, Hector had bristled, but nothing he’d been doing had brought him much bank and he really was between jobs, so he told his old schoolmate the truth: “Yeah, I need a job, Carmine. And they ain’t easy to come by.”
Carmine, wearing Italian shoes that were worth more than Hector’s entire wardrobe, studied him and said, “I got a little job for you if you wanna do it. There’s a guy in Hollywood that used to make transactions at the bank when my grandfather was still running it. I think him and my grandpa did some outside deals together. I’d like you to run a package up to him today. It’s paperwork from the bank that he needs this afternoon. You still got a car?”
“Of course I got a car.” Hector did not tell Carmine that it was a ten-year-old Hyundai with dented fenders and a body rusted through from being parked in the driveway of the Cozzo home during San Pedro’s winter dampness.
Carmine said, “You can save me a drive to Hollywood. Here, take your mom and dad to Sorrento’s for a pizza tonight.” He gave Hector two hundred-dollar bills. Hector then walked with Carmine to his 7 Series Beemer and was handed a large cardboard box sealed with masking tape.
“Give this to Mr. Markov personally,” Carmine instructed, giving Hector a note bearing the address of an east Hollywood bar called Rasputin’s Retreat.
“Your grandpa musta did business with Russians,” Hector said after looking at the name of the bar.
“He did business with everybody that needed a banker.” Carmine passed Hector a business card that simply said, “Carmine Mambelli” with his cell number. He added, “Remember, only to Mr. Markov. You got a problem, you phone me, okay?”
The rush-hour traffic was even more miserable than usual that day, and it took Hector nearly two hours to get to east Sunset Boulevard. Rasputin’s Retreat was one of those tricked-up ethnic bars Hector hated. The main barroom was dark, and the walls were decorated with garish frames containing small lighted prints of charging Cossacks on horseback, the onion domes of St. Basil’s, matryoshka nesting dolls, and Fabergé eggs. A samovar took up too much space at the end of the service bar, and the sound system played balalaika music. It looked to Hector like a place where the old Russians might come to drink, but he couldn’t imagine the younger ones falling for the kitsch. It wa
s such a small joint that he didn’t see how it could pay the rent even on this eastern section of Sunset Boulevard.
Hector had left the box in the car and entered Rasputin’s Retreat empty-handed; now he asked the bartender if Mr. Markov was around. The bartender nodded toward the corridor leading to the small kitchen and the restrooms. Hector walked back there and found a door marked “Office” and knocked.
A male voice said in slightly accented English, “Come in. The door is unlocked.”
Hector entered, and for the first time encountered Mr. Markov. He was in his seventies and sturdily built for his age, but with remarkably feminine hands and manicured nails, making Hector think the old dude had a bit of swish in his tail. His comical Young Elvis hairstyle was dyed black, and that day he was wearing an ivory blazer over a violet sport shirt open at the throat. His face looked spit-shined from a fresh chemical peel, and he wore O.J. shoes, but Hector figured them for Bruno Magli knockoffs. He thought that Markov’s English was better than any he’d heard in Pedro from the immigrant Italian friends of his grandfather’s.
Markov looked warily at Hector and said, “You do not have something for me from Carmine?”
“Yes, Mr. Markov,” Hector said. “I thought I should leave it in my car till I made sure you were here.”
Markov smiled. “That is good thinking. Very good. Please go to your car and retrieve it for me.”
When Hector returned with the heavy carton, he assumed he’d be thanked and dismissed, but Markov said, “Carmine tells me that you are between jobs and could use employment. He said that he has known you all his life.”
Hector nodded. “We went to Catholic school together. Clear through high school almost.”
Markov said, “I might be able to offer you some temporary employment and see how you do. Are you interested?”
“Yes, sir!” Hector said.
“I do not hire hoodlums,” Markov said. “Do you have a police record?”
“Well, I had an arrest for having somebody else’s credit card,” Hector said, “and I got busted when I made a mistake and wrote a NSF check, and then there was some trouble for possession of coke, but it was jist a few grams. Because I was driving and had a minor wreck, I done sixty days on that one, but it’s the only time I ever served. I’m thirty-two years old now. I outgrew all that childish crap.”
Markov smiled slightly and asked, “Why are you being truthful? Do I look like the kind of man who would verify what you tell me? The kind of man who would demand honesty in any dealings I have with my employees?”
“You sure do, Mr. Markov,” Hector said.
Sometimes he thought that fate had led him to Markov, and other times he wondered how much juice his old friend Carmine had with his new employer. But whether it was karma or Carmine, within a few months he had a great job and a sweetheart deal, paying very modest rent on a three-bedroom house in Encino subleased to him by Markov.
He’d always doubted that Markov was the man’s true name, and he’d never known where Markov lived or with whom. He did not believe that Markov was really Russian, because he’d heard him pause and stammer with uncertainty when he spoke the language briefly to the bartender that first day. Based on his childhood experience with a few Serbian families in Pedro, Hector guessed that Mr. Markov might be a Serb. He often thought that if he only had to do collections and report to Markov, it would’ve been a dream job.
But it was not a dream job, because mostly he had to collect for, and report to, the big scary Korean who wore those Valentino and Hugo Boss tailored suits. He called himself Mr. William Kim, but Hector knew that half the goddamn population of Koreatown called themselves Kim. When Hector had complained to Kim about the nasty little conversation he’d had with two Armenian thugs who’d waited for him outside the rear door of Shanghai Massage—a conversation about who should be doing the collections at any massage parlor in Little Armenia—Kim had just dismissed it with a wide grin that revealed a gold tooth in his grille.
Kim said, “If we got to, we deal with Armenians, no problem.”
Hector had decided to take the good with the bad and cope with all of it, because he was making almost six grand a month, tax-free, even on bad months. And there was the little house in Encino, the only caveat being that sometimes, if Markov phoned and said there was a need to entertain an important client, he’d have to clear out for the evening. Then Hector would have to pick up a masseuse or a dancer from Club Samara and drive her to his house to do whatever the special client wanted her to do. Hector would stay in a motel on those nights, and the next day he’d either send his bedding to the laundry or throw it away, depending on how it looked.
On only one occasion had he been asked to stay home during the private party. Markov had sent him a Russian client to handle, and Hector knew that this one was a real Russian because he’d had to pick him up at LAX when he got off a flight from Moscow, and deliver him straight to his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel. He called himself Basil and, after that night, he drank all the vodka Hector had in his house, and he fucked one of the Asian masseuses, who Hector had had to summon on short notice. It was a night that Hector would never forget, because Basil, who Markov spoke of with great deference and respect, was without a doubt the weirdest son of a bitch Hector Cozzo had ever met in his thirty-two years on earth.
Markov had warned that Basil had very peculiar tastes and told Hector to be enthusiastic about anything that titillated this man, who was about to become a primary investor in a Los Angeles business deal being brokered by Markov. After the massage and sex was over that evening, and after Basil got good and drunk and the masseuse was alone in the bedroom getting high on Hector’s cocaine, he found out exactly what else it was that titillated the Russian.
Hector would never forget that moment when Basil took him into the living room and showed him a photo album he carried in his briefcase. He had dozens of photos of amputated limbs! Arms, hands, legs, feet. Hector was half-expecting to find a beheaded corpse, but he never saw that. He was shocked, but he had to pretend that the sickening pictures fascinated him as well.
Basil’s English was poor, but he made Hector understand that he would love to have a girl sometime who was an amputee. He made it known by whacking at his left arm and leg with a karate chop. And then he emitted a drunken cackle that gave Hector an electric shiver from his neck to his tailbone.
Hector’s brief education in apotemnophilia came when, for the first time, he delivered the massage parlor’s collections directly to Markov at Club Samara. They met in the back office that afternoon, and Markov thanked him profusely for showing Basil a good time and for making him feel welcome in Hector’s Encino home.
Hector had been employed by Markov for only a few weeks at that point, and he wanted very much to make an impression on his employer. Markov slowly and methodically explained to Hector what the amputation paraphilia was all about and, sadly, how Basil was afflicted with it. He smiled a lot as he explained it and said that Hector had nothing to fear from Basil.
His employer said that Basil was the only son of a Moscow billionaire and that Basil had acquaintances in Moscow and Berlin and Amsterdam who shared his affliction. He told Hector that one of them had undergone an amputation of a healthy arm nearly to the elbow, and that the person, whose gender was not disclosed, had become a kind of legend to the others.
Markov paused when he saw Hector turn a bit pale. “Do not be too shocked,” he said. “This is of little concern to us.”
And then Markov explained that because of his need of the Russian’s money, he had investigated and found a Dr. Maurice Montaigne, who lived in Hollywood and who had done all sorts of underground surgeries in Tijuana before and after his medical license was taken away. Markov had had a long consultation with Dr. Maurice, who, he’d learned, was a crack cocaine addict, and the doctor had promised Markov that if he ever did another “elective amputation” in Tijuana, he would arrange for Mr. Markov’s Russian associate to talk to the patient
before and after the event.
Hector repeated the phrase to Markov: “An elective amputation?”
“Yes, Hector, very much elective,” Markov answered with his straight-razor smile. “We have to overlook certain peculiarities in the world of business. And we must keep Basil happy or he will take his father’s investment elsewhere.”
Before Hector left his employer that afternoon, Markov said, “If ever you encounter anyone, male or female, who may have undergone an unusual amputation, please inform me. I have learned that this kind of person enjoys displaying the surgery, and a massage parlor is a place they frequent. I mention this because Basil shall be coming to Los Angeles once a month for the next year or so, and I must keep him as entertained as possible.”
Hector felt woozy and feverish. He asked Markov, “How would I know if an amputation was unusual, sir?”
Markov replied, “If it occurred at a Tijuana clinic, especially if it was performed by a Dr. Maurice Montaigne, we can assume that it was . . . unusual.”
There were things in Hector Cozzo’s life that he’d compartmentalized, and memories that he’d repressed, and that had been one of them. Still, recalling his employer’s instructions, he had mentioned to a key masseuse at each of the massage parlors in and around Hollywood that if any of the girls ever got a client who happened to be an amputee, they should ask where the surgery was performed. He promised a reward for such information. He hadn’t bothered to mention the name Maurice Montaigne to anyone, because he thought it highly unlikely that he’d ever have to deal with this nightmarish crap again. And Basil’s later encounters at Hector’s home with various masseuses and dancers had not ended with required peeks at Basil’s photo album.
When Hector had once asked Basil if he would prefer to have the girls brought to his suite at the Four Seasons when he came to Los Angeles, Basil had become irritated and said, using mangled English idioms, “I am lonesome wolf who do not make shit where I am sleeping. I shall not fuck wolfess at my hotel.”
Harbor Nocturne Page 10
