Hades

by Russell Andrews

  “You were always a rude bastard,” Lenny Rube said. He looked at Justin and said, “Jesus Christ. What the hell happened to you?” Justin didn’t bother to respond. Lenny Rube raised his eyes, a look that said, Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, then he saw Reggie and said, “Excuse me. Leonard Rubenelli.” He extended his hand, and she shook it.

  “Agent Regina Bokkenheuser,” she said. “FBI.”

  “What do you want?” Lenny Rube said.

  It was Justin who answered. “I want Bruno.”

  “What, you don’t know how to get in touch with him?”

  “He seems to be out of touch at the moment.”

  Lenny said nothing for a minute, as if he was pondering the request, then he said, “You know, I never liked the fact that you and Bruno were so friendly. It’s always made me uncomfortable. Other people, too.”

  “I wouldn’t overestimate our friendship so much if I were you, Len. This isn’t a social occasion. I want you to tell him to talk to me.”

  “I’ll tell him when I see him. That it? That’s what’s so pressing? Can I go back to my guests now?”

  “Not yet,” Justin said. “You might want to sit down for this.”

  Rubenelli waited long enough to convey that it was his choice whether or not he was going to stay, but when the decision was made, he sat in a large, overstuffed chair with a multicolored, flower-patterned, quilted fabric. Justin began to talk. He told the Mafia boss almost all of the financial details he’d learned from Roger, down to the profits that Rubenelli’s various red-named companies had been making—as well as their recent losses. He explained as much as he needed to about Evan Harmon’s shorting scheme and financial sleight-of-hand artistry.

  Rubenelli said nothing until Justin was finished. Then he pulled a pack of cigarettes from a drawer. To Reggie he said, “You mind if I smoke?” She shook her head and he said, “My wife, she don’t like me to smoke in the house. But I think I need one—you know what I mean?” He offered one to Reggie and Justin; they each declined. “You always were a good cop,” he said to Justin. He lit up, took a quick drag. “It’s why you’re so unpopular.”

  “I’ll take that as a way of saying you’re not disputing what I just told you.”

  “Take it however the fuck you want.” Rubenelli took a deep drag. “I’m seventy years old and I smoked my whole life. Since I was ten. Probably live to be a hundred. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “Not that much,” Justin said.

  “So what do you want from me?” Rubenelli asked.

  “We want you to fill in some gaps.”

  “And I’m doin’ this just out of the goodness of my heart?”

  “You’re doing it because I can make a really good case that you’re responsible for the deaths of Evan Harmon, Ronald LaSalle, and Wanda Chinkle. It’s good enough to take to court, and right now I’d say it’s at least fifty-fifty it’s winnable. And if that happens, you’ll be smoking behind bars for those last thirty years of yours.”

  “What’s stoppin’ you from making your case?”

  “I think there’s something bigger going on.”

  Rubenelli smirked. “What, you’re sayin’ I’m innocent?”

  “You’re the least innocent guy I’ve ever met, Len. I’m just saying I’m not convinced you’re guilty. At least of these murders. But if we release this information, and tie you to everything I know we can tie you to, everybody else is going to think you’re guilty as hell. Of a whole bunch of things.”

  “Ask,” Rubenelli said.

  “You met with Evan Harmon and Ronald LaSalle down in Palm Beach at the Rockworth and Williams hedge fund conference.”

  “Yeah. I have a house down there. Right on the water. I use it in the winter. Bunch of snobs, you know, but you can’t beat the fuckin’ weather in January.”

  “How’d you hook up with them?” Reggie asked.

  “You’re not gonna believe me.”

  “Try us.”

  “Bruno. He was usin’ LaSalle as a broker.”

  “As a legit broker?” Justin asked.

  Lenny Rube laughed. “Totally legit. Bruno got interested in the market. He started to play around. LaSalle made him some dough. A lotta dough, if you wanna know the truth. So he came to me and said I oughtta check this guy out.”

  “Len,” Justin said, “you’re telling me that you were using Ron LaSalle as your personal, legit broker to play the stock market?”

  “How much of this conversation is off the record?” Rubenelli asked.

  “Unless I’m wrong and you ordered these hits, it’s all off the record. I wish you nothing but success with your moneymaking schemes.”

  “Off the record, it started legit. As kind of a test. Then we went to him and said we wanted to invest some—uh—corporate funds. We wanted him to be a kind of funds-to-funds guy.”

  “Funds to funds?” Justin said. “What are you, going to business school?”

  “Hey, scumbag,” Rubenelli said. “A lotta what we do’s legit now. And we gotta play it legit. And it wasn’t just my dough, our dough. We got a few . . . outside investors.”

  “Other families?”

  “I’m talkin’ to you about my business. I don’t have to bring in other people’s business. I’m just sayin’ my investors got money to invest and we got people to look out for and we’re like anybody else—we like to hire good people to watch over our money.”

  “So LaSalle started investing your money in various hedge funds?”

  “Yeah. Until . . . well . . . he kinda figured out we weren’t interested in dealin’, you know, a hundred percent on the up-and-up. I mean, we were makin’ dough, but we decided we weren’t makin’ enough dough.”

  “He backed out?”

  “He wasn’t stupid. He asked out. I liked the guy. He did his job for us. I said fine. Just get me a good replacement.”

  “Evan Harmon.”

  “A greedy fuckin’ guy.”

  “You put your—okay—corporate money into Ascension.”

  “We made a deal.”

  “Which was?”

  “He wanted our dough and he wanted it bad, this guy. We told him we’d go with him. But we wanted a guarantee.” Rubenelli paused. Justin knew it was for dramatic effect, so he gave him his moment in the sun. Then Rubenelli continued. “Twenty percent.”

  “Guaranteed on your investment?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he agreed,” Reggie said.

  “He agreed happily. I think your friend LaSalle told him he was crazy. But like I said, this Harmon was one greedy fuck.”

  “You know how he did it? Guaranteed you that kind of return?”

  “I wasn’t dealin’ with him too directly. But I heard a few things and I had my suspicions. Now I pretty much know for sure, thanks to you.” Rubenelli stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray. He went into a small bathroom off the den, tossed the remains in the toilet and flushed them away. When he came back he said, “My wife. I’m not kiddin’. She’ll bust my balls big-time if she sees I’m smokin’ in here.” He looked longingly at the pack of cigarettes. But he put it back in the drawer. “You know, I’m gettin’ kind of philosophical in my old age.”

  “How’s that?” Justin said.

  “I been thinkin’ how things change. I been in this business a long time. Since I was a kid. And I seen a lotta changes. In the way we work, the way we think. People got the impression that we’re like the movies. We sit around some table and do whatever the fuck they think we do. But we’re a business now. We’re in a lotta legit businesses. Our kids are legit. It’s different. It changes things, sometimes make you cautious. Kinda philosophical even.”

  “Jean-Paul Rubenelli,” Reggie said.

  “Whatever. But I’m tellin’ you, even the politics are different. When I started, you talk to a lotta the family heads, they were Democrats, you know. They didn’t care so much about the niggers, but they liked the whole underdog thing. We could relate
to it. And we had some clout. This was the Hoffa era, you know. The Daley era in Chicago. I heard stories, back to Kennedy and Nixon. The West Coast wanted Nixon, they had their hooks in him. But we told ’em to back off. It wasn’t his time. We had to send people down to Florida—what the hell was that guy’s name, Nixon’s money guy. Stupid name. Rebozo. Bebe Rebozo. We had to send a couple guys to his house, meet with him and Nixon, tell ’em this wasn’t their year—you know what I mean?”

  “You should write a book, Len. But is this going anywhere?”

  “I’m just sayin’ it ain’t like that anymore. Guys got rich. Guys got fat. Guys got houses like this one. We used to deal with unions. With businesses, small businesses. Now we deal with Wall Street, with investors, lobbyists. Much more genteel. Not as much fun.”

  “So the mob’s a bunch of Republicans now—is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m sayin’ that things change. We got different connections, we got different friends. The whole way of thinkin’ has changed. But some people don’t change. I don’t change. I mean, somewhat—you know? I adapt. But not that much. I like the old ways.”

  “And Bruno doesn’t change.”

  “Bruno? Nah, he don’t change at all. He does what he does. Always has, always will. And some guys like it, some guys don’t. Am I done now?”

  “I just want to get this clear: You didn’t know about the platinum shorting?”

  “What are you, gonna keep me here all night on this shit? I thought you wanted to talk to Bruno.”

  “I do.”

  “Then let him tell you what he knows. I took you about as far as I can go. ’Cause I didn’t go to fuckin’ business school, you smart-ass.”

  “How do I talk to Bruno?” Justin asked.

  “He’ll be in touch.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” Rubenelli said. “Very soon. Now can I get back to the table? My wife’s relatives. I’ll be lucky if they left me one fuckin’ cake crumb.”

  32

  Reggie worked her BlackBerry on the short ride from the East Hampton Airport back to Justin’s house. He sat with his head leaning back and his eyes closed. But when she told him the reports she’d requested had come through—all the information he’d asked for, and more; she’d gone ahead and put through searches on her own—his eyes opened and, although his head didn’t move, the eyes did, shifting toward her. She read what had been sent to her. He blinked once, showing he understood, showing that the information was as stunning to him as it was to her.

  When the taxi pulled up, she insisted on walking Justin into the house. He resisted but not very hard. And when they were inside he spoke in the same monotone he’d been using since she’d arrived at his house earlier. He was tired, said he wanted to go to bed, and she said, “I know. But I’m not leaving.”

  “Reggie . . .” he said, but then he stopped. He didn’t have anything more to say.

  “I’ll sleep on the couch. I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You killed somebody today, Jay. And it was horrible and brutal and it’s not over yet, you know it’s not over yet, so you can’t be fine.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Maybe I’m not fine.”

  He leaned back on the couch, and as he did she saw the physical pain he was in. She got up, got his bottle of single malt scotch and poured them each a glass. He took a small sip, recoiled as if the liquid were burning his lips, but then he closed his eyes in satisfaction, and when he opened them again he took another sip.

  “You’re a strange man,” she said. He didn’t answer, just probed with his eyes. “You smoke dope; you’ll sleep with married women; I know from personal experience you won’t say no to kinky sex.”

  He took another sip of scotch, this time a bigger sip. “So far I sound like any other guy except luckier.”

  “And you’ve killed people.”

  “So have you,” he said slowly.

  “But I don’t sleep at night,” she told him. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Things wake me up in the middle of the night, but they’re other things. Not that.”

  “You’re a cop,” Reggie said. “You enforce morality. And despite everything, I think of you as honest and moral.”

  “I don’t enforce morality,” Justin said. “I enforce the law. Two totally different things.”

  “So you don’t think in terms of morality,” she said.

  “Of course I do. Constantly.”

  “And do you think you live a moral life?”

  “I don’t really think like that.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re too driven, too fixated on what you do.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed.

  “Then do you? Live a moral life? This isn’t multiple choice, it’s yes or no.”

  “Okay, yes. Comparatively. Yes.”

  “Then define it.”

  “Morality? I can only define it for me, I think.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Discipline.”

  “Say what?”

  “For me it’s discipline. I do what feels right or good until it doesn’t. Until it feels as if it’s going too far. And then I’m disciplined enough to stop.”

  “And if it never feels wrong?”

  “Then I don’t stop.”

  She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips. He didn’t kiss her back. But he didn’t pull away. And he didn’t close his eyes.

  She kissed him again, tasting him. And this time he did respond. His hand came up behind her head and he gently pulled her closer to him. He could feel her warm breath on his lips, smell her sweat commingling with her perfume.

  “I’m not feeling very disciplined,” she whispered.

  “Good,” Justin told her. “Because I don’t feel like stopping.”

  She had to help him upstairs and into bed.

  She made sure he was comfortable, gently pushed him back so he could lie down, and then she began to kiss him lightly, careful not to touch his ribs or the bandage on his hand or the stitches on his face. She kissed his neck, his cheek and his lips. She kissed him deeply now, her tongue inside his mouth, and they began to make love. She took his clothes off slowly, saw the deep bruises from the battering he’d taken earlier. She removed her clothes just as slowly. She wanted it all to be slow; she wanted to please him as much as possible. She let him look at her naked, came back onto the bed, and let him run his good hand over her face, her neck, down her back. They kissed again and she got on top of him, and as they began to move she heard him groan. His eyes told her he was okay, so they moved together, and it didn’t take long for either of them. When it was over, she was drained, realized how much she’d wanted him, how much she’d needed this, needed it with him. She looked down, wanted to tell him that, but she saw that she’d hurt him, that it had been too much for him, and she said, “I’m sorry, oh god, I’m so sorry,” but he pulled her closer, using his bad hand, and he said, “It’s all right, it’s all right.” And she said, “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to be in pain.” She reached to the side of the bed, where she’d put the pills the doctor had given him. She went to open the bottle, but he took it. And he tossed it across the room. They heard the bottle roll and come to a stop as it hit the wall. He kissed her on the side of her head, and said, “Again.” She looked at him in surprise, started to shake her head no, it wouldn’t be good for him, but he said, “I want to make love to you again.” And he began to move, slowly, and she could see how much it hurt him, but could also see how much he wanted it, wanted her, so she began to move slowly again, too, on top of him, and as they were making love, and as she was watching him, the passion not quite overriding her concern, he rose up a bit, and pulled her down to meet him, and he put his lips up against her ear.

  “Pain is good,” he whispered. “It means I’m still alive.”

  They woke up together, found they were entwined. Her face was in
his chest, her legs curled over between his. His arm was around her, covering her. They were naked.

  He looked at his alarm clock, saw it was 5 a.m. They both wondered why they were awake, felt that maybe they weren’t, maybe this was some kind of mutual dream, then she sat up and so did he.

  They knew why they had awakened.

  Someone was downstairs.

  They listened, heard a rustling noise, then a quiet cough, the sound of someone shifting position. Justin did his best to swing his legs out of bed, but he couldn’t, and also couldn’t stop the grunt of pain that escaped from his lips. She was out of bed quickly; she went to his bathroom door and grabbed his robe off the hook. She slipped it on, then she knelt down, ran her hand across the floor until it touched the gun that she’d left there. She had discarded it at the same time she’d taken her clothes off. But before she could grip it, she heard him whisper, “Drop it.” She looked up and he was pointing his own gun at her. He shook his head, one quick jerk back and forth, and said, “Don’t touch it. Move back,” and then she realized what was happening—what he thought was happening—and she thought her heart might break. The first time they had made love, that very first time a year earlier, it had been a setup. She had set him up, or at least had agreed to it. Men had barged in on them in the middle of the night, had drugged Justin and taken him away. He had suffered enormous pain—emotional and physical—as a result. She could see in his eyes he thought she’d done it again. She shook her head, but he didn’t waver. Reggie tried not to let her pain show, tried not to show that she was devastated, but she knew she wasn’t doing much of a job.

  He said in a hushed tone, “Get in the bathroom. If I hear the door open I’ll shoot you.”

  She thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t. She just stepped sluggishly—all energy sapped from her body—into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.