Rivers of Gold

by Adam Dunn

  The passenger door slammed. Baijanti Divya was already heading for the corner of Twenty-sixth and Madison, where a cab idled in front of a boarded-up restaurant behind the Federal Courthouse, a dark-skinned man with a bushy white beard and dark turban behind the wheel. She slid into the passenger side, and they were gone.

  It was too bad, Santiago thought as he keyed the transmission sequence out to the CAB team’s phones, that he wouldn’t be there to watch her go by standing in the bed of a pickup at the head of ten thousand cabs bisecting Manhattan lengthwise along a golden filament two miles long. It really was too bad. He hoped More would take a long-view shot, just for the record. Maybe it would end up in some book somewhere, someday.

  The CAB station hadn’t seen this much activity since the riots. Three interrogation rooms were booked, one for the cabdriver known as Arun Ladhani, an Indian national, and one for a second cabdriver, named Wiliad Ngala, in from the Democratic Republic of the Congo on a shaky work permit. Working from the Narc Sharks’ analysis of the taxi trip sheets surrounding past speak locations (with More’s rooftop observations thrown in), the drivers of those cabs on duty during the corresponding shifts were quickly identified. Baijanti Divya had made positive visual ID just to be sure, and here they all were. Somewhere along the way, CAB Group One had become an effective police unit. McKeutchen was so happy he forgot to replenish his supply of apple gum, to Santiago’s relief.

  The third interrogation room was on loan to two teams of Feds. The FBI team was comprised of two squat special agents, Saltarello and Bassadanza, and their supervisor, a towering, cadaverous deputy SAC named Totentantz. They were arguing jurisdiction with the supervisor of the Treasury team, a dapper mocha-colored man named Reale. His two burly underlings, Gilliard and Rondo, glared at Santiago and More, clearly itching for a fight. They had been in the tail car during More’s mad sprint across the Queensboro Bridge.

  The Feds were sitting on one Mark Shewkesbury, head of the True Apothecary Fund, one of the new feeder funds started by Urbank under the strict new federal regulations imposed in the wake of the Jagoff trial. They had surprised him at his office earlier in the day, while he was kibitzing with a state assemblyman whose name was well known to the cops, a fat swarthy Greek named Ommatokoita who sat on the financial oversight committee. The assemblyman had hauled ass when the Feds came in (his name not being on the warrant), and Shewkesbury had started howling for a lawyer. That stopped when they cuffed him to the table in the interrogation room, at which point he began rambling incoherently. The Feds had grudgingly told the cops about Shewkesbury’s financial records, which showed a series of payments to Bacchanal Industries—which turned out to be a premium brothel in a brownstone on West Eighty-third, just off the park. When the Narc Sharks (accompanied by an armored ESU team More swiftly whistled up) took the door, they found a bonanza. “Six different kinds of pills and counting,” panted a breathless Liesl into his phone. Even better was the company computer, the hard drive of which a slender young woman in lingerie tried in vain to fry before Turse drew a bead on the center of her forehead and gently advised: “Don’t fucking move, dear.” Both Narc Sharks had GTL light/laser attachments on their Glocks, along with tactical Fobus holsters that permitted a concealed carry for the modified rig, which were hardly standard issue.

  “I wonder who gave them the idea for those,” Santiago muttered, glaring at More, who shrugged.

  So the Feds were arguing and stealing angry glances at the cops, the Narc Sharks were writing their own ticket to OCID, and Santiago was stuck with More, two surly cabbies, and Shewkesbury, who had stopped ranting and now stared, glassy-eyed and drooling, at the old Micronta clock on the wall, watched through the one-way glass by Santiago and McKeutchen.

  “Guy used his own credit card at a brothel,” Santiago said, shaking his head. “How can people who are so successful be so stupid?”

  “Y’know, maybe Oswald Spengler was right,” McKeutchen observed.

  “Who?”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” McKeutchen growled gleefully. “Get the mope his translator.”

  Santiago started to walk off, but More tapped him on the shoulder, shook his head, then tapped his own chest and vanished into the stairwell. The lawyers from Legal Aid and the Taxicab Workers Association insisted on a translator who spoke either Swahili or Bantu for the Congolese cabbie, who glowered through the glass like he’d done it before. Santiago figured he’d try his luck with the Indian burnout first.

  Closing the door of the interrogation room behind him, Santiago surveyed his prey. Short, spindly, expensive-looking haircut poorly maintained, with a short-sleeve plaid button-down over a T-shirt that read I LOVE GRAVITY. This was Santiago’s first full-length CAB interrogation, and since he knew he’d be in the spotlight, he wanted to make sure he did everything by the book.

  “So,” he began, “you want a—”

  “Fuck you, man,” snarled the little brown cabbie.

  “Okay, so you don’t want anything to eat or drink,” Santiago smiled. This would be easier than he thought. He pulled out the second chair and sat backward on it facing Arun. “Guess why we picked you up?”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “It wasn’t ’cause you had any outstanding summonses.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “Wasn’t ’cause you failed a drug test.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “Wasn’t ’cause your license expired.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “Who’s Nightclub Guy?”

  That tripped him up. This time he hesitated just a moment before repeating his favorite line.

  “We know the switch is in the cabs. Where do you re-up?”

  See previous line.

  “Who does the money?”

  Ditto.

  “Look,” Santiago said in his best Reluctantly Helpful, “we’ve got you on conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute. Your trip sheet shows you making runs to Newark, so we can make it interstate trafficking, too. You’re looking at fifteen years minimum, twenty if I tack on an obstruction charge.”

  He was getting somewhere. The cabbie was morosely silent. He had no idea the charges being leveled at him were baseless, there being no dope in Arun’s cab and no cash other than what the cabbie had on him at the time of his arrest. Still, Arun was acting like he was already facing the judge. That was fine with Santiago, who wasn’t so sure where any part of this fucked-up case stood on a purely legal basis.

  “You give us a name, we give you a deal. Otherwise, call your union head.”

  The cabbie snorted. “Who—the chaakha? What’s she gonna do for me?”

  This was such an unexpected break that Santiago nearly dropped the ball. “Probably nothing. Your hack license is history, most likely your personal one, too. The Legal Aid lawyer you’ll get will just ask the judge for leniency. That means half the maximum, if you’re lucky. Say ten years minimum. Unless you play ball with us.” Santiago hoped he wasn’t overdoing it.

  The cabbie looked down at his lap. Santiago got the feeling that he’d been through this before, and was getting sick of it. Maybe if he—

  “Get it from the African,” the cabbie snapped, startling Santiago. “I don’t give a shit about him.”

  Throughout his life Santiago had repeatedly, sometimes violently, experienced the seething racism between black and brown firsthand. What was true in New York and Hispaniola apparently held on both sides of the Arabian Sea as well. He would never understand it. He shook his head, got up, and left the room.

  McKeutchen gave him a firm pat on the back after the door closed behind him. “That was a ground-rule double, kid. Not bad for your first time at the table, not bad a’tall. Now if More gets that translator, we might get out of here by dinnertime.”

  But the evening rush hour was nearly over when More came up the stairs behind a gigantic bald man with glossy black skin, who wore the smallest sunglasses Santiago had ever seen, shaped to cover the almon
d arc of the eyelids rather than the bony ocular orbit. Extra chairs were brought into the second interrogation room for McKeutchen, More, Santiago, and SAC Totentantz. Wiliad Ngala exchanged a few gruff-sounding words with the translator, then nodded his head once.

  “Tafadhali,” the translator said, gesturing for Ngala to begin. The room’s hidden recording devices were already running.

  “I look at you policemen,” began Ngala, “and I wonder if you really know what you are up against. Far be it from me to debate the efficacy of law enforcement, as I have seen firsthand what becomes of society in its absence.

  “I was born in Ndeko, north of Goma, which as you may or may not know is on the border between what is bemusingly called the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, with Uganda to the north and Burundi to the south. I grew up in the refugee camp nearby at Kibati. For as long as I can remember there has been trouble between all these nations I have mentioned, which are superimposed over a map of tribal battle lines going back centuries. When the Hutu began slaughtering the Tutsi in earnest in Rwanda about twenty years ago, each of these surrounding nations picked a side. When the militias blurred the national boundaries by melting into bush and town, massing periodically for hit-and-run massacres on each other’s villages, I was just a boy. I played in garbage and drank polluted water and thought nothing of it. This was simply the way the world was, why fight about it? I never knew my father. My mother passed away when I was five. She wouldn’t stop vomiting blood and died before I could bring a doctor back to our house. By ‘house’ I mean whatever slabs of plastic my brother and I could drag together from inside the zone where the UN troops patrolled. Going out into the woods alone was much too dangerous.

  “After the Ugandan troops pulled out, the militias came through the streets. These were boys not much older than my brother and me, drunk and stoned and barely strong enough to carry their weapons. Everyone knew what became of those who were captured and forced to join the militias. We stayed just long enough to see the first killings. Boys forced people out of their homes and stores, made them kneel in the street, and executed them. Those victims from rival tribes were disemboweled and their entrails eaten raw.

  “My brother and I ran into the woods. After two days, when the shooting died down, we decided to cross the river. A group of others we had met up with while traveling offered to help us across; they said they knew of a fisherman with a boat. We believed them. But after they had gathered us and several others into a clearing, they demanded that we hand over all our money and possessions. My brother and I ran back to the woods. The gumagumas opened fire and my brother fell down. I went into the woods and stayed for another two days, gathering whatever rainwater and insects I could to survive. On the third day, I crawled out to see if they were still there, but they had gone. I dug a makeshift grave for my brother by the clearing where he had been killed.

  “I lived in the woods, starving, moving from place to place along the river, staying off the roads. I heard bits of news here and there, so many names, Matata, Ngudjolo, Nkunda, warlords came and went. I grew up on the river, always trying to head west, doubling back to avoid soldiers and militias. There was no point in going north, the Lord’s Resistance Army controlled the woods, and we all knew what happened to those they captured. I was lucky not to have been shot by Ugandan or Rwandan security forces; your government trained them well.

  “Everyone told me if I could get to Kinshasa and somehow get across into the Republic, it would be as though I had died and gone to heaven. Clean water, all the food you could eat, drugs for malaria and cholera, even air-conditioning. And after a year, I finally made it across, with the help of some men who worked for drug dealers bringing in cocaine from South America. I worked for these men for a year, showing them the best crossings, until I had enough money to get to Brazzaville. There I worked for another year cleaning toilets until I qualified for passage to the U.S.

  “I arrived here in the fall of 2010, just in time to watch the city fall apart. Some other Africans told me I could find work as a cabdriver, which is what I did. I was on the job maybe six months, living in a homeless shelter, trying to save what money I could, when I was approached by someone I recognized to be another drug dealer, who said he could triple my pay. I believe you have this man sitting in the next room.

  “When you are starving, officers, when you have not known a real home since childhood, when you have watched everyone you have known and loved die, when you have seen children turned into monsters that eat the flesh of their elders, you would be hard-pressed to turn down such an offer. It was a small matter for me to ignore the rude and distasteful ways the people of this city demonstrate to cabdrivers, for I have seen people do much, much worse. But such aloofness neither puts food in my belly nor places a roof over my head. The man in the next room explained how the system worked; in its way, it’s really quite effective and elegant. And I was always paid cash at the end of each night’s work. And since I was already accustomed to how badly New Yorkers treat cabdrivers, dealing with my annoying contact was also a small matter. For the first time, officers, I had enough money to influence my own fate. For the first time in my life, I had enough to eat. If you do not send me to prison or deport me back to Africa, perhaps I will one day be able to save enough money to go back there on my own. They say that the shooting has finally stopped, that the warlords are all in jail or dead. Maybe someday I will be able to go back and find my brother’s bones, and give him a proper grave.”

  The enormous translator took off his minuscule sunglasses and began to cry. The cops were silent. McKeutchen’s fat face was pressed into a doughy visage of grimness; Totentantz and More were expressionless. Santiago experienced a gnawing hollowness in the pit of his stomach; he desperately wanted to leave the room. Ngala reached out and gently patted the translator’s enormous shoulder but continued to glare coldly at the cops in front of him.

  Everyone in the room except Ngala jumped when More snapped, “Et qui pourrait être vôtre contact?”

  The huge translator was so shocked he stopped sobbing. Ngala grimaced angrily at More for a moment, then lowered his eyes and muttered something in Swahili.

  “He has very unusual hair,” the giant translated.

  The room went dead silent except for the faint drone of the overhead fluorescents and the sound of the penny dropping in Santiago’s head.

  “Holy shit,” Santiago breathed. “We’ve got him.”

  More suggested the Benelli, but Santiago was already through the outer door lock. The inner ones took some doing; the kid must have spent money on new cylinders.

  Their initial search did not yield much. The walk-in closet yielded finery the likes of which Santiago had never seen or touched; he didn’t recognize any of the labels. There were more pairs of shoes, boots, and silly-looking sneakers than he himself had owned since his feet had stopped growing. The bathroom had two sets of thick, velvety towels the colors of dried herbs. The bed was a standard queen but covered with all manner of opulent pillows and linens; Santiago was reminded of the one and only time his sister had dragged him into ABC Carpet and Home to outfit his apartment (Santiago had taken one look at the prices and left).

  There was a wide mahogany desk and an even wider bookcase, ornate in an old-fashioned way, stocked with large-format art books with titles Santiago didn’t recognize: Mark, Steichen, Singh, Snowdon. There was a shelf of smaller books, some of which bore yellow stickers on their spines that read USED.

  And that was it.

  For a few moments they both stood silent in front of the four huge photos of the Mall in Central Park, each shot clearly taken in a different season. They were nothing short of stunning.

  The desk looked promising. Santiago made for the computer, which took up most of it, along with a money counter and a top-of-the-line digital camera. When he tapped the space bar on the keyboard, the monitor filled with multiple images of a curvaceous Boricua chick wearing only a belly chain.

  �
��How do you know she’s Puerto Rican?” More asked over his shoulder.

  “See that a mile away,” Santiago said dismissively.

  More was staring at the books. The bookcase looked like an antique, too, with an intricately carved mantle. More, however, seemed only interested in the books, inspecting the spines of each.

  “File says he was an art history major at NYU,” Santiago pointed out. There hadn’t been much else to go on; the kid had no record at all, not even a parking ticket. Santiago picked up a book that was lying on the desk next to the computer, a well-thumbed copy of John Lawton’s Life Before Mankind, third edition. Santiago flipped it open at random to a page showing a scale drawing of a man dwarfed by what appeared to be a gigantic scorpion, but with flippers. He squinted at the caption: Species of the class Eurypteridae arose during the Ordovician and Silurian periods and attained sufficient size to become one of the Permian’s top marine predators … Santiago shut the book and tossed it back on the desk.

  More was still inspecting the bookcase. “You thinkin’ ’bout selling those on eBay?” Santiago ribbed.

  “I would’ve killed for books like these when I was a kid,” More said tonelessly. Without taking his eyes off the bookcase, he absently reached up into the left sleeve of his field jacket and withdrew a huge, slightly curved blade, with the gleam of Damascus steel. A Stek. Santiago had read about such knives. He seemed to remember they were used by fishermen to cut through whale blubber.

  Maybe it was the way More casually mentioned killing, or the familiar way he handled that scary fucking knife, or the fact that he’d probably had it on him all this time they’d been working together and Santiago had never had a clue. Whatever it was, Santiago didn’t like any of it. He hoped they could just grab the kid fast and get him down to the station quietly.

  “More?”

  More had dragged the kid’s swivel desk chair over to the bookcase and stood on it (like anyone could balance so easily on a swivel chair, fucking More). After examining the mantle from about two inches away, he worked the tip of the blade into the ornamental grommet.