by Todd Merer
“Actually, I really don’t know the details.”
“But you do know he was irradiated?”
“We’re trying to figure . . . fuck you, Benn. What did Rigo say?”
“That Felipe Mondragon was involved in the murders of his girlfriend and family.”
“That’s all he said?”
“That Mondragon poisoned him, too.”
“You got a written statement?”
“No time. They tossed me out.”
I didn’t mention the recorded statement because it included a reference to Sombra. No way was I going to throw that into the mix and conflict myself out of whatever chance remained of my representing Sombra. Nor was it my job to snoop for the feds. As far as I was concerned, justice had been served to Rigo. I had no illusions.
Sombra killed those who ventured too close to him, but if I wanted my fortune, I’d be bound for either glory or hell. Fuck it. In for a dime, in for twenty mil. Roll the dice and hope they come up sevens.
“It was a brief conversation, Barnett.”
“I see.” Robinson sounded tired.
“Maybe he’ll come around.”
“No, he won’t. I just got a call from Prattsville. Rigo died an hour ago.”
I didn’t reply. Now Rigo belonged to the ages, and along with him had vanished any possibility of Barnett Robinson getting me out my Eastern District jam. I let it go at that. The Southern District played hardball. Tit for tat, this for that. Nothing for nothing. I hadn’t given them anything, and they wouldn’t give me anything.
“Good night,” Robinson said, and hung up.
In retrospect, Rigo’s course of action made sense. He had felt so threatened by Sombra that he feared staying in Colombia. He knew Mondragon was working for Sombra but wanted to keep his enemy close—almost too close, letting Mondragon surrender him in Antigua nearly being a fatal mistake. Wanting to protect his family, he’d kept Mondragon on the case, living proof that he wasn’t flipping on Sombra. Mondragon hadn’t bought it.
Which raised a question: Why was the video such a hot topic if it only implicated Uvalde and Rigo?
Which spawned an answer: because another person really was on the video. Only Rigo, in keeping with his game plan of releasing information in small parts, had cut out the part of the video showing Sombra.
Which raised another question: Where was the missing clip?
I was out of answers. I was weary of the whole business. Too many twists, turns, and betrayals. I needed to distance myself. I needed some loving. I really needed to be with a woman. As soon as I got home, I’d go through my book, start making calls until I got the answer I wanted.
I turned the corner to my tree-shadowed street. Quiet and peaceful. The mansions of both my billionaire neighbors were dark. I neared my building and became aware of someone moving quickly behind me. I turned—
Into a white, powdery cloud that enveloped my face.
CHAPTER 60
Coke, I thought in the following millisecond, then realized, no, not a chemically processed product; something organic, plantlike. But whatever it was blanketed my senses immediately. Stung my eyes shut, filled my nostrils, numbed my mind; I tumbled into another dimension, a there that wasn’t there . . .
I became dimly aware of an arm slipping through mine. Of a person pressed against me as I entered my building’s lobby. Of Viktor’s weirdly echoed voice saying, “Good evening, Mr. Bluestone.”
Then, somehow, I—we—were in the elevator, and I felt a jumble of feelings, sensations, a chaotic wonderment signifying nothing. The one and only constant in the maelstrom was a dank, plantlike smell, and another, fainter smell, a familiar scent I couldn’t quite recall . . .
My apartment now.
The light was dim.
I heard my voice.
I was going . . .
Over.
And.
Out.
CHAPTER 61
Someone slapped my cheek. Hard.
“He’s waking up,” a woman said.
My lids creaked open. Light like needles pierced my eyes. An instant category-five migraine made me gasp.
“Drink,” the woman said.
A glass touched my lips. I parted them and sipped water that felt like acid on my esophagus. Behind the glass, a plump woman with rosy cheeks smiled. I’d never seen her in my life. Was she an angel? Was I dead?
“Valery, help him up.”
Val?
Consciousness returned and, with it, clarity. I lay on the floor of my apartment with Val kneeling at my side. The woman must be his wife, Sonia, whom I’d never met.
“I’m making a bad first impression,” I said.
“No talk,” Val said. “Take hot shower.”
“Cold! You want kill him, Val?”
“Pliz, Sonia. For a man, hot.”
Val guided me into the bathroom. Stripped me naked and sat me in the steam shower and closed the door. Why was I so compliant? Much like I had been last night, with . . . with . . . a person I hadn’t caught sight of. I couldn’t remember much . . . except for a fleeting recollection: familiar olfactory memories, a tropical fragrance, the smell of sex . . . had I unconsciously copulated while too stoned to be aware? Wouldn’t have been the first time that happened to me, but in the past I’d remembered afterward, usually regretting that it happened.
Raped. That was food for thought. But I didn’t feel the discomfort of violation, so maybe not. Or maybe I was the violator?
Water drummed against my head; memories and thoughts washed away.
I sat there for a very long time. Or thought I did.
Val leaned inside. “Long night, huh? You okay now, boss?”
“Yeah. What time is it?”
“Afternoon. Sonia call me when she find you. You go to sleep. We go now. Sonia clean another day, yes?”
“Yes.” My voice sounded far away.
I stood beneath the water, and gradually coherence returned. I shut the water and stepped from the shower, feeling better, but—Jeez!
In red lipstick, two words were scrawled on the vanity mirror:
Drug Lawyer
The title of the unpublished novel I’d written. The failure that had ended my dream of being a writer—
My God. Had I told the woman about—
It hit me. It was a woman.
Had I revealed other secrets?
Get a grip, Benn. Think!
Blankness. I needed help.
I got dressed and left.
I called Doc Concierge in Miami. He sent me to a New York doctor and remained on the speakerphone as his colleague drew blood and checked my vitals.
“Tell me about it,” Doc said over the phone.
“I, ah, inhaled an unknown substance.” Doc knew my addictive history, and I figured he was thinking relapse. I said, “I didn’t get high. Well, not intentionally. It was against my will. So to speak.”
“Like date rape.”
“Something like that. Some sort of powder. Airborne.”
“Airborne.”
“Okay, it doesn’t make sense. The point is, there’s a hole in my memory . . . a number of hours I can’t remember.”
He told his colleague to write me a script. Until then the guy hadn’t said word one. But as I left, he said, “A psychiatrist might help.”
I filled the prescription. Then went home, took one more pill than directed, and immediately passed out.
CHAPTER 62
I awoke well along the return trip to myself. Except for the blank spots in my memory. I knew there was a woman to whom I’d babbled like a meth freak, but that was all. I called Doc Concierge again, but my blood work wasn’t back yet. It occurred to me to speak with the other concierge in my life.
“Viktor, you were on the other night?”
He smiled. “You were bombed.”
“The woman I was with?”
“A real good looker.”
“Describe her.”
“I wasn’t working that nig
ht. My cousin Viktor was. He told me.”
“What time does he come on?”
“He left on vacation. In Serbia.”
“Can you call him?”
“He’s hiking in the mountains. No cell service.”
I slipped Viktor a Franklin. “Get me a copy of the security-camera videos of that night.”
“You got it, chief.”
The next day Viktor gave me a thumb drive. I inserted it in my device, took a deep breath, thought, Let’s go to the videotape, then pressed “Play.”
The lobby video counter said 9:45 p.m. The view was of the lobby. The other Viktor was behind the desk, reading a newspaper. He looked up as people entered:
Me, looking reasonably okay, perhaps a little wobbly, but par for my course. I walked close against a woman shielded by a floppy hat. An Unknown Female—UF—fucking acronyms . . .
The elevator video showed my face: white as the Joker’s, an idiot smile. The woman’s face remained hidden by her hat. Her hand went in my pocket. Keys flashed; she fit a key to my apartment door. It opened, and we went in.
The video ended . . . a second later, it started again.
Now the time counter said 2:45 a.m. The woman reentered the elevator, still hidden inside her coat and beneath her hat. Cut to the lobby camera. She walked through the lobby. The video ended again.
And again resumed at 4:10 a.m., when the woman returned. She went back to my apartment . . . another break until . . . 5:00 a.m. She left, carrying an overnighter. Mine. Inside it was . . . what?
Doc Concierge called: my blood work was fine. No controlled chemical substances in my bloodstream. But I’d been drugged with something. I closed my eyes and tried to re-create sensory impressions. Nothing. The powder had been so powerful, I’d gone right out. Yet I’d still functioned.
What kind of a substance does that?
A suggestive. I remembered a case:
A jeweler had thrown a bash for his new line. Woke up the next morning to find his multimillion-dollar collection gone. He didn’t remember a thing, and his blood test showed nothing amiss. But an insurance investigator found a residue in the punch bowl. A lab ran extraordinary tests. A result came up with a trace of scopolamine, a plant-based derivative used by the Nazis and the CIA as truth serum. Puts the victim in a compliant, zombielike state, although afterward they remember little. The investigator discovered one of the guests had done time as a jewel thief.
My client wasn’t the jeweler. He was the jewel thief.
Talkative guy. Told me scopolamine grows in the wild all over Colombia, where it’s known by other names—devil dust, burundanga—and ground to a white powder by thieves, who blow it in an unsuspecting victim’s face, after which the victim is compliant, talkative, unreserved—
Oh no.
My gut sinking, I punched numbers on my microwave, and a panel opened to the safe where I kept $25,000 in emergency money. It was empty.
I went in the living room. I moved the sofa, exposing the floorboards. Between the seams were hinges to a safe embedded beneath where I kept a stash. I punched in the complicated sequence that opened it—
Gone.
I ran the few blocks—fuck my aching back—to the office. The door was unlocked. The safe hidden in a faux column yawned open. The money that had been in it was gone. My hidden-in-plain-sight money in the armoire:
Gone.
I slid down the wall to the floor and sat there for a long while. Nothing moved except the second hand of my watch. It swept past the date . . . May 1.
Mayday.
I was wiped out. Picked clean. Violated. All I had were memories . . . I gave a little start—
Memories!
I sat at my computer and entered the code to PARANOID.FLOYD, in which I kept my double-bookkeeping system listing cash transactions in case I was audited and needed to re-create records. PARANOID.FLOYD was encrypted to list prior entries.
The screen blinked the previous access: April 28, 3:30 a.m.
She—whoever she was—had gotten in.
Was I going to be blackmailed? Pay, or be whistle-blown as a tax cheat and sent to federal prison? What did she—they—want of me?
But then my despair segued into cold anger.
Mayday. Yes. But it wasn’t me in distress.
She—they—were in for payback.
CHAPTER 63
I was still stewing in unrequited anger when I got a jail call, an operator asking if I would accept charges. I did. It was Billy Shkilla. He and the other Shkillas had been arrested on drug and murder conspiracies. He was in state court, 100 Centre Street, awaiting arraignment. “You got to hurry, man. They’re gonna call my case soon.”
I sighed silently. Here I was, surrounded by the broken remnants of my life, my future hidden by black clouds, and now another demand was being foisted on my diminishing resources. I hadn’t been to state court in years . . . so many memories, many good, but too many tawdry, draining. I probably would have gotten out of the defense business had I not escalated to a federal practice. What could I possibly do for Billy that any state lawyer might not do better? No matter the lawyer; bail on a murder case would be astronomical. As for a fee, I wasn’t about to take Billy’s few bucks. I sighed again.
“On my way.”
Traffic was heavy. My mind was still muddled, so I lowered the window. The wind was ice cold. Clouds of steam pouring from manholes; bus exhaust and distant sirens. Plainclothes cops working doubles needing a shave. Relatives. Girlfriends and wives giving one another the stink-eye.
But strangely, the closer I got to 100 Centre, the higher I felt. When I was a young public defender, pot was an exotic smoked only by the cool. Mady and I spent long weekends in bed, smoking and murmuring, “Oh wow.” I felt that kind of high now, aware, anticipatory. All was well. Oh wow.
Billy’s predicament brought me back to earth. I had to find the kid a way out.
I went into the clerk’s office and asked for a copy of Billy’s complaint. Waiting behind the wire-glass window, leaning on the scarred countertop, I felt as if I’d never left. My American life did have a second act: a repetition. I was stoned in the state courthouse again.
I entered the courtroom just as the arraignment concluded. The judge had gotten tired of waiting and assigned Billy a public defender. Bail for all defendants was $1 million. Billy’s head was down, but he lit up when he saw me.
“Call me,” I said as they led him away.
Not that I’d have anything of substance to tell him. One of the worst aspects of state cases is that they move slowly, and invariably the prosecutors play discovery games so defendants don’t know all they’re up against until just before trial, when they’re offered a take-it-or-leave-it-right-now deal. The way it was, but hardheaded me would butt the system every step of the way.
The next day, another unknown caller reached out to me: a man who said he was calling on behalf of Josh Waldman. His voice was unfamiliar. He seemed edgy. I was wary.
“Sorry, but I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
“Meet Mr. Waldman. The Oyster Bar, noon.”
With that, he hung up, leaving me still another puzzlement. I recalled Josh as a brown bagger, not at all the type who did lunch. Then again, he’d changed from the young lawyer who’d been my paper man. But why not call me himself? Why interpose someone between us, calling from an unknown number, no less?
No matter. I needed to hear Josh speak. To see through his eyes.
The Oyster Bar was in Grand Central Terminal. When I arrived, I didn’t see Josh. I took a seat at the bar and ordered water with a slice of lemon; that’s how clear I wanted to be. A young guy in a good suit sat next to me. Looking straight ahead, he spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
“Mr. Waldman is waiting for you on the shuttle platform,” he said, then got up and disappeared into the crowd.
I guessed Josh wanted to discuss my problem while traveling elsewhere. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. But even as I descende
d into the bowels of Grand Central, leaving the suburban commuter tracks and entering the NYC subway system, I disabused myself of that notion. I was kidding myself, because it was obvious why Josh wanted to meet me elsewhere.
He didn’t want to be seen with me.
My anger refocused on Josh. For Chrissake, he was my lawyer! What in hell was he worried about?
When I got to the shuttle platform, Josh was nowhere in sight.
After a minute, a train pulled in. As its doors slid open, Josh stepped from behind a steel pillar. He paused long enough to catch my attention, then boarded. I did, too.
Josh sat without looking at me. I sat across from him. The shuttle ride was short, from Grand Central to Times Square, from Midtown east to Midtown west. When the shuttle stopped at Times Square, Josh got off. I did, too.
He remained on the platform. I did, too.
When the conductor announced the shuttle was about to leave for Grand Central, he got back on. I did, too.
Just before the door closed, he got out. I did, too.
He left the station. I did, too.
Times Square and 42nd Street are smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan, but it looked like Disneyland. Not for the first time, I reflected on how the Square and the Deuce had been nothing but porn, pimps, and prostitutes when I was growing up. Nothing remains the same in the Apple. Josh was a living example.
What was he so afraid of?
He walked west, and I followed. Past the theater district, down tree-lined residential streets, relatively quiet at this hour. Josh stopped and put a foot atop a fire hydrant, pretending to fuss with his shoelace. When I paused a few feet away, he spoke, without looking at me. His voice was tight, clipped.
“I won’t risk the slightest chance of being seen together,” he said. “Just so you understand, since I left your office, I don’t do drug work. Too dirty. And in this particular instance, the kind of dirt that rubs off. I’ve worked too hard for too long to build a practice with clients who can’t afford to be associated with you and your problem.”
“Because we share the same lawyer? I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
