“This time, the father wouldn’t. Not a business of this kind. Cocaine. Father would turn away.”
“Would the father have to know?” Rascob said. Two helicopters skittered in before the tallest buildings on the skyline, heading for the airport.
“He would,” Frolio said. “The risk is big. His plan is not to use the planes again.” He made a small gesture with his right thumb toward the sky above the water. “Too risky. To have the transporters swallow the condoms the day of the night that they come here from Puerto Rico, Mexico, whatever.
“I say to him that I agree. ‘Won’t work. Ever since the time the rubbers burst inside the people, they got sick. At least one died. Now they watch the airplanes, getting on and off. Profiling—kind of people who they know would do such a thing for pay. You try a thing like that again and you lose all the money—drugs and people too.
“ ‘Besides, we do not do that. Family rule—we do not conduct such business.” ’
“Well,” Rascob said, drawing the word out.
Dominic looked grim. “ ‘The man is dead,’ young Charlie says to me. ‘The son is dead. The boss in jail.’
“ ‘Viva la Famiglia,’ I say to him. ‘And the Family’s not in jail. The rule is of the Family, not the boss, who is in jail, or the son and father, dead.” ’
Rascob gazed straight ahead and said nothing. The wind gnawed at the back of his neck and he reached back with both hands, awkwardly, to pull his hat down on his head and tug up the collar of his trenchcoat.
“You don’t agree,” Frolio said.
Rascob said, “Oh, I agree. The Family rule is as you say—of course we honor it. But as you know there’s been an exception made in recent years. Many times, in fact. For money to be made. The business has become so great—if we don’t participate we will lose control. So—conducting it is not allowed, but financing is permitted.
“As I’ve understood it now to be arranged.”
“I have not,” Dominic said. “If you go to McKeach and report what I have said, and he tells you I am wrong and the money should be given, then you tell him I said that someone else must take it—put it on the street for this forbidden business. This one—if he decides to do this one, he does it himself. That is all I have to say.”
2
AS CASUALLY AS A REGULAR VISITOR with an interest in the three-story leasehold, Nick Cistaro just before noon the same day opened for the first time the low gate in the black iron fence on the sidewalk and walked onto the brick patio of Imaginings at 73 Newbury Street in Boston. He wore a black calfskin single-breasted safari jacket, a white merino turtleneck, custom-fitted stonewashed blue jeans, black Gucci loafers. His head was large, well furnished with carefully tended silver-grey wavy hair, the face below it expressionless behind the blue-lensed wraparound Vuarnet sunglasses. He latched the gate behind him and scanned the facade—half a flight of stairs led up to a portrait studio with a display window on the elevated first floor—before crossing the patio and descending the three flagstone steps to the Imaginings door. It was forty percent grey-tinted glass invisibly hinged at the left of the display window. The window contained a life-sized stuffed-toy tawny lioness posed resting but watchful under a broad swatch of gilded cat-o’-nine-tails, a small ivory card with black calligraphy reading “STIEFF COURTESY F.A.O. SCHWARTZ” lying next to its left haunch.
The door opened and closed silently when he entered. The shop was deep and narrow, eighteen feet across, carpeted with beige rush matting and illuminated by baby floodlights recessed into the ceiling. Along the right wall there was an elongated grouping of oversized green and gilded bamboo furniture—two wing chairs, a trunk, three tables, each with two straight chairs, a chest of drawers—arranged in front of a triptych screen depicting a porticoed walkway facing on a North African marketplace long-shadowed in late-afternoon light. An audio source played a Bach piano suite arranged for guitar; he did not recognize it. At the rear of the shop were two unoccupied kidney-shaped birch desks and tan chairs facing four beige leather director’s chairs and a love seat with beige hopsack cushions. Under the overhang of the mezzanine were four two-drawer brown-metal file cabinets set against a cocoa-colored wall decorated with shiny chocolate-brown masks and crossed spears festooned with beige feathers. In the center of the wall a dimly lighted narrow corridor opened into gloom. Steam rose from a squat brown mug on top of the file cabinet at the left of the door.
To the left of the desks was a stainless-steel semicircular staircase with narrow black carpeted treads; it led up to and continued along the mezzanine above. There was one black arched door off center to the left beyond the top of the staircase and another about twelve feet farther over to the right. Cistaro sniffled, pushed the sunglasses up and back on his hair and started up the stairs. At five feet eleven, 218, he made the staircase flex and creak. He tried to rest his weight lightly and no longer than necessary on each tread.
On the balcony Cistaro without knocking opened the first door. He found Crawford in the eight-by-twelve grey tweed cubicle behind it, recognizing him by the small Florida-shaped port-wine birthmark on his lower left cheek and jaw. Cistaro went in immediately, shutting the door behind him; it was hollow anodized aluminum and clinked like play money.
Crawford, talking on the phone at his cluttered desk in shirt-sleeves, had been looking down through gold half-frame granny glasses and doodling fairly good Snoopys with a hexagonal gold automatic pencil on a foot-square pad of bright yellow paper. He looked up, vexed and puzzled. “Uh huh, you’re Crawford,” Cistaro said, nodding. “You’re Crawford and you’re late.”
In the corners behind Crawford were two aluminum easels displaying hand-painted one-third-scale copies of paintings by Claude Monet, one sunset-golden-orange of the facade of the cathedral at Rouen, the other evening-blue of the Thames side of the Houses of Parliament. Crawford sat between them also carefully fashioned, a compact man in his early thirties with rather long bleached-blond hair parted precisely in the center. He wore a lavender Egyptian cotton shirt with white French cuffs linked with gold sunbursts, a white collar with a gold collar pin, a navy blue tie with gold five-pointed stars, and navy blue suspenders with a wide gold stripe down the center. He had never seen Cistaro before and, distracted by his entrance, only half-heard what he said. Therefore he had not understood what Cistaro had said—but instead of saying that, he scowled. He held up his right forefinger irritatedly and shook his head. Then, looking down, he nodded. “Yes, I know it is, Dee,” he said into the phone, “and I know it’s annoying. And I know just what to do. But it’s like everything else—won’t take any time at all to do it, we go back out there together and I show you how. But I can’t go out there today, and if I try to describe it to you it’ll take me a while. So I’ll have to call you back—someone’s just come in.” He stared up at Cistaro. “No, very unexpectedly.” He frowned. “Yes, then, all right. See you.”
He replaced the phone in the black desk set with his left hand and gazed at Cistaro with exasperation. Then he said, “Who are you?” with the chill soft muted politeness that paralyzed museum-quality finish carpenters; quailed temperamental artisans who worked with tile, intaglio and metals and haughtily refused to learn English; and partially compensated clients who had lots of money, modestly realized they did not have extreme good taste but could afford to buy, regally, as much as they felt they needed (more than their friends had), and rather expected condescending insolence from its more reputable purveyors.
Cistaro smiled tightly, showing six teeth in the front row of his upper jaw. “I’m the guy you owe money to,” he said. “You’re late—paying me.”
“I owe lots of people money,” Crawford said calmly. “I’ve never laid eyes on most of them in my life. Nor have I wished to—there’s no need. I’m sure I’m late on many of my accounts. It happens all the time. The kind of work I do? People who I do it for, fall behind on me. Happens to them all the time? Happens to me all the time. When they get caught up, I get caught up.�
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Cistaro said nothing.
“The people I owe money to—they always get it. So they know they can trust me. You? I’ve never seen before, in my entire life. So you have no experience to go on, and simply don’t realize that. Are you pressed for cash? How much do you need? I’ll see if I can help you.”
Cistaro showed more teeth. “I’m not pressed for cash,” he said pleasantly. “People like you, who owe me—they are pressed for cash. Why they come to me, the first place—get the cash they got to have, they haven’t got no cash. That’s what you did, you know it or not. Came to me referred, okay? Any other hurtin’ puppy—guy you asked where you could find ninety large, right off? He said come to me.”
“Oh, but I’ve never seen you before,” Crawford said mildly.
“You seen people, work for me,” Cistaro said. “You seen them when you saw my money. Didn’t see my face then, but you seen Ben Franklin’s pictures and you seen the presidents. That means you seen me.
“Six weeks ago, you fall in our laps, said you needed cash for two. Forty-five a week then, just like it is today. Which we told you, and you said you understood. An’—that even though it was a lot more’n you’re used to paying, it was acceptable. That was what you said to Tony. Next time Tony saw me, he told me you said that.
“Kid never heard that one before. ‘ “Acceptable,” he said.’ Could not get over it. Well, what the hell, he’s just a kid. Hasn’t been around that much—you’re something new for him.”
Crawford’s expression gradually changed. “Would this Tony be Anthony, the barber? The young fellow in the shop down on Broad Street? The guy that Mario took me to see, before the three-day weekend? He said he had another appointment coming in at three-fifteen, so he had to hurry.”
“Look, he cuts hair—financial district,” Cistaro said. “Why we took him on. Where he is, an’ what he does, and who he does it to. Good location for him? Good one for us, too. Every day he’s seeing people who at one time or another need some money in a hurry; so happens they’re tapped out; got no place to get it. People talk to barbers. Why this is I do not know. If this guy knows everything there is to know, you know? What’s he doin’ cutting hair? But they do it, all the time, all his people, just the same. They got something on their minds, who they go and tell it to? To him. There he is, he’s just a kid, all he knows’s cutting hair—so they ask him for advice.
“Which day it was? Don’t know. Sometime last month. The deal was for two weeks. All our weeks end on Friday—’til you miss one. Then all weeks end every day—so which day it was don’t matter. Two weeks was what you said you wanted. Then, well, apparently it’s taking longer’n you thought it would. Perfectly all right with us, long’s you’re all right. Keep it ten years, if you want, long’s you stay all right.
“Three-four weeks, that’s what you were—perfectly all right. We sent a guy around, day you got the money, look you up and check you out? Here you were, just like you tell Tony—looked okay to him. But then week five—no check.
“ ‘Fuck happened?’ we think. ‘Something go wrong with this guy? Well, we’ll give him another week—prolly come in then. Tell us what went wrong.’ But six weeks was due last Friday—once again no check comes in. Now it’s seven weeks, today. Tony doesn’t hear from you, see you come around? Naturally he’s concerned—he calls us.” Cistaro paused for a beat or two and scowled at Crawford. “Like he knows he hasta do.
“Gotta understand the kid,” Cistaro said. “Position you put him in, okay? Mario introduced you, right? This’s fine for Mario, but for Tony, not so fine. This’s all he knows about you—Mario says you’re all right. Okay, far as it goes. We’ll take Mario’s word on that, so long’s we see it’s true. But Mario’s a customer. He don’t work for us. He’s got no responsibility, you don’t turn out all right.
“Tony works for us. He’s got the responsibility—but he knows you not at all. Even after a month or so, he don’t know you all that well. High-class neighborhood here and all? Kind of people you got up here, this end of town? Look like they got lots of money—but hey, how does he know?
“ ‘Newbury Street? I don’t go there. This guy Crawford came to me—I didn’t go to him. I don’t know where he comes from. Never see the guy before. What the hell I do?’
“Tony’s a good kid. Wants to do what’s right for everybody, not make some dumb mistake. So he asked me what to do. I told him, ‘Hey, don’t worry, kid. I’m over there from time to time. I’ll take care of it.’ So that’s how come I’m here here today, all right?
“Put it to you, black and white—just connect the dots. Reason I am here today: You owe me one hundred and three thousand, nine hundred and fifty dollars. Me—not Mario. Not Tony. The original ninety; the forty-five hundred you owe week five, which you miss; plus the forty-seven twenty-five, week six; plus the forty-seven twenty-five you owe today. You made me nervous. Lots of guys would up you five points onna week-six ice, and five more in top of that this week, week seven, but I never been a guy saw any point in bumping up the count so high guy can’t see no way out. I leave that tah the government.”
He laughed, one bark. “So, you can give me thirteen nine-fifty or one-oh-three nine-fifty, either way is easiest for you. Which’s it gonna be?”
“Look,” Crawford said, shaking his head, “what I said originally there, about owing people money? People owing me? There’s something that you have to understand about this business that I’m in. It all depends on exactly what it is that we’ve sold you—what we’re selling you, I should say. That determines when it is the buyer owes the money. All right? And even then he still has thirty days, of course, a chance to see it in the home—if it looks like we expected. It’s on approval, see? Everything we do—the kind of goods and services we deal in—it always works that way.
“And rarities, all right? Antiquities we deal in? What was involved in the deal that we got you involved in, through the Tony that we heard about through Mario, all right? That’s what was involved. These’re artifacts we’re dealing in, genuine antiquities, one-of-a-kind things. And, well, it’s very difficult, for anyone, involved in any of these transactions, to say exactly when or how the whole deal will be … well, brought to fruition. Or sometimes—fairly often, actually—even if it ever will be. Brought to fruition, I mean. If you understand me.”
Cistaro stared at him.
“Half the time they have to be … well, sometimes the countries that they come from, see? We find that what we have to do is go outside regular channels, the normal export-import regulations that you have … they … that they would normally apply, would apply in these kinds of, ah, cases.
“These things can be sensitive. These other countries—third-world countries, really, no use pretending otherwise—they’re not always keen on having them, well, having what we find removed. From the areas where we’ve found them—and this’s after, mind you, someone’s paid a good deal to have them prospected for, looked for. When no one even in these countries themselves was absolutely sure that they were there, even dreamed that they were there. And then if they’d been found, to dig them up. Or if they’d have any value if they did.”
“Really,” Cistaro said.
“Yes,” Crawford said. “So it all can be a very delicate, and time-consuming, business, and therefore very expensive, in and of itself. As well. And then the actual process of having them removed; you have to be exquisitely careful about how you go about having them do that. Because these things are so fragile. From the sites where they’re found, I mean—even those’re sensitive. Have to be careful how you dig. And then from the countries, God—when it comes to physically taking them out of the countries where they originate, well, it’s like having a tooth pulled.
“I mean, hell, sometimes we have to spend as much as six or seven months, arranging transportation through another country, as backward as the first, maybe even two or three. The kind of provenance, a paper trail, that enables us to, you know, get them passed along, almo
st from hand to hand, really. Document specialists and so forth, just to get them into Switzerland, ultimately through Customs here, they finally reach New York. But once we get them as far as Switzerland, well, then we always feel as though we can breathe a little easier, the hard part’s behind us now. But it’s never really sure.
“Now the buyer we go through this for, we acquire these things for—none of this’s his responsibility. Any of his concern at all. He’s completely apart from all of this, knows nothing about it. And that’s the way it has to be, as far as he’s concerned—the way he wants it. That’s why the huge markup. In this instance, for example, the artifacts involved in this deal that we’re financed with the money that I got from your man Anthony … well, the actual intrinsic value of the pieces, in the objective sense, I mean, is probably in the neighborhood of thirty, thirty-five, forty thousand the outside.”
“That much,” Cistaro said, looking interested.
“Oh, yes,” Crawford said. “The rest? All eaten up by these imponderables. And the buyer that we have for them, the customer who ordered them, see if we could get them for him and’s been waiting several months now for the chance to get his hands on them, these pieces, well, this is so speculative, so uncertain a procedure, that he doesn’t owe the money until the artifacts are actually in his possession. In his home. That’s why they cost so much, when they actually do arrive.”
“I see,” Cistaro said.
“So,” Crawford said, “as you see, it isn’t simple, this kind of business isn’t. We deal in fairly large sums of money, but one way or the other, it’s always tied up. Pretty well tied up. So, it may surprise you to hear this, but I don’t keep that kind of cash—–”
Crawford was still talking as Cistaro dragged him out of his chair by his blue tie with gold stars and drew his chin down hard against and then across the surface of his desk, not with sudden impact but irresistible force and unpleasant friction, until his pelvis butted up against the back edge of the desk, so that he extended his neck to its limit and choked, and had to stop talking.
At End of Day Page 2
