by Adam Gittlin
had to do was track me down, plant the egg, and disappear. Enter
Pangaea-Man.
As I came down, around the ramp that led from Jersey into the Lincoln Tunnel, I looked out to my left at the entire Manhattan footprint from Harlem to where the Towers use to reign. Even though it was the middle of the night, a dense ball of light hung over the island, the result of intense wattage flowing below. Thankful is the first thing I remember feeling for that energy. I couldn’t help marveling at the fact such a jagged skyline could seem so orderly.
I felt relief that my partners didn’t seem to be involved. I couldn’t handle that level of betrayal. Not now. The stars were continuing to align, but I still had questions. How well did I really know Andreu Zhamovsky or what he was capable of?
Did I know him at all? My own half-brother?
My lines kept getting crossed between the note in my father’s handwriting and the fact the watermark on that same note was in Russian. Is that why Galina hung up when I told her my father was gone? Was it possible she knew what was happening but was afraid of her own son?
At the bottom of the ramp I swung around to the right and shot through the toll using one of the EZ Pass lanes. Within seconds the tunnel linking the two states swallowed me. When it did, something dawned on me.
Someone once said that out of chaos emerge patterns. What if it didn’t, I thought. What if chaos was to remain just that, chaos, but you were able to create the patterns on your own, without anyone knowing? What if you were able to define the emerging order of events into a pattern that only became apparent to others after the consequences of such events were already irreversible?
I had been forced to play someone else’s game. So, I thought, maybe it was time to tweak the rules. Still wary of using my cell unless I absolutely needed to, I picked up Pop’s, dialed a familiar number, and hit “send.”
“Jonah!” L pushed out, trying not to sound asleep.
“Sorry to wake you, pal.”
“What the fuck is the matter? You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You said you’d—for twenty-four hours.”
“I know what I said, L. I’m okay. Really.”
“You’re not selling me. Tell me where you are.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I knew it. I knew you were in serious shit once you asked me for that gun.”
“I didn’t want to lie to you, L. You know that.”
“Of course I do.”
L paused before going on.
“I’m so sorry about your pop. The whole thing’s so fucking awful.”
At this moment I was treading water with regard to how I felt about my father. I said nothing.
“I wish I could bring him back for you, man. I’d be a liar if I said I know how this must feel.”
I knew L was trying to help, but I didn’t have the time or the stomach.
“I appreciate it, L,” I stopped him, “but I’d really rather not get into any of that right now.”
L obliged.
“How serious is the trouble you’re in? And be honest.”
It was time to trust my oldest, closest friend. My best chance for him to come through on my upcoming request was to convey the severity of the situation.
“Life and death I think.”
“Oh fuck,” he said under his breath. “Tell me where you are, Jonah. Let me come help you.”
“It’s out of the question.”
“Why?”
“Because it has to be.”
“I don’t understand. What’s so fucking—”
“L! Please! Don’t you think you’re the first person I would have called if it was at all, even the slightest bit, possible?”
He said nothing.
“If you truly want to help, just listen.”
L let out a big, drawn out sigh.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Tell me the name of the loading dock guy we always laugh about who works for Plotkin.”
Plotkin, whose facility is across the street from L’s, is another meat distributor and one of Luckman’s primary competitors.
“The who?”
“Come on, L, the fucking shady Mexican guy we laugh about who spends every other six months in jail. The one who always comes looking to you for a job but always gets hired back across the way when you say no.”
“Oh, you mean Hernando, the one who helps smuggle illegals into the country?”
“Yes! Hernando!”
“What the fuck could you possibly want from him?”
Chapter 40
Early Monday afternoon, draped in fine Italian fabric and briefcase in hand, I stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk in front of my apartment building. Everything from the pistol to my sunglasses to each hair on my head was perfectly in place. Under the hot summer sun I made a right to head uptown. Just as I did, to my surprise, was an approaching Detective Morante.
“Good afternoon, Jonah. You have a minute for me?”
He looked just as he did the first time I met him, neatly dressed, almost stylish. A nicely pressed navy blue button-down was tucked into his nonpleated charcoal pants and finished off with brown leather shoes that matched his belt.
Remaining calm I looked at my watch.
“I’m on my way to a meeting.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” the detective responded slowly.
“Is there a problem?”
“No,” his voice snapped back, his arm dropping back to his side, “I’m just surprised to see you jumping back into work so quickly. You know, with everything that’s happened over the last few days.”
“Yeah, well, it hasn’t been easy. Keeping busy is best. It’s how I deal.”
“I guess that makes sense. I mean—”
The detective turned slightly to his left and threw his arms out in front of him, palms up, as if presenting my apartment building to me.
“How else do people come to live like this?”
I looked dryly at the property, then back at Morante.
“I have somewhere to be, detective. What is it that I can help you with?”
Detective Morante returned his angle, focus, to me.
“We’re doing a full inventory of the crime scene, standard procedure in all homicides, and we’ve come across a cell phone A/C adapter plugged into the wall in your father’s study. Only, there was no phone. You have any idea who may have removed it?”
Fuck! All I had meant to do was duck anyone listening in on me.
“Because,” the detective went on, “it seems there’s been some activity on the line since after his death. And if—”
A bit of sweat began forming on the back of my neck and it wasn’t from the sun. If push came to shove, L and Galina could be easily explained. My best friend and, as I had just learned, my father’s Russian mistress whom I felt the need to confront. Although then there was Derbyshev, which meant a whole new world of shit Morante hadn’t learned of yet. That’s when it hit me. A preemptive strike appeared to be in my best interest.
“It was me, detective.”
If they knew it was me who took the phone then perhaps they’d have no need to check the identities behind the called numbers.
“Really. When?”
“Friday afternoon. Before I headed home from the office early I stopped at my father’s townhouse to pick up some business papers I left in his study. Once there I realized my phone was about to die. Even though I felt like shit, I still had some time-sensitive calls to make on my way home. Pop told me to take his phone.”
“Is that right?”
“It is.”
I looked at my watch again.
“Detective, I really do need to get going.”
“I understand, Jonah. You’re a busy man. I just have one more question.”
“About?”
“A couple of items in your father’s basement.”<
br />
“Like what?”
“For starters, the set of free weights. What can you tell me about them?”
“I used to lift with them in high school.”
“High school.”
“That’s right.”
“You haven’t touched them since?”
“I don’t believe so. Maybe a couple of times when I was home in the summer during college, but—”
“But what?”
“Detective, I’m not sure I understand your question.”
“My question is I’d like to know if you can tell me why a couple of them are missing.”
“Missing?”
“That’s right. The weight set you have down there isn’t only a damn nice one, but according to the manufacturer you have the complete set, both dumbbells and plates. Only, two of the barbell plates are missing. Both of them thirty-five pounders.”
The manufacturer. Morante had just informed me, no doubt intentionally, he was digging.
“Like I said Detective, it’s been a lot of years since I used them.”
“Huh,” Morante grunted, turning his attention to the passing traffic. “So I guess you wouldn’t know much about the tool chest either.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He returned his stare to me.
“You don’t know about a tool chest?”
“No, I mean...yes...that’s not what I meant. Of course I know about the tool chest. It’s been down there my whole life.”
“You use it lately?”
“No.”
“Did your father?”
“I have no idea.”
“Interesting. Because like the weight set it is of top quality, and also missing a couple of vital elements. Such as a pair of pliers and a saw.”
My thoughts spun to Mattheau. His desire to dispose of the body and his hidden yet savage past. The more I wanted to now understand what he had done, the more afraid I knew I’d ever be to ask him.
“Detective, what does any of this have to do with my father being shot?”
“Probably nothing. Like I said, a complete understanding of the crime scene is standard procedure. It’s just that, judging from your father’s lifestyle, he doesn’t exactly strike me as the handyman type.”
I was nervous from the direction the conversation had taken. An inquiry of my own was all I could do to regain my footing and show the good detective he hadn’t rattled me.
“Detective, while I have you here, I actually have a question of my own.”
“Oh yeah,” he shot back, humoring me, “what’s that?”
“The cigar ash. The one that’s been discussed in the papers.”
“What about it?”
“Are you sure it was from Saturday morning?”
“We’re running tests to determine that.”
“Wouldn’t it have blown away? Or couldn’t it have come from somewhere else on that street?”
“At first you would assume either of those scenarios to be true, but that morning was so still our CSI team decided to check out the rest of the blacktop in front of the townhouse. Sure enough, not six feet from where the ash was found and your father’s chauffeur said the car sped off, was a small patch of the same ash embedded more firmly in the tar, probably at the point of contact where it originally fell from someone’s cigar.”
I was confused by Morante being so forthright, then figured he was trying to freak me with the department’s prowess in the area of scientific fact-finding.
“I see,” I said, trying to remain calm.
Fucking Murdoch. I knew it.
“Jonah, did your father ever smoke a cigar?”
I quickly saw my opening.
“He did.”
Here was my chance to lead the detective away from Murdoch so I could have him all to myself.
“In fact often, on summer weekends after returning from dinner, he would light one up and take a walk around the neighborhood. Maybe your crime lab could see if the ash found was from the kind of cigar he smoked.”
“What kind of cigar was that?”
“Monte Cristo #2.”
“How about you Jonah?”
“How about me what?”
“You ever smoke cigars?”
It felt as if someone had jammed a racquetball down my throat. I couldn’t lie. All he needed to do was ask one person familiar with me and I was screwed.
“I do.”
“Ever smoke Monte Cristo #2s?”
“Sometimes.”
We parted ways, me heading uptown and Morante looking to cross the street. Before I was twenty feet away the detective yelled to me.
“By the way, Jonah, I forgot.”
“What’s that?”
“I think you know a friend of mine. Spencer Simon.”
Just his name was enough to make me feel like a heavy-duty strap, the kind for securing an unruly mental patient to a gurney, was tightening around my chest. I didn’t respond.
“He told me to mention you’re in his thoughts. As are his hopes of a speedy resolution to all of this.”
Chapter 41
I stepped out of the elevator onto PCBL’s main floor in the Chrysler Center, a complete bat out of hell, albeit in mind more than body. Physically I was doing my best to remain alert, motivated, but not overly high-strung. My demeanor, my energy, was the opposite of what anyone I was going to encounter would expect. It was important I didn’t blow my cover. It was essential I didn’t appear hysterical by overcompensating. Inside, I was fucking bursting with anticipation. It was time to lift those up who deserved to be lifted. And it was time to swat those down who deserved to be crushed.
Cautious of being tracked, I felt I needed to pick my spots and keep moving. Everything that was about to occur had to happen expeditiously. I pushed my Bruno Maglis down the sophisticated hallway, the past two weeks chasing me, nipping at my heels. Poised, posture intact, I never looked over my shoulder. I simply moved forward wearing the mask of a strong man struggling to hold my chin up like a professional and return to my responsibilities. Truth be told, my grieving had happened in my apartment and en route to and from Baltimore. By this point I was insensate. I was nothing more than a thick, sharp, lethally pointed machine ready to bore into the eyes of those who had screwed me.
It was three p.m. when I entered the office following a quick shower in my apartment. I came in late because I wanted to keep my schedule fresh, my whereabouts unscripted. Unable to speak, touching the corner of her eye with a well-used Kleenex, Carolyn rose from her desk and wrapped her arms around me. I anticipated condolences and hugs that afternoon, so my pistol was in my briefcase that I was holding in my right hand.
“I’m so sorry, Jonah,” she said into my ear through a sniffle.
“I know you are, Carolyn.”
“Don’t worry for a second about tomorrow. I’ve taken care of everything.”
“I knew you would.”
Still hugging me, she put her face in front of mine.
“Do they have any idea who did this?”
I shook my head “no.”
“They don’t.”
She put her head back on my shoulder and gave me another squeeze.
“If there’s anything I can do, anything, just let me know. You name it.”
The serious tone made my jaw lock.
“I’m okay, Carolyn. How about you? Any of your numbers come in?” I asked, looking to break the tension.
A brief chuckle fought through her tears.
“Scratch off over the weekend, a thousand bucks,” she replied, humoring me.
We separated.
“Actually, Carolyn, I’m going to have to take you up on that offer sooner than you think.”
Carolyn, curious, took her seat.
“Whatever you need, Jonah. What’s up?”
Action.
I looked around. I crouched down, my knees
bent to the point I was looking up at her. I placed my hand up on her desk for added balance.
“I need your help, Carolyn. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I don’t have the time to explain. I don’t know who else to turn to. It is definitely the most important thing I’ve ever asked of you.”
Carolyn shifted her eyes.
“Jonah, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be scared,” I said quietly. “I need you to keep your voice lower. Everything will be fine if you help me.”
Carolyn looked around, as if waiting for someone to pop out from under a desk to guide her. No one ever popped out, so it was time to lay it on. Years of gifts, astronomical bonuses, extra vacation for her efforts; all of this was about to benefit me in a way I had never planned.
“If you follow my instructions you won’t be in any danger. And you could end up saving my life.”
Carolyn’s eyes turned from scared to determined as loyalty began to overrun apprehension.
“From the person who killed your father?” she whispered.
That’s the fucking spirit, I thought.
“No time for questions,” I said back to her. “All I’m asking you to do is make some phone calls.”
“Phone calls?”
“That’s right. Simple phone calls. But they need to be made from phones untraceable to you. Random pay phones.”
Carolyn was silent. I could tell the mention of her having to maintain anonymity had her insides twisting.
“It would mean the world to me, Carolyn. And I promise to make it worth your while.”
Sensing my true need, Carolyn took the bait. Jumping in line with the program, she nodded her head ever so slightly “yes.”
“Here’s what I need you to do—”
Once Carolyn had her marching orders I headed down the hall. Perry’s and Jake’s offices were empty. I figured if they were in the office at all, they were in with Tommy.
