“I just need you to bring me to him,” Aleks replied. “I’ll take it from there.” He took a thick roll out of his pocket. US currency. Kolya’s eyes widened. “I will need a car and a driver. The car should be nothing flashy. Tinted windows.”
Kolya crossed to the window, opened the blinds. He pointed to a midnight blue Ford parked near the street. The car was for sale, and had the price of $2,500 on the darkened windshield.
“This will do,” Aleks said. “Do you have a driver?”
“Omar is the man.”
We’ll see, Aleks thought. “I also need a room at a nearby motel. Something quiet, but near an expressway. Off-brand.”
“I know all the motels, yo. My cousin works at one up the way.”
Aleks peeled off about ten thousand in cash, held it out to Kolya. Kolya went to take the money. Aleks pulled it back.
“Your father was a brother to me,” Aleks said. “A vennaskond. Do you know what this means?”
Kolya nodded, but Aleks believed the young man did not fully understand the bond. Young American men like Kolya, men on the fringes of criminal society, gauged their belief of “gang” life and its fragile loyalties on what they saw in the movies and on television, on what they heard on the radio. His father and Aleks had been tested in battle. He continued.
“I am going to treat you with trust, with respect,” Aleks said. “But I will not put my life in your hands. Do you understand this?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I understand.”
“And if you cross me, just once, you will not see me coming, nor will you see another dawn.”
Kolya tried to hold his gaze, but failed. He looked away. When he looked back, Aleks had the money out.
“I need the following things,” he said. “Do not write them down.” He then dictated a list, a list that included a fast laptop computer, a high-megapixel DSLR camera, a portable color printer, photo-quality paper, and a half dozen prepaid cellphones.
“You can buy these things now?” Aleks asked.
“Hell yeah.”
“Do you have a driving license?”
“Sure.”
“May I see it?”
Kolya hesitated, apparently not used to producing ID on demand. He then took out a bulky wallet, a scuffed leather billfold attached to a chain. He extracted his license. Before leaving Tallinn, Aleks had looked up New York licenses on the Web, had studied a JPEG of the document. Kolya’s permit looked genuine.
“Can you get me a license like this?”
“No problem,” Kolya said. “What’s the name and address?”
“I don’t know yet,” Aleks said. “When you come back we will take the picture. Then we will begin.”
As Kolya walked across the garage, he motioned to Omar, who emerged from the office. Moments later, the two men left the shop.
One hour later Kolya returned, four large bags in hand. While Kolya was gone, Aleks looked through every drawer and file cabinet in the office. He had all the information he needed on the young man – his home address, phone numbers, cell numbers, social security number, bank accounts. He had them all memorized. Although his recall was not quite photographic, he had an eidetic talent for recollection. His greatest faculty was thoroughness. He kept both his enemies and friends at hand. In his experience, one had the potential to become the other at a moment’s notice. Often, with no notice at all.
“Any problems?” Aleks asked.
Kolya shook his head. “Cash talks, bro.”
After unpacking the bags and boxes inside, Aleks booted the laptop. He got through all the opening screens, launched the web browser, and began to surf the Internet for what he needed.
He soon found the official documents he needed online, hooked up the printer, and printed them.
While the laptop battery charged, he unpacked the DSLR camera, a Nikon D60. He slipped in a high-capacity SD memory card and, when the battery held sufficient charge to take a few images, he had Kolya render five close-up photographs of him standing in front of a white wall. He hooked the camera up to the laptop, launched the image program, and printed off the photographs on high-quality, semi-gloss paper.
An hour later he was ready. He gave Kolya the trimmed photographs. “At some time today I will have the name and address I need for this driving license.”
Kolya nodded. “I’ll have Omar take this to my man and he’ll get it set up. All we have to do is call with the info and he’ll get right on it. We could have it within the hour.”
“Do you trust this man? This forger?”
“He did a lot of work for my father.”
This was good enough for Aleks. “Do you still have enough money to cover this?”
Aleks saw the slight hesitation in Kolya’s response. There was no question that there was enough money left over from what Aleks had earlier given the young man, but they were all thieves in this room. The hesitation spoke to instinct, more than reason. Perhaps involuntarily, Kolya’s eyes dipped to Aleks’s tattoos, and what they meant.
“I’m good,” Kolya said.
“Good,” Aleks replied. He slipped on his coat. “Are you ready to do this?”
Kolya shot to his feet. He held up a set of keys. “We’ll take the H2. Go to Queens in style, yo.”
Aleks unplugged the fully charged laptop, slipped it into its carrying case. “We need to make one more stop first. Are there places near here that sell hardware? Tools? We will need these things.” Aleks handed Kolya a list. Kolya scanned it.
“Home Depot,” Kolya said, handing it back.
Aleks took the list back, burned it in an ashtray. “Will they have all these things in one store?”
Kolya laughed. “Bro,” he said. “This is America.”
EIGHT
The Austin Ale House was famous for many things, not the least of which was its propensity to welcome any number of members of the Queens district attorney’s office in the front door, and discreetly help them out the back door a few hours later. Many times, when a major case was won, the DA’s office celebrated the victory in the bar/restaurant/Off Track Betting parlor on Austin Street.
The site was also famous – or more accurately infamous – for being the site of the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder, and subsequent legend. Kitty Genovese was a young woman who was stabbed to death in the parking lot, and cried for help as she crawled across the frozen asphalt toward her apartment. According to numerous reports, neighbors who heard her pleas failed to respond, although over the years this notion has come into question. Regardless, the syndrome had become part of the justice system lexicon, dubbed the “bystander effect” or, if you lived in Queens, the Genovese Syndrome.
None of this was ever far from the minds of the prosecutors, cops, and support personnel who elbowed the mahogany at the Austin. Over the interceding years, many a glass had been raised in the name and legend and memory of Catherine Susan Genovese.
Michael had driven Falynn Harris to her foster parent’s home in Jackson Heights. They had talked for nearly two hours. During that time Michael walked her carefully through the case, twice, and she had proven himself remarkably perceptive and bright, far beyond her fourteen years. Michael knew that if she had half the poise and strength on the stand, the defense would not shake a single branch.
But it was on the drive back to her foster home that something remarkable happened. Michael told Falynn about the murder of his own parents. It just seemed to come out in one long sentence. Except for Abby, he had never told another living soul the whole story; about his fears, his unrelenting grief, his anger.
Was this wrong? Had he crossed the line? There was little doubt in his mind that he had. But he knew why he had done it. He had one chance of putting Patrick Ghegan away for life, and that chance was Falynn Harris. He needed her to be not only intellectually engaged, but emotionally engaged.
When he finished his story, Falynn just stared at him. She dabbed her eyes while he was telling the tale, but now her eyes – although a bit red �
�� were dry. She almost looked a bit matronly.
“What does that saying mean?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“The one your mom said to you right before, you know…”
Michael had told her about this, then instantly regretted it. It was something planted deeply in the garden of his soul, and he did not let many people in. “Zhivy budem, ne pomryom,” he said. “If we will be alive, we will not die.”
Falynn looked out the passenger window for a few moments. It had begun to rain. She looked back at Michael. “What do you think that means really?”
“I have a few ideas,” Michael said. “What do you think it means?”
Falynn gave him a beguiling smile. “I’ll tell you when this is all over.”
Michael nodded. He took out his small notebook, wrote on it. “This is my e-mail address and my cellphone number. You contact me whenever you want. Don’t even look at the clock.”
Falynn took the piece of paper. She unbuckled her seatbelt, leaned over.
“Is it okay to hug you?” she asked.
Michael smiled. “It’s okay.”
They hugged, parted.
As Michael watched her climb the steps, he knew everything was in place. She was going to testify fully against Patrick Ghegan, and the man who had killed her father was, at the very least, going away for life.
Michael Roman was going to win.
Life was good.
The bar was packed. The gathering was for retiring ADA Rupert White who, it was rumored, was getting ready to join a white-shoe firm on Wall Street.
Michael looked around the room. It was a who’s who of the movers and shakers in Queens politics.
For the first hour it was a standard roast – other prosecutors, defense attorneys, city councilman, judges, all recounting stories and anecdotes, PG-rated ditties that brought casual laughter and mild reproach from the ostensibly dignified Rupert White. In the second hour, after enough Jameson had flowed under the bridge of propriety, the vulgarity was unleashed, and the stories recalled a number of less-than-public episodes, including the time Rupert White was stalked by a disturbed juror from an old case and, of course, a cache of embarrassing inter-office romantic moments.
“As I live and breathe. Tommy Jesus and The Stone Man.”
The voice came from behind Tommy and Michael.
Michael’s nickname, The Stone Man, grew out of two sources. He originally acquired it because he was of Estonian descent, and a lot of the street people he knew in the early years – most of whom he prosecuted – had no idea what or where Estonia was. They couldn’t pronounce it. The second meaning came later, due to Michael’s reputation as an ace prosecutor. As he began to try and win the bigger cases, he had to square off against more and more hardened criminals, at least those whose defense attorneys were dumb enough to put them on the stand. Michael Roman, even in those heady early days, was unflappable, solid as a rock. Thus the Stone Man.
For Tommy, the nickname also had a dual meaning. Tommy Jesus came first out of the obvious. Tommy’s last name was Christiano. But his reputation in the office was one of a prosecutor who could take a dying or dead case, and bring it back to life, like Lazarus from the tomb.
Michael turned around. Behind him stood an inebriated Gina Torres. When Michael had started at the Felony Trial Bureau, Gina Torres had been a paralegal; a slender, leggy knockout, given to skin-tight business suits and expensive perfume. Now, a few years later, she had moved on to a private firm – they all did – and put on a few pounds, but they all landed in the right places.
“You look fucking great,” she slurred at Michael.
“Gina,” Michael said, a little taken aback. “You too.” And it was true. The cafe au lait skin, the shiny black hair, the pastel lipstick. That tight skirt.
“I heard you were married,” she said.
Michael and Gina had had a brief, sparking romance for a few months when he’d gotten to Kew Gardens. It ended as abruptly as it started. But Michael recalled every tryst, every coffee-room kiss, every elevator encounter. He held up his ring finger. At least he hoped it was his ring finger. He was getting hammered.
Gina leaned forward and planted one, hard and sloppy, on the mouth.
Michael almost fell off the stool.
She pulled back, ran the tip of her tongue over his lips. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
When Michael was able to speak, he said “I kinda do.”
Gina slid her business card onto the bar in front of Michael, took one of the full shot glasses, downed it, then walked away. Every man at the bar – actually, every man at the Austin Ale House – watched the show.
Michael glanced at Tommy. For the moment, for the first time in his life, he was speechless.
“Dude,” Tommy said. “You’re my fucking hero.”
Michael picked up a napkin, wiped the lipstick from his lips. He drank a shot, shivered. “Abby’s going to know, isn’t she?”
Tommy laughed, sipped his drink. “Oh yeah,” he said. “They always do.”
NINE
On a busy street in the Astoria section of Queens, two men sat in an SUV near the corner of Newtown Avenue and 31st Street, beneath the rumbling steel canopy of the El. They had stopped at a Home Depot on the way, paying cash for a total of twelve items. The cashier had been Pakistani. Aleksander Savisaar wondered if there were actually any Americans in America.
Aleks took what he needed from the plastic bag, and put it in his leather shoulder bag.
The address they sought was a narrow doorway lodged between a funeral parlor and a store that sold pagers. The cracked stone steps and grimy door told Aleks that this portal did not lead to a flourishing enterprise of any sort. Next to the door was a verdigris-covered bronze plaque that read:
PEOPLE’S LEGAL SERVICES, LLC. VIKTOR J. HARKOV, ESQ. SUITE 206
They circled the block, then parked across the street. An aged sign in the window on the second floor declared Attorney / Notary Public. It appeared to be from the 1970s.
“Check to see if there is a back entrance,” Aleks said.
Kolya slipped on his sunglasses, glanced at the side-view mirror, and stepped out of the vehicle.
Aleks reached into the box on the back seat. Inside were a half-dozen prepaid cellphones. He extracted the printout from his pocket, one he had made at the Schlossle Hotel in Tallinn, the address and phone number of Viktor Harkov. He punched in the number. After five rings there was an answer.
“People’s Legal Services.”
It was a man, older, Russian accent. Aleks listened to the background noise. No sounds of anyone typing, no conversation. He spoke in broken Russian. “May I speak to Viktor Harkov please?”
“I am Harkov.”
Aleks noted an asthmatic wheeze in the man’s breathing. He was ailing. Aleks glanced at the bank on the corner. “Mr Harkov, I am calling from First National Bank, and I would like to – ”
“We do not have an account with your bank. I am not interested.”
“I understand. I was just wondering if I might make an appointment to – ”
The line went dead. Aleks closed the phone. The brief conversation told Aleks a few things, first and foremost was that, unless the man subscribed to call forwarding, Viktor Harkov was indeed in his office, and that he did not have a secretary or receptionist. If he did, she was not in the office, or perhaps she was in a restroom. By the looks of the building, the signs, and the fact that Harkov answered his own phone, he doubted it. Harkov may have answered the phone with a client in his office, but Aleks doubted this, too.
Kolya got back in the vehicle.
“There is a rear entrance, but you have to go by the back door of the Chinese restaurant,” Kolya said. “Two of the bus boys are back there right now catching a smoke.”
Aleks glanced at his watch. He opened his laptop. Within moments he got on a nearby wi-fi network. He entered the address for People’s Legal Services on Google Maps and zoomed in
. If the image was accurate, there was access to the target building via a fire escape from the roof to the top floor. He pointed to the image.
“Is this still there?”
Kolya squinted at the screen. He probably needed glasses but was far too vain to get them. “I didn’t see it. I wasn’t looking up.”
Aleks had given the man a simple task, an undemanding reconnaissance of the rear of the building. He was clearly not his father.
Aleks knew he needed Kolya. But not for long.
“Wait here,” he said. “And keep the engine running.”
People’s legal services was at the end of a long hallway on the second floor. Aleks entered the building one door east of the building, and then taken the stairs to the roof. Once there, he crossed over and descended the fire escape and entered Harkov’s building on the fourth floor.
On the way down the back stairs, Aleks scanned the landings for surveillance cameras. He saw none. Still, as he entered, he put on a ball cap and pulled up the collar on his leather coat. He met no one.
When he reached the door to 206 he stopped, listened. From inside the office he heard the sound of a Russian-language radio program. He heard no other voices. He glanced both ways down the hallway. He was alone. He took a cloth from his pocket, turned the doorknob. The door opened onto a small, messy anteroom. To one side was an old pickled oak desk, covered with newspapers, magazines, and advertising flyers, all yellowed, all coated with the dust of months. Against one wall was a rusting file cabinet. The room was empty. As he had thought, there was no secretary.
Aleks closed the door gently behind him, turned the lock. When he appeared in the doorway to the inner office the man at the desk appeared startled.
“Are you Viktor Harkov?”
The old man looked at Aleks over the top of his filmy bifocals. He was lank and cadaverous, with thinning gray hair, a liver-spotted scalp. He wore a drab suit, tattered at the cuffs, a yellowed shirt and knit tie. The clothes sagged on his skeletal frame.
The Devil_s Garden Page 8
