“Hey!” Charlie called. “Hey!”
She waited at the curb for two taxis to pass, taking the opportunity to slip off her heels, then ran barefoot across Fifth Avenue into Central Park, dark hair bouncing behind her—too fast, Charlie thought, I couldn’t catch her in a million years. He watched her run with one shoe in each hand, then disappear through the trees. He looked up and down the street, feeling confused. What was the problem? Except for calling her mother, hadn’t he comported himself well? They’d had a nice night, hadn’t they? I pay for a great room, he thought bitterly, I give her a great fucking time, and she runs away from me? What’s she so scared of? No one’s here. He glowered at an elderly woman who stood admiring her small dog as he deposited a tiny curl of shit onto a piece of tissue paper.
Then he eased along the avenue, actually enjoying the morning but feeling an odd new pain in his back. All that screwing last night, he thought proudly, pulled something. But it’d been worth it. Would he ever be able to do it again like that? Why not? He still had some of the Chinese tea in the apartment. And more on the way! Thinking of it put him in a better mood. He’d look at the paper with breakfast. Eggs, he could make eggs, for God’s sake. Read about the Jets. Bill Parcells. Call Ellie and listen to her babble about the azalea bushes.
As he turned the corner to Sixty-third Street, a tall man carrying the New York Post appeared in front of him. “Like to introduce myself, sir.” He extended his hand. “Name’s Tommy.”
Charlie gave the man a vague nod but kept walking. Kelly the doorman stood in front of the apartment building flagging down a taxi. In and out of the heat all day, always a smile.
“Sir?” called the tall man, following Charlie.
He turned around in irritation. “What?”
The man slid the newspaper back, revealing a black semiautomatic pistol. “Get in the car.”
Which had slid up behind Charlie silently, another man getting out of the back door, a third in a green baseball jacket behind the steering wheel.
“Hey, fellows,” said Charlie agreeably, “you got the wrong guy here.”
The driver in the green jacket lifted up his sunglasses at the same moment as the first man slipped a tight hand around Charlie’s arm. “I don’t think so,” he said politely.
THEY DROVE DOWNTOWN, with Tommy looking through Charlie’s billfold and finding the Vista del Mar papers in the breast pocket of his coat. His hands were cuffed tightly. The driver introduced himself as Morris.
“We didn’t expect your girlfriend to go running into the park.”
Charlie stayed silent.
“Ran pretty fast, too.”
“I guess so.”
“You’ll help us out, won’t you?”
“This guy’s name is Charles Ravich,” announced Tommy. “We have his home address, work address, and this looks like—some kind of vacation place in New Jersey.”
“See if he has a wife.”
Tommy consulted the Vista del Mar papers. “Elizabeth.”
“What else? Keep looking.”
“Phone in his pocket.”
“Charles,” asked Morris, “does she have your number?”
“Yes.”
“Turn it on, Tommy. See if she calls him.”
“Hey, hey!” cried Tommy, finding the photo of the boyfriend and waving it in front of Morris. “Look at this.”
“What kind of animal would do that?” Morris shook his head. “Fucking barbaric.”
They drove south for five minutes, then cut west on Fourteenth Street and then one block south into the meatpacking district. There they stopped and hustled him out of the car in front of a rusty door in a wall. I’m going to get out of this, Ellie, he told himself, don’t worry.
“You got back trouble?” Morris asked, watching Charlie.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Inside the building, they pushed him up some cement steps and then across what appeared to be an old factory floor. He noticed a rotten mattress to one side. In front of him stood a large worktable, some utility lamps, and three heavy chairs. Sitting in one was a man of about sixty.
“You go … here,” said Morris, pushing Charlie onto the stained, chopped-up table and cuffing one of his arms to a ring. “This is Mr. Ravich,” he said.
“Hello, Mr. Ravich.” The older man lifted a hand.
“Who are you?” said Charlie. “Tony?”
Morris smiled. “I told you we got the right guy.”
Tony stood up. “Mr. Ravich, I can see you’re a successful businessman.”
He shrugged.
The phone in Tommy’s hand trilled. He handed it to Morris. “Yeah?” He listened. “It’s her,” he said.
“Let me have it.” Tony took the phone. “You got my five million dollars now, Christina? … Didn’t you see what happened to your last boyfriend? … I don’t care about that—I want it in three hours. You’ve wasted a lot of my time, you know that? Years. And what is this fucking IRS shit? I have to meet my wife for lunch. If I don’t have something by eleven o’clock, your new boyfriend will be something you can put on a sandwich. Then we’ll go after your mother, okay? We know she’s home now, we know where she is in her little pink bedroom … Don’t call me that … And don’t call anybody down there … If my guys don’t get my—It’s not bullshit. My guy says she’s watering her lawn right now, bunch of flowers climbing up the garage … Now you believe me?” He looked at Charlie. “She wants to talk to you.”
Tony held the phone to Charlie’s ear. “I’m sorry,” cried Christina. “I’m sorry.”
“Tell them where—”
Tony pulled the phone away. “You call back in ten minutes. Ten minutes … You’re going to help us out here.”
Now Tony called another number that Morris had given him. “Yes, hello, Mrs. Ravich? … This is the Bell Atlantic office, yes. Just checking the line, ma’am.” He nodded at Charlie. “Everything’s fine … We had some workmen in the vicinity. Yeah. Thank you.” Tony hung up. “Sounded like a nice lady. So, Charlie, here’s the situation. We have you and we know where your wife is. We don’t have Christina, but we know where her mother is. She knows where the five million is that she stole from me, but she isn’t saying.”
I don’t want to tell them, Charlie thought, but they’ve got Ellie. And Christina, or whoever she is, couldn’t care less. “It’s in two large boxes in the backseat of an old blue Mustang convertible in her mother’s garage,” he said. “She told me that.”
“No, it’s not,” answered Tony. “We’ve been through that place like mice. There’s no car like that. We found a bunch of antique dolls and things, but nothing like that. I know. I been on this for months.”
“I can’t help you,” said Charlie. He noticed Tommy carrying in two large toolboxes.
“Sure you can,” responded Tony, smiling as he looked at Charlie’s card.
“How?”
“I’m seeing here that you’re the chief executive officer of a company named Teknetrix. Sounds like big money to me. You’re the deep pockets. Your girlfriend stole my money and you’re going to pay me. She can pay you back herself.”
“You guys’ve made a big mistake,” Charlie said in a let’s-forget-everything voice. “I don’t have that kind of money. And I don’t know where your money is. I thought it was in the air-conditioner boxes.”
Morris pulled a drill out of the toolbox and plugged it in.
“It’s just money,” Charlie added.
“It’s not just money.” Tony shook his head, tired of being misunderstood. “It’s a lot of things, Charles. It’s the dishonesty, the lack of respect. It’s the fact that it wasn’t my money, not exactly. I had to pay that out of other funds. Which set me back, you know? Another little problem developed … that also cost me money. Also, we thought it was somebody else for three years. A stand-up guy named Frankie. He knew we wouldn’t believe him when he said he didn’t do it.” He nodded at Morris. “My friend here is very persuasive. We got some info
rmation out of her boyfriend and he didn’t want to give it to us.”
“Tony, Tony,” said Charlie, pulling against his handcuff experimentally. “Let’s be reasonable.”
The cell phone rang again. “Yeah?” said Tony. “Just a—” He held the phone out. “Okay.”
Morris started the drill.
“You hear that, sweetie?” asked Tony, waving at Morris to stop. “That’s right. We’ll do that to your mother if you don’t help me out here.” He handed the phone to Charlie.
“Yes?” he said. “Yes?”
“Charlie?” asked Christina. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll do anything, Charlie.”
“Give them their fucking money back!”
“I don’t have it!”
“Last night you told—”
“My mother got rid of the car!” she cried. “I didn’t know.”
“When?” he screamed. “When didn’t you know?”
“I just found out,” cried Christina in his ear. “Yesterday, Charlie.”
“You could have told me.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t call the police.”
He missed a breath. “Because these guys have your mother?”
“Yes, Charlie.”
“So it’s me or your mother?” he said in frustration.
“No, no, not exactly, Charlie.”
Morris took the phone. “Give me the number of your phone,” he said to her. He wrote it down. “Don’t go anywhere.” Morris clicked off, then handed the phone to Charlie.
Tony’s face soured and he shot his lower jaw out. “Start calling, start getting me my money, you asshole.” He pulled out a book of crossword puzzles, checked his watch. “Three hours. I’m not sitting here longer.”
Charlie stared at the phone. This wasn’t happening. An hour ago he was in the shower in the Pierre Hotel. His head pounded. No coffee, no tea, past 8:00 A.M. already.
“And anything stupid, we’ll go say hello to the missus.”
“I get it, all right,” Charlie muttered bitterly.
He dialed Ted Fullman at Citibank. How hard can this be? he thought. Ted works in a bank. He’ll send over some money and I’ll get out of this. Five million easy come, five million easy go—a briefcase from Sir Henry Lai. “Ted, Charlie Ravich.”
“What can I do for you today, so early?”
He heard the sound of computer keys. “Do you ever make cash disbursements?”
“Sometimes, depending.”
He rubbed his temple. “I mean, can you send cash over to my office?”
“How much?”
“A lot. Six or seven figures?”
“We generally don’t provide cash in such sums.”
“Of course.”
“We’ll provide a bank check.”
“How fast?”
“Same day, a few hours by messenger.”
“Do you ever provide cash?”
“Not on short notice, Charlie. Not seven figures. We have a lot of forms that have to be compiled when the sum is quite large on a personal account.”
“Forms?”
“Government forms, money-laundering, all that kind of thing. How much you want?”
“A lot.”
“Anything over, maybe, fifty thousand will need a signature from someone downstairs, and then—”
“Just a moment.”
“I can get a bank check,” he said to Tony, his hand over the phone.
“You gotta be kidding me.” He flipped through his puzzle book, looking for one that he hadn’t completed. “Cash, Mr. Ravich. Cash is king.”
“How about a wire transfer to an offshore bank account?”
“No way,” answered Tony. “I don’t trust it.”
Charlie returned to the phone, starting to worry. “Ted, I want to do something else. Will you wire one third of those new funds back to Jane in London?”
“That I can do. One third?”
“More or less. Say, five million even.”
“Things okay, Charlie?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine.”
Ted chuckled. “You’re up to your old tricks?”
“Yes,” said Charlie anxiously. “We should have lunch before the end of the year, Ted.”
“Great.”
“How soon will the money go back to Jane?”
“Two minutes it’ll be on her screens, I’d say.”
“Good, good. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He hung up.
“Where’s the money?” asked Tony.
“I’m working on it.” Keep your voice even, he told himself.
“You sent it to London?”
“That loosens it up,” he said. “It’s not a bank, it’s a brokerage.”
“You fucking sent it to London?”
“I sent it to another computer,” Charlie muttered.
He thought: Five million in an account in London. How do you turn it into cash? You can’t buy stocks or bonds and just be given the certificates. Everything was electronic these days. He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty here, one-thirty there. The thing could drag out for a while. He’d run into time-zone problems. He called Jane.
“Charlie?” she asked.
“Jane, would you check my account?”
“Sure. Just a moment.” He watched Morris pull a work light closer. “Your bank just sent us five million dollars,” she exclaimed. “Want to buy euros?”
“No thanks. I don’t want to make any trades.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Does your New York office disburse cash?” he asked.
“I doubt it.”
“You buy gold contracts?”
“Sometimes.”
“What happens when they’re settled?”
“Oh, the gold never changes hands, really,” she explained. “It’s just paperwork. I don’t even know where the actual gold is. Some bank somewhere.”
“Right. I need someone in your New York office to help me.”
“I can switch you over now. Same screen, a broker there.”
“You’re around a few more hours, though?”
“Two. But we’re very busy today.” He heard a beep. “Timothy, this is Charlie Ravich. I told you about that trade on GT a few weeks ago? This is the guy. He needs some help. Charlie’s one of our favorite customers, so please dance the fandango if he asks. I would, I know that.”
“Thanks, Jane,” he said miserably, watching Tony find a pencil in his pocket.
“What can I do for you today, sir?”
“You got my account there on your screen?”
“I do.”
“How much cash is in it?”
“Five million—plus.”
“Good. You guys don’t disburse real cash, I suspect.”
“No, sir. We bounce money around, we never see it.”
“You guys ever deal with what we used to call bearer’s bonds? Those things that are practically cash?”
“Those are more or less obsolete, sir. I don’t think they’re used in this country anymore.”
“I’m an old man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re there all day?”
“All day, sir.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“What you got?” asked Tony, his voice echoing against the far broken windows. “Nothing?”
“I’m working on it.”
“He’s not getting anywhere,” Morris noted.
“I can call back my banker, but then he’s going to know there’s a problem,” Charlie said.
“Then don’t do that,” snapped Tony.
Morris handed Tony something. “You saw this?”
“Where’s it come from?” The photo of the boyfriend.
“It was in Charles’s coat pocket.”
“You guys piss me off,” said Tony. “She was right there in the hotel with Mr. Ravich here. How could you miss her?”
Tommy opened his hands. �
�You told us not to go inside in front of the cameras.”
“There were cameras on the outside of the building, too,” added Morris. “We were careful, Tony.”
Tony nodded. “Keep going, Charles.”
He put the phone down on the table, trying not only to figure out a way to make some money appear but also to appraise Ellie’s vulnerability. He remembered that she was having trees delivered that morning, which was good. Workmen around.
The phone rang. Tony picked it up. “Yeah, he’s here,” said Tony, “but you’re going to listen now.” He nodded at Morris. “Help her see it my way.”
Morris pulled an electric saw out of the large box.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Charlie. “You don’t have to do this.”
The men pulled off his shoe. “I’m going to clamp it,” said Morris. “Just to be sure.”
“Hey, hey!” yelled Charlie as his sock was pulled off. “You don’t need to do—”
“He’s already missing some toes,” noted Morris. “Someone has been here first.” He dropped Charlie’s foot and examined his hand. “What was this—let me see … It moved slightly off perpendicular to the plane of the palm … very high speed …”
“It was an M-16 round.”
“You took a machine gun bullet through your hand?” Morris rubbed his nose in thought. “Something’s different here.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tony, keeping the phone held out.
“I don’t know.” Morris looked at Charlie. “Lift your arms.”
He complied, stiffly. Just do what they say, he told himself. Don’t give them a reason to get angry.
“Stand up.”
He stood.
“What the fuck is this?” Tony asked. “Aerobics?”
“Bend over,” ordered Morris. “Just drop your hands down.”
He went as far as he could.
“What’s wrong with your back?” asked Morris.
“Nothing.”
“Can’t you go farther?”
“No.”
“You’re fucking wasting my time!” yelled Tony. “Call back in five minutes,” he said into the phone.
Morris lifted up Charlie’s shirt. “I knew it. Major spinal damage.”
“What are you doing?” cried Tony.
“Just give me a few minutes, Tony.” They pushed Charlie flat onto the table and Morris brought over a work lamp. “Your lumbar aponeurosis is all torn up … You definitely damaged—what? The fourth and fifth lumbar? Maybe the sacrum as well.” He pinched one of the vertebrae. “That might be a tiny chip on the articular process here, or some very hard scar tissue …” His fingers probed the ridges of Charlie’s lower spine, hurting him. “This was my specialty. I—it’s a fusion!” he exclaimed. “Right?”
Afterburn: A Novel Page 46
