A Walk Among the Tombstones

by Lawrence Block

Page 39

 

  I called Brooklyn Information and tried to find a listing for a Raymond Callander, or an R or RJ Callander. The operator pointed out that there were other ways to spell that last name, and checked more possibilities than would have occurred to me. Spelled one way or another, there were a couple of listings for R and one RJ, but the addresses were way off, one on Meserole in Greenpoint, another way over in Brownsville, none of them anywhere near Sunset Park.

  Maddening, but then the whole case had been like that from the beginning. I kept getting teased, making major breakthroughs that didnt really lead anywhere. Turning up Pam Cassidy had been the best example. From out of nowhere wed managed to produce a living witness, and the bottom-line result of that was that the cops had taken three dead cases and shoved them all into a single open file.

  Pam had provided a first name. Now I had a last name to go with it, and even a middle name, all thanks to TJ with an assist from Bellamy. I had an address, too, but it had probably stopped being valid at about the time the phone was disconnected.

  He wouldnt be all that hard to find. Its easier when you know who youre looking for. I had enough now to find him, if I was able to wait until daytime, and if I could allow a few days for the search.

  But that wasnt good enough. I wanted to find him now.

  IN the living room, Kenan was on the phone, Peter at the window. I didnt see Yuri. I joined Peter, and he told me that Yuri had gone out to look for more money.

  "I couldnt look at the money," he said. "I was getting an anxiety attack. Rapid heartbeat, cold damp hands, the whole bit. "

  "What was the fear?"

  "Fear? I dont know. It just made me want to do some dope, thats all. You gave me a word-association test right now, every responsed be heroin. A Rorschach, every ink-blotd look like some dope fiend bangin himself in a vein. "

  "But youre not doing it, Pete. "

  "Whats the difference, man? I know Im gonna. All it is is a question of when. Beautiful out there, isnt it?"

  "The ocean?"

  He nodded. "Only you cant really see it anymore. Must be nice living where you can look out at water. I had a girlfriend once, she was into astrology, told me thats my element, water. You believe in that stuff?"

  "I dont know much about it. "

  "She was right that its my element. I dont like the others too much. Air, I never liked to fly. Wouldnt want to burn up in a fire or be buried in the earth. But the sea, thats the mother of us all, isnt that what they say?"

  "I guess. "

  "Thats the ocean out there, too. Not a river or a bay. Thats just nothing but water, straight on out, farther than you can see. Makes me feel clean just to look at it. "

  I clapped him on the shoulder and left him looking at the ocean. Kenan was off the phone, and I went to ask him how the count stood.

  "We got a shade under half of it," he said. "I been calling in every favor I got coming and Yuris been doing the same. I got to tell you, I dont think were going to find a whole lot more. "

  "The only person I can think of is in Ireland. I hope this looks like a million, thats all. All it has to do is get past whatever rough count they give it on the spot. "

  "Suppose we shoot some air into it. If every pack of hundreds is short five bills, you got a tenth again more packs. "

  "Which is fine unless they pick one pack at random and spot-count it. "

  "Good point," he said. "First glance, this is going to look like a good deal more than what I handed over to them. That was all hundreds. This has about twenty-five percent of the total in fifties. You know theres a way to make it look like a lot more than it is. "

  "Bulk it up with cut paper. "

  "I was thinking with singles. The papers right, the color, everything but the denomination. Say you got a stack, supposed to be fifty hundred-dollar bills, total of five grand. You dummy it up with ten hundreds on top and ten on the bottom and fill in with thirty singles. Stead of five grand you have a little over two grand looking like five. Fan it, all you see is green. "

  "Same problem. It works unless you take a good look at one of the dummied-up packets. Then you see its not what its supposed to be, and you know right away, no argument, that it was phonied up that way to fool you. And if youre a nut case to begin with, and youve been looking for an excuse to murder all night long-"

  "You kill the girl, bang, and its over. "

  "Thats the trouble with anything flagrant. If it looks as though were trying to screw them-"

  "Theyll take it personally. " He nodded. "Maybe they wont count the stacks. You got fifties and hundreds mixed, five thousand to a stack, half that in a stack of fifties, how many stacks are we talking if we come in at half a mil? A hundred if its all hundreds, so call it a hundred and twenty, thirty, something like that?"

  "Sounds right. "

  "I dont know, would you count it? You count in a dope deal, but youve got time, you sit back, you count the money and inspect the product. Different story. Even so, you know how the big traffickers count? The guys who turn upwards of a mil in each transaction?"

  "I know the banks have machines that can count a stack of bills as quickly as you can riffle through it. "

  "Sometimes they use those," he said, "but mostly its weight. You know how much money weighs, so you just load it on the scale. "

  "Is that what they did at the family enterprise in Togo?"

  He smiled at the thought. "No, that was different," he said. "They counted every bill. But nobody was in a hurry. "

  The phone rang. We looked at each other. I picked it up, and it was Yuri on the car phone, saying he was on his way. When I hung up Kenan said, "Every time the phone rings-"

  "I know. I think its him. When you were out before we had a wrong number, some guy who called twice because he kept forgetting to dial two-one-two for Manhattan. "

  "Pain in the ass," he said. "When I was a kid we had a number that was one digit off from a pizzeria on Prospect and Flatbush. You can imagine the wrong numbers we got. "

  "Must have been a nuisance. "

  "For my parents. Me and Petey, we loved it. Wed take the fucking order. Half cheese and half pepperoni? No anchovies? Yessir, well have it ready for you. And fuck em, let em go hungry. We were terrible. "

  "Poor bastard in the pizza place. "

  "Yeah, I know. I dont get many wrong numbers these days. You know when I got a couple? The day Francey was kidnapped. That morning, like God was sending me a message, trying to give me some kind of a warning. God, when I think what she must have gone through. And what that kids going through now. "

  I said, "I know his name, Kenan. "

  "Whose name?"

  "The one on the phone. Not the rough half of their rough-and-smooth act. The other one, the one who does most of the talking. "

  "You told me. Ray. "

  "Ray Callander. I know his old address in Queens. I know the license plate on his Honda. "

  "I thought he had a truck. "

  "Hes got a two-door Civic, too. Were going to get him, Kenan. Maybe not tonight, but were going to get him. "

  "Thats good," he said slowly. "But I have to tell you something. You know, I got in on this because of what happened to my wife. Thats why I hired you, thats why Im here to begin with. But right now none of that means shit. Right now the only thing matters to me is this kid, Lucia, Luschka, Ludmilla, shes got all these different names and I dont know what to call her and I never met her in my life. But all I care about now is getting her back. "

  Thank you, I thought.

  Because, as it says on the T-shirts, when youre up to your ass in alligators you can forget that your primary purpose is to drain the swamp. It didnt matter right now where the two of them were holed up in Sunset Park, didnt matter if I found out tonight or tomorrow or never. In the morning I could hand everything I had to John Kelly and let him take it from there. It didnt matter who brought Callander in, and it didnt matter if he did fifteen years or twenty-five years or
life, or if he died in some side street at Kenan Khourys hands or at mine. Or if he got away scot-free, with or without the money. That might matter tomorrow. It might not. But it didnt matter tonight.

  It was very clear suddenly, as it really should have been all along. The only thing of importance was getting the girl back. Nothing else mattered at all.

  YURI and Dani came back a few minutes before eight. Yuri had a flight bag in either hand, both bearing the logo of an airline that had vanished in mergers. Dani was carrying a shopping bag.

  "Hey, were in business," Kenan said, and his brother beat his hands together in applause. I didnt start clapping, but I felt the same excitement. Youd have thought the money was for us.

  Yuri said, "Kenan, come here a minute. Look at this. "

  He opened one of the flight bags and spilled out its contents, banded stacks of hundreds, each wrapper bearing the imprint of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

  "Beautiful," he said. "Whatd you do, Yuri, make an unauthorized withdrawal? Howd you find a bank to rob this hour of the night?"

  Yuri handed him a stack of bills. Kenan slipped them from their wrapper, looked at the top one, and said, "I dont have to look, do I? You wouldnt ask me if everything was kosher. This is schlock, right?" He looked closely, thumbed the bill aside and looked at the next one. "Schlock," he confirmed. "But very nice. All the same serial number? No, this ones different. "

  "Three different numbers," Yuri said.

  "Wouldnt pass banks," Kenan said. "They got scanners, pick up something electronically. Aside from that, they look good to me. " He crumpled a bill, smoothed it out, held it to the light and squinted at it. "Papers good. Ink looks right. Nice used bills, must have soaked em with coffee grounds and then ran em through the Maytag. No bleach, hold the fabric softener. Matt?"

  I took a real bill- or what I assumed was a real bill- from my own wallet and held it next to the one Kenan handed me. It seemed to me that Franklin looked a little less serene on the counterfeit specimen, a little more rakish. But I would never have given the bill a second glance in the ordinary course of things.

  "Very nice," Kenan said. "Whats the discount?"

  "Sixty percent in quantity. You pay forty cents on the dollar. "

  "High. "

  "Good stuff dont come cheap," Yuri said.

  "Thats true. Its a cleaner business than dope, too. Because who gets hurt, you stop and think about it?"

  "Debases the currency," Peter said.

  "Does it really? Its such a drop in the bucket. One savings-and-loan goes belly-up and it debases the currency more than twenty years worth of counterfeiting. "

  Yuri said, "This is on loan. No charge if we recover it and I bring it back. Otherwise I owe for it. Forty cents on the dollar. "

  "Thats very decent. "

  "Hes doing me a favor. What I want to know, will they spot it? And if they do-"

  "They wont," I said. "Theyll be looking quickly in bad light, and I dont think theyll be thinking of counterfeit. The bank wrappers are a nice touch. He print them, too?"