The Hazards of Good Fortune

by Seth Greenland

  It had been years since Jay had seen Marat, from whom he kept a wary distance. He did occasional favors for him, like arranging apartments for associates in Gladstone buildings, but their contact was minimal. Marat rose from his chair, smiled, and embraced Jay and Boris in succession.

  Only his height was unchanged. When Jay thought of Marat, it was as he looked in the 1970s, with a barrel chest, more hair, and a coiled aspect. In his late sixties now, his hair had thinned and grayed. The Cyrillic letters tattooed on his ringed fingers had faded. His chest had shrunk, and his girth expanded. Most surprising to Jay, he smiled when he asked if they had enjoyed the singer. They assured him that her talents were exemplary.

  “During sixties, in Soviet Union, all kinds of Africans showed up to attend school,” he said. “She reminds me of those days.”

  Marat indicated they should join him at the table. He inquired whether they would like a drink and, without waiting for an answer, called into the darkness for a bottle of vodka. He asked after Boris’s mother, and Boris told him that she was well. Marat sent his greetings.

  “Is my son causing you problems?” Marat asked with mock concern. Boris looked away, embarrassed by the teasing. Jay assured him he was not. He had trouble imagining what it must be like for Boris to have Marat Reznikov as a father.

  A beefy woman with bleached blonde hair appeared with the vodka, deposited it on the table, and toddled away. Marat poured three glasses and lit a Lucky Strike.

  “I’m trying to quit,” he said, taking a deep drag and blowing an impressive cloud. “You see how well it’s going.”

  Boris asked if he could have a cigarette. His father lit one and handed it to him. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture. Jay had never seen Boris smoke.

  Marat stared at Jay. “You look like shit.”

  “It’s been a difficult time.”

  “I always tried to keep my name out of the papers.” Marat waved the smoke away. “The more people know your name, the more people want to take you down. Why you go on television? I watched that interview. You dug your own grave with your mouth.” Jay did not respond. Being addressed like this in front of Boris was painful. “What kind of idiot goes on television?” Marat still pronounced it “eee-dyote.” His accent still redolent of the Odessa docks.

  “My advisors suggested it.”

  “Your advisors?” He spat the word like a bloody tooth. Now it sounded jarring in Jay’s ears. Marat called out for appetizers. The same waitress arrived in seconds with a plate of herring and crackers. Marat slapped her backside as she departed.

  Jay thought back to the summer when he met his Ukrainian cousin for the first time. To a college student from a world far removed from the first-generation Bronx and Brooklyn experience of his parents, this immigrant seemed like a wild beast. His surface was composed, but underneath something simmered that could erupt without warning, like the steamy day when the two of them crossed a potholed street in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, and the gypsy cab lightly struck Marat. Jay never forgot the sick feeling that overcame him as he watched his cousin pistol-whip the driver.

  His mouth full of herring, Marat said, “You drove all the way to Brooklyn to see me on this beautiful day. What’s on your mind?”

  Jay wrenched his thoughts back from the Bronx. He outlined his situation with the league, related that the playoffs started soon, and told Marat that a judge was going to rule on the matter shortly.

  “What can I do?”

  “You still know a lot of people in the sports book in Las Vegas?”

  “One or two.”

  “And that league referee who went to prison for gambling.”

  “Not personally, no.”

  “There are rumors, Marat, we discuss them at the owners’ meetings.”

  “Always there are rumors.”

  “Any hint of fixing in a sport can make people think it’s like professional wrestling. It would kill the league.”

  “Rumors are like oxygen, Jay.” Marat glanced around the dim room, over one shoulder, then the other, to illustrate his point. “Everywhere.”

  “I’m not asking you to confirm or deny.”

  The expression that had been so welcoming hardened, replaced by a feral wariness that appeared at home in Marat’s weathered features.

  “Boris, give us a minute,” Jay said. He did not want his protégé to witness his further abasement. Boris took his glass of vodka and retreated.

  Jay leaned over the table, lowered his voice: “I only want to be able to communicate to the commissioner that facts might come to light that could cause trouble for the league exponentially worse than what my situation is causing so he’ll have to back off and figure out a way to line up behind me.”

  Jay hadn’t intended to drink the vodka, but now he took a sip.

  “That’s your plan?”

  “I don’t have a lot of options.”

  “If they push back then on top of all the other trouble, they’ll get you for extortion. Not only will they get you, they get me, and then I’m going back to prison. But, Jay, I’m not going back to prison.” Marat had done time upstate for running a gasoline racket.

  “I can’t go to prison.”

  Marat took another drag of his cigarette and released a plume of smoke.

  “Take your medicine. I did five years. You are big boy, you can do it.”

  The club was starting to feel like the middle of the night on a deserted subway platform in the 1970s, the atmosphere rank with bad possibilities. Jay started to perspire. His clothes were already moist from the downpour and now he wanted to take a shower.

  “Listen to me, Marat.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “When you asked me to forget what I saw—”

  Marat interrupted, “I’m not going to tell you I’m grateful because I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He drained the vodka in one gulp and poured another.

  Jay knew his cousin would admit nothing out loud but it didn’t matter. It was a decision that went against his grain at the time and in the ensuing years he had carried like a virus.

  “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “You are bigger man than your father, and Bingo was great man. Is handicap to be born with money because hard to learn how shit works. But you learned.”

  Marat, philosopher.

  Marat, dispenser of favors.

  Marat, lands’ end court for petitioners with no hope.

  Jay knew exactly how shit worked, which was why he was here in the Rasputin nightclub swilling vodka with his grizzled cousin. He reflected on his father, wondered if he would have traveled to Brooklyn to sit down with Marat and attempted to pull invisible levers that would shift the planes on which everything was built. He concluded that that is just what Bingo would have done. But Jay didn’t know if he had Bingo’s nerve. Perhaps the easiest thing would be to arrange a deal with Marat and then not live up to his half of the bargain. Marat would turn him into a pavement stain and that would be the end of it.

  “I could lose everything.”

  “What everything? Don’t be dramatic. You’re a fucking billionaire.” Marat picked a piece of tobacco from between his teeth and flicked it off his finger with a callused thumb. “I tell you what. Say I make a couple of phone calls.” Jay straightened his back. This negotiation is why he was in Brooklyn. “What can you do for me?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I didn’t say I would do it.”

  “Marat, just ask.”

  “I love basketball.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Remember when Russian men’s team stole 1972 Olympics from the Americans?”

  “Who can forget?”

  Marat smiled as if he were the one who had arranged that farce himself. He drained his glass and called for coffee. The same
waitress arrived with the same speed and placed two espressos in front of them. Jay inhaled the pleasant smell. Its familiarity comforted him, but he did not touch his cup. Marat downed the shot in one gulp.

  “I hear your team is worth more than billion dollars.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Give me half.”

  “Cash?”

  “Ownership.”

  His cousin was throwing him a lifeline, but it was one that would strangle him. A partnership with Marat would be like sharing a confined space with a sleeping lion. Eventually, the cat would awaken.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I should risk my ass for a box of chocolates?”

  Jay insisted such a transaction would be remarkably difficult to engineer. There are few businesses as public as professional sports. Owners have to vote, Marat was a convicted felon. There were ways to disguise ownership, Marat said. His name was on only a fraction of the enterprises he controlled.

  “Those are illegitimate businesses.”

  At first, Marat seemed insulted. At this point, Jay did not care.

  “Not all of them, boychik. Not all of them.” Marat named a well-known Manhattan restaurant operated by a famous chef and informed Jay that he owned a controlling share. When Marat saw the look of surprise on Jay’s face, he said, “See, even a guy as smart as you, you don’t know everything.”

  “I don’t think it can work.”

  “Don’t tell me it can’t work if what you want to say is you don’t have the balls to pull it off.”

  Jay said he would think about Marat’s offer and call him. Marat told him not to use the phone. He should come back and shake on the agreement in person.

  “If you don’t want to do it, I understand. Big decisions are not easy. When time comes, if things are bad, perhaps then I help you.”

  “How?”

  “You say you can’t go to prison.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “Then maybe you want to disappear.”

  It was still raining when they drove back to Manhattan. Jay did not mention the particulars of his discussion with Marat, only that he had agreed to consider helping him. Boris listened and nodded. Who knew what he was thinking about his father, their relationship, and the different roads their lives had taken.

  Was it worth it to make Marat a silent partner? If it could help Jay avoid prison, perhaps it was. One of the reasons he had hired Boris out of college was because Marat had asked, but also, he viewed it as a means to keep Boris out of his father’s orbit. As corny as it was, Jay wanted to be the kind of example for his young cousin that his father had been for him, someone to admire, to emulate. In going to Brighton Beach, he had utterly betrayed that idea. In the Gates of Heaven Cemetery, Bingo Gladstone lay not far from where Babe Ruth was buried. Today Jay was glad of it. As they drove over the Brooklyn Bridge and slid beneath the cloud-shrouded towers of Manhattan, the wash of shame he experienced was tempered by the distant hope that his gambit might work.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Dag’s coma lasted ten days. After a week, when Dr. Bannister and his team attempted to bring him out of it, the patient was unresponsive. The wounds were beginning to heal, but his slightly enhanced brain function proved a false dawn. The prognosis went from hopeful to guarded. The international medical team Jay had assembled could not say if he would emerge from a “persistent vegetative state.” Jamal Jones had not been back after the first week and Brittany Maxwell had returned to California to look after her children. But Dag’s brother Trey, Lourawls, and Babatunde were a constant presence, as was Imam Ibrahim Muhammad. When his friends took a break, Trey remained at his brother’s side with the imam.

  Muhammad told Trey his own story: The crimes, prison time, and conversion. They discussed the fragility of existence and the innate need of humans to submit to something greater than themselves. The cross on Trey’s neck was inked when he was trying to make Church Scott’s team and he derived limited comfort from the art when he was cut loose. He told the imam that he wished it had been something more than a decoration. Now that his life had once again derailed he found himself compelled by the spiritual succor his new friend offered. The words of Ibrahim Muhammad were seductive and welcoming and offered sensible solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

  At Dag’s bedside Trey perused the pamphlets the imam gave him with heightened interest. What he knew about Islam mostly came from television: Jihad, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, seventy-two virgins, a grab bag that did not cohere into anything he could comprehend. Because white people controlled the media, he viewed much of what it purveyed as inherently suspect. He wanted solace in a time of need, not to strap on a suicide vest and blow himself up. He was impressed that the Prophet was a warrior who vanquished his adversaries and had multiple wives (the Prophet actually reminded him of several guys he knew growing up in Houston). The idea of being part of a vast community of believers that stretched around the world held deep appeal. The no drugs or alcohol business might be a problem, but following every rule wasn’t the point, was it? Besides, if he had to quit, he could.

  He considered the Five Pillars of Islam: Al-Shahadah (Testimony), Al-Salah (Prayer), Al-Siyam (Fasting), Al-Zakat (Almsgiving), and Al-Hajj (Pilgrimage). All of them seemed not only doable but an effective program for gaining control of a sybaritic existence defined by running errands for his brother, whom he loved, but wasn’t it time to think about his own life? Trey Maxwell needed to create some sacred space for himself. He needed to stand up and be his own man, gain inner strength, purify, and if one point six billion Muslims could be trusted, Islam was the answer, the word, the “for real” thing.

  Dag’s room was on the tenth floor, overlooking the heliport adjacent to the East River. Each day the helicopters would come and go, arriving and departing in an endless cycle. One came in and another took off, climbing above the river and banking into the distance. There was something mystical about the helicopters to Trey, something he could not quite put into words. But he felt it. Then, it hit him: The helicopters lifting off reminded him of the Prophet Muhammad ascending from Al Aqsa astride his winged steed to begin his heavenly journey. His mind never used to work like that. He felt something good was happening.

  When the imam arrived at the hospital the following day, Trey asked how he could become a Muslim. The imam praised him and said he knew Trey would find happiness, tranquility, and inner peace. His friends took the news in stride, which is to say they asked him if he was going to wear white robes and sell bean pies up on 125th Street. When Trey said, “Ain’t funny,” and they saw he was serious, that temporarily ended the comedy.

  On Wednesday afternoon of the second week Dag was in the hospital Trey, Lourawls, and Babatunde were playing poker (Trey’s conversion did not include a prohibition against a friendly card game in Dag’s room). Exuding the false cheer of hospital rooms where the possibility of upsetting news flickers like a lightning storm on the horizon, Lourawls gloated as he raked in a twenty-three-dollar pot. Babatunde cursed and told Lourawls he had no talent for the game, it was just luck. Trey ordered the winner to shut up and deal the next hand. As Lourawls began to distribute the cards, Dr. Bannister entered with a group of residents and asked if they would mind stepping out. This was routine, Bannister saw Dag each day, and the entourage left the room. The banter continued in the hallway while they waited for the doctor to finish the examination.

  Bannister emerged from the room accompanied by the residents, the graveyard in his eyes. He said, “It looks like your brother might have sepsis.” Trey had no idea what sepsis was and asked if it was dangerous. “It’s a systemic inflammatory response and, yes, it’s dangerous. His organs are failing.”

  Trey asked if they could do anything to reverse what was happening and Bannister informed him they were doing all they could.

  Trey spent the night at the hospital, grabbi
ng snatches of sleep in the chair next to his brother’s bed. Teams of doctors attended Dag, changing IVs, hooking him up to different machines. As the night wore on Trey stared at the blinking lights. He talked to Allah and with every cell in his body he supplicated, begged, and prayed. Dawn arrived and, bleary-eyed, Trey watched as helicopters rose up like flying horses and arced over the river through the early morning light soaring above the pallid sun toward Arabia.

  D’Angelo Maxwell died that afternoon.

  PART III

  “And the days keep worryin’ me,

  There’s a hellhound on my trail.”

  —ROBERT JOHNSON

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Jay was in a conference room with several lawyers at Doomer’s firm. They were planning to file an injunction against the league when one of the attorneys looked up from his phone like a night watchman who has just discovered an empty vault. When Jay heard the news, he went numb. He slumped in his chair. The lawyers all looked away, as if an electromagnetic shield had materialized around their client that deflected their glances. After Jay’s silence became prolonged they decided to adjourn for a few minutes so he could collect himself.

  Jay had the urge to go somewhere but did not want to be seen in public so he repaired to Herman Doomer’s office. As he reeled through the workplace, he felt the stares of the support staff falling on him like blows. Rooted to a chair, he could not look at Doomer, who had emerged from behind his desk and joined Jay in the sitting area. He told Jay there was a bottle in his desk if wanted a drink. In a monotone, Jay declined the offer.

  In his nearly six decades on earth, Jay had never felt so isolated from humanity. Now I’ve killed someone, he thought. Of all the Commandments, I have violated the most sacred one. His mouth tasted like ashes. He felt as if the sky itself had fractured and collapsed on him.