The Hard Stuff

by David Gordon

“Of course,” she purred, returning his smile.

  He turned toward the group, who were watching him intently.

  “Looks like my vacation is over.”

  *

  In the car, as Nero steered them back onto the elevator, Gio chuckled and shook his head. “I have to hand it to Maria,” he told Joe. “She knows how to play an angle. She gets the dope, crushes her competition, and instead of pissing off her overseas suppliers, she can say she helped wipe out the people who robbed them.”

  Joe nodded. “And we’re playing right along.”

  Gio shrugged. “The heroin trade doesn’t affect me. I steer clear of the hard stuff when I can.” He frowned at Joe. “You might try that, too, for a change.”

  “That was my plan,” Joe said. “Until you volunteered me to steal forty kilos of pure dope.”

  Gio laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry about that.”

  Joe smiled. “That’s how it goes. Just because you decide to keep away from the hard stuff, doesn’t mean it will keep away from you.”

  The car pulled out of the elevator. Nero addressed them in the rearview.

  “Where to, Boss?”

  “Want me to drop you somewhere?” Gio asked Joe.

  “Just at the corner,” he said. “I want to walk and think.”

  “What’s your first move?”

  Joe picked up the paper bag from Dr. Z that he’d left on the seat. “First I’m going home to watch Jeopardy! with Gladys and drink this tea. Then tomorrow I start shopping for diamonds.”

  13

  “Heavy” Harry Harrigan had spent his life in Hell’s Kitchen. He was born in Roosevelt Hospital and grew up living in the tenement walk-ups in the West Fifties. His mother worked sewing and steaming in the Garment District and his father had been a union set builder on Broadway shows, theoretically, when he wasn’t drinking or gambling. He never cared much for classrooms. He lived and learned on the streets: from the bums begging in Port Authority, the dancers rehearsing in studios, the actors drinking with gangsters in bars, the limos outside the fancy restaurants, and from the hookers, dealers, and peep shows lining the old Forty-Second Street.

  It was as a teenager that he fell in with Pat White, a rising star in the underworld and one of the most dangerous guys in Hell’s Kitchen, notorious for his work as a ruthless and reliable hit man. In the late eighties, Harry joined Pat’s crew for a string of bank robberies that made their name and fortune. Pat expanded into extortion, gambling, loan sharking, running a protection racket for the local joints, brothels, clubs, and dives, and acting as an enforcer over the unions and businesses in the garment business, theater, and construction. But as Pat’s star rose, Harry’s didn’t exactly rise with him. A couple of unlucky moves got him time Upstate in the pen and huge legal debts. Back and knee problems, which led to serious weight gains, ended his days of leaping over bank counters and running from cops. He was no longer young and mean enough to be muscle and he’d never been smart enough to handle the high-level shit, like political influence peddling, contract fixing, and so forth that Pat spent his time on now that he was a boss.

  And so Harry was reduced to running a small sports book, struggling to keep up with his alimonies, child support, and legal bills, and sitting on one of his few remaining treasures: the rent-controlled apartment his mother had lived in. The fifth-floor walk-up was hell on his knees, but the next step down for him was the gutter. Or prison, if he didn’t keep on the right side of his new bosses: the Feds, who had finally caught up with him for good when his last lame attempt at a one-man bank heist in New Rochelle went sour. The cabbie he’d hired to drive him there and back turned out to be an undercover cop. Like a true Manhattanite, Harry had never learned to drive. So there he was—same apartment, same neighborhood, same guys—except now he wore a wire taped to his chest along with his gold cross. Harry was back where he started, if he ever really left.

  Tonight however, he was in a good mood. Tonight Harry was getting paid. One of his regular clients, having lost a bundle on the games, had tipped Harry off to a truckload of high-end electronics gear being brought in for some fancy condos going up in the neighborhood—the gizmos that ran smoke sensors, elevators, and, in the sweetest irony of all, building surveillance and alarms. Harry told Pat, who sent some young guys, those Irish punk “nephews” he’d brought over, the Madigan brothers, to hijack it. The swag was sold off, the local cops and the Italian crew that controlled the trucking and construction union—Gio Caprisi’s people—were duly paid their cuts, and now, tonight, they were splitting the take. Harry expected upward of fifty grand. So when he got dressed and ready to head out at 2:00 a.m. on a weeknight—the streets quiet but still humming with garbage trucks rumbling by and taxis hunting for drunks—he put on a clean shirt and a sharp jacket, but he left his wire at home. No reason to let the fucking feebs know about this. Bastards would probably want a cut, too.

  His good mood took a hit, however, when he showed up at the back door of Old Shenanigan’s House to find Liam, the youngest and to Harry most irritating of the Madigan brothers, waiting in the alley. Thin and pale, with long hair and light eyes, he was just the kind of little twerp Harry would have sneered at and bullied in school back when he was swaggering around the neighborhood.

  “Good evening, Harry,” Liam said in that Lucky Charms lilt that everyone found so fucking delightful. “Or should I say good morning?”

  “Liam,” Harry managed a nod and started to move past him to the basement stairs, where he could see lights aglow. The metal doors were propped open, and a roller conveyer lay propped on the narrow, steep steps that led down into the kitchen. His knees hurt just looking at them.

  “Sorry, Harry,” Liam said, putting a hand out, like a damn traffic cop. “I have to frisk you.”

  Anger flared in Harry’s eyes. “You? Frisk me? Do you know who I am?”

  Liam’s mild grin didn’t budge. “I should, Harry. You remind me often enough.”

  “I was robbing banks with Pat thirty years ago when you were sucking on your mother’s tit.”

  “I’m twenty-five, Harry,” Liam noted. “That must be me brother you’re thinking of.”

  “This is bullshit,” Harry muttered, though inside he was flush with relief that he hadn’t worn the wire tonight.

  “Since you know Pat so well,” Liam was saying, “I’m sure he won’t mind you telling him his orders are bullshit when you get down there. Or you can just go home, and we will mail your cut.”

  With a dramatic sigh, Harry put his arms up and Liam patted him down, chest, back, under the arms, up and down the legs, even a quick swipe between them. Then he stepped back.

  “Anything else?” Harry asked as he crossed the alley. He was just angling his big body to take the first awkward step down into the basement when the kid called out.

  “Oh, Harry, wait, I just remembered. There is one more thing.”

  “What the fuck?” he muttered, turning back to see Liam pointing a gun down at him, an automatic with a silencer. His eyes went wide.

  “Pat said to give you this, too,” Liam said, still smiling, and fired.

  *

  Liam used a Walther P22 with a Finnish SAK suppressor to muffle the shots. He emptied the magazine directly into the chest, and when Harry dropped to his knees and slumped over the top step, Liam could see clearly that he was dead. He used his foot to push the big body back and called out “delivery,” as Harry’s corpse rattled down the conveyer and landed with a thump. Then he went down the steps, quickly and lightly on his young legs, and pulled the doors shut behind him.

  In the kitchen basement, Sean, Liam’s middle brother—Jack was the oldest—stood over Harry, who was now sprawled like a shipment of potato sacks on the plastic tarp they’d spread out below. Sam was dressed in the same kind of disposable work coveralls, booties, and hairnet that real cleaning crews would wear when they came to disinfect this place or pump out the oil they’d use to fry all those potatoes.

 
“Come on, let’s get started,” Liam said as he pulled on a matching outfit. “The kitchen workers get here by six. I’ll call Jack and tell him to meet us up at the farm.”

  “Will they really use him for fertilizer, Liam?” Sam asked, removing Harry’s watch and rings, going through his pockets, and then dumping the items in a plastic baggie to be disposed of later. He yanked off the gold cross.

  “Why not?” Liam zipped up his coveralls. “He’s organic. Anyway, what’s fertilizer but shite in a bag?” Liam slipped his booties on and pulled down the cap. “Here’s one extralarge bag of pure shite on the way.”

  Sam picked up the meat cleavers and handed one to Liam. “More like four bags, I reckon,” he said as he got to work.

  14

  Joe had lunch with Rebbe. They met at Ben’s Kosher Deli on Thirty-Eighth. Joe got hot pastrami on rye and a Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda and Rebbe got tongue, which they cured on the premises, and a Cel-Ray to drink. They split a knish. Afterward, Rebbe ordered coffee and pulled a face as Joe ordered hot water and dunked the custom-made herbal tea bag from Dr. Z.

  “What’s that? Some fakakte health fad?”

  “Kind of,” Joe admitted. Then he nodded at the nondairy creamer Rebbe was stirring into his coffee. “Look who’s talking. You take your coffee gray?”

  Rebbe chuckled. “It’s true. God does not make it easy for those who follow him.” Joe could think of some jihadists who’d agree but said nothing. He sipped his tea, Rebbe sipped his coffee, they both made unhappy faces, and then Rebbe taught him about the diamond trade.

  The United States is the world’s largest market for diamonds, and over 90 percent of the diamonds that enter the country come through New York. The vast majority of those pass through the Diamond District on Forty-Seventh Street between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas. Over twenty-six hundred separate businesses populate that block, nearly all related to diamonds, gems, or fine jewelry. In the windows and the counters, in the tiny booths that crowd the indoor retail markets, in the warrens of offices filling floor upon floor of the buildings, housing wholesalers and craftsmen, importers and traders, stones gleam and glow, jewelry glitters, and money flows like a buzzing hive honeycombed with riches. That one narrow street runs between hulking stone buildings like a canyon, and that canyon is a mine, more packed with diamonds that any prospector could hope for. It was the dragon’s lair. Ali Baba’s cave. A dream for any thief.

  It was also a thief’s nightmare. There were armed guards patrolling everywhere. There were cops always hanging around. There were alarms and cameras, safes and locks, deeper and deeper holds inside the fortress. Plus many of the diamond merchants were armed. A large proportion of the Hasidim shuffling by in black coats or the suave dealers in sharp suits with glittering goods on their hands and throats or even the hunched, schlumpy artisans with magnifying glasses screwed into their eye sockets had concealed carry permits—and that was just the legal guns. Who knew how many Uzis slept in desk drawers or behind counters?

  Even with a safecracker as good as Yelena and someone like Joe to get her and her tools in there and out again—and enough time to work unnoticed by cameras and watching eyes, without a suspicious getaway car parked on the block or a drilling noise or a flashlight in a dark hall—they would still need to know who had that kind of stash on hand before they went in.

  Joe had spent the morning wandering the district with a hoodie and a messenger bag over his usual jeans and Converse high-tops, invisible as only a messenger in Manhattan can be, sipping a deli coffee, pretending to talk on his phone, drifting with the crowds of shoppers—and he had come to a conclusion: it couldn’t be done without inside knowledge, and even then there was only one somewhat plausible way. Fortunately, Rebbe had access to that knowledge and had come to the same conclusion: “You have to take them on the move, boychik. It’s the only smart way.”

  “Exactly,” Joe said. “Even if I figured a way to muscle in and get back out alive, you could never be sure of smashing and grabbing enough. It’s not like we can go back for seconds.”

  “And to sneak in?”

  “I’d have to know who had enough in their vault that night and then get plans, alarms, and so forth. It’s possible but again very risky, especially getting out. With a bank job, let’s say, you can try to go in the roof or from next door. But here, next door is another bank. That whole block is like a wall of safe-deposit boxes.” He finished his tea with a grimace. “The only smart play is to hit them when they’re moving. That’s always the weakest point in the chain. But of course they know that, too.”

  “That’s why a smart dealer moves a little at a time, puts it in his pocket and takes a cab, along with a hundred other schmoes in black suits. Except”—Rebbe sipped his coffee thoughtfully—“sometimes they need to move a lot for a show, let’s say, or to ship merchandise from one branch to another. But of course, they keep this very secret. No one knows who or when.”

  Joe smiled. “Except you.”

  *

  Joe talked to Juno next. Juno was a tech wizard. A kid from the block like Joe had been, he also moved effortlessly through realms that to Joe were as remote as Neptune, and his expertise had been invaluable on their last joint caper. He visited him in his mom’s basement, which he was slowly trying to convert into a studio but remained mostly his teenage bedroom and nerd headquarters for now. The first time Joe had been in this house, he and Yelena had been looking for Juno after their last job went sour and Juno’s older brother, Eric, had been pointing a gun at Joe’s head. In the end, not only did Joe help save Juno’s life, but he also insisted on giving him his cut from the job. This earned Juno’s loyalty and respect and also paid for the sound and digital recording equipment heaped on the desk. So, when Joe called and said he was coming by to discuss a job, Juno served Joe a grape Snapple, moved some laundry from the busted couch, and, as soon as they got settled, just asked him: “What are we stealing? And when?”

  Joe smiled. He put his Snapple on the coffee table made of a wooden crate covered in a sheet—ten grand in gadgets and no table—and said: “Four million in diamonds. In two days. For starters. Then it gets complicated.”

  Juno looked at him. Every one of these statements was its own question: Four million? In diamonds? In two days? For starters? Then he grinned and just said: “Cool. What do you need?”

  *

  Next Joe had to track down Yelena. Although they had shared a number of beds, none had belonged to her and he didn’t know where she lived or even if she had a steady place, only that she generally hung out in the Russian parts of Brooklyn out by Brighton Beach. In fact, considering how intense their time together had been, an average person might be surprised at how little he really knew about her: they’d committed crimes together and fled from the law; they’d killed people together and saved each other’s lives. But of course Joe had fought beside men many times, training together, depending on each other for survival, and then never seen them again. The fact that he and Yelena also had such combustible sexual chemistry, and that they genuinely seemed to like and understand each other, intensified their connection but did not inherently alter it: They worked well together. They fit. It made them good partners. It did not mean they sent each other birthday cards. He actually had no idea when her birthday was or even her exact age. He did have a phone number, though, so he called and left her a message: “Hey, it’s Joe. We should meet.” And since she in her own way knew Joe quite well, knew how little use he had for phones and that she was one of only a handful of people who even had his number—Gio, Gladys, the manager from the club—she texted back right away: When?

  ASAP, he answered. And she sent an address.

  *

  The address, however, was not in Brighton Beach. It was in Chinatown, the Chinatown in Downtown Manhattan, which was smaller and more tourist filled than the gigantic one out in Flushing but also much older and with layers running deep in the history of New York, both culturally—as the original co
mmunity of mainly Cantonese immigrants—and literally, as this old part of town was riddled with tunnels, basements, narrow streets, alleys, and tenements that had been in use going back to the days of the Five Points gangs that once ran underworld New York.

  Joe had no idea what to expect when he got out of the train on Canal and wandered down Mott Street till he found the building—a quaint dump that seemed to lean slightly left, with a shop selling souvenirs, fans, jade plants, and bootleg Hong Kong DVDs on the first floor—and buzzed before climbing two flights of narrow stairs, also slanted left, to knock on the door. It was opened by Crystal from the club. She wore a Chinese robe that she might have bought in the downstairs shop. Her hair was down and she looked younger and, to Joe, much prettier without the expertly applied makeup she always had on at work.

  “Hi Joe,” she said. “Come on in.”

  He smiled. “Hey Crystal. Good to see you.” A small calico kitten meowed and fled as he entered and she closed the door behind him. It was a studio, small but very well arranged, with a linen-colored IKEA couch and white cube coffee table in front of a large flat screen, a neat little kitchen area, and in back, under the sheer-curtained windows, a low bed full of big white pillows on which Yelena was propped, dressed in a sleeveless, ribbed white undershirt and cutoff jean shorts, drinking coffee.

  “Hey Joe,” she said and smiled. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” he said. “That sounds fine.”

  Crystal got him a cup and then the three of them chitchatted—or Crystal did since neither Yelena nor Joe were much for chitchat—while Crystal got changed, disrobing and then pulling on clothes while she talked with the total lack of self-consciousness about her body that all dancers have—from ballerinas to strippers. Then she announced that she was running out for cigarettes before tactfully leaving them to talk about the things she was not meant to hear and knew she did not want to know. When she got back, her place was empty, except for the mewling kitten, and she was neither surprised nor insulted to find that neither of them had left a note.