by David Gordon
15
Joe took Yelena to get the supplies they needed for the plan he’d proposed, then they met with Juno and got dressed up: Joe in a thick brown wig that Yelena trimmed and fitted to look real, or at least like a guy who hoped no one noticed his expensive rug, a matching bushy mustache that curled down along the grooves of his mouth, and heavy-framed, expensive-looking glasses in the corners of which Juno had installed tiny pin cameras that took wide-angle shots when Joe clicked the button in his pocket. He wore summer-weight dress slacks, an Italian silk shirt similar to the ones many of these diamond guys wore, and brand-new sneakers so trendy that Joe himself had never even heard of them. Juno and Yelena chose them and laughed out loud when Joe put them on. He didn’t see what was so funny.
Yelena dressed like the hot Russian babe she would never for a second deign to be in a push-up bra and frilled Oscar de la Renta blouse, gaspingly tight leggings, and Louboutin heels that even stolen from the showroom still cost enough to confound Joe. She had a camera in the Apple Watch on her wrist and one in the clip that she wore in the back of her hair: generally it was pulled in a tight ponytail or hanging more or less straight. Now she had curled and primped and sprayed it into a confection of golden curls that rose and fell over her shoulders and drifted down her back. Her nails were dipped and beaded like ceremonial daggers.
The trickiest bit had been the bling. They were trying to con their way past the biggest gem dealers in town, eyes trained to rate and weigh stones all day, and the idea of hustling by with a bunch of paste on Yelena’s fingers or a Canal Street knockoff watch on Joe’s wrist was laughable. Fake moustache fine. Fake Rolex, forget it. Gio had lent Joe both his Submariner and his wedding ring without hesitation. His only comment: “If you have to lose one, make it the Rolex, for both our sakes.” But for Yelena they took up a collection: a ring and a bracelet from Maria, a necklace from Alonzo’s wife, and another ring and anklet from Rebbe’s mistress, a young Jamaican girl he kept on the Upper East Side. Each of them handed the goods over with great reluctance, many warnings and promises, and the general sense that if Yelena were to disappear or come to harm, a bloody gang war would ensue like nothing the city had seen in generations.
As a gesture, in the way of an insurance company goon trailing a gem-studded starlet at the Oscars, Joe and Yelena arrived in a black Escalade driven by Alonzo’s bodyguard, Barry. Juno hid in back behind the tinted glass, ready to pluck Joe and Yelena’s photos from the air.
Yelena was a natural. Though Joe had never seen her wear any jewelry at all, she entered the market like she owned it and began promenading down the aisles, deliberately drawing attention to herself rather than attempting to fade out or blend in like you were supposed to casing a job. But of course parading like a princess toying with baubles fit in perfectly here.
“Oh my God, honey, look at this,” she yelled to Joe, who dutifully hustled over. A grinning saleslady—her own hair an ash-blond meringue and her ears, throat, wrists, and fingers bedazzled—was sliding a square-cut stone on to Yelena’s ring finger. Another saleswoman, with long black hair and emerald earrings, came over to help coo.
“Isn’t it cute?” she asked Joe, hand modeling for him. He kissed her finger.
“Your finger’s adorable, baby,” he declared. “But that ring looks a little small.”
“Actually it is a bit loose on her,” the blond saleswoman corrected. “But we can have it sized.”
“I meant the rock,” Joe said. “I want something special for my special girl!”
He strode off.
“Isn’t he the sweetest?” Yelena asked the crestfallen saleswomen as she held her finger out to be unringed.
In this way they covered the whole place before ending up at Shatzenberg and Sons, the outfit Rebbe had fingered to Joe in the first place. Yelena sashayed up and down their counter of blinding treasure, then sighed.
“I don’t know honey, it’s all the same old stuff,” she told Joe loudly while one of the Shatzenberg sons hovered. “Maybe we should just wait till we get to Hong Kong.”
“Whatever you say, baby. You know how bored I get with shopping,” Joe said, winking at Shatzenberg.
“You know,” he said, leaning in unctuously—Joe could smell his cologne—“if you like, why not come up to the private showroom? You can sit and relax while we show your lovely wife some of our wholesale stock.”
“How do you mean, wholesale? I just want one perfect ring for my lady.”
“Yes, yes. I understand very well. I mean loose stones. You pay by the carat and then we can set it however she likes. It will be truly unique.” He put a hand out, pinky finger gleaming. “I’m Morty Shatzenberg.”
“Well, that’s very big of you, Morty,” Joe said, pumping him. “This is Ivana and I’m Dixon. We’re the Syders.” He squeezed Yelena’s shoulder. “How’s about that, babe? A one-of-a-kind piece for my one-of-a-kind piece of ass?”
She slapped his arm and rolled her eyes at Shatzenberg. “Excuse him, please. He has no class. I’d love to see your loosies.”
Nodding and scraping, Shatzenberg led them to the rear of the market, where an armed guard held the door for them. They went down a bare, concrete hall to an elevator and rode up ten flights, where a key turned a lock in the panel that opened the elevator doors. Across that hall, through another locked door, they entered a small, windowless room. The walls, floors, and ceiling were all covered in thick, brown carpet, and recessed lights threw spots along the walls and shined down on the center, where the only furniture was an antique desk with two chairs on one side and a single one on the other. Shatzenberg invited them to sit and then spoke into a small intercom that looked out of place on the elaborately carved and inlaid French desk. A moment later, a door opened in the carpeted wall: there was no handle on their side, and in the second it was ajar Yelena glimpsed a steel-lined room with a vault. A young woman stepped through holding a case and shut the door behind her. She strode over, her heels sinking soundlessly into the deep pile, and set the case down. Shatzenberg opened it. A scatter of stars shined out from the midnight-black velvet lining. Round diamonds, in sizes up to ten carats.
“My God,” Yelena murmured, and for the first time, Joe didn’t think she was pretending.
*
Twenty minutes later, Yelena and Joe left, smiling and chatting excitedly about sizes and settings and cuts, and Shatzenberg, playing the long game, hid his disappointment, assuring them he’d be here when they were ready, though he did try warning them that this particular stock would soon be gone, off to their Antwerp office. On the street outside, rush hour was in full force, the sidewalk like a river of bodies trying to wash you right down the drain of the subway on the corner, and as they fought the current to cross to where the car was waiting, a couple of Hasids blocked Joe’s path.
“You Jewish?” they demanded. “You Jewish?”
Joe shrugged them off, his mind on the problem at hand. “Not today,” he said and took Yelena’s hand. They hurried across the street and climbed into the door that Barry held open. In back, Juno was already scanning through the photos they’d been continuously sending, arranging them into mapped and scaled layouts of the market, the hall, the elevator, and the inner sanctum.
As soon as the door was shut, Joe pulled the wig off and scratched his scalp, which had been driving him crazy.
“You get all that?” he asked Juno, handing him the glasses.
“Yeah, and I got all up and down the block while we were waiting, but I’m not sure how much good it will do. It’s tighter than a preacher’s ass in there.”
“I know. And twice as hairy. What do you think?” he asked Yelena, who was pulling off her shoes and slipping on her sneakers.
She shrugged. “Maybe with an army we storm it, and I break the safe while the police make a siege. But then what? Where do we go? The roof? Maybe you will have a helicopter waiting?”
“No. It’s got to be when they move it. But how? Look at this.” He gestured
toward the front seat. “We haven’t even gone one block.”
“Sorry,” Barry called back. “It’s the traffic. By the time I go a few feet the light changes again.”
“Sorry, Barry, I wasn’t blaming you. Just griping.”
“What about just smash and grab?” Juno said. “Like snatching chains back in the hood? I could bring in a couple guys I know make bank just grabbing iPhones from dumb tourists and college kids. They call it apple picking. They can grab the stones and run down into the train and then hand the shit off to you two, a nice harmless white couple. Even if the cops grab up my boys after that, they’ll have to let them go.”
Joe smiled. “That’s assuming they remember to run in our direction and not home to Brooklyn by mistake.”
Juno shrugged. “It’s possible their sense of direction might get fuzzy outside the hood.”
“This won’t be a sprint anyhow. Rebbe says they wheel a steel strongbox right onto the armored truck. Only the brother here and the one in Antwerp know the combination. They don’t even trust their own security guards with this.” He stared thoughtfully out the window as they finally crept across the avenue to a chorus of frustrated honking. The Hasids were busy harassing other passersby. It was a clogged mess. “No,” he said, thinking out loud as he peeled off his fake moustache. “This is going to require something a bit weirder.”
16
Joe sent Alonzo and Rebbe’s property home to Brooklyn with Juno and the driver, and he and Yelena took the subway uptown to return Maria’s jewelry.
“All the way to Washington Heights on the subway?” Yelena teased. “I guess the rich husband act is over. At least you could steal me a car, Joe. It’s faster.”
“Not during rush hour,” he told her. “We can steal one for the ride home if you like.”
In fact neither of them would do any such thing. They wouldn’t even jump a turnstile. A professional doesn’t commit misdemeanors on the way to committing a felony. They took the 1 train.
*
“Take that, you little slut! You know it’s what you deserve!” Paul brought the whip down smartly across Gianna’s pale, white rump, already crossed with red. The leather snapped, and she twitched, gasping.
“Thank you, sir, may I have another,” she breathed. She was bent over the hotel bed, dressed in a black lace bra and panties, thigh-high stockings, red heels. Her blond head was facedown in a pillow to muffle her cries. Her panties were yanked down.
Paul gave her another stroke. He was working up a sweat actually, and he pulled off his shirt, tossing it onto the chair where his tie and jacket already lay, neatly folded. In the closet, another suit and shirt hung, to prevent creasing—the clothes Gianna would change into later when she turned back into Gio.
Paul Rogers was Gio’s accountant and an expert money launderer. Thanks to Paul, Gio had millions stashed safely around the world, insuring his family’s future and also, thanks to the fronts and shells Paul had set up, a way to funnel the laundered money clean as freshly pressed dress shirts back into the many legitimate businesses he owned or controlled, providing a fat legal income to show the tax man.
But Paul had also taken on another, even more secret and precious role in Gio’s life. For as long as he could remember, Gio had nurtured fantasies of being dominated, abused really, by a handsome young man, especially a man of Paul’s type: blond, blue eyed, Waspy, Princeton educated. After they connected by chance in a gay S&M bar Gio controlled, they began meeting privately, providing Gio with purely sexual fulfillment and relief. But over time, real feelings had grown between them, and now Gio wasn’t sure what they were: Lovers? Friends? Boyfriends? Gio didn’t even think of himself as gay. He was happy with his wife, they had a good sex life, and he had no desires for men outside of this particular role-play scenario, which had become an obsession. Yet he did feel tenderly toward Paul.
“Thank you, sir, may I have another!”
The whip came down again, hard, and Gianna moaned. Her ass was throbbing. Paul stopped, catching his breath.
“Are you ready, Gianna? Ready to show me what a good little slut you can be?”
“Yes, sir. Please,” Gianna said and kneeled before her master. She undid his belt with shaky hands and unzipped him. A phone rang.
Gio froze. “Which one is that?”
“Who cares,” Paul said urgently. “Ignore it. We can’t stop now.”
The ring continued. “It’s the work phone,” Gio said. “I have to take this.”
He stood, still tottering uncertainly in his heels, after all this time never having gotten the hang of them, and grabbed the phone.
“Yeah,” he said into it, in his normal voice.
Paul sighed elaborately and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face.
“It’s me. Can we talk?” It was Fusco, an NYPD detective, corrupt cop, and compulsive gambler who owed Gio more than he could ever pay.
“Yeah, it’s a burner,” Gio said. “It’s safe.” He’d texted Fusco this number and would ditch it as soon as they spoke.
“So I’ve been asking around like you said,” Fusco told him. “Even on the task force, and nobody knows for sure where this talk is coming from, but it’s not NYPD. FBI maybe? Who knows?”
Fusco had been telling Gio that there was chatter about a big dope deal going down and that the Caprisi family name had been linked to it. This was especially disconcerting to Gio, since he had only become associated with the situation a day ago. Nor was this the first time. A German smuggler who moved stolen electronics and cars worldwide had been arrested by Interpol shortly after Gio had closed a deal with him. The implication was clear: Somebody was talking to the law. And it looked like the leak was in Gio’s ship.
Gio took a deep breath and counted to ten. He felt his rage rising but also knew that taking it out on Fusco or Paul or the furniture in the hotel room, while it might feel good for a second, was not going to help.
“Okay,” he said calmly. “Keep digging. And thanks.”
He hung up the phone. Almost immediately a text came through on his other, personal phone. It was Carol. He glanced at his wrist, then realized Joe had his watch.
Paul came out of the bathroom, naked and beautiful.
“Now then,” he said with a smile. “Let’s finish what we started.”
“Sorry,” Gio said, removing his wig, his face now odd in the mirror, with his eye shadow and lipstick smudged by the pillow. “I have to get in the shower and meet my wife.” He kissed Paul quickly as he went by into the bathroom. “She’ll kill me if I’m late. It’s date night.”
*
Maria’s apartment seemed humble from the outside. She had a big house in the Bronx near Riverdale but kept this place for business and also to be at home, among friends and family in the old neighborhood. She got bored sitting in her big house alone. The apartment was in a nondescript brick building with the smell of cooking in the halls and kids and telenovelas blaring behind the doors, but the teenager hanging on the front steps worked for Maria, and the janitor sweeping the lobby got his job because his wife knew her. Both nodded to Joe and Yelena as they passed and got on the elevator. She lived in a rear corner apartment on the top floor, where most of the apartments were occupied by her relatives or people she’d known for decades: an old blind man who never left the neighborhood, a retired maid who spoke no English and used to clean Maria’s house. Joe knew that eyes were watching through the peepholes as soon as they stepped off the elevator, and the door opened the second his knuckles tapped the door.
It was Little Maria herself, barely reaching Joe’s shoulder even in her spike heels, a flower-patterned apron over her black sweater and blue slacks. She held a wooden spoon in her hand and something that smelled great was cooking somewhere behind her. She kissed his cheek.
“Hola mijo,” she said. “I hope you’re hungry.”
“I am now that I smell your pernil cooking,” Joe said. “Here’s your stuff back.” He handed her pieces over.
“And this is your novia? Guapísima.”
“This is Yelena. She’s the one who’s going to steal the diamonds.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” Yelena said and held out her hand.
“Buena. Pretty and smart, too.” She rose on her toes to kiss Yelena’s cheek.
“We need Carlo,” Joe said. “It’s time to email. I hope he’s still alive.”
She sneered. “Me tienes la creta hirviendo. But sí. That cuero is alive.” She led them into the living room, where another woman—older, plumper, and even smaller—was watching Spanish TV. Barking could be heard faintly, too, coming from behind a door. The room was large and ornately furnished: a red-velvet couch, a huge flat screen, dark wooden tables, tasseled lamps, paintings of Jesus and of a tropical scene on the flocked walls. The windows commanded a view of the bridge and of the Jersey Palisades, aglow with the sinking sun.
“Tía,” Maria called. “Mira los frijoles.” The old lady rocked to get momentum, then stood and waddled efficiently by, taking the spoon from Maria as she passed into the kitchen. Maria knocked on the door where the barking was coming from. “Paco! Abre la puerta!”
The door opened and a goateed young man in jeans, a white tank top, gold cross, and Yankees cap let them in. It was an office, furnished as opulently as the living room, with a thick carpet, wide dark desk, and leather chairs. But the velvet drapes were drawn, and the center of the room was taken up by a large dog cage in which a naked man cowered. He was covered in cuts and bruises. A choke chain hung around his neck. A large pit bull in a much nicer, studded collar stood outside the cage barking and drooling, either because he wanted to kill the man inside it or because he wanted his cage back.
“Ay! Duque! Be quiet!” Maria yelled, and the kid grabbed the dog by the collar, yanked him back, then petted him till he sat down calmly and licked his hand, tail wagging. Maria approached the cage. The man inside it watched and whimpered.
