Dead and Gone - Andrew Vachss [1]
“Half a million dollars?” I asked her, seated in my booth in the back, the third bowl—of a mandatory three—of hot-and-sour soup in front of me.
“They say,” Mama answered. Meaning: she wasn’t endorsing it herself; she wouldn’t vouch for anyone involved at the other end.
“And a hundred for me?”
“For whole trade,” she said, reminding me that I hadn’t found this job on my own—they’d called her. The whisper-stream knows a phone number for me. After it bounces around the circuits, it eventually rings at one of the pay phones in the back of Mama’s restaurant.
“Six hundred,” I added it up. “And Dmitri, he’s going to taste, too, right?”
“He say, same country, he help for nothing.”
“And you say …?”
Mama just shrugged. We’d never meet the parents. What they wanted was a middleman. The hundred large was all there was as far as we were concerned, no matter who else was getting what.
“Why come to me, then?”
“Cossacks know I find you. Say you know … these people.”
“You mean they think—?”
“Not same people. Those people.”
“Ah.” Sure. Who knew the freaks better? They raised me. Recaptured me every time I ran, aided and abetted by the only parent I ever had: the State. I learned from the freaks, did time with them. And, when I got the chance, I hurt some of them.
Never enough of them, though. Those scales would never balance.
Mama was silent, letting me decide. Work was money. This deal wasn’t a retirement-size score, but it was strong cash.
Any other circumstances, she would have been all over me to take it. Instead, she looked a question at me.
I knew what she needed to hear. “I can do it,” I told her. Meaning: I could trade cash for a stolen kid and just walk away. Keep it professional.
Mama gave me a sharp look, then nodded slowly.
Whoever they were, they knew their business. I was waiting at the corner they’d had the Russians send me to, standing next to a pay phone. It rang. I picked it up.
“You’re going to hear me say a 917 number. I’m only going to say it once. You walk away from that pay phone. Far away. When you get far enough away, you call the 917 number. Don’t bother writing it down—it’s going to disappear after this one call. That’s the way we’re going to work this, until we get it all sketched out. A new number each time, understand?”
“Yes,” I said, keeping it short. If he thought I was trying to prolong the conversation, he’d smell cop. And that would end it.
“You ready for the number?”
“Yes.”
He gave it to me. I shook my head “No!” at the men from Dmitri’s crew who’d been standing next to me and walked over to where my Plymouth was parked, keyed the ignition, and took off.
I drove all the way out of Brighton Beach, one hand on the cell phone the Mole had built from spare parts around a cloned chip. As soon as I got clear, I punched in the number he’d given me.
“Go ahead,” is all I said.
“We’re not going to play around,” he told me. “The Russians, they’re already satisfied, understand? So don’t be asking any questions about the merchandise. All you and me have to do is figure out how to make the exchange.”
“Safest place is right out in public.”
“Safest for who, friend? I don’t think so.”
“Just tell me how you want to do it.”
“That’s the problem—I can’t think of a way to do it and still be safe. And I have to be safe. Otherwise, I’m just going to keep the merchandise. I was told you’d know a way.”
Who told him? The Russians? Someone else? Or was this just his way of saying he was putting all the weight on me? I spun it through my mind quickly, but nothing came up on my screen.
“You know East New York? The flatlands south of Atlantic?” I asked him.
“Sure. Not a chance.”
“Maspeth, then? By where the water