The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [88]
“Raisin Brans?”
“Yes, some name like that, on the box, I can’t remember….”
“Kellogg.”
“Yes! Is Kellogg. I say I don’t know no Kellogg, I don’t know any private business from Jake Mishkin and I don’t want to know, and they say I should keep my ears open and find out whatever with this Kellogg and Jake Mishkin. So what I do? I come talk you like a man: Jake, what is with you, all of sudden gangsters?”
“I don’t know, Arkady,” I said. “I wish I did know.” Whereupon I told him about the attack on me and Ms. K. and the theft of the briefcase, although I did not expand on what was supposed to be in it. But Arkady was after all a Russian and he stroked his chin and nodded. “So what is in briefcase, Jake. Is not drugs?”
“Is not drugs. Is papers.”
“You can give them so they leave you alone?”
“I can’t. It’s a long story, but I would like to know who your zeks are working for, if you have an idea.”
“You didn’t hear it from me,” said Arkady. He was nibbling at his lip, and his eyes were all over the place. Seeing him like that, this big, confident man nervous as a sparrow, was nearly as shocking as the attack by the thugs. After a pause and in a hoarse voice he said, “They work for Osip Shvanov. The Organizatsia.”
“The who?”
“In Brighton Beach. Jewish gangsters. You know about this? Twenty years ago the Americans say to Soviets, you are keeping Jews against will, this is like Nazis, you are persecuting, let them go. So the Soviets say, okay, you want Jews, we give you Jews. Then they go to Gulag and they find every criminal what had Jew marked on passport, they say you go to America, you go to Israel, have nice trip. So some come here. Of course most Jews got out from Soviet Union was regular peoples, my accountant is one of these, very nice man, but also very many criminals, and they go back to old doings, whores they have, porno, drugs, what-you-call, extortions. These very bad peoples, like these Sopranos you have on cable, but Sopranos are stupid and these are very smart, are Jews! And Osip is worst of all of them.”
“Well,” I said, “thanks for that information, Arkady.” And I got up to leave, but he gestured to stop me and added, “They come here too. These men, yesterday morning, and ask me if you going come here today, and they just sit. I could not eat my lunch, they are watching me like animals. So, Jake, I’m sorry, but I think you should not come here to train anymore. I will refund membership, no hard feelings.”
“You’re booting me out? I’ve been coming here nearly twenty years, Arkady.”
“I know, I know, but you can go other places, you can go to Bodyshop—”
“What! Bodyshop is pretty boys and girls in designer outfits and fat guys on treadmills reading the Wall Street Journal. Bodyshop sucks.”
“So someplace else. You keep coming here they make me to spy on you and if I say no…I don’t want my place burned up and I have family. I mean it, Jake. You don’t know these peoples. If you got something they want, is my advice give it to them.”
I saw Arkady had a point, so we shook hands and I left, with my gear in a Nike bag. I felt like I’d been expelled from school because someone else cheated. But the mention of family was what had really struck home. I recalled that I had one too.
My diary says simply “A.” in the slot for six-thirty on the day in question, which was the first Wednesday in November, so it was my evening to dine en famille at my ex-wife’s brownstone on East Seventy-sixth Street, our arrangement on the first Wednesday of every month. Not exactly “ex,” because officially, in the eyes