Beyond Suspicion

42

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Yuri was chasing flies. They were all over Gulfstream Park. Not the kind that race horses swatted away with their tails. These were flies with money to wash.

Yuri loved thoroughbred racing, and in Florida’s winter months the name of the game was Gulfstream Park. The main track was a mile-long oval wrapped around an inviting blue lake that even on blistering-hot days made you feel cooler just to look at it. Gulfstream was a picturesque course with over sixty years of racing tradition, host to premier events like the Breeders Cup and Florida Derby. It sat within fifty miles of at least ten casinos that were more than happy to take back your winnings, everything from bingo with the Seminole Indians to blackjack and slot machines on any number of gaming cruises that left daily from Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. This was as good as gambling got in Florida, and Yuri was in heaven.

But he hated to be ripped off. Especially by his own flies.

“Pedro, got a minute?”

Pedro was a new guy, early twenties, pretty smart, not nearly as smart as he thought he was. He was standing at the urinal in the men’s room beneath the grandstands. Hundreds of losing tickets littered the bare concrete floor at his feet, but at the moment the two men were alone in the restroom.

He looked at Yuri and said, “You talking to me?”

“Yeah. Come here. I got a big winner for you.”

Pedro flushed the urinal, zipped up, and smiled. It was his job to buy winning tickets, all with dirty money. It was one of the oldest games in the money-laundering world. Take the dirty proceeds from a drug deal, go buy a ticket from a recent winner at the track, cash it in and, voilà, your money’s legit. You had to pay taxes on it, but that was better than having to explain suitcases full of cash to the federal government. Pedro might wash ten thousand dollars a day this way. He was a fly, always hanging around race tracks the way insects of the same name buzzed around a horse’s ass.

“I hit the trifecta in the second race,” said Yuri. “Twenty-two hundred bucks.”

Pedro washed his hands in the basin, speaking to Yuri’s reflection in the mirror. “I’ll give you two thousand for it.”

“You charge commission?”

“Sure. You still come out ahead. You turn that ticket in to the cashier, you end up paying the IRS five, six hundred bucks in income taxes. You sell it to me, you get fast cash for a measly two-hundred-dollar transaction fee.”

“I gotta tell you, Pedro. Every time I’ve done this in the past, it’s been at face value. A twenty-two hundred dollar purse gets me twenty-two hundred bucks from a fly.”

“Must be a long time since you won anything. I been doing it this way for at least two months.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

“Business good?”

“Excellent.”

“What does your boss say about that?”

“Nothing I can tell you.”

“I think he’d be pissed. Because you haven’t been telling him about your ten-percent commission, have you?”

“That’s between me and him. You want to sell your ticket or not?”

Yuri grabbed him by the back of the neck, smashed Pedro’s head into the sink. A crimson rose exploded onto the white basin. Pedro squealed and fell to the ground, his face bloodied, a broken tooth protruding through his upper lip.

“What the… hell?” he said, dazed.

Yuri grabbed him by the hair and looked him straight in the eye. “Two months, huh? That’s a thousand bucks a day for fifty race days you been skimming. You got two days to cough up a fifty-thousand-dollar present to your boss. Or I’ll come find you, and you’ll be spitting up more than just your teeth.”

The bathroom door opened. Two men walked in, then stopped at the sight of blood on the sink and Pedro on the floor.

Yuri walked past them and, on his way out, said, “It’s okay. He slipped.”

The door closed behind him, and Yuri walked calmly into the common area beneath the grandstands. A group of dejected losers watched the replay of the third race on the television sets overhead. Winners were lined up at the cashier window. Dreamers were back in line for the next race, wallets open. Yuri bought himself an ice-cream bar and returned to his box seat near the finish line. It was an open-air seat in the shade, with a prime view of the nine-hundred-and-fifty-two-foot straight-away finish from the final turn.

Vladimir was in the seat next to him. “Flies all under control?”

“Totally.”

“I think I’ll call you the bug zapper.”

“You do and I’ll squash you like a cockroach.”

Horses with shiny brown coats pranced across the track. The big black scoreboard in the infield said it was five minutes until post time.

“I had an interesting meeting last night. A friend of one of my employees from the blood center claims he can hook us up with fifty million dollars in viatical settlements.”

“How?”

“He has connections with some AIDS hospices.”

“Fucking AIDS. That’s how we got into the mess we’re in. All those homos were supposed to be dead in two years. Then they get on these drug cocktails, AZT, whatever, and live forever.”

“Well, not forever. We both know that a weak immunity system offers a great many opportunities to expedite the process. How’d your meeting in Paraguay go?”

“I set them straight, but it doesn’t do us any good.”

“What do you mean?”

“Brighton Beach canceled our contract.”

The trumpet blared, calling the horses to the gate. “What?”

“No more money. Not fifty million, not fifty cents.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t give me a reason. I think it’s because of all the attention this West Nile virus is getting from the Centers for Disease Control. They’re probably getting nervous.”

“Why would they be nervous?”

“Because there just aren’t that many cases of West Nile virus in the United States. It could start to look pretty fishy when the authorities figure out that half the reported cases in the United States involved AIDS patients who had viatical settlements.”

“How many of our targets ended up getting West Nile?”

“One woman in Georgia’s dead from it already. Could be a few more to follow.”

“You don’t know how many?”

“Not off the top of my head. You know how Fate works, his little game. Only the ones who chose a slow, painful death would have gotten stuck with West Nile. The others got something quick and painless. Relatively quick and painless.”

“I’m beginning not to trust this Fate. I think I should meet him.”

“I can probably arrange that,” said Yuri. “Someday.”

Vladimir pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, as if to stem a migraine. “I don’t understand this. This was such a perfect plan.”

“It was never perfect. Look at the Jessie Merrill situation. The minute we branch out from AIDS patients who need a little help dying, we get scammed.”

“That’s a whole ‘nother situation.”

“Yeah,” said Yuri. “Whole ‘nother situation.”

The bell rang and horses sprang from the gate. Yuri and Vladimir raised their binoculars and watched through the cloud of dust as the sprinting pack of thoroughbreds rounded the first turn.