Born to Run

Chapter 19

The Greek was the last customer of the night at Mahoney’s Pub. He walked past the empty booths and pulled up a stool at the Formica-topped bar.

“What’ll it be, old man?”

The bartender was young, short, and skinny-the complete opposite of the Greek, who was an imposing figure even when seated.

“Shot and a beer,” he said.

The beer was dinner. Or breakfast. Whatever worked at 1:00 A.M. for a guy with a huge problem on his mind and who couldn’t sleep. Alcohol touched his lips only when the back pain flared up-something he’d dealt with for almost fifty years, ever since those thugs had thrown him off an apartment building in Nicosia to watch him splatter like a watermelon. The doctors had told him he was lucky to be alive, lucky not to be paralyzed. They obviously didn’t know Demetri Pappas. Luck had nothing to do with it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It was a cliche, but the Greek lived by it. Swimming in the Mediterranean Sea had whipped his body back into shape. A mile a day for over forty years. Then cycling. Seventy miles in a single day had been commonplace in his prime. Finally, he was ready to run. He’d finished eight marathons in his lifetime, and he was determined to run another before he hit seventy. He still smiled at reruns of that old TV show, Ironside. The Greek should have been that guy in the wheelchair. Instead, he was Ironman.

The bartender set him up. He downed the drinks quickly.

“’Nother round.”

The Greek’s brain was buzzing, but he was still thinking clearly. He never let himself drink to the point of intoxication, never did anything to cloud his judgment. Especially when it was decision time.

Plan A was dead-literally. Chloe Sparks had totally conned him. He should have known that serious money from the Inquiring Star was out of the question when the editor had refused to negotiate and handed him off to a young reporter. Plan B had seemed like a better idea. What politician wouldn’t pay a king’s ransom to launch himself overnight from second-in-command to head of state? It certainly would have worked that way in Cyprus-and not just because Shakespeare had written of such false loyalty in Othello.

“Here’s to you, Iago,” he said, and then he downed the second round as quickly as it was poured.

The bartender switched off the glowing neon beer sign in the window. “Closing time, old man.”

“How about a coffee?”

“There’s a diner across the street.”

The Greek grumbled, but he was angrier with himself than anyone. He should have known better than to put his trust in the likes of Jack Swyteck-a lawyer and the son of a politician. Swyteck-what the hell kind of a name was that, anyway? Must have been another one of those hatchet jobs by immigration officials at Ellis Island. The Greek had once known a Jozef Swatek from Galicia. Or was it Prague? Could have been Russia.

Fucking Russians.

The Greek tipped back his beer glass and found one more swallow. Plan C would be the charm-as soon as he figured out what it was.

The bar was empty, and the bartender looked ready to head home. “Twenty-four bucks,” he said.

The Greek checked his wallet. Four singles. He was twenty dollars short. Two hundred fifty thousand and twenty dollars short, to be exact.

“You take an IOU here?”

“This ain’t no charity.”

“World keeps getting crueler every day, don’t it?”

The bartender started wiping down the Formica. “Tell me something I don’t know, pal.”

The Greek snatched the towel, giving the bartender a start.

“What the hell, old man?”

With a quickness that belied his age, the Greek brought his hand up from his lap and rested it on the bar top. It was wrapped in the towel.

“I’m telling you something you don’t know.”

The bartender glanced uneasily at the towel. “What you got wrapped up in there?”

“Could be just my hand. Could be my hand holding a bobcat.”

“A bobcat?”

The Greek turned deadly serious, working extra hard to speak with no accent. “I mean the Beretta model 21A semiautomatic twenty-two-caliber pistol fully loaded with forty-grain lead, round-nosed, standard-velocity subsonic ammunition. Weighs less than a pound, easily concealed in the palm of a man’s hand. Wrapped in a towel like this one, the muzzle blast is reduced to something less than a cap gun. Much less. On the street, it’s called a bobcat. You didn’t know that, did you?”

The Greek delivered his patented stare, a penetrating laser that could have burned through men of steel, much less a skinny bartender who looked barely old enough to drink. To most folks, the Greek was another one of those sixty-something-year-old marvels who could have lifted weights with Chuck Norris and out-boxed Sly Stallone. An unlucky few, however, learned why he stayed fit-though it had been a very long time since he’d killed a man over twenty bucks.

“There’s two hundred dollars in the cash register,” said the bartender, his voice quaking. “Grab it and go.”

“Don’t shit your pants, okay? This ain’t a robbery. I’m good with the drinks. Just put them on my tab, junior.” Dzunior.

“Forget about it. They’re on me.”

The Greek slid off his bar stool. “I’m gonna pay you for the drinks. I got some money coming in.”

“Sure, whatever. Just be cool and walk your bobcat right on out of here.”

He started toward the door, but an almost unbearable shooting pain in his right leg brought him to a halt. Sciatica from the L5 vertebra felt as if someone had taken a hot knife and sliced him open from hip to heel. It got that way only when he was under serious stress-and these last two weeks had been as serious as it gets.

He closed his eyes for a moment, the way his Zen muscular therapist had taught him. She’d given him various techniques, starting with a descriptive name for his pain that would make it seem weaker than his will to defeat it. He tried “Useless Pain in the Ass,” but that was too cumbersome. He settled on “Politico,” a shorter but synonymous term.

The Greek swallowed the pain and walked out the front door.

The cold night air cut to the bone, which only exacerbated his back pain. It was possible that the bartender would dial 911, but if he did, so what? As much trouble as the Greek had gotten himself into on the outside, he was probably safer in jail.

He stopped at the pedestrian crossing on the street corner. A taxi pulled up before he could even get his hand out of his coat pocket to flag him down. It was a van. The side door slid open, and the Greek climbed up into the middle seat.

“Motel Six,” he said, as he closed the door. “Just outside the Beltway.”

The driver nodded and pulled away, and before the Greek could react, a leather strap came up and over his head from behind. He grabbed it instinctively, trying to pry it from his neck, and it loosened just enough for him to breathe.

“Move and you die,” the man said. He was in the luggage area behind the middle seat. His accent was definitely Russian.

Shit, not again.

The Greek struggled to speak. “That you, Vlad?”

“It ain’t your momma.”

It was definitely Vladimir. He gave the Greek another centimeter of slack on the strap, and the words came easier.

“I’m no good to you dead,” said the Greek.

“No damn good alive.”

“I can’t raise a quarter million dollars overnight.”

“Should have thought of that before you started skimming from us.”

The Greek drew a breath. In the old days, a casino manager could pocket ten grand a month from the counting room and the Sicilians would look the other way, almost expecting their local boys to grab a little “walking-around money.” All that changed when the Russians took over Cyprus. Skimming in the classic sense-hiding your own money from the government-was still cool. But hiding money from the Mafiya was almost certain death, if you got caught. And the Greek had been caught red-handed.

“I’ll double what I owe,” said the Greek. “Five hundred thousand. Give me two weeks.”

The taxi rounded a corner, and in the rearview mirror the Greek caught a glimpse of the man behind the pistol. He appeared to be smiling.

“One week,” said Vladimir. “Call it professional courtesy.”

The taxi stopped, and the Russian leaned closer to whisper into his ear: “If I come back, it won’t be pretty, and it won’t be quick. Half a million in one week. Or you’ll wish to God I’d finished you off tonight.”

The driver hopped out and opened the door. Vladimir pushed the Greek out into the street, and the taxi sped away as he picked himself up from the pavement. He walked to the curb and cinched up his coat.

Half a million dollars. In one week. It didn’t seem feasible, not with two strikes named Sparks and Swyteck already against him. At this stage of the game, his only real choice was to go back to Keyes’ people. The Greek had sold his secret way too cheap the first time around anyway. They might pay again if he threatened to go public.

Or kill me.

He buried his hands in his pocket and walked slowly into the night. Yeah, they might kill him this time. But one thing was certain.

It beat letting the Russians do the job.