Dead on Arrival

75

Bianca Castro was in the prison library, looking at yesterday’s papers, checking on how the markets were doing. Not great but not bad. She shoved the papers into the bin and walked back into the stacks to find a book she wanted, a book on real estate investing.

She had never dabbled in real estate. She didn’t know that much about it. She had always stuck with blue chip stocks and index funds, and right now she had a ton of dough in ten-year CDs, since she wouldn’t be needing access to her money any time soon. And since she had the time, she figured she might as well educate herself on real estate investing. Another thing that interested her was the futures market, but she didn’t know much about that either, just that futures were extremely risky but the payoffs could be huge. Maybe the library had some books on that subject too, but she doubted it. Most of the books in the damn place were lawbooks. All these women, most of whom could barely read, were always trying to find something on which to base an appeal.

She was running her fingers along the spines of the books when she heard a shoe scrape the floor to her right. Two bitches, both of them Hispanic, were coming toward her. She didn’t like the expression on their faces but she wasn’t too worried. The fourth day she’d been at the prison she’d demonstrated, in a particularly brutal fashion, that she wasn’t a person you wanted to mess with.

The two women stopped a few paces from her. There was barely room in the narrow aisle between the bookshelves for the women to stand abreast, and there was no room at all for one of them to maneuver around behind her. But then she heard a noise, and she glanced over her shoulder and saw a third woman, also Hispanic, coming down the aisle from the other direction.

‘You remember Jorge Rivera?’ one of the women said.

‘Who?’ Bianca said. ‘Who the fuck is Jorge Rivera?’

Then she remembered: the driver she’d used in D.C.

‘He was my cousin,’ the woman said, and she pulled a shiv out of the waistband of her jeans, a toothbrush handle filed to a lethal point.

The Ukrainian had used a glass cutter to cut a neat circle out of the hotel room window. Now all he had to do was wait for the water taxi to come across the river.

On one side of the Elizabeth River, in Portsmouth, Virginia, was a waterfront complex called Portside that had concession stands and hotels and an open area for outdoor concerts. Directly across the river, in Norfolk, Virginia, was a larger waterfront shopping area called Waterside, and it was filled with retail stores and places to dine and drink. A small water taxi for foot passengers and bicyclists traveled between Portside and Waterside every half hour. The Ukrainian was on the Portsmouth side of the river.

Both Portside and Waterside were currently awash in red, white, and blue. There were balloons, bunting, and banners everywhere in honor of the American holiday called Fourth of July. The Ukrainian had heard there would be a fireworks show that night, and he wished he could have stayed to see it. He liked fireworks and he liked celebrations. He would have bought a glass of beer and flirted with long-legged American girls. ‘Hi, my name’s Jack,’ he would have said to them, and they would have gotten drunk together and watched the fireworks exploding over the river.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be able to stay for the fireworks; he would be miles away before the show started.

He checked his watch, and even without the binoculars he could see the water taxi loading on the Norfolk side of the river. Several men in white uniforms, maybe five or six, were walking onto the ferry together. He knew there was a large navy base in the area and he was guessing that the men in uniform were naval officers, and considering who they were with, they were probably admirals. He placed the binoculars to his eyes. Yes, there he was, surrounded by admirals. The goatee, he thought, made the black man look more like a saxophone player than a politician.

The Ukrainian waited until the boat was halfway across the river before he picked up the rifle.

Mahoney later said to DeMarco, ‘The moral of the story, son, is never fuck over a man who plans assassinations for a living.’