Death Benefit

55.

GREEN POND, NEW JERSEY MARCH 25, 2011, 8:45 P.M.

Prek drove carefully into Green Pond, a private summer lake community in Morris County in northern New Jersey. What could have been an hour’s drive had taken nearly two, partly because of traffic, partly because Prek kept the van well under the speed limit, even on the open stretches of road. Some of the items in the van would have taken a lot of explaining if the vehicle was involved in a traffic stop.

The Green Pond that lent its name to the town was actually a lake. This night its surface was dark as the moon had yet to rise. Prek navigated the twisting, hilly eastern shore road where the few homes, sitting at the end of long driveways, were mostly hidden by dense, leafless hardwood forest. There were just a handful of homes on the cliffs on the western side, which could be reached only by boat. The village itself lay to the north. After a mile or so the road wound closer to the lake and to the dwellings along the shore. Some of the homes belonged to year-round residents and their windows glowed with warm incandescent light and the occasional flash and flicker of the ubiquitous big-screen TVs. At the southern end of the lake were a number of summer cottages and they were dark, with their docks stacked in neat piles and their boats under tarps.

Prek pulled into the driveway of Aleksander’s waterfront cottage, which was situated on a peninsula at the very southern end of the lake facing out onto a cove a couple of hundred yards in diameter. Aleksander had been drawn to the house by its private location on a spit of land. He had been delighted to find out that for seven or eight months of the year, the houses and cottages on either side of his on the eastern cove were dark and deserted with their heating systems off and pipes drained. There were only two houses on the western side of the peninsula, and they were also empty except during the summer months. Buda loved the place because of its serenity, particularly in the winter when the lake froze up solid.

Prek parked in back of the house facing the road, found his key and opened up, turning on the lights and the oil-fired heat.

“Honey, I’m home,” Prek called out, laughing.

The closer they had got to this sanctuary, the brighter the mood in the van had become. Prek was positively gleeful that everything had gone so well. The boss was sure to be very pleased.

The three men unloaded the rolled-up carpet that contained Pia and brought it quickly inside. The front door opened directly into the living area, where there were two leather couches, one black, one brown, facing each other in the center of the room in front of a fieldstone fireplace. Prek moved a low coffee table scattered with automobile magazines to the side so that Genti and Neri could set down the carpet roll containing Pia. They then unrolled her until she lay sprawled, facedown, on the room’s massive fake oriental.

Prek called Buda. He wanted to tell his boss that they’d arrived and all was well. He also hoped to get the okay to finish up with Pia. It was a perfect night, quiet and dark, to dump a body in the large swamp that extended for almost a mile from the southern end of the lake into a protected virgin forest surrounding a government arsenal called Picatinny. It was the kind of wilderness whose remoteness would come as a surprise to most residents of New York City. It had certainly proved useful to the Buda crew on more than one occasion.

To Prek’s irritation, Buda didn’t pick up. Prek didn’t leave a message; Buda would see the missed call and know Prek was trying to reach him.

Prek’s annoyance was exacerbated when it dawned on him that despite all their planning, they’d forgotten to bring any food. There was a store up the road about five miles north, but Prek didn’t think it was a good idea for any of them to show their faces in a public spot, not when they were going to be disposing of a body. Prek went into the kitchen, such as it was, and looked in the fridge. There was one carton of milk with a past-due date. The cupboards were even more depressing. There was an open box of cold cereal, but one corner was chewed off and mouse droppings could be seen.

Discouraged, Prek reentered the living room. There was a sudden silence. Prek could tell Genti and Neri had been talking about something and had stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” Prek asked.

The two men were looking at Pia. There had been a disagreement.

“How long before she wakes up?” Neri said.

“She’s got ten milligrams of Valium in her, so she’s going to be sleeping it off awhile,” Prek said. “She’ll start to wake up, but she’ll be very groggy. We can always give her another shot if need be. Buda didn’t answer his phone.”

“She’s beautiful,” said Neri.

“Our young friend here was just telling me what he’d like to do to her,” said Genti. “I suppose we could all take turns, maybe even be interesting to watch. What do you think, Prek? We should have done it when we were in her room last night.”

“I like my girlfriends to participate,” Prek said. “And anyway, we’re not doing anything till I hear from Buda that she’s safe to get rid of. Remember, she’s got an Albanian name. We got to be sure we wouldn’t be stepping on someone’s honor, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Oh, come on, Prek,” Genti said, “what are the odds of that? There’s two hundred fifty thousand Albanians in the area, and this is one girl. I’ve never seen anyone that good-looking related to any of us. She sure doesn’t look like your sister.”

Genti and Neri laughed. Prek didn’t. He had a premonition there was going to be trouble after everything had been going so smoothly.

Neri and Genti were sitting on separate couches. Neri looked like a dog in heat, practically panting while adjusting himself. He was looking alternately at the supine Pia and at Genti, who he believed was in his corner as far as having sex with the woman was concerned. Genti Hajdini had come up through the crew’s ranks at the same time as Prek, but Buda entrusted Prek with more responsibility and bigger jobs. As a consequence, Prek made more money than Genti, and when Buda wasn’t around, Prek called the shots. He knew this was something Genti resented, but it rarely was an open problem between them. Prek knew that Genti was still miffed about not being allowed to have his way with Pia the previous night.

“The boy did good tonight,” Genti said, pointing at Neri and making a shooting sound. Genti and Neri laughed again, then stopped and Genti looked at Prek. “Maybe we should reward him. Maybe we should reward all of us.” There was a heavy silence in the air.

“Who made you the boss, anyway?” Neri said quietly.

Prek looked from Neri to Genti and back again. Neri was still wearing the black jacket he’d had on when he shot the boy in the street and Prek assumed he still had the gun in an inside pocket. Genti might be armed too, for all he knew. His own gun was in the glove compartment of the van. Did he really think Neri and Genti would gang up on him and take him out? In this crew, as Prek and Genti both knew very well, stranger things had happened. Turning his attention back to Neri, Prek held his frankly impertinent gaze.

“Buda said I’m the boss when he’s not around.”

Pia let out a groan.

“Listen, you assholes! Buda told me we wait until he’s sure there is no family connected with this woman. You go and mess with this woman and Buda finds out she’s someone’s daughter or niece and you two haven’t been able to keep it in your pants? The uncle or father, whoever he is, is not going to be happy. He’s going to be unhappy with Buda and that means Buda is going to be very unhappy with you.”

“She’s unconscious,” Neri said. “Out of it. She won’t even know, at least not for sure. It’s such a waste. Like it’s a crime.”

“She’ll know, you asshole.”

“You not interested in girls anymore, Prek?”

Now it was time to stare down Genti. Prek knew that Genti’s comment was meant to rile him, but he decided to ignore it. “She’s a pretty girl, sure, but there are a lot of pretty girls.”

“I don’t see any others in the room,” Neri said. He was looking at Genti, hoping for support.

“You don’t want to be the reason for a blood feud. Trust me.”

“Unfortunately, he’s right,” Genti said. He got up from the couch and stepped over to Prek. He draped an arm around Prek’s shoulder and jostled him.

“We’re just screwing with you. If we get the all-clear, Neri gets his, okay? I might take a turn, why not?”

Genti stepped over to Pia’s body and with his forefinger lifted her skirt.

“Not bad, not bad at all. Whaddaya say?”

“I say we don’t touch her until we get the green light to whack her. When that happens, you two can do what you like. For the time being, help me put her on the bed to get her out of sight. You two are like teenagers.”

Prek went over to Pia and grabbed both ankles. “Come on! Give me a hand!”

With Genti and Neri taking an arm each, they carried Pia into the bedroom. There they tossed her onto the bed.

“Now leave her be,” Prek said, motioning his two colleagues to precede him back into the living room. As Prek followed them he wondered what the hell was keeping Buda.