Exact Revenge

49

WHEN PEOPLE THINK of upstate New York, they think of winter. Brutal cold and storms that dump four or five feet of snow. But the most vicious weather comes in the summer when a warm placid day is suddenly transformed by violent thunder, lightning, and wind that makes children whimper and smells like the end of the world.

Bert has the TV in the living room on without the sound. He points to the screen as I walk past.

“See that?” he says.

I stop and look at the radar map. A dark green wall with a belly of red, yellow, and orange oozes slowly from west to east across the backside of Ohio toward western New York.

“Looks bad,” I say, peering outside at the sun-drenched back lawn.

“It will be,” Bert says.

“Turn that off, okay?” I say.

Down on the expansive teak dock, Rangle’s wife and daughter are lounging on deck chairs, oiled up, with their faces tilted toward the sun. Allen and Rangle are already on board the twenty-eight-foot party boat. Bert gets behind the wheel and the motor puffs blue smoke into the clean air. Villay hurries down the path, across the dock, and hops on board the boat with another apology for holding things up. Bert casts off and we ease out toward the middle of the lake.

Allen digs into the cooler and passes out bottles of Heineken. We talk about the color of the water and the smattering of new homes that mar the crest of the far hills. When we get to where the fish are, Bert drops the anchor and begins handing out fully rigged poles. I scoop up a shiner out of the bait bucket and hold up the wriggling minnow for everyone to see.

I look at Villay as I speak.

“What you want to do is run your hook through the mouth, like this,” I say, punching the hook up through the bottom side of the fish’s jaw and out through its tiny snout. “Some people hook them through the back, but it kills them too quickly. If you want to get a big one, something worth having, you have to hook it like this.”

“What’s the difference?” Rangle asks.

“Panic and agony,” I say, then smile. “The minnow thrashes longer and harder when you hook it through the face. The big ones get excited. It’s like an IPO.”

Rangle smiles with me. Villay is the last one to get a minnow and he hesitates. I put my hand on his arm.

“Bert will do it,” I say, looking down at him.

He looks at me and smiles.

We sit quietly around the edge of the boat on padded benches, our poles dangling in the air. Waves lap against the aluminum pontoons. I close my eyes behind their sunglasses and listen, enjoying the bath of sunlight, the taste of a cold bottle of beer, and the pressure I can actually feel building up behind Dean Villay’s face. Rangle and Allen talk football among themselves and Bert keeps glancing to the west while I wait.

Villay stands up and his reel clicks as he brings in his line. I open my eyes to see him inching this way. He sits down beside me and says, “I understand you’re interested in my ideas on some constitutional issues.”

“The president has asked me to give him a name or two,” I say, slowly bringing in my own line. “Your career interests me.”

“I like to think I’m as conservative as Clarence Thomas,” he says.

“I’ve read several of your more important decisions,” I say, popping my minnow out of the water and letting it writhe in the air. “But I’m not completely clear on where you sit with the death penalty.”

I cast my line out again.

The lines on his face ease. He squints at a boat going by before he says, “It’s not a deterrent. We know that. But I think in some cases, it’s morally justified.”

“What about the innocent ones?” I ask. Everyone is listening now. “Doesn’t the state become the criminal when one innocent man, even one in a thousand, is executed, when in fact he is innocent?”

“If a man is found guilty in a jury trial of his peers,” Villay says with a small smile, “by definition, he cannot be innocent. Are we talking jurisprudence, or philosophy? Those are two very different conversations.”

“Well put,” I say, and I can see all his perfect teeth.

We catch ten lake trout between us and Bert promises to have the cook serve them with dinner. Lunch is a pleasant buffet served from silver trays and eaten on a long table on the back porch set with crystal glassware and several arrangements of fresh cut flowers. Afterward, I invite Rangle into my study. We are discussing finances when a red Ferrari roars past the window. A few moments later, Bert shows Andre into the study.

He wears a burgundy Hugo Boss shirt that matches his slacks. On his wrist is a Cartier Panther. His accent is passable and his natural arrogance is enough for Rangle to buy into his identity. We hatch a plan for manipulating the Russian stock market, then join the rest of the party back down on the dock for more drinks and sun. Rangle is twisting his fingers madly and is nearly out of breath as he introduces Andre to his daughter. He pulls a deck chair alongside hers and offers it to him. As an afterthought, he introduces Allen, who takes Andre’s hand and coolly looks him up and down. The wind picks up late in the afternoon and a blanket of high mackerel-scale clouds blots out the sun.

Dinner is in the dining room at eight. We are dressed in a way that makes Ms. Vanderhorn feel at home and are seated around the grand mahogany table. Two girls in waitress uniforms hurry in and out, serving dinner. Billy Fitzpatrick and his wife, Diane, have joined us. Billy is the district attorney for Onondaga County, Villay’s old job, and his wife is a judge. Both are highly regarded by everyone, and I figure I may as well put the five million I gave to the party to some good use.

I have them seated facing the Villays at my end of the table. Allen presides over the other end, holding his mouth at an odd angle while Andre sucks down Jack-and-Gingers and boasts to the Rangles. From time to time he touches Dani Rangle’s bare arm and she giggles.

After the main course is taken away, there is a lull where the conversation fades to a murmur.

I clear my throat and say, “Billy, question for you. What’s the statute of limitations on murder?”

Billy’s eyes are pale green and set in a round red Irish face. He looks me over.

“That depends on how well you know the DA,” he says with just a hint of a long-lost Brooklyn accent. “Just kidding. There is no time limit on prosecuting a murder. It’s the only crime that doesn’t have one. Why?”

“Bert thinks this place has a ghost,” I say. “And he says that the spirit will be restless until someone is punished. Ridiculous, I know, but I’m in a bind. Bert is the best man I’ve ever come across and I’m pretty fond of this place.”

“What? You got a clairvoyant or something? Tarot cards?” Billy asks, dabbing his lips with the napkin.

“Not far off,” I say, looking around the table. The others have stopped talking now and their eyes are on me. Villay tugs at his necktie. His wife is stiff and pale in her black dress.

“I don’t believe it, but Bert,” I say, nodding toward the dim corner of the dining room where he stands in a suit, watching the help, “comes from a long line of Akwesasne medicine men. He told me the first day I showed him this place that there was a ghost. I had a good laugh, right, Bert?”

Bert steps into the light with half his face covered by the shadow of his nose and his eyes narrow canyons of darkness. He grunts and nods, then like distant thunder, he says, “My grandmother always told me that the wings of the dark spirits brush the lips of the medicine man and his line. And when I came to this place, I felt that on my lips.”

“Yeah, I saw a psychic one time on the witness stand,” Billy says with a mischievous smile. He takes a sip from his wineglass. “Didn’t go over too good, but a medicine man? That might work.”

This brings a laugh from everyone, even the Villays, and the tension evaporates. While the moment is calm, I excuse myself and go upstairs. I know from the Hewlett Harbor maid whose toothbrush is whose and I slip quickly into the Villays’ bedroom, where I put the right drop on each. Their room has been soundproofed, but for good measure I go through the other rooms, applying more drops from the red vial on other toothbrushes.

By the time I get back, dessert is being served and the first fat drops of rain tap intermittently against the windowpanes.

“Please. A toast,” I say, raising my wineglass. “To health, happiness, young love, and the Russian stock market.”

This brightens everyone except Allen, who stares passively at me. I make a point to grin at him, until finally, he smiles back. Glasses clink together and everyone drinks. I nod to the girls who wait like Bert in the shadows of the long room. They step out and refill everyone’s glasses. Rangle is half in the bag and now he stands up.

“I have a toast,” he says, bowing his head toward Andre so that the dark auburn flap of his hair falls sideways off the top of his bald head. “To the czar and all his offspring.”

Andre looks at him, puzzled, then smiles, although I don’t believe he understands who the czar is. We all drink to the czar and Rangle sits down with a satisfied look on his face that quickly melts under his wife’s glare.

When Dani giggles and leans toward Andre, he kisses her ear. Allen slams his fist down on the table, jarring the china and tipping over his half-empty wineglass.

“Keep her,” he says, and marches out of the room with his head high.

Andre and Dani burst out in giddy laughter. Rangle shows all his teeth and his wife looks like she ate a bad piece of fish. I signal the girls again and they pour more wine.

“A final toast,” I say, rising to my feet. “To domestic felicity.”

They all stare at me blankly, but raise their glasses just the same and empty them. I take a sip, look at my watch, and suggest after-dinner drinks on the back porch for those who haven’t had enough. I then thank them all again for coming, excuse myself, and wish them all a good night.

50

ALLEN IS DOWN AT THE LAKE. I can see his shape lit by the low-voltage lights along the shore. The rain is still falling in random bloated drops. Allen appears not to mind as he casts stones from the beach into the rippling black water.

“I’m sorry,” I say, toweling off a lounge chair beside him before I sit down and put up my feet.

Allen is silent. A sliver of the orange moon peers through the trees on top of the far hill before disappearing into the bank of clouds. Over the hissing of the wind in the trees I can hear the crunch of Allen’s feet on the beach. He throws half a dozen more rocks into the water before raising his voice above the wind and saying, “What made you invite that asshole anyway?”

“It’s really not Andre’s fault,” I say. “He is what he is and I have a business deal with him and Rangle. To tell you the truth, I think it gives you a good out.”

“Who says I want an out?” he says, turning to face me. A drop of rain strikes his cheek and he wipes it away.

I fold my hands together.

“Allen,” I say quietly. “That’s a rocket ship bound for space. You want to be on it because it’s fast and sleek and exciting. But whoever mounts that baby is going to burn up as soon as they leave the launching pad. You know that. I know you know…”

“What did you… plan it or something?”

“Of course not,” I say. “But I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t stop it, and that’s because you’re my friend.”

“So what,” he says with a small smile, looking up at the dark sky then back at me. “I owe you two lives now?”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I say.

“I feel like I do,” he says, “even though I wanted to punch you in there.”

“Violent,” I say, skipping a rock of my own without getting up from my seat.

“That’s my father’s side,” he says. “To hear him tell it, I’m practically a clone. It makes my mom and me laugh.”

“Pretty crazy about your mom, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Dani Rangle is a long way from her. I’ll have to remind myself of that for the next one.”

“Well,” I say, rising from my seat and looking up. “Time for bed.”

“Good night,” Allen says.

“As your mom would say, don’t forget to brush your teeth,” I tell him, and he laughs.

I watch him from my bedroom as the tempo of the rain picks up. I lose his shape for a moment in the mist rising from the water. Then his rain-soaked shape appears from the gray and the back door slams shut. Thunder begins to crash and the blackness is shattered by white bursts of light. The trees bow down and one of the old spruces cracks like a cannon.

I listen to the storm rage and wait until after midnight before I sit down with a mug of green tea and start up the computer. The Villays are snug in their bed under a blue light occasionally lit bright by flashes of lightning outside. Christina’s mouth is open, her arm flung over her forehead. Villay himself is tossing and turning, muttering to himself, whining like a feverish child. His eyes are open, but stare blankly at the ceiling.

I split the screen so I can see the images projected onto the ceiling and Villay at the same time, then I start the sequence, just the way Chuck showed me. The instant Villay sees the image of his first wife’s face he shrieks like a sorority girl. His head twists from side to side, but his eyes seem frozen on the image, his body pinned to the bed.

In an eerie voice, the computer-generated image of Villay’s first wife begins to moan and shriek and it rises on the back of the howling storm outside, flailing above it then sinking back as if she were drowning all over again.

“You killed me, Dean,” she says, wailing. “You killed me. You murdered me. You and she. Murderers, Dean. I won’t leave you, Dean. You chose her, but now I’m back. I won’t leave you, Dean. You killed me…”

On and on she groans. For Villay, it is an unending nightmare. One he cannot escape. The drug in the green vial was perfected by the CIA in the eighties, before the end of the cold war. It opens gaping holes in the mind so that horrible images and sounds can be poured in without filter and slosh around to contaminate without end.

It won’t happen tonight. Or tomorrow night. But sooner or later, the drug will do its job.

It will break his mind.

51

“INCREDIBLE,” Rangle says, tapping an open copy of the Wall Street Journal that rests on top of the black onyx slab that makes up his desk. “Russian sweet crude through the roof. That’s the fifth perfect trend in two weeks.”

I clasp my hands behind my back and walk across the thick rug to the window. I can see New Jersey. The Statue of Liberty gleams, emerald in the last rays of the afternoon sun.

“I’m glad you’re pleased,” I say.

“Do you know what someone said they’re calling me?” Rangle asks. “The wizard of Wall Street. Do you think that’s a compliment?”

“Of course,” I say.

“It’s a jealous town,” he says, musing. He strokes his little mustache and then grasps his fingers.

“Pleased?” he says, shaking his head, grinning now. “My little girl’s head over heels in love. My wife is happy. No small feat there. Did I tell you that Vance International got me copies of the documents that draw a direct line from our Prince Andre all the way to Alexander III? I’d go out and buy a Powerball ticket if I didn’t know we were going to make more with our new Russian prince.”

I put my hand against the glass. It’s warm from the day.

“God, it’s a long way down,” I say in a low tone.

“Excuse me?” Rangle says. I hear his desk chair swivel my way.

“Did you ever look down?” I ask, glancing back at him. “It’s a weird feeling I get whenever I’m up high. What it would be like to have it all rushing up at you and you can’t stop it.”

Rangle is beside me now. He raps his knuckle on the window.

“Safety glass,” he says.

“That’s right. We’re safe,” I say. “We’re on the top. But just look.”

He glances at me. His eyes flicker down toward the street and the waterfront below. Cars crawl along like ants. People are specks that barely move. He clears his throat and moves back to his desk. The intercom buzzes and his secretary announces that his lawyer is on the line and says he needs to talk to him.

“Not now,” he says. “Tell him I’m with Seth Cole and I’ll get right back to him.”

I turn and take a seat facing his desk. I make a steeple of my fingertips and say, “On the twentieth, we’ll take a position in the Bank of Moscow. There will be a favorable announcement first thing on the twenty-third and the price will jump hard. It’ll happen fast and we’ll sell into the surge at four p.m. Moscow time.”

Rangle leans toward me. His hands grip the edge of the dark wood desktop.

“How much?” he asks. “I can leverage half a billion after what happened with the oil. Everyone will want in.”

“As much as you think is wise,” I say. “Just buy into it in ten-million-dollar blocks and make sure you use different brokerage houses.”

“Oh, what are you worried about?”

“Safety glass,” I say quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“My God,” Rangle says, exposing half his teeth behind a smile that’s close to a sneer. “This is it. The Russian market. I was on top in the late nineties and then I took a huge hit, but I told my wife, I said, ‘It will come again. One day, the opportunity will be there and I’ll jump on it.’”

He looks hard at me, narrowing his eyes. His ears seem to flatten and he says, “I want a billion.”

I nod my head and sigh.

“That sounds reasonable,” I say. “And while you’re at it, there’s something I’d like to do… for Allen.”

“Of course,” Rangle says, “he can get in at whatever level he wants. There’s no million-dollar minimum for a friend of yours, Seth. You know you don’t even have to ask, just tell me.”

“It’s not about the fund,” I say. “That’s too obvious. In fact, I want this entirely between you and me. Charity isn’t charity unless it’s anonymous. I want to help him indirectly. I understand his father is looking for an investor in his company.”

“He’s been looking,” Rangle says, twisting his lips. “And there’s a reason he hasn’t found one. That’s not for you, Seth. Very sketchy. Casinos. Hotels. In his mind if he can sell his partnerships, he can get into the Friars Club.”

“It wouldn’t be me,” I say. “But I have a friend who represents a group of Native Americans. They’ve got some casinos upstate and they want to get into Atlantic City. I was thinking I could put him in touch with Frank’s partners. Not even go through Frank. Buy his interests out and they all live happily ever after.”

“You’ll be the first person on the planet who wanted to do a favor for Frank Steffano,” Rangle said.

“I thought you were old friends,” I say.

“That’s a strong word,” Rangle says. “Frank is a pompous goombah. All this casino stuff has gone to his head, not to mention his ass. Wears a goddamned diamond pinky ring.”

“I’d really do it for Allen,” I say with a shrug.

Rangle writes something on a piece of paper and hands it across the desk to me.

“Ramo Capozza?” I say, looking at him.

“He’s out on Staten Island. Calls himself a businessman. A casino owner. Frank helped out his nephew when he was in some trouble up in Syracuse. Frank likes to tell everyone they were business partners in a development company, but he was a cop and I heard they ran a book until the nephew got murdered.”

“Think Ramo’s a football fan?”

“His business is gambling,” Rangle says.

“The first preseason game is next Friday,” I say.

“There you go.”

“So, how do I get in touch with him?”

“Actually,” Rangle says, picking up the phone. “My lawyer that just called me? He knows Capozza’s lawyer…”

Five minutes later I have a number.

52

I THANK RANGLE and head uptown. I’m meeting Dean Villay for dinner at Patroon. After a week, I grew weary of watching him suffer every night. Instead, I get a report every morning from Lawrence. Two days ago, he said Villay was very close, so I wanted to see him in person. The maître d’ shows me to a round high-backed leather booth. Villay looks up from his glass. I can smell the scotch. I extend my hand and notice that his is trembling, damp, and cold.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I say. I slide into the soft seat and the maître d’ puts a linen napkin in my lap.

Villay’s curly hair is matted. He is wearing a suit, but the knot on his tie is crooked and has been pulled loose. His eyes are red-rimmed, puffy, and moist, and there are several scabs on the side of his face. He picks at one of them and says, “I still want it.”

“I’m sorry?” I say, tilting my head. The sounds of the restaurant are muted.

The waiter appears and I order a sparkling water with lime and another scotch-a double-for the judge. Somewhere by the darkened windows a table of people laugh together, then break out in polite clapping that quickly fades.

The shoulders of Villay’s jacket are sprinkled with flakes of dandruff. He goes to work on a different scab and leans toward me, whispering.

“The Supreme Court. I don’t care about her,” he says. The ragged edges of his pupils gape open. “I care about Oliver Wendell Holmes. I want that. Think. Harlan, Rehnquist, Brennan. Great justices that no one but law students remember. And Holmes was known for his dissents. Opinions that didn’t even become law. The law is malleable. People don’t understand that. She doesn’t.”

“I felt bad that the weekend didn’t turn out,” I say. “And I wanted to check on you.”

Villay finishes his drink and smoothes out a wrinkle in the heavy linen tablecloth before clenching his empty hands.

“You know there’s nothing they can do?” he says, looking up at me through the tops of his eyes. “They complain about me. Say there’s something wrong…”

He pounds the table, jarring the silverware, and says, “Of course there’s something wrong. That’s everyone. We all have secrets. Don’t we? But I am appointed for life. No one can touch me. Even she can’t take it.”

As the waiter sets down the drinks, Villay picks at another scab. He winces and examines his finger. A crimson smear. His knee jiggles under the table. His eyes dart from side to side.

“You’re having trouble?” I say, squeezing the lime into my glass and taking a sip. Another waiter goes by with plates of steaks still sputtering from the grill, leaving a scented trail of seared meat.

Villay leans forward again, grabbing the new drink, whispering. “There should be a law against the jealousy of women. Now that would be jurisprudence. That would be helpful. They’re like cats. Bitter. Unforgiving. Relentless. Goddamn fucking demons.”

“You have a beautiful wife,” I say.

“She sleeps,” he says. “Beautiful, but do you think she feels? Do you think it even affects her? We went to that house… and she sleeps... but she caused it all to begin with.”

“Dean,” I say. “You need to rest.”

“Ha!” he shouts, and people turn to stare. Villay leans close again, lowering his voice. “That’s the last thing I need. I need Holmes. I need to write laws that squeeze the hordes into small spaces and cull them like a reaper.”

I leave a hundred-dollar bill on the table and get up.

“Where are you going?” Villay shrieks, licking his lips and hugging himself so hard that he rocks forward.

I look down on him, smile, and say, “You’ve lost your mind, old friend.”

“What friend? Are you giving it to me?” he says loudly, then puts a knuckle in his mouth and clamps down. Those oddly torn pupils widen, then contract.

The maître d’ appears beside me and says, “Is everything all right, sir?”

“Fine,” I say, tossing my napkin down on the seat. “Everything is just right.”

53

WHEN MY CAR PULLS INTO THE GATE of my Fifth Avenue home, I raise my eyebrows at the sight of Andre’s red Ferrari. My reports on Andre are that he spends every minute with Dani Rangle. She is showing him Manhattan in a big way. They drink rare champagne, eat gold-covered sushi, dance all night, and snort generous amounts of cocaine. Sometimes an expensive call girl will join them to finish things off at his flat.

Against my advice, Allen didn’t give up on Dani entirely and there was a scene at the China Club, where she threw a drink at him and Andre threatened to break his neck. Martin and some other friends dragged Allen out and that was the last of it, but it seemed to fuel the fire between Andre and Dani even more. Still, I know Andre hasn’t run out of money, even though he’s doing a good job trying, so I can’t imagine what would bring him here.

A servant opens my limo door before I can. I straighten the edges of my suit coat and readjust my tie knot as I walk up the broad marble stairs and into the cavernous foyer. Bert is waiting by the stairs, his eyes on the arched doors to the library.

“The dog leg?” I say, angling my head toward the doors.

Bert pinches his lips, nods, and says, “Better than that. Your old friend is with him.”

“Russo?”

“The scarecrow-face himself. Birds of a feather.”

“Where’s the girl?”

Bert shrugs and falls in behind me. I take a deep breath and exhale before opening the door.

Russo is sitting on the couch in front of my desk. Gone is his flap of hair. A shadow of razor stubble extends from his face all around the fringes of his round dome. He is thin and pale, and his shoulders have all but collapsed. He’s dressed in ratty jeans, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and a black knit cap that pushes those ears out even farther. His Adam’s apple jerks up and down in his neck and his bulging eyes dart back and forth between Andre and me. The insides of his arms are spotted with tiny bruises.

Andre is dressed in pleated navy slacks and a matching silk shirt open at the collar. A heavy chain hangs down to the smooth crease of his chest muscles. He’s treated himself to a Rolex and in his hand is a crystal decanter. He hands Russo a large snifter, fills it with bourbon, and then refills his own.

“Drink?” he asks, raising the decanter.

I sit down behind my desk and say, “No. Have a seat, Prince.”

“Yeah,” he says, half his mouth pulled up in a smile. He throws himself down sideways in a leather chair with his legs over the arm. “I like that. And we’ve got some business to discuss.”

He glares at me until I nod my head.

“My former partner here is down on his luck. So, he naturally sees how things are going for me and he wonders if he can get in on some of the good fortune. I guess you two know each other anyway, right?”

Russo won’t look at me, but he is nodding his head so that his dorsal-fin nose cuts the air. Under his breath, he says, “Yep, that’s Arthur Bell.”

I slip open the top drawer of my desk and wrap my fingers around a Glock 9mm that has been fitted with a silencer. Everything is too close to happening for my plan to be disrupted by these two. I’ve got my in to Frank. Villay is on the edge. Rangle’s financial empire is about to crash. I expected Andre to run off with Rangle’s daughter or at least drag her down into addiction; she is Rangle’s brightest jewel, and that would make his ruin complete. But I can’t be greedy. I’ll have to do without these two.

“You’re a lot of people at once, apparently,” Andre says, grinning at me and raising his glass before taking a swig. “And that’s okay with us. We just want to get paid for the information, same as we would if we sold it to, say, the Post or someone. You’re becoming an important man, Quick Buck-Seth Cole-Arthur Bell-Running Deer. Owning the Jets and all that.”

“I think I have something that will make everyone happy,” I say. “Bert, would you get that small suitcase that I keep in the upstairs vault?”

“The…”

“The brown alligator suitcase,” I say. “In the vault. If you go, you’ll find it.”

Andre sets down his snifter and shifts in his seat. From his waist, he pulls out a jet black Colt.45 and points it at my head.

“Nothing funny, Bert,” he says, curling his lip up away from his teeth. “I’m not here to fuck around.”

“You’ll like what he’s got,” I say, letting go of the Glock and easing back in my chair.

Russo stands up and says, “Andre, we-”

“Sit down! You just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. You wanted some payout,” Andre says without taking his eyes off me. “I’m getting it for you. With the money this guy’s got, you sure as fuck don’t need mine.”

Bert returns and sets down the suitcase on the coffee table between Andre and Russo.

“Open it,” Andre tells his partner.

Russo fumbles with the latch and pops it open. His eyes get wide and shiny. He takes a small knife from his pocket, nicks a bag, and touches his finger to the white powder inside. He puts his finger in his mouth, looks at Andre, and says, “Heroin. It’s pure.”

“About five million dollars’ worth,” I say. “A gift from me to you. To help keep your partner from having to sell a story that wouldn’t help any of us.”

“Yeah,” Andre says, nodding his head and getting to his feet. “A gift. We can all still get along. We’re having a good time, you and me, aren’t we, Seth Cole?”

“Things are going very well,” I say.

Russo closes the suitcase. Andre and he back out of the room.

“No hard feelings,” Andre says. “You know I’m working on that guitar.”

“No problem. You two are doing me a favor. Our deal still stands,” I say, and they’re gone.

Bert stands looking at me for a moment, then says, “I thought you were going to kill those snakes.”

“I thought about it,” I say. “But I think this will work even better. I got the heroin from the Russians who run the market. Under the circumstances, I didn’t want to refuse it, and now I’ve put it to good use.”

I pick up the phone and call my contact at Vance International, asking them to put two agents on Andre, twenty-four hours a day.

“Just watch him. If he hurts anyone,” I say into the phone, “then just tell your men to point the police his way and stay out of sight.”

When I put down the phone, Bert says, “You know they’ll be back for more.”

“Well, it will take even Andre some time to work through that,” I say. “And by then, a lot of things can happen.”

54

BERT AND I RIDE in the back of my limousine down the steep ramp and into the dark gut of Giants Stadium. At the head of the tunnel leading out onto the field, we get out and watch as Ramo Capozza’s long car pulls to a stop behind ours. An eight-year-old boy wearing a Kevin Mawae jersey gets out, followed by a burly gray-haired man with thick eyeglasses and a stooped, shuffling gait. The boy is Joey Capozza and he holds his great-grandfather’s hand without shame. There are three other men in suits who surround the Capozzas, carefully examining the tunnel with their scowling eyes. Their mouths are clenched tight and you can see the muscles rippling in their jaws.

I greet the old man and the boy warmly and introduce Bert as my good friend and business associate Mr. Washington. Capozza eyes him carefully up and down. Bert smiles and winks at the kid and we all walk out of the tunnel together with the three suits creating a perimeter.

As we step out onto the turf, a security guard in a yellow windbreaker touches my hand and says, “No one on the field.”

Another guard grabs him and yanks him away, saying, “That’s Mr. Cole.”

“Sorry, Mr. Cole,” the man says, and I nod to him.

Our little group is the only one on the field besides the Jets players and their opponents, who warm up in their football pants and jerseys without the shoulder pads. The white glow of the stadium lights give the turf a false hue, and you can smell that it’s not real. The air is still warm, but a cool breeze makes it pleasant to be outside.

“Pappa,” the boy says, tugging his great-grandfather’s sleeve. “It’s Kevin Mawae and Dave Szott. Look.”

“Come on,” I say, “let’s talk to them.”

“Can we?” the boy asks.

“Sure.”

The two enormous players are all grins. They sign the boy’s shirt and call Chad Pennington over to meet him too. The boy bounces on his toes and makes circles around his great-grandfather as we walk back inside the tunnel to make our way upstairs. Ramo Capozza wears a silent grin. He nods to me and quietly says thank you.

Inside the suite, we sit in the front row of the box with the Capozza muscle standing behind us drinking cans of Diet Coke. The game begins, and Joey informs Bert and me who all the players are and what they do.

“I’m sorry,” Ramo Capozza says, his brown eyes large but twinkling behind their thick lenses. “Joey, I’m sure Mr. Cole knows his own team.”

“Not as well as some people,” I say, ruffling the boy’s hair. “It’s more of an investment for me.”

“I understand you’re doing quite well with your investing since you’ve come to New York,” he says.

I nod and say, “I’ve certainly expanded what I’m involved in. It used to be just art. Bert is interested in diversifying too.”

“I understand that from you,” Ramo says, “but we weren’t able to find out much more about Mr. Washington.”

“The Akwesasne are a secretive group by nature,” I say with a soft laugh. “But I know that when you see Bert’s financials, you’ll be comfortable bringing his group in as investors. I understand you have a partner who’s looking to get out and I just thought… well, that it would be good to put the two of you together, Mr. Capozza.”

The older man says nothing more. We watch the game until the second half. Since it’s a preseason game, the first-team players are taken out. The boy’s eyelids begin to droop and he puts his head on his great-grandfather’s shoulder. Ramo Capozza nods to one of the men in back and he scoops the boy out of the seat, cradling him in his arms.

“I think it’s time for us to go,” Capozza says, shaking my hand. Then he hands a card to Bert. “Call me, Mr. Washington. I’d like to talk more and maybe you could bring us some of that financial information. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but Frank’s interest is worth around a hundred million dollars.”

“That’s right around what Bert’s group is looking to do,” I say, and Bert nods.

We thank Mr. Capozza for his time and see him to the door of the suite. He thanks us for giving him a night his great-grandson won’t forget.

“Jesus,” Bert says when they’re gone. “Did you see those three guys? They make Andre look like a choirboy.”

“This is the big leagues, Bert.”

“And you’re going to send me into a meeting with all those guys without you?”

“You’ll do fine,” I say, taking a can of Bud Light out of the refrigerator and cracking it open for him. “You did great tonight.”

“Yeah,” Bert says, “with an old man and a little kid.”

“Don’t let that ‘old man’ fool you. His teeth are razor-sharp.”

“Exactly,” Bert says, “and I just want to make sure it’s not us that get bitten.”

55

WE’RE RIDING IN THE BACK of the limo, quiet in the darkness, when Bert says, “How about you have a beer with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you and me. How about we just have a beer, like we used to when you lived in my trailer. Remember that?”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“Good days, huh?” he says, and I see his massive shape leaning over and I hear him rattling around in the ice chest.

“Not bad,” I say. “A little cramped.”

“Yeah, that shower wasn’t no marble cathedral like that thing you got now. But sometimes I miss just having a bologna sandwich with ketchup on white bread. You?”

I hear the snip and clink of two bottles being opened. Bert hands me one. A Molson Golden that makes me smile. We touch the lips of glass together and drink.

“I like good food,” I say. “Good food and red meat.”

“I see how you eat those steaks. That ’cause you got hungry in jail?”

“I did get hungry,” I said.

“That go away any?”

I take another swig of beer and think about it. We’re crossing the GW Bridge now and I can see all the lights of Manhattan.

“You want to thumb wrestle?” I ask.

“I thought we didn’t do that no more,” he says. “I thought we’re a little too fancy for that.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to see us back here,” I say, and hold out my hand. I pin him quickly and he immediately wants to go best out of three. He beats me once and then I get him again and it becomes best out of five. He gets me the next two and then we’re done because by then it was best out of seven.

“You ever notice how you have to keep going until you win?” I ask him.

“That’s ’cause thumb wrestling is my thing,” he says. “Like fucking these people over is your thing.”

“Exact revenge,” I say, more to myself than to him.

“What?”

“When someone does something to wrong you,” I say, “you exact revenge. You take it. But it’s exact too in its precision. It’s about respect.”

Bert only grunts.

“You’re the one who told me one time that you’d kill Villay if you ever had the chance, you remember that?” I say.

“Yeah, that’s different,” he says. “In the old days, the Akwesasne warriors would tomahawk their enemies who fell on the battlefield. That wasn’t the way it was with all the tribes. The Hurons? They’d skin ’em while they were still alive and boil them. That’s pretty exact, huh? The white man’s like that, but in a sneaky way. I think you get this from your dad’s side.”

“In a way,” I say, thinking of Lester.

The car dips down into a tunnel and we lose sight of the city around us. Bert drinks the next beer on his own, and neither of us says anything until we get out in front of the mansion and we say good night.

When I get to my bedroom, I feel something. A dark figure is tucked into the curtains by the balcony. My heart races and I ease my way over toward the night table. There is a gun in the drawer.

I think of Andre, Russo, Villay, Rangle, and Frank all at once.

“Seth?”

“Helena?” I say, exhaling. I step into the broad strip of light that falls into the bedroom from between the curtains.

She moves into the same light and throws her arms around my shoulders.

“Don’t do that.”

“I saw you and Bert come in,” she says. “Standing in the curtains is lucky for me.”

“I thought you were in Toronto.”

“I was.”

“I thought tomorrow was Boston.”

“It is,” she says, putting her nose in my chest. “Did you miss me?”

“I always miss you.”

“So, you’re glad I’m here?” she asks.

“Always.”

“Is there someone else?” She pulls away and looks up at me.

“Is that why you were watching?” I ask quietly.

“You’re different since we came here,” she says. “There’s something.”

“Work,” I say. “Just work.”

I kiss her and we move toward the bed.

In the middle of the night, my eyes shoot open. I am breathing hard. Helena is wrapped around me and I twist free and sit up, dabbing at the dampness on my upper lip. I saw Villay, twisting in his sheets. I heard him moan. And scream.

It is 3:37. I look at the computer on the desk across the room and I get up and get dressed. I resist the urge to turn on the computer. Instead, I sit out on the balcony, watching the sky above the park change from black to purple to blue while I wait for the day to come.

At 6 a.m., I am in the second-floor dining room, having breakfast with Bert, when my cell phone rings.

“He did it,” says Chuck Lawrence. “It’ll be on the news if you want to see. I waited until now to call. Didn’t want to wake you.”

“What did he do?” I ask. Bert is looking at me.

“Killed the wife,” Lawrence says. “Strangled her. Then went running through the neighborhood in his boxers crying like a baby. I went in as soon as he left and got our stuff out of there. I’ve seen some bad stuff, but… Jesus.”

“Where is he now?”

“They took him straight to Winthrop Hospital,” he says, “that’s where I am. They got him locked up in a rubber room.”

By the time the psychiatrists are finished with their initial assessments and I am able to buy my way into Dean Villay’s rubber room it’s nearly noon. He is lying in the corner wrapped in a straitjacket, sedated. His breathing is shallow and he stares vacantly at the empty wall. His face is sunken and gray and his forehead gleams with a thin sheen of sweat.

His blood-red eyes widen when I kneel and put my face in front of his. The torn pupils are fully dilated, like black stars. I speak in a whisper.

“Do you know who I am?” I say.

His eyes grow wider yet. He nods that he does.

“Cole,” he says in a mutter.

“No,” I say, keeping my voice very low. I put my lips next to his ear. “Look close. Look at my eyes. It’s me… Raymond White. I’m back.”

I look at him again, staring until his face crumples in agony, his eyes locked on mine.

“You can’t be,” he says. “You’re dead.”

His arms begin to squirm inside the canvas straitjacket, making the buckles clink like small spoons. A choking noise bubbles up from his throat. His head starts to shake and jerk from side to side before he explodes into an unending wail.

I put my fingers in my ears and stand up, looking down on him while he twists and shrieks until his throat is torn and an attendant comes in, nervously taking me by the arm and leading me away.

56

THE WINDSHIELD WIPERS slapped erratically across the cracked glass, making the dark road ahead barely discernible through the rainbow smudge. Andre rubbed the back of his neck, tired from holding it at an angle so he could see out of the one strip that the blade wiped clear. The play in the wheel of the ’72 International Harvester made steering the wet, windy back roads a constant battle.

“Piece of shit,” he said, stubbing out his Marlboro in the ashtray and slapping the dashboard. In the back was most of the heroin, along with three hundred and sixty thousand dollars in cash. They had dumped some of their smack in Syracuse and gotten rid of a little more outside Utica.

Andre wasn’t going to do anything stupid, though. He knew the best places for him to unload it were up at the border where it would go to Montreal. He wasn’t going to get caught up with another Haitian deal. He was selling only to people he knew. Then, when he had his money, he could go back to New York and check out Seth Cole again to see what else he might have.

“Should have taken that fancy car of yours,” Russo said from the backseat, offering up a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

“Shut the fuck up,” Andre said, swiping the bottle from him and taking a pull. Dani was asleep, curled up on the seat next to him. Like him, she wore jeans and a white tank top T-shirt. He nudged her.

“Whaaat,” she said in a long groan.

“Want some?” he said, nudging her still.

“Fuck off,” she said and pulled her jean jacket up off the floor and over her head.

“Bitch,” Andre said, nudging her with his elbow hard enough in the head to make her sit up and blink. “Have some.”

She took the bottle and tipped it up. Amber liquid dribbled down her chin and she swallowed until it was gone.

“I love a girl that swallows,” Andre said, and she cuffed him playfully on the back of the head.

“Where’d you find this piece of shit, anyway?” Andre asked Russo, looking at his ugly mug in the rearview mirror. “The junkyard?”

“Got it for four hundred dollars,” Russo said, frowning. “So I don’t know what you expect. You better believe I’ll be buying myself a Mercedes as soon as we get back to civilization. Hey, what are we gonna drink now? There’s no liquor stores open.”

Instead of answering, Andre focused on an all-night gas station up ahead. He pulled in and handed Russo a hundred-dollar bill.

“Go get a case of something good. Michelob or something. And ask them if there’s a decent place to get some rest around here.”

“There ain’t no Ritz-Carltons,” Russo said, hopping out. “I can tell you that.”

“He’s an asshole,” Dani said in a slurred voice when he was gone. She was staring straight ahead.

Andre looked up through the smeared windshield at the bright green and yellow of the BP sign and in a detached voice said, “I know.”

“Why’d we even bring that ugly bastard?” she asked. “He gives me the creeps. Why are we riding in this piece of shit?”

“This is America, honey,” he said. “I want to see how the real people live.”

“You’re talking funny.”

“I been talking funny for a month,” he said. “Now, why don’t you give me a kiss.”

“He’s coming.”

“So what,” Andre said, grabbing the soft part of her thigh and squeezing. “Maybe we’ll let him watch tonight.”

“You’re sick,” she said, and licked his neck.

“I think you’d like that,” he said, and swirled his own tongue in her ear.

The rear door opened. Russo slipped in, brushing the rain off his shoulders, and said, “Hey, hey, cut it out. There’s a motel about two miles up Route 12 with HBO, can you save it?”

“We might let you watch tonight,” Andre said.

Russo cracked open a can and shifted in his seat.

“You want a beer?” he said. “I got some sandwiches too.”

Andre busted out laughing and Dani did too.

“You’re both fucked up,” Russo said, sniffing the air with that big nose and tugging at the collar of his yellow Polo shirt with its tiny blue horseman.

Andre made Russo go inside the motel office and get two connecting rooms on the end. Inside, they put their bags down and met at the little round veneer table in Russo’s room. Russo set out three silver cans of beer and Andre took out some needles, surgical tube, a Bunsen burner, and a spoon. He lit a Marlboro and let it dangle from his mouth while he got to work. Dani slipped her jean jacket off, lit a cigarette of her own, and watched him, the blue flame of the burner reflecting double in her dark eyes.

“Lie on the bed,” Andre said when the needle was ready. He inhaled deeply and stubbed out his cigarette.

She stubbed out hers too, then lay down in the sagging middle of the dingy bedspread and held out her arm. Andre wrapped her upper arm with the tube, stuck the needle into her vein, and removed the tube while he shot her up. Dani’s eyes rolled up. She began to moan and squirm lazily on the bed.

Andre grinned at Russo and said, “You want to go next?”

“Sure,” Russo said, raising his can and drinking some of the beer.

After he set it down, he lit up a Newport before he looked at Andre, exhaled the smoke, and said, “Now that she’s in la-la land, I want to ask you something.”

“Ask,” Andre said, tapping some powder from the bag into the spoon without taking his eyes off it.

“I heard you say something to her earlier about her cut,” Russo said, taking a drag, the ember burning bright.

Andre looked up and noticed that as Russo brought the beer can to his lips it trembled slightly. So did the Newport.

“You giving her some of yours?” Russo asked, taking a gulp and replacing the cigarette.

Andre’s grin grew wide and he narrowed his eyes at Russo through the smoke and said, “No. I was talking about her cut. She’s with us. She gets a cut.”

“’Cause the way I see it,” Russo said, opening another can of beer, taking another drag, and studying the table in front of him, “it’s you and me are partners. I don’t see me giving part of my share to her. It was you and me all along, and now all of a sudden she’s here. And I know she’s your girl, but that doesn’t make her a partner…”

Russo looked up to see Andre studying him and said, “Well? That’s fair, right?”

“I think the liquor’s talking for you,” Andre said.

“We’re gonna make five million dollars and I want my half!” Russo screamed, banging his fist down on the table.

57

THE BEER CAN WENT OVER. Beer foamed out of it in a bubbling pool that started to run across the small table toward Andre. He didn’t move, even when the river of beer ran over the lip of the table, spattering the leg of his jeans. Andre just stared and smiled. Dani groaned happily from the bed.

With the cigarette hanging from his mouth, Russo jumped up and began to mop the spilled beer away from Andre as if he were hoarding gold. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and hissed out in the mess. Russo used his bare bruised arm to sweep it onto the rug, then dried it on his leg as he sat back down.

“Jesus, I got shot in that Haitian deal. You fucking shot me in the leg, man. I could have talked and gotten off and you’d be in jail,” Russo said. The corners of his mouth were pulled tight and he ran his hand over the stubble of his scalp, knocking off the black cap. “You don’t want that.”

“Are you gonna cry?” Andre said.

Russo’s face was twisting up, wrinkling that nose and making his eyes squint.

“I want my share, Andre,” he said, starting to blubber. “This is all because of me. It isn’t fair!”

Andre took a deep breath and sighed through puckered lips. In one quick movement, he reached down, pulled the gun from his waist, snapped home a round, and had it pointing directly in Russo’s face.

Russo winced and turned his head away, bringing his hands up as if he could block the bullet. Andre sprang to his feet, sending the chair clattering into the wall.

“You want a share? You want your own big share?” Andre said through gritted teeth. “Fuck you!”

The gun blast was deafening in the small space and it even got Dani’s attention.

“Wow,” she said.

Russo was on his side, rabbit-kicking away at the carpet as if his feet could take him away. But the blood coursing from a dark hole just in front of his ear began to slow to a dribble and his kicking became nothing more than a dying tremble.

“Fuck,” Andre said.

He stuffed the gun back in his pants and cracked open the door, peering slowly outside until he was sure no one was around. He waited there for several minutes. Not even a light went on. He went back inside and began to look around. From the bathroom he grabbed a towel and began rubbing the surfaces of everything he or Dani had touched. Doorknobs. The spoon. The needle. The chair. The faucet in the bathroom.

He loaded their bags back into the old truck, then heaved Dani over his shoulder and slumped her down in the front seat. He made one last check, leaving the bag of heroin, before tossing the towel down in the pouring rain and jumping back into the truck. He turned north onto Route 12 and checked his rearview mirror.

His mind started gnawing over all the things he could have done differently, starting with the shooting and going all the way back to when Russo showed up in the first place. He should have gone to Seth then. He had a good thing going and now he had fucked it up just like everything else. He wondered if it was the curse his old man had put on him when Andre beat the hell out of him with a tire iron. He thought about that bloody mess and his old man’s words: I’ll fuck you over from the grave, I swear.

But in a funny way, beating his old man’s head in was what got him on the road to independence. From that time on, people respected him. He was nobody’s fool, not even Bonaparte’s. He was the one who got the women and the drugs and the kicks, and that’s what money was for anyway. He’d beat this trap same as he had the others. How could he be down when he had the drugs and the girl, and hadn’t it been a kick to see the look on Russo’s face right before he shot him? Not a lot of people got to see that.

He smiled at Dani and flicked his finger against her ass. She groaned, eyes fluttering, and smiled at him.

Andre sighed deeply and smiled back.

His heart rate had started to even out and he was thinking about where he’d dump the gun when he saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror.

“Fuck!” he said, punching his foot to the floor.

Dani looked back and slowly said, “Wow. This is so fucked.”

There was more than one car now, and even as he accelerated up that dark wet highway, they seemed to be closing in. His mind raced to think of a place where he could turn off. Turn off the highway and run. He could survive in these woods if he had to. He’d done it before.

After the bridge over the Big Moose River, there was a bend at the top of the hill and an old logging road right after it. He was almost there and he would briefly be out of sight of the police cars. He thought about the duffel bag full of cash. He could carry that and Seth Cole’s suitcase full of drugs and be gone without a trace in this rain. Dani would have to stay behind, and he indulged himself in a small hit of pity.

Andre saw the bridge and he felt a fresh surge of adrenaline firing up the nerves behind his eyeballs. The road ran down and he was just to the bridge when a cop car pulled up off the side road on the other side with its lights flashing.

“Fuck!” he screamed, slamming the wheel, but not letting up on the gas.

The cop car came straight at him, driving right down the middle of the bridge.

“Die, motherfucker!” Andre screamed, heading dead at him, picking up speed.

At the last second, the cop car tried to swerve, but fishtailed instead. Andre smashed into the rear quarter and the big truck spun, rocked, and plunged through the guardrail. The truck seemed to hang in the air, suspended in space. Silent. Peaceful.

Then it dropped. Andre braced himself, outscreaming Dani as the heavy truck plummeted a hundred feet to the rocky riverbed.

58

BERT IS DRESSED in a new gray pinstriped Zegna suit with four buttons on the jacket. His burgundy tie is in a Windsor knot. Miraculously, we found a pair of Ferragamo fifteen double E wingtips. On his wrist is a big silver-and-gold Rolex Submariner.

Chuck Lawrence is fidgeting with the pin in the tie that is really a camera. He lets go and gets on his tiptoes to peer up into Bert’s ear.

“Comfortable?” he asks.

“You can’t see it, can you?” Bert asks, fingering his ear.

“Don’t touch it,” Chuck says, and disappears out the front door.

“I don’t know about these stripes,” Bert says, looking down.

“They make you look less like a refrigerator,” I say. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. You’re everything you’re saying you are, and I’ll be right there in your ear.”

“Yeah,” he says, putting a breath strip into his mouth and replacing the package in his coat pocket, “I’m an Indian from upstate. But I don’t own any casinos or know anything about big business. How’s it going to come off when I’m just repeating the stuff you say in my ear? My grandmother used to say that a skunk in a possum’s coat still smells like a skunk.”

“When they see your bank records,” I say, handing him the portfolio, “all they’ll smell is money.”

“Did you have to call it the Iroquois Group and be so fucking obvious?” he asks.

“It’s a sentimental thing with me,” I say. We are standing in the foyer of the mansion on Fifth Avenue. I open the front door and follow Chuck down the steps toward the white utility van with a boomerang antenna. In front of it is my limousine. “Let’s get going, will you? If you’re late, that’ll piss them off.”

Bert looks down at his watch and shuffles after me. He gets into the limo. In the back of the van are two captain’s chairs and a metal desk beneath a bank of electronics with four different TV monitors. I get in the back, sit down next to Chuck, and put on my headset.

I push a red button in front of me on the desk and say, “Bert, do you hear me?”

“Jesus, not so fucking loud,” Bert says.

The camera gives me a fish-eye view of the inside of the limo, and now Bert’s scowling face dips down into the top of the picture. Chuck Lawrence adjusts some knobs and says, “How’s that.”

“Better,” Bert says, but his tone is surly.

“You’ll be fine,” I say.

Chuck climbs hunchbacked into the front of the van and gets behind the wheel. We follow the limo across the 59th Street Bridge and down into Long Island City.

I watch and listen. When Bert picks up the Post off the seat and begins to go through it, I realize that I’m holding my breath. After I read the papers this morning, they went right in the trash so he wouldn’t see. I try to make some small talk, but he keeps on turning the pages, even when I start blabbing about the Jets’ upcoming game.

I already know the item on Dani Rangle is on page eleven. Two inches. No picture. The small headline reads, FINANCIER’S DAUGHTER DIES. I think maybe Bert will miss it, but he doesn’t. The paper rattles and he pulls the lower corner of the page closer to his face.

After a few seconds he puts the small story right up to the camera lens in his tie, rattles the paper loudly, and says, “Did you know this?”

I sigh and press the red button. “Let’s not worry about that now, okay?”

“You knew,” he says. “Jesus.”

I stab the red button and ask, “What’s Jesus got to do with it?”

“She was just nineteen, that’s what,” he says, looking down into the camera, his nostrils like two dark caves. “First Villay’s wife and now this.”

“She was no fucking Girl Scout,” I say, stabbing the button and blurting out the words before I realize I’m talking about someone who’s dead.

Bert is quiet for a minute, long enough for me to wonder what has happened to my soul.

He folds up the paper and sets it down on the seat. I see him angle his chin out the window. Finally, in a low rumble, he nods his head and says, “Yeah. You’re right. She was going down anyway. No problem.”

His tone isn’t convincing.

When we get to the East River Yacht Club, the limo goes in but we drive past and park on the road where we can see the big modern building, a rectangle of concrete with smoky horizontal windows. Across the East River are the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan surrounding the silver jewel of the Chrysler Building. There are other limousines out in front of the Yacht Club and men in dark suits patrolling the perimeter whose jackets are bulging with automatic weapons.

“Bert,” I say into my headset, “you’re with me, right?”

“Right here,” Bert says. “Ice in my veins. Skunk in a possum suit.”

“Good,” I say.

Bert is frisked by the men at the door and led inside. He goes up the stairs and through a lobby. In the back, overlooking the river, is a long room with a conference table. Nearly a dozen men are sitting around with small espresso cups in front of them on saucers with small lemon peel shavings. Frank sits in the middle of the group facing the water. Ramo Capozza is at one end of the table and there is a chair for Bert at the other, where he sits down.

“It’s good to see you, Mr. Washington,” Capozza says.

“Thanks,” Bert says.

Someone sets down a cup of espresso in front of Bert along with a sugar bowl and some cream. Bert lays down the portfolio on the table in front of him, but doesn’t touch the coffee.

“Thank you for meeting with me, gentlemen,” I whisper.

Bert glances down at his tie and stiffly repeats my words.

“Holy crap,” Chuck Lawrence says under his breath.

“Don’t look at your tie,” I say in an even lower whisper.

“Don’t look at-” Bert begins to say, then after an uncomfortable pause he recovers. “I mean, would you like to look at these bank papers?”

All the men are looking down the length of the table at him. It is Frank who smiles and says, “Damn right I would. Hand that stuff down here, would you, Jim?”

The portfolio is passed down by the man on Bert’s left, and Frank tears it open and begins to pull out the papers. His eyes are narrowed and his massive jowls shake under the effort it takes him to breathe. The diamond ring on his finger flashes on his fluttering hands.

“In a real hurry, aren’t you, Frank?” says a man on the other side of the table with a pocked face, a bulbous nose, and a dark widow’s peak of slicked-back hair. “I guess our business isn’t clean enough for you and all your Park Avenue friends, huh?”

Frank stops what he’s doing and looks from the pit-faced man to Ramo Capozza.

Capozza intertwines his fingers and says, “Dominic, Frank has been a good partner for a long time. He’s ready to do other things. That’s not a sin. I told you, I like the fact that Mr. Washington’s group is a new and legitimate source of financing. They know the industry, so I think this could be a good opportunity for everyone. I don’t want bitterness…”

The man called Dominic folds his hands and dips his head. The rest of the room is silent. A tugboat going by outside sounds its horn. Finally, Bert clears his throat and shifts in his seat. Ramo Capozza nods at Frank and Frank digs back into the papers. He scans one, then another, and slides them down the table toward Capozza. The man to Capozza’s right, thin and angular, wearing a creamy brown suit, puts on a pair of gold reading glasses and examines the papers as well.

I’m pretty sure the most interesting one would be the statement from The Bank of Zurich showing a statement from the Iroquois Group for one hundred thirty-seven million dollars. The other would be the state certificate of incorporation showing Bert Washington as the president of the Iroquois Group.

The man leans toward Capozza and whispers in his ear. Capozza nods. Bert clears his throat again and this time begins to cough. I lift the headset away from my ears and look over at Chuck, who’s doing the same thing. When Bert’s done, I put the headset back on to catch a few words of Bert’s.

“-over the numbers,” Bert is saying.

The men all stare at him. Some start to mutter.

“What did he say?” I say in a hiss to Chuck with my hand over the microphone. Chuck shrugs.

“I think everyone should relax,” Capozza said, raising his hand. “Donald has the books. It’s nothing the different corporations don’t already give to the IRS, so let’s not get excited. The fact that Mr. Washington’s group is thorough is the sign that they’re a good group of businessmen and they’ll be good partners.”

The man with the reading glasses reaches down and sets a box of three-ring binders on the table. The box is pushed all the way down to Bert. Bert sits silent.

“It shouldn’t take our accountants much more than a week to check through these, then, if you gentlemen are still willing, we’ll have a deal,” I say into Bert’s ear.

He repeats it stiffly. Frank squints at him and rolls his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

Ramo Capozza slaps his aging hands gently on the tabletop and says, “Very good, Mr. Washington. We appreciate your coming by. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some more business here before I meet my daughter for lunch.”

Bert doesn’t move.

In his ear I say, “Go shake his hand.”

“Go sha-” Bert starts to say, then stands up and continues. “I’m going to go. Now. Thank you very much.”

He picks up the box, moves down the length of the table, and shakes Ramo’s hand, then walks out the door. A man leads him through the hall and down the steps.

Bert is actually out the door when I hear Frank say, “Hey, Bert, do you mind if I call you Bert?”

Bert turns and there he is. Frank. Massive. Greasy. But with manicured hands and a three-thousand-dollar suit. A lump swells in my chest.

“No,” Bert says.

“Good,” Frank says. “Hey, Ramo told me it was Seth Cole who introduced you. That right?”

“Yes,” I say in Bert’s ear. “Tell him yes.”

“Yes,” Bert says stiffly.

Frank angles his head, still looking at Bert. A small smile creeps on his face.

“Yeah, well… tell him from me… thanks. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bert says. He turns away and steps toward the open door of my limo.

“Hey,” Frank says, causing Bert to turn toward him again. “Don’t think you’re going to pull any funny stuff with those records…

“The last Indian war didn’t go so well for you guys.”

59

FRANK RUBBED HIS TEETH back and forth against the face of his thumbnail. His eyes were looking out the window, but he wasn’t really seeing any of the storefronts on 49th Street, he was just staring. When the car pulled up in front of the Diamond Men’s Club, Frank waited for his driver to open the door. A bullnecked bodybuilder dressed in a tuxedo hurried outside to hold open the door to the club.

“Good morning, Mr. Steffano,” the kid said.

Frank didn’t bother to take the thumbnail away from his teeth when he asked, “Mickey in?”

“Seven a.m., same as always,” the kid said, rushing to open the inner door. The girl in the cashier’s booth stopped chewing her gum to stare.

It was dark inside and the red lights pulsed with the music. On the main stage a blonde girl who looked like she was about fifteen worked the brass pole at the end of the middle runway. Two guys in cowboy hats offered up creased dollar bills. Five or six other men in rumpled business suits were spread out in the dark, sitting at small round tables drinking twenty-dollar drinks.

Frank snuck up on the bartender and watched carefully as he poured a drink, then walked down the stairs, across the floor to the far wall, where he let himself past another musclehead and into the back. He passed a changing room where two half-naked girls were looking at their faces in the mirror and laughing about something. Mickey’s office was in the very back, across the hall from Frank’s. Frank knocked five times with a rhythm that was Mickey’s special code, and after a minute the bolt lock clicked and the door opened.

“What?” Mickey said in his grouchy nasal wheeze before he peered up through his glasses and saw that it was Frank. “Frank. What are you doing here so early?”

“Why?” Frank asked, pushing the door so the knob rattled against the inside wall. “You doing something you shouldn’t be? How come any time I come here during the day everyone acts real nervous?”

The space was cramped, and he kept Mickey there instead of letting him use his own spacious office across the hall even though he rarely used it himself and Mickey was there practically twenty-four seven.

“If someone was gonna try to take you, Frank,” Mickey said, “they’d be doing it at night. We don’t make enough money during the day to pay the phone bill. You’re just intimidating. That’s why they’re nervous.”

“Good,” Frank said. He pulled up a chrome and leather chair across from Mickey’s desk. On top of it sat an open folder with some account sheets, a computer, and an ashtray piled high with spent cigarettes and snowy ash. Behind the desk were a massive safe and two gray file cabinets. Mickey sat down and lit a cigarette, his small fingers struggling to hold the match steady.

“You’re shaking,” Frank said.

Mickey nodded toward the wall that was lined with pictures of his wife and their two teenage kids. The boy was a miniature of Mickey, small and sneaky-looking with big ears, except the boy didn’t wear glasses and he hadn’t lost most of his kinky orange hair.

“She’s leaving,” he said.

“Your wife?”

Mickey nodded.

“She can’t do that. You want me to have someone talk to her?”

“No,” Mickey said, exhaling. “Let her go. I got an apartment already and that little blonde thing from Sioux City is moving in.”

“The girl out there on the pole?”

“How’s your wife?” Mickey asked, squinting one eye at Frank through the smoke.

“Mickey,” Frank said after a moment’s pause, “how’s our books?”

“Clean.”

“I’m not talking just here. I mean the whole crapshoot. The casinos. The hotels. The clubs.”

“Clean,” Mickey said with a little less conviction.

“How clean?” Frank said, shifting his bulk toward the desk. “Clean enough so if a bunch of hotshot lawyers and accountants dug in there’s nothing doing?”

“The way we got it set, it’d be a real shell game. Someone pretty smart would have to have, like, the books from all the companies, and sit down to compare one to the other and have a pretty quick eye to see what you got going on.”

“Fuck,” Frank said.

“Why?”

“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about that. I need to find some things out about a couple of guys.”

“Who?”

“Guy named Seth Cole who bought the Jets and his friend, this Bert Washington guy who says he’s with a group of Indians who own some of those casinos upstate.”

“How much? How soon?”

“All I can and yesterday,” Frank said. “And I want you to use all our cops.”

“That much?”

“If you need to empty that fucking safe behind you, you do it, understand?” Frank said, making a fist. “I want to know who these motherfuckers are and what they’re doing.”

Mickey was sitting up straight now and blinking, looking around the room like he was expecting someone to pop up out of nowhere and kill him.

“Ah, I’m just jumpy. Maybe everything’s just fine,” Frank said, waving his hand in the air and easing back in his chair so that it gave a little groan. He looked over at a picture of Mickey and his family on a beach somewhere and his eyes lost their focus. “I’m so fucking close, Mick. This deal is so perfect.”

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said, putting his thumbnail back against his teeth, his eyes still on the photograph. “But if it is, I ain’t gonna just sit here and take it. You get the money ready too. In case we got to run.”

“Run?” Mickey said. “Hey, I don’t see running from those guys, Frank. You don’t run from them.”

“Oh yeah?” Frank said, pulling his thumb out of his mouth and leaning toward Mickey. “What else you gonna do, talk? You gonna throw me under the bus and save your own ass?”

“They don’t have to know about me, Frank,” Mickey whined, his eyes pulled down at the corners. “I don’t want the money.”

“Well you’re taking the fucking money,” Frank said, drawing a Glock 9mm out from under his coat and putting it in Mickey’s face. “Ten percent. That’s your share. You’re rich, you and that little Sioux City bimbo. So you better find out for me real quick who these motherfuckers are so I can deal with it.”

60

WHEN MY FATHER DIED, they cremated his frozen body and buried the ashes in a cardboard box. I had that box dug up and reburied under some tall pine trees on a windy knob that overlooks the valley of the Onondaga Nation. I know how much he loved my mother and Black Turtle too. The stone that marks his new grave is a towering pillar of limestone cut from his own quarry with a sculpted bust of my father on top with his eyes facing the Nation. I know he would have liked that.

But still, after he froze to death, his body was burned-one of the few things my father ever openly despised about death. And I remember the one time we talked about it that he asked me to never let them burn his body.

Because of all that, I believe I would be justified if I didn’t feel any remorse as I watch them lower Dani Rangle’s dark walnut casket with its single rose and its silver gilt corners into the ground. But justified or not, there is a knot in my stomach. I sigh and force my mind away from the young girl. My business is with Rangle and it cuts through sentimentality. It has to.

Rangle is stooped over, and when the priest hands him the silver ornamental shovel to deposit the first scoop of dirt over his daughter’s dead body, it glints in the bright sunlight and he staggers away. An attendant from the funeral home catches him and stiffly endures his teary hug.

Katie Vanderhorn is much less affected. She stands in her place next to the grave in a black dress and sunglasses with her long hair gently waving in the breeze and is comforted by the one-armed embrace of Martin Debray. There are maybe two dozen other people there, standing under the pale blue sky, in front of their chairs, and dressed in the finest suits and dresses that can be found on Madison Avenue. One man looks at his watch. Another woman yawns. When the priest finally gives up, dumps the dirt himself, says a last prayer, and excuses them, they turn to leave without bothering to comfort the hysterical Bob Rangle.

It is the white-haired priest who takes Rangle by the arm and slowly leads him toward the waiting limousine, following a few steps behind his wife, who is clutching Martin’s strong arm. I walk down the hill with the wind in my face, smelling the fresh loamy dirt. I walk around the grave and down the path of white fabric that leads toward the limo.

When I put my hand on the priest’s square trim shoulder, he starts and whips his head around. His pale blue eyes are wide when they see me, almost as if he’s afraid.

“I need to talk to him, Father,” I say, gently separating the older man from Rangle’s sagging frame. “Please. It’s all right. I’m an old friend.”

I support Rangle by one arm and he looks up at me without focusing. There are gray circles under the dark wet pits of his eyes and his nose drips and seems more pointed than ever. The dyed flap of hair hangs crooked across his bald head. The lines on his face are deep and craggy. The face of an old man. He takes a ragged breath, wiping the drip on his sleeve, and a moan escapes him.

I watch the priest walk toward his own waiting Town Car, his robes full of the breeze. When he turns back to look at us, I nod to him and smile. He continues his walk. On the gravel drive, I see Martin Debray’s face in the dark opening of the limousine. Rangle is still crying, although all his tears seem to have been spent.

“I have some more news for you,” I say in a tone that makes Rangle straighten and wipe his eyes.

“He was a royal,” he says, blubbering.

“Sometimes they’re worse,” I say. “I tried to call you this morning.”

“I was…” Rangle looks back at the grave and pulls his arm away from my grip. “You’re hurting me.”

“The Russian government announced that it’s investigating the Bank of Moscow for fraud.”

“What?” Rangle’s eyes widen and his mouth opens so that I can see his tongue. “When?”

“Midday,” I say, soaking up the expression on his face. “Moscow time.”

“After we bought?”

“After you bought,” I say. “Technically, we’re not even having this conversation. I’m just a client, remember? My lawyer advised me against talking to you. With your client list, and the amount of money lost, he expects an FBI probe. But I wanted to tell you in person…”

I can’t help a small smile. The sound that comes from him is exquisite, a strangled cry of rage and horror. His lip curls up under the thin mustache. He clenches his hands and his weak trembling turns into a violent shake.

“It could be worse,” I say. “Believe me when I say that.”

“You-” he says in a screech, raising his fist. “You’re sick.”

My heart is racing. I would love to smash his face and snap his neck with my bare hands, but that would be too easy. This is the man who destroyed my life, not for love or even money, but out of greed for power and adulation. He ruined Raymond White for a seat in the U.S. Congress, and for that, his suffering will be a long-drawn-out affair. So instead of hitting him, I turn and walk away, savoring what waits for him now.

61

RANGLE MADE A FEW discreet calls with his hand over his mouth and the phone and found out that everything Seth told him was true. He slumped in the corner of the limousine and said nothing else the entire way back to his apartment. When the car stopped, he didn’t bother with his wife and Debray, but he told the driver to wait for him. He slipped out of the car, hurried through the lobby, and into the elevator.

Bursting into his apartment, he dismissed the maid and headed directly into his bedroom. There he went right to his wife’s jewelry safe.

He filled one of her small handbags with everything valuable, then went into his own walk-in closet and took down a large Louis Vuitton suitcase from a shelf. He threw in the handbag and three of his best suits along with a tuxedo and two pair of shoes, then as much summer-wear as he could fit.

He heard Katie come in, mix a drink, and then ease herself down on the bed with a heavy sigh that ended in a long self-pitying groan. Rangle reached up under his sock drawer and sprung the latch on the wooden panel behind his suits. He pushed the clothes aside and spun the tumbler on his own safe. Inside was a black velvet bag that crunched softly when he lifted it. He opened the top, scooping up a handful of diamonds.

Twenty million dollars’ worth of investment-grade stones. Better than a Swiss bank account. Better than cash. He slipped the bag into a leather briefcase and slung the shoulder strap across his body. In his bathroom, next to the toilet, was a phone. He dialed information and got the number for the charter at Teterboro. Yes, there was a G-V available on short notice. He asked them to put together a flight plan for Grand Cayman and hung up.

With the suitcase in hand, he walked back out into the bedroom and stopped at the foot of the bed. Katie was propped up on a mountain of pillows with her arm up over her face. He set the suitcase down.

“I’m leaving, Katie,” he said, straightening his back and his hair at the same time, “and I’d like you to come with me.”

His wife’s body started to shake. First just slightly, then almost convulsively, she sucked in some air and let it out in small spurts. At first he thought she was hysterically crying, but when the sound started to come it was pitched with laughter.

She actually shrieked, then said, “Oh, Bob, what do you mean, leaving? You’re in mourning, remember?”

“You’re sick,” he said, spitting the word.

Her arm came down off her face and he saw the glitter in her eyes.

“I am sick,” she said. “Sick of you.”

“Katie, I don’t care about everything. I’ll take you with me,” Rangle said. “If you stay here, there’s not going to be anything. The money’s gone. All of it.”

“But you’re wrong, Bob,” she said, still grinning. “Martin and I have plenty of money.”

“What do you mean, Martin and you?” he said, choking.

“Doesn’t your French notion of marriage include business?”

“You have money together?”

“Of course,” she said, her lips tight. “Lots. He’s very good.”

Rangle felt his face twisting. He turned quickly and picked up the suitcase, stopping only to slam the bedroom door on her laughter.

When the limo stopped in front of the terminal at Teterboro, Rangle got out without a word to his driver. Inside, the girl behind the counter said that everything was ready and he snapped that it damned well better be. The driver delivered his suitcase and a handler scooped it up and said he’d put it into the jet. Rangle dismissed his driver and gave the girl his Platinum Card, enjoying the fact that since no one would be left to pay it, this ride was going to be for free.

The G-V was waiting just outside the hangar, its long white body shining in the sun, its massive engines looking almost too big for the rest of the plane. On board, he nodded to the pilots, who were checking their controls, and stepped through the galley into the main cabin.

One of the pilots came back and offered him a drink. Rangle settled into the leather recliner, fastened up his seat belt, and said, “Scotch and soda with ice. A double.”

The pilot nodded, and as he fixed the drink in the galley, he said, “I kept the shades down until we take off and get the air-conditioning going, Mr. Rangle, to keep you as cool as we can.”

Rangle took the drink from him and sipped the cool golden liquor, letting it dull his nerves.

“Can I take that briefcase for you?” the pilot asked.

“No,” Rangle said, clutching it to his chest. “I have some things in here that I need.”

“Okay, we’ll be taking off right away.”

Rangle nodded and looked at the shaded window. He lifted the shade a little and beyond the upward-bent wing saw a fuel truck drive away. He heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and felt the plane shake, then the sound of the stairs being retracted and the cabin door being secured.

Rangle loosened his tie and reclined the seat a little more. The engines screamed to life, and he angled the vent so that the cool air hit his face. The thought of Dani came on him suddenly and his chest convulsed. He swallowed some of his drink and held the briefcase tight as the plane swung around and headed up the runway.

He shut his eyes. After a brief pause, the plane accelerated, pushing him deep into the seat’s cushions. When they began to level off, he took another swig and pulled the shade all the way up. Sunlight streamed in. Below was the Hudson River littered with boats and the small white tails of their wakes.

Rangle sat up straight. He leaned across the cabin and opened the other shades. Mountains. He looked up the aisle. The cockpit door was closed. He sat back down and folded his arms across the briefcase, his mind spinning. He didn’t want to seem ridiculous. He looked out the window again. More river and more green hills. They were definitely going north.

He leaned into the aisle again and directed his voice toward the cockpit door.

“Hello?” he said.

Even when he raised his voice to a shout, nothing happened. Rangle got up and started through the galley. When he got halfway through, he realized one of the pilots was sitting in the front chair. A mountain of a man in a white shirt and dark slacks.

“I know this sounds crazy,” he said, putting on a foolish grin and reaching out to touch the pilot’s shoulder, “but aren’t we going the wrong way?”

When the man shifted his bulk around, Rangle clutched his briefcase and stepped back.

“What are you… you’re the Indian,” he said, his voice pitched.

Bert grinned up at him and pointed to the back of the plane with his thumb. “You better go sit down. We’re going right.”

“This is my charter,” Rangle said in a screech. “I’m going to the Caymans.”

“You’re going someplace a little chillier than that, old weasel,” Bert said, shifting around in his seat. “Now go sit down or I’ll make you sit down.”

“I can pay you,” Rangle said, raising his eyebrows and nodding his head, fumbling to open the briefcase. He loosened the neck of the velvet bag and took out a stone about the size of a half-karat. He held it up in the light so that the rays of its glitter dodged back and forth across Bert’s fat cheeks.

“That’s ten thousand dollars right there.”

Bert reached out and took the stone, then dropped it into his mouth and swallowed. Grinning he said, “You know what your stones mean to me? Shit. It’ll be a frozen shitsicle where we’re headed… I hope you packed warm.”

62

MY G-V ISN’T BACK for more than two days before I use it to head north across Canada, the Hudson Bay, the polar cap, and finally to Uelen on the Chukchi Peninsula in the farthest corner of northeast Russia. A couple hundred miles across the Bering Strait is Point Hope, Alaska, population 794. But for Bob Rangle, those 794 Americans may as well be on another planet.

I’m excited, but partway through the trip I take a pill, pull the shades on the unending sun, and sleep. When I wake up we’re in a place where the only person who speaks English is a hunting outfitter, Alexi Fedorovich. He meets us on the abandoned military runway twenty miles outside of town in an old Soviet helicopter. The runway itself is lined with the empty skeletons of the once-proud Soviet air force. Some are twin-prop babies from the Second World War and some are the sleek MiGs they pestered us with during the cold war.

Alexi is a thick-chested Russian with a full red beard and sharp green eyes. With his ship and his weapons he is a law unto himself in this region. The men who work for him are Chukchi natives, distant relatives to the Eskimos. They are here to take us to his northern base camp, the one they use to hunt polar bears, a hundred and fifty miles to the north. I shake his hand, then zip up my fur-lined parka. The sun is about to dip just below the horizon, so it’s colder than it will be in a couple hours, when the sun will reappear for the remainder of the long summer day. I tell my pilots to stay with the jet, and Alexi hands them a loaded Kalashnikov that he takes from one of his men.

“For wolf,” he says.

My pilots are both former navy fliers, so they do nothing more than shrug and accept the gun. I know wolves are a problem here, but also that the people in this forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union have become as desperate as the wolves themselves. We board the patchwork helicopter and strap in. Alexi flies the machine himself and soon we’re tilting away from the airfield to the deafening sound of the chopper blades. Alexi’s three men are grim-faced. They don’t smile and they don’t talk.

Even though the sun is down, its glow lets me clearly see the landscape below. The evergreens grow shorter and shorter until they give way to the low rocky brush and finally to the snow itself. After a time, a finger of jagged black rock appears up ahead, an island in the frozen plain. Just beyond it is the dark gray roiling Chukchi Sea. In the center of the windblown rock formation is a low cabin with smoke pouring up out of a galvanized pipe stack. We land in front of the rocks on a sheet of ice. The men hop out and make right away for the cabin. Alexi and I follow, in less of a hurry because we are outfitted in better gear.

The big Russian slaps his arm around me and hugs me to him as we walk.

“You make many people live good with this diamonds,” he says.

“Does he have any left?”

Alexi shakes his head no. He pats his coat and I hear the distinct crunching sound of a bag of small stones.

“When?”

He looks at the plastic watch on his wrist and says, “In morning. Five hours he no fire.”

“Alexi?” I say, grabbing his arm and looking up into his face.

“He no dead,” Alexi says, showing me a mouthful of yellow and gold teeth. “I tell my man, he no moving, you giving wood. When he coming here, one hour he no spending diamonds. Then, very very spending. He spending every diamond. Every food and every firewood we having. Big fire that day. Very stupid man.”

“Greedy,” I say to myself.

“Yes, very greedy like you say.”

“That’s what got him here.”

We reach the path that leads through the spiny rocks and the packed snow squeaks under our feet. The door to the cabin opens and I see Bert’s big round face in a halo of fur. His expression is as empty as those worn by Alexi’s men, and the only welcome he gives me is a grunt as he raises his heavy mitten. Alexi puts his hand on the door and offers me coffee.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Thank you. I want to see him.”

Bert grunts again and starts down another path that goes around the back side of the cabin. I follow him. There is a snowdrift piled up in the lee of the towering rock protecting the cabin, but a narrow path has been cut through it. When we round the rock, the wind hits us in the face and we have to lean into it until we come to a switchback path that takes us down into a small bowl in the snow whose lip is a semicircle of squat black rocks. White powder snakes along the ground like fast-moving smoke. In the center of it all is the blackened pit of a burnt-out fire.

Bob Rangle is burrowed down into the ashes as far as he can go. Beside him is the open Louis Vuitton suitcase. Every article of clothing that was inside is either on or somehow wrapped around his body. He looks like a homeless man you might see under a frozen bridge.

Bert stops at the lip of the bowl and looks out over the frozen wasteland. The pale disk of the sun is resting on the horizon like a child’s flashlight being shone through a bedsheet.

“I know now what kind of animal I was in my last life,” Bert says, his eyes narrowed at the sun.

“A turkey?”

“A bird, anyway,” he says without cracking a smile. “Maybe a hawk. Something that flies high and brings death like a lightning bolt. I have no stomach for this.”

“I know,” I say, patting his back.

But Bert only turns and heads back up the path, saying, “I’ll leave you to your game.”

I grab the sleeve of Bert’s parka and pull him around.

“Let me tell you something,” I say, looking up at him with clenched teeth. “That piece of shit down there put me in a place where men live like animals.”

“And this is what it taught you?”

“Yes,” I say. “Three rules, and the third was the most important. Without it, you were done. Exact revenge. Someone does you wrong, you exact revenge. You make it ten times worse for them. A hundred times. That’s what he taught me, Bert. He and his friends. And now that’s what he’s getting.”

I let him go and I tramp down the path into the bowl. Rangle can barely move, but when he hears his name, he rolls on his side, rattling the chain that is attached to a post Alexi has driven six feet down into the ice. Rangle looks up at me with empty eyes through a slit in the hat he has made out of six pairs of underwear and three pairs of tennis shorts. His mustache and eyebrows and lashes are white with crystals, and when I yank the clothes off his head I see that the end of his sharp nose, like most of his ears, is black and frosted with ice.

He makes a pitiful low groaning noise and tries to pick up his makeshift hat to replace it on his head. But when his hand appears from the folds of his clothes, I see that its long fingers are also frozen and black. A useless claw.

“Do you know why you’re here?” I ask him, checking the bile that has surged up into the middle of my throat.

He shakes his head.

“Do you know who I am?”

He shakes his head no again.

“Look at my eyes,” I say, kneeling down and moving close. “It’s me, Raymond. Raymond White.”

He groans and his eyes roll away.

“Look at me,” I say, grabbing his cheeks. “This is how my father died, you piece of shit. He froze to death. While you and Frank and Russo were toasting my life in jail, my father felt what you’re feeling now. Do you like it?”

He looks away, and I grab his ear and twist it until he shrieks and flops back and forth.

“Look at me! Do you like it?”

“No,” he croaks, his eyes glued to me now, welling up. “Please, no.”

“I did nothing wrong,” I say, standing up and trying not to choke. “My father did nothing wrong. You killed us both and now that you know how it feels, I’m going to save you. Not because you deserve to live. No, Rangle.

“It’s because you don’t deserve to die…”

I walk back up the path. In a ragged choking voice I hear him call the name of the man I used to be.

Raymond. Raymond White.

Back at the cabin, I sit down with the others around the potbelly stove and soak the heat out of my coffee cup with two hands. When they’re warm, I look at Alexi and say, “Your American client needs medical care. You have a hospital in Uelen.”

“Ten year was Soviet hospital,” he says. “Now maybe ten room. Doctor, yes. Animal doctor. But have army nurse good… medical.”

“I’d like you to pay them enough for him to live there,” I say. “He has no one to care for him in America, so he will stay here.”

“How long he stay?” Alexi asks, his eyebrows soaring.

I shrug and say, “I don’t know. Ten years? Twenty? As long as he lives.”

“He no talk Russian,” Alexi says. “Doctor cutting hands and feet and nose. Ears too. They no speaking him. He no walking. He staying bed.”

“Yes,” I say, getting up from the table and patting Bert’s hunched-over shoulders. “In America we do things in a big way. Isn’t that right, Bert?”

“That’s what the white men say.”

“Come on, chief,” I say to him, tugging him toward the door. “We’re not done.”

63

IT’S A CHILLY DAY for August, and outside the van, the late-afternoon rain hammers down on the metal roof. But I’m warm. I want Frank to live in fear and I know that someone like him fears only one thing.

I listen and watch as the guards frisk Bert outside the Yacht Club, but it isn’t until he walks into the meeting room overlooking the misty gray river that my heart starts to race. There is Ramo Capozza at the end of the table with his cappuccino and there in the middle is Frank, leaning back with his hands folded over his big belly.

Bert sets down a briefcase of documents on the table in front of him and sits. Frank’s eyes never leave him.

“Well, Mr. Washington,” Ramo says, setting down his cup on its saucer with a soft clink, “I trust your group is happy.”

Bert clears his throat and recites his line, saying, “We would like to know if since we’re buying Frank Steffano’s piece of the business that we’ll get the same deal with the unreported cash.”

Ramo glances at the man with the glasses on his right and smiles. He folds his hands together and puts his elbows on the table, leaning forward. His pale green eyes are big behind the thick lenses. Their lids are half closed.

Frank has his jaw set and he glares at Bert.

“Our disbursements,” Capozza says, “are all accounted for as payments to the partners. As you can see, this partnership is very profitable. Everything is legitimate. That lets me sleep at night. I like thinking that my grandchildren can go to college without worrying about wiretaps. You understand that, don’t you?”

I push the red button on the audio control board in front of me and say, “Pass him the documents. Tell him that’s how you do business too.”

Bert shifts and pushes the briefcase away from him. The man on his left passes it toward Capozza’s end of the table.

“That’s how we do business too,” Bert says stiffly.

“So why do you think there’s an issue with some cash?” Capozza says, still smiling, but with his lips at an odd angle across his capped teeth.

“Tell him, ‘If you look at these papers, you’ll see that over the last three years Frank’s taken almost seventy million dollars in cash out of the casinos,’” I say.

Bert repeats the words. The briefcase gets to Frank. Instead of passing it on, he takes hold of it in both hands and stands up.

“I think before this goes any further,” Frank says, “that this partnership needs to know more about who you are. Don’t you think that would be a good idea?”

He is grinning at Bert now, and Bert shifts in his chair and folds his arms across his chest just below the tiny camera lens.

“Little warm in here, Bert?” Frank says, his eyes still glued. “You should be feeling a little warm, ’cause I know this whole thing is a scam. It’s a scam by you and it’s a scam by Seth Cole.”

The men around the table begin to murmur, and Frank raises his voice above them.

“You don’t represent a group of casino owners, do you?” Frank says. “The Iroquois Group is nothing but a front, and I have some papers here of my own.”

Bert pushes back his seat away from the table.

“Wait, Bert,” I say. “Stay there. Tell them if you’re a scam then why doesn’t he let them look at the papers in the briefcase and decide for themselves. Do it. Now. Be angry, Bert.”

Bert clears his throat and repeats my words in a rumbling voice that sounds better than anything he’s said so far.

“Why don’t you give us those papers, Frank?” the pock-faced Dominic says from across the table. “Pass them down to Ramo. You got nothing to be afraid of, right? You wouldn’t steal from the partnership. That’d be too stupid…”

“I’ll pass this down,” Frank says, and, reaching down beside his chair, he comes up with some papers that he puts down on the table and slides toward Ramo Capozza. The man to Capozza’s right examines them through his glasses.

“This proves what I’m saying,” Frank says. “This Indian is some low-level muscle for a guy named Bonaparte. The only thing they got is a juiced-up bingo parlor and a drug racket up on the St. Regis Indian Reservation. There is no casino group. The money in that Iroquois Group account came from a shell corporation owned by Seth Cole. It’s all a scam to get at me.”

“Shit,” I say. I turn to Chuck Lawrence and he lifts his headset. “Get ready. If this gets bad, you’ll call 911 and report an armed robbery at the Yacht Club. We might have to break this thing up, but wait till I say.”

I turn back to the TV monitor.

“What about the briefcase?” Dominic is asking.

“Whatever’s in this,” Frank says, patting the briefcase without letting go, “is all lies. This guy and Cole had almost two weeks to cook this shit up. It’s nothing.”

“If it’s nothing, then we can look at it,” Dominic says, putting both his hands flat out on the table. He looks down at Ramo Capozza, whose eyes are going back and forth between Bert and Frank.

To Bert I say, “Tell Capozza Frank’s lying. Tell him to look at the briefcase.”

Bert says, “He’s lying.”

“You son of a bitch,” Frank says in a growl, reaching inside his jacket. “I ought to take you out right here.”

“Frank!” Capozza shouts.

Everyone falls silent and the older man softly says, “This is a business meeting.”

He looks at Bert and says, “Mr. Washington, we run this business like a family. We trust each other. We cover each other’s backs. Isn’t that right, Dominic?”

“Yeah,” Dominic says, looking at the table. “We do.”

“If you and Mr. Cole have a problem with Frank, you shouldn’t be bringing it to us. We’re a very loyal group. Frank treated my nephew-God rest his soul-like his own blood and for that I owe him a debt.

“Now, Frank,” he says, turning his cold eyes on Frank. “You shouldn’t have any problem letting us see that briefcase. Of course we know you wouldn’t steal from us and that’s how we’ll look at it. But we will look, Frank…

“If what you say is true, and I have no doubt it is, Frank, then you can deal with Mr. Washington and Mr. Cole how you see fit. But… we’re businessmen here. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Frank says, handing the briefcase to the man on his right and watching it until it is in the hands of the man next to Capozza.

“Mr. Washington,” Capozza says, standing up to signal an end to the meeting. “I know you and Mr. Cole are friends and I appreciate the hospitality you showed me and my great-grandson, but I do not appreciate any of this and you can tell Mr. Cole I said that.”

Bert stands up and says, “Can I go?”

Capozza looks at him with an expression of surprise and says, “Of course, Mr. Washington. I told you. We’re all businessmen here and our business is finished.”

Bert is quickly escorted out into the rain and put in my limousine. When the door closes, he holds out his tie and looks down into the camera.

“Jesus Christ,” he says.

“You did good,” I tell him.

“I thought they were gonna kill me,” Bert says.

I signal Chuck to get going. He puts down his headset and climbs into the front of the van and we pull away from the curb.

“I was ready to pull the pin,” I say. “We were going to call the cops if it got any more dicey.”

“Yeah, when they started dicing me up,” he says.

“You know what I mean,” I tell him. “Have a Molson Golden. There’s a six-pack in the ice chest. Have a couple.”

“Now we’ll both have to go to that doctor in L.A. and have our faces changed,” he says.

“Maybe not,” I say.

“You got a plan?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s comforting.”

I hear the slushy sound of ice and the hiss of a can. Bert brings the gold can up to his mouth and sucks it all the way down before punctuating it with a belch.

“On that note,” I say, “I’m signing off. I’ll see you at the house.”

When I get back, the butler meets me at the car with an umbrella and tells me that Helena just got there a few minutes ago. I find her on the couch in the bedroom with her knees drawn up to her chin and staring out at the rain. She’s dressed in jeans and a dark green Jets sweatshirt, barefoot, with her dark silky hair pulled back into a ponytail. She jumps up, startled, and meets me halfway across the room, throwing herself into my arms with a squeal, kissing me, and wrapping her legs around my waist.

“I missed you,” she says, then repeats it three times and starts laughing when I bite her neck.

“Me too,” I say.

“What’s wrong?” She lets go and touches my cheek with the back of her hand.

“Things,” I say. “Helena, we need to talk.”

We sit down on the couch and I tell her about Frank, the man who killed her father. What he did to me. What I’m trying to do to him. I even mention Lexis. I tell her all about Bert’s meeting with Ramo Capozza, the brother of her grandmother, my plan, and how it all came to pass. The point is, I never dreamed I would need her to get involved in this, but we’re in trouble.

When I finish, she looks out into the gloom. Silver drops of rain slide down the long pane of glass. Some run into the others and become one. Some twist apart and go their own ways. I have no idea why.

“I thought about it a million times,” she says, tracing the pattern on the couch with her fingernail. “I told you. I knew who my father’s uncle was. Sometimes, when I was up in Alaska, I’d dream about it. Me going to him, and him sending people after Frank Steffano for what he did. But I was always afraid…”

“Why?”

She looks at me with tear-filled eyes and says, “I don’t know. Part of me thinks the whole thing is my own fault.”

“That’s not true. I told you that.”

“I know,” she says, looking at me. “But it’s how I feel.”

I put my hand on hers and squeeze.

“It’s all right,” I say.

She presses her lips tight, looks away, and sighs.

“I’ll go see my uncle,” she says.

“I don’t want you to do this just for me,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “But I was thinking about how you said it was your job to do this, and I don’t know if that’s right.

“I get up there and I sing, and people-some of them-even cry. And I think they do because it’s like they know that I’m still crying inside. I think people sense that. I don’t want to sing only like that for the rest of my life and I think maybe if I did this, it would help.”

64

THE MORNING SUN gleamed off the surfaces of the puddles from the previous night’s rain, giving the air the steamy hint of garbage. At the dock, a towering blue freighter caked with rust with the name Bella Napoli creaked and swayed. Cranes worked steadily to remove the truck-size containers from her belly while along the dock, long bladed forklifts moved them around like a small colony of ants carrying food ten times their own size.

A long black Mercedes limousine eased through the chain-link gates with their faded red-and-white sign that read Absolutely No Trespassing. On the dock already was another limousine, a Cadillac. Outside it stood a well-built man in a suit. Two others walked on either side of an old man, stooped over and wearing brown wingtip shoes, brown slacks, and a baggy yellow cardigan sweater. His glasses were thick and his thin gray hair was plastered down with some kind of barbershop formula.

The man next to the Cadillac stepped in front of the Mercedes, preventing the car from driving right up to the old man, who was now bent over a crate that two workers had removed from a red container. The two thugs with the old man approached the Mercedes as well, reaching into their jackets with their eyes scanning not just the car, but the whole dock.

Helena got out and made them stare, even though she wore no makeup and nothing fancier than sandals, a pair of faded jeans, and a man’s white V-neck T-shirt.

“Holy shit,” one guard said to the other. “That’s Helena.”

Chuck Lawrence got out right after her, and he and the two big men approached one another like dogs in a vacant lot.

“She needs to talk to Mr. Capozza,” Lawrence said.

They looked at their boss, who stood with a tomato in each hand, blinking at them all. He nodded.

“Okay,” one of them said.

Helena took slow uneven steps and looked down only once to skirt a deep oily puddle. When she reached the old man, she held out her hand. He put the tomatoes into one hand and took hers with the other. Smiling, he held up the bright red fruit. Their stems were a rich green.

“When I was a boy,” he said, “my father used to come here to make sure the tomatoes came from Italy. What they do is, people will take a crate from Mexico and put them in a crate that says Italy. But if you don’t get good tomatoes, then the sauce is no good and the whole meal stinks.”

“Do you know me?” she said with the beginnings of a smile.

“I’ve seen you on TV,” he said. “I have a couple grandkids who’d be happy to trade places with me right now.”

“No,” she said. “Do you really know who I am?”

Tears filled up in Helena’s eyes and she wiped them on the back of her arm. From her back pocket she took out a birth certificate and unfolded it.

Ramo Capozza looked at his men, searching their faces, smiling, but with his eyes narrowed.

“Who sent you?” he asked.

“No one,” she said, offering up the certificate. “I’m Helena. My father was Tony. Tony Romano.”

“Tony?” Capozza says. His hand falls to his side and the tomatoes drop to the wet pavement, bursting and spilling their seeds. “They killed him. My sister tried to find you, but your mother disappeared…”

“I wasn’t with my mother, Uncle Ramo,” she said, her face crumpling. “He took me away. They made me do things-”

Ramo Capozza hugged Helena to him and patted his gnarled hand on her back.

“Shhh,” he said, glaring at his men over her shoulder to make them look away.

Softly, he said, “I killed those men.”

“No,” Helena said, pulling away. “You didn’t. There weren’t any men. It was one man.”

Capozza scowled, his thick eyebrows crunching down on top of his pale green eyes.

“That can’t be,” he said. “Someone is telling you lies. Tony’s partner was there.”

“It is, Uncle Ramo,” she said. “No one is telling me. I saw it. It was his partner who did it. I saw Frank Steffano kill my father. I was only ten, but I could never forget his face or what he did to me-”

Ramo Capozza held his niece tight. She was shaking. He continued to pat her back, until his fists were curled into balls. His teeth were clamped together and the corners of his mouth were pulled tight.

He was shaking too.

And then she told her story.

65

IN THE BOWELS OF A GARAGE on 79th Street, Frank locked up a dark green Ford Excursion with a beep and a blink of its lights. The truck was loaded up with almost everything he needed. Food. Clothes. Weapons. Passports. They’d cross the Canadian border into Montreal. From there they’d fly to Sydney. The other end of the world. The only thing left was the money-he checked his watch-and by now, Mickey should have that.

He walked up and around the concrete bend. The parking attendant, a dark young black man reading a paperback, had his feet propped up on the glass inside his booth. Frank held up his ticket and winked at the kid, then proceeded up the ramp and into the gritty wind, where he turned right and headed for home.

They were waiting for him in the first narrow alleyway between buildings. He saw them as they sprang and he tried to turn and run, but he hadn’t taken a step before they were on him and he felt the sharp point of a knife prick his skin an inch from his windpipe. He froze.

The blade came to rest along the carotid artery, pressing into his skin. The warm flow of blood seeped down into the folds of his neck. Frank swallowed and lost control of his bladder. He quickly squeezed and kept the warm wetness from spreading beyond his underwear. A hand reached around and removed the gun from under his arm.

“Get in, Frank,” said a voice in his ear that he recognized.

A navy blue Grand Marquis had pulled up alongside the curb. The driver reached back and over to swing open the rear door. Frank got in, fighting the urge to yank his arm free from the man’s grip. He slid into the car and strained his eyes to see. The two men wedged themselves in on either side of him. Ramo’s men. He felt a gun barrel pressed to his ribs. They pulled out into the street, and when they got under the first light, he saw the man behind the wheel was the scar-faced Dominic Battaglia.

Frank felt his insides go tight.

He looked at the men on either side of him. They were staring straight ahead. Soldiers following orders. Neither of them knew that he had a fishing knife up his sleeve. Now wasn’t the right time, but it might save him later.

“Let me go, Dominic,” he said in a croak. “I’ll give you all the money.”

“You think I’m like you?” Dominic said into the rearview mirror. His lips were pulled clear of his teeth.

“It’s a lot.”

“I know how much it is,” Dominic said. “We all do.”

Frank’s mind spun with a billion possibilities. The car passed over the 59th Street Bridge, then onto the BQE. When they passed the Atlantic Avenue exit where Ramo Capozza lived, Frank knew he was going to die. He could kill one of them with the knife, but he’d die. His eyes searched for an interested Port Authority officer when they passed through the toll at the Verrazano Bridge. There was none.

As they crossed over onto Staten Island, Frank looked north toward the big city. The galaxy of lights. The dark towers. He bit into his lower lip and narrowed his eyes.

They left the main roads and turned onto an empty street marked by a huge billboard with a sketch of the office buildings soon to come. At the back end of the deep loop, tall piles of dirt and stacks of raw steel girders shone under the car’s yellow beams. They left the pavement and jolted along a dirt track, through the dirt piles and steel, coming to rest in a cloud of dust at the edge of a foundation hole.

The men on either side of him got out, and for an instant, he felt almost free.

“Get out, Frank,” Dominic said, wagging a snub-nosed.38 into the doorway of the car. “Don’t make me tell them you squealed like a pig. Be a man. Ramo said if you were a man, you could go easy. Me? I voted to make it last.”

Frank slid his bulk to the edge of the seat and hoisted himself out into the warm night. His armpits had bled all the way through his suit coat and he smelled the sour scent of his own fear. His eyes darted up toward the shadowy form of a machine. One of the men was climbing up its side. He heard a heavy metal door squeak open and closed and then the coughing of a diesel motor as it spun to life. Its rheumy eyes glowed and Frank saw now that it was a concrete mixer.

“Come on,” Dominic said, pushing Frank toward the hole with the.38 in his back.

Frank stumbled forward. The other muscle was on his left with his gun out too. Dominic stayed behind him. The barrel of the mixer clanked into action, spinning with an electric whine.

“Kneel down,” Dominic said, pointing to the lip of the black hole.

Frank heard the truck’s gears grinding into place and the squeak of the axle as it crept forward. He knelt down and bowed his head. He started to shake and blubber.

“Dominic, please,” he said, sobbing. “You can have it all.”

He turned his head back to see Dominic with his legs slightly straddled, moving the pistol toward the back of his head.

“I don’t want to die,” he said, whining and holding his trembling hands up near his temples.

Dominic’s toothy grin shone in the headlights of the cement mixer. Frank spun and grabbed Dominic’s hands and gun at the same time. The gun flashed, blasting a hole through Frank’s palm, but he hung on, dropped to his shoulder, and flipped the smaller man over his back into the hole. Frank rolled, his ears ringing. The second man’s gun fired, licking with orange flames, and he felt the bullets humming past his head. Something struck his leg as he came out of his roll with the.38 leveled.

One shot to the head and the man went down like a puppet.

Frank ran limping at the cement mixer. The third man was bursting out of the door, jumping for the ground with the knife in his hand. Frank shot him in the chest in midair and he fell in a heap.

Frank turned and bolted back to the lip of the hole. He stuffed the.38 in his pocket, scooped up the second man’s Glock, and checked the load, calmly standing over the deep dark trench, listening. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a shape moving slowly along the bottom. He fired three quick shots and heard Dominic screaming in pain and fear.

Frank moved closer, limping on down the length of the foundation hole, his feet scuffing up little clouds of dust in the headlights. His left hand was throbbing now and he balled it into a fist to try and stop the bleeding. Dominic still screamed.

“Hey, Dominic!” he shouted above the noise. “Fuck you!”

Frank unloaded the Glock into the hole, careful to shoot only below his business partner’s waist. Dominic’s squealing continued now at a heightened pitch. Frank tossed the empty gun down in the hole. His own gun was in the second man’s waist and he took it out before dragging his body to the edge of the hole and kicking the gun into the bottom of the trench with Dominic. The third man went in too, along with the.38 before Frank climbed into the cab of the mixer. He eased the truck to the edge and dumped its load, filling the bottom of the footer with four feet of concrete.

66

LEXIS CAME OUT of Lincoln Center in high heels, clutching Allen’s arm to steady herself. “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him, burying her nose in the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. “I know that’s not your favorite thing.”

“That’s ’cause you are,” he said, opening the door of the limousine for her.

Lexis bit her lip.

“What’s wrong?” Allen said. “I thought that was nice.”

“Very nice,” she said, smiling and touching his arm.

“Man, it’s late,” Allen said, looking at his watch. “You gotta be tired, huh?”

Lexis yawned and nodded her head.

“I’ll drop you off,” he said, his voice suddenly upbeat. “I’m shot too, but a bunch of guys are meeting in the Village. You know, since it’s my last night.”

“You want to have some tea?” she asked. “Or a coffee?”

That’s how she saw the night ending. His last night in the city before going back to school. Just the two of them at the kitchen table. But Allen looked at his watch again and winced.

“You don’t mind, right, Mom?”

“Of course not,” she said, forcing a smile.

Allen took out his cell phone, turned it on, and called Martin to find out where everyone was going. Lexis sighed, then took her own cell phone out of her purse and turned it on. She had a new message. It was Cornell Ricks, the governor’s man. He’d left a package at their building. His voice cold and clipped. Not saying anything else. No hint. Nothing.

Michael, their doorman, had given personal things of hers before to Frank. She dialed the apartment and looked at her watch. There was no answer. She looked at her son, forced a smile, and leaned forward to fill a glass from the crystal decanter of bourbon.

When she looked back at Allen, he was still talking, but watching her. He immediately looked away. Lexis sighed, but still brought the glass to her lips. She took two small sips, watching her son, then swallowed the whole thing and fumbled with the decanter again, refilling her glass with her eyes on him the whole time.

The second one she enjoyed a little more, and by the time the car pulled to a stop in front of their building, she was feeling much better. She replaced the empty glass in its holder and let Allen help her out. Michael held the door for them with a slight bow.

“Mrs. Steffano,” he said in his Brooklyn accent. “Your husband just came in. He doesn’t look good. He said he took a spill at one of his construction sites, but I’m worried. There was a lot of blood.”

She asked about the package.

He rubbed the side of his face and showed her his crooked yellow teeth.

“Mr. Steffano took it up for you about fifteen minutes ago when he came in.”

Lexis gripped Allen’s arm and walked unevenly to the elevator.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” he asked.

They got on the elevator.

“Nothing,” she said, forcing a smile. “Maybe you should just go like you are.”

“In a tux?” he said with a brief laugh. “Right, Mom. What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said.

They arrived at the top floor.

“Mom,” Allen said, stepping out into the hall.

He followed Lexis into the apartment.

“Dad?” he called.

She shut the door behind them. When Frank didn’t respond, she took a deep breath. Maybe he was gone. Maybe he didn’t read what Cornell Ricks brought her. Maybe there was nothing much inside the envelope besides an account of how Raymond White had died in jail or was living out his life in a cell somewhere.

Allen was looking at her.

“I’m just tired,” she said. “Your father probably got a Band-Aid and went right back out.”

When she reached up to kiss his cheek, she heard Frank’s muffled voice calling her name from deep inside their master bedroom.

Allen looked that way.

“Allen,” she said, following him down the hall.

Allen disappeared into the bedroom and she heard him cry out.

She went in. Frank was sitting on the bed, a gun in one hand, the other in a fist jammed into his coat pocket. His suit, like his face, was covered with dirt. The collar of his shirt was red with blood, and when he took the other hand out of his pocket, she saw the bloody bandage. There was a hole in his pants and a dark stain. Behind him was a manila envelope, opened with the papers spilling out. On it was her name.

“Allen,” Frank said in a growl, “listen. We’ve got trouble.”

“What happened?”

Frank held up his bloody hand and pressed his lips tight. He raised his voice.

“Allen Francis. Listen, goddamn it,” Frank said. “I’ve got a plan. It’ll all work. Go change your clothes and pack some things for a few days. I’ll meet you on the back stairs.”

He looked at his watch and said, “Hurry up. We’ve got to meet Mickey at the Rockefeller Outlook at midnight.”

“Dad, we start practice-”

“Goddamn it! Look at this!” Frank shouted, holding up his hand clenched around the bloody white rag. “Go get your fucking things!”

Allen left. Lexis moved toward her husband, reaching for his hand.

“Frank, let me-”

“You get back,” he said, waving the gun at her and grinning. “You’re not coming. I’m getting the money from Mickey and you’ll have nothing.”

“Frank, what are you talking about?”

“Bitch,” he said, standing up and raising the gun as if to strike her.

Lexis flinched and backed away.

“Get in the closet.”

“Frank, tell me.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, limping toward her, herding her back. “I know.”

Frank pointed his bloody hand back at the papers on the bed.

“That fucking Raymond White is behind all this. Him and that Seth Cole,” Frank said in a harsh whisper, “and you knew. He escaped and he’s out there. Who do you think ruined Rangle? His daughter’s dead. That fucking Raymond White wants to kill me. He wants to kill my son, and you knew.”

“Allen won’t leave me,” she said, feeling the doorframe of her closet and stepping inside.

“You think he’ll know?” Frank said, grinning even wider, moving into the doorway and steadying himself on the door handle. “Just that we had to split up. To be safe. That we’ll meet you. But don’t you ever let me see you again.”

Frank had her backed into the corner. He raised the pistol and struck her in the side of the head. Lexis crumpled to the floor. She tried to raise her hands, but Frank brought the gun down again and again. Blood spilled down her face. One eye went dark. Her teeth were shattered and she gagged on the bony fragments and the blood.

Frank stopped and stepped back. He was breathing hard, holding himself up by the bar that held a row of dresses, smearing their collars with his own blood.

“You can’t take him,” she sobbed, spitting blood and teeth onto the carpet, her head hanging. “You can’t, Frank.”

Frank was bent over, huffing from his efforts. He tilted his head up, his pale blue eyes burning beneath his thick dark eyebrows.

“The only reason I’m not going to kill you,” he said, “is because of that boy.”

Frank turned to go, staggering toward the closet door.

“You can’t, Frank!” she shouted, sobbing now, her face already puffy from the swelling. “He’s not yours!”

Frank whipped around, pointing the gun at her, his hand shaking.

“He’s mine,” she moaned, looking away.

“Not anymore,” Frank said. He slammed the door shut and left her in the emptiness.

67

HELENA AND I LIE IN THE DARK, the sweat cooling our naked bodies. My fingers are interlaced with hers and I squeeze them, compressing the bones between the second and third knuckles with my own. I used to do this to Lexis and I wonder if I should feel ashamed, thinking of her when I’m lying here like this.

I can’t help what I think. It was another life, but some parts of it are still vivid, no matter how hard I try to forget.

Helena rolls my way, puts her fingertip against my Adam’s apple, and starts drawing a straight line down when the phone rings.

Helena groans and says, “Don’t answer it. It’ll be Darwin. He’s the only person I gave your home number to that would call this late.”

“You should talk to him if it is,” I say, picking up the phone.

“It’s eleven o’clock,” Helena says, arching her neck so she can see the clock by the bedside.

When I hear Chuck Lawrence’s voice on the line, my body goes rigid.

“I know you said not to interfere,” he says, “but you better come over here.”

“Why?”

“She’s in pretty bad shape,” he says.

“Lexis?” I say, and now Helena’s body goes rigid too.

“She needs a doctor,” he says, “but she wants you first.”

“I’m coming,” I say, and swing my legs out of bed.

I look down at Helena. She grabs my hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Where are you going?”

“An old friend,” I say, pulling away from her and putting on my dark blue slacks. I pull on a matching short-sleeved collared shirt, button it up without tucking it in, and slip on my shoes.

“That’s his wife,” she says, tilting her head and raising one eyebrow.

“She is an old friend,” I say, putting on my watch. “Please, Helena. This is almost over.”

“Then what?” she asks.

I shake my head that I don’t know.

“And us?” she says, raising her voice. “Am I part of your plan?”

I bend down to kiss her.

“Don’t,” I say, running my fingers through her long silky hair. “I’ll be back.”

I don’t make any noise leaving my room, but when I get to the bottom of the stairs, Bert is hustling after me, pulling on his shirt.

“Working?” he asks.

“Maybe.”

“Forget me?”

“Figured you’d make it.”

“You know me,” he says with a thin smile. “Never like to miss any fun.”

In the garage next to my limousine is a boxy black Mercedes G55. I get in and drive toward Lexis’s address on Park Avenue. At 54th Street, I run through a yellow light turning red. The car behind me makes it too. Maybe it’s following me, but I don’t have time to worry about that. I leave the SUV right there on the street. The doorman seems flustered-purple-faced with a crooked hat-but he sends us right up. The heavy wooden door is open. We go in and I call Chuck’s name. My voice rebounds off the glass dome far above. The Caesar without a nose stares from his pedestal. I walk through the rotunda entry, my heels clicking on the marble until they reach the deep rug of the great room. I stop short and Bert bumps into me.

She stares down at me from that painting and then I hear Chuck’s voice coming from the vaulted passageway on the opposite side from where Lexis has her studio.

I jog down the hall, past a doorway that leads into the kitchen, and into a bedroom of long drapes and marble columns. Chuck is sitting on the bed with his arm around Lexis. Her hands cover the top of her head. When she looks up at me, I stop, sickened.

“Jesus,” I say.

“Frank,” Chuck says, getting up and moving away from the bed.

Her hair is crimson and matted. One eye is a bluish slit. That side of her face has grown red and swollen. She’s been crying and holds a knotted towel in her hand.

“Raymond,” she says.

I hear Bert grunt behind me.

“You’re thinking of someone else,” I say, frozen in front of her.

“I know who you are,” she says.

I shake my head and feel my plastic face.

“The Blue Hole,” she says, angling her head. “I think of it every day.”

Behind her is a painting on the wall. Thundering water, foamy green. Three figures in the mist. Faceless parents holding hands with a child. My face is stern. I can feel it heat and my eyes filling.

“You said it couldn’t happen,” I say, sitting beside her on the bed, staring at my hands. “That we couldn’t be apart.”

I can smell the hint of Frank’s Cool Water cologne. The demon that haunts even my memories. She reaches out and takes my hand, stroking my palm with her fingertips.

“In a way, we weren’t,” she says, looking into my eyes and tilting her head. “Part of you has been with me all the time. We made love that day, remember?”

I squint at the painting and see, now, my totem-the stick figure of a running deer-faintly etched in the mist above the father. A smaller totem floats over the child in the middle.

“You’re a liar,” I say, the words coming out before I can think about them. I stand.

She looks down, quiet for a moment. Then, without looking up, she says, “You’ve seen him. His eyes.”

“He’s not mine,” I say. “If he was, you stole him. He belongs to you now, you and your husband.

“Chuck, call an ambulance,” I say, then turn to go.

Lexis doesn’t speak but I hear a wail as I put my hand on the door.

I stop.

“You loved me,” she says.

I turn and glare at her. “I did.”

“This mess,” she says. Shaking her head, she drops off the edge of the bed and onto her knees. “It’s all a mist. All these years. It can change. I’m begging you. He’s your son.”

I drop my head and close my eyes. I take a deep breath, fighting back a tide of emotions.

Suddenly Chuck steps forward.

“Frank said something to Allen about getting his money from Mickey and meeting him at the Rockefeller Outlook,” he says. “It’s a rest area on the Palisades Parkway, just north of the George Washington Bridge.

“Give me your gun,” I say to Chuck.

I feel the heft of his HK self-loading.45 and close my fingers around it. Without looking back, I turn and go.

68

ON OUR WAY UP the Hudson Parkway, I call Ramo Capozza and tell him I think I’ve got a package for him. I ask him to have a couple guys meet me at the outlook. We cross the GW and head north on the Palisades. A few miles up, Bert points at the blue-and-white sign glowing in our headlights. The Rockefeller Outlook. There are no headlights in my rearview mirror. Ahead a pair of taillights disappear around a bend. I slow and pull off the parkway.

Under a row of streetlights, faded yellow diagonal lines mark two dozen parking spots along the river’s side of the narrow parking area. It’s empty except for a dark green Excursion and a small Mercedes sedan. Nothing moves. Beyond them is a line of trees, ghostlike in the glow of light. I turn off my headlights and coast to a stop behind the Excursion. Small stones and grit crunch under the tires, and I hold my finger to my lips signaling Bert to be quiet.

We slip out of the black G55 and stand together surveying the area. The trees that line the sharp edge of the Palisades are broken by a sidewalk lined with lollipop telescopes where you can see the sights of the Hudson up close for fifty cents. Beyond the walk is a jagged line of black rocks separating the outlook from the plunging drop that leads to the river hundreds of feet below. On the far side of the Hudson, the distant lights from the Bronx twinkle around the mouth of the Harlem River.

But there is no sign of Frank.

I lean close to Bert and in a whisper say, “Stay here. I’ll take a look.”

“I should go too,” Bert says in a low rumble.

“No,” I say. “If they come back, don’t let them get away. Be careful.”

I leave Bert in the shadow of the Excursion. Crouching low, I hurry up onto the sidewalk. Now I can see the city to the south.

I hear nothing except the rustle of leaves in the breeze until the horn of a freighter moving upriver sounds from deep below. There is a sign I see now planted between the big toothy rocks. DO NOT CLIMB ON THE BLUFF. As I move closer to the edge of the darkness, a light flashes at the same time a pop sounds from below. They are swallowed almost instantly by the darkness, and for a moment I wonder if I imagined it. Then I hear a shriek, and voices.

Frank.

Nothing mattered to Frank anymore but his boy and the money. When he saw Mickey’s car resting under the lights, his face stretched taut with a grin. Things were working so well that the pain in his leg and hand and neck seemed distant, unimportant. He pulled up the truck alongside the small Mercedes and looked around only briefly before climbing out.

Allen got out too. Frank turned to tell him to stay, but the throb in the meat of his leg and the sharp stabbing pain in his hand made him think again. A car whooshed past on the parkway, its taillights a blur.

“Come on,” Frank said, and limped toward the darkness.

He stepped up onto the curb, kicking a pinecone and crushing some broken glass. The loose edge of a garbage bag snapped against its metal can. Frank sniffed again. No sign of Mickey. The cut in his neck began to burn. Then he heard his name being called and the smell of a cigarette floated up and swirled away.

The muted sound came again from the blackness beyond the outlook’s lip and was quickly swept away on the breeze. Frank steadied himself against a metal telescope and slid the Glock out from under his arm before creeping toward the edge. When he got to the rock barrier he eased down onto the rough cool stone and leaned over into the dark, looking and aiming at the same time.

The dim figure of a man with the ember of a cigarette glowing in his mouth waved his arms.

“Frank,” he said. “Down here.”

It was Mickey, his rat face lit by the sudden orange flare of the cigarette.

Frank sat down on the top of one of the big rocks and swung his legs over the side. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that a steep grassy bank descended about twelve feet to another outcropping of flat rock. Beyond that was a darkness deeper yet. Even from where he was, Frank could feel the void and it chilled his spine.

“Come on,” he said to Allen, and struggled down to the outcrop below, letting his bottom slide along, matting the grass for the last four feet.

Allen’s feet struck the rock and he bent over to help. Frank stood breathing hard, wincing from the pain. Mickey was grinning at them in the dim glow from the big city ten miles away. He stood on the very edge between two enormous duffel bags, the canvas kind used for carrying hockey equipment. In front of Mickey was a small suitcase.

Mickey pitched his butt over the edge, opened his arms, and said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Frank. But this is a lot of money and it’ll take you a few minutes to get it back up that hill. Time for me to get my little Sioux City girl and get going. Nothing personal. Just the way you taught me.”

“Where’s the passports?” Frank asked, hobbling slowly toward the edge.

Mickey smiled and said, “You’ll get those when I get up on that ledge and you’re down here.”

“But you’ve got them?” Frank said, his voice rising to expose the panic he was beginning to feel.

“Sure I do,” Mickey said. He picked up the suitcase and started to circle away from the edge.

Frank raised the Glock and shot him in the knee.

Mickey dropped and writhed on the rock ledge, mewling. Frank closed the gap, reached into Mickey’s coat, and came up with a sleek new Smith amp; Wesson Model 66. He held it out to Allen.

“You might need this.”

Allen looked at him blankly.

“Take it!” Frank shouted.

“Dad, Jesus,” Allen said, shaking his head and grabbing a handful of his own hair.

Frank frowned at his son, the silence and the stupid expression on his face.

“Be a man, goddamn it,” Frank said. “You’re my son, now act like it.”

“I don’t want that,” he said, pushing away the gun, his eyes fixed on Mickey.

“You will if you need it,” Frank said, opening his hand and slapping it in there. “You think you just get a Platinum Card and a Land Cruiser on your sixteenth birthday? You gotta do things to get that stuff.”

Frank bent back down. He dug deeper into Mickey’s coat and came up with a thick brown envelope. Mickey continued to whimper.

“Shut up,” Frank snarled.

He tore open the envelope to examine the papers in the dim light. Passports with his and Lexis’s and Allen’s pictures in them along with phony birth certificates, credit cards, driver’s licenses, and Social Security cards. The whole package had cost him a hundred thousand dollars, but the names and the Social Security numbers were real, so they could get through any airport or customs agent in the world without raising an alarm. The ones for Lexis he slipped back into the envelope and tossed over the edge of the bluff.

By daybreak, Capozza’s men would be hunting for him with everything they had, but he and Allen would be long gone.

“What do you think about seventy million dollars?” he said, looking from the bags to his son. “You think we can get by on that? Huh?”

Allen looked at him blankly.

“Dad,” he said, “are you kidding?”

Frank pulled his collar away from his neck, exposing a thin red line of flesh.

“Is this a joke?” he said.

“Jesus, Dad,” Allen said, stepping away from him.

Frank stuck his Glock in Mickey’s face. The smaller man winced and started scrabbling away.

“Get over there,” Frank said, wagging his gun toward the bags, prodding Mickey with the barrel.

“Frank,” Mickey said in a whine, clutching his mangled knee, “what are you gonna do?”

Mickey was cowering there at the lip. Frank raised the gun as if to strike. When Mickey turned his face away, Frank put the bottom of his shoe against the accountant’s rump and shoved. Mickey screamed and flailed, his arms grasping air. He hung for a moment in the empty space, then disappeared into the darkness with a fading howl.

“Jesus,” Allen said, his voice breaking, his eyes leaking tears. He stood there, arms by his sides with the wind whipping at his dark hair. One fist was clenched. In the other hand, he held the Model 66 by the barrel. Frank felt his face grow hot.

“Take one of these,” he said. He put his Glock into its shoulder holster, hoisted one of the big heavy bags, and lifted the small suitcase of Mickey’s money with his hurt hand.

“Take it!” Frank yelled, limping toward the bank with his hands full.

Allen nodded, but didn’t move.

Frank sensed something coming at him from above, but he had no time to think and react. He heard a cry and felt the jolt. Everything went black and he fell backward, dropping the money and splitting the back of his scalp open on the stone.

69

THE SOUND OF FRANK’S raised voice makes my heart beat faster and my shoulders tense. I dart down behind one of the rocks with the.45 raised and listen.

I hear Frank shout again over the wind. The murmur of Allen’s response. A growl and the whining stops. I ease into the space between two of the rocks and look down.

Frank looking at papers. Allen with a gun. Frank tosses an envelope away, then prods the man he shot toward the edge. When he kicks him over, my gut twists, but I hold tight. He’s still got that gun and I’ll be an easy target if I show myself with the glow of the rest area lights behind me.

Allen is crying, and then Frank’s greed takes over. Instead of leaving one of the bags and keeping the gun in his hand, he holsters it, picks up one bag and the suitcase, and heads snarling toward the grassy slope.

I could kill him now, but that wouldn’t do. Not after all I’ve been through. Capozza’s men-the thing that really terrifies Frank-are on their way. He needs to suffer. I stick the.45 into the waist of my pants. When he’s close, I jump up onto the rock I’m hiding behind and launch myself down on top of him. In midair, I am illuminated by headlight beams that swing over the top of me from behind.

I strike him and roll to the side, rising to my feet and drawing my gun.

Frank crabs his fat frame backward toward the ledge, leaving the money behind. The lights from whatever car has just arrived stream over the top of us, broad blue beams that stab into the darkness above the pitchy river.

“Stop!” I yell.

Allen stands off to the side, between us. He has a revolver in his hands, pointed my way now, wagging it back and forth. My gun is aimed steady at Frank’s head. His shoulders heave up and down from the effort to breathe. His hands go in the air and he gets up on one knee. He glares at me, blinking, those empty blue eyes piercing beneath the eaves of his heavy brow.

“Seth,” he says, the name slipping from his bared teeth. “Where’s Raymond?”

“You’re looking at him,” I say with a tight smile.

Frank looks at Allen and screams, “Shoot him!”

My eyes never waver from the snake.

“Allen,” I say, “I came to take you back to your mother.”

“Do what I say!” Frank screams. His face is red and flecks of white spittle fly from his small chubby lips.

“He’s not your father, Allen,” I say slowly, relishing the shade of purple that blooms in Frank’s face. “That’s why you’re nothing like him. You’re my son.”

“You fucking liar,” Frank snarls. “I’ll kill you…”

He starts to lower his hands. I shake the gun at him.

“Move, Frank, and you’ll die right now.”

“Kill him!” Frank shouts at Allen. “Pull the fucking trigger!”

“Genetics, Allen,” I say. “You took biology. Two blue-eyed parents can only have blue-eyed kids. You have brown eyes… like mine.”

I hear Bert call my name from behind. That low rumble. His giant shadow confuses the headlight beams. I see Allen spin and the flash of his gun. The shadow disappears and Bert cries out.

My eyes flicker. Frank dives. Allen goes down with him. My gun follows Frank, but I can’t pull the trigger. His head is behind Allen’s.

I see the glint of metal. Long and thin. From his sleeve, Frank has drawn a blade that now rests against Allen’s throat. A fishing fillet knife. Like the one used to frame me in another lifetime.

“If he’s yours, then you don’t want me slittin’ his throat,” Frank says in a growl. He raises himself up behind Allen, pulling him up too, using him as a shield.

Allen’s eyes are wide. He gropes for his neck.

The knife licks his skin and his limbs freeze.

I see those deep brown eyes. I see myself.

“Seth,” he says, begging me.

“See?” Frank says, sneering from behind Allen’s dark head of hair.

“He’s mine, Frank,” I say. “The whole game is mine. They’ll find you.”

“They’ll find you dead first,” Frank snarls. “Put the fucking gun down, or they’ll find him too.”

My hand lowers and my fingers go loose. The.45 clatters to the rock floor.

“Get down,” Frank says. “Put your hands on your head. Now! Him or you.”

I feel the energy drain quickly from my body. I kneel and lace my fingers over the top of my head, but I’m watching.

“Good,” Frank says. He pushes Allen aside and draws his Glock.

He limps over to me and touches the pistol to my forehead. I can hear his ragged breath. I can smell his cologne and garlic wrapped in mint. He moves behind me where I can’t see him, dragging the metal barrel across my scalp and up over my fingers until it comes to rest in the soft tissue beneath the back of my skull.

Allen’s face is white, his hair a tangle from the wind. Behind him the big city blazes, floating.

“I’m gonna do what that jury shoulda done,” Frank says in a husky whisper. “The death sentence.”

I close my eyes and the gunshot explodes in my ears.

Frank crashes down on top of me and I see a burst of lights. When he rolls off, I am covered in blood.

Helena is standing in the beams of the headlights, her shadow like a dark angel, hair pulled back, faded jeans, the smoking three-inch Chief’s Special in her hands. She crouches, hops over the edge of the rocks, and slides down the grassy bank with her gun raised.

I pull my legs out from under Frank’s bulk and step back. Allen is on his knees, shaking, his head in his hands. Frank’s gut protrudes up out of his dirty jacket, stretching the buttons of the white shirt that is now crimson with blood on the left side. His chest heaves up and down and as he wheezes blood foams at his lips. His eyes are wide with fear and he stares up at Helena. His fingers twitch and claw around the rocky ledge in search of his gun.

Helena’s eyes are glassy and narrowed, and when I call her name, she doesn’t react. The Chief’s Special is trembling, but well aimed at Frank’s face.

“Helena!” I shout. “Don’t.”

“Do you remember me?” she says to Frank.

She drops the gun from his face to his crotch and fires three quick 9mm rounds.

The only thing I can hear through the hot smell of powder and the smoke and the ringing in my ears is the symphony of Frank’s piercing screams.

Another car shrieks to a stop above us and I hear the slamming of doors. Capozza’s men are soon beside me with their guns drawn. They grin like jackals as they haul Frank up the hillside by his ankles. His agony is mixed with fear now. Sobs punctuate his shrill moaning as his head bumps along the stony ground.

Allen’s face is blank. I tell him to come on. I take Helena’s hand and tug her up the hill. Bert is dusting himself off, bleeding from a nick in the upper arm from Allen’s gun. Under the glow of the streetlights I can see Frank twisting and hysterical in the trunk of an old Lincoln Town Car. Capozza’s men slam it shut and go back over the edge for the money. They heave the heavy duffel bags into the backseat and then climb into the front. The doors slam.

Inside the trunk, Frank’s muffled squealing pitches even higher. The car’s gears clank. The tires yip. Off they go.