Politika

TWELVE

Minutes before his death, Julius Agosten was rolling his vender’s stand out of the parking lot on Twenty-third Street and trying to imagine what he would do if he hit the lottery.

The first thing on his list, he thought, would be to turn his stand over to his brother-in-law, vender’s license, garage space, and all. Stefan was still young enough to tolerate the long hours out on the street, leaving the house at four o’clock in the morning, getting home after eight at night, sometimes after midnight on weekends, summer and winter, rain or shine. What with Rene and Stefan having had the baby recently, the stand would give them a chance to make some decent money, maybe even put away a few dollars for the little girl’s future.

There were only a limited number of vender licenses available in the city, and even fewer locations as busy as the one Julius had staked out for himself, Forty-second Street and Broadway, the heart of midtown. During the week you had the professional people, men with briefcases, women in stylish outfits, thousands of them jamming the sidewalks, pouring from the subways, rushing this way and that out there on Times Square, stopping for coffee and something to eat — a Danish, roll, whatever — as they hurried to their jobs. And then you had the cabbies, the cops, the shop clerks — everybody, really. Who had time for breakfast at home nowadays?

Julius pushed the stand down the block toward his waiting van, its metal casters rattling on the pavement, the noise very loud in the predawn hush. In three hours the city would awaken, but now the insurance gates were still drawn over the storefronts, and no one was pushing through the revolving doors of the office buildings, and the only traffic was an occasional newspaper truck or taxi swishing by under the dim throw of the street lamps. Thankfully. Because if the street got crowded, the traffic cops would come out in force, and he’d be fined for illegally parking the van while he got his stand out of the lot. But what else was he supposed to do? Wheel it all the way uptown on foot, twenty blocks, which was a long walk even in decent weather, and seemed a lot longer in December?

Forty million bucks, he thought, remembering the Lotto ticket in his pocket again. If he won, he would retire and head someplace warm. Buy a big house, a mansion, one with acres of lawn and a curving gravel driveway behind high iron gates. Maybe it would have an ocean view on one side — Gerty, God rest her soul, had always loved the ocean. There would be no more leaving the wagon overnight in the parking garage, no more paying two hundred a month for the privilege of keeping it safe from vandals and thieves. No more dragging himself out of bed at three A.M. so he could drive to the wholesaler in Queens for his rolls and pastries, then get the wagon out of the lot, and be set up on his corner by the start of the rush hour.

This had been his routine for over a decade, week after week, year after year. And while Julius wasn’t a man to forget his blessings, he couldn’t deny that it had taken a toll on him. Waking up early was getting more difficult every day. His work hours left him with no time to spend with his grandchildren. The circulation in his right leg had been giving him trouble, and his left shoulder very often ached.

Most of all, though, he was getting sick and tired of the brutal winters.

Today he was wearing a quilted parka and had the hood drawn up over his head, but the sharp wind coming off the Hudson stung his exposed cheeks, and his bones felt brittle from the glacial cold. These days, Julius was always adding layers of insulation to his clothing, but somehow there were never enough to keep him comfortable.

It was, he supposed, all part of becoming middle-aged… but why hadn’t he noticed his youth slipping away until it was too late to prepare for it?

Reaching the van now, he pulled the stand around back and knelt to connect it to the trailer hitch. Forty million, forty million, forty million. Given the size of the jackpot, maybe he should have bought more than a single ticket this week, he thought. He’d heard it made no difference in the odds if you had one or a hundred, going strictly by the math. But still…

Julius had nearly finished hitching up the stand when he heard hurried footsteps behind him. He jerked his head around, startled. They seemed to be coming from around the corner, on Fifth Avenue.

A moment later the woman turned onto the block.

At first Julius thought she was probably a hooker. What respectable woman would be out on the street at this hour, let alone on such a frigid morning? Anyway, despite the citywide cleanup campaign, there was still a thriving skin trade in the neighborhood — like the drive-through line, as it was called, right over on Twenty-eighth and Lex, where you’d see the cars double- and-triple parked on busy Friday nights, heads bobbing under the dashboards.

As she came walking in his direction, though, Julius found himself thinking that she really didn’t look like a streetwalker, at least not like any of the girls he’d seen in this part of town, most of whom plastered on their makeup an inch thick and dressed to advertise their goods even if it meant freezing their behinds off. In fact, she seemed more like one of the businesswomen who’d be stopping to buy a croissant from him in a few hours.

Wearing a tweed overcoat, dark slacks, and a beret that was pulled down almost to her ears, she was a striking beauty, with an exotic, high-cheekboned face, and a wedge of straight black hair blowing back over her shoulders in the wind.

She walked right up to him now, stepping quickly through the darkness, vapor puffing from her mouth.

“Help me,” she said, sounding very upset. “Please.”

Julius stared at her in confusion.

“What?” he said awkwardly. “What — what’s the matter?”

She stopped maybe an inch away from him, her large black eyes meeting his own.

“I need a ride,” she said.

He frowned. “I don’t understand…”

“Here, let me show you,” she said, and fumbled in her shoulder bag.

Julius watched her with growing confusion. Why would she walk up to a perfect stranger and ask…?

Before he could complete the thought, he heard a rustling sound behind him, then suddenly felt something hard and cold push against the back of his head.

The woman nodded slightly.

Not to him, he realized, but to whoever had stolen up on him from the shadows.

His heart knocked in his chest. He’d been tricked, distracted —

Julius never heard the silenced Glock go off, never felt anything except the jolt of the muzzle against his head as the trigger was pulled and the bullet went ripping through his skull, blowing out his right eye and a large chunk of his forehead.

As his body dropped faceup to the ground, its remaining eye still wide with shock, the pistol angled downward, spitting three more muffled rounds into his face.

Gilea looked both ways, saw that the street was empty, and then crouched over the body, avoiding the puddle of blood that was already spreading over the sidewalk around it. She unpinned the vender’s license from the front of the parka and slipped it into her purse. She hastily searched through the coat and pants pockets, found a wallet and key ring, then glanced up at the bearded man with the gun.

“Let’s get out of here, Akhad,” she said, tossing him the keys.

He slipped the Glock under his jacket, opened the side of the van, then returned to the corpse and dragged it in behind the front seat.

Out on the street, Gilea finished hitching the vender’s stand to the back of the van, went around the side nearest the curb, and leaned her head in through the panel door. She noticed a blanket on the floor of the rear compartment and tossed it over the body. Then she climbed into the passenger seat.

Sitting beside her, the bearded man found the ignition key amid the cluster in his hand and started up the engine.

They pulled away from the curb, driving west along Twenty-eighth Street, the vender’s stand bumping along in tow.

The van rolled into the auto repair lot at Eleventh Avenue and Fifty-second Street at ten minutes past five. Although the shop would not open for business until 8:30, the garage door was elevated and Akhad drove right in. Three men in gray mechanics’ coveralls were waiting inside near the door to the office.

Gilea pushed out of her door and jumped down off the running board.

“Where’s Nick?” she asked.

“On his way,” one of the men said in Russian.

She gave him a look of displeasure. “He should have been here.”

The man didn’t answer. Gilea let the silence expand.

“The body’s in the van,” she said finally. “You’ll have to dispose of it.”

“Right.”

She reached into her purse for the laminated vender’s license, and handed it to him.

“That should be altered immediately,” she said. “And I want the stand ready by tonight.”

“It’ll be done.”

“It had better,” she said. “We have less than three days.”

“Don’t worry, there won’t be any problems.”

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

“It’s miserably cold in here,” she said. “How can you take it?”

He nodded toward the van and grinned.

“It helps to keep busy,” he said.