The Hunted

29

At 10:00 a.m., Elena arrived promptly for her monthly visit. She came in a rental car picked up at the local airport, a cramped bright purple economy model with a zippy little engine. She and Alex had done this routine fourteen times now. Different prisons, different states, different guards. But it was old hat. The routine rarely varied. Later, she would dump the car, hop a fast flight for Atlanta, wander through the huge terminal for a few hours trying to shake any followers, then at the very last minute hop another flight and bounce around the Midwest awhile. Everything paid for in cash. It would take her two days to return home but Alex emphasized that the time and money were worth it. This was not a game. People were out there, trying to kill her. No precaution was too great.

Her ID had been checked, she'd been patted down and searched, had her hand stamped, and was waiting quietly in a stiff plastic chair when Alex entered. The glass partition was perforated with dozens of small holes. An improvement, they thought, over the last prison, where they had been forced to whisper awkwardly over intercom phones. They were paranoid about bugs. It hampered their conversations terribly.

"You look beautiful," Alex told her. He did not mention the dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted and worn down by fourteen months of endless work, of living in the shadows, of leaping out of bed at the slightest creak of a floorboard. He was trying to hide how guilty it made him feel.

"I love you," she replied, her usual opening.

No need to ask how he was doing; how the new prison was working out; how he was being treated. Alex called almost every night from one of his three cell phones, and they chatted back and forth late into the night. She knew about Benny Beatty, and all about the "mutual fund" Alex was running for an ever-swelling pool of prisoners and guards. No different from the two previous prisons. Elena kept the records and managed the investments through a local Virginia broker she had picked for his efficiency and reliability. Checks arrived in the mail with great frequency from Alex's new clients in each prison, a trickle in the first month, before word spread and the floodgates opened. Elena promptly deposited the checks with the broker, and they were instantly invested. Every night Alex called with fresh instructions to be relayed to the broker the next morning. Execute this sell; buy five thousand shares of this; short this, long that. The stock market was roaring. The fund was beating it handsomely, and Alex's "clients" were elated. He couldn't walk ten steps in the yard without people pleading to join up.

The Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily were delivered to his cell every morning by a guard who had emptied his entire 401(k) nest egg and handed it over to Alex's care.

Even Elena's broker was shadowing Alex's moves with his own money.

"How's Bitchy?" Elena asked.

"Fine. His appeal comes up next month."

"Does he have a chance?"

"I helped draft a letter for him to the court. It might help."

Over the past year, Alex had kept her well-informed about the characters he had met in prison. His ability to fit in with these rogues and villains and gangsters amazed her. The Choir Boys of Mariel with their relentless scheming to find a lawyer who could buy their way out. Mustafa, the glowering head of the Black Power brotherhood in Chicago, who kept ominously reminding "Brother Konebitchie" what would happen should the investments go south.

Bitchy Beatty was the most baffling one yet. Inexplicably, he and her husband had grown quite close. Odd bedfellows, though perhaps that was a phrase best avoided.

"What does the letter say?"

"He deeply regrets the pain and suffering he caused. He found God, God found him. When he gets out he intends to send hundred-thousand-dollar checks to each man he injured."

"That sounds nice. They should be impressed."

"I wrote the letter and forged his signature. Benny loathes the Jets for stealing his championship ring. He doesn't regret a thing."

Alex smiled and she laughed.

Alex leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. "The guard in the back. The tall one with blond hair. Name's George. He's your man."

Elena fell back into her chair, waited a moment, then glanced quickly over her shoulder. Three guards were back there but George was ridiculously easy to spot. Tall guy with white-blond hair leaning against the wall, pretending to be bored. He caught Elena's eye and winked effusively.

When they were finished, George would escort her out to the large anteroom to collect her coat and purse. They would brush against each other, a light bump that lasted seconds. Elena would hand George a bundle of computer disks. George would hand back a bundle of disks from Alex. George was the one with his whole 401(k) in the fund; in two short months, it had already doubled. Whatever Alex wanted, George would bend over backward to provide.

"Any new clients?" Alex asked, referring to their other new business venture.

"A few. General Motors signed up yesterday. I left right after they called. There wasn't time to update you."

"You do good work, Mrs. Konevitch."

"If she could write code half as fast as Mr. Konevitch, Mrs. Konevitch would have a thousand new clients."

For the time being, such talk was as romantic as they got. Their new business was roaring out the gate. The entire Internet world was going crazy with start-ups sprouting like poppies in a compliant Afghan field. None, though, had developed multimedia advertising technology as brilliant as Alex. The beauty of it was, Elena hit up pretty much the same clients they had enlisted for Orangutan Media. Same Rolodex. Same marketing contacts. Only the pitch differed. Alex leaned closer, until his lips were nearly pressed up against the glass. "What does MP say? Any updates?"

"No, the situation hasn't changed. He's furious. Says he's never seen anything like this. Keeps calling it a disgrace."

Alex appeared disappointed, though he tried his best to stifle it with a forced smile. "Tell him to relax, it's not his fault. We're up against the American and Russian governments, and I don't think any lawyer could prevail. I couldn't be happier with him."

"He's demoralized, Alex. He feels responsible. He wrote another long, bitter letter to the judge. Same theme as the last six. What happened to those high-sounding instructions to the prosecutor about putting you in a nicer place than this?"

"I'm fine, Elena."

"No, you're-"

"Relax, I'm fine. I actually had wine with a late dinner last night. Pot roast, fresh corn and potatoes, cooked by a guard's wife, served in the cell. Me and Benny over candlelight. He still thinks I'm cute, incidentally."

"You are cute. But you're not fine, Alex Konevitch. And don't tell me differently. You're surrounded by murderers and rapists and nasty gangs. You could get shooked in the showers by some crazy killer just because you stepped on his toe."

"Shanked," Alex corrected her.

"Oh, shut up." A few months before Elena had done something deeply regrettable; once done, though, it was impossible to erase. She had gone on an all-out binge of prison flicks, a response to her curiosity about what her husband was going through. She watched them all, one after another, late into the night, night after night. For months afterward she was tormented by nightmares, waking up sweating and shivering. The images of brutal killings and chaotic beatings and jailhouse rapes came back to her constantly. Her precious husband was trapped inside a vicious building filled with barbaric monsters who snuffed lives for a pack of cigarettes.

Alex tried to shrug it off. Hollywood hooey, he called it. A bunch of cinematic nonsense, hyped-up tripe to shock and appall the ignorant public, he insisted.

He was lying. She knew better.

Thankfully, he had acquired no tattoos; none she could observe, anyway. But who knew what was lurking beneath that shirt, or under those baggy pants? And there was no doubt that Alex looked different. Harder, long greasy hair pulled back in a tight ponytail now, less expressive, a little slower to laugh, and his eyes darted around constantly, alert in a way that tore at her heart. Even his walk was different. No longer the old determined, upright clip straining to shave off a few extra seconds; it now resembled a slide more than a walk, slow, slumped, and slothful, with hands perpetually sunk to the bottom of his pockets. A survivor's walk. A way of saying he cared about nothing.

She understood but did not like it. Adapt, blend in with the natives, or you became bait to the strongest animals in the cage.

There was only one good thing about prison: sleep and exercise were plentiful. What else was there to do? Until this visit, anyway, Alex always looked remarkably refreshed and fit. He must've had a bad few nights, though, because this time he looked painfully exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot, with large bags underneath them. He hadn't slept well in days, possibly weeks.

"This is crazy, Alex," she uttered softly.

"It is what it is, Elena. Be patient."

"I've been patient for a year. I want you in my bed, where you belong. I'm tired of sleeping alone."

"I'm not all that crazy about sleeping with Benny, either. Have you ever heard an All-Pro lineman snore?"

"Stop it."

"And the smell. All that bulk. He comes back from his workouts in the yard, the paint falls off the walls."

Like Alex was an Irish rose himself. All the prisoners stank. They were oblivious to their own odors, but Elena was nearly flattened by the stench in the prison visitors' room. She wanted to bring Alex home and scrub a year of prison stink out of his skin. Then take him to bed and heal a year's worth of fear and misery and frustration and loneliness.

"Alex, are you sure you're okay?" she pressed, more emphatically this time. She was his wife. All this jokiness was an attempt to conceal something. He was far from okay.

Alex looked down and played with his fingers a moment-a slight twitch around his left eye, an almost imperceptible shift of tiny muscles, and she knew.

She bent forward until her face was pressed against the glass. "Stop lying. What's happening?"

"All right. Somebody tried to kill me yesterday."

"Yesterday… what happened?"

"In the yard, I was playing basketball when a man made a run at me. He was carrying a crude hatchet constructed in the prison shop. As attempts go it was stupid and clumsy. It had no chance."

Elena was perfectly motionless. This was the nightmare she had long dreaded. She watched him and waited.

"I was lucky," Alex informed her, trying to make it sound trifling, little more than a bad hand of cards. "Two of the cons on my team are investors in the fund. I threw the ball in his face, his nose shattered, he slowed down, they disarmed him. It wasn't all that dramatic." He left off the part about how his friends mauled the killer, stomping his hands and breaking both arms to be sure he wouldn't try again.

"Who was he? Why did he want to kill you?"

"A Russian. A former Mafiya gunman who obviously wasn't as handy with an axe."

"I asked why he wanted to kill you."

A momentary pause. "Apparently, the people in Moscow are offering big money to whoever gets me." Then a more prolonged pause before he made the painful decision to tell Elena everything. "It was the second attempt."

"I see. And when was the first?"

"Two months ago."

"Two months? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I've been quite careful since then. Benny follows me everywhere he can. I'm surrounded at every meal by a squad of our investors. A few of the guys watch over me when I shower, use the bathroom, use the library. They don't want their golden goose hauled out in a coffin. I'm only in danger when I leave my cell."

Elena reeled backward into her seat and struggled to fight her horror-she couldn't. "I'll call MP and have him insist on moving you to another prison. We'll raise hell. Hold a big obnoxious press conference. We'll-"

Before she could finish, Alex was already shaking his head. "I've already considered that. Don't. Don't even try."

"Why not?"

"I'm alive only because I've established a network here. At each new place, it takes three weeks to a month, at a minimum. I'd be completely naked."

"And if the investment fund for some reason has a bad month? A sudden market correction, for instance. That happens, Alex. How good will your protection be then?"

He forced a smile. "Believe me, I think about that every day. It certainly helps focus the mind."

She crossed her arms and did not acknowledge the smile. "And if you stay here, it's just a matter of time, isn't it? Say one of your new friends becomes distracted, or at the wrong moment bends over to tie a shoe. Maybe somebody slips a little poison in your food, or a little knife in your back."

"A lot could happen," Alex admitted, rubbing his temples. "They've been scared off a few times. A week ago, in the library, before some of my friends made a threatening move. Five days ago, in the shower, three men were approaching me when a guard showed up."

"I see."

"Look, I won't pretend I'm not worried. These are rough people, killers. They're watching me every day, looking for an opening. I know the odds."

"You have to get out of here, Alex."

"Believe me, that thought has crossed my mind. The past few weeks, I've lived in the law section of the library."

"There has to be something. You can't just let these people kill you."

About two cubicles down, a loud argument suddenly exploded between a prisoner and his wife. The woman was barely more than a child, maybe nineteen, dressed in a scant black leather skirt, black net stockings, a halter top that did more to reveal than conceal, false eyelashes that flopped like gigantic butterflies, and enough cosmetics to camouflage a battleship or capsize it. Only a moment before, she and the hubby had their faces pressed tightly against the glass panel, whispering sweet nothings back and forth, like they were ready to disrobe and grope each other through the divider. The husband suddenly recoiled backward, nearly tipping his chair to the floor.

"Oh yeah, you heard right. Your twin brother," the woman roared.

"My own brother. You're sleeping with my own brother," the husband wailed, slamming both fists like noisy gavels against the glass panel.

"Yeah, well… least I kept it in the family, since I know how much that word means to you. This time, anyways."

"You're a bitch. A whore. A backstabbin' whore."

She stood up and jammed her face up against the divider. "Hey, you noticed, finally. Guess what, idiot? I'm givin' it away to any fool who looks twice. They're thinkin' of naming a mattress after me. So what are you gonna do about it, huh?" she taunted.

Until this moment, the three guards in the room had looked on with an air of bemused boredom. Old hat, old story, happy days again in the visitors' room. A wife cheating on a locked-up hubby: what's new? A tired old scene the guards had observed a thousand times with few variations. Many marriages lasted a year, some more than two, very, very few beyond the third year of separation.

There was one inviolate rule, though, and this prisoner bashed it to pieces. He snapped, leaped to his feet, and, howling at the top of his voice, began trying to crawl and claw his way over the divider. Two guards lost their look of boredom and sprang into action. They yanked him off the glass, jerked his arms behind his back, and slapped cuffs on him. They began dragging him out as he hollered a bewildering array of curses at his wife.

His wife stood and loitered, arms crossed, watching it all with a smile that smacked of huge contentment.

Then, at the final moment before they yanked her husband through the door, she whipped down her halter, exposing two rather impressive breasts. With two hands, she cupped and then began juggling them. "Hey," she yelled at her husband, "remember these? Tonight your brother's gonna have a field day with 'em. And once I get bored with him, you know what? I'll bet I can get your father in the sack."

She tugged the halter back up, spun on her heels, and with a loud triumphant clack of high heels departed the room.

"Poor man," Elena remarked with a sympathetic frown after the tumult died down.

Alex bent forward and shook his head. "That's Eddie Carminza. He's up for bigamy. Five years in the joint, the max. She's one of four wives."

"My God, this place is crazy, Alex. You have to get out."

"Well, there is one thing we can try. Move the case out of immigration channels into a federal court. It's premature, though, and incredibly risky."

"You might prematurely die in here if we don't try something."

"I know. But there are two problems. Serious problems. One, federal court means different rules and procedures. MP isn't a criminal lawyer. Also he has no experience in the federal system. The rules of evidence and admissibility are stricter. It's too late to replace him, though."

"Can he handle it?"

"I'm not sure any lawyer can and MP is already holding a bad hand. And who knows how much ammunition our friends in Russia have provided the prosecutor over the past year."

"But Mikhail-"

"Mikhail hasn't found us the silver bullet. There's no legally acceptable proof that my money was stolen. No proof I'm being framed. Nothing to keep me from being shipped back to Russia."

"All right, what's two?"

"If we rush into federal court, and I lose, I'll be shipped right back here. We can try an appeal, and we will. But that takes time. I'll probably be dead long before."

"So it's a choice between very bad and awful?"

"More like between certain death and probable death."

"So what's this idea?"

"It's called a motion for habeas corpus. Technically, by shoving me into the federal prison system, they've created a loophole we should be able to exploit. It forces the government to show cause for my imprisonment. If a judge accepts it, the process happens very fast."

"How fast?"

"Three days after we launch it, we'll be in court."

"Oh… that fast." Elena stared at her shoes a moment. She began fidgeting with her hands. "Is it too fast?"

"Possibly," Alex told her. "We have a lot of enemies, here and in Russia. Everything has to happen at once. And everything has to succeed, or as my friend Benny puts it, it's game over. Also Mikhail will have to move up his time schedule. And we'll have to pray for a legal miracle."

"We're overdue for a miracle."

"I don't think it works that way. We'll have to produce our own."

"I'll call Mikhail the second I'm out of here."

"You have a busy weekend ahead of you. It's time to share everything with MP, then pray it's enough."