Bernie said, “This is Malcolm Watkins. You spoke on the phone.”
I shook hands with the kid and pointed to the backpack. “That the money?”
“Yes, sir. They specified a red backpack.”
“What did they sound like?”
“What do you mean?”
“The voice on the phone—man, woman, American, foreign, young, old?”
“Oh, sorry. I have no idea—Mrs. Mulholland talked to them.”
I looked at Bernie. “Mulholland said—”
“I know. No way around telling her. I’ll deal with Rory.”
I didn’t point out she almost certainly already knew. I’d caused enough trouble. Instead, I asked, “What’s the drill?”
Franklin looked down at a yellow legal pad. “Bring the money to the Sheraton at Newark Airport tonight at ten. Alone. She said they repeated that. Go to the front door with the backpack, wait. You’ll be searched. No guns. Then you go to the room they tell you. The door will be ajar. Put the backpack on the bed and leave. The girl will be in the lobby. They said if anything goes wrong, they’ll kill her first, then you.”
He said the last part awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable. This wasn’t what he’d been trained for. I nodded and smiled.
“Don’t worry. These guys probably learned that watching TV. Let’s see what we have.” I picked up the backpack. It was full of bills, tens and twenties, banded into packs of a thousand dollars each. I looked up at Watkins. “All here, right?”
“Yes, sir. Counted it twice.”
I took the box of small electronic devices from my messenger bag and selected one about the size and shape of a Wheat Thins cracker. Then I reached around in the backpack until I felt an inside pocket, and used some Super Glue to stick the RFID tag to the nylon. Bernie and Watkins watched while I rezipped the pocket, the latter with some suspicion.
“Radio frequency identification transponder,” I said. “RFID. Everybody’s using them. Casinos, Walmart, car rental companies—it’s the big new thing. Sends a signal to my laptop. GPS software communicates with the satellite, tells me where the backpack is.”
Watkins looked at Bernie, then back at me. “She said they said no tricks. They said—”
I cut him off. Whatever they said wasn’t important. “These guys have any brains at all, they’ll expect us to try something. Hundred grand’s too much money to just piss away—that’s how they’ll look at it. This is an older radio tag. I want them to find it. So they won’t look for this one.” I held up a piece of plastic about the size of a grain of rice. “New generation, just out. Japanese, of course.”
I removed a pack of bills from the bag and slid a twenty from the middle. A tiny drop of glue stuck the transponder to the currency, which I reinserted into the pack. “If they take the money and leave the bag, we’ll still know where they are.”
Bernie said, “What will you do when you find them?”
“Don’t know. Depends in part on who they are. I’ll think of something.” I picked up the red backpack along with my bag. “Better get going. Might be traffic in the tunnel. Where do you want me to call?”
“We’ll be here,” Bernie said. “Good luck.”
* * *
I walked north through the all but empty, muggy streets. I keep the
Potemkin
in a garage on Pearl Street. I keep the Vlost and Found company car—a black 2003 Ford Crown Victoria, Police Interceptor model—in an open lot on Water Street. I call it the
Valdez,
after the ill-fated tanker, not the Madison Avenue coffee character. It has seventy-five thousand miles on the odometer, dents in the front fender and back door, and cost $9,800. It’s essentially a Crown Vic with a bunch of extra features and equipment and drives like its namesake, but it’ll move when you ask it to, and I couldn’t care less if it gets nicked, dinged, or totaled. A perfect New York City car.
I tossed the bags in back and headed for the Holland Tunnel, where it was still rush hour. I wanted to arrive early, get the lay of the land. The dashboard clock read 8:33 when I left. At 9:02, I pulled into the Sheraton’s parking lot. I found a space near the entrance and sat in the dusk. It felt a little like the old days, when I’d been stationed here before—meeting an agent when exposure for either of us had dire consequences. This time, though, I hadn’t chosen the venue, and the dire consequences would all fall on me.
I watched the parking lot in the failing light. If I were doing this, I’d have a man in the lot, two in the lobby, and two upstairs, in the room next door or, better, across the hall, all connected with earphone radios. Their first concern would be the money, their second, me. No reason for them to do anything so long as I followed instructions. Which I fully intended to do. Up to a point.
At 9:42, a car drove in, its headlights sweeping across the
Valdez
and the front of the hotel. It parked on the other side of the entrance. A man in a rumpled sports coat got out and unloaded a wheeler suitcase from the trunk. It was red. Shit. Nothing I could do. I held my breath as he pulled it to the front door. He stopped in the lighted entranceway to search his pockets. It took forever before he found what he was looking for—his cell phone. I almost got out and yelled at him to keep moving, but nobody attacked him. Nobody came out to greet him. From what I could see, there was nobody to pay him any attention whatsoever. He finally continued inside. The parking lot returned to emptiness. I waited several more minutes before exhaling slowly. They knew who they were waiting for.
At 9:55, I slid a SIG Pro 9 mm handgun, a compact, double-action autoloader with a polymer frame and a ten-round magazine, into the backpack with the bills, working it down almost to the bottom. I don’t like guns. The result of having them pointed at me in my youth. I don’t carry one as a rule, but I wasn’t sure what I was in for tonight, so better safe than sorry. I figured the guy at the door, if there was a guy at the door, would search me and make sure the backpack contained the money, but he was unlikely to dump it out in the parking lot. Or so I hoped.
I locked the car, hoisted the backpack, and walked toward the entrance. The bright lights of the covered doorway cast everything around it in shadow. No doorman, no bellhop, no other guests, just a big, empty, well-lighted space. To walk into that, like the guy with the suitcase, was to present a target a blind man couldn’t miss from a quarter mile away. I stopped fifteen feet short, still in the shadows. Growing up in a Marxist bureaucracy teaches many things, and one of them is patience. I could stand there all night if need be. I was disobeying instructions, but if they meant me harm, I might get a half second of warning. I waited, stock-still, one eye on the door, peripheral vision searching the parking lot for any sign of movement among the cars.
Newark is known as a tough town, but it’s not Moscow. Nobody shot me from the shadows. After two long minutes, a man in a dark-colored shirt pushed his way out the door and straight in my direction.
“Back to car,” he said without breaking stride.
He followed me to the
Valdez.
When we got there, he had a gun in his hand.
“Bag on car. Hands on car.” Ukrainian accent.
I put the backpack on the hood and my hands on the roof. He ran his free hand over my arms, legs, and torso. He opened the backpack, looked inside, shook it once, pulled out a pack of bills, fanned it, and replaced it. The one flaw in my plan was that he’d try to accompany me upstairs, but he put the backpack on the car, walked around to the other side, and said, “Go. Three twelve.”
I took the money and walked to the hotel without looking back.
The lobby was empty, but the cocktail lounge, on an open, raised floor to one side, was a third full. Could be another one there. I didn’t look but walked straight to the elevators, the backpack over my shoulder for all to see, and punched 3. I transferred the SIG to my waistband during the ride.
The door opened in a small waiting area. Empty corridors ran in both directions. Room 312 was to the right. Door ajar, as promised. I pushed it open and stopped. No movement. No sound, other than the hum of hotel machinery and a TV somewhere down the hall.
Inside the door, a narrow hall extended past a closet and bathroom on the left into the room itself, which was filled with a king-sized bed, a desk, and a chair. Standard hotel design.
I had just put the backpack on the bed when I heard a noise. I started to turn, but a blow landed on the back of my head. Something hard, knocking me forward, onto the bed. I held myself up, which was a mistake because it got me another crack on the skull. I fell to the floor, woozy but conscious and alert enough to pretend I was out cold. A foot poked my side a couple of times. I refused to move and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady.
A male voice, speaking Ukrainian, said, “Watch him while I get the money.”
I heard the sounds of the backpack being emptied. The same voice spoke again.
“Jerk-fuck thinks he smart. Look at this.”
The other man said, “Shit. You think that’s—”
“Not now, fool! Search him. Get his keys—and anything else.”
The other man bent over me. Vodka on his breath. I felt his hands in my jacket pocket. When he tried to push me over, I pulled the SIG from my back and stuck it in his face.
“Back off.”
The man pulled away fast, afraid. The other man said, “Shit!” and bolted for the door, carrying a blue backpack.
“Looks like it’s you and me, pal.” I made a show of raising the gun.
“No … I … Please…”
He backed slowly away, as if any sudden movement would cause me to fire.
“Get out,” I hissed.
He was gone in an instant, leaving a Raven MP-25, a true junk gun, on the bed.
I hefted the pistol and ejected the clip. Full, but the safety was on. He’d probably hit me with the butt. I felt the back of my head. Some swelling near the base of the skull, a little blood, not too much. These guys were amateurs, and incompetent ones at that, but the fact that they were Ukrainians was one more coincidence I didn’t like.
The red backpack was on the floor, empty. The transponder was next to it. I sat on the bed long enough for my head to clear, then took the plastic liner from the ice bucket and filled it at the ice machine on my way downstairs. The lobby bar was still busy. No Eva. No one under the age of thirty. I wasn’t surprised, but I wanted to be able to tell Bernie I was thorough.
I returned to the elevator. The Sheraton had ten floors, eight with guest rooms. The top two were labeled
CLUB LEVEL
and required a special key. I assumed the Ukrainians wouldn’t have sprung for those. Thirty-eight rooms to a floor, two hundred thirty to check. I started on eight and worked my way down, knocking on every door. Business was slow, and fewer than a hundred rooms were occupied. I asked for Eva wherever someone answered. Most responded, “Wrong room” or “Not here.” I interrupted two couples in the throes of passion. The first woman screamed, “My husband!” The second man told me to “Fuck off!” Three other women threatened to call security. One guy invited me to join the poker game he was running in his suite. The whole process took just over half an hour.
Eva wasn’t there, just as I’d expected. Never had been. Time for Plan B. The Ukrainians might know where she was. More likely, I’d have to find a way to get them to spill who they were working for. Along the way, of course, I’d retrieve the money and discourage whoever needed discouraging from trying to put another bite on the Mulhollands. Priorities.
No one near my car. The Ukrainians were long gone—or so they thought. I wedged the melting ice bag against the headrest and leaned against it. The cold felt good. I turned on my laptop, took out my cell phone, and dialed Bernie’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Turbo! Where are you?”
“Hotel parking lot. We had a little scuffle, but everything’s okay now.”
“What? Are you all right? Have you got Eva? What about the money?”
At least he asked about me first. “I’m okay. Bump on the head, that’s all. No Eva. Not here. Never was. I searched the whole hotel. I should know about the money in a minute.”
“What should I tell Rory? And Felix?”
“I wouldn’t tell them anything yet. Bear with me.” I put down the phone and picked up the laptop. A few clicks of the cursor and a map filled the screen. An arrow pointed to a block in Jersey City, not far from the Holland Tunnel. I picked up the phone.
“Looks like they didn’t go far. Jersey City. I’m on my way. I’ll call later, but it could be a while.”
I closed the phone before he could argue, pulled out of the lot, and found my way onto I-78 East. When I was through the tolls and climbing the ramp onto the Pulaski Skyway, I made two more calls. The first was to Foos, with the Jersey City address. I woke him up, but he’s used to that. The second was to Gayeff, a former Soviet Olympic discus thrower. He and his twin brother, Maks, who competed in the shot put, did contract work for the Cheka after they retired from athletics. They now run a numbers operation in Brighton Beach and moonlight as muscle for hire, mainly, I think, because they enjoy it. Gayeff was awake, but I probably interrupted something—he didn’t sound happy to hear from me. He agreed to round up Maks and meet me in an hour.
When I got to Jersey City, I found a parking place, adjusted what was left of the ice in the bag, and settled in to wait. It was going to be a long night. Not least for the men holed up at 145 Montgomery Street.
CHAPTER 9
Montgomery Street was in the process of gentrification. About half the three-story brick row houses in the block containing 145 looked like they’d had significant money put into them. The other half did not. Number 145 was in the latter group.
I’d been there ten minutes when Foos called. “Three apartments. Two tenants have lived there several years—Sanchez and Rodriguez. Third place is empty, or rented off the books, Apartment 1A. Need anything else?”
“Don’t know yet. I’m waiting for reinforcements.”
“Track and Field?” His nickname for Gayeff and Maks. He thinks it’s hilarious. “Don’t let those boys get out of hand. I’m going for pizza. Back in twenty.” Foos likes to smoke a little dope from time to time, which invariably gives him the munchies.