Rivers of Gold (18 page)

Prince William looks me in the eye.

—Not until now. Whatever happens, make sure you know which side you're on.

I try to ask him how the hell he knows all of this, but suddenly I'm hemmed in by a pair of megatheriums. One of them puts a huge paw on my back. It's hard and heavy and carries the potential for catastrophic damage with it.

—
Please come with us
, one of them intones.

I'm on my knees on the floor of the former Bryant Park Grill's men's room downstairs from the party. At least they won't be able to drown me in one of the toilets; the water was shut off ages ago. The megatheriums are behind me, and there's a huge heavy hand on each of my shoulders, pressing bone against bone, though not quite hard enough to make me scream. LA, who stands before me resplendent in skin-tight gym attire, her chiseled abdominals inches from my mouth, must want me for something.

—You know, Renny, I like to think of myself as fair-minded and even-tempered. Your boss Reza is not. That's upsetting the balance of things, which upsets
me
.

LA slaps me, lightly, with her right hand, then softly brushes her fingers against my cheek.

—Reza, LA says, is not willing to share.

And she punches me in the same spot she was rubbing. I see it coming, and there's nothing I can do about it. LA's workouts are paying dividends; I taste blood in my mouth and the bathroom fades out for a moment. The hands on my shoulders never waver.

She goes back to stroking my face again, and continues.

—Your friend out there showed some shrewd business sense coming to me to parley. He figures with a war on he can play both sides against the middle and still get paid. What do you think, Renny? Would you like to get paid?

My brain is struggling to absorb what she's telling me while trying to shake off the effects of her punch. I manage to say:

—I'd like to get paid.

LA backhands me hard, the other side of my face this time, but the taste of blood in my mouth is stronger. The goons still don't budge. (I will not cry. I will
not
cry.)

—Then I suggest you find another party to peddle your wares at, once you resupply. I'm keeping tonight's shipment for my trouble.

(Oh shit oh fuck oh FUCK ME. She's taking the Specials, I'll have to make up the cost to Reza, on top of what I already owe for the light … )

LA draws back her arm for another blow and I can't help it, I flinch, and feel the burn of tears starting at the corner of my eyes. LA lowers her arm. Her smile makes my stomach drop like a high-speed elevator.

—Give Reza my regards, she says.

She jerks her head at the twin golems and turns away toward the sinks.

And I'm hauled to my feet so hard my arms feel like they'll come out of their sockets. The goons half-pull, half-drag me out of the bathroom, out past the clumps and hordes and gaggles of stunned onlookers. I've never been thrown out of anywhere, I've always known how to play it smooth. I can't handle this. This is worse than the beating. There's no fame like infamy. I will
not
cry. (Not here.)

There's a momentary pause while one goon gets the door. Just long enough for me to look back toward the men's room. Just long enough to see another guard ushering a woman inside. Just long enough for me to see that it's N.

Ngala whatever-the-fuck is his usual surly self, though he's surprisingly blasé about having just been held up and ripped off by LA's thugs. When I ask him if they took the stash, he shrugs and points to the partition. He doesn't care about losing fifty thousand dollars' worth of coated, easy-to-swallow, lab-grade Ecstasy tablets. His cab isn't damaged, that's all he's worried about. I put him on my list of people I'd like to kill. The list has grown long.

Retch. Tony, who never showed up tonight and still owes me for ten Specials. LA and her whole earpiece-wearing muscle menagerie. Prince William, who's making a deal with LA behind Reza's back to hedge his bets about who wins the war. Marcus fucking Chalk, who will never hire me again. Johnette, who made sure of it. And Reza, who's expecting his money and is accustomed to my prompt deliveries.

So who's on
my
side?

Prince William. Phone's off. L. Phone's off. N—no, I'm not calling N. I don't know where I stand with N. I don't even know where she stands anymore. I am definitely not calling Reza or any of his retinue. Marty. Phone's off. There's two dozen numbers in my phone, but there's nobody I can talk to, nobody I can trust.

I have many contacts, but no friends.

Wait—Joss. I stab the call through the phone, angrily gesturing at Ngala to wait. He wants to go back to work. He will, but for me. Thunder sounds, off in the distance. We're supposed to get hit with a storm tonight. Perfect.

Joss lives in the penthouse of a brownstone on Sixty-ninth and Second with a fabulous glassed-in living room cantilevered out over the street, doubtless guaranteed by Daddy. After having Ngala drive me home to pick up half the remaining batch of Specials (I leave the other half in my stash as backup), I have him drop me under the cool neon Goldberg's sign on First, the last indie pharmacy left in town. It's a five-minute walk to Joss's place. She buzzes me in downstairs just as it starts to pour.

The girl who opens the apartment door upstairs is jailbait. Small breasts nestled in a man's blue oxford shirt knotted in front, exposing a midriff not quite free of baby fat, with a silver hoop in her navel and jean shorts cut off just below the crotch. She's actually wearing pigtails. I put her at seventeen, maybe.

—Rough night? she asks with a wry smile.

—Joss called me, I grunt impatiently.

—Do come in, she says, gesturing with the drink in her hand.

Joss is splayed out on the couch with a pile of fashion magazines, each open to a piece illustrated with my photos. She's turned the lights down so she can watch the lightning. The wraparound glass is thick, the drumming of the downpour seems faint and far away.

—Renny! Joss squeals, jumping off the couch to embrace me like we're old friends. There's been some drinking going on, though not enough to seriously hamper things. Joss is making a lot of body contact, pressing herself against me, her arms locked behind my back. Not long ago I'd hoped for this, and after the day I've had, I might even revisit the sentiment, but I wasn't expecting her to be babysitting. If she's put off by the condition of my face, she's not letting on.

—Meghan's my cousin. She just got back from school. I've been telling her all about you, Joss says playfully, with a gleam in her eye.

—Yes, you seem to be quite the man of many talents, Meghan says from the bar that separates the open kitchen, where she's building a G and T that would drop a horse. Naturally, she brings it to me.

—To business, Joss says, clinking her glass against mine and her cousin's.

—What exactly did you have in mind? I ask. I want to close the deal, take my money, and get out of here so I can start on Damage Control, not to mention figuring out what the hell is going on. There's too many wild cards now. Reza. LA. Prince William. N. What kind of hand will I be dealt?

—How much have you got on you? Meghan asks. Joss just sits there wearing a bright smile. I notice for the first time that she's not wearing much else, gray gym shorts that LA would probably admire, and a tank top that does not indicate the presence of a bra. What's going on here?

I take a long pull of my drink and survey the two of them, then slowly pull out the disk case. This is crazy, but it's been a crazy day. And I need this deal. Their eyes light up.

—How much is in there? Meghan says, all business. Quite the budding young entrepreneur. America's Future.

—Two fifty.

—What're you asking?

—Fifty large.

—No problem! beams Joss, who's obviously bankrolling her cousin's venture.

—How do we know if it's good? Meghan asks.

I take another belt of my drink, then set it down and pop open the case, extracting two tabs and handing them to Joss, who hands one to Meghan. They neck theirs and chase the pills with gin.

—I'll be right back, Joss says, hopping off the couch. Renny, make yourself comfortable. Meghan, make Renny feel at home. Out she goes, presumably to get the money.

This is all for show. Meghan's obviously setting up a franchise at her college, or more likely her boarding school, and she's talked Joss into putting up the money. Assuming a twenty percent markup once she starts distributing, she and Joss can split ten percent profit each, even keeping a small stash for themselves. With the money they make, the stash would end up paying for itself—free Specials, which they can keep or sell as they choose. Very smooth.

—Very smooth, I say to Meghan, who's standing behind the couch.

—Funny, Meghan says, coming around the couch to me, that's what Joss says about you.

There's a strange glint in her eye, but the drug shouldn't kick in for a few minutes yet. I figure I'll watch them lift off, then take my money and go.

But Meghan is standing between me and the door, smiling in a bad-girl way, almost absently untying the knot of her shirt. She shrugs it off, and a wave of nostalgic lust washes over me. Meghan's newly budding breasts are exactly like those of B, the girl with whom I spent the excruciating summer of my fifteenth year, being carefully tutored in the playing of that most magnificent instrument that is the female body.

Still smiling, Meghan steps close to me. She slowly pulls down my zipper and unsheathes me, her fingers lightly circling the head and top of the shaft with a butterfly's touch. My cock swells up so hard and fast I can feel the blood draining out of my brain. Behind her Joss appears, naked, and cups Meghan's left breast with her left hand, fingers lightly tweaking the nipple, while her right hand comes around Meghan's hip and grips my cock with a seasoned authority I would not dare challenge.

Which is how we all end up on the living room floor beneath the glass roof, Jim Hall's
Concierto de Aranjuez
playing out of my phone through Joss's superb sound system, with me kneeling behind Meghan, thrusting very deeply, very slowly, one thumb gently but firmly in her ass, guiding, Meghan's head between Joss's thighs, her mouth expertly working on her cousin's most precious portion. Meghan has the most terrific vaginal grip I have ever experienced. Rule Number Two goes flying out the window and dies silently on the rain-spattered street four stories below, followed by all the others.

Well, wouldn't you've thrown it out too?

It's only much, much later, emerging from a cab in front of my house, the eastern sky slowly giving way to gray, drifting in the fugue state of a man who has just had one of the most horrific days and searing nights of his life, while reaching for my keys, that I realize I never got the money.

H A D I T H

N
ow there's something you don't see every day,” Santiago remarked. More, in unusually gabby agreement, nodded.

They were watching roughly three hundred cabdrivers at afternoon prayer, kneeling on rugs in the taxi holding lot at LaGuardia Airport, facing Mecca and the Grand Central Parkway. This was overflown at an obtuse angle by big transatlantic inbounds from Benin, Bahrain, Medina, and Ankara. Desperate to keep foreign money coming into the city, the state assembly (with much public and vocal support from Representative Dick Lamprey, D–New York) had just after the crash pushed through an emergency tax-free revenue bond issue (as was the fashion in fundraising for flat-broke cities) to retrofit the airport for the big 747-300s and A-380s that had international range but needed more room to stop. The issue was rated triple-C with a 10 percent yield, and Albany wrote in a clause forcing New York to buy at least 25 percent of the bonds. When Mayor Baumgarten (I–New York) pointed out that the city couldn't afford the bonds at face value, let alone the interest payments, he was shouted down by the coterie of legislators around Assemblywoman Janice Anopheles (D–New York) and the coven of City Council members around Speaker Isabella Trichinella (D–New York), as well as being dealt a particularly venal snub by Senator Theodore Usanius Rickover Davidson III (D–New York), on Baumgarten's own financial-news cable channel. The bond bubble lasted just long enough for the new runway extensions to be paved. When it burst and the state defaulted on the issue, the city treasury was gutted. Mayor Baumgarten had boxcars full of shit thrown at him daily by the unions while he performed wholesale amputations of the Sanitation, Health, Education, Fire, and (of course) Police departments. He kept the airport construction crews on schedule, though, and the renovation was completed on time and, to the surprise of all but Hizzoner the Mayor, under budget. Now new waves of affluent travelers shopped in the airport's sterile boutiques hawking must-have NYC curios like T-shirts and coffee mugs, and model NYPD prowl cars and bright yellow toy taxicabs. They bought tons of fattening snacks and splurged on gallons of sugary cocktails at the airport's new food courts and bars. All in all, the rehabbed airport added a thousand new jobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city's moth-eaten economy, which would otherwise have been siphoned off completely by those bastards in Newark. This made the Port Authority (which owned the airports) very happy and was considered to be one of the few silver linings in an otherwise pitch-black tapestry of the city's history.

This new wave of jaunty travelers also lavished tens of thousands of dollars on taxicabs in from the airports; why bother figuring out the buses and trains when your home currency kicks the shit out of the U.S. dollar? Cab rides everywhere, from the airports, from the hotels, to the theaters (those few that were still open), to the high-level executive meetings, and, of course, to all the parties on the illegal club circuit for which the city was now internationally infamous.

All of this was being spelled out to a placid More and a smoldering Santiago by the head of the de facto drivers' union as they stood in the taxi holding lot.

In an effort to combat the mounting sense of frustration caused by an investigation that no one at CAB seemed to care about, over the murders of cabdrivers nobody cared about, Santiago had decided to follow More's lead—More's less and less cop-like behavior notwithstanding. They'd started by trying to question a few drivers themselves. The very sight of a badge, however, made most cabdrivers' mouths snap shut. Santiago tried repeatedly to get something, anything, from the cabbies about the killings, but it was always the same thing.

“
Les bus sont emparés de manière lente
,” said a Senegalese.

“
Etot prokliati autobus uzasno medleno iediet
,” said a Russian.

“
Yeh busen saali Itni Dheere chalti hain
,” said an Indian.

They were getting nowhere fast, and Santiago was getting annoyed even faster. Then he had an idea.

After confirming the identities of the victims and securing the names of the garages where they worked, Santiago had gone to the one place he thought might be able to guide him through the city's byzantine taxicab industry. It wasn't the city's Taxi and Limo Control; those fuckers never returned his calls. While he had been a student at CUNY, Santiago had spent a fair amount of time at the Dominican Studies Institute on Convent Avenue in Harlem. He still kept an eye on various DSI goings-on, and he remembered seeing something about the formation of a long-term research project on Dominican taxi drivers within the last few years. Reaching out to Periandro Herrera, one of the project's researchers and a fleet owner himself, Santiago had been advised to meet with the lead organizer of the drivers' “union” (which was more in name than fact, since under state law cabdrivers were classified as independent contractors and therefore prohibited from official union organization).

Who now stood before him.

“
Trate de no mirar
,” Herrera had warned him. “Don't gawk at her. She's touchy.”

Baijanti Divya was nearly seven feet tall and wore the longest, loudest sari Santiago had ever seen. It was iridescent, in the exact shade of orange as the Creamsicle pops Santiago had devoured in childhood. She had large hands and a long neck, both of which shimmered with gold. (If it was real, Santiago thought, she had a night job that paid much better than labor organizing.) A filigreed gold braid was suspended between her left earlobe and nostril. A crimson
bindi
flared between her shaped eyebrows. There was no way in hell Baijanti Divya could keep a low profile, Santiago thought. It just wasn't her nature.

“You have two cabdrivers murdered in as many weeks,” she said in a deep voice that resonated oddly in Santiago's tympanum. “Yet you suspect the drivers themselves to have been complicit in criminal activity?”

Fucking More. It was his fault they were coming on like the cabdrivers were to blame for getting themselves killed. Barely speaks for six months, then boom, two cabbies get whacked, and suddenly he's looking for Keyser Söze. All this shit about looking at
the cabs, the cabs
. Why was More so interested in a couple of garden-variety robbery-homicides in the middle of a fucking crime wave? The NYPD clearly didn't give a shit about a couple of cabdrivers more or less. Not that Santiago accepted this, but why was More so hung up on it?

“We have to look at all the possibilities,” Santiago replied in his best Polite But Official, since More was back in his mute mode. “You said yourself the industry is rigged against the drivers. Maybe one of them was skimming.”

“You clearly have little grasp of the way the industry is structured, detective,” she said. “Taxi drivers cannot ‘skim,' which I presume from your usage means cheating the meter. You cannot cheat the meter. All meters in yellow taxicabs in this city are attached to non-navigational GPS units, the presence of which is mandatory in all TLC-licensed New York City taxicabs. The drivers themselves are required in most instances to pay the maintenance costs for these meters and, in some cases, for their installation as well. The meter records the place and time of each and every fare. It is also connected to the engine of the taxicab. If it is tampered with in any way, it shuts off. All meters are connected to a central mainframe, which the TLC claims is used to send text messages to drivers alerting them to areas of high fare demand or traffic problems, but which in actuality is a surveillance system by which the TLC can keep track of all on-duty cabdrivers at all times. No city cabdriver is allowed to operate a taxicab with a broken meter; broken credit-card swipes are permissible, since the drivers can still conduct cash transactions. But a broken meter is prohibited by regulations. Any cabdriver operating with one would be immediately pulled off the road by TLC enforcement or your own NYPD colleagues, and could easily lose his license and his job. A cabdriver would have to be suicidal to try to cheat the meter, detective, and you have already described this as a homicide investigation.”

She was tough, this one. Smart, too. And then there was that voice! “Would a cabdriver be able to hold back some money when he goes off duty?” Santiago asked.

“There are two kinds of cabdrivers, detective. There is the lease driver, which applies to the majority of the drivers you see in this parking lot. Lease drivers pay a fixed rate per shift for the use of the taxicab. This ‘day rate' or ‘lease rate' is due in cash at the end of each shift. In addition, the gas tank must be filled before shift change. To use an example, the second victim, Jangahir Khan, worked a day shift for the Sunshine Taxi Corporation in Queens. He would be paying, I believe, one hundred and eighty dollars per shift. If he did not make that while on duty, he would have had to make up the balance out of his own pocket. The cabdriver who does not pay his shift rate would most likely not be permitted to work another shift for that garage. I should also point out that if he had incurred any tickets during his shift, he would be responsible for paying those as well, or risk losing his license and, possibly, his job.

“The second kind of driver, the owner-operator, owns his medallion and taxicab, in principle. In actuality, the case is most often that he has taken on massive loans. The current market price of a TLC medallion is just over six hundred thousand dollars. If Mr. Khan or the first victim, Eyad Fouad, were owner-operators, they would have had to come up with over sixty thousand in cash to secure the medallion, then work off the remaining ninety percent as best they could. This can take a lifetime, detective, and sometimes cannot be done. I remind you that this is only for the medallion. They would then have to secure funds to buy the car, and have it prepared for taxi use, a process known in the trade as a ‘hack-up.' They would have to pay all costs associated with the hack-up at the TLC. Failure to pay any of these costs would render their taxicab legally inoperable. No money means no cab, and no cab means no money. This is all just to get the cab up and running. Once they do, owner-operators must pay for gas, insurance, maintenance, emissions checks, garaging, and the city road tax. Whatever is left feeds their families. It is not,” Baijanti Divya concluded, “an enviable position to be in.”

Her voice was causing mixed signals in Santiago's mind. He tried to focus. “How would they get that kind of money, especially with the new loan regulations?” By 2010, after the subprime meltdown, commercial real estate collapse, and coast-to-coast credit card defaults, getting any kind of loan practically required one to sell his vital organs.

“Mortgage lenders for the taxi industry offer ninety percent financing, often on terms that could politely be called usurious,” she replied smoothly. “These lenders have made themselves indispensable to the industry, even more so since the banking crisis.”

“Where do they get their financing?”

“Typically, they would make arrangements with the banks,” she said. “Given Urbank's rapid growth, it is able to exert a greater amount of influence over the remaining brokers. Call it a leverage on leverage.”

“How else would an owner finance a fleet outside of brokers and banks?” More asked out of nowhere, startling Santiago so much his teeth clacked. There was no trace of phlegm in More's voice. Baijanti Divya's luminous green eyes moved over to More.

“There are many places one may find money, detective,” Baijanti Divya said, and the new, faint note of coyness in her voice registered in Santiago's head.

“Like where?” he blurted out.

Without taking her eyes off More, Baijanti Divya said, “I believe you are asking me to confirm something you already know.”

Now Santiago was lost. The conversation had taken an abrupt turn, and he had been thrown out of it. “What do you mean?”

“I believe your colleague is referring to the Javaid Tariq Corporation. It is, shall we say, an experimental paradigm, a pilot program for an aging industry,” she said. “I'm surprised you haven't heard of it; most drivers would give quite a bit to be able to work there. At the risk of sounding trite, it's a taxi corporation designed to provide better returns for the drivers as well as the owners, who, of course, are drivers themselves, as required by TLC regulations. It's also only half a mile from where you now stand.”

“
Namaste
,” More said, tilting his head slightly in her direction.

“
Shubh kamanaye
,” replied Baijanti Divya, smiling.

“What the fuck?” groused Santiago.

“You want to tell me what the fuck happened back there?” Santiago grumbled. More had been keeping him off balance all day, and it was pissing him off.

“She's sharp for a
hijra
,” More gurgled.

“Okay, before you tell me what that means, tell me what fucking language you were speaking and how you know it.” The last thing Santiago wanted was more linguistic surprises from his ordinarily taciturn partner.

“Hindi. Rosetta Stone.” More was watching the jumbo jets lumber into the sky.

“You speak Hindi? Is that part of your ESU training too?” Santiago was unconsciously pressing down on the gas as they hurtled creakily onto the expressway.