Every Man a Menace (21 page)

Moisey felt his eyes squint. He didn’t understand why they were having this conversation in front of Mr. Hong.

“Listen to me, Misha,” said Isaak, speaking gently. “There are certain things you can’t do. We had a deal. Semion made a deal. He promised, if Mr. Hong helped him with his little fucking problem—a problem, I remind you, he brought on himself. And Mr. Hong helped, all right? He took care of it.” He dropped his voice and switched to Hebrew: “They fucking killed them, you know that?” He went on in English: “You can’t promise things in this world and then change your mind on some whim. You know? Bad for business. It puts us all in danger. Throws the world into chaos.”

Moisey felt lightheaded. “So give him time,” he said in Hebrew.

“We’ve run out of time.”

“What are you talking about?” Moisey asked, switching back to English.

“Certain lines cannot be crossed,” said Isaak.

“So we’ll convince him,” Moisey said, aware of the desperation coloring his voice. He sniffed again. “You’ll go and convince him. We’ll go together.”

“Not the issue.”

“Then what?”

“Semion needs to go,” Isaak said.

“Killed?” Moisey asked, in Hebrew again.

Isaak nodded. The Chinese men were staring at them. One of them, the driver from the other day, chewed on his gum as though milking it for lost flavor.

“You can’t let them do this,” Moisey said in Hebrew. “You’re talking like a fucking monster.”

“No more Hebrew, man,” Isaak said. “Please, it’s rude.”

“So what? You’re going to let them go and kill him?”

“Not them.”

“You?” Moisey asked.

“No.” Isaak shook his head.

Moisey imagined locking himself in the bathroom, sending a text message to Semion:
Run, right now. Run for your life. These men have lost their fucking minds.
But he didn’t even have the man’s phone number. And then reality clicked together.

“Me?” he asked.

“It’s the only way,” said Isaak.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If you don’t do it, Mr. Hong has to clean up everything. You understand me? Everything.”

Moisey wanted to slap his friend’s face. Choke him. Beat him senseless. The man’s flat affect was unbearable. He looked at Mr. Hong, who stared back at him. He could feel the other men staring, too. He could feel everyone in the room breathing in and out.

“No, no, no, fucking no, no, no, no,” he said.

“We’re not asking.”

“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” said Moisey, switching back to Hebrew. “You need to tell these men to leave, and we need to find new partners. You need to do it right now. This has become fucking crazy. You understand? It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s business. Mistakes happen every day, but these men are going to wait. Every time we screw up one little tiny thing, they are going to move in and take another fucking piece. You understand?”

“No, Misha,” Isaak said. “If you don’t take care of this—today, right now—these men are going to kill me. Okay?” Isaak’s eyes filled with tears, but Moisey knew from past experience that his friend could do this at will.

“What do you think we’re sitting in here for?” he went on. “You think I invited them up so we could all have a nice little meeting together? Misha, stupid, they have guns. They are going to use them.”

“You lying piece of shit,” said Moisey in English. He turned to Mr. Hong. “Why me? Why don’t you go and fucking kill him?”

Mr. Hong regarded him with apparent sympathy.

“We have two options,” said Isaak, gesturing for Moisey’s attention. “We can say no to these men and get killed right now. Have our bodies dumped in the middle of the fucking
ocean. Or you can do this, take care of our problem, help me show them that you are loyal, that I am loyal, that we can both be trusted. That we can all continue doing work together. I’m fucking begging you, man. You want me to get on my knees? You do it and we move you here; you take Semion’s place. My second in command. We reorganize, send someone out to replace you. Continue living, breathing. You fucked up, all right? Not that bad, but you fucked up. Semion, on the other hand, has declared war.”

“Is what he’s saying true?” asked Moisey, directing his question to Mr. Hong.

“Everything he says is true,” Mr. Hong said.

You’re both lying,
thought Moisey.
It’s ludicrous. That phone call I made doesn’t matter. Semion changing his mind doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
He looked at Isaak.
It’s you,
he thought.
It’s all you.
Mr. Hong’s posture, the way he held himself, none of it looked like a man making commands. No, this was clearly Isaak’s plan.

Moisey put his head down. He almost had to laugh. There could have never been any other outcome, ever since Isaak had called out to him as a boy.
Beggar, which way to the beach?
All the way here, to this fucking apartment.
Fine,
he thought.
Fuck it
.

“Give me the gun,” he said. “And give me a drink. Whiskey, ice. Give me the gun and let’s get this fucking thing over with.”

Mr. Hong said something to one of his men, who leaned forward and opened a small gym bag that sat at his feet. Moisey hadn’t even noticed it. The man dug something out and brought it to Moisey: a neatly tied bundle, like something
from a damn picnic. It was heavier than it looked. Moisey set it on his lap and unwrapped it. Inside was a Glock 23 and a suppressor. He lifted the gun, pulled the slide, found a bullet chambered, popped the clip, and confirmed that it was fully loaded. His heart punched away in his chest like a scared rabbit. Fourteen bullets. He could kill them all right now.

His mind pushed the idea out like bitter poison. He was a coward. No, instead, he would go up there, knock on Semion’s door, and tell him he had to leave, right then, that Isaak and Mr. Hong had ordered it. No time to pack, go right now, run for your fucking life. And then he’d leave, too.

Isaak brought him the whiskey. The tumbler—heavy, wet on the outside—was filled nearly to the top with ice and gold liquor. It spilled onto Moisey’s hand when he took it. He looked at Isaak, nodded, then held the glass up to the other men and drank. Two of the Chinese men began speaking quietly to each other.
Each of us in our own private hell,
thought Moisey. Isaak and Mr. Hong looked equally wan.

He looked up from his drink and realized that everyone was waiting for him. The glass was half empty now. He sipped again. Mr. Hong took his phone out and began checking messages. Three-quarters gone. He wished he had more.
I’ll tell him to run.

“There are cameras in the hallway,” said Isaak. “You have to get into his place before you pull the thing. After that, we’ll come up. Get his body out. In five days I’ll buy him a plane ticket from his computer, on his credit card. I have a man who will fly under his name, using his passport. They look like fucking brothers. He’ll go to Brazil. He’ll send e-mails to me from Semion’s account, say,
Man, fuck you’re
missing a great time here. Come meet me.
He’ll use his credit cards, and then he’ll disappear. I’ll report him missing after that. A simple missing-person report. They won’t even begin to look. Nobody will miss him.”

You planned everything out, you sick fucking bastard,
thought Moisey. He sipped the last of his drink, swirled the ice in hopes of making more liquid appear, and then set the glass down on the table.
I’ll tell him he has thirty seconds to leave.
He screwed the suppressor on to the gun. His stomach was warm from the whiskey.

“After some amount of time,” continued Isaak, “as his business partner, I’ll be able to collect some of his assets. The house, the car, I don’t know. It’s all probate shit. I’ll have to check with my lawyer. We’ll split it, of course, you and me.”

Moisey nodded.

“Hold on,” his friend said. He left the room and returned a minute later with two large suitcases. “Carry these. It will make you appear more appropriate.”

Moisey stared at the bags.
Absurd, absolutely absurd.
He stood on rubbery knees, sniffed, and walked toward Isaak. They were fancy roller cases, the kind that could move on four wheels in any direction.

“Maybe two is too many?” he said. “I need a free hand, you know?”

“Yeah, right, sure,” said Isaak. “Take one, roll it, let him see it. We’ll bring the other up. We need something to carry him out.”

They were going to cut Semion into pieces, Moisey realized. The final absurdity.

“Good,” he said. He considered shaking his friend’s hand, but he patted his shoulder instead. He checked the safety on the gun, then slid it into the waistband of his pants. He stepped to a mirror by the door and practiced pulling it out. The suppressor made it ungainly. His reflection showed him as a ghastly man, skinny, pale, dark circles under his eyes. His head looked like a skull.

I’ll tell him to run. I’ll tell him he has to go, that’s it, game over.

He grabbed the suitcase. Mr. Hong rose to his feet. Moisey nodded to him and walked with Isaak to the door.

“I’m sorry,” Isaak whispered.

Moisey stared at his pouty bottom lip and marveled at how long it had taken him to discover that his friend was a complete sociopath.

“It’s floor thirty-one. He’s in thirty-one twenty. We’ll come behind you.”

Moisey stood alone in the corridor. There was an emergency exit at the end of the hall. He looked behind him and saw one at the far end, also. They could take opposite stairs. He walked toward the lift feeling like he was somehow outside himself. In a daze, he pressed the button to call the elevator.
Thirty-one twenty,
he repeated Semion’s room number in his mind.

His mouth was dry. As the doors opened he realized that he had to urinate; the feeling was so strong that for a moment he thought about going back to Isaak’s apartment. But instead he pulled the suitcase in behind him and pressed 31. The doors closed and he felt the pull of the rising elevator.

The elevator door opened and he began walking toward the apartment. The fear inside his chest was unlike any he’d felt before. A perfect and complete fear. He stopped in front of Semion’s door, staring at the rug in front of it. Someone had placed a rug so that people could wipe their feet. Had Semion done it? The gun pressed the skin under his belly. His ears picked up the low drone of the elevator kicking back to life.
Let it go down to the ground floor,
he thought. But it stopped too soon.

He pressed Semion’s doorbell. In his mind, strange fragmented memories:
his mother, a dinner he’d eaten in Thailand, a ferry he’d once taken.
After a moment, the peephole darkened. Moisey forced a smile.

The door opened. Confusion filled Semion’s eyes. A white room stood behind him. High ceilings. Blue sky. Clean floors. Semion was backing away, his hands up near his chest. The gun kicked, making a hissing noise. Smoke in the air. Blood pouring through Semion’s hands from his throat. Blood coming out like water.

Two more shots. One in the chest, one in the head. The room became quiet. He was already dead.

Part 4

Vanya Rodriguez, also known as Anna Monticello, also known as Candy Hall-Garcia, Candy Thompson, and Candy Valentino, was born with the name Jacqueline Rose Infante. In her mind she thought of herself as Jackie Santos. She was born in Brazil but grew up in Newark. She had dropped out of Rutgers after her sophomore year, and not too long after that she had gone to prison: two years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County. She had been arrested in Queens holding an ounce of cocaine and nearly a hundred thousand dollars in fake gift cards for Fifth Avenue stores. She was twenty-three years old when she got locked up.

After she got out, she linked up with a group of credit card forgers operating in Dallas and San Francisco. Over the next few years, Jackie Santos developed a small reputation, among certain types, as a woman who could talk a sober man into doing just about anything. She liked running with thieves. The normal world bored her.

The idea to go after Semion Gurevich was brought to her by a man named Tom Roberts. Roberts was an ex-cop, a
felon, working as an unlicensed private investigator in San Jose. He could get things done that other PIs couldn’t. He was what the Jewish Mafia referred to as a
handy man.
He was good with wires, crowbars, lock picks, GPS devices, guns, baseball bats, all of it.

“All you gotta do is just meet this guy,” said Roberts, when they first spoke about it. They were sitting at a back table in a hotel bar just south of the San Francisco airport. The place smelled like a fast-food restaurant. Roberts drank coffee; Jackie sipped a wine spritzer.

“You get to go to Miami for two weeks, all expenses paid. Just get me into his apartment.”

“And?”

“A thousand a day,” said Roberts. He was a big bald Caucasian. His neck went straight down from his head. He had hairy knuckles and hair coming out of his ears. He looked like a cop. Jackie had a soft spot for him because he’d never tried to sleep with her.

“What do you need me for?” she asked.

“This guy lives in a fancy high-rise,” said Roberts. “I’m not gonna be able to just break in. I need a pretty girl like you to help me get in there first.”

“Sweetheart, I’m kinda busy right now,” she said, opening the negotiation. She was dressed in a white romper and a black satin jacket. She’d shown up with wet hair and red lipstick.

“Harvey said he’d forget that little business if you did me this one.”

It would be nice not to owe Harvey anything. He had a claim on eighteen thousand dollars from her after a
complicated deal that involved real estate fees in Redwood City. Roberts had her attention.

“Two thousand a day,” said Jackie.

“One-five,” said Roberts. “I’m only getting three.”

“Let me think about it,” Jackie said.