Notorious (29 page)

T
he meet, which was
held in a warehouse in Greenpoint that belonged to a client of Diamond's, went better than he could have hoped. The connect was no peasant. He was a worldly and sophisticated Pakistani who'd spent years cultivating relationships with the warlords in Afghanistan who controlled the poppy fields. He'd been educated in California and in Western Europe, which gave him a taste for American music and a desire to hang with the beautiful people. Meeting Atari was a huge kick for him, and pretty soon they had a commitment to up the weekly shipment by such a significant amount that Diamond and Bo were already figuring on hiring ten new shift managers and fifty street pitchers in Vegas alone. Beyond that, they'd reach out to kingpins in other cities who were interested in taking product on consignment.

At one point, when the connect and some of his people were working out shipping arrangements with Bo, Diamond leaned over and whispered in Atari's ear.

“I'm gonna invite him back to the hotel to party with the Russian girls.”

“No, don't.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't feel like it.”

“Normally in a business deal you offer hospitality like that.”

“I just stroked the shit out of this motherfucker like you asked, and I don't want to see his face no more. If he needs to get laid, let him look in the phone book.”

Diamond reflected that it was just as well if Atari and the connect didn't become bosom friends.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

 

A
fter the meet, Diamond gave Bo a lift in the Mercedes, and Atari and his bodyguards went in Atari's Bentley. They were planning to meet back at the hotel.

“You're gonna love this place, and the girls Atari has are prime merchandise,” Diamond said.

Bo stared out at the traffic, looking sullen and dangerous.

“What's your problem?” Diamond asked.

He shrugged. “This shit don't feel right to me. The beef Atari got with us is too big to drop.”

“The kid is all about the money, Bo. That's why he's trucing with us, because he smells the green. Besides, his lawyer got killed, and I stepped in to help him out. I made the lead witness and the case agent go away. The government's got to fold now, you watch. Atari is grateful to me, and he's demonstrating his gratitude. Lester's death brought us together.”

“What do you know about that?”

“What, about Lester's murder?” Diamond glanced at Bo, who nodded. “Not much, but the man had a lot of enemies. He had his fingers in a lot of pies. I did ask Atari if he whacked Lester, if that's what you're thinking.”

“Yeah. What'd he say?”

“He said no. I mean, obviously he wasn't gonna say yes.”

“Obviously.”

The traffic on the BQE was heavy tonight. Diamond concentrated on driving for a few minutes.

“I did think about it,” he said eventually. “The thought crossed my mind briefly. But then I said to myself, Why would Atari whack his own lawyer?”

“To get to you.”

“But why go through that? Why not just call me up and hire me? I'm in the yellow pages.”

“That would be too obvious. If he came at you straight, he'd raise you up, wouldn't he?”

Diamond was silent again, thinking.

“Bo, I hear you, and I appreciate your sense of caution, but it's unwarranted in this situation. What happened between us and Atari was fifteen years ago. And okay, I understand that he vowed revenge, and he wrote some stupid tune about how he's gonna get me, but look at how much he has to lose now. All that money and all that fame. Who'd give that up over some ancient beef?”

“It ain't just any beef. Fro Joe was a brother to him. I think he's been waiting to set us up good, till he feels like he can get away with it. And there's something else, too, something that's been bothering me.”

“What's that?”

“Normally I keep my ear to the ground, but being out in Vegas, information can take some time to reach me. I didn't hear this until yesterday, or else I would've been more on top of the situation.”

“Yeah, what?”

“I had a shorty down in Leavenworth. We was cell mates for about a year or so. A Muslim brother from Detroit. Talented with weapons, especially explosives.”

Diamond looked over with greater interest now. “Yeah?”

“He knew I'd been with Atari back in the day. He used to listen to the man's music all the time. Well, my shorty got out before me, and when we was going our separate ways, he asked me for an introduction. He had this crazy idea like he'd get a job working security for Atari and score mad benjamins and pussy. I said, look, Atari and me ain't exactly on good terms, but maybe I can figure a way to hook you with him. I sent him to Ninth Floor Pete in the Houses, with instructions not to mention that the connection came through me, because then Atari wouldn't take the introduction.”

“Ninth Floor Pete. That
would
get him to Atari.”

“They found the shorty's body upstate two days after your lawyer got blown up, bullet in the back of his head. He was the one who made the bomb.”

D
iamond would normally valet-park
the Mercedes and give the attendant an extra fifty along with the car keys to make sure it came back without so much as a speck of dust on it. But that routine wouldn't be smart right now. They needed to avoid attracting attention, for the simple reason that they didn't know what would happen once they went upstairs.

Diamond took Bo through a side entrance so they could get to the elevator without walking through the main part of the lobby.

“You're wrong about this, I'm telling you,” Diamond said as they waited for the elevator to come.

“Let's hope so. I don't want to screw up this gig any more than you do. But I won't be stupid, either.”

“We agree that you're not planning to start a war for no reason, right? I want no part of that.”

“I ain't no pussy. I ain't giving up my weapons to his boys without a fight, that's for sure.”

A fortyish woman in a Chanel suit had come up behind them.
She heard that remark, took one look at Bo, and decided she didn't need to use the elevator right then.

The doors slid open and Diamond and Bo got on.

“See what you did?” Diamond said. “Now we've been noticed.”

“What does it matter? If this is all in my imagination, then nothing's gonna happen, who gives a shit who saw us?”

“I'm just saying, why force a confrontation? That's not how I work. I'm about brains, not muscle. If I sense hostility, I walk away calmly and figure out how to squash the enemy at my leisure. That way, I keep my nose clean and stay out of jail. You could take a lesson from me there, Bo.”

“Fine words, son, but they don't mean shit if somebody's gunning for you. If Atari wants us dead, I'll know as soon as I walk in the room, and when he makes his move, I'll take him out first. Nobody gets the jump on me. You think you can play it any other way, you're too stupid for me to deal with. Either you follow my lead, or you walk away now.”

The doors opened on Atari's floor. The bodyguards were not in the hallway as Diamond was expecting. Instead, there was a cute little maid there, a Spanish girl, pushing a big laundry cart. Diamond smiled at her. She looked away in alarm, abandoning the laundry cart by the entrance to Atari's suite and taking off down the service staircase.

Bo was already knocking on the door.

“See?” Diamond said. “His boys aren't even here to take our guns.”

“Yeah, where are they, then?”

Diamond didn't answer.

“You coming?” Bo demanded as the door opened.

Diamond stepped up behind Bo. Bo held his hands loose at his sides like some gunslinger from the Wild West, but it was just Atari alone, wearing a silk bathrobe.

“Hey, here you are. Right on time,” Atari said, backing into the room. “I sent my muscle downstairs to bring up some of the girls. They'll be back any minute.”

They stepped inside, and Atari closed the door. Diamond tried to catch Bo's eye to say,
“See?”
but Bo was concentrating all his attention on Atari, who'd moved past them into the room. Atari stood in front of the sleek leather sofa, smiling his celebrated smile, his hand moving toward the waistband of his pajamas. Beyond him, the two bodyguards sprang up from their hiding places behind the tall back of the sofa. The extra-long silhouettes of their guns told Diamond they'd been fitted with silencers.

Diamond had had a concealed carry for twenty years, and he practiced every weekend at the range, but he'd never been in a gunfight. For a split second everything came to a dead halt as he stared down the barrels of three big guns, until the first pops from the silencers spurred him to action. He bent down, going for his ankle holster, and the wall behind him exploded into a million fragments. He looked up and saw Atari's chest erupt into a volcano of blood. The top flew off one of the bodyguard's heads. The other took a bullet in the left arm but got off a round at Diamond with the right. Diamond felt his knees buckle before he'd made the conscious decision to drop and roll. On the way down, everything was in slow motion.
Drop and roll, drop and roll.
It was a drumbeat in his head, and he was pleased with himself for having such quick reflexes. It wasn't until he saw the bright red stain spreading on his snowy shirtfront that he understood he'd been hit.

M
elanie reached out and
pushed the doorbell. The man, who she'd decided was definitely the driver Alexei, was standing off to the side so Jennifer wouldn't see him through the peephole. Melanie's mind was blank with fear. She was terrified that the driver would decide to shoot them on the spot, right in the entry hall. That he'd pull out his gun, put it to their temples, and blow them away one after the other,
boom-boom
. If that was his plan, all the high-tech surveillance equipment in the world wouldn't save them, and Steve would be raising their beautiful little girl alone. Or else with Kate, or even with somebody Melanie had never met. She didn't want to die. She didn't want any other woman raising her daughter.

A darkening at the peephole revealed that Jennifer was behind the door.

“Melanie, go away,” Jennifer said.

Shit.

“Hi, Jen,” Melanie said in a perkier tone than she normally used. “I heard you were sick today, so I thought I'd come by on my way home and see if you needed anything.”

“What?”

“What is going on?” the driver demanded in an urgent whisper.

“She's sick. She says she doesn't want any visitors,” Melanie said, loudly enough that Jennifer would be sure to hear and alert the DEA agents who, Melanie hoped with all her might, were still inside.

The driver was beside her in a second. He pushed her head in front of the peephole with one hand and held his gun to it with the other.

“Open the door right now or I kill your friend,” he said to Jennifer.

To Jennifer's credit, she yanked the door open right away. The driver shoved Melanie through and slammed the door shut behind them.

“Both of you, against the wall, turn around!” he yelled.

Melanie turned and faced the wall. The wallpaper was strange—a mustard-yellow toile with a repeat pattern of a squirrel chasing a nut. The driver pulled a roll of electrical tape from his jacket pocket and expertly bound both of their hands behind their backs. The tape pulled on Melanie's skin but she resisted crying out. That could set him off; people like this got pissed off easily. She was amazed that they weren't dead by now. Why hadn't he killed them immediately? After all, the prudent thing to do was to get it over with. Only in that way could he be sure of avoiding complications. He must want something from them.

The driver slapped a strip of tape over Melanie's mouth and kicked her feet out from under her so fast that she didn't have time to react. She came crashing down on her right side, hitting her ear hard against the wood floor. Her grunt of pain emerged guttural and harsh through the tape. For a few seconds the world faded to black. When it came back into focus, he'd dragged Jennifer over, shoved her down on the sofa, and was half kneeling on her stomach with his gun to her head.

“Where is the tape?” he demanded.

Jennifer trembled so hard that her words came out in a stutter. “Wh-what tape?”

He raised his gun overhead as if to strike her with it. “My boss think you were making tape of him when he talk to you on telephone. I want it now!”

“I—I d-don't have any tape!”

He beat her viciously about the head and face with the pistol, up and down three times in quick succession with all his might, and Jennifer screamed hysterically.

“Shut up, bitch, or I shoot now!”

Suddenly men burst out from every direction. Several came crashing through the front door and tripped over Melanie. Somebody's hard shoe caught her in the back and she cried out in pain.

“Get her out of here!” somebody shouted, but nobody took the time to do that, and Melanie huddled on the floor, afraid that she'd be hit if she moved so much as a finger. The air filled up with the reports of pistol shots and the smell of gunpowder. Jennifer screamed on and on. A man yelled in agony. The sounds and smells felt like being in hell.

Then, suddenly, silence fell.

“He's dead?” Tommy Yee's voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“Definitely.”

“Who else is hit?”

“Spinelli's hit, get an ambulance.”

“Shit, is he okay?”

“Yeah, it's just a flesh wound.”

“What about Jarrett over there?”

“I'm fine!”

Within seconds, they heard sirens. One of the agents came and sat on the floor beside Melanie, the same kid from Virginia who'd
given her a lift to the OCME earlier that afternoon. It felt like years since she'd seen him.

“You okay?” he asked, but she still had tape over her mouth.

“Oops, hold on,” he said with a grin, picking at the edge of the tape. “I'll do this quick, like a Band-Aid.”

He yanked it off.

“Oww!”

“Sorry, that's got to hurt. You're all right, though?”

Melanie nodded. He took out a Swiss Army knife, cut the tape from her hands, and helped her to her feet.

“Thanks.”

Blood gushed from Jennifer's forehead. Tommy Yee came back from the kitchen with a roll of paper towels. He tore off a generous piece and pressed it to her cuts to catch the blood that was pouring into her eyes.

“Head wounds bleed a lot. You're gonna be fine,” he said.

The tan sofa was stained deep red, and Jennifer's clothes were soaked, too. The sight and smell of all the blood turned Melanie's stomach. She shifted her eyes away so she wouldn't have to look at the paper towel, which was rapidly turning crimson. Only then did she notice the man's legs protruding from behind the sofa. The pool of blood was widening by the second, and soon it would reach her shoes. She sidestepped it, and in doing so, brought the corpse into full view. She couldn't not look. The man's chest was a pulverized mass of blood and tissue. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. Two small, neat bullet holes in his forehead explained the red puddle spreading beneath his head. This was the first time she'd gotten a straight-on look at his face. Red hair and battered features. It was indeed the man from the surveillance photo, and he was definitely dead.