The Defense: A Novel (29 page)

I held the door open for Alvin.

“I’m supposed to pay you now, but I want to make sure you understand what’s expected of you,” I said.

Alvin looked a little surprised and confused. Nevertheless, with the promise of money, he walked into the dark room. I flicked the lights on, and as he moved by me, my right hand reached for his gun. I popped the catch and lifted the Beretta clear, but he heard the click of the catch opening and the sound of metal clearing leather and grabbed my forearm. A straight left, hammered into the back of Alvin’s neck, sent him down onto his knees and released his grip on my arm.

“Take it easy and you just might live through this,” I said, pointing his own gun at the back of his head. “Have a seat.”

For a man in his position, he appeared calm.

He picked a metal chair off a stack in the corner and sat facing me about five feet away. I closed the door.

“So, you let the Russian Mafia into the courthouse with the vans. Why’d you do it, Alvin?”

“Same as you—money. I get shit pay in this job, and I got alimony to meet. Don’t try and tell me you’re above taking a bribe.”

“Maybe not, but I’m not going to kill anybody to get paid. What’s in the vans?”

“They told me they needed the vans to make a clean exit. If Volchek’s convicted, he’s going to make a run for it. If I get asked about it later, then all I did was let in a couple of vans and add them to the log—how am I supposed to know who they belonged to? Even if I lose my job, I got a hundred grand in my apartment. I can’t make that kind of money working this shit detail.”

“Where’s Volchek now?”

“They’re all up on nineteen, waiting for you.”

“You got keys for the vans?”

“No. Look, I told you everything. Lemme go, and we’ll forget about this.”

“I can’t take that chance. You got handcuffs?” I said.

“Sure.”

“Go get acquainted with that radiator in the corner.”

Alvin got up and turned to his right to look at the radiator before whipping his body around. He spun toward me, sending the steel chair tumbling through the air toward my head. I put my arms in front of my face and felt the chair legs crack into my elbow and wrist. Alvin’s gun fell from my grip. He was already moving toward the tumbling Beretta. He dove to the floor and grabbed the gun by the barrel. I skipped onto my left foot and curled my right leg behind me before heaving it forward into Alvin’s face. It was easily a forty-yard field goal—his head rocked back on his shoulders before his face smacked back down into the concrete. His body became instantly limp and lifeless.

Retrieving the Beretta from the ground, I put my fingers to Alvin’s throat and found a strong pulse. He was out cold, but at least he was still alive. I dragged him to the radiator and cuffed him to the pipe, careful to take his radio, cell phone, and the spare magazine for the Beretta from his belt. The radio and cell phone, I smashed against the wall. With the lights cut and the door closed, I felt confident Alvin wouldn’t be discovered for a while. I slipped the Beretta and the spare mag into my coat.

The first van I found sat in the northwest corner of the lot. It had been driven straight into the space, and the passenger side sat maybe three feet out from the wall. An additional steel padlock secured the back doors. The van’s suspension seemed to be sitting lower than normal, as if it was fully loaded, but it was difficult to tell for sure. I couldn’t see the interior because of the tinted windows. If these vans were decked out with alarms and immobilizers, a red light should flash intermittently from the dash. I would be able to see it even through the heavily tinted glass. After a minute of careful inspection, I couldn’t see any light and felt satisfied that I could use the old-fashioned method of opening the doors. Before I made my move, I checked the lot again and found it empty. The guard’s hut wasn’t visible from my position. If there was security in the hut, they would be doing exactly what security guards do best—watching cable TV and ignoring the CCTV monitors. Returning to the van, I smashed the butt of the Beretta into the passenger window twice. My second swing shattered the glass. Unless a cop or security guard took the time to walk to the end of the lot and check the passenger side of this vehicle, they wouldn’t find any evidence of a break-in. I waited a minute to see if anyone heard me. Nothing moved in the lot.

The rear of the van was packed floor to ceiling. A tarp covered the load. I threw the tarp down and saw what appeared to be stacks of barrels wrapped in bright blue plastic. At first I didn’t know what I was looking at—then my breath caught when I saw wiring running from the left-hand corner of the barrels. I followed the wiring to a large black plastic box, which seemed to be some sort of junction for multiple wires. A single wire ran from the box to a circuit board. Attached to the circuit board was a digital timer with a readout of 00:20:00:00, which I guessed to read twenty minutes, the other values representing hours, seconds, and tenths of a second. There didn’t appear to be anything that looked like a radio receiver, so I thought they probably had to start the timer running manually, although there was no way to be sure about this. One thing appeared certain—this was not an escape vehicle.

The other van was located at the opposite end of the parking lot at the southeast corner. Both vans rested beneath the supporting walls of each side of the courthouse, with the passenger side closest to the wall. The tint on the second van’s windows wasn’t as dark, and I was able to see a similar huge load in the rear. Its suspension also looked low, so I guessed they carried identical loads. The suitcase that I’d watched Gregor haul into the van the night before sat on the passenger seat. The case was a silver hardtop Samsonite, identical to the case that sat upstairs, the case that Arturas had used yesterday morning to bring the case files to court. I forced the window, opened the van, and when I picked up the case to set it down on the floor, I noticed that it felt unexpectedly light. The big man, Gregor, had picked up the same case last night, two-handed.

This didn’t feel right.

Before I opened the case, I considered running up the stairs, grabbing Kennedy by the hand, and leading him to the vans. Two things stopped me. First, Alvin the security guard. My DNA would be all over him, together with a solid imprint of my shoe on his face. Second, I had opened both vehicles. My fingerprints would be on the door handles, and I had nothing to tie the Russians to the vans.

It all depended on what was in the case. I slid my thumbs along the catch release and as the lid rose, I thought that I would find another detonator inside, or a clue about what Arturas planned to do with the vans or something that would give me clarity on this whole thing. When I saw what was inside, I couldn’t help burying my head in my hands. My eyes closed, and I slapped my head twice.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, I felt completely dumbfounded.

The case was empty.

Then a thought hit me and stayed in my head. The case was empty—just like the first detonator that I’d taken from Arturas.

There was only one theory that fit. One idea that made even partial sense of all of this. I found the elevator and hit the button for floor nineteen. I took me a few seconds to hide the Beretta in the trash can before I got into the elevator and traveled up to the top floor to meet Volchek.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Volchek, Arturas, Victor, and Gregor sat in the small office on the nineteenth floor, eating take-out breakfast.

“Anything for me?” I said.

Gregor handed me a take-out box with the remains of a pancake stack.

“What did the feds want?” asked Volchek.

“They tried to convince me you were a threat to their witness and that if I knew anything, it would be in my best interest to let them know about it. I told them you were an innocent man, a paragon of virtue, and it was my pleasure to represent you.”

Volchek laughed.

In the corner of the reception area, I saw the suitcase. A hardtop Samsonite identical to the empty case I’d found in the van. The case lay open on the floor.

Just like its twin in the basement, the case was empty.

Or at least, it
looked
empty.

The pancakes were greasy, but they gave me a boost and stopped the gnawing reminder from my stomach that I hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. As I ate, I thought it through again.

The case in the basement appeared to be around four feet long, two feet wide, and about a foot and a half deep. Although the case that sat on the floor shared the same dimensions on the outside, with the lid open I could see that this case was only around a foot deep on the inside. That could mean only one thing: The extra half a foot of depth was still there; it was just covered with a false bottom. As I’d expected. Before I got into the elevator, I had carefully checked the case I’d found in the basement and there were no hidden compartments.

Since the early days of Prohibition, America has led the way in smuggling techniques. The false-bottomed case was a classic. The great trick with false-bottomed suitcases is that whoever is searching your case is only ever interested with what is
inside
the damn thing. No one is interested in looking at the outside of a case, and that really is the only way of telling if there is a false bottom. Often the patterns on the material lining can serve as a type of optical illusion, telling the eye that this is the entirety of the case. What had helped me spot the false bottom was that I’d just seen an identical Samsonite, so I already had a strong visual clue as to the true volume of the case.

The only drawback to a false-bottomed case was that it usually didn’t stand too much scrutiny if you knew what you were looking for. I decided to test my theory so far.

Throwing down my empty take-out box, I knelt down at the suitcase, closed the lid, picked it up, felt the extra weight, compared to the case downstairs, and was about to walk into the chambers with it when the test paid off.

“What are you doing?” asked Arturas.

“I’m packing the files into the case. I’ll need them for court.”

“Put the case down. Victor will do that for you.”

“No. It’s okay. I can—”

“Put the case down!”

Arturas lost his cool. He didn’t want me poking around in the suitcase. He was worried I might find the hidden compartment. Volchek seemed a little puzzled.

“Arturas, calm down. The lawyer is trying here. He might pull this off, and we won’t have to … well, you know. Give him a break, for now,” said Volchek.

I put down the suitcase and sat on the couch. My attention fell on the print of the
Mona Lisa
that sat above the reception desk, and suddenly, what was just a theory took shape and solid form in my mind.

The false detonator, Alvin the fat security guard, and the false-bottomed suitcase: The functions and roles of all these things now became clear to me as I stared at the portrait.

The key to understanding all of it was the
Mona Lisa
. From a con man’s point of view, the
Mona Lisa
had its attractions. It was the most copied painting in the world, and historically, copies had hung in famous galleries and museums all over the planet. Every couple of years, I read in the paper about some new scientific discovery that claimed a copy of the painting was in fact the original masterpiece. I maintained an interest because to me, the only reason somebody would make a copy of anything was to make a switch, to make somebody believe the original was still in place when, in fact, they were looking at a copy. The forger is the con man’s best friend.

I figured the suitcase that Arturas brought through security the morning before, which contained the case files, was in fact the case that I’d just seen in the basement. Gregor had remained in the courthouse overnight while Arturas, Victor, and I had gone out to get the money and pay off Jimmy. During this time, Gregor must have gone to the basement and switched cases, so the case that Arturas had used to carry the case files into court yesterday now sat in the basement and the case that Gregor put into the van last night sat on the floor in front of me. That meant whatever was in the false-bottomed case would have set off the alarm if Arturas had tried to bring it through security yesterday morning and, most important, the X-ray scanner would have seen through the false bottom.

Volchek was not in the least interested in the case. He didn’t have a clue that the cases had been switched. If he didn’t know about the cases, I was pretty sure he didn’t know about the vans or Alvin, or that Arturas had brought along two detonators, a real one and a fake.

Why have a fake detonator and a real detonator? Why have two identical suitcases? Why make a copy of the
Mona Lisa
?

So you can switch them without your mark noticing.

All along I’d thought I was running a con on the Russians.

Arturas was conning me but, more important, he was also conning Volchek. I had sensed the tension between the two of them, and I’d watched Arturas nursing that facial scar.

Volchek stood over me and said, “Five minutes to trial, Mr. Flynn. I hope the money was worth it, for your sake. If Tony Geraldo says anything that implicates me in Mario’s murder, I’ll have Arturas call his girlfriend, and your daughter can blame you as she entertains my men.”

“Tony will keep his mouth shut,” I said.

Arturas lifted the suit jacket from the back of the chair.

“Put this on. We will plant the bomb during the lunch adjournment,” he said.

Again I felt the weight of the device on my back and the cold dread of having such a lethal thing close to my skin. With the FBI readying their warrant for my apartment, I knew I probably wouldn’t make it to the lunch adjournment.

If I was right and Arturas was running some kind of con on his boss, I still had no clue about his ultimate aim. I remained convinced that my answers lay in the false bottom of that suitcase. I needed to take a look inside without Arturas seeing me, and I had no plan on how to do it.

“For you,” said Arturas, handing something to Volchek, who examined it before slipping it into his pocket. Arturas had just given Volchek a detonator.