The Shadow Box (31 page)

This in itself troubled him. Moon was no killer. He
might have no problem turning the guy who killed Jake
into a pot roast, and then whomever gave the order. But,
knowing Moon, Julie felt he would try not to hurt anyone
else who might get in the way. That's a dangerous attitude.

Say a woman, for example, turned out to be involved
in this. Moon might have a problem with doing a woman.
But say it's a man, which it is. Moon will want to look
him in the eye. He'll want to be sure the guy knows why
he's dying. A real killer wouldn't give a fuck.

It gets worse. If Moon has a hit list, the Parker guy and
Michael's old boss are at the top. And they'd realize that
by now. Moon will turn up in New York before long and
they'll be waiting for him. A real killer doesn't let you
know he's coming.

What bothered Julie's conscience a little is that all this
is what he'd been banking on. Setting Moon loose, waiting while he stirs up the nest, watching where the pieces fall.
Which is what Doyle suspected. Which is why Doyle is
so pissed.

But it was Moon's own fault. All Moon had to do was
answer some questions. If he had, Julie would have made
one phone call to his friends in Florida and Moon would
have had all the shooters he needed.

Because there's money here. There's a mountain of it.
The trick, however, is to find a way in. You don't just
say, “Hey, this looks like a good business. Let's hire a few pharmacists and set up a factory, maybe on one of
our ships.” You have to know how to move what
you've made and who you have to grease. You have to have either knocked off the competition or made some
kind of deal with them. Having friends in the FDA
couldn't hurt either but, even there, you have to know who to buy.

Yahya, on the other hand, says the selling part's easy.

“How easy?”

“Go to any distributor. Show him your sample. Tell
him the price is one third off wholesale.”

“Won't he know right away it's bogus?”

“Of course. At such a price, it is either bogus or
stolen.”

“Stolen happens too?”

“Of course.”

“Okay . . . say the guy's honest.”

Yahya knew what he was asking. “He will want no
part of it. But he will not call the police.”

“Why not?”

A shrug. “Why should he make enemies? It is enough to politely decline.”

Fat Julie made a doubtful face. “Well . .
.say
he
doesn't. Say he bites.”

“He will ask for your documents.”

“Yeah, but where do
I
get them? And how do I know
what he wants?”

“He will show you. He will show you exactly.”

To hear Yahya tell it, this distributor then goes to his
files and pulls out samples of the documentation he needs.
Invoices, bills of lading, licensing agreements, and letters
on the maker's corporate letterhead certifying their point
of origin and giving batch numbers and production dates.
He's saying, “This is what I need to protect my ass,” but
not out loud in case this is a sting. He leaves them on his
desk while he goes to take a piss. He's saying, “I'll lend
you these. Take them when I'm not looking and make me
a set just as nice.”
  

Could it really be as simple as that?

Johnny G. had one good idea. He said let's send Yahya
up to the Bronx, up around University Avenue, which
was Mohammed Mizda's neighborhood and where half the
Pakistanis in New York seem to live. Yahya must have
friends up there, right? They know he did time for dealing
pills and got early release on probation. Probation has expired so now he can bag his crummy job on the docks
and start looking for a new connection. We get lucky,
Yahya will get steered to AdChem, which will give us
someone inside.

It seemed worth a shot. Johnny G. sat down with Mo
hammed Yahya and explained the job, dangled some very nice financial incentives, but he also outlined the new Gi
ordano brothers termination policy—two Brooklyn rats
under a heated pasta bowl—in case he should be tempted
to fuck with them. Yahya jumped at the deal.

So we wait.

Waiting, thought Julie, was basically what Johnny had
in mind because Johnny was beginning to have second
thoughts about grabbing a piece of this bogus pill thing.

“We promised Pop,” was what he said. “We swore to
God we wouldn't.”

“Yeah, but that was about drugs. This stuff is
medicine.”

“It's all medicine, Julie. That's where all the street shit
started. When Pop was a kid, you could buy it off the
shelves.”

“Johnny . . . what's bothering you?”

But he only shrugged and looked away.

“Okay, I said it wrong. This isn't just medicine. This
is health care for the masses.”

“Say what?”

“Come on, Johnny. You can't turn on the TV without
hearing about health care. You hear about old ladies going
without food because they have to spend the money on
medicine because, for years now, the big drug companies
have been ripping them off.”

His brother closed one eye. “We'd be doing this for
old ladies? Is that what you're telling me, Julie?”

No, smart-ass, we wouldn't.

But they'd benefit, right? They'd benefit from managed
competition which everyone says is good. And it's us
who'd do the managing.

Julie had been reading up on this. Even if they passed
national health insurance, all the drugs under patent will
still be expensive. Of the others, maybe you need more
than they'll give you. Or maybe it's a drug you can't get at all because it isn't approved in this country.

Even when patents run out and you can buy generic
versions of drugs, you still need a prescription. There can
also be a big difference between one batch of generics
and the next. They said that on TV too. On “60 Minutes,”
he thought it was.

Quality control. That's what we'd give them. Any pill
they want, from any country, guaranteed as good or better
than the original and at a price they can live with. The
only catch is it can't be too cheap, people have to need it
every day, and they have to need it forever. As long as
the pill works, how is this wrong? Would Pop say this
is wrong?

“And very little risk, Johnny. You said so yourself.”

“Tell that to Jake Fallon.”

Goddamn it.

“Johnny
...
are you going to tell me what put a bug
up your ass?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Two weeks ago, I never seen you so excited. What's
the matter, it's too big? Villanova didn't teach you to
think big?”

“No. Big is what's good about it.”

“Well, what? That it's a crime? Because I got news for
you, Johnny. You've been a fucking criminal since—”

”I want to talk to Moon. Or at least to Michael.”

“Wait a minute. What for?”

“Because if AdChem was doing this, and Jake or Mi
chael found out, what if that's what got Jake killed?”

“It probably was.”

“So? What'll you say to Moon? ‘Sorry about Jake,
Moon, but those guys had a good idea. Too bad about
Bronwyn, Michael, but we see a way to score here
.
”

“Johnny, it's not the same.”

”I want Moon to tell me that. Moon or Michael.”

Twice in the past several nights, Doyle's home phone
had rung and there was silence when he answered. He had
stayed up each time for a couple of hours, sitting in the
dark with a gun at his side.

He suspected, however, that the caller was Moon. He
felt that Moon had just wanted to hear his voice so he'd
know there had been no reprisal for that business in Palm
Beach. But Moon could also be dead for all he knew.
Thanks to goddamned Julie.

He could be dead at the hands of Parker and his bunch
or dead in some hotel room from another stroke. Or, God
forbid,, Parker might have him.

But the last did not seem likely.

He would have heard by now because someone would
have approached him with a deal. The deal would be,
“You want Moon back? More or less in one piece? Then drop Michael's lawsuit, withdraw the subpoena of Leh
man-Stone's files, and we'll call it a draw.”

But Doyle had heard nothing. Not even an offer from
their lawyers to settle for a couple of hundred grand or so just to get rid of this thing. On the contrary, their
lawyers were spending a lot of time in court trying to
stonewall him on the discovery process. This struck
Doyle as dumb. It's the same as admitting either that
Michael has a case or that Lehman-Stone has something
much bigger to hide.