Marked Man (2 page)

It might have been a pathetic fantasy of the lowest order, but in her own strange way she did.

The tattoo appeared on
my chest at a rather inopportune time. I was just then in the middle of a delicate negotiation that had exploded in my face, hence the media storm and dire threats. But I should have known that trouble was brewing, what with the ominous way the whole thing started, a deathbed visit to an old Greek widow with gnarled hands and breath like pestilence itself.

“Come closer, Mr. Carl,” said Zanita Kalakos, a withered stalk of a woman, propped up by the pillows on her bed, whose every raspy exhale held the real threat of being her last. Her skin was parchment thin, her accent thick as the stubble on her jaw.

“Call me Victor,” I said.

“Victor, then. I can’t see you. Come closer.”

She couldn’t see me because the lights were off in her small bedroom, the shades pulled, the curtains drawn. Only a candle flickering by her bedside and a glowing stick of incense provided illumination.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Come to me.”

Standing at the edge of the room, I took a step toward her.

“Closer,” she said.

Another step.

“Closer still. Bring over chair. Let me touch your face, let me feel what is in your heart.”

I brought a chair to the side of her bed, sat down, leaned forward. She pressed her fingers over my nose, my chin, my eyes. Her skin was rough and oily both. It was like being gummed by an eel.

“You have a strong face, Victor,” she said. “A Greek face.”

“Is that good?”

“Of course, what you think? I have secret to tell you.” She glommed her hand over the side of my head and, with surprising strength, pulled me close so she could whisper. “I’m dying.”

And I believed it, yes I did, what with the way her breath smelled of rot and decay, of little creatures burrowing into the heart of the earth, of desolation and death.

“I’m dying,” she said as she pulled me closer, “and I need your help.”

It was my father who had gotten me into this. He had asked me to pay a visit to Zanita Kalakos as a favor, which was curious in and of itself. My father didn’t ask for favors. He was an old-school kind of guy, he didn’t ask anyone for anything, not for directions if he was lost, not for a loan if he was short, not for help as he struggled still to recover from the lung operation that had saved his life. The last time my father asked me for a favor was during an Eagles game when I made a brilliant comment about the efficacy of the West Coast offense against a cover-two defense. “Do me a favor,” he had said, “and shut up.”

But there he was, on the phone to my office. “I need you to see someone. An old lady.”

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Why does she want to see me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dad?”

“Just do it, all right? For me.” Pause. “As a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Think you can handle that?”

“Sure, Dad,” I said.

“Good.”

“As a favor.”

“Are you busting my chops?”

“Nah, it’s just this is almost like a real father-and-son thing. Calls on the phone. Favors and stuff. Next thing you know, we’ll be having a catch in the yard.”

“Last time we had a catch I threw a high pop that hit you in the face. You ran off crying.”

“I was eight.”

“You want to try it again?”

“No.”

“Good. Now that that’s settled, go see the old lady.”

The address he gave me was a small row house on the southern edge of the Northeast section of the city, my father’s old neighborhood. A gray woman, round and slumped with age, cautiously opened the door and gave me the eye as I stood on the stoop and announced my presence. I assumed this was the old lady my father wanted me to see, but I was wrong. This was the old lady’s daughter. She shook her head when she learned who I was, shook her head the whole time she led me up the creaky stairs that smelled of boiled vinegar and crushed cumin. Whatever the mother wanted with me, the daughter didn’t approve.

“I knew your father when he was boy,” said Zanita Kalakos in that crypt of a room. “He was good boy. Strong. And he remembers. When I called him, he said you would come.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Kalakos. So how can I help?”

“I am dying.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“I know, Victor.” She reached up and patted my cheek. “But it is too late for doctors. I’ve been poked, prodded, sliced like roasted pig. There is nothing more to be done.”

She coughed, and her body heaved and contracted with a startling ferocity.

“Can I get you something?” I said. “Water?”

“No, but thank you, dear one,” she said, her eyes closed to the pain. “It is too late for water, too late for everything. I am dying. Which is why I need you.”

“Do you have an estate you want to settle? Do you want me to write you up a will?”

“No, please. I have nothing but a few bangles and this house, which is for Thalassa. Poor little girl. She wasted her life caring for me.”

“Who is Thalassa?”

“She who brought you to my room.”

Ah, I thought, the poor little girl of seventy.

“Are you married, Victor?”

“No, ma’am.”

One of her closed eyes opened and focused on my face. “Thalassa, she available, and she comes with house. You like house?”

“It’s a very nice house.”

“Maybe you are interested? Maybe we can arrange things?”

“No, really, Mrs. Kalakos. I’m fine.”

“Yes of course. A man with such a good Greek face, you find someone with bigger house. So we are back to problem. I am dying.”

“So you said.”

“In my village, when death it walked into your house on tiptoes and tapped you on shoulder, they rang church bell so everyone would know. Your neighbors, your friends, family, they all came to gather around. It was tradition. A final time to laugh and cry, to hug, to settle scores, to wipe off curses”—she rubbed her lips with two fingers and spat through them—“a final time to say good-bye before the blessed journey. For my grandparents it was like that, and for my mother, too. I went over on boat to say good-bye when it was her time. It wasn’t choice, it was necessity. You understand?”

“I think so, ma’am.”

“So now the bell it is chiming for me. All I have left in my life is to say good-bye. But time, it is running fast, like wind.”

“I’m sure you have more time than you—”

Another wrenching, full-body cough silenced me like a shout. Her hands rose and shook in pain as her body contracted in on itself.

“How can I help?” I said.

“You are lawyer.”

“That’s right.”

“You represent fools.”

“I represent people accused of crimes.”

“Fools.”

“Some are, yes.”

“Good. Then you are just man I need.” She raised a finger and
gestured me close, closer. “I have son,” she said softly. “Charles. I love him very much, but he is great fool.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Now I see. Has Charles been accused of a crime?”

“Has been accused of everything.”

“Is he in jail now?”

“No, Victor. He not in jail. Fifteen years ago he was arrested for things, too many things to even remember. Mostly stealing, but also threatening and extinction.”

“Extortion?”

“Maybe that, too. And talking with others about doing it all.”

“Conspiracy.”

“He was going to trial. He needed money to stay out of jail.”

“Bail?”

“Yes. So, like idiot, I put up house. The day after he left prison, he disappeared. My Charles, he ran away. It took me ten years to get back house for Thalassa. Ten years of breaking my back. And since he ran, I haven’t once seen his face.”

“What can I do to help him?”

“Bring him home. Bring him to his mother. Let him say good-bye.”

“I’m sure he could come and say good-bye. It’s been a long time. He’s way off the authorities’ radar.”

“You think? Go to window, Victor. Look onto street.”

I did as she told, gently opened the curtain, pulled the shade aside. Light streamed in as I peered outside.

“Do you see it, a van?”

“Yes.” It was battered and white, with a raw brown streak of rust on its side. “I see it.”

“FBI.”

“It looks empty to me, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“FBI, Victor. They are still hunting for my son.”

“After all these years?”

“They know I am sick, they are expecting him to come. My phone, it is tapped. My mail, it is read. And the van, it is there every day.”

“Let me check it out,” I said.

Still standing by the window, I reached for my phone and dialed 911.
Without giving my name, I reported a suspicious van parked on Mrs. Kalakos’s street. I mentioned that there had been reports of a child molester using the same type of van and I asked if the police could investigate because I was afraid to let my children go outside to play. When Mrs. Kalakos tried to say something, I just stopped her and waited by the window. I expected the van to be empty, parked there by some neighbor, nothing more than an innocent vehicle left to inspire the wild paranoia of an old, ill woman.

We waited in quiet, the two of us, accompanied by the rasp of her breath. A few minutes later, one police car pulled up behind the van and then another arrived to block the van’s escape. As the uniforms approached the car, a large man in horn-rimmed glasses, a flat-top chop, and a boxy suit came around from the other side. He showed a credential. While one cop examined it and another cop engaged him in a conversation, the man looked up at the window where I stood.

I watched all this as it played out, watched as the man in the boxy suit retreated back into his van and the two police cars pulled away. I closed the curtains and turned to the old woman, still propped up by the pillows, whose eyes, glistening with the light of the candle, were staring straight at me.

“What did your son do, Mrs. Kalakos?” I said.

“Only what I said.”

“You haven’t told me everything.”

“They are hounding him for spite.”

“Spite?”

“He was a thief, that is all.”

“The FBI doesn’t spend fifteen years searching for a common thief out of spite.”

“Will you help me, Victor? Will you help my Charlie?”

“Mrs. Kalakos, I don’t think I should get anywhere near this case. You’re not telling me everything.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not after seeing that van.”

“You sure you not Greek?”

“Pretty sure, ma’am.”

“Okay, there may be something else. Charlie had four close friends
from childhood. And maybe, long time ago, these friends, they pulled a little prank.”

“What kind of prank?”

“Just meet him, meet my Charlie. He can’t come into city no more, but he can be nearby. We set up meeting point for you already.”

“A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“New Jersey. Ocean City boardwalk, Seventh Street. He be there tonight at nine.”

“I don’t know.”

“At nine. Do for me, Victor. As favor.”

“As favor, huh?”

“You do for me, Victor. Work it out, make deal, do something so my boy, he come home and say good-bye. To say good-bye, yes. And to fix his life, yes. You can work that?”

“I think that’s beyond a lawyer’s brief, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“Bring him home, and you tell your father after this we’re even.”

I thought about why the FBI might be so interested still in Charlie Kalakos fifteen years after he fled his trial. Charlie was a thief, had said his mother. And long ago Charlie and his friends had pulled a little prank. That van outside told me it must have been a hell of a little prank. Maybe there was an angle in Charlie’s long-ago prank and the FBI’s strangely keen interest in it for me to find a profit.

“You know, Mrs. Kalakos,” I said after I did all that thinking, “in cases like this, even when I take it on as a favor, I still require a retainer.”

“What is this retainer?”

“Money up front.”

“I see. It is like that, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Not only a Greek face but a Greek heart.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“I have no money, Victor, none at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“But I might have something to interest you.”

Slowly, she rose from the bed, as if a corpse rising from her grave, and made her way creakily, painfully, to a bureau at the edge of the room. With all her strength, she opened a drawer. She tossed out a few
oversized unmentionables and slid open what appeared to be a false bottom. She reached both hands in and pulled out two fistfuls of golden chains glinting in the candlelight, silver pendants, broaches filled with rubies, strings of pearls, two fistfuls of pirate’s treasure.

“Where did you get that?” I said.

“It is from Charles,” she said as she stumbled toward me with the jewelry dripping from her hands, falling from her hands. “What he gave me long ago. He said he found in street.”

“I can’t take that, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“Here,” she said, thrusting it at me. “You take. I have saved for years for Charlie, never touched. But now he needs me. So you take. Don’t spend until he is back, that is all I ask, but take.”

I let her drop it all into my hands. The jewelry was heavy and cold. It felt as if it held the weight of the past, yet I could feel its opulence. Like foie gras on thin pieces of buttered toast, like champagne sipped from black high heels, like tawdry nights and sunsets over the Pacific.

“Bring my son home to me,” she said, grabbing hold of my lapels with her hands and pulling me close so her foul, pestilential breath washed over me. “Bring my son home so he can kiss my old parched face and tell his mother good-bye.”

I walked to my office
that afternoon with a light step, despite the pockets of my suit jacket being weighed down with plunder.

The offices of Derringer and Carl were on Twenty-first Street, just south of Chestnut, above the great shoe sign that hung over a first-floor repair shop. We were in a nondescript suite in a nondescript building with no décor to speak of and a support staff of one, our secretary, Ellie, who answered our phones and typed our briefs and kept our books. I trusted Ellie with our financials because she was a trustworthy woman with an honest face, the fine product of a strict Catholic upbringing, and because embezzling from our firm would sort of be like trying to cadge drinks at a Mormon meeting.

“Oh, Mr. Carl, you have a message,” Ellie said as I passed by her desk. “Mr. Slocum called.”

I stopped quickly, put a hand on one of my bulging jacket pockets, turned my head, and searched behind me as if I had been caught at something. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“Only that he needed to talk to you right away.”

I thought about the FBI in the van outside the old woman’s house and the inevitable phone call once they found out who I was. “That didn’t take long,” I said.

“He emphasized the right away part, Mr. Carl.”

“Oh, I bet he did.”

When I reached my own office, I closed the door behind me, sat at my desk, and carefully pulled out the chains and the broaches, the heavy mass of jewelry, letting it all slip deliciously through my fingers
into a small, rich pile upon my desk. In the bright light of the fluorescents, it all seemed a little less brilliant, tarnished, even. I supposed the old lady wasn’t into polishing her son’s ill-gotten gains. Just then I had no idea how much it all was worth, and I wasn’t intending to swiftly find out either. The last thing I needed to do was draw attention to the jewelry, being that my legal title to what was undoubtedly stolen property could only be considered dubious. No, I wasn’t going to let anyone, not anyone, know about what the old lady had given me.

There was a light tap on my door. I quickly shoveled the swag into a desk drawer, closed the drawer with a thwack.

“Come in,” I said.

It was my partner, Beth Derringer.

“What’s up?” she said.

“Nothing.”

She looked at me as if she could see right through my lie. She tilted her head. “Where were you this morning?”

“Doing a favor for my father.”

“A favor for your father? That’s a first.”

“It surprised me, too. An old lady wants me to negotiate a plea deal for her son.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Nah, it should be easy enough, or would be if the FBI wasn’t suspiciously interested in the guy.”

“Did we get a retainer?”

“Not yet.”

“And you took it without a retainer? That’s not like you.”

“I’m doing a favor for my father.”

“That’s not like you either. What’s in the drawer?”

“What drawer?”

“The one you slammed shut before I came in.”

“Just papers.”

She stared at me for a moment to figure out if it was worth pursuing, decided that it wasn’t, which was a relief, and dropped down into one of the chairs in front of my desk.

Beth Derringer was my best friend and my partner and, as my
partner, was rightfully entitled to one half of the retainer given me by Zanita Kalakos. I wasn’t pulling a Fred C. Dobbs here, I had not been driven mad by the sight of gold and was intending to stiff Beth of her fair share. But Beth’s ethics were less flexible than mine. If she knew what Mrs. Kalakos had given me, and the likelihood of from where it had come, she would have felt obligated to turn it all over to the rightful authorities. She was that kind of woman. I, on the other hand, figured the jewelry had been stolen long ago from the rich, who had already been reimbursed by their insurance companies, and so saw no reason to fight against my Robin Hood tendencies. Isn’t that how he did it, take from the insurance companies and give to the lawyers? So the jewels and chains would stay safely and secretly in my desk drawer until I found a way to turn them into cash, and I already had an idea of just how to do that.

“I have a client coming in this afternoon that I’d like you to meet,” she said.

“A paying client?”

“She paid what she could.”

“Why don’t I like the sound of that?”

“Should we maybe discuss the retainer we didn’t get from your old lady?”

“No. Okay, go ahead. What’s her story?”

“Her name is Theresa Wellman. She hit a bad patch and lost her daughter.”

“Misplaced her, like under the bed or something?”

“Lost custody to the father.”

“And this little bad patch that caused such an overreaction?”

“Alcohol, neglect.”

“Ah, the daily double.”

“But she’s changed. She cleaned herself up and got a new job, a new house. I find her inspiring, actually. And now she wants at least partial custody of her daughter.”

“What does the daughter want?”

“I don’t know. The father won’t let anyone talk to her.”

“And we’re involved why?”

“Because she is a woman who has changed her life and is now fighting for her daughter against a man with power and money. She needs someone on her side.”

“And that someone has to be us?”

“Isn’t this why we went to law school?”

I glanced down at my desk drawer. “No, actually.”

“Victor, I told her I would do what I could to get her daughter back. I’d like your help.”

I thought about it for a moment. I didn’t like this case, didn’t like it one bit. I mean, who the hell can tell which is the best parent for a kid? Let someone else take the responsibility. But Beth hadn’t been happy in our practice for a while. She hadn’t said anything directly to me, but I could see the discontent in her. I was increasingly worried that she would end the partnership, find something more fulfilling, leave me in the lurch. I didn’t think I could keep the firm going all on my own, and, truthfully, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. The only thing that would keep me trying was the utter lack of anyplace else to go. So if helping out in one of her pity cases was a way to keep my partner on board, then I didn’t have much choice.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet her.”

“Thank you, Victor. You’ll like her. I know it.” She paused for a moment. “There’s something else.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is.” She looked away with embarrassment. “I’m being evicted.”

“That is ominous. Playing your rock and roll too loud?”

“Yes, but that’s not it.”

“I’m sure we can scrape up a partnership distribution to get any back rent paid.”

“It’s nothing like that. I’m actually up-to-date in my rent, believe it or not. It’s just that the real-estate market has picked up. The landlord wants to gut the building, redo each floor into luxury lofts, and sell them off at obscene prices. I’m in the way.”

“What about your lease?”

“It’s up in a month. He mailed me an eviction notice.”

“When?”

“I got it a month or so ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it then?”

“I don’t know, I guess I hoped if I ignored the letter the whole thing would go away. Except it didn’t go away, and the date’s getting close.”

“What about the other tenants?”

“They’re all getting ready to leave. But I don’t want to leave. I like my apartment, and I couldn’t bear to move. Is there something I can do?”

“We can fight it. There are all kinds of screwy landlord-tenant laws on the books. We’ll tie them up for months, bollix the whole condo deal, make their lives an utter misery. Making the lives of corporate types an utter misery is half the fun of being a lawyer.”

“What’s the other half?”

“I haven’t found it yet. Give me the eviction letter and I’ll file something.”

“Thank you, Victor,” she said as she stood. “I feel better already.”

“Don’t worry, Beth. It will be fine.”

At the doorway she turned and gave me a wan smile. “I knew I could count on you.”

Poor thing, I thought as she stood there with a hopeful expression on her face. She was going to have to find herself a new place.

When she closed the door behind her, I opened my desk drawer again, just to get another peek. Then I screwed up my courage and called Slocum.

“You have stepped in it now, Carl,” said K. Lawrence Slocum, the chief of the Homicide Division at the district attorney’s office.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“The FBI called our office in a panic, trying to find out who you are. According to the FBI, you apparently visited a Mrs. Kalakos this morning.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t be cute, it’s unbecoming.”

“How are they so certain it was me?”

“How are they certain? Let me count the ways. First, they took a picture of you from the surveillance van. Then, while you were inside, they found your car and ran your license plate. Then they traced a cell-phone call that had sent a team of uniforms to check on their stakeout.”

“Oh.”

“What are you up to, Carl?”

“Nothing, really. I’m as innocent as a lamb.”

“Why do I suspect that you are lying?”

“You had a difficult childhood, you never learned to trust.”

“What did you and the old lady talk about?”

“Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from disclosing the details of my conversation with Mrs. Kalakos.”

Pause. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“But I would be interested in hearing what you know about her son.”

“Charlie the Greek?”

“No need to start throwing around derogatory ethnic labels, Larry.”

“That’s his name in the gang. Charlie the Greek.”

“Gang?”

“The Warrick Brothers Gang. You ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“A local crew, named for its leaders, two psychopathic icemen.”

“Icemen?”

“Jewel thieves. They were quite sophisticated, responsible for a plague of robberies and burglaries, including a series of spectacular jewelry heists from upscale mansions running from Newport, Rhode Island, to Miami Beach. They were stationed here and in Camden, which is why they were on our radar.”

“They still around?”

“The brothers are out of commission, one is dead, the other in prison in Camden. But there are still some members floating around that are active in all kinds of criminal activities in the Northeast part of the city. We can’t seem to put them away.”

“But why is the file on homicide’s desk?”

“It seems every time a witness shows up who might have something to say, the witness ends up floating in the river or dead in his car. One guy opened his trunk and got a faceful of steel from a rigged shotgun.”

“Nasty.”

“The whole investigation, including the murders, is still open.”

“What was Charles Kalakos’s connection?”

“He was one of the original gang members. He was arrested on a
host of charges fifteen years ago, but he somehow made bail and disappeared before trial. We haven’t heard a peep from him since.”

“That doesn’t explain why the FBI is so hot on his trail.”

“There’s a federal prosecutor name of Jenna Hathaway who is apparently out to clean up the Warrick gang once and for all and who believes Charlie the Greek is the key. But my sense is that this Hathaway, for some reason, is hot to get a hard charge on Charlie to squeeze something else out of him, something not related to the Warrick case at all.”

“That’s peculiar.” The little prank? “Any idea what?”

“None, but she gives me an uneasy feeling. There’s too much interest here for it to be small-time. Anyone caught between Charlie and this Jenna Hathaway is going to get crushed, trust me. You might want to think twice about taking up this loser’s cause.”

I thought about what he was saying. Then I opened the drawer and peeked in.

“To tell you the truth, Larry,” I said, “I don’t have much choice.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I’m only doing this as a favor.”

“A favor?”

“To my dad.”

He laughed. “Now I know you’re lying.”

When he hung up, I took another look at the plunder in the drawer. Yowza. This must be how Trump feels when he stands at the window in his penthouse apartment, with his model wife by his side, and surveys all the buildings he owns. Maybe not, but to me it still felt pretty damn good. I now had a better idea of where the jewelry had come from: the mansions of Newport, seaside getaways in Miami Beach. Yeah, I knew where it had come from, and I knew where it was going, too. I searched my key chain for the desk key, found it, and locked the drawer tight.

Now all I had to do was figure out how to bring sweet Charlie home. Nothing I couldn’t handle, I figured, which was not the last time in that case I would be very, very wrong.