Red Ink (24 page)

The freight carrying container 95824 is up ahead, traveling at the posted yard speed of 5 mph. We overtake it easily. Scotto keeps the pedal to the floor, racing along the service road that parallels the outbound spur. Railcar after railcar flashes past. The numbers on the target go by in a blur. She keeps going until we’re so far ahead of the train, it’s completely out of sight by the time she stops.

We waste no time getting out of the car. Scotto starts stuffing a nylon gym bag with things from the trunk. I’m pulling my typewriter from the backseat with one hand and a suitcase with the other. Headlights sweep through a distant turn, startling us. If it’s the train, it’s moving so fast we’ll never get aboard. I’m not sure if our luck is holding or running out, but it’s not the train—it’s the tractor! Tinted two-piece windshield bridging its cowl like a pair of Ray-Bans, engine snarling behind vicious chrome teeth, stacks snorting fire into the darkness, the monster-on-wheels comes at us at high speed.

We literally run for our lives, putting as much distance as possible between us and the Buick that blocks the narrow service road. The driver redlines every gear. The speeding tractor closes the distance in an eyeblink. It’s heading right for the sedan.

“Shit!” Scotto exclaims, glancing back. “That son-of-a-bitch is gonna total my car!” She drops her bags, then pulls her pistol, steadies it with both hands, and coolly fires at the on-rushing vehicle. The windshield shatters. The engine growls like a broken lawn mower. A tire blows. The tractor swerves wildly out of control, narrowly missing the Buick. It rockets across a median, sending up a shower of gravel, and crashes into an embankment.

“Yes!” Scotto whoops, pumping a fist in triumph.

Despite the circumstances, I can’t help thinking it’s amazing the things people become attached to.

“Stay back,” she orders, pushing me aside before advancing on the tractor cautiously. The door cracks open before she gets
there. The shotgun emerges. She advances swiftly, then grasps the barrel and pulls hard, yanking Harlan from the cab. He gets a face full of gravel. Scotto gets his weapon. “Police officer! Don’t move!” she commands sharply, pressing a foot against the back of his neck. He remains facedown on the ground. She hands me the shotgun. “Shoot him if he moves.” She swings the door open wide, leveling her pistol at the driver. “Police! Out. Now. Move it!” He stumbles from the cab, blood trickling into his beard from a cut on his cheek. “Hit the deck,” Scotto orders, holding the pistol on him as she steps back.

The wail of sirens rises as he flops facedown in the gravel next to his colleague. The backup units race along the service road and converge on the tractor. Krauss and Nutcracker are at the forefront of the agents who pile out of the vehicles, guns drawn.

“All yours, Tom,” Scotto says coolly as they move in around the two truckers. Then, noticing a single headlight streaking through the darkness, she breaks into a cocky grin and adds, “Come on, Katkov. Don’t want to miss our train.”

The long freight seems to be picking up speed as it exits the yard. At the least, we’re going to need a running start. Krauss and the other agents are wide-eyed as we scoop up our bags and start sprinting parallel to the tracks. The ground shudders violently as the throbbing diesel approaches, pushing air with jolting force as it passes.

We’re running clumsily with our cargo alongside an empty boxcar. I toss the typewriter and suitcase through the open door. Scotto does the same with the canvas sack and her shoulder bag. There’s a boarding handle welded to the doorframe. It takes me several tries, but I finally get hold of it and belly flop aboard. The train is moving faster. Scotto is running like crazy to keep up. She accelerates and makes a desperate headfirst lunge for the doorway. I manage to get hold of her wrist. She hooks a leg over the sill—half of her in, the other half hanging perilously out—and claws at the floor for a handhold. I grab the seat of her pants with my free hand and drag her inside. We stumble away from the door and fall against opposite walls of the boxcar, gasping for breath.

“You . . . you okay?” I finally ask.

She nods, unable to speak.

“I . . . I . . . think . . . I’m starting to understand.”

“You . . . you mean about . . . getting back into the field?”

“Uh-huh. . . . You’re . . . you’re amazing.”

“I know . . .” she wheezes with a grin. “But I think . . . maybe . . . I’ve lost a step or two. . . . Gotten a little . . . broad in the beam.”

“I believe . . . I mentioned that when we first met.”

“A born diplomat.”

“Think positively. . . . It gave me something to hang on to.”

“That’s what my husband says. Don’t start getting sexual on me, Katkov.”

“Thought’s never crossed my mind.”

“Nice to know I can always count on you for an ego boost.”

I smile. So does she. We’re sitting there like rag dolls, watching the city go by, when it dawns on me we haven’t the slightest idea where we’re going.

29

I
’m jolted by a sharp poke in the ribs. An elbow, to be exact. Scotto’s elbow. I don’t know why, but it seems she’s always waking me up. I roll over, eyes gritty and heavy with sleep. She’s lying on the floor next to me, alternating the painful jabs with angry tugs of a small blanket that barely covers us.

“Katkov? Come on, shake out the cobwebs, dammit.”

I’m staring at her face as if I’ve never seen it before. My disorientation lasts a few seconds. Then the train’s rhythmic clack penetrates the haze, and the last forty-eight hours come back in a numbing rush.

“What? . . . What?” I rasp, worried something’s happened to the container. “Something wrong?”

“Bet your ass,” she snaps. “Why aren’t you over there where you belong?”

I groan, relieved, despite her shrill pitch. “Well, it got quite chilly for a while. I figured there’d be no harm in sharing the blanket. So . . . I slipped beneath it.”

“Next to me.”

“Next to you. Yes. I had little choice. Unless you’d prefer I’d taken it back to where I belong.” I angrily toss it aside. My body is sore and stiff from the boxcar’s hard floor, and I’ve no
tolerance for her pettiness. I let my head clear, then stagger to my feet and roll the corrugated steel door aside.

A thin shaft of daylight knifes into the darkness and gradually widens. Humid air with a sharp, salty bite follows. I inhale deeply, squinting at the glare. Beyond the lush tropical foliage that borders the right of way, a sparkling expanse of ocean stretches to a faint horizon and blends into a cloudless sky. The climate and vegetation leave little doubt we’re traveling south.

Scotto drifts over and stands next to me, looking appropriately contrite. “Sorry ‘bout that,” she says, raising her voice over the sound of clacking wheels and rushing air that snaps at her hair. “I’m one of these people who wake up grouchy.”

“Forget it.”

“Hey, it was selfish of me to hog the blanket in the first place. Okay?”

“Okay,” I reply, feigning I’m still offended.

“Something’s bugging you, isn’t it?” she prompts, taking the bait.

“No, really.”

“Come on, I can tell. Spit it out.”

“Well, it’s nothing of any consequence; but I found it a little unsettling last night when you started moaning, ‘Marty! Oh, Marty!’ in the middle of your orgasm. Other than that . . .”

She laughs lustily. “Only in your dreams, Katkov. Only in your dreams.”

We’re standing in the doorway, watching the coastline go by, when the train leans into a curve. The freight is soon stretched out over its entire length, and we can see container 95824 at the other end. I doubt anyone else is keeping an eye on it. I heard rotors several times during the night, but we must be well beyond the three-hundred-mile range by now, because there’s no helicopter in sight.

We settle on the floor and go to work on the junk food and bottled water Scotto hastily stuffed into the gym bag along with the blanket and some clothing. Once fortified, she slips her pistol from its holster, extracts the clip, and checks there isn’t a bullet in the chamber. Then, with sure-handed authority, she begins breaking the weapon down. This is a satisfying ritual, not a chore; and, like Vorontsov’s medals on the lace tablecloth, the precisely machined parts are soon neatly arranged between
us on the blanket, along with the box of shells and cleaning kit Scotto takes from the gym bag.

I’m reflecting on how she handled those truckers and wondering why she craves living on the edge instead of in a house in the suburbs. “Tell me something, will you, Scotto?”

“Do my best.”

“Why’d you become a cop?”

“Easy one. I dated a guy in college who was a criminology major. Much more interesting than European History—than him, for that matter. Definite FBI type. So I switched.”

“That’s how you became a cop. I asked you why.”

“It’s exciting. Makes me feel secure, and"—she inserts a long brush into the pistol’s barrel, then looks up at me and giggles—“I get to play with guns. Last but not least, there’s my Uncle Angelo.”

“The one who taught you to shoot craps?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You followed in his footsteps?”

She bursts into laughter and shakes her head no. “I’d be in the slammer if I did that.”

“He’s in prison?”

“Was. I said he was a bit of a hood. Got caught running numbers out of his
trattoria.”
She deftly slips the hammer assembly into the housing and locks it in position. “Made the best Sicilian pizza in Bensonhurst. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as skilled when it came to making bail.”

“So then what? You got into law enforcement to prove that all Italians aren’t mobsters?”

“Nothing that idealistic.” One by one, her fingers insert bullets into the clip as she explains. “He was a great guy, lots of laughs, affectionate. All the guys in my neighborhood were like that, but a lot of them had a sort of—I don’t know—a pathological split in their personalities. They’d be hugging their kids one minute and pistol-whipping a shopkeeper who wouldn’t pay protection the next.”

“There’s a lot of pistol-whipping going on in Moscow these days.”

“Yeah, well, my girlfriends married those guys. They stayed home, cleaned house, cooked, and had kids—perfect little housewives who are still lying to themselves about where the money comes from.”

“And you figured getting into law enforcement would keep all the split personalities at bay.”

“Yeah, and it worked. I’m married to a decent guy who wants a little house in the ’burbs with a wife, kids, and a dog.” She slaps the clip into the handgrip, holsters the weapon, and fastens the tie-down. “All that figuring sure came back and bit me on the ass, didn’t it?”

Several blasts on the locomotive’s air horns save me from having to reply. The insistent clanging of a bell follows as the train thunders through a crossing on the outskirts of a town. A quaint, steepled station with a sign that reads PORT ST. LUCIE flashes past.

“Florida,” Scotto announces brightly. “We’re in Florida, Katkov. My Aunt Adele lives down here.”

“Uncle Angelo’s wife?”

“No. Uncle Hank’s. He was a golf pro.”

“You had an uncle who was a golf pro?”

“Yeah,” she replies indignantly. “They weren’t all hoods. He had a driving range when I was a kid. Way ahead of his time.”

“Way ahead of mine too. People try to hit a little ball into a hole from five hundred meters away. I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. They’re always grousing about a hook, or a slice, or getting up and down, whatever the hell that means.”

“Something to do with impotence, I imagine.”

Scotto laughs. “Beats me, but I can tell you where we’re going. . . .” She lets it tail off with that look she gets when pieces fall into place. “Miami.”

“Miami? How do you know that?”

“It’s the fluff-and-fold capital of America. The creeps get that cash into the banking system down there, they can wire it anywhere in the world. I mean, there’s more than a hundred international banks with branches in south Florida. Some collaborate outright, some are negligent, some are just plain stupid. We’ve been leaning on ’em pretty hard lately.”

“I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve been under the impression your banking system is rather highly regulated.”

“Up to a point. Ten thou is the magic number. Anything over that has to be reported to the IRS.”

“So they keep each transaction under the limit, and you’re none the wiser.”

“You got it.”

“But two billion dollars. It’d take forever to launder that much, wouldn’t it?”

“Depends. Doesn’t take more than a couple of seconds to run an electronic rinse.”

“What’s that?”

“A wire transfer. A trillion bucks a day is wired among the world’s banks, Katkov—that’s
trillion.
Every penny goes through this massive computer setup in Manhattan called CHIPS.”

“An acronym for . . . ?”

“Clearing House Interbank Payments System. They’ve got more electronic security than the CIA and KGB put together: codes, passwords, backup systems, screening systems, over a hundred dedicated phone lines to member banks. Five out of every six dollars that move in our economy go through the place, not to mention eighty percent of worldwide payments—and all for eighteen cents a pop.”

“Per transaction?”

Scotto nods smartly. “Regardless of the amount.”

“In other words, they could wire the entire two billion, anywhere in the world, for eighteen cents?”

“Uh-huh. But, like I said, they have to get it into the banking system first.”

“Despite all that technology, there’s still no way to distinguish dirty money from clean?”

“Not once it’s on the wire. Bankers have the best shot. Unfortunately, the very institutions that are in a position to do it have the least incentive.”

“Because they’re making money off it.”

“Getting rich off it. Anywhere from seven to ten percent off the top.”

For the next four hours, temperature and humidity continue to rise, and stations zip past more frequently: Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Pompano, Fort Lauderdale. It’s late afternoon by the time Miami’s beachfront hotels come into view across Biscayne Bay. Bathed in the glow of fading sunlight, the pastel facades appear as if they’ve been dusted with powdered sugar. Long, narrow bridges that Scotto calls causeways connect the overdeveloped strip of sand to the mainland.

The train begins slowing down, then enters a short tunnel that takes it into the railyards in northeast Miami. Long lines
of freight and passenger cars line the tracks. Work diesels patrol in search of their charges. Yardmen scurry between them checking couplers.

Scotto and I gather our things and prepare to jump from the boxcar when it stops, but the train seems to be maintaining its speed. Indeed, instead of being directed through a series of switches, instead of being shunted onto a siding, it continues straight ahead, bypassing the network of tracks. We exchange nervous glances as it becomes clear that we’re waiting in vain, that it isn’t going to stop, that, as we fear, it’s going in one end of the yard and out the other.

“What the hell’s going on now?” Scotto groans, her tone a mixture of exhaustion and exasperation.

“Maybe there’s another yard someplace?”

“Yeah, sure,” she says cynically, taking an angry swipe at the gym bag with her foot.

The long freight continues through a section of town that reminds me of East Baltimore, passing beneath a traffic interchange where expressways, interstates, and causeways come together in a gigantic concrete knot. Towering futuristic skyscrapers are looming up ahead when the tracks suddenly curve sharply eastward toward a short causeway that angles out across the water.

In the distance, an immense man-made island of passenger terminals, warehouses, and piers hovers above the placid bay. A sign proclaims PORT OF MIAMI DODGE ISLAND TERMINUS. The superstructures of cruise ships and ocean-going freighters beyond make it painfully clear that the money isn’t going into Miami’s banking system to be laundered electronically, as Scotto theorized. It’s going into one of those cargo vessels, going out of the country, going to an unknown destination, where it will be scrubbed by hand.