Rubbed Out (19 page)

“What about his mail?” I asked. “Are you supposed to collect it?”

“He didn't say anything about that,” one of the kids answered.

“He just said to shovel his driveway,” the other one added.

Which meant the post office was probably holding it. Which meant he'd been planning on clearing out when he'd sent me down to New York City.

I'd been his stalking horse. For sure. The knowledge did not put me in a good mood.

I checked at his favorite bars, but no one had seen him there either. One of the bartenders I spoke to said that Paul had told him he was going to be doing a job and would be away for a while.

On a hunch I checked at Le Bijou, the strip club Alima worked at. It seemed like the type of place Paul would go. Now that I thought about it, I wondered if Paul had introduced Wilcox to this place, because it didn't seem like the kind of activity a man like Walter would engage in without a push.

The same guy who had thrown me out the first time came around the bar to meet me. He looked as big now as he had then.

“What is it with you?” he said when I asked him if he'd seen Paul Santini. “Does this place look like Information Central?”

I made a show of looking around. “You mean it's not?”

The place reeked of loneliness. I'd seen more connections happening at shoe sales than I did between the woman dancing on the stage and the two men watching her. At least lust is something. There was nothing there at all.

The guy pointed to the door. “I told you once, and I'm telling you again, get out of here. And this time stay out.”

I didn't argue. What was the point? There was nothing I could do to make him talk if he didn't want to.

I like to think that intelligence, guile, and cunning triumph over strength, but some days I wish I was six-five and three hundred and fifty pounds. It would make my life a hell of a lot easier.

 

 

The third day, the deadline Paul had told me we had, came and went without anything happening. I began to relax a little. Who knows, maybe he'd made the whole thing up.

It was possible, I started thinking, that maybe the whole Russian mob thing was just a scam to make me find Janet Wilcox for him. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

I spent the next couple of days making it up to Zsa Zsa and Manuel. I took Zsa Zsa for a couple of long walks, shared a beer with her at a bar down in Armory Square, got her a couple of new dog toys and a new collar. This one was covered with seed pearls. I could tell she thought it was pretty nifty by the way she pranced around. The mouse incident was pretty much put behind us.

As for Manuel, I gave him a two-hundred-dollar bonus, took him and Bethany out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's, and bought him a DVD player. After all, I was spending Paul's expense money. I really didn't care.

Actually, I wanted to get rid of it. It felt like blood money to me. In the end, I donated what was left over to one of the no-kill animal shelters. At least that way it would do some good.

Zsa Zsa, Manuel, and I settled back into our routine.

I'd begun thinking everything was going to be all right when the call came.

Of course.

Isn't that the way things always go?

I
t was one of those bleak mid-winter, midweek days, the kind where the sky is an expanse of gray and it seems as if it will snow forever and you wonder what the hell you're doing living in a place like this.

I was killing time watching another sputter of flakes falling outside the store window. It wasn't a lot. Just enough so I'd have to clean off the car again when I went outside. Not that I was complaining. Up north, they'd gotten a foot or so dumped on them. Zsa Zsa and I had eaten lunch half an hour ago. One Big Mac for me, one for her, and we'd split a large order of fries.

The day was going slowly. I'd done the
New York Times
crossword puzzle and gotten my taxes ready for my accountant, not to mention cleaned, watered and fed the animals and washed the floor. I kept looking at the clock expecting it to be five. But it wasn't. I had six more hours before I could go home. I'd just taken ten dollars from a customer, given him fifty cents' worth of change and bagged the new ferret toys he was buying when the phone rang. I picked up as the customer walked out the door.

“Noah's Ark,” I said.

“Is this Robin Light?” someone with a heavy Russian accent asked.

I took a deep breath. It looked as if I'd been wrong. It looked as if Paul hadn't made up the story about the Russian mobsters after all. Too bad for me. I was hoping he had. I snugged the phone between my ear and my shoulder and reached for my cigarettes.

“Who wants to know?”

“Joe.”

I lit up and inhaled. A kitten we were keeping for someone jumped up on the counter, knocked my matches over the edge, and watched them fall.

“I hear Joe is a well-known name in Russian. So is Mike.”

The voice chuckled. “I was told you had a good sense of humor.”

“Who told you?”

“I will let you guess.”

“What if I don't like guessing games?”

The kitty jumped off and began batting the matches around.

“Then you shouldn't play them.”

“Fair enough. So what can I do for you?” As if I didn't know.

“A friend of yours has something of ours. We would like it back.”

I could have taken a leaf out of Janet Wilcox's book and pretended I had no idea what he was talking about, but what was the point in doing that? Look at where it had gotten her.

“I'm sure you would, but he's not my friend,” I said. “And I don't have anything.”

“That's too bad.”

“Go talk to him.”

“That will not be possible, I think.”

A chill went up my spine. I took another puff from my cigarette, then ground it out on the top of the soda can next to the register. I don't know why, but it was making my throat feel raw.

“And why is that?”

“Because . . . because . . .” the man who called himself Joe paused, searching for the correct phrase. “He . . . he has gone on a long trip.”

“You saw him?”

“To say good-bye.”

Somehow I didn't think we were talking Aruba here. Poor Paul. I wondered where they had gotten him. And how. Knowing Paul, he'd probably gotten drunk and called them up to tell them how I had the money. And they'd said, we understand. Come. Tell us all about it over a drink. And that had been that. Paul had always thought he was smarter and tougher than he was.

“I see,” I said.

“I'm glad you do.”

“We should talk,” I said.

“Da.
We should. That is why I am calling.”

I remembered my grandmother had always hated the Russians. She'd lived in a little town that sat on the border between Poland and Russia. Sometimes the border had been on one side, sometimes the other. But she'd never thought of herself as Russian or Polish. She thought of herself as Jewish. Now that I thought about it, I'd only heard her speak Yiddish in the house. Never Russian. I wondered if she'd known any.

There was a Russian Orthodox church five blocks away from our apartment. She always crossed to the other side of the street when we went by it. Once I'd asked her why.

“Cossacks,”
she'd said and spat three times on the sidewalk.

I'd cringed in embarrassment and pretended I wasn't with her. I wanted to have a grandmother who didn't sip her tea through a sugar cube, who was American.

I couldn't stop thinking about how hurt she must have felt when I arranged the meeting.

When I hung up, I called George. I may be many things, but suicidal isn't one of them. Contrary to what some people think.

 

 

I met Joe's friends down in Armory Square at a cigar bar called The Impresario. On the weekends the place is always packed, but this was nine-thirty on a snowy Wednesday night in Syracuse, and not too many people were there. The bartender was killing time polishing glasses, talking to a couple of kids who looked as if they should have been home studying, and keeping an eye on the television over the bar, all at the same time. He nodded to me as I went by. George didn't. He took another sip of his beer and continued watching the television.

The men I was looking for were sprawled on a sofa in the back. They were smoking cigars and sipping what I assumed to be brandy out of snifters. There were three of them. All three were dressed in black turtleneck sweaters and dark pants. Two looked to be in their early thirties while the third man I put at mid- to late-fifties. Except for a scar that went down the length of his left cheek, the older man had finely drawn features while the other two had noses and mouths that looked as if they had connected with one fist too many. All three had slicked-back, dark hair.

The older one waved me over.

“You want to try some brandy?” he asked as I sat down in an armchair facing him.

“That would be nice.” I took out a cigarette. The man closest to me leaned over and lit it with a gold lighter. I noticed he was wearing a Rolex on his wrist. If it was a counterfeit, it was a good one.

The older man signaled to the waitress. “In Russia people eat and drink.” He indicated the coffee table in front of us. “There, the whole table would be covered with food.”

She came over and the man ordered a brandy for me.

“It is more civilized, I think.” He looked at me. His eyes were shrewd. He smelled of money. “Do you know Russian peoples?”

“My grandmother came from Russia.”

“You are Jewish, no?”

“Yes.”

“I can tell. It is not the same thing as being Russian.”

“So she said.”

He picked a piece of lint off his sweater. “I do not mean this in a disrespectful way.”

“Then how do you mean it?”

“As a matter of fact. Jews are different. Like the Ukrainians are different. Or the Turkish people.” He took another puff of his cigar. “I myself am part Jewish. On my father's side. One generation back. Just as she is Italian,” he said, pointing to the waitress who was putting my brandy on the coffee table in front of me. “Are you?” he asked.

“Part Italian,” she said and scurried away.

“See,” he said. “I am always right. I have an eye for these things.” He pointed to his eye, then indicated my drink. “Try it.”

I took a sip. “It's good.” And it was. I'd forgotten how complex a good brandy can taste.

He looked pleased. “Fifty year. Americans think Russians only drink vodka and eat caviar and borscht. They see
Doctor Zhivago,
and they think they know about Russia. They think they know about the Russian people. They are wrong. They know nothing. How can they know when Hollywood has an Arab playing a Russian?

“Russians are a serious people. Tough.” He hit his chest with the flat edge of his fist. “Not soft like you Americans. We go through hard times. Always hard times. When the French come to Moscow, the people burn everything—their food, their houses, everything—because they would not let the French have their city. The Russians would see their children starve first.

“We have lived through the Tsars. We have lived through the Fascists. We have lived through the Communists. Do you know the secret to the Russian peoples?”

I shook my head.

“We are not afraid of death. This makes us strong.” He took another sip of his brandy and put the glass down on the coffee table. “You have heard of the Russian Mafia, yes?” he asked.

“I have read about them,” I replied carefully.

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Your reporters make them out to be idiots. That is a mistake. People who know them are respectful.” He took a puff of his cigar and knocked the ash off into an ashtray. “Do you know why?” he asked and then answered his own question. “They are smart and they are not sentimental. Now the Italians are a sentimental people. The Russians are not. Someone he owes an Italian money and he does not pay. The Italian warn and warn and warn. The Italian gives lots of chances. Then if the customer does not pay, they kill him. Big deal. Now it is over for this man. He does not have to worry anymore. But the Russian, he is not like this.” And he waved a finger in the air. “He is very different.

“The Russian, he only give one warning and the man, if he does not pay, he does not kill him. He kills first his children and then his wife. And if still the man is not paying, he kills the mother and the father. The man that owes, he has more . . .” He searched around for the word. “How you say . . . he has more incentive to pay back the money that way. And the Russians, they are not caught because they always make it seem someone else is doing it. Either that or these people, they just disappear. No one ever find them. They become . . . like in your McDonald's hamburgers.”

Suddenly veggie burgers began to have a greater appeal.

“Russian mob people know how to do things like this. They are good. This is because many Russian Mafia, they are ex-KGB. They are efficient. They know how to run things. I think this is interesting, don't you?”

“Very.” I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray. I almost would have liked it better if he had threatened me. “But I don't see what this has to do with me. May I speak frankly?”

The man nodded.

“My friend was stupid. He handled things badly, so badly that the person he was interested in stepped in front of a bus.”

“Da,”
the older man said. “We know this.”

“Then you must also know that I don't have anything to do with this situation.” I picked my next words carefully. “I can understand your being upset at your loss, but sometimes, as a businessman, these things occur, and when they do one has to take a write-off.”

The older man took a sip of his brandy, savored it for a few seconds, then swallowed and blotted his lips with a napkin. “This is true. But one does not take this write-off until one has explored every avenue for getting one's money back. We think you are smarter than your friend.”

“My friend was a professional. I was just helping him out.”

“Then perhaps you will do us the favor of helping us out as well.”

“Of course I would like to, but unfortunately I have a business to run.”

“People buy these snakes and things that you sell?”

“How do you know what I sell?”

“Good businessmen do their research.” He toyed with his glass for a second before taking another sip. “I have a problem finding good help. Do you?”

“Everyone does,” I replied cautiously, wondering where the conversation was going. “It's the nature of the times.”

“It is especially frustrating when you find someone good and they disappear.”

“Disappear?”

The older man nodded. “It happens.”

I was about to reply when a phone rang. The younger man on his left reached over and picked up the cell phone lying on the table next to his drink. He spoke for a minute in Russian, then handed the phone to the man I'd been talking to.

“Please excuse me,” he said to me and then switched to Russian. A minute or so later, he handed me the phone. “For you,” he said. “Go on,” he prompted.

I took a deep breath and lifted it to my ear.

“Robin,” Manuel said. Then there was a click and nothing.