The Deal (48 page)

“Your numbers came in today.”

One hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Cash. Carolyn was about to be out of a job, so the emergency stash from my safety deposit box, minus a little I’d need for myself, was the least I could do. I gave her a kiss on the cheek then stood up. She just stared
at me.

Next, I headed for Perry’s office.

“Jesus Christ, Jonah!”

Perry blasted out of her seat toward me. I put my briefcase down. We hugged. I closed my eyes. I could feel myself not wanting to let go.

“Listen to me, Per,” I said, forcing myself to grab her arms and gently push her back. “I can’t stay here.”

“Why not? What’s going on, Jonah? You miss your father’s funeral, you totally disappear—”

“I know, it all seems crazy,” I said, squeezing her arms tighter.

“We all love you, Jonah. We only want to help and you’re not letting us. You’re just shutting us out like—”

I started to say, “Because I’m scared for—” but caught myself. The last thing I wanted was for her to fear for her safety.

“What? What is it, Jonah? Let me in. You don’t need to go through whatever it is you’re dealing with alone.”

“Per, all I can say right now is that you’re right. Something is happening and it’s fucked up. It’s much more than just my father’s death. But it’s complicated. You have to just trust me when I say now is not the time and this is certainly not the place.”

Her eyes saddened while at the same time becoming concerned.

“Should I be scared?”

I didn’t know how to answer so I dismissed the question. I squared my jaw and spoke quietly, firm.

“I promise to tell you everything. I swear. Meet me tonight at eight o’clock in Tribeca at Acappella. It’s on the corner of Hudson and Chambers. Don’t tell anyone you’re meeting me there. No one. Not Jake, not Tommy, no one.”

I shot into Jake’s office. He was talking to someone on speakerphone.

“Lionel, I’ll have to call you back.”

I closed the door.

“I can’t move forward unless the numbers work Jake,” the voice on the other end said.

“I know that. Work with me here—a few minutes.”

“Fine. Just—”

Jake didn’t wait for an answer and hung up.

“Fuck, Curtis—”

“Don’t,” I said.

My arm was up and I was closing in on him fast.

“Don’t what?”

“Get up.”

He stopped his ass midair. I sat down in one of the two chairs facing his desk.

“I don’t have time,” I went on.

He sat back down.

“Time? Jonah, man, what’s happening here? Tell me how I can help.”

“It’s nothing like you think. I’m fine. I mean, with the grieving and everything, I’m fine.”

“Then why weren’t you—”

“Tribeca tonight. Eight o’clock. Acappella. Can you be there?”

Jake, caught off guard a bit by the danger in my words, my tone, looked back at me straight in the eye.

“Of course I can be.”

“I’ll tell you everything. Just promise me something. Not a word to anyone. Not to Tommy, not Perry, no one.”

Tommy was next. Once I had played the same game with him, I left his office and started toward mine. Before I got there my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Andreu. I let it go to voice mail. Carolyn appeared behind me.

“Jonah, I—”

My phone rang again.

“Hold on, Carolyn,” I said, continuing toward my destination without breaking stride.

It was Andreu again.

“Fuck,” I said under my breath.

“Actually, I need to—”

Carolyn was still trying to get my attention. I didn’t hear her. My mind was consumed with the different things my Russian comrade might want to discuss, the different games he might want to play.

I entered my office still looking at my phone, thinking.

“Now is that any way to treat a client?”

Surprised, I looked up. There he was, Andreu Zhamovsky, casually sitting in my office. He was dressed in Brioni and a reckless, devilish, hell-bent smirk, holding his own cell phone.

“Andreu! I, uh—”

I looked at Carolyn as I realized what she had been trying to tell me. I looked back at Andreu.

“Wow! What are you doing here?”

I put down my briefcase and moved toward him. He stood up. We hugged as we played each other’s bluff.

“What? I’m not allowed to check up on you unannounced? See how you’re holding up?”

I picked up my briefcase and headed behind my desk while Andreu retook his seat. Keep it business, I reminded myself. Stay even. Carolyn asked us if we wanted any coffee. We both passed. She left, closing the door behind her. For a moment there was silence.

“Have you stopped working long enough to grieve your father’s passing?” he continued.

“My work is my grieving. Besides, two bullets to the brain hardly constitutes a passing.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” he shrugged.

“When did you get in?” I asked.

I sat down slowly in my chair, reminding him whose office he was in.

“A couple of hours ago.”

“I didn’t know you were making the trip.”

“Neither did I. Something unexpected came up.”

“Really?”

My mind started throwing around possibilities like swelling kernels in a popcorn maker.

“Something that has to do with the deal? Anything I can help you with?”

“Nothing like that.”

Andreu, confident, relaxed in his seat.

“Something personal,” he continued.

“Personal?”

“That’s right. I like to watch your CNN sometimes. It keeps me up to date on the happenings in the States. Anyway, one particular story caught my eye—”

Then just like that, in a move that made the hair on my arms stand up, he declared war on me. He took out the F. Scott Fitzgerald Mont Blanc Writers Edition pen—my father’s personal favorite. Its shimmering white barrel caught my eye immediately. I could see the author’s signature on the black resin cap. Andreu had taken aim. He tapped the end of the pen against one of his top front teeth.

It made perfect sense. The story on CNN was that of a cop who had been dumped in the river. I, consequently, was still yet to even be arrested. Andreu had no choice but to come to New York and assess the situation. He didn’t like what he had found.

The gloves were off.

“Really? CNN. I’d take a guess, but I must admit that I’ve fallen behind a little bit with the news.”

“Of course, you’re a busy guy. I should know, on top of what you’re going through, I’m the one who has you working like this.”

I turned to my computer screen.

“What’s this?” I said, pretending to be responding to something.

I looked at my watch.

“Fuck! I had no idea what time it was.”

I hit the intercom on my phone.

“Yes, Jonah?”

“Carolyn, I’m late for a meeting with Merrill and I forgot to have you get me a car. Call downstairs and have Javier hail me a cab.
”

Javier was one of the building security guards. He did this for us, hailed cabs, when we were in a bind for time in exchange for a nice tip. So for Carolyn it was not at all curious.

“Of course, Jonah.”

I jumped out of my chair, grabbed my briefcase and headed toward the door.

“Fuck, Andreu,” I said looking at the time on my cell. “I have a meeting with the bank regarding your deal. If you had only told me you were going to be in town—”

“Of course, Jonah. Duty calls. I’ll tell you what,” Andreu said, “I have a car downstairs. Forget about the cab. Let me take you where you need to go. In fact, since I’m here, why don’t I sit in with you on the meeting?”

The driver opened the door to the limo.

“Please.” Andreu said, waving me in first.

I told the driver the address of my fictitious meeting. I took the far bench, the one sideways and up against the wall. Andreu followed me in, taking the rear. The car started moving. Once it did Andreu quickly started toward me. My back stiffened, my fists clenched. But all he was doing was going for the bar immediately to my right. He poured himself a straight Belvedere. He offered me one as well. I declined and he retook his seat. Without another word, he slugged down most of the drink in one gulp, then balanced the near-empty glass on the seat next to him.

“You’re smart, Jonah. Tough. You always have been.”

Andreu stopped as if he were waiting for a response. I didn’t give him one so he continued.

“You know why I’m here, Jonah. Isn’t that right?”

“Where did you get that pen?”

“I’m here,” Andreu went on, ignoring me, “because of this.”

He grabbed a New York Post from the seat and tossed it to me. The cover was Pangaea-Man’s soft coffin being removed from the river.

“And the fact you’re still working on a deal your partners should be completing without you.”

There were so many words I wanted to spew at him. Instead of trying to sort them out, credit him, I turned away and looked out the window. I noticed we were going in the opposite direction of Merrill’s office.

“That cop was supposed to sink you for this, Jonah.”

I said nothing.

“There was someone waiting for the egg to be admitted into evidence so they could return it to me. Only it never made it into evidence, did it?”

Still I stayed silent.

“Look at you,” Andreu talked down at me, “when did you become such a madman? I mean, killing police officers?”

The words were searing. I returned my eyes to Andreu’s

“What’s the matter? The six eggs from Baltimore weren’t enough?”

His demeanor, expression did a 180-degree turn.

“What are you talking about?”

“I know everything, Andreu. I know about Derbyshev, you planting Danish Jubilee Egg on me, I know it all. I must say I was pretty confused for a while. Once I learned Hart was caught on camera less than a month before it was supposed to be moved to the Capital it all started coming together. The time frame of our little real estate deal, your gopher trying to get the egg back from me, all of it. The egg was going to be under much stronger lock and key once moved. Hart learned about the government cameras, but because of your plan to accumulate all of the eggs there wasn’t time to abort, only improvise. That’s why Hart immediately dumped it off on me and disappeared. I imagine on your very generous dime. There was only a small amount of time for him to handle the egg before the whole world was looking for him.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

I leaned back in my seat.

“The only thing I couldn’t figure out was if I was the intended mule or the best available option. Until, that is, I found the note in my father’s handwriting on the cop who was accidentally killed, quite frankly, because of you. A note written on stationery with a Russian watermark.”

Andreu tried to laugh it off.

“This is absurd,” he chuckled.

“How’d she make you do it? How’d she convince you to throw both of our lives away for a bunch of antique eggs?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is that right? The same way I don’t know she’s the one who put you in touch with Derbyshev in the first place?”

Andreu threw the last remaining sip of his drink down his throat.

“She’s a fucking black widow spider, Andreu. She’s fooled everyone for thirty years. Alexander, Stan, you—”

Andreu fired his glass, narrowly missing my head. It exploded behind me.

“Don’t say another word! Not another word! Your jealous, out-of-control father was the problem! He’s always been the problem!”

“Is that what she told you?”

“What she told me is that my father was found face down six years ago at Tealtralnaya Station, pumped full of over forty bullets, on your father’s orders. Not the victim of a mugging like our foreign-investment-seeking government wanted to pretend.”

“That’s probably true. Only your mother left out one important fact.”

“What’s that?”

“The hit was her idea.”

“Shut up, Jonah.”

“I can’t. You’ve left me no choice. The truth hurts me just as much as it hurts you. It doesn’t change the fact it’s the truth.”

“My mother loved my father. She would never hurt him.”

“She pretended to love him. Then she pretended to love her rich contingency plan, Stan Gray.”

“Lies! All lies!”

“She’s up to something, Andreu. She wants those eggs for herself, and she’s wanted them for a long time.”

“The missing Fabergé eggs were the dream of my father, not my mother.”

“There’s some interesting artwork hanging in my father’s townhouse that says otherwise.”

Andreu, confused, laughed.

“What do you mean, artwork?”

“Your mother’s. Drawings and a painting. She used them to secretly correspond with my father. They had an affair since meeting when she and Alexander first came here.”

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Your father was an animal, Jonah. He tried to force himself on her. The reason she never said anything to my father was because she knew he’d kill Stan, and she felt he’d worked too hard to throw everything away. Your father spent every day after trying to keep her quiet.”

He held up the F. Scott Fitzgerald Mont Blanc.

“One such example. Apparently Stan’s favorite.”

“So that’s why you jumped on the opportunity to take me down,” I humored him. “Hart’s problem in your mind wasn’t a problem at all. Plan B gave you the chance to give my father the ultimate payback. The public embarrassment of watching me swing and the shame of his own son thinking he’d set him up. The icing on the cake you undoubtedly had planned for him before someone saved you the trouble. You obtain the eggs and take us down all in three week’s work.”

Andreu said nothing.

“Pretty crafty job with the note,” I went on. “For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how you pulled that off, but now it’s perfectly clear. With the gifts from my father must have come notes. Once you had these, or, should I say, once Mr. Worldwide had these in his possession, a near-authentic reproduction of the handwriting became easy. For someone who couldn’t publicly point a finger at me, a note was the perfect solution. Clean. Simple. A sample of my father’s handwriting, what would have been an obstacle, became a nonissue.”