Genie for Hire (26 page)

It was a map of the Safavid empire, around the turn of the
18
^th
century. The Safavids were a Persian dynasty, which ruled a big
chunk of the world around the Caspian Sea, or Mare Caspium as it was referred
to on the map. Biff had lived for some time under the rule of Shah Tahmasp, who
assumed the throne when he was only ten years old, and who had encouraged
bookbinding, calligraphy and miniature painting to flourish.

He detected traces of residual magic embedded in the canvas,
as though it had been imbued with power centuries before but then had faded
with time. With a shudder he realized that might be the way Farishta ended if
she was unable to retrieve the amulet.

“You like the map?” Mrs. Himmelfinger said.

He turned back to her. “Yes, I do. Is that where you’re
from?”

She barked a short laugh. “I’m from Brooklyn. But my
grandfather was from some shtetl around there somewhere. He brought the map
with him when he came to this country.”

“I’m sure it’s quite valuable.”

“As long as somebody doesn’t steal it off the wall.”

The aide retreated to another part of the apartment, and
Biff envied her. “You can move one of those bears and sit,” Mrs. Himmelfinger
said.

The armchair that matched hers held a half-dozen stuffed
bears in a range of sizes and styles. He carefully relocated them all to the
sofa, arranging them.

“They’re not having a tea party. Just shove them over there
and sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

Biff dumped the rest of the bears and sat. “I spoke to both
of the agencies you’ve been using, and did background checks on all your aides.
Every one of them came up clean.” He didn’t mention the failed beautician. “Do
you have a list of what’s missing?”

“I made one out yesterday. But I think she stole it.” She
nodded toward the kitchen, in what Biff assumed was the aide’s direction.

By then, Biff had an idea of what was going on. He closed
his eyes and opened his third eye to the energy in the room, then stood and
walked to the dining room table. “Where are you going?” Mrs. Himmelfinger
demanded.

Biff didn’t answer. Underneath a pile of recent mail, he
found a list in handwriting that matched the old woman’s scrawl. “This it?” he
asked, showing it to her.

“How did you do that?”

“It’s a gift. You just sit here for a few minutes and let me
see what else I can find.”

He  began going down the list. Three strands of freshwater
pearls were at the bottom of a cloisonné vase on the coffee table. Her latest
brokerage statement was lost in a pile of junk mail on the kitchen table. Her
diamond engagement ring was in the tissue box on her night table. And so on.
After a solid half-hour search he had found everything on the list except a
gold baby ring with the initial E on it, which Mrs. Himmelfinger admitted had
been lost since soon after her marriage to the late Mr. Himmelfinger.

Biff sat across from her, as she looked at the array of lost
objects he had found. “I need to get this place cleaned up, don’t I?” she
asked.

“It would be a good idea. Things wouldn’t go missing so
easily if there was more open space.”

“You’re right. You haven’t worked off that retainer yet,
have you?”

“I’ll give you back the remainder,” he said, reaching for
his wallet.

“No, you can work it off. Clean the place up.” She waved her
hand around. “The girl will help you. I’m going in to take a nap.”

She rang her bell before Biff could complain. The aide
returned with a walker, and led Mrs. Himmelfinger to the bedroom. Before the
woman could return, he closed his eyes, summoned his power, and began twirling
his finger around the room.

All the junk mail, the old newspapers and out of date
magazines vaporized into the air. The stuffed animals disappeared, to end up in
a haphazard pile in the lobby of the children’s hospital. Most of the
mismatched knickknacks went to the Jewish thrift store, and Biff conjured up a
receipt Mrs. Himmelfinger could use for her taxes.

By the time the aide returned the living room had been
transformed. The surfaces were clear and clean, the chairs and sofa empty
except for throw cushions. The aide stood there open-mouthed as Biff smiled and
said goodbye.

If the detective business didn’t work out, he thought as he
left, he could always start a cleaning agency. He walked to where he’d parked
the Mini Cooper, and when he slid into the driver’s seat Farishta appeared in a
tiny whirlwind.

Farishta turned to face him, sniffing the air. “My Bivas,”
she said. “You have found someone else? A sylph?”

“Just a business associate,” he said.

She crossed her arms in a seductive pose that pushed her
breasts together under her sheer black blouse, and Biff felt himself going weak.
He licked his lips.

“I have news,” she said. “That arms shipment?”

He turned the car on. “Coming in tomorrow. Already signed up
with Igor Laskin to move it along.”

Farishta looked disappointed.

“What did you expect, Farishta? That I was going to sit here
on my hands waiting for you to come back? I’ve been working out with Igor
Laskin every day. And just so you know, he hasn’t taken that coin from around
his neck—not even when he takes a shower.”

“That I know,” she said. “I, too, have watched him.”

He looked at her and smiled. “In the shower? Now I’ll be
jealous of him.”

“Please,” she said, leaning back in her seat and stretching
her legs, cloaked in the pegged harem pants she favored. “Where is Raki?”

Biff shrugged. “He’s not obsessed about following me anymore.”

“Did you do something to him?”

“Farishta, he’s not a pet. He’s just some crazy rodent that
used to hang around.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to stop by the office
and pick some stuff up, then get down to the Miami airport for a briefing with
the guy in charge of Customs. You want to come?”

“Why not?” Farishta said. “This way I will see when I can
take back my amulet.”

As Biff pulled into a parking space at the shopping center, Raki
came scampering down the trunk of a palm, chittering away. He hopped through
Farishta’s window into the tiny back seat. “Yes, I am happy to see you, too,
Raki,” Farishta said. “Has Bivas been ignoring you?”

Biff left them to chat, and walked into his office. All he
needed now was the butterfly to complete this wacky pseudo-family he had
accumulated. He retrieved the files he needed and returned to the car, sliding
from the humid heat into the cool of the air conditioning.

As they drove, Farishta sat back against her seat, the air
blasting her long dark hair so that it flowed around her head like a living
thing. Raki dozed in the back, waking every time Biff cursed at a slow-moving
driver or zoomed between semi-trailers at top speed.

“This is why they would not let you drive the chariots when
we were in Rome,” Farishta said.

“Those charges were all trumped-up, and you know it,” Biff
said, veering onto the airport expressway at top speed. He was forced to slow
down as they approached the never-ending road construction that surrounded the
airport, and had to pay attention to navigate through the forest of signs that
led to the short term garage.

He and Farishta left Raki in the car with the windows open
an inch and walked through the garage. A mother with a pair of pretty, blonde
girls of about ten joined them at the crosswalk, and Biff remembered Sveta
Pshkov. Her death was the reason Biff was still pursuing Laskin and Petrov;
though she was a bad woman, Biff felt that by taking her on as a client, he had
an obligation to protect her, and he had failed at that. The least he could do
was bring her killers to justice.

They crossed the multiple pick-up lanes and entered the
terminal. It was a shame that Laskin had such a dark side that he was able to
be manipulated into killing people; Biff had come to like him a bit as they
worked out together. But his long experience around humans had showed him that
they often had many shades to their personalities.

Biff and Farishta met Hector and Jimmy in the Customs
department’s waiting room at the international arrival concourse. “I have a
question,” Farishta said, when they were all seated on the hard plastic chairs.
“Why do these guns pass through Miami at all? Why not go direct from Baku to
Managua by plane?”

“Good question,” Hector said. “We think it’s because the
airport is controlled very well by the government, while the rebels have
connections at the port. Miami is the easiest transfer point from air to sea in
this general area. Plus we figure that the Russians have been doing this long
enough to have it down to a science.”

Frank Jaeger, the customs officer in charge of air cargo
shipments, and Fiorentino’s boss, stepped out and ushered them into a conference
room overlooking runway 9/27.

Jaeger was a young guy with a Boston accent, tall and slim,
with dark hair cropped military short. After the introductions were complete,
he said, “This office controls the north-south cargo flows in the Western
Hemisphere. We’re the world’s largest gateway to Latin America and the
Caribbean, we handle more cargo than any other airport in the US, and we have a
stellar security record.”

“Except for Albert Fiorentino,” Jimmy said.

“We don’t know for sure that Al was on the take,” Jaeger
said.

“And some of us probably still believe in Santa Claus,”
Jimmy said. “But the point is we have intel that a batch of guns is coming in from
Azerbaijan tomorrow, then going to a cargo ship on the Miami River, destination
Nicaragua. Records show that there have been eight similar shipments in the
past year—all of them signed off on by Al Fiorentino.”

Hector took over. “If you look at the cargo manifests
Fiorentino signed off on, they show agricultural machinery. Last I checked,
Kalashnikov AK-47s are not used for agricultural purposes.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Jaeger asked.

“Can you explain the procedure for getting a shipment
through Customs?” Biff asked. “I’m going to need a basic understanding of what
happens if I’m going to pull this off.”

“When goods come into the United States, they need to be
cleared through Customs,” Jaeger said. “That involves preparing
documents and/or electronic submissions, calculating and paying taxes, duties,
and excises. So what typically will happen is that this plane from Baku
will land, and the cargo will be offloaded to a U.S. Customs warehouse adjacent
to the runway.”

Biff started taking notes as Jaeger got
up and walked over to a whiteboard. He sketched in a plane, a runway and a
square building next to it. “An agent performs a physical examination of the
merchandise to establish that the cargo is eligible to enter the United
States—that it’s not in any of our prohibited categories, and that it matches the
commercial invoice which lists all the items in the shipment and
their value.”

Farishta raised her hand, and the gold and silver bangles on
her arm tinkled gently. “May I ask a question?”

Biff sniffed the male pheromones rising off all the men as
Farishta manipulated them.  “Of course,” Jaeger said, smiling.

“What happens if there is no match?”

“That does happen from time to time. Paperwork gets
confused. The agent also examines the packing list, the air waybill, and any relevant
permits and/or licenses. Eventually we figure out what’s right and what’s not.”

She smiled. “Thank you so much.”

Biff thought Jaeger blushed. The Customs officer cleared his
throat and continued. “Then the agent files the Entry Summary, which includes
the import data and the duty owed.”

“Fiorentino was the agent on duty for the past shipments?”
Biff asked.

Hector said, “According to the records we received.”

“Usually we have procedures in place to double check the
examinations and the Entry Summaries,” Jaeger said, frowning. “Fiorentino must
have found a way around them.”

“No second signature required?” Jimmy asked.

Jaeger shook his head. “When we’re busy, the senior agents
can sign off on their own. It’s hard to investigate with Fiorentino still
hooked up to a ventilator. The doctors don’t want us to upset him, so I can’t
go in there and say, ‘blink once if you’ve been taking bribes, or blink twice
if you haven’t.’”

“I’ve found discussing criminal prosecution does tend to
upset people,” Jimmy said. Farishta laughed.

Jaeger pointed back at the whiteboard. “Once the paperwork is
in the system, a customs broker can go to the Cargo Clearance Center to get the
shipment released.”

“What’s a customs broker?” Biff asked.

“A middleman, who knows the Tariff Schedule, a
listing of duty rates for imported items, and the regulations governing
importations,” Jaeger said. “The broker knows how to fill out our forms
and figure out how much the customs duty is. It’s usually a percentage of the
value of the shipment. There’s also a merchandise processing fee of 0.21%.”

He turned back to the board and drew a truck. “Once you have
your clearance, you have your truck show up at the warehouse, you hand over
your paperwork, and you drive away with your merchandise.”

“Which is where we come in,” Hector said. “We’ll have
surveillance on the warehouse so that we can pick up the truck as it leaves the
facility. We’ll follow it down to the Miami River. We’ll get a search warrant
for the cargo ship, confiscate the weapons and arrest Laskin and Petrov.”

“What if they are not there?” Farishta asked. “What if they
hire someone to drive the truck and steer the boat, and you can’t connect
either of them to the shipment?”

“Igor Laskin is Petrov’s go-to guy,” Jimmy said. “He won’t
trust some hired hand to pick up the guns and drive them down to the boat. We
catch Laskin red-handed, and then we get him to flip on Petrov for a lighter
sentence.”