Operation Bamboozle (33 page)

“The two big bills in the fire were genuine.”

Julie put down her chopsticks. “A thousand bucks. All we had left. You burned it.”

“I invested it. I bought their trust with it. They
wanted
to believe me, I could smell it in the air, but they still needed one little nudge to push them over the edge. If I could turn genuine dollars into phonies—and they truly believed one of those notes was real—then they'd stop worrying.” He dug into his chow mein.

“Those notes
were
real, Luis.”

“No, no. Couldn't be. I tossed them in the fire.”

“So black is white. Which means Operation Bamboozle exists. Also General Bolshevik.”

“If Vito's chaps think so.”

“But you know and I know it's all a con. And the truth about every con is, it never lasts. Sooner or later it blows up in
somebody's face.” She chopsticked a piece of chicken and ate it before it could get away.

“I'm rather worried about the general,” Luis said. “Drinks too much, drives too fast, talks about defecting. To France. He wouldn't like France, would he?”

“Not if you say so, Luis.”

“The general needs us. We should leave LA for a while. Vito and Nicky expect me to get their money to Ukraine, don't they? So we can't be seen to stay here. Think of somewhere nice to go.”

“New York,” Julie said. “See the new Broadway shows.”

They went home, packed a couple of bags, phoned a neighbor and asked their twelve-year-old son to feed Othello, gave the boy the spare house keys and fifty dollars, and drove to the airport. They could afford to fly first class. They told the airline they were Mr. and Mrs. James de Courcy, in case Nicky Zangara inquired.

Nicky was looking into the fire. “He burned all the evidence,” he said. “How can we check what he says when he goes and burns it? That was too smart. Way too smart.”

“You got no imagination.” Vito had a large Jack Daniels inside him and he was working on another. “The fact that he burned the paper
proves
it was funny money. The evidence is in the act. Stop thinkin' like a goddamn cop.”

Nicky kicked a burning log for not burning fast enough. “There's somethin' wacky about him. He's not one of us.”

“That's what I like. None of you can see further than Culver City on a clear day. This guy sees clear to Ukraine. You see the five and dime. He sees four hundred percent.”

“Yeah. That's a payout of nearly a million a year, just to us guys. A million. In cash.”

“Well, you heard him. Ukraine's big. Bigger than California.” Vito emptied his glass and the bartender came in a hurry. “You don't get big by thinkin' small, Mr. Zangara. The guy gave me a church, did you know that? A whole goddamn
church,
for Chrissake!”

“I saw it.”

“Like it was a pair of gold studs. Box of cigars.”

“Yeah, nice.”

“Anyone ever give you a church? No big deal, just: Thought you might like church? That's what I call thinkin' big.”

Nicky abandoned the fire and went and got a glass of ice water. “Here's an if,” he said. “If Cabrillo screws us …”

“That's easy. I whack him, pronto.”

Nicky shook his head. “Whackin' guys is not your job now. You should delegate. That's what-”

“You're soundin' like Uncle. Drivin' with the brakes on. Ever been to Florida?” Discussion over.

Michael Stagg had been trying desperately hard to remember the medical name of the disease which he might or might not have inherited. Trying too hard. If he'd simply
asked
for the answer, instead of
demanding
it, the name might have popped out of his brain's retrieval system within 24 hours. Nobody likes being browbeaten. Brains are human too.

Then Jensen TransAmerica Investigations showed him a photograph of Luis Cabrillo looking relaxed and self-confident in a doorway, and his brain suddenly said
Eagleston, Chappell and Hart.
And it added:
neurostatic hypostasia. The B strain.

“He told me he was a Boston lawyer,” Stagg said.

“Untrue,” Jensen TransAmerica said. “We checked him out. No warrants against him, no known occupation, no obvious source of income. And in the past six months, three men have been discovered dead on his property. All with known criminal backgrounds.”

That same day, Stagg visited a doctor, an old friend, and asked him what he knew about seeing non-existent empty holes in magazines. “Sounds like a type of migraine,” he said. Then Stagg asked him about neurostatic hypostasia. The man laughed. “I know it's bullshit,” he said. Stagg went away feeling both glad and mad. All that fear and anxiety were being turned into rage. There was plenty of it.

Autumn is the only season when New York is unquestionably terrific. Winter can be brutal, spring has come and gone while you're still in the shower, and summer is when the sun beats down like a great brass gong. The thunderstorms are Biblical. Broiled or drenched: you choose. But Manhattan in the fall is crisp and bright.

Julie and Luis stayed at the Algonquin, never met Dorothy Parker and didn't hear anyone say anything witty, but they killed a couple of weeks very pleasantly. Saw some shows, walked in the Park, ate in restaurants that were a light year away from the 86th Street bar where she used to sling burgers. Manhattan was a good place to be young, healthy and loaded.

They went to Macy's department store because he had heard that it sold everything. He saw a display of miniature tape recorders and he bought one. The salesman showed him how to operate it and then packed it in a box. “Does it play backward?” Luis asked. No, the man said. It's got a fast rewind. That's what people want.

As they left, Luis asked Julie if she knew someone who could make the machine play its tape backward.

“I was in the ad game. Wrote hundreds of radio commercials. I know a man.”

They took a cab to a recording studio at 44th and Seventh, where the man she knew said he would do anything for her, up to and including bigamy. Luis explained his needs. “Let's get it straight,” the man said. “You want to reverse the machine, or reverse the tape content?” She left them to it, and went to a coffee shop with an old pal who had just done a voice-over for a pencil commercial. “What sort of voice does a pencil have?” she asked.

“Slim and literate. Always to the point. How d'you like sunny LA?”

She thought for a couple of seconds. “It'll make one hell of a good ruin,” she said. “Give it back to the coyotes. They were there first.”

When Luis joined them, he asked where he could get a military uniform. Preferably red, not new. They took him to a theatrical costumiers. He tried on a cherry-red tunic with dark green epaulets. “Baggy,” Julie said. “A size too big.”

“It's perfect,” he said. “I'll take it. Can you sew on some medal ribbons? About a dozen.”

Three days later they flew back to LA.

When Luis and Julie left LA, Agent Moody was in San Diego, giving evidence before a grand jury about the kidnapping of a movie star. It was a difficult case: maybe the star colluded with the kidnappers in order to get publicity for her fading career plus a share of the ransom paid by the studio, in which case maybe it wasn't a kidnapping at all …. Whatever. Moody spent five days in San Diego. It was a week before he called Charlie Denny and said Cabrillo-Conroy had gone.

“Could be in Ukraine by now,” Denny said.

“Could be anywhere. Omsk, Tomsk and all points east.”

“Stopping at Minsk and Pinsk … You don't sound heartbroken.”

“I've met them both. They may be a pair of heels but they're not organized crime. I hope they don't come back, for their sake. They're taking a ride on a tiger.”

“Perhaps we can trap the tiger without killing the passengers.”

“Perhaps, in a perfect world,” Moody said. “But this world stinks, so why should you care?”

“Beneath this tattered shirt there beats a shabby heart,” Denny said. “Lunch soon?”

Ten days passed before Moody called him. By then, Denny had found a new fish restaurant with a sparkling view of the Pacific. Sea bass and a bottle of white Bordeaux. Moody usually had a sandwich at his desk.

“What do we know for sure?” he said. “We know they're back home from wherever the hell they've been. We know they're cozy with Vito DiLazzari. But why? Could be they're all playing canasta.”

“Could be that fake Ukrainian lottery means fake Ukrainian lottery,” Denny suggested. “You sure we can't bug Vito's place?”

“Granite, three feet thick. He never uses the phone, not himself. If we could get inside, which we can't, the acoustics
would be truly lousy. Konigsberg, on the other hand, is a piece of cake. But we still don't know if their Ukraine is a country or a can of beans.” He drank some wine and looked at Denny's cheery face. “Can't help thinking it's a long, long way from your LA office.”

“Fly west from here, and Ukraine is actually closer than if you fly east. We sneak in through the KGB's back door.”

“Now I'm sorry I asked.” Moody went back to his sea bass.

“That's what I read in
Newsweek,
anyway. I haven't the faintest idea what's going on. Nobody tells me anything.” His smile was amiable and might even have been sincere.

“Me neither,” Moody said. He wasn't paid to save the world. Leave that to the Ivy League boys.

Othello asked little of life. Fresh water, gravy in his dog food, maybe a marrowbone to suck on. There were rabbits nearby but the little bastards ran, whereas with a marrowbone you could depend on the bloody thing to keep still. At his age, a dog valued stability. And now look, these idiots were messing him about again.

“I let him out to poop an' stuff,” the neighbors' son said. “No problem.” He gave Julie the canopener. Othello saw the exchange, and recognized a crucial switch in the balance of power. He sniffed her ankle and the ancient smell signaled food, so he tried to bite it. The effort hurt his jaws. He quit. Dimly, he saw Luis doing something. Frying sausages, maybe. Othello slumped and salivated.