The Swede (23 page)

U
P AT ALTITUDE, THE PEACEFULNESS
of the evening sun made his eyelids heavy. Still, Grip couldn’t fall asleep.

The stake. It wasn’t the mental image of the woman in the woods that disturbed him, but the thought of what he’d unleashed. Vladislav—after only a few days, he’d already done the job. It was like an incantation, a demon. Why did Grip feel drawn to him? As if an aching nerve had been exposed.

Grip squirmed in his seat, tried to close his eyes. No luck, squirmed again. The setting sun shimmered like melting glass over the horizon. He pulled out Shauna’s pile of tickets and documents, began leafing through them to give himself something to do. Among the papers, he found an unmarked envelope. The flap wasn’t licked, just tucked in. Inside the envelope was a pair of double-folded, blurry photocopies. Grip unfolded them.

Transcript of Hearing. Tape: 1 (2), K921314

Appearing:

Examining Officer Shauna Friedman (SF), FBI

Defendant Romeo Lupone (RL), detained on suspicion of complicity to commit forgery

RL:
Why this time? You never needed to record us before.

SF:
All our previous little dates can remain a matter between you and me. But now we have an agreement, what you say must be official, and so it has to be on tape.

RL:
For fuck’s sake, people will say I snitch.

SF:
Call it whatever you want, this is the deal, if you want to walk out of here a free man.

RL:
When do I get out? Today?

SF:
Give me something to convince the prosecutor that you are worth his time, that you actually have something to offer. Then we’ll see. Withdrawal of prosecution is no trifle, there are many people involved. Two or three weeks, I would think, before a judge will let you go free on bail.

RL:
Three weeks in this fucking hole.

SF:
That’s the game. Do you want to play or not?

RL:
Go to hell.

SF:
I didn’t hear you. Try again.

[
Silence
.]

SF:
This won’t take long, we’ll start with this.

RL:
That’s a fucking passport photo, right?

SF:
Yes, it is.

RL:
I’ve said that I can tell you how it happened, how they did it . . .

SF:
How
you
did it.

RL:
Yeah, how we did it, then. Both the sculptures and the thing in Central Park. But no names. If anyone finds out . . .

SF:
We don’t give a damn. And right now, we don’t care how you did it either. We need names!

[
Silence
.]

SF:
Look at the picture. You’ve talked about “the Swede,” that the one who did the planning was called the Swede. Is that him?

RL:
Maybe.

SF:
Maybe?

RL:
Shit, that was years ago now. A single fucking picture.

SF:
Maybe
isn’t good enough. You’re having trouble understanding? Right now, I see a prosecutor turning his back on you when he hears this. I see a driver from Brooklyn in his freezing cell in upstate New York.

[
Silence
.]

SF:
A hell of a lot of years in Sing Sing.

[
Silence
.]

SF:
I see that things are sinking in. That you’re getting it.

RL:
That’s him. I think it’s him.

SF:
Oh no, it’s not that easy, just saying you think it’s him. You have to be certain.

RL:
Please, I need . . . give me. Give me better pictures.

SF:
Let’s leave the Swede. We’ll go on to this one instead. Him, I have more photos of. Take a look!

[
Silence
.]

SF:
Look at all the photos. You can’t miss this one, if you’ve seen him. Really try to concentrate now.

RL:
Bill.

SF:
Bill, yes, but many people are named Bill.

RL:
Adderloy, Bill Adderloy.

SF:
So he was with you, Adderloy was with you?

RL:
No. [
Clears throat.
] Adderloy wasn’t with us, it was Adderloy we worked for. I was there when he inspected the goods afterward in a warehouse, both times, both statues and the fucking thing from Central Park.

SF:
Bill Adderloy?

RL:
Yes.

SF:
Now that’s more like it. Maybe it won’t be that cell in Sing Sing, after all.

RL:
Do I have to testify? I mean, testify in front of people?

SF:
One thing at a time. If you can identify Adderloy, you will go free on bail, I’ll see to that. But the judge won’t let you off completely until you’ve given your final word about the Swede. I will get hold of better photos, and in the meantime, you make sure to put your memories in order. Then if you’re lucky, you can avoid both the cell and the witness stand.

Grip sat still. Completely still with the pages in his hand, maybe a minute. Maybe ten.

Had . . .

Below him passed the Indian Ocean, or perhaps they were already over the Pacific. It was night in any case; he had one night to shield him. Before him lay the ticket that would take him all the way home, and with it, a blurry transcript. Grip dismissed the idea that he had a choice—the easy world would last only as long as his flight. One night, then the wheels would touch the ground again.

Had . . . ?

The hearing transcript left him with both clarity and fog. Why had Shauna Friedman done him the favor of tying N. to New York?
It didn’t fit, not with Topeka and the quintet from Weejay’s—all it did was give Grip a chance. Just like with Romeo Lupone, who’d do anything to avoid a few decades behind the limestone of Sing Sing for accessory to murder. Grip had been picking around in Shauna’s puzzle before, but it was only now that he saw
all
the pieces. The way it truly was. In Kansas, Reza had babbled on about Adderloy and “the Swede” in his cell. Shauna had already trailed Adderloy for art theft and collaborating with terrorists, and then she got hold of N., who had Grip’s passport in his pocket. A passport with too many entrance stamps for New York. And sure enough, someone busts a petty thief in Brooklyn who snitches when it gets too hot. Once again a lot of vague talk about “the Swede.” Conveniently enough, N. was the one who could be blamed for everyone’s sins. N. as bank robber in Topeka, and then as art thief in New York. Shauna trimmed the edges to make it fit: Adderloy, the art theft, the crazy orgy in Topeka. She assumed that N. and Adderloy went way back. This made things easier, the idea that they’d worked together at least since the theft of the Arp sculptures. That came first, then Topeka and finally Central Park. Among all the marionettes, N. was the lead puppet, the common link. Of course, you wanted to believe that. Anything would do.

But what about reality then? The reality was Adderloy. Bill Adderloy made money off Baptists and Methodists, who wanted to Christianize and poke in all the world’s abscesses—and with that money he bought and stole art. For fuck’s sake. Had . . . had Grip then worked for Adderloy? The thought made a steel band tighten around his heart. It was chance, had to be chance. He twisted and turned every circumstance. So much had been going on in his head as he stood in that workshop in Brooklyn, when he looked over the plans, rewrote them. Among the maps of the robbers, the prospective
art thieves. The same went for the hit in Central Park. Who cared about the unknown client? Grip had just made sure that nothing linked him to the one ultimately behind it all. At both jobs, Ben had been the only link. That’s how it was. Conspiracy was an impossibility, a twisted tale. Grip didn’t doubt it for a moment.

Chance, he had to find a way to accept it. Shauna had even said so herself. Adderloy had sought out the forbidden long before the tsunami. And Grip had been sucked right in. But it was chance, and now he had to free himself from it. For one night, he could keep it at bay, as long as there was air under the wings. The robbery in Topeka, and N. in his cell. It was like he was held by a thin, thin wire that could pull him back to Garcia any time. And there was another wire in his chest, reeling him toward the American continent at five hundred miles per hour. Toward Central Park and Romeo Lupone.

The hearing transcript disappeared into the envelope. A crew cut in a suit who’d just been to the bathroom passed by. Their eyes met, and Grip felt it, the thin wire pulling him back to Garcia. Shauna Friedman, she wouldn’t simply release him outright. He knew that, he did, but now he thought it through: even if she didn’t have people on the airplane, she’d no doubt have him followed as soon as he set foot in the States.

Shauna Friedman’s intimacy, the drinks, the day at the beach. Beauty always weakens you, inevitably, no matter what your orientation. If there’s ever a thought of caressing what her kind radiates, if only to touch the soap bubble and see if it lasts, then other things fall away. Then you let down your guard. You start to underestimate, and you guess wrong. Grip knew all about that. Everything. And yet. He was a primitive animal, his responses all too ingrained.

The Pacific, all black. Still a few hours left.

Shauna Friedman had shown the passport to Lupone. Grip’s
passport, Grip’s picture. Grip had noted the date of the hearing: April 21. It was just over three weeks ago, or exactly three days before Grip was called by the Boss in Stockholm and handed his tickets. Lupone had hesitated, and Shauna had decided to put Grip and N. in the same room. Which was which? Lupone was still uncertain, and three weeks later, still no decision had been made. Suddenly, Grip was the only one left.

And now what?

Now Shauna Friedman wasn’t just trying to keep an eye on him. The envelope, the copy of the hearing with Lupone—it was a call to action.

I
N
S
AN
D
IEGO
, G
RIP WAS
picked up by a bleary-eyed driver, after his plane landed in the dawn mist on North Island.

“Welcome, Ernest Grip!” The mistake was repeated at the hotel reception in Coronado. Shauna’s stack of prepaid reservations was getting used up, one by one. Grip’s next flight wouldn’t leave until after lunch, so he went up to the room and slept for an hour, then took a walk.

Getting onto the Internet was easy enough. At a café with huge windows, he paid a few extra dollars to log on to the flat-screen monitor at a bar overlooking the sea. Two short e-mails. First to the Boss, saying he’d be on his way home soon. No dates, just that. For a while, he considered how to word the second one. Drank his coffee, looked out over the sea, and decided to be blunt.

He wrote: “What about Adderloy?”

He left it that way, and looked out to sea again. Sunny, no wind, but the breaking waves roared even inside the café. A few surfers, mostly lounging around on their boards. They lay there for a while, swaying, like lethargic seals. But when a big wave rolled in, like a flock of birds on a sudden whim, they all began to paddle—and then rose to a crouch. They shot out fast, the white surf breaking over them from the towering wave behind. It lasted only a few seconds, then nearly all of them fell headfirst. Only one managed the turns at the top of the crest and back. As the foam
from the dying wave formed a white mat around him, he threw a lazy glance over his shoulder and dove in.

When the surfer’s head rose to the surface, Grip looked down at the computer again, read: “What about Adderloy?” He clicked send.

The e-mail went out to Vladislav.

A
t the hotel, Grip began to repack his bags; he would only take a carry-on. All the dirty laundry he’d amassed now filled the large suitcase, along with one of his two suits—it couldn’t be helped. He took the elevator down and walked out the back of the building. Near Deliveries, he found a Dumpster and hoisted his bag over with a crash into the garbage. Then he went back to his room, showered and changed.

A new car with a driver showed up at the appointed time. The dry concrete whined under the tires, and they shot like a plane at takeoff over Coronado Bay Bridge, with views of the aircraft carriers in the harbor and the bay in all its glory. It took a full hour, crossing the city, to get to San Diego International.

“Only one carry-on.” The woman with glittering gold nails and raven hair nodded. “Through to New York via Atlanta, checked into business class with window seats on both routes.”

Grip took the two boarding cards from her hand.

In business, the flight attendant was obviously gay, had a nice tan, and served pepper steak. Grip stopped him and mentioned extra wine. He also had his second radar on—going back and forth to the bathroom, he instinctively looked for eyes keeping track of him for Shauna. But he found no obvious feds. Maybe they’d just lie low, be content to watch him once he checked into the hotel in New York? Maybe not.

Then his thoughts slipped away to other things.
What about Adderloy?
And so Grip went back there, thought about Vladislav. Examined his own mental picture of him. The long, swept-back hair, the big outlandish glasses. The bus that was drowned in the tsunami, the guard on the floor of the bank in Topeka, everything that N. described. How he always got away. Even that stake in West Virginia—Vladislav would get away with it. Napoleon always stayed close to his generals who’d survived the most battles. Some are born with that kind of luck. Or that kind of instinct.

Grip chewed ice from his empty cup and looked at the flight attendant. He was reminded of nights and clubs a long time ago. Of something unrestrained and raw.

H
e stopped for a moment at the monitors when he got off the flight in Atlanta. Barely a half-hour layover, people streaming past him from every direction. On his way to the new gate, Grip went to an ATM and maxed out the card, putting the bankroll in his inside pocket. Among the seats where they waited for the New York flight were faces that had become vaguely familiar since the pepper steak. Grip found a spot and sat down; at the counter, someone got agitated over a booking error. The general atmosphere was impatient, newspapers and bags rustling. Then the flight was announced, and people immediately lined up.

Boarding cards got fed into the machine for Delta Airlines’ evening flight to New York, and people walked onboard. With maybe five to go before Grip, he leaned forward to a flight agent behind the counter with a phone to her ear. “Restrooms?” he asked.

She pointed lazily.

He broke from the line.

In the reflection of a kiosk window, he saw that no one was following him. He turned the corner, no hurry, and then another corner.

As he went by, the boarding pass disappeared into the bag of a cleaning cart, a pair of glass doors slid apart with a whisper, and he felt evening air. The taxi driver hadn’t even gotten out of the car before Grip sat down in the back.

“Yes?” said the driver, as he accelerated onto the highway ramp and still didn’t know where they were going.

“You choose. The best place to buy a cheap used car.”

A
t Ed’s Motorcar Gallery, they probably hadn’t expected any more customers that day. An office hut under a canopy of silver streamers, hundreds of cars in rows, with prices painted in rainbow colors across the windshields. Grip paid for the taxi while a single salesman, sitting on a hood, cautiously stood up and looked him over.

But then it was done in five minutes, even a quick wash for the sake of it. A black Ford Taurus with anti-rust paint across the rear bumper. Grip stood in the office holding an instant coffee and looking at a shelf of motocross trophies while the salesman feverishly rooted for the documents that required signatures. The quick handshake had stressed him out. He tried to tell stories about the trophies, but descended into profanity when he kept looking in the wrong folders. Finally they got a couple of signatures down, a cash payment, and the seller turned out the light behind him before he went out to rub off the price on the windshield with a rag.

And Grip drove off.

The gauge was on empty, so he tanked up on the next block
before heading back out to the highway. Northward, he’d gone through the first tank by midnight, left Georgia behind for South Carolina—and by then his eyelids were closing too often. He checked into a motel, threw his little bag into the room, turned on the air conditioner, went back down to the night clerk, and asked for the Internet. The man showed him to a computer in the office behind the desk.

“No kiddie porn now,” said the clerk, and went out again.

Grip was tired, his mind a blank. He rubbed his eyes for a while and tried to remember the temporary account password.

Then he logged in. Vladislav had replied.

“I found Adderloy down in Houston. It took me three years, but I found him.”

Vladislav had found Adderloy. Grip thought about Maureen Whipple in West Virginia, about the stake. What did he mean by
found
?

“Is he alive?” he wrote, and sent. He wasn’t sure which answer he actually wanted. Couldn’t feel the different weights on the scales, blamed it on being too tired. Adderloy, Vladislav, Central Park, Shauna, Ben. Vladislav wanted revenge on Adderloy—that part had to play a role, no?

Then his in-box blinked. A new message.

“He’s still alive” was Vladislav’s reply. Reading him so directly felt like having a séance with a ghost.

“Be careful,” wrote Grip. Mostly just to hold on to Vladislav, a quick answer to show that he too was sitting there.

“Why?” came next.

Why? Grip ate sugar cubes out of a bowl on the desk. Why? Wasn’t that the ten-thousand-dollar question? Why? Because! Because if Vladislav got caught, so much else would go down with him. Can’t get busted now. Not a single one of them.

“There are more people looking, FBI looking,” Grip typed in.

He got the answer right away: “Do you work for them?”

Grip sensed it, how the ghost was about to fade away. No bluffing now; he had to hold on to Vladislav.

“Among other things,” he replied.

Grip remained seated, one, two, he looked at the clock, five minutes.

Took the last sugar cube, peeled off the paper, and sucked on it until it fell apart in his mouth.

“Excellent,” said the e-mail, when Vladislav had decided. Then a second followed: “If you want to earn gold stars from the feds, get in touch again in exactly one day.”

G
rip slept, got back into the car before the sun rose. After a couple of hours, he stopped for breakfast—eggs, sausage, and bacon—at a truck stop outside Greensboro, North Carolina, then relied on doughnuts and burgers all the way up to New York. He could have gotten there a day earlier, on the flight from Atlanta. But now no one knew where he was. No one. It was late, he had an hour to go, yet the calm decisiveness had begun to spread inside him. He passed the clock tower in Brooklyn, and at that exact moment felt at once totally anonymous and completely at home. He checked into a hotel, where he could see a piece of the East River from his room, as a reminder. Only a corner of Manhattan, but still: there on the other side of the water, Ben probably held court with a small circle at a bar—stubbly, smiling.

When Grip logged in, his in-box was empty.

“I’m here,” he wrote and sent. Waited.

“That makes two of us,” came soon.

“Well—the gold stars?” wrote Grip.

“Tell the feds to go see what’s at the bottom of Adderloy’s freezer.”

Grip read the sentence twice, and thought of a few stuffed plastic bags. A “?” was all he wrote.

“It’s in the basement.” There was an address that apparently belonged to Adderloy.

“?” he wrote again.

“It’s not Adderloy lying in there, but let them find out. It’s enough.”

“They’ll be looking for you.”

“Everyone is looking for me. That’s just part of life now.”

Nothing more was said.

Adderloy’s freezer—that and a couple of days in New York before Grip had to show a sign of life. A balance of terror with Shauna. A quid pro quo. He’d have to stay steady along the slackline, the whole way.

The next day he bought a prepaid phone card and started calling: got to the haulers, checked addresses, moving in a slow spiral toward his goal. He was an old investigator at heart—locating people, that he could do. Crisscrossing Brooklyn in the black Taurus: offering someone a cigarette with a flick of his wrist, having pastrami with mustard for lunch with the drivers at Delvecchio’s Deli, doing a scratch card with a bored cashier in a convenience store. Asking little questions, sometimes getting little responses back. Finding him wasn’t particularly difficult, Romeo Lupone. Even the guy who turned out to be his lawyer had spilled over the phone, said something about a judge allowing him to go free on bail until further notice. He needed to quickly master his habits. Grip predicted there would be a bar. Lupone was the type—a stool at a counter that no bastard sat on if he was nearby.

It took Grip those two nights to find the hangout. At last he saw Lupone leave a neighborhood bar; Grip already knew where the apartment was, so he didn’t follow. Instead he went in. It smelled of sweat. A topless dancer with a worn-out body was gyrating in a corner without an audience, otherwise mostly leather jackets, slicked-back hair, and silicone bustlines.

“Romeo?”

The bartender said he’d just left. A shabby-looking guy with a girl on his knee nodded in agreement. The seat next to him, swung out, empty. Good enough. Lupone would be back, free on bail with a probation violation hanging over his head—the snitch would claim his territory to the bitter end. It was only a question of tomorrow night, or at most, the night after.

The next day Grip went into a hardware store and bought some screwdrivers for show, and a sharp awl. On Kent Avenue, there was an Army Surplus with uniform overcoats and Marine Corps T-shirts from floor to ceiling. Above the rows of hangers hung naked mannequins wearing only gas masks. A handwritten sign at the counter said R
APE
S
PRAY
. Grip fingered one of the containers.

“My wife wants something stronger than pepper spray,” he said, and put the container back.

The bearded clerk looked incredulously at him. Finally decided with a smack of his tongue, and bent down to the shelves behind the counter.

“Two,” added Grip, laying bills on the counter.

“Be careful,” murmured the clerk and gave him a brown paper bag. No change, no receipt.

Grip ran back toward Williamsburg, stopped at a FedEx office, wrote a note by hand, and stuffed it into a large envelope made of
stiff cardboard. Got help with the address, paid. Then he called FBI’s general tips line from his car.

Once he reached a live voice, he said, “An item will be delivered to your office on Kew Gardens Road during the afternoon. It’s addressed to Shauna Friedman—make sure that she gets it.”

“I can’t guarantee—”

“I know you can.”

“There are thousands here who—”

“She’s a special agent with you, with her own secretary and a pretty office here in New York.”

“Who may I say it’s from?”

“Forget it—the item is for Shauna Friedman. And if she’s not there, someone has to call and read her the message.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m sure we will. And tell her that starting tomorrow night, I’m staying”—Grip pulled the note from his pocket and read—“at the Best Western in Newark.” It was the hotel she had originally booked him into.

“But?”

“She knows who I am.”