The Weight (43 page)

“Right,” Solly said, showing me again that we weren’t being taped.

“That note,” I said, getting up to dig a little piece of paper out of my jeans, “the writing is so tiny, I could only make out some of it.”

I was around to his side of the desk by then, holding the paper in my left hand to spread it out in front of him.

When Solly looked down, I slammed my right forearm across the back of his neck. Like I was a machete chopping cane. His forehead hit the desk on the way down. It was like breaking a broomstick over your knee—he was dead before he hit the floor.

I knew Solly had this big freezer bin in the back. For unstable goods, he told me once. I never asked what he meant by that—if he wanted me to know more, he would have said.

For once, I got lucky. All that was in there was a few little bottles, with corks in them. Looked like frozen water, but when I took them out, I put them down real careful.

Something else, too. A big Ziploc bag. When I wiped off the frost, I could see what looked like something wrapped in a black cloth. I pulled it open. The cloth wasn’t cloth at all—some kind of plastic weave, with a thin layer of foam under it. When I peeled that off, I found what looked like an old-style address book, the kind with the little rings along the spine. The blanket must have been insulated; the book was hardly even cold.

With the freezer empty, I didn’t even have to cut Solly up—just kind of folded him over and shoved him around until I could close the lid. Breaking those bones
felt
loud, but I knew it wasn’t really.

I snatched that address book and slipped it into my coat. I took
the Ziploc and the wrapping, too. A good thief knows you never leave empty spaces; that’s the same as telling the owner someone found his stash. If everything still looks the same, it might take him a long time to look inside and find out he’s been robbed.

I looked at my watch. Lynda would be pushing that serving cart outside our door in five minutes.

I was back in the hotel by two in the morning, sleeping with my alibi.

Yeah, my prints were all over Solly’s basement. But if I’d known about that place for a long time, other guys knew, too. And I know, from listening to B&E pros, that the cops can’t tell
when
a fingerprint was left.

I could have gone in with latex on my hands or something, but Solly, he would have sniffed that out before I could get close to him.

It’s already done
, is what I was thinking, just before I fell asleep.
Fuck it
.

I checked out early. Got one of those guys they have out front to find me a cab. He hit something on his cell phone. A minute later, a black sedan pulled up.

I handed the doorman a five and piled into the sedan like I didn’t know what he’d just pulled on me. A few blocks later, I handed over what the driver said was the “flat fee” to JFK. Sixty bucks.

Lynda was waiting for me at the United terminal. I stacked the luggage all around her. Then I just walked over to the cab line.

The “flat fee” back was a lot cheaper.

At nine on the dot, I walked into the bank. I didn’t speak to the manager, just emptied my safe-deposit box.

I caught the LIRR outbound. At that hour, it wasn’t even half full.

From the station, I walked over to the lot where I had the Toyota
stashed. The guy was a little surprised to see me so soon, but I told him the job had gone sour, and acted like I wished there was someone around for me to hit.

He got a little jumpy then. But when I didn’t ask for any money back, he even smiled.

I drove the Toyota to JFK, parked in the short-stay lot.

It took me two trips, because I wanted to move fast and look normal. Lynda went along on the last leg. She barely fit, and the Toyota’s back window was completely blocked, but we didn’t have far to go from there—I knew a motel that took cash.

We transferred everything to the room. Place like that, you can’t leave luggage in a car. Even the trunk, you’d be taking a chance. But out in the open, it’s as good as gone.

When that insurance spook visited me Upstate, he’d left his card. I tore it into tiny pieces, then I got rid of the pieces in different spots. But the number that he wrote on the back, I put it in the one place they can’t search.

He answered on the second ring.

“You came to visit me once,” I said. “That offer you made, is it still good?”

“Absolutely.”

There wasn’t a trace of … anything in his voice.

“It’s really that important to you, Sugar?” Lynda asked me.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. It’s never really … gone from me.”

“What if she still believes that you—”

“That’ll be her choice. I’m no head doctor, but I figure, girl’s been through what she’s been through, just getting to
make
a choice, that’d be pure gold to her.”

Lynda looked at me for a long time. Like she was trying each eye on by color.

“You’re right,” she finally said. “Only, what if they don’t manage to convince her? Sure, she gets to make that choice. But if it
really goes the way you want, won’t she think the man who … did that to her, won’t she think he’s still around?”

“I never thought of that,” I told Lynda. “But what can I do? It’s one package. No bargaining. I’m not asking for much, considering what they put on the table the last time.”

“That was years ago, baby.”

“I guess I’ll find out, then.”

“We’ll
find out,” Lynda said, putting her little hand on top of where I’d made a fist out of my right.

He was where he said he’d be: a booth way in the back of this diner on Queens Boulevard, far away from any windows. “You can’t miss it,” he’d told me. And he was right; it was the biggest diner I’d ever seen in my life.

“You’re looking good,” he said, shaking my hand. “And those glasses, that’s a very fine touch.”

“Solly fixed me up with them. And a bunch of other stuff, too.”

His face was almost a perfect mask, but when I said “Solly,” he’d given it away. So they probably knew all along, but didn’t have a shred of proof.

I hoped they had. Known it all along, I mean. Being a thief doesn’t just mean stealing, it means knowing who you’re stealing from—my first fall taught me that. If the insurance people knew that jewelry job had been Solly’s, they hadn’t bothered to tell the cops.

Or maybe they had, for all the good that would have done them. From where they’d look at it, Solly’s been in the business longer than I’ve been alive, and the Law has never touched him, not even once.

“You said the deal was still good?”

“Conspiracy charges have a statute of limitations just like robbery. Only difference is, the time doesn’t start to run until the conspiracy is
discovered
. And that’s exactly where the case is now—in discovery.”

“It takes that long?”

“It can, depending on who you—”

“Okay, I get it. Only, I don’t want the same deal.”

“Because you already did the time and—”

“No. Just listen, okay? I don’t want your money; I want your protection.”

“From who?”

“Solly. He’s probably got spotters on the street looking for me right now.”

“I don’t suppose you want to explain that?”

“Good guess. There’s a few other things, too.”

The waitress came over. The menu was as thick as a damn dictionary. I got a Caesar salad with chicken, no dressing; he got a steak, fries, onion rings.

Soon as she left, I told him the rest of what I needed. “I’m not going to give you a statement. If you’re recording this, you’ll have to edit out the part where you offered me a quarter-mil to lie in court so you could get the case against your company thrown out. And you’d also have to—”

“I’m not recording anything, Mr. Caine.”

“At least that’s my real name, Mr. Robert Johnson.”

“How long do you want to play this out? All you’ve given me so far is a list of what you
won’t
do.”

And Solly’s name
, I thought. That’s when I was sure they’d known all along.

“I’m not going to testify,” I told him. “But I can give you enough to prove that jewelry-store job was a setup from jump. It was the owner’s idea.
He’s
the one who found Solly, not the other way around. I know how much we got away with, and it’s nothing close to what he’s suing you for.”

“You know this how? Whatever you got from a fence doesn’t mean you got the actual value.”

“That’s right. That’d always be right. But I’ve got the
actual
value.”

“You mind telling me how?”

“Solly. You know what a GIA certificate is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I didn’t. But Solly did. Solly always knows what things are worth. That’s why he gets half off the top: he sets up the jobs, he moves the loot—even cash money, you have to sell at a discount; it could be marked, see? And he supplies everything you need to do the work, too.”

“This ‘Solly’ would be?”

“Solomon Vizner.”

He was on the hunt now. But he didn’t want to spook the canary before the song was over. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, sorry.”

“I don’t think he has a record. But I have his address.”