Brainquake Read online

  “Thanks, Mr. Grigor.”

  “I’ll buy lunch.” Mr. Grigor waved the remaining bill. “This’ll cover a couple hamburgers.”

  * * *

  On the tenth floor the Boss ignored the TV news replay of the mob in Central Park. She was worried. Very, very worried. Paul’s attacks kept her up nights. Brainquake, he called it. Seeing crazy things in pink. She suffered from bad headaches herself and weird nightmares, but nothing like Paul’s sickness.

  If it was a brain tumor, Dr. Adson would drill a hole in Paul’s skull, implant a radioactive drip to attack the tumor and, fingers crossed, Paul would be okay. But she couldn’t write it off that easily. It was Paul’s skull. Paul was special.

  She had violated a rule by going outside their own medical ring to contact Dr. Adson. If the organization’s staff of doctors knew about Paul’s brainquake, he’d be shot at once and so would she for not reporting it.

  When she saw Dr. Adson on the cover of Time she had taken a chance and gone to him. She’d used a phony name. Tops in his field, she was sure the neurologist knew other doctors on his level that could help with her particular need.

  And he did. He recommended several throat and ear specialists to examine her deaf-mute daughter. Dr. Adson had encouraged her to never give up hope that one day Samantha would speak and hear.

  So she broke house rules. She told him about Paul, the taxi driver who ran errands for her when she was in the city, and who helped her take care of her daughter. Paul called his sickness a brainquake and that interested Dr. Adson, who scheduled an appointment. Any minute Paul would show up and tell her what Dr. Adson had said.

  When she first learned of Paul’s attacks, she panicked. What if he had one of his brainquakes while carrying a bag with millions of dollars? She should never have given him the job. But she had, for reasons both personal and professional. In some ways he was the perfect bagman. She hired only those existing at the far end of solitude; those with gaps between them and society. She patiently nursed those gaps with her bagmen. With Paul it was easy.

  But with Paul, she also bent backwards.

  The minute a bagman carried his bag into the battlefield he was vulnerable to pirates. She got used to writing off killed-inaction bagmen.

  But if Paul were killed, she could never write him off. Not Paul. She had never promised his father, Barney the Bookie, that Paul would always be safe. But she had made that promise to herself because he was Barney’s son.

  Barney took bets from her when she was Rebecca Plummer, an 18-year-old hatcheck girl at Dinty’s Chop House where the sporting and theatrical crowd dined. She studied turf sheets, placed $2 bets. When she owed him $10 he took her marker and that trust in her started their long relationship. When she increased bets and lost heavily, he still took her markers. And when he introduced her to the gentle-mannered Max Fillion—Max the Mouthpiece, lawyer for Pegasus Delivery—it changed her life.

  The Boss owed Barney.

  She would still be checking hats at Dinty’s if not for him. He sold Max the idea of getting her a job at Pegasus. She knew little about Barney except that he and his wife refused to place their child in an institution. They taught the boy to read, write and talk a little. When Barney’s wife died of cancer, their son was ten years old. Barney kept on teaching him. Raised him by himself. She loved Barney for it.

  Barney, too, had inspired her to never give up hope that her daughter would hear and speak.

  She remembered the first time Barney came to her about Paul. Every word of that moment was tattooed in her brain…

  …She was lunching with her daughter at Dinty’s Chop House, pointing out where she used to check hats and coats, when Barney walked up to their corner booth. He looked terrible. Pale. Sweating. And sick. She just couldn’t tell him how awful he looked.

  “This is my daughter, Samantha.” The Boss’ voice was low. “She’s fifteen. Join us for lunch, Barney.”

  Slowly Barney sank into the chair, watching as the Boss explained to her daughter in sign language that this was a man who’d helped her, a special friend. She could see Barney was shaken. She had never told Barney she had a daughter, never mind that she was deaf and mute.

  Barney kept staring at the blue-eyed, black-haired girl talking to her mother in sign language. Samantha was a dead ringer for the Boss. Both were beautiful. Samantha extended her hand. Still in shock, Barney shook it. Her hand was a feather, her skin satin.

  “She said she’s happy to meet the legendary Barney the Bookie.”

  Barney smiled at that, or tried to. It was a wan attempt. He was here for a reason. Desperation filled his face.

  “I need help, Rebecca.”

  “How much, Barney?”

  “Not cash.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “A job for my son.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Bagman.”

  The Boss looked in his eyes, which stared back, pleading. How did he know? When did he find out? From whom? What she bossed for the organization was a well-kept secret, even from men like Barney, who were in a corner of the business themselves. Only those involved in her operations knew. Unless Max had told him…? But Max never would. He was called “Mouthpiece,” but what he knew best of all was how to keep his mouth shut.

  And Pegasus was a legitimate cover. Barney could have asked for a job for his son in the truck pool, storage, transportation, business office, complaint department. All were legitimate. City, state, federally licensed. Taxes paid on the nose for some eighty years. No worker in the legit half knew what business was going on in the other half.

  What Barney knew, that one word he had spoken, could cost him a bullet in the head. She looked away, down at her hands, at the Racing Form beside her plate. Her silence meant she scratched Paul. She didn’t want to see the look of failure in Barney’s face.

  He said nothing. She kept looking at the Racing Form.

  “Who do you like in the fifth?” She did a pretty good job keeping the tension out of her voice. Barney didn’t answer. She steeled herself, glanced up at him. He was shaking like a malaria case, his voice was barely audible.

  “Goldilocks,” Barney said. “Kentucky winner.”

  “I like Lightning Bolt.” She couldn’t keep her voice steady. “Won the Swaps. What do you think, between them?”

  His face looked dreadful. Looked dead. She knew there was no one else who would give a job to his son.

  “I’m no Solomon, Rebecca. One horse or the other. You pick.” Barney made a movement to leave.

  She seized his hand. “Wait a minute, Barney. I want to place some bets. Samantha knows horses.”

  He watched her talk to Samantha, fingers sketching diagrams in the air. Samantha’s hands didn’t hesitate.

  “Samantha’s choice is Goldilocks, five hundred to win.” The Boss waited.

  Barney took out his pad with trembling hands, jotted down the bet. The Boss watched Samantha’s fingers, which were still in motion.

  “Three hundred on Big Red One to place,” the Boss said.

  Barney fumbled with his pencil. Paul would never get a job. Barney knew he shouldn’t be here fucking around with goddam bets. He’d struck out with Rebecca. But he jotted down the bet.

  Samantha’s fingers continued their silent soliloquy.

  “Two hundred on Tinikling to show.” The Boss watched Barney jot it down and rise to his feet. Her heart froze. She read his face. She read Barney thinking that after he died, what would his son do on his own? She read in Barney’s face his fear that the boy would become a bum, live on handouts, die a bum.

  “What’s your son’s name?”

  “Paul.”

  “Age?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Police record?”

  “None.”

  “Vices?”

  “None.”

  “Friends?”

  “Loner.”

  “Girls?”

  “None.”

  “Ref
lex?”

  “Slow.”

  “Improving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Face?”

  “Cipher.”

  That night when she phoned Barney, his son said, in the rasp she would come to know like her own voice, that Barney wasn’t booking bets anymore, and hung up. She paid for Barney’s funeral in cash, leaving no name.

  * * *

  The sudden blast of the Colonel Bogey March and the blinking red light on her desk brought her back to work. A button stopped the music. She had chosen the tune because she liked it the minute she heard it in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai. Her Maltese, Knight, jumped on her cluttered desk. The bluish-gray fur of the cat matched the Boss’ eyes. She called him Knight because the blue arrowheads pointing inward above his eyes looked like the cross of the Knights of Malta.

  The Boss was 49, looked 35. The contours of her face were those of a young Garbo without a speck of makeup or any of the popular overhauling actresses or models were subject to. Tall, with high cheekbones and breasts modest but firm under a light blue blouse, she crossed her office shining like the star of a Paris collection. Legs perfect, slim. The kind that would give Paris couture a blood transfusion.

  She reached the heavy walnut table against the bare wall, pushed a button under it. A wall panel slid open. The dumbwaiter ascended to a stop. She lifted the basket in it, glanced at the bag of phony bills stapled to the yellow card with the number 28 on it.

  Under the table were many black and brown leather bags on the floor. One bag was sticking halfway out. Her dark blue shoe pushed it back and she carried the basket to her desk, dialed one of the many multicolored cordless phones.

  “Ginko here, Boss.”

  “A phony ten grand came from 28.”

  “There’s six drops it—”

  “I know how many it has to go through. The fall guy is the one that sent it to me. You, Ginko.”

  “I got no machine, Boss!”

  “You got one of the best forgers spotting for you, Ginko. When he struck out, you swung the bat. You’ve got twenty-four hours to come up with kosher bills. From your wallet.”

  She hung up, burned the bills three, four at a time in her large stone ashtray. It took a while. When she was done, she burned the yellow note. Then she opened the safe under her desk, took out a batch of clean bills, counted them, and substituted them in the stack.

  Her black phone rang. A light on it blinked.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s important, Rebecca. I’ll be in your office in twenty minutes.” Max hung up.

  She froze. It was no coincidence. Max knew. And not about the phony bills, either. That wouldn’t have made him come in person. It must be Paul. But how? How in the hell could he know? Could he have gotten to Dr. Adson somehow? If he knew, it meant Paul was already hit. Why phone her? To tell her to her face that he was an old friend but that she had to be hit, too?

  Or to tell her to run, get lost, disappear?

  No. Max wasn’t that much of a friend. He had a wife and family to protect.

  She phoned Dr. Adson, learned from his secretary that Paul never showed up. She hung up. Accident! He was in the hospital? Or killed in a car crash. He wasn’t carrying a bag. She would be off the hook, in that case. A second later she hated herself. She was ashamed to feel safe if Paul was killed in an accident and didn’t have a bag on him. If he had an accident, he was dead or unconscious in some hospital. He couldn’t phone her if he was unconscious.

  She dazedly counted the brown-paper-bound stacks of cash on her desk, made sure the total was $500,000, returned the basket to the dumbwaiter. Her trouble phone rang. She streaked to the red blinking light, grabbed the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a For Sale sign on Zookie’s window. Been there two days. Back door’s boarded. Not a toy in the window.”

  “Hold on, Walter.” She muted the red phone, dropped it on a pile of file folders on her desk, pushed papers aside, pushed Knight aside but the cat wouldn’t move. She felt the bottle under the folders, lifted them. The red phone slipped, knocking over an empty perfume vial. She opened the small bottle, popped an aspirin, swallowed some water, picked up the red phone.

  “Go on, Walter.”

  “Go on? I just told you.”

  “No toys in his window?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hold on, Walter.” She put the red phone down, dialed the yellow.

  “Apex Delivery.”

  “Jerry, did you get relay 412 this week?”

  “Hold on, Boss.”

  She waited. She never figured Zookie had the guts to pull such a stupid thing. She picked up the empty perfume vial. On TV the replay was of Lieutenant Zara carrying a baby to an ambulance. How good the perfume smelled to Samantha when she was five years old. The Boss smiled, remembering how the child doused herself with it, emptying the vial.

  “Zookie’s Toy Shop?” Jerry said.

  “Yes.”

  “Zookie said you knew about the 412 relay.”

  “Zookie said? Goddam it, Jerry, you know when a relay misses a schedule you’re to phone me immediately.”

  She slammed the phone down, re-opened her desk safe, found a number in a little fat book, dialed it on the yellow phone.

  “Hello?” A little girl’s voice. Nervous.

  “Is your daddy home?”

  The Boss heard voices. An adult came to the phone, a woman. “Zookie passed away three days ago.” The woman’s voice was shaky…even afraid.

  The Boss hung up, dialed another number. “Cornet Hardware.”

  “Danny,” the Boss said, “take an extra drop in thirty minutes. Relay it 412. Thanks.” She hung up, picked up the red phone, unmuted. “Walter. Cornet Hardware. Thirty minutes. Danny. Tall. Heavy. Fifty. Bald.”

  The Boss hung up. Goddam Zookie. Now she’d have to lean on his widow to get that fifty grand back. Thank God it wasn’t a million or more. A yellow light blinked. On the alley monitor Farnsworth was waiting. She pushed a button. He went into the building. Why should she get angry at Zookie? People die. The widow, of course, would know nothing about the fifty grand. It would be a pity to lean on her. Or maybe the widow’s taking a long shot. Maybe she’s got it stashed and counting on nobody leaning on a widow who has a child.

  The pink light blinked. On the monitor Farnsworth was waiting in a stone cell. She pushed the floor button. A steel door noiselessly slid open. Farnsworth entered her office carrying his brown bag, which he placed on her desk. The door slid shut. He opened the bag. The cat sniffed around it. The Boss placed stacks of cash in his bag, closed it.

  “What wheels last week to the ballet school?”

  “Taxi.”

  “Use your motorcycle.” The Boss looked at her watch. “Olga will be in the cloakroom in twenty-five minutes. It’s next to a big painting of Baryshnikov.”

  Farnsworth picked up his bag, crossed to the exit door on the opposite side of the office. The door slid open. He stepped into a small elevator. The door slid shut.

  On her monitor, as always, she watched Farnsworth emerge from the elevator in the deserted, brightly illuminated basement and walk toward the camera so that she could see he was Farnsworth and no hijacker. The street monitor was in back of the building. She watched him pass the Pegasus motor pool. He crossed the street, passed motorcycle cops roaring into the motor pool of Police Headquarters, passed cops talking near one of the fleet of squad cars, passed several cops entering Headquarters, reached a small garage, its door opening by remote control. The monitor in the garage picked him up walking past his taxi, past a small van, placing his brown bag in a green wooden box strapped to his motorcycle luggage grill, donning goggles and helmet, riding out. On the street he disappeared in traffic. She watched if any vehicle pulled away from the curb to follow him. None did.

  8

  The Boss waited for Max.

  She leaned back tensely in her big red swivel chair and stared at the door that he would be coming
through to tell her face to face what he hadn’t been able to tell her on the phone. The red leather chair was not an ordinary red. She had selected a particular orange-red—a color that fascinated her when she spotted it on the underside of the wings of a redwing thrush when she was going through a book of birds. The leather was dyed special to order, and it cost her barely anything because the shop selling the furniture was one of her drops.

  Her eyes frozen on the door, her mind clogged with Paul’s brainquake, she caught herself reliving her first meeting with Paul, three years after he began with the organization in a trainee job. She could plainly see the steel door sliding open…and twenty-year-old Paul walked into her office…he glanced through her tenth-floor penthouse window at the skyscrapers towering over them.

  “Paul Page?”

  “Where’s the Boss?”

  “I’m the Boss.”

  His cipher face showed no reaction to learning that the Boss was a woman. She invited him with a gesture to sit on the other orange-red leather chair by the side of her desk. She watched him almost shyly sink into it, deflating his lean body so as not to attract any attention. He clasped both kneecaps like a child and looked timid. Bagmen often did when they first reported to her.

  But she knew that there was nothing timid about any of them, not the ones that made it to her office. Timid meant cowardly. A coward could never pass the three-year test he had passed.

  There he sat. Barney’s boy. Trained by nature to have that blank face he wore. Trained for three years by Hoppie to never exhibit stupid bravery, trained to use his head, trained it was healthier to out-drive, out-walk, out-smart a pirate and lose him, trained that the gun was the bagman’s last resort.

  Trained not to be a trigger-happy macho or trigger-happy cop or trigger-happy FBI man or trigger-happy CIA man.

  She loathed the gun. It was manufactured to kill humans and animals. She had no control of the gun. Her bagmen loathed the gun. They were healthy in mind. That’s what she and her bagmen really had in common. She was sure that Paul also loathed the gun—or Hoppie would have scratched him from the field.