A Walk Among the Tombstones

I CALLED TJ's beeper and punched in the number on the Landau girl's Snoopy figural phone. Snoopy and Michael Jackson both seemed to play key roles in her personal mythology, judging from the room's decor. I paced, waiting for my call, and found a family photo on the white enamel dressing table, Yuri and a dark-haired woman and a girl with dark hair that fell past her shoulders in cascading ringlets. Lucia looked to be about ten in the photo. Another photo showed her alone, older, and looked to have been taken last June at graduation. Her hair was shorter in the more recent photo and her face looked serious and mature for her years.



The phone rang. I picked it up and he said, "Yo, who wants TJ?"



"It's Matt," I said.



"Hey, my man! What's goin', Owen?"



"Serious business," I said. "It's an emergency, and I need your help."



"You got it."



"Can you get hold of the Kongs?"



"You mean right away? They sometimes hard to reach. Jimmy Hong got a beeper, but he don't always have it with him."



"See if you can get him and give him this number."



"Sure. That's it?"



"No," I said. "Do you remember the laundromat we went to last week?"



"Sure."



"Do you know how to get there?"



"R train to Forty-fifth, a block to Fifth Avenue, four, five blocks to the wishee-washee."



"I didn't realize you were paying attention."



"Shit," he said. "Man, I allus payin' attention. I's attentive."



"Not just resourceful?"



"Attentive an' resourceful."



"Can you get out there right away?"



"Right now? Or call the Kongs first?"



"Call them, then go. Are you near the subway?"



"Man, I always be near the subway. I talkin' to you on the phone the Kongs liberated, Forty-third an' Eighth."



"Call me as soon as you get out there."



" 'Kay. Somethin' big goin' down, huh?"



"Very big," I said.



I LEFT the bedroom door open so that I could hear the phone if it rang and went back into the living room. Peter Khoury was at the window looking out at the ocean. We hadn't talked much on the drive, but he'd volunteered the information that he hadn't had a drink or a drug since the meeting I'd seen him at. "So I got five days," he said.



"That's great."



"That's the party line, isn't it? One day or twenty years, you tell somebody your time and they tell you it's great. 'You're sober today and that's what counts.' Fucked if I know what counts anymore."



I went over to Kenan and Yuri and we talked. The bedroom phone didn't ring, but after perhaps fifteen minutes the one in the living room sounded and Yuri answered it. He said, "Yeah, this is Landau," and glanced significantly at me, then tossed his head to get the hair out of his eyes. "I want to talk to my daughter," he said. "You got to let me talk to my daughter."



I went over and he handed me the phone. I said, "I hope the girl's alive."



There was a silence, then, "Who the fuck are you?"



"I'm the best chance you've got of making a nice clean exchange, the girl for the money. But you'd better not hurt her, and if you're playing any games they better get called right now on account of rain. Because she has to be alive and well for the deal to happen."



"Fuck this shit," he said. There was a pause and I thought he was going to say more, but he hung up.



I reported the conversation to Yuri and Kenan. Yuri was agitated, concerned that I was going to screw things up by taking a hard line. Kenan told him I knew what I was doing. I wasn't sure he was right, but I was glad for the support.



"The important thing right now is to keep her alive," I said. "They have to know that they won't be able to rig the exchange on their terms, without even demonstrating that they've got a living hostage for us to ransom."



"But if you make them mad-"



"They're already madder than hatters. I know what you're saying, you don't want to give them an excuse to kill her, but they don't need an excuse. It's already on their agenda. They have to have a reason to keep her alive."



Kenan backed me up. "I did everything their way," he said. "Everything they wanted. They sent her back-" He hesitated, and I finished the sentence mentally: "in pieces." But he hadn't shared that aspect of Francine's death with Yuri and didn't do so now. "- sent her back dead," he said.



"We're going to need cash," I said. "What do you have? What can you raise?"



"God, I don't know," he said. "Cash I got damn little of. Do the bastards want cocaine? I got fifteen kilos of slab ten minutes from here." He looked at Kenan. "You want to buy it? Tell me what you want to pay me."



Kenan shook his head. "I'll lend you what I got in the safe, Yuri. I'm in the bucket already waiting for a hash deal to fall apart. I fronted some money and I think it was a mistake."



"What kind of hash?"



"Out of Turkey via Cyprus. Opiated hash. What's the difference, it ain't gonna happen. I got maybe one hundred large in the safe. Time comes I'll run back to the house and get it. You're welcome to it."



"You know I'm good for it."



"Don't worry about it."



Landau blinked away tears, and when he tried to speak his voice was choked up. He could barely get the words out. He said, "Listen to this man. I hardly know him, this fucking Arab here, he's giving me a hundred thousand dollars." He took Kenan in his arms and hugged him, sobbing.



The phone rang in Lucia's room. I went to answer it.



TJ, calling from Brooklyn. "At the laundromat," he said. "What I do? Wait for some white dude to come in an' use the phone?"



"That's right. He should get there sooner or later. If you could park yourself at the restaurant across the street and keep an eye on the laundromat entrance-"



"Do better than that, man. I be right here in the laundromat, just another cat waitin' on his clothes. Neighborhood here's enough different colors so's I don't stick out too much. Kongs ever call you?"



"No. Did you reach them?"



"Beeped 'em and put your number in, but if Jimmy don't have the beeper with him, it's like it ain't beepin'."



"Like that tree in the forest."



"Say what?"



"Never mind."



"I be in touch," he said.



WHEN the next call came in Yuri answered it, said, "Just a minute," and passed it to me. The voice I heard was different this time, softer, more cultured. There was a nastiness in it but less of the obvious anger of the previous speaker.



"I understand we have a new player in the game," he said. "I don't believe we've been introduced."



"I'm a friend of Mr. Landau's. My name's not important."



"One likes to know who's on the other side."



"In a sense," I said, "we're on the same side, aren't we? We both want the exchange to go through."



"Then all you have to do is follow instructions."



"No, it's not that simple."



"Of course it is. We tell you what to do and you do it. If you ever want to see the girl again."



"You have to convince me that she's alive."



"You have my word on it."



"I'm sorry," I said.



"It's not good enough?"



"You lost a lot of credibility when you returned Mrs. Khoury in poor condition."



There was a pause. Then, "How interesting. You don't sound very Russian, you know. Nor do the tones of Brooklyn echo in your speech. There were special circumstances with Mrs. Khoury. Her husband tried to haggle, in the nature of his race. He sliced the price, and we in turn- well, you can finish that thought yourself, can't you?"



And Pam Cassidy, I thought. What did she do that provoked you? But what I said was, "We won't argue the price."



"You'll pay the million."



"For the girl, alive and well."



"I assure you she's both."



"And I still need more than your word. Put her on the phone, let her father talk to her."



"I'm afraid that won't-" he began, and the recorded voice of a NYNEX announcer cut in to ask for more money. "I'll call you back," he said.



"Out of quarters? Give me your number, I'll call you."



He laughed and broke the connection.



I WAS alone in the apartment with Yuri when the next call came. Kenan and Peter were out with one of the two guards from downstairs, looking to raise what cash they could. Yuri had given them a list of names and phone numbers, and they had some sources of their own. It would have been simpler if we could have made the calls from the penthouse, but we only had the two phone lines and I wanted to keep both of them open.



"You're not in the business," Yuri said. "You're some kind of cop, yes?"



"Private."



"Private, so you been working for Kenan. Now you're working for me, right?"



"I'm just working. I'm not looking to be on the payroll, if that's what you mean."



He waved the issue aside. "This is a good business," he said, "but also it's no good. You know?"



"I think so."



"I want to be out of it. That's one reason I got no cash. I make lots of money, but I don't want it in cash and I don't want it in goods. I own parking lots, I own a restaurant, I spread it out, you know? In a little while I'm out of the dope business altogether. A lot of Americans start out as gangsters, yes? And wind up legitimate businessmen."



"Sometimes."



"Some are gangsters forever. But not all. Wasn't for Devorah, I'd be out of it already."



"Your wife?"



"The hospital bills, the doctors, my God, what it cost. No insurance. We were greenhorns, what did we know from Blue Cross? Doesn't matter. Whatever it cost I paid. I was glad to pay it. I would have paid more to keep her alive, I would have paid anything. I would have sold the fillings out of my teeth if I could have bought her another day. I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and she had every day the doctors could give her, and what days they were, the poor woman, what she suffered through. But she wanted all the life she could get, you know?" He wiped a broad hand across his forehead. He was about to say something else but the phone rang. Wordless, he pointed at it.



I picked it up.



The same man said, "Shall we try again? I'm afraid the girl cannot come to the phone. That's out of the question. How else can we reassure you of her well-being?"



I covered the mouthpiece. "Something your daughter would know."



He shrugged. "The dog's name?"



Into the phone I said, "Have her tell you- no, wait a minute." I covered the phone and said, "They could know that. They've been shadowing her for a week or more, they know your schedule, they've undoubtedly seen her walking the dog, heard her call him by name. Think of something else."



"We had a dog before this one," he said. "A little black-and-white one, it got hit by a car. She was just a small thing herself when we had that dog."



"But she would remember it?"



"Who could forget? She loved the dog."