Rivers of Gold Read online

  He had plenty of girls and plenty of product and was moving more each year, thanks to his cultivation of a small network of cabdrivers and distributors, in particular one ambitious little fuck with a dumb hairdo and an even dumber name, said he was a fashion photographer or something, who had been introduced to Reza by the British bastard. Still, the new kid had the contacts and proved it regularly with clockwork earnings, as well as by procuring a somewhat higher grade of talent for Reza’s service sector. Reza still stayed up late nights with legal pads, crunching numbers (though now with the help of a top-of-the-line Sony laptop), still by the light of a single lamp (though now a Danish designer model), trying to visualize a diversified empire of real estate, software, money-lending, narcotics, and flesh, all connected by a taxi-yellow transportation network, and all under the organization’s protection.

  His epiphany came at the end of a long, aggravating Tuesday, which he’d ended with a high-test bottle and a ditzy blonde whose name didn’t matter. He’d been staring at the whorls and patterns made by the rising smoke from his cigarette (now a premium English brand, no longer exported to the U.S. but easily available to seasoned anglers in the shadow economy’s waters), while the blonde (eager to please after he’d tossed her half a gram of premium flake) tried in vain to succor vitality from his exhausted glans.

  He’d been worrying about money all day. A larger income meant more to hide, and the organization had been painfully precise about his taking steps to ensure clean transfer of funds without calling undue attention to himself from banks or regulators. Those from less-polished quarters, the chiselers and competitors, the organization handled with Swiss efficiency: One phone call from Reza and the problem disappeared.

  It was not lost on Reza that he resided at a point of intersection between the white and black economies of the world, and that problems in the latter were much more easily solved than problems in the former. What was needed was a machine, an engine that would conglomerate and streamline his businesses in a manner that funded itself while providing solid legal cover for all illegal operations and revenues.

  His epiphany came in a climactic expectoration of enlightenment that nearly asphyxiated his cokehead consort. Reza now knew just what he had to do.

  The following day he secured a home equity line of credit from Urbank, a sweetheart arrangement that allowed him to draw the maximum with a pay schedule that was essentially his to call, and without penalties for early payoff of principle. The loan officer was, of course, a client of Reza’s, who promised clean paperwork. Reza, in turn, promised a discount on the loan officer’s trade, catering to the officer’s peculiar tastes, which would certainly earn him a prison sentence were they publicized. The credit line ran to seven figures, available immediately.

  Next, Reza worked up a prospectus on his laptop, burnishing and polishing the armatures of his dream machine. When he felt confident the presentation was solid enough, he took a big belt of Polish vodka and called his handlers to request a meet.

  It went better than expected, although all things are relative. When he was finished with his pitch, the handlers stood silent, frowning at him. One of them went to the other side of Reza’s large apartment to make a call. When he returned, he said: You will come with us.

  They took him and his laptop downstairs, where a gleaming Audi QX TDI with blacked-out windows idled. Reza made himself comfortable in the plush backseat. He thought things were going well. His demeanor changed somewhat when he was bookended by two large, unsmiling men who took his laptop away, then handcuffed and hooded him. The Audi moved off, Reza marveling at how quiet its diesel engine was. He figured things might still be going well, considering how the organization did things. The fact that he was not being allowed to see the route to their destination suggested he would remain alive for some time after reaching it. He did not bother trying to guess the route, knowing they would drive in circles to defeat the purpose before setting out. He grimly settled for trying not to soil himself. After all, he had a pretty good idea what was happening.

  He was finally going to meet with the Slav.

  The Slav: a slab-sided monolith of horrific certainty. His presence drained the air from a room. Outdoors, the environment seemed to rearrange itself to accommodate him, as though the earth itself knew just who was standing on it. He stood swathed in black calfskin that kept his gigantic body in shadow, and the airport lights formed a penumbra around his shaven skull that gave the impression of a hideous mockery of a halo. Only the Slav’s face and hands were visible, framing the mind that measured Reza’s fate and the hands that could all too easily enforce it.

  The Slav had no visible joints. His head simply rose out of his massive upper body in the manner of reptiles. He had no wrists; his enormous hands (the digits thick as rifle grenades) simply sprouted from arms like concrete pylons. Girth implies midsection; the Slav had none. His frame was impossibly wide and geometrically solid. What light there was around him was snatched from the air and imprisoned in his eyes, shining with an opacity that obscured iris and retina. The Slav rarely blinked. He looked like an early amphibian that had clawed its way out of the primordial sea, stood on dry land for the first time, and decided then and there that it all belonged to him.

  Reza had once seen the Slav naked, in a bathhouse near Brighton Beach. His tattoos stretched from just beneath his clavicles to the wings of his pelvic girdle, circling his ribcage front to back, an atlas of stopping points on a long road of criminal and military history. The bathhouse meet was to discourage electronic surveillance; Reza had been subjected to both strip and body-cavity searches (including a naso-pharyngeal probe). The Slav had watched expressionless, men on either side of him in leather, wools, and furs, dripping sweat on a fearsome array of weapons, motionless in the steam.

  That had been years ago. Since then the pendulum had swung from right to left and back again twice, with no visible improvement. Now was a new time of crisis, new fertile ground to exploit.

  The Slav stood in front of Reza, impassive as he had been that day of their first meeting, impervious even in the wake of a 747 roaring just overhead on approach. When the squeal of the landing gear hitting the tarmac reached them from across the water, the Slav spoke, his voice clubbing the air between them into submission.

  Reza did not speak the Slav’s native Ukrainian; the Slav did not speak Reza’s native Bulgarian. Russian was forbidden while discussing business in urban environments, as the Slav was too rich a prize for myriad police and intelligence services (replete with Russian speakers) the world over. For business, Reza and the Slav spoke Romanian. Being Bulgarian, Reza’s Romanian was pure southern Bucharest. Being Ukrainian, the Slav’s was northern, rougher, inflected with the murderous tinge of Chişinău.

  “Haideţi să-l,” the Slav rumbled. Let’s have it.

  Reza shifted his cigarette from left hand to right, opening his left fist, which had until then been clenched around a tiny ten-megabyte flash drive containing his monthly operations report. He held it aloft on his open palm; it was immediately snatched by a shadow from behind him. Reza knew his men would be disarmed by now; he hoped the Slav would not kill them. This was one of those rare moments in life when being careful could hurt.

  For the next three and a half minutes, Reza recited a carefully scripted spiel of revenues, expenditures, receivables, and requirements, the litany of operations. Reza was just hitting the high points; the details were laid out to the smallest denomination of various currencies and meticulously mapped out in tables and pie charts on the flash drive. Reza’s voice was steady, as were his hands. The tremors came before and after he was in the Slav’s presence; standing in front of him now, Reza was calmed by an overwhelming sense of finality. If the Slav wanted to kill him, he would do so, and (Reza’s sniper notwithstanding) there would be absolutely nothing Reza could do about it. Such certainty removed the anxiety of the unknown.

  Reza didn’t mention the problem he’d had with Eyad; the Slav wouldn’t care ab
out his personnel problems. He would’ve handled things the exact same way, Reza thought.

  The Slav inclined his head marginally, once, when Reza finished his presentation.

  “Bine făcute,” he grunted appreciatively. “You’ve done well. What I don’t like is the size of our market share. New York is for sale, and I don’t like waiting in line.”

  Reza’s sphincter tightened. He’d known it would come to this. He did his best not to squirm.

  “You know what we want,” the Slav said.

  The pressure in Reza’s colon was intense.

  “Ştiu,” he replied, hoping that the Slav would not hear the turmoil in his voice. “But these things take time. Abruptness gets noticed. We can afford to move slowly. There’s plenty of business for everyone.”

  The Slav snapped his fingers; Reza nearly jumped. A rustling noise came from behind him. Reza groaned inwardly as two shadows, black-swathed, with night-vision goggles over their balaclavas, dragged his sniper, groggy and unsteady on his feet, in front of him. One of the shadows unslung the sniper’s rifle from his shoulder and held it by the barrel, muzzle-up, to the Slav, who took it one-handed, by the grip.

  “I don’t blame you for taking precautions,” said the Slav slowly, effortlessly holding the eight-pound rifle dead steady, the suppressor muzzle resting lightly against the hollow of Reza’s throat. “But the next time you put a sniper on me, I’ll make you eat his kidneys. Înţeleg?”

  Reza was rigid with fear. He was trying desperately not to fart.

  In one disturbingly smooth motion, the Slav withdrew the rifle, flipped on the safety, popped out the magazine, and cleared the chamber, all without looking. One of the shadows caught the ejected round on the fly. “STG,” the Slav said with a smile that made Reza’s stomach torque. “I carried one myself in Ossetia. I commend you on your choice of weapon.” He made a dismissive motion with one hand, and Reza’s sniper hit the ground with a groan.

  “Pe curând,” the Slav said. “I look forward to your next report.”

  No long good-byes for military men, Reza thought as the Slav’s squad mounted up and drove off in a matter of seconds. Just as well. As the last vehicle’s taillights disappeared through the reeds, Reza loosed a long, jagged volley of flatulence in relief.

  His men took that as their cue to take their hands from behind their heads and get up off their knees. They were Poles who did not speak Romanian. The two gunsels helped the groggy sniper to his feet.

  “Moja głowa jest zabicie mnie,” the sniper moaned. “Why’d he take my rifle?”

  “Yeah, what the fuck was that all about?” asked one of the support thugs.

  Reza was still looking at the place where the Slav had stood. He could still feel the suppressor muzzle against his throat. He was not aware that he had moved his hand to where the rifle had touched him until the tip of his cigarette grazed his chin. There was no pain; as usual, the Kazakh had extinguished itself.

  “The rest of your lives,” Reza growled.

  P A R T II

  C A R N I V A L O F T H E D A M N E D

  T H E S A C K L E R W I N G

  I’m sitting in the copy shop that serves as a front for Reza’s office. It’s payday, meaning I make my Fast Forty drop and take my ten percent commission. Ordinarily, this is a fairly brisk matter; I don’t like hanging around the office. Reza’s tense enough these days, but there seem to be more overseas heavies here than usual. One of them, some steroid mongoloid as big as a fucking house, is in the office all the time now. I don’t know if Reza’s feeling heat from Eyad’s death—supposedly the cops are looking into it, but there’s no way they’d ever learn enough to follow the trail here—or if he’s pissed about what’s been happening in the speaks. Too many fights, too many ODs. I’m only on Specials, euphorics—when was the last time you saw someone fighting-mad while on Ecstasy? But who knows who’s slinging what else on the circuit. Prince William deals a little powder, I know that for sure. I don’t—I’ve never touched powder, neither personally nor professionally. Then there’s smoke, ice, who knows what other kinds of pills besides Specials. This is what happens when the party goes on too long; what started out pretty turns painful, at an unpredictable rate.

  While waiting to be summoned, I’m catching up on the latest slasher yarn by C, a British novelist I was once fortunate enough to photograph (though sadly not to swive). I’m probably one of the only people my age still reading hard copy. There’s a good reason for it—phones stay off when you’re in the office, and you don’t turn them on again until you’re out on the street. Besides, I like books, another lamentable casualty of our age. This author has a special meaning for me, too. Long have I dreamed of the day I could entice her back to town, to the Metropolitan Museum and the inner sanctum of Dendur within, where I would ravish her upon the temple’s altar, carved kings and goddesses looking on, until her screams of joy would echo off the two-thousand-year-old stones …

  Yes, I’m definitely in a Metropolitan mood. I’m due to meet N there in an hour, which is all the more reason to get in and out of the office fast. Sitting here now waiting on Reza’s whim is just tedious. I’m actually excited—I haven’t been on a real date in years. X was the last woman you could say I dated, someone I had a connection with higher than pelvic. Someone I liked, someone with whom time shared made for a little bit of light in the city’s lingering gray. Someone not connected with business, with the speaks, or with Reza. Especially not with Reza.

  N is … different. Yes, she and I spent our first night together at Le Yef. And yes, LA did invite her to lunch, something I’d like to hear more about, and something I want Reza to never, ever hear about. But she’s much more independent, much more self-assured. She has the air of someone who knows what she wants and how to get it, someone older than she actually is. The more time I spend with her—and it’s been whenever I can, L has been chiding me all week for ignoring her electronic come-hithers—the more I’m convinced N’s headed in one direction: Up. She’s got the focus, the drive, the hunger. She energizes me, something I haven’t felt since—

  —He’s ready for you, Re-ni.

  Reality has a way of shattering the fondest reveries, and at this moment it manifests itself as Edek, one of Reza’s Polish rent-a-thugs, who suddenly looms over me and jerks his head silently for me to follow. Normally his garrulousness extends to grunts and curses. This is why I try to avoid spending time with the rest of Reza’s crew. These aren’t the sort of people I want to remember, or to be remembered by.

  At the back door Jan, Reza’s Tin Man, jerks his head for us to enter the Inner Sanctum. Jan’s a gun nut. You rarely see him out in public, because Reza doesn’t want to take the chance that he’ll get busted on a weapons charge. I don’t know how he gets all his iron, and I don’t care. That’s not my end of the business. Jan must have had some time off, though; his head’s all bandaged up.

  —Rough night? I ask him, trying for levity. Jan glares at me with blackened, bloodshot eyes and I decide to immediately disengage. We head inside.

  How to describe the lair of a modern black-market tycoon? You’d expect custom, premium, high-end-low-profile, no? No. Reza’s office looks like a small showroom for used office furniture, which is exactly how he wants it. Chipped desk, battered file cabinets, black swivel chairs with broken hydraulics. Deep Zone Project playing softly in the background.

  This is called Hiding in Plain Sight.

  The man himself is seated at his usual place, next year’s Sony Mercury notebook on the desk in front of him. At his nine o’clock, the new gorilla’s sitting in a chair watching HGTV on a wall-mounted flat screen with—I surreptitiously risk a second glance to make sure—a lollipop in his mouth. As Jan ushers me to sit down I just catch the end of the latest Immodium Anti-Diarrheal spot featuring the great Arnaldo Mazur’s rich baritone over the backing track of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata: Immodium. Stop the Squirts.

  —Love what you’ve done with the place, I say. It’s a la
me line, but I don’t care. Usually I’m not this glib in Reza’s presence, but today this whole routine just seems flat and distant, like a bad foreign-language gangster movie. And I have better things to do, with someone far above all this.

  Reza closes his laptop and adjusts himself in his chair to give me his full attention. He might be forty-five, he might be sixty, I don’t really know for sure. His wiry brown hair has receded a bit across the wide Slavic steppe of his forehead, and the hard slopes of his face bear the ravines and gulleys of a life not easily lived. But his jadeite eyes have the avaricious glint of a much younger man. I don’t know how long he’s been at this, or how much longer he can last. But he’s in it for the long haul, unlike me. I’ve got no designs on his job. I just want enough to get out and start over, but clean and well capitalized. Let Prince William be Reza’s golden boy, I don’t care.

  —Same as always, Reza replies in his inscrutable accent. I know he’s from Hungary or Belarus or one of those places where everyone savors tiny cups of eye-watering coffee and speaks ten languages, but I like to think of him as Russian. Jan materializes off my left shoulder and I hold up my messenger bag. With a well-practiced sequence of movements, Jan pulls out the Tumi computer case within, handing it to Reza, who with equal economy of motion activates the machine sitting downstage right on his desk. It’s a Cummins JetScan two-pocket, which can sort large bills from small, or sift new bills from old. I know this because I have the exact same one at home. The day I made my first commission from Reza, I asked him what model he had and went out and bought myself one. There will be no difference between my count and his—see Renny’s Rule Number One. Reza extracts the cash from a waterproof parcel I special-ordered online for this job and runs it though the Cummins. No beep—a Fast Forty in full. Reza counting his money is one of the few times I get to see him smile.