If it came to it, I knew this guy would probably have no qualms about sticking a knife in my heart – and if Nestor was right that’d only be for starters – but I found his attitude irritating and didn’t feel like playing along.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a fucking problem. I don’t see you before. And I don’t like you already.’
‘Like me? What the fuck has that got to do with anything? I’m not asking you out on a date here.’
He flinched, moved – was maybe even going to reach for something, a knife or a gun – but then he thought the better of it and just looked around, over his shoulder, probably pissed now at Nestor.
I decided to push it.
‘I thought all you Russians were big shots – you know, tough, in control.’
He looked back, widening his eyes at me in disbelief. Then he collected himself, and for some reason made up his mind to respond.
‘What – I not in control? I turn you down.’
Now I snorted sarcastically.
He paused. Then he snarled, ‘Fuck you. What you know about us anyway?’
‘Quite a bit, actually. I know about Marat Balagula and the gas tax scam, and that deal with the Colombo family. Then there’s… Michael…’ I paused and made a show of trying to get the name out. ‘… Shmushkevich?’
I realized from the look on his face that he wasn’t entirely sure what I was talking about. He would probably only have been a kid when the so-called daisy-chain of dummy oil companies had been in full swing in the ’80s, trucking gas in from South America and forging tax receipts. And anyway who knew what these younger guys talked about when they got together – probably not the great scams of a previous generation, that was for sure.
‘So… what?’ he said. ‘You a cop?’
‘No.’
When I didn’t add anything, he started to get up to leave.
‘Come on, Gennady,’ I said, ‘lighten up, would you?’
He stepped out of the booth and looked down at me, clearly debating in his head whether or not he should kill me right here, or wait until we got outside. I couldn’t believe how reckless I was being, but I somehow felt I was safe, that nothing could touch me.
‘Actually, I’m researching a book on you guys,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a focus, though – somebody whose point of view I can use to tell the story…’ I held off for a couple of beats, and then went for it. ‘Somebody like you, Gennady.’
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and I knew I had him.
‘What kind of book?’ he said in a surprisingly small voice.
‘A novel,’ I replied. ‘It’s really just taking shape at the moment, but I see it as a story with an epic dimension to it, triumph over adversity, that kind of thing. From the gulags to the…’ I trailed off here, faltering for a moment, aware that I might be losing him. ‘I mean, if you think about it,’ I went on quickly, ‘the guineas have had it all their own way up to now, but that five-families, men-of-honour, badda-bing badda-boom shit has become clichéd. People want something new.’ As he considered what I was saying, I decided to hammer it home, ‘So my agent thinks the movie rights on this will almost certainly be snapped up as well.’
Gennady hesitated for a moment, and then sat back down into the booth, waiting for more.
On the hoof, I managed to outline a vague plot centring on a young second-generation Russian who finds himself moving up through the Organizatsiya. I threw in references to the Sicilians and the Colombians, but with a repeated wave of the hand I also kept deferring, in anticipation, to Gennady’s superior grasp of the details. Managing to flip the axis, I soon had him doing most of the talking – albeit in his fairly mangled English. He agreed with some suggestions I made and dismissed others, but he’d got the whiff of glamour into his system now and couldn’t be stopped.
I hadn’t planned any of this, of course, and as I was doing it I didn’t really believe I’d get away with it either, but the boldest stroke was yet to come. After he’d agreed to do consultancy on ‘the project’ and we’d established a few ground rules, I managed to edge the conversation back around to the loan. I told him my advance on the book had already been spent and that the 75K was a gambling debt I had to pay off – and had to pay off today.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This matter was now a minor distraction to Gennady. He took out his cellphone and had a quick conversation with someone in Russian. Then, still on the phone, he asked me a series of questions. What was my social security number? Driver’s licence number? What were the names of my landlord and my employer? Where did I bank and what credit cards did I hold? I took out my social security card and driver’s licence, and read out the relevant numbers. Then I gave him the names and the other stuff he wanted while he relayed the information in Russian to the person on the other end of the line.
With that taken care of, Gennady put away his phone and got back to talking about the project. Fifteen minutes later his phone rang. As before, he spoke in Russian, at one point covering the mouthpiece with his hand and whispering, ‘That OK, you cleared. So – what? Seventy-five? You sure? You want more? A hundred?’
I paused, and then nodded yes.
When he’d finished on the phone, he said, ‘Will be ready in a half-hour.’
Then he put the phone away and placed his hands down flat on the table.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘so who we going to cast in this thing?’
Half an hour later, on the nose, another young guy arrived. Gennady introduced him as Leo. He was skinny and not unlike Gennady, but he didn’t have Gennady’s eyes, didn’t have what Gennady had – looked, in fact, like he’d had whatever it was Gennady did have surgically removed. Maybe they were brothers, or cousins, and maybe – I started thinking – maybe I could make something out of this. They spoke in Russian for a moment and then Leo pulled a thick brown envelope out of his jacket pocket, put it on the table, slid out of the booth and left without saying a word. Gennady shoved the envelope in my direction.
‘This a knockdown, OK? Short term. Five repayments, five weeks, twenty-two-five a time. I come by your place each…’ He paused, and stared at the envelope for a moment. ‘… each Friday morning, start two weeks from today.’ He held the envelope up in his left hand. ‘This no joke, Eddie – you take this now… you mine.’ I nodded. ‘I go into other stuff?’
I shook my head.
The other stuff being, I presumed – at the very least – legs, knees, arms, ribs, baseball bats, switchblades, electric cattle-prods maybe.
‘No.’ I shook my head again. ‘It’s OK. I understand.’
I was anxious to get away now that I had the cash, but I could hardly appear to be in too much of a hurry. It turned out, however, that Gennady himself had to go, and was already late for another appointment. We’d exchanged phone numbers, so before he left we agreed that in a week or so we’d make some arrangement to meet again. He’d check up on some stuff, and I’d work a little more on shaping – maybe even expanding – the central character of what had somehow mutated, during the course of our conversation, from a novel into a screenplay.
Gennady put on his Ray-Bans and was ready to go. But he paused, and reached over to shake my hand. He did this silently, solemnly.
Then he got up and left.
I called Klondike from the payphone in the diner. I explained the situation and they gave me the address of a bank on Third Avenue where I could deposit cash that would immediately be credited to my account.