“It’s like fudge!” Vera exclaimed.
“That’s right,” I said. “Fudge just happens to be one of heroin’s states during processing. Only we’re keeping it at the fudge state with chemical stabilizers. Then, when our fudge gets to New York, we’ll do the last step of the process, and our heroin will be the white powder you’ve been expecting to see all this time.”
“If I didn’t have this mask on, I’d kiss you. In fact, I’d do more than that.”
“Later, please. Just use that spray can. Try to make your potatoes brown and your fish blue instead of vice versa.”
We worked furiously, as two criminals intent on a $20 million batch of marzipan could be expected to. What eight normal employees might have done in eight hours, we did in four. Every redeemable ounce of heroin was poured, baked, colored, and baked again. Now we started boxing the warm candy. We filled only the bottom layer of each box. Despite our pace, it was only two hours before the morning shift would arrive.
From the previous day’s output of finished boxes, we took the top layers of real marzipan and covered our heroin candy. One hour was left, and the most critical work was still undone. There had to be not one trace of heroin or even the slightest hint of the abnormal when Vera and I left. We scoured the vat and the floor around it. Cans of vegetable coloring were refilled from stock. The trays had to be cleaned, new boxes brought from stock, and the whole work area and oven ventilated. All excess candy, boxes, the overalls, and gas masks were thrown down the incinerator chute and, last, the invoice for the bags of almond powder had to be changed from twenty to nineteen.
“The oven, what about the oven?” Vera asked. “It’ll still be warm.”
“An old oven would be. This one is gas heated and water cooled. We have eight minutes. Let’s go.”
I locked the door behind us. By the time we reached the end of the block I saw the first women arriving for work, walking in pairs in their white aprons. I felt like a wrung rag. Vera was exhilerated.
“You’re a genius.” She almost danced to the car.
“You’re a genius,” she was still saying when we got to our hotel room. “If you just made up a batch of special candy once a month, you could control the whole North American market. You could flood it and drive everyone else out of business.”
I dropped backwards onto the bed and gratefully let my head sink into the pillow. My eyelids shut simply from their weight.
Vera undressed me. She was still intoxicated with success.
“You will be the most powerful man in Europe, do you know that, Raki. And with my help, nobody can stop you.”
I was too beat to know or listen. A month of impersonation and precise planning was at an end. I’d beaten the Corsicans and half the customs systems in Europe. The marzipan would pass easily through the Lubeck inspection.
Raki Senevres was now worthy of the Mafia’s respect. I felt Vera’s naked body slide under the sheets next to me. We fell asleep in each other’s arms. Like scorpions mating, a voice in the back of my mind told me.
Twelve
“I knew you could do it, Raki. From that first day in Beirut, I said this guy has got what it takes.”
Charles DeSantis filled my glass and patted my shoulder. Two weeks before, his hand might have held a knife. Now he was full of bonhomie. The whole room was filled with bonhomie, Mafia style. Chiefs from a dozen New York, New England, and Middle Atlantic families were in attendance, invited by DeSantis so that they could witness his coup and get in line for distribution rights. There were enough elaborately cut suits, curdled gold cufflinks, Countess Mara ties, tiger’s eye rings, and Rolexes for a jewelry convention. Vera Cesare, sipping Chivas Regal with a secretive smile, stood out like Marie Antoinette in an ornate court.
But the heavy-handed fashion was a symbol of power. Just as DeSantis’s address was: a whole floor of the World Trade Center, the tallest building in the world. Manhattan and New York harbor were at the bottom of some great canyon. I was supposed to be very impressed.
“Hey, Happy,” a portly pin-stripped consigliere from Boston grabbed DeSantis by the elbow, “You say we’ve got to rush for a piece. How soon is the stuff going to get here.”
“Raki says in a week, right?”
“It’s coming by boat,” I said. “I flew ahead so that I could meet everyone.”
“So Raki and I could get together and iron out the last details,” DeSantis broke in possessively. He clapped his hands loudly. All the heads in the room turned in his direction. “Let’s have some quiet here. I got an announcement.
“A lot of you have been asking me why I bet $100,000 that this guy here, this Turk, could do what no organization on the other side has ever done. That is, to bring in 100 kilos of top-grade Turkish snow. Everyone said it was impossible, and I know that there are still a few people here who wouldn’t want to swear on their mothers’ graves that I’m telling the truth. I mean, everybody but everybody knows you just can’t hide that much stuff. Well, it turns out you can if you’ve got enough imagination. But,” he started smiling, “before I go any further, I see some hungry faces. Anybody like some candy?”
From the table drawer, DeSantis took a box of marzipan. On the lid was a raised gold illustration of the Holstentor. Along the edge in elegant script was a note that Royal Hauffmann marzipan was exported exclusively by Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft. The box was a sample from a long night’s work.
“What is this? A joke?” one or two of the Mafiosos demanded.
“Take a piece,” DeSantis shoved the box at the most uninterested guest.
“I didn’t come here for candy.”
“Try it, you’ll like it,” DeSantis rose to the top of his wit. “Take it,” he added with rougher emphasis.
The Mafioso, a boss’s son type with mod sideburns, shrugged and took a piece. He bit, chewed, and spit on the rug.
“God, what the hell is that?”
“Marzipan, you jerk,” DeSantis laughed. “You never heard of marzipan before?”
“Come to the point,” one of the older men in the crowd shouted.
DeSantis took a piece of candy from the lower level in the box and gave it to the kid with side-burns.
“I tasted.”
“Taste again.”
With a grimace, DeSantis’s victim took a bite from the new piece. He spit on the mg again, but this time he knew what he’d eaten.
“Jesus, that’s pure snow! It’s heroin!”
DeSantis gave the rest of the piece to the Boston chief. All the other guests crowded around for a look at the candy box.
“It’s semi-processed opium,” a veteran from Chicago said. “Then what else did you do to it?”
“Vegetable coloring and stabilizer. They’ll come out in the processing here,” I answered.
The Chicagoan smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“A goddamn brainstorm,” he exploded. “How much is a box worth? $200,000?”
“About. The top layers of all the boxes are real marzipan. There’s no way customs can spot the fake,” I said. “X-rays won’t help because nothing is hidden. Dogs won’t be any good because the heroin odor is covered by the almond smell. Besides, all customs really looks at is the contents slips we have to file with the Food and Drug Administration for imported food, and we have customs slips from four countries testifying to the purity of the almond powder. As long as nobody tries to hijack the shipment, it’s perfectly safe.”