“Relax,” Tiger said.
Klesko steered down 47th Street and turned south on Fifth Avenue, the muscle car’s powerful engine growling hungrily, even at the slow pace of Manhattan traffic.
“You are Isaac?” Klesko asked, peering back at the merchant with the rearview mirror.
“Y-yes …”
“You did purchase alexandrite, yes?”
The question clearly caught Isaac by surprise. “Oh … yes. One stone.”
“Look up with your eyes,” Klesko ordered him.
“Two weeks ago I bought the stone,” Isaac continued, but kept his eyes down, terrified of meeting Klesko’s penetrating gaze. “I took it with me to—”
“Look to me!” Klesko barked. Tiger encouraged Isaac’s cooperation with a gentle jab to the ribs with the muzzle of his gun, hoping as he did so that the man would not piss himself.
Isaac wisely raised his face so that Klesko could read his eyes.
“Tell who was it that brings you the stone,” Klesko demanded.
Isaac opened his mouth to speak but then hesitated, and no words came out of his mouth. Tiger saw this as an interesting development, and knew his father would also. Even with a gun placed squarely against his rib, Isaac Hamlisch was defiant. What would inspire this simple businessman to be so reluctant, so careless about his own safety? His hesitation could only mean that the identity of the person who sold him the stone was worth protecting.
A child, perhaps.
“Ah,” Klesko said, apparently agreeing with Tiger that Isaac’s hesitation was an answer in itself.
“A girl?” Tiger asked, his greater ease with English obvious as soon as he spoke up. “A young girl? Short blond hair?”
Isaac did not answer.
“There is nothing you can do for her,” said Klesko. “We already know, you see?”
“A girl,” Isaac confirmed, “and three others.”
The man’s eyes dropped down again, not in fear now but in an obvious gesture of shame for having given up the information.
“One stone?” Klesko asked. “Not cut?”
“One stone, uncut.”
“She said from where?” Klesko asked.
“From a family estate, she said.”
Klesko did not understand the term. He asked Tiger for a translation.
“Estate,” Tiger said.
“Naslyedstvo.”
Klesko snorted contemptuously.
“And what did you pay for this stone?” he asked.
“Eight thousand dollars.”
“That is fair for market?”
“Yes.”
“Where can we find this girl?”
“I have no idea.”
Through the rearview mirror, Klesko’s eyes burned into Isaac, Klesko deciding whether or not Isaac was lying.
“She will come back to you?”
“I don’t know if she has more stones.”
“She gives you her name?”
“She signed documents. It’s the law.”
“Yes?”
“The name was Aretha Franklin.”
Tiger could not suppress a wry laugh. He could not help but feel a certain amount of admiration for the cunning of the mysterious girl, this petite, blond-haired
Aretha
.
“Not the real name?” Klesko asked Tiger.
“No, Father,” Tiger said, careful not to make Klesko feel mocked for his ignorance of popular culture. “Not her real name.”
They drove in silence then for nearly a minute, continuing south on Fifth, making better progress than usual in the sparse pre-holiday morning traffic. As the seconds ticked by, Tiger knew that Klesko was making a decision about the diamond merchant’s fate. It seemed to Tiger that Isaac knew this as well, but the young Hamlisch remained stoic.
“You will buy more stones if we bring them?” Klesko asked Isaac.
“Y-yes,” said Isaac, stammering a little. “Yes, I will buy more stones.”
“You will not speak of us to police?” Tiger asked.
“No.”
“If you speak,” Klesko said, “we will know this. We will find your family and kill them all. Look at me with your eyes …”
Looking sick with dread, Isaac lifted his eyes and met Klesko’s in the rearview mirror.
“You believe we will do this?” Klesko asked. “Kill them, every one?”
“I believe it,” Isaac said.
After a moment more of consideration, Klesko pulled the car over to the curb.
“Go,” said Klesko, reaching over to open the passenger side door. With a sense of relief, Tiger shoved the passenger seat forward with his foot and climbed out of the car, allowing Isaac to climb out as well. Tiger got back into the front seat and Klesko steered them back into the traffic, leaving Isaac Hamlisch behind.
“We find the girl,” Klesko said.
“Da,”
Tiger agreed.
They turned west and drove to Tenth Avenue, then pointed north and headed all the way to 87th Street and Amsterdam, the corner where they had lost track of the girl and her friends the night before.
They scanned the area—this time in full daylight—trying to figure out how the children had escaped them.
“How do they disappear into the air?” Klesko asked as he and Tiger continued their search of the corner where the four teens had eluded them. “These are magic children?”
They had been forced to abandon the previous night’s search as the police descended on the area, but now it was daylight and the streets were back to normal business. As he had the night before, Klesko soon focused on the empty bank on the corner. He tried again to peer through the soaped windows, but without satisfaction. Tiger followed as his father moved to the narrow service walkway at the rear of the bank building, finding the rear fire exit. The men found something curious there: on the door handle hung a small combination lockbox, attached to the handle tightly enough so it could not be removed.
“There is a key,” said Tiger.
“Eh?”
“If you open the box with the code, there will be a key inside.”
And then Klesko understood: the bank space was empty and available for lease. The key was for realtors to gain access to the property. Klesko tugged at the lockbox, confirming that it was still fully attached and unbroken.
“If they entered here, they have the code,” said Tiger.
“How?” Klesko asked.
Klesko stepped to the first Dumpster near the door and lifted its top. The bin was less than half full. At least a dozen empty pizza boxes were stacked inside, plus three plastic grocery bags piled near the top, filled with trash. Klesko tipped the bags open and found crumpled wrappers for various kinds of snack food: chips, candy, popcorn, etc. He closed the Dumpster again and the two men moved out of the walkway, back to the sidewalk.
“This was her place,” Klesko said.
“No more,” said Tiger. “They would not stay.”
“They are gone,” Klesko agreed. “So. Why throw garbage away? They will never come back. Why make it clean? Who has code for getting this key and also makes this place clean?”
Tiger considered the question, but suspected that his father already knew the answer. Tiger followed Klesko to the front entrance of the bank space, where inside the window a placard was mounted. It read:
For Commercial Lease—7,000 sq. feet
Desmond & Green Realty
NINETEEN
The phone picked up on the first ring.
“Yeah.”
“Hey. This is Wally.”
“Little sister,” Panama purred. “What up?”
“You had another place for me to get an ID,” said Wally. “Could you give me that?”
“Not the Brighton?”
“No. The other one you said.”
“What? They mess with you in Brighton?”
Wally considered the question:
Did they mess with me in Brighton Beach?
They changed her life in Brighton Beach. Did that count?
“Long story,” she answered. “It’s fine. The other one?”
“Jersey City,” answered Panama. “You don’t like Russians, then fine, I give you some New Jersey Nigerian motherfuckers, see how you like that. You ain’t never find no Africans blacker than these. These motherfuckers
black
…”
Wally waited out Panama’s diatribe on the abyssal blackness of Nigerians until he finally coughed up the Jersey City address.
“What else goin’ on?” he said once he had dictated the address. “You gonna bring somethin’ in? More o’ those shiny
expresso
boxes?”
“That was a onetime thing,” said Wally. “But I need to ask you something about Rage.”
There was a moment of silence on Panama’s end of the line, and then a sigh. “I’m disappointed, little sister, you wanna get in some shit with Rage. You too good for his business, you want my opinion.”
“I’m not going to do business with him.”
“Then good.”
“He’s still moving party supplies to the clubs downtown?”
Another moment of silence on Panama’s end. “Who the fuck is askin’?”
“I am,” Wally said. “Do you remember Sophie? She used to be with us?”
“Little Sophie ain’t welcome aroun’ here no more. Used to be sweet, now crystal got her all fucked up. Think maybe she mulin’ for Rage these days.”
“She’s dead. Killed.”
“Okay,” Panama said after a pause. “That ain’t exactly shockin’ news, you see what I mean.
‘Tweaka chick goes into business with Rage, nex’ thing you know she found dead.’
”
“Yeah,” said Wally. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be curious. You’ve got nothing for me on this?”
“What I got is a big slice o’ Panamanian wisdom: let it the fuck
go
. You hear me, little sister? Nothin’ good gonna come out of you holdin’ on to that kinda shit.”
The trip to Jersey City
went smoothly enough. Tevin and Wally traveled alone, taking the New Jersey PATH train to Journal Square and walking two blocks to a warehouse doorway on Sip Avenue. The Nigerian crew lived together in their warehouse space, and a few of them were still asleep on cots when Wally and Tevin arrived at nine o’clock. The transaction was simple, especially compared to Wally’s experience in Brighton Beach: the Nigerians delivered a first-rate fake ID for two hundred dollars, no questions asked and no lives changed.
The deal included a musical bonus: ten tracks of music performed by the Nigerians’ own band, a Palm Wine combo called the Ghosts of Ilorin. The Nigerians downloaded the tunes onto Wally’s cell phone so she and Tevin could use their earphone splitter and listen to the tunes together on their ride back to Manhattan.
Wally leaned into Tevin as they listened to the music, resting her head on his shoulder, wanting to feel him next to her. It had been rising for days, this sensation. Something to do with …
everything
—hearing from Dr. Rainer that her mother was still alive, witnessing the bloodshed on the same night, staring directly into Klesko’s eyes through the window of the bank. All of it had shaken something loose inside Wally, opened her up to sensation and emotion in a way she couldn’t remember experiencing, ever. It was almost overwhelming. Wally wasn’t sure what any of it meant, but she knew that having Tevin close answered a yearning inside her that she was no longer willing to deny.
Tevin sensed the change, clearly. He tapped Wally on the shoulder and she pulled out her earphones. They could still faintly hear the the Ghosts of Ilorin leaking out of their earbuds as they spoke.
“You’re okay?” he asked, searching her eyes with a look of confusion.
Wally couldn’t blame him. How many different signals had she sent him over the past months?
“I’m good,” she said, and smiled.
Tevin chuckled a little at the enigma that was Wally Stoneman and shrugged. They put their headphones back on and listened to the music for a while, but then Wally pulled her buds out and yanked Tevin’s out as well.
“That’s your way of saying you want to talk?” Tevin said. “Real subtle.”
“Do you think about what will happen if I find my mother?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean to us,” Wally said. “You and me. Jake and Ella.”
Tevin considered the question, looking reluctant.
“We’ll work it out,” he said, sounding confident, though Wally sensed that he too was concerned about their fate.
“You don’t think I would just, like, run off with her and ditch you guys?” The question had been preying on Wally’s mind, and even she didn’t know the answer, so how could the crew? The tension among them had ramped up since Wally’s search had begun, and she figured the doubt about their future together had something to do with it.
“It’s crossed my mind.” Tevin shrugged. “Jake and Ella too.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the answer?” he asked.
Wally thought about the right thing to say, something that would be honest but also convey how much she herself had suffered over all the doubt that surrounded them.
“You guys are my family,” she said. “I can’t imagine my life without you. But if I said I knew everything coming our way in the future, that would be a lie.”
Tevin nodded. “Okay.” But he looked like he had something else to say, so Wally waited him out. “You could stop all this,” Tevin finally continued. “I’m not saying you should, but … who would blame you? Those men …”
“They’re looking for Yalena too.” Wally spoke with absolute confidence. “You see that, don’t you, Tev? We’re following the same trail. If they find her first … I’d never be able to live with that.”
Tevin nodded but didn’t respond. Wally could see that he had hoped for another answer.
“The way you guys came into the building last night,” she said, “all that shooting and everything, and still you were coming up. That was unbelievable and totally brave. I’ll never forget that.”
“I’ll always protect you, Wally,” Tevin said, shyly now, not meeting her eyes. Wally could see that he wanted to say more.
“I know,” she said. Again, she leaned her head against Tevin’s shoulder.
Wally wanted to tell him more. She wanted to share what she had seen as she sat behind the darkened bank window and looked into Klesko’s dark eyes; Wally had seen herself, had seen both her past and her future contained in the singular features of Klesko—her father—and her unalterable connection to that monster was almost more than she could bear. She tried to put it all out of her mind, if just for a few moments. She leaned closer into Tevin and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.