the room, occasionally resting on me, but if there was anything to read in it, it escaped me. Maybe I was just too tired.
Mike sat on a rust-colored sofa, reading the fax, looking placid. He was dressed as I’d seen him last, in khakis and a gray sweater. It was hard to believe that was only a few hours ago. He got up and walked to the doorway, where I was leaning. I was better at leaning now than at sitting, since the body blow from Pell had displaced my already fractured rib, and my pals at St. Vincent’s had wrapped my midsection in a long elastic bandage. Mike handed me the fax. It was short and to the point:
$5 MILLION READY FOR WIRE TRANSFER BY 8AM EST THURSDAY. YOU WILL RECEIVE TRANSFER INSTRUCTIONS THEN. FUNDS MUST BE TRANSFERRED WITHIN 4 HOURS.
All in caps, all in bold type. The fax had come in on Pierro’s home machine. It was like the message Bregman had received, though he’d been given a week to get his money together. Pierro had just four days. Like the first fax, this one had a phone number at the top of the page, a 718 area code this time.
“I’ll check out this number tonight, and if I find an address for it, I’ll go there tomorrow. But I’m not expecting much.” Mike nodded and Helene looked at me. Pierro didn’t stir.
“It’s a lot of money, Rick,” Mike observed.
Pierro shrugged. “Yeah, about thirty percent of my bonus last year,” he said. “A lot” is a relative thing.
“It’s a lot to pay for silence,” I said, “especially for an innocent man.”
Pierro lifted his big head and looked at me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said in a slow rumble.
Mike glanced at me and answered. His voice was low and even. “Only that making a payment may not be the wisest course, Rick. There’s no way of knowing that this won’t be just the first installment.”
Pierro grimaced and pushed his fingertips into his temples. “Jesus
… how many times have we been through this, Mike? I told you-guilty, innocent-in this climate, it doesn’t matter a damn to my pals at French-or to anybody on the Street. I get a stink like this on me, and that’s it-I’m done. All this-it’s done.” He held his hands out, gesturing at the room around us. “Well, that’s not an option, okay? That’s not an option for my family.” He leaned forward again and let out a long breath. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Besides, with what you tell me about this frigging prosecutor, it could be I’m hosed anyway. She can haul me in front of some frigging grand jury, drag my name through the papers…” He clenched his thick hands into fists. “How does she even know we exist, anyway? And why does she care? What the hell does she want from me?” He bounced the heel of his palm on his forehead. “How did things get so screwed up?” His voice was a harsh rasp. Mike sighed.
“This was always a risk, Rick,” he said evenly. “We knew it could happen-we talked about it from the outset. But we didn’t think we were fishing in their waters yet, so this was a surprise to us too.” Mike paused and looked at Pierro, who stared down at his own big hands.
“Frankly, I have no idea how we came to Shelly DiPaolo’s attention,” Mike continued. “But as to why she cares-there’s no mystery about that. The MWB case is a career maker for her, if it goes well-and a career breaker otherwise. From what John has heard, she needs a big win. Nassouli is one of her high-profile targets-one of her big fish-so it’s no surprise she’d be interested in anyone even remotely connected with him. And no surprise she’d be hostile to anyone she thinks is making her job tougher. When she heard about John-snooping around the MWB offices, and asking questions about Nassouli-she probably thought he fell into both categories.”
“So, she’s interested and pissed off, and that’s that? She says ‘Drop your drawers,’ and you just drop them?” Pierro asked. There was petulance mixed in with his frustration and fear. Mike ignored it.
“If it comes to that, yes. But it’s never that simple. We don’t know exactly what she wants yet, and we don’t know how badly she wants it. It’s true, she’s got a lot of power. She can question John, and me, and make it hurt. And if Ms. DiPaolo really wants to know who we’re working for, she can subpoena us, bring us in front of a grand jury, put us under oath, and ask-and have a judge jail us for contempt if we don’t answer.” Helene’s eyes darted from Mike to me and back to her husband. Mike continued.
“But her powers aren’t limitless, and they don’t come free. She operates in a world of cost and benefit, just like everybody else. She can get us to drop our drawers, but it will cost her-in time, in money, in manpower. She’s going to weigh those costs against what she thinks she can get out of this, and against all the other things she could be doing instead. We may not be able to stop her, but we can up the price-maybe to the point where it stops making sense to her. Ideally, though, it doesn’t come to that. Ideally, we strike a bargain.”
Pierro pinched the bridge of his nose again, and shook his head. Helene moved her hand to his neck, but he shrugged her off and stood. He thrust his hands in his pockets and walked to the windows and stared out.
“And if you do manage to deal with her, then what? Whoever this is wants his money in four days, and you guys haven’t got jack for me.” He moved back and forth in front of the window like a bear in a cage.
“We don’t have hard and fast proof, it’s true, but we have a theory…” Mike said, but Pierro cut him off.
“Yeah, yeah, Trautmann-you told me. But you don’t have enough to negotiate with, so it doesn’t do squat for me.”
“We’re still working on it, Rick. We have four days. It’s not much time, but it’s something, and John has accomplished a lot in the last couple of weeks.” Pierro looked at me and gave a short, harsh laugh.
“Yeah, like getting the frigging FBI on my back,” he said. Helene sighed and turned in her seat to look at him.
“That’s enough, Rick,” she said sharply. “You’re being stupid, and you’re saying things you don’t mean. Haven’t you been listening to Mike? He and John might get called before a grand jury because of us. And look at John’s face, for Christ’s sake. Look what he’s been through for us. Now you apologize to him.” Pierro shook his head and looked sheepish.
“Jeez, John, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m sorry-really. Helene is right, that was way out of line. It’s just… hell, I don’t know. This thing-it’s making me nuts.” I nodded at him. Mike continued.
“We have to take this one step at a time, Rick. First, we talk to the feds and see what they want and where that takes us. When we know that, we can make decisions about Thursday.” Pierro nodded and turned away from us. We watched him pace by the windows for a while, and then Helene walked us to the door.
“Please forgive him,” she said to both of us when we were in the foyer. “He’s… well, you know the pressure he’s under. It’s making him crazy. But please, hang in there with us.” She put her hand on my arm. Mike made reassuring noises. I had a question.
“That fax he got tonight-that’s the only communication he’s had since the first one? There’s been nothing else?”
Helene looked at me impassively for a moment. No surprise, no confusion, no indignation, and no answer. “Please, John,” she squeezed my arm, “just stick with us. Please.”
“What the hell is going on?” I said to Mike when we were out on the street. “Is it me, or does it seem like all of a sudden we’re just along for the ride?”
“It’s not just you,” he said, shaking his head. “The ground is definitely shifting. Yesterday, you talk to Trautmann, and then- boom — you get a visit from Pell, Pierro gets the squeeze, and on Thursday he’s supposed to pay up. It feels like someone’s nervous and in a big hurry.”
“Trautmann didn’t strike me as the nervous type. Impulsive, yes, but not the type to run scared,” I said.
“If not him, then who?” Mike asked. I shook my head and scanned the street for a taxi.
“You really think you can work a deal with DiPaolo?” I asked. Mike snorted.
“Sure, we can deal. No problem. Something along the lines of us agreeing to answer all her questions and her agreeing not to jail us for contempt.”
“You made it sound good upstairs.”
“Rick needed something to get him through the night. After Monday we’ll know better how to set his expectations.” I spotted a cab. It cut across traffic and screeched to a halt nearby. “Call me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes,” Mike said, and turned east, toward his home.
It didn’t go well.
I traced the 718 number on Pierro’s fax to a store in Brooklyn, on Atlantic Avenue, at the fringe of Boerum Hill. It was a tiny place, wedged between a hardware store and a pizza joint, and the only spot on the grimy, tired- looking block that was opened when I got there, early Sunday morning. The closest it had to a name was a plastic sign out front that read “Papers, Smokes, Lotto.” Inside, there were a couple of inches of floor space, surrounded by
