Mask Market

I lit a cigarette, a signal to my backup that I was okay. For now.

“This man was in trouble,” he said. “He thought this trouble was a burden he could transfer. Do you understand?”

“He was a cooperating witness?”

“He was, if our information is correct, negotiating to be exactly that. But the deal had yet to be struck.”

“So you needed to move before—”

“No. Not for that. This man was a thief, and he stole from many. We are businessmen, and money is important. But in our business, there is something much more important than money. It is not just that this man stole from us; it was known that he did it. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

Understand it? I thought to myself. I was raised on it.

Inside, if a sneak thief takes your stuff, it’s nothing personal—it’s just part of living there, like rain falling in Seattle. But if the thief shows off what he took, it’s like he raped you. If you don’t square that up, you don’t get to keep anything that’s yours.

You’ve got a pack of Kools in your cell. A fresh, new pack. You go to take a shower, come back, and find it’s gone. That happens. And that night, you see a guy on the tier smoking a Kool, holding a whole pack in his other hand. Still nothing—the commissary sells them to anyone with money on the books. But then the guy says, “Thanks for the smokes, punk.” And now, now you have to hurt him. You don’t do that, you’re going to be meat on some freak’s plate.

But all I said to Yitzhak was, “If other people thought it was safe to steal from you…”

“Americans see with wide eyes,” he said, sounding more like a Talmudic scholar than a businessman who regarded hunter-killer teams as a line item on a budget. “You say ‘Russian’ to an American, and he thinks he knows all there is to know. But there are Odessa Beach Russians—you know the people I mean—and there are… others.

“We have been on this earth for thousands of years. But, every place we go, we have to establish our own identity. In American minds, a Jew is always motivated by money. Money comes first. That is a perception we have to change, if we are to be allowed to conduct our own business. You understand this?”

“If you don’t build a rep for always getting even, it makes people think you’re weak.”

“Correct!” he said, pleased with the pupil. “The stereotype is that we are clever people, but not strong people. In our business, it is more valuable for our enemies to believe we are crazy than that we are clever.”

“Which is why this guy who stole from you couldn’t just disappear. You needed his head on a stake.”

His shrug was eloquent.

“But the money…?”

“We made our own inquiries. Before we…acted. This was a sophisticated thief. There was some system in place—it is too complicated for me to understand; that is not my role—but the money was vacuumed right out of his accounts, and then it just disappeared. The thief himself would not know where it ended up.”

“Then what good would it do him?”

“He had a confederate. Maybe more than one. Someone he trusted.”

“And you think I know who that is?” I said, snapping my unsmoked cigarette into the darkness.

“No,” he said, smiling. “If you knew where that much money was, you would be long gone. Far away.”

“So what did you want to snatch me for?”

“We know you met the thief. We had to learn whether you were…”

“His ‘confederate’? Get real.”

“Yes, we understand that. We understand that now. The information we had was…sketchy. A man such as that one, he would have no friends.”

I understood what the Russian was telling me. “Friends,” as in those who would avenge his death.

“So what was I supposed to tell you?”

“We still want the money,” the man said. “We thought maybe you could help us find it.”

“You think this guy told me?”

“No,” he said, brushing off my sarcasm. “We don’t think this man knew we knew he was a thief. But he knew we would find out eventually.”

“That explains it,” I said.

“What?” he asked, too eagerly.

“Why in the world a white man would want to go to Africa.”

“Please,” he said, tilting his chin at me for encouragement.

“I did some…work over there. Years ago. But I keep up my contacts. It’s a good thing to have people in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty.”

“Where?”

“Nigeria.”

“Nigeria?” His voice reeked suspicion. “Free-lancers haven’t worked there since—”

“Nineteen seventy,” I finished for him. “But it’s still the most corrupt country on the planet.”

“You have not been to Russia recently,” he said, as if his nationalistic pride had been insulted.

“I haven’t been to Russia at all. But I know how to get things done in Nigeria.”

“And that’s what this man wanted?”

“He didn’t know specifics. All he’d heard was that I could get someone set up in an African country where a lot of cash would guarantee a lot of safety. I think, from the little bit he said, that he thought it was South Africa, but he wasn’t particular.”

“So what happened?”

“You know better than me,” I said. “I told him I needed twenty-five thousand just to start the process. I thought we’d have to make another meet, but he said he had it with him. Not on him, in his car. He went out to get it…and he never came back.”

“Did he leave anything with you?”

“Yeah. The tab for the drinks we’d ordered.”

He said something under his breath. Sounded like Russian.

“Did he come to you directly?” Asking me a question he already knew the answer to.

“No.” The truth.

“Will you tell me the name of the person who introduced you?” Testing me; they already knew it had been Charlie, thanks to his wife.

“No.”

“A man must choose his own path,” he said, very deliberately. “Must it be your choice to stand in mine?”

“I’m no different from you,” I answered. “If I gave you a name, my own name would be hurt. And that would put me out of business.”

“For fifty thousand dollars? Cash?”

“No.”

He made a guttural sound I took for approval. “You are a businessman, fair enough. Let us say the name of the person who introduced you to the thief means nothing to us, yes? But, should you happen to run across information—say, from another source—that might be of value, you understand that you would be compensated?”

“Sure.”

“What do you think is fair?”

“For…?”

“For your time and trouble, as I said.”

“For my past time and trouble?”

“If you like.”

“I like the number you mentioned.”