'Think coffee shops,' Peter said. 'Yuri, you shoulda been a Greek.'
'A Greek? Why should I be a Greek?'
'Every corner there's a coffee shop, right? Man, I worked for one of them. Ten employees on my shift, six of us were off the books, paid in cash. Why? Because they got all this cash they're not declaring, got to keep the expenses in proportion. If they report thirty cents of every dollar goes through the register, that's a lot. And you know the frosting on the cake? Eight and a quarter percent sales tax on every sale, law says they have to collect it. But the seventy percent of sales they don't report, they can't exactly hand over the tax on that, can they? So it gets skimmed, too. Pure tax-free profit, every penny of it.'
'Not just Greeks,' Yuri said.
'No, but they got it down to a science. You were Greek, all you gotta do is hit twenty coffee shops.
You don't think they all got fifty grand in the safe, or stuffed in the mattress, or under a loose board in the clothes closet? Hit twenty and you got your million.'
'But I am not a Greek,' Yuri said.
Kenan asked him if he knew any diamond merchants. 'They have a lot of cash,' he said. Peter said a lot of the jewelry business was markers, IOUs that passed back and forth. Kenan said there was still some cash in it somewhere, and Yuri said it didn't matter because he didn't know anyone in diamonds.
I went into the other room and left them at it.
I WANTED to call TJ and I got out the piece of paper with all the calls the Kongs had logged to Kenan's phone. I found the number of the laundromat pay phone but hesitated. Would TJ know to answer it? And would it compromise him if the place was crowded? And suppose Ray picked up the phone? That seemed unlikely, but—
Then I remembered there was a simpler way. I could beep him and let him call me. I seemed to be having trouble adjusting to this new technology. I still automatically thought in more primitive terms.
I found his beeper number in my notebook, but before I could dial it the phone rang, and it was TJ.
'Man was just here,' he said. He sounded excited. 'Just on this phone.'
'It must have been someone else.'
'No chance, Vance. Mean dude, you look at him an' you know you seein' evil. Wasn't you just talkin' to him? I got this flash, said my man Matt is talkin' to this dude.'
'I was, but I got off the phone with him at least ten minutes ago.
Maybe closer to fifteen.'
'Yeah, be about right.'
'I thought you'd call right away.'
'I couldn't, man. I had to follow the dude.'
'You followed him?'
'What you think I do, run away when I see him comin'? I don't walk out arm in arm with the man, but he walk out an' I give him a minute an' I slip out after him.'
'That's dangerous TJ. The man's a killer.'
'Man, am I supposed to be impressed? I'm on the Deuce 'bout every day of my life. Can't walk down that street without you're followin' some killer or other.'
'Where did he go?'
'Turned left, walked to the corner.'
'Forty-ninth Street.'
'Then walked across to the deli on the other side of the avenue.
Went inside, stayed a minute or two, came out again. Don't guess he had them make him a sandwich on account of he wasn't in there that long.
Could of picked up a six-pack. Package he carried was about that size.'
'Then where did he go?'
'Back the way he came. Sucker walked right past me, crossed Fifth again, and he's headin' straight back for the laundry. I thought, shit, can't follow him back in there, have to hang around outside until he makes his call.'
'He didn't call here again.'
'Didn't call nowhere, 'cause he didn't go inside the laundry. Got in his car an' drove off. Didn't even know he had a car until he got into it. It was parked just the other side of the laundry, where you couldn't see it if you were sittin' where I was.'
'A car or a truck?'
'Said a car. I tried to stay with it but there wasn't no way. I was layin' half a block back, not wantin' to tag him too close on his way back to the laundry, and he was in the car an' outta there before I could do nothin'. Time I could get to the corner he was around it an' out of sight.'
'But you got a good look at him.'
'Him? Yeah, I saw him.'
'You could recognize him again?'
