dirty seagull over a pizza crust near the piles to Lenny’s right. Beyond them, the sky and the river merged in a smear of gray.
Lenny heard a jubilant commotion of bells, whistles, and contestant screeches from the television. They seemed to jangle off the corrugated walls of the hut. Somebody on the program had apparently won something.
“Aw crap, Len,” Boch said. “You made us miss the answer.”
“Sorry.” Lenny gave the coil heater beside Tommy’s chair a longing glance. “It all right if I come in?”
“Sure,
He sat. Springs creaked, groaned, and poked into his bottom. The armrest felt as if it had absorbed a large quantity of used motor oil at some point in its long life. Still, the warmth from the heater had quickly taken the chill out of his bones, and he couldn’t help but be appreciative.
“How’s the son?” Boch said, rotating his swivel chair toward Lenny.
“He took the purple streaks out of his hair last week, started wearing what they call dreadlocks instead. Like those guys in Jamaica.” Lenny spread his hands haplessly. “Gets straight As in school, though, so what can I say?”
Boch grunted his commiseration, smoothed his palm over his brilliantined hair. “My oldest daughter, Theresa, she’s pregnant with her second. Husband’s a slacker,
Lenny leaned down and wriggled his fingers in front of the heater.
“Kids,” he said, shaking his head.
“Kids,” Boch repeated. He sighed. “What can I do for you, Len? ’Cause if this is about another rush job for UpLink, you’re outta luck. The Port Authority’s been wrapping the red tape around my balls since the bombing…”
“Nothing like that.” Lenny gave him a significant glance and tipped his head toward the other man in the Quonset, who was still watching the game show.
Boch nodded. “Joe,” he said.
The guy wrenched his eyes from the tube. “Yeah?”
“Get out there and check on that shipment from Korea,” Boch said, pointing out his window at the dock. “Remind the boys I want it at the warehouse before they knock off for the day.”
“Sure,” Joe said.
“And Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“Then go get us some coffees.”
“Sure.”
Joe buttoned his mackinaw and left.
Boch waited until he was out of earshot and turned back to Lenny.
“So,” he said. “Talk.”
“Friend of mine in Customs tells me an outfit called Mercury Distribution has a lot of merchandise come in at this yard. Received a shipment from Russia maybe a month, month and half back.”
He paused. Boch made an indeterminate sound, gestured for him to continue.
“I need the skinny on Mercury,” Lenny said. “It legit, or what?”
Boch looked at him. “Why you asking?”
“Because my boss asked me to ask,” Lenny said.
A moment passed.
Boch kept looking at him.
“They been saying on the news it might be Russkies did that number in Times Square,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And now you come in with your questions about Mercury.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Boch said.
“Me neither, but I swear I don’t know any more than I’m telling you,” Lenny said. “I’m doing this on faith, Boch.”
There was another silence. Boch meshed his knuckles on his lap, glanced down at them, cracked them.
“Mercury’s run by a hood name of Nick Roma,” he said, finally. “Don’t let the handle fool you, he’s no
Lenny nodded. “What kind of stuff he import?”
“Ain’t my lookout,” Boch said. “I got to stay healthy for the wife’s sake, you know?”
Lenny nodded again, rose from the couch, moved toward the entryway, turned to face Boccigualupo. Though he was still inside, he could feel the cold seeping back into him as he moved farther from the emission of the heater.
“I owe you one,” he said. “And FYI, the answer to that question on the game show was ‘Richard Burton.’ ”
“Thanks, I’ll make sure Joe finds out,” Boch said. He chewed his upper lip. “And you tell your boss to be careful, Len. These are dangerous people he’s messing with.”
Lenny took a step closer to the door, then paused half in and half out of it. On the dock, the seagull had won its competition with the tag team of pigeons and was triumphantly shaking the pizza crust in its beak. The sky seemed a little grayer than it did before.
“I’ll tell him,” he said.
Gordian buzzed Nimec in his office at three P.M.
“Good news,” he said. “I just heard from our man Reisenberg.”
Nimec’s fingers tightened around the receiver.
“He’s got the material?”
“Scads of it. Or so he says,” Gordian said. “You want me to have him FedEx it to us?”
Nimec considered that a moment. FedEx was normally reliable, but even they had been known to misplace the occasional package — and this was one shipment that couldn’t afford to go awry. Nimec didn’t know where Lenny had gotten the information from, but he knew someone would be in trouble if word got out that he or she was leaking information like this. Besides, he thought, if he was going to have another sleepless night, he might as well spend it packing his travel bag.
“No,” he said. “I think I’d better fly into New York tomorrow morning.”
There was a brief silence before Gordian commented.
“Something tells me you’ve been wearing out your carpet again, Pete,” he said.
Nimec stopped pacing.
“Goes to show how little you know about your employees,” he said.
Gordian grinned, but sobered quickly. “Is your team ready to go, Pete?”
“Always,” Nimec said. “On a moment’s notice.”
“Good,” Gordian said. “Because a moment may be all we get.”
Nimec nodded. “I’ll put ’em on alert,” he said. “And then I think I’ll go pack.”
Pressing the button on his phone, he disconnected from Gordian and then punched in the first phone number.
TWENTY-SIX
As legend goes, when Alexander the Great was presented with the riddle of undoing the Gordian knot, he
