6
Ray Genaloni put the phone's receiver down gently. 'Excuse me, but isn't this supposed to be a secure line?' He did not raise his voice. He might have been asking about the weather. He pointed at the flashing red diode on the little electronic tap-detector connected to the telephone's base. 'That doesn't look particularly
Luigi Sampson, his enforcer, as well as the Vice President in charge of Security for Genaloni Industries — the more or less legal side of the operation — shrugged. 'The feds. They got stuff we can't get commercially.'
Genaloni ground his teeth together. He mentally counted, slowly.
One… two… three…
He had been working to control his temper for most of his forty years, and he was a little better at it than he used to be.
… four… five… six…
Twenty years ago, when Little Frankie Dobbs had given him a similar shrug for something that had pissed Ray off, he had beaten Little Frankie's head in with a Louisville Slugger. Killed the idiot, ruined a nine-hundred-dollar suit with blood spatter, and had to beg his father for forgiveness because Little Frankie was almost a made guy and the son of an old friend besides.
… seven… eight… nine… ten.
'All right,' Ray said, feeling a little more in control, even if his anger was still hot and churning in his belly. As long as it didn't show, that was the thing. He had come a long way since Little Frankie. He wasn't going to fly off the handle and start doing stupid stuff, not now. He had a degree in business from Harvard. He was the CEO of a major company, not to mention head of the Family and all
He looked at Sampson, who sat on the couch across the desk from him. 'All right, Lou. Who is behind this?' He waved at the phone.
'It's coming out of the FBI's Net Force,' Sampson said.
Genaloni adjusted the Windsor knot on his two-hundred-dollar silk tie. Calm. That was the way. Calm. 'Net Force? That's computer stuff. We aren't into that in any major way.'
Sampson shook his head. 'Somebody knocked off their head guy in D.C. last week. They're looking at us for it.'
'Did we do it and somebody forgot to tell me?'
'We didn't do it, Boss.'
'Then why, pray tell, are they looking at us for it?'
'Somebody wants them to think it's us. Whoever cooled the FBI guy used the same MO as our Ice Team.'
'Why would somebody want the feds to think we killed one of them? Never mind, I know the answer to that. So the question is,
Genaloni leaned back in the massage chair, a four-thousand-buck unit full of motors and top-of-the-line electronics under a carefully distressed brown leather cover. The chair hummed and sensors measured and weighed and adjusted springs and cushions to support the small of his back. He'd injured his back on a dare when he'd been fourteen, jumping sixty feet off a dock into the East River. That had been stupid two times: one, for the jump; two, for the polluted water. He was lucky he hadn't gotten hepatitis while he'd been thrashing around in that crappy water, almost drowning from the pain. And his back had been giving him trouble on and off ever since.
'I don't know, Ray. We've got our people looking, but no leads yet.'
'All right. Keep at it. Find out who is trying to give us grief. Let me know as soon as you get it. And since I can't trust my own phones, get a message to the Selkie. Put him on standby.'
Sampson said, 'We can handle this in-house, Ray. I got people.'
'Humor me, Lou. You know, me being the boss and all?'
Sampson nodded. 'Right.'
After Sampson had left, Ray touched a control on the chair and allowed the motors to rumble and massage his aching back. He didn't need this kind of problem. The legit enterprises now brought in more money than the graybiz. There were some corporate takeovers and a couple of merger possibilities in the works, and he did not want the feds breathing down his neck while those were in flux. Whoever was doing this had made a mistake, a bad mistake. One more generation and his family would be respectable, as legitimate as any other family whose fortunes had begun with bandit ancestors somewhere back in history. His grandkids would rub shoulders with Kennedys, Rockefellers, Mitsubishis — no hint of scandal or illegality. The ends justified the means. Respectability was worth it, even if you had to kill a bunch of people standing between you and it to get there.
Mikhayl Ruzhyo stood on a street corner in Chinatown, looking at a storefront with live white ducks penned in the window. It was as interesting as anything he'd seen in this city, the ducks. He had ridden on the famous cable cars, and they were, in his opinion, much overrated. He had viewed the Colt Tower in the distance. Gone to Fisherman's Wharf and eaten fried shrimp. He had seen the famous bar where women with a fondness for filling their breasts with bathtub sealer had danced naked. Too, he had watched many homosexual couples walk past on the streets, holding hands and doing things that would have gotten them arrested back home.
And now he watched ducks, destined to be somebody's dinner, waddle back and forth in the window of a Chinese grocery. Such an exciting life.
He smiled to himself. He was no Country Ivan, come to a big city for the first time. He was a man of the world. He had spent time in Moscow, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, New York, Washington, D.C. But none of those places were home. Where he wished more than anything to be was at his small farm on the outskirts of Grozny. What he wanted to do was arise at dawn, go outside on a frigid winter morning with hoar frost thick on the ground and split wood for the stove, using his muscles like a man should. He wanted to be feeding the goats and chickens and geese, milking the cow, then warming his hands by the fire as Anna fried eggs in fragrant goose grease for his breakfast…
He turned away from the placid fowls, which knew not what fate awaited them. Anna was five years gone, taken by the cancer that had eaten her life all too quickly. At least she had not died in pain. He'd had enough contacts to provide her with medicine for that. But no cure had been possible, even with the best doctors in the country on call. Plekhanov had seen to the doctors. Ruzhyo would always be in the Russian's debt for his help during Anna's final days.
What he wanted was impossible. The farm was still there, his brother working it, but Anna was not, and so it meant nothing to him anymore. Nothing.
He started to walk, paying only as much attention as needed to potential threats as the Chinese locals and tourists moved past him, ogling the displays in various shops. Here a place where imported brass was peddled, there a store specializing in stereo music players and small computers, over there a place that sold shoes.
When Anna died, nothing had been left to him. After a dark, bleak time he could hardly remember, Plekhanov had reminded him of his old desire to see his country prosper. And Plekhanov had offered him a way to help achieve that, by doing what he already knew how to do best:
No, he could not go back to the life he had lived before. Never again.
The communications device Plekhanov had provided him buzzed on his belt. Ruzhyo looked around, sharpening his perceptions, alert for anybody taking notice of him. If he was being watched, he could not detect it. There was no reason for anybody in this city to watch him, even to know he existed, but one did not survive in this business for very long by being less than careful. Plekhanov wished for him to survive, so he did what was needed to do so.
He pulled the com unit from his belt. Only three people should have this number: Plekhanov, Winters the
