Sweeney on the Rocks Read online

  And now? All his concern about life in Montana, about the hot air of his various deceits…phssst. It’s gone, burned away by the image of Aggie, lingering in his eye like a flashbulb echo. Her jaw wrenched half-open under the tape. Maybe a racquetball stuffed in there. Racquetballs work good.

  But after the first rush of adrenaline, as implacable and inarguable as fluid pushed from a hypodermic, after this high tide pulls back, he’s left only with the effluvial muck of his despair.

  Posture all you want, Sweeney. This guy’s got you over a barrel. Breetvah. How do you strike back against a ghost? How do you maneuver here, what’s your play?

  Assuming you’re willing to sacrifice Montana—which he is, okay? move on—and even in the context of that grand gesture, what carrot do you have to bargain with? What stick could you use to coerce?

  He’s got nothing. As of this instant, nothing but his own tit in the wringer.

  From what he knows about the Russians? They’re going to see no percentage in keeping Aggie alive. They’re predictable in their ferocity, their pragmatic heartlessness. If he ever gets to the point where he can actually trade the stones for Aggie? It’ll be like cashing in for a corpse.

  Maybe he goes to the cops. He considers this for a moment…for about as long as it takes him not to be a moron. It would go against every instinct. And anyway, from what he’s seen, cops don’t know how to take care of a kidnapping. They always screw up the end game.

  Despair, fatigue, melancholy. Eskimos have ten thousand kinds of snow, Sweeney has sadness. And what’s this now? A despair that arises from impotence and outrage, tempered by a soupcon of cynical calculation. There’s always a move you can make. Somewhere.

  He flips at the phone. Stares at Aggie’s photo. Again, and again. Flip, flip. From this time forth my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.

  Big words, Sweeney. Big words.

  Catering to the disaffected rich, turns out, is one of Montana’s principal industries. Wheat, cattle, tourism, sure, you bet. But dig the coin generated by second homes, the thousands of log mansions tucked away in darling little stands of aspens. Remington rip-offs and trout ponds out back. Bierstadt through each window and a nice wrap-around porch.

  God bless the faceless out-of-staters. How they support an entire subculture of antler chandelier artisans and fireplace masons, snow plowers and gardeners. Not to mention, a good portion of these homes—empty nine, ten months out of the year—the owners aren’t as wealthy as they’d like you to think. They sublet, thus making their private paradises available for a rate. They rely on property management firms to take care of the details.

  Take this place on Jack Creek, for instance. Rented sight unseen with a Visa card in the name of an infant dead these last twelve years. Fed-ex the keys, see you next week. Ten miles south of Rockjaw, it’s forty acres backed up against National Forest. End of the road, with a view. Three stories. Front yard is asphalt driveway. Backyard is all flagstone and hot tub. By rumor, the owners are third generation Pfizers. Or maybe Waltons. Or Krogers.

  Marble countertop and flagstone floors in the kitchen. An eight burner stove with an exhaust hood that’ll suck the gravel right off your palm. Down a short hallway, past framed photos of soft white men on yachts (victims of too much too early, beached now in middle age, simmering in the juices of myopic self-interest), a half dozen bedrooms. And down a spiral staircase (constructed from kiln-dried teak shipped up from Costa Rica), a wet bar and liquor cabinet, snooker table and…Jesus, is that a bocci ball court? Anyway, the middle of the room, two log pillars. Old growth white pine, thick as Ionic columns.

  With loops of heavy rope stretched around their bases. And handcuffed to the ropes, a pair of women, legs outstretched.

  Aggie. Unconscious, or nearly so. Bruised at the eyes and blistered at the mouth, lips cracking. Duct tape gum still visible on her cheeks.

  And Elizabeth. Eyes swollen from weeping, sure, but otherwise unharmed. Cramped, stretched out in an awkward parody of a yoga pose, arms twisted back. She straightens her legs, working to nudge her mother, to touch her with her toes. “Mom?” she whispers, stretching out another hard-earned inch, squirming. “Mommy?” Then louder, frustrated: “Mom!”

  Which awakens the sound she’s been dreading, the noise that will (assuming she makes it out of this alive) jerk her awake at all our hours for months to come. The slow, muted scuff of sneakers descending the stairs. Then a voice. Lighthearted, conversational: “Elizabeth? What did I say about talking?”

  She closes her eyes. Senses, despite herself, the change in light, gray to black, as his shadow falls over her.

  She tilts her head further away, fighting against tears, against giving him any sort of satisfaction.

  Eddie and Sweeney sat in a rental car, a little compact Honda, across from the NYU hospital on First Avenue. Hazard lights on and windows cracked for their smokes, air conditioner running full blast. Half an hour now they’d been watching taxis and Lincoln town cars cycle through the hospital’s courtesy lane.

  Eddie, behind the wheel, was coked-up and nervous. Twiiitchee. The last six months he’d been running his own distribution thing up in White Plains. Far enough away he wasn’t edging in on the Gambinos but close enough he could make supply runs on the weekends. Good money, good hours, good benefits. Downside? An Achilles heel for his own product. Eddie and self-control? Forget about it.

  Eddie ground his teeth, danced his fingers around the dash like Chopin. “I’m just saying, they shoulda given us the full size sedan. Did you see that chick at the counter? Looking down her nose. I told her I wanted a full sized sedan. They give us this little crackerbox piece of shit. I find out where she lives? Forget about it.”

  “Eaaasy, cousin.”

  “Fuck easy.” Eddie reached for another beer. Cracked it and slid it into a foam Yankees sleeve. His idea of a stakeout: eight ball and a twelve pack of Coors. “Easy don’t get you rich, it don’t get you laid, it don’t get you respect.”

  “Will you quit with the dash at least? Jesus.”

  Eddie glanced at his own fingers. “Yeah, shit. Sorry.”

  Sweeney had just lately been preoccupied with the notion of empathy. The equation of it. Intelligence plus self awareness divided by a certain kind of guilt equals empathy. Sweeney had it in spades. A curse in this business. Cousin Eddie? With Eddie it came and went. More often than not, halfway through a strong arm gig (some guy bleeding on the floor) Sweeney would glance up at Eddie and see how he was off someplace else, as cold and distant as a housecat.

  Eddie said, “Bytchkov’s gal gets off her shift at 6:30. He said Friday nights she goes out to eat. Her and her two nursing pals. We follow behind, catch her in an alley, go for her purse. She fights. Boom, it’s done. Easy peasy.”

  This whole thing’s been giving Sweeney indigestion. One thing to whack a guy that deserves it, to respond to violence with violence. But this woman? Her only sin was bad taste in boyfriends.

  “You were born in this hospital,” Eddie said. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “We paid a visit. I was like four years old? We come in here, I seen this little red-faced turnip of a kid all swaddled up. Crying. Jesus you could cry. Even then you couldn’t stop crying. I thought, if that’s what babies are, I ain’t never having one. My bachelorhood comes thanks to you, Cosmo.”

  “Four years old.”

  “Your old man gave me this bubble gum cigar. Remember those? Big pink Cohiba. I bit the end off, spit it out. They all thought that was the funniest goddamn thing.”

  “Well.”

  Eddie’s mention of Sweeney’s old man? Payback, maybe, for not collaborating on Eddie’s rental car umbrage.

  “How is your dad, by the way.”

  “I hear he’s all right.”

  “You two still ain’t talking?” Eddie could fake sympathy the way Sweeney could play the piano. And Sweeney couldn’t play the fucking piano.

  Sweeney changed
the subject. “I been thinking about Breetvah.”

  “Oh?”

  “Bytchkov pays him up the ladder?”

  “If the guy exists.”

  “But Bytchkov’s paying up to somebody.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  “So he exists.”

  “My opinion? Yeah. But, something else is going on, too. Maybe he’s a midget. Short guys, you know, they don’t command no respect. So he hides out. Maybe he’s a woman, right? A vampire, can’t come out during the day. Whatever. But Bytchkov, whenever he talks about Breetvah? He’s terrified, man. Think about that for a second. Bytchkov. Terrified.”

  “We go through with these kidnappings, Bytchkov’s not letting those kids go.”

  Eddie found a cigarette. Tapped it on its filter. “No.”

  “So we take out his girlfriend, then we, what, we murder three kids?”

  “Well, not personally.”

  “Jesus, Eddie. I mean, Jesus…”

  Eddie sat up in his seat. “That’s her.”

  The snapshot from Bytchkov had Helena Glinka as late twenties. A thin, pretty smile and red hair going prematurely grey. It was hard to picture a woman even so moderately attractive pairing up with a schlub like Bytchkov. But seeing the woman in the flesh, it made more sense. Narrow shoulders, heavy breasts, big hips. Everything went progressively thicker to her shins. Mismatched hospital scrubs, heavy handbag, and a weak-ankled limp. She stood on the corner with two other nurses, all of them exhausted but trying for smiles. The end of their shifts.

  Sweeney’s first thought: Poor woman. His second? A freeze-frame image of himself putting a bullet through her terrified face. He considered his own inward recoil, the flinch and start, and how these two reactions would proceed to haunt him. He glanced at Eddie, hoping for commiseration; instead, he found only calculation.

  Sweeney said quickly, like pulling off a band aid, “Count me out.”

  “What?”

  “Can’t do it. Count me out.”

  Eddie smirked. Sweeney and cold feet? They weren’t strangers. “In for a penny, in for a pound, cousin.”

  “Look at her. Seriously. Look at her.”

  “What I got going on with Bytchkov, you need to know, this is only the first move. We do this right, there’s no stopping us. Me and you.” Eddie put his hand on Sweeney’s arm. “Me and you.”

  “But we got to kill that woman.”

  “First step.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  Eddie took a breath, priming the pump on his next round of arguments. Sweeney had a weakness with regard to Eddie’s cajoling. He knew this about himself. Safest play would be to just leave.

  Sweeney stepped out onto the sidewalk. Stood there, considering his history with Eddie, their future. The dilemma of alienating a Russian psychopath. He put his head back into the car. “Best I can do, Eddie? I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll do that for you.”

  And as ugly as it is to admit, Sweeney might have kept that promise, allowed the woman, those children, to be murdered for the benefit of Eddie’s bank account, allowed his own secondhand guilt to be swept under his Freudian carpet…had he not himself been collared eight days later.

  ~

  Check out Sweeney in the hotel room mirror, modeling his new suit. Lookin good, man. Off-the-rack Armani, dark blue. Work that summer wool. His pants hemmed quick, greased by an extra fifty. Thank you, dead wop with cash in a briefcase. He lifts his chin, knotting a Hermes tie the color of tarnished silver. Double Windsor, bien sur. Dimpling it with that certain kind of je ne sais kwah. Funny how it all comes back to you.

  Tina had said, “Big spender.”

  “However this goes down, money’s the least of my problems.”

  He’s hoping now that the fancy threads will distract from the smears of sleepless lampblack under his eyes. The tremble in his hands. Eight in the morning, he’s already running on fumes.

  Turning in the mirror—slender Sweeney in a decent suit—he likes it. The Montana tan speaks of ruddy health and the weight in his shoulders reads like gym time. The dress shirt’s half an inch smaller at the collar than what he used to buy. And the jacket has a nice pleat in the back. Good for covering up some kind of pistol.

  For instance: From the Fed-Ex box he’d shipped to himself from Montana, unzipped beside the TV, the dead wop’s .357.

  He spins the cylinder. Holds it up to the mirror.

  The stainless steel matches his tie. Nice.

  He tucks it under his belt in the small of his back. Almost unnoticeable. He pulls his belt a notch too tight. Jumps up and down a few times. The gun stays put.

  Okay. Before heading out the door, he calls Marilyn. Six thirty in Montana, it’s understandable that her phone would be off. He says to her voicemail. “Call me. It’s an emergency.”

  Out in the hall, he knocks on Tina’s door. “Banks open in half an hour.” Above all else, he needs to hide his anxiety from Tina. Right now, all the leverage is his. She needs him more than he needs her. But if that changes, if she understands his dilemma, no way he’s getting his hands on those stones.

  Meanwhile, and until he gets the next call from Breetvah, he’s got some room to maneuver. Not much, but some.

  And after he gets the call, after he gets his marching orders? Maybe he’ll be able to stonewall the guy. (Keep your head, Sweeney. Play it smart.) He’ll do the predictable bluff and bluster: “Harm one hair on her head. Let me talk to her.” Yadayadayada. And if he can elbow out a few extra hours, maybe something will occur to him. Some new angle. Please let something occur to him.

  Sweeney knocks again. “Tina?”

  A muffled assent from inside.

  Something in her tone drops a quarter. A rustling, then she has unlatched the door. Leaving it for Sweeney to open.

  “Tina?”

  Her room is a mirrored repeat of his. Cramped floor plan dominated by a queen-sized bed. Wall-mounted flatscreen. Worktable with a phone. But Tina’s room has been overturned by…what. Grief? Anger? Exhilaration? Some tectonic sort of emotion.

  She sits in the chair by the window, ignoring him, chewing on a knuckle.

  “Tina?”

  She looks up.

  She’s been crying. And how. The bedspread, the dresser, the work table, they’re all covered with a garden of crumpled Kleenexes. The empty box sits discarded on the floor, eviscerated. A roll of toilet paper from the bathroom has taken up second-string service. Same clothes as yesterday. “Tina?”

  “Georgie’s gone.”

  “Georgie…”

  “My kid brother. He’s missing. They got him. I know they got him. That’s how come they knu-knu-knew about Muh-Muh-Montana.” Hitches and sobs.

  Old news to Sweeney. Should he have mentioned it? It would have complicated things. And even now, his first thought: Here’s yet another goddamned thing. “Did you tell Georgie you were going to Montana?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t ruh-ruh-member.”

  “Sweetheart,” He sits on the edge of the bed facing her. Takes her clammy hand. “Sweetheart, best thing we can do is we get the rocks. Once we’ve got some leverage, we can make them pay. Whoever did this to you, to Georgie? They’ll pay.”

  Revenge, that’s what he has to offer. A thin soup, of course. But it’s something.

  ~

  When wiseguys start getting some scratch together, first thing they do is imitate their betters. The boss invests in a house in the Hamptons? The capo shops Brentwood. Capo buys an Escalade? His soldier gets a Four Runner. These are gestures that show both loyalty and admiration.

  Which is why, when Sweeney got called to an informal sit down with Anthony Acerbi, he had to drive out to Staten Island. To the guy’s home. Which was yeah, an honor and kind of creepy at the same time. Am I walking down into a basement lined with plastic, or what?

  If he ever found the place. The streets all ran together like noodles in a pot. North, south, up, down. Sweeney’d been out to Staten Island maybe fiv
e, six times his entire life. And never up to Todt Hill. I mean, if you’ve got the bank to live up here, why not buy an apartment in Midtown? It don’t make sense.

  Anthony was a Castellano protégé. They practically went to grade school together. So after Castellano moved into the white house, it only took Anthony about six months before he’d found his four bedroom rancher at the bottom of the hill. A swimming pool ringed by lounge chairs and flowers in pots. By the time Castellano got his ticket punched by Fat Sal and them, Anthony had gotten used to the burbs, acquired a taste for the slow life. He stuck it out.

  Sweeney wasn’t obliged toward Anthony Acerbi. Showing up wasn’t required of him in the way that say, if an envelope was missing he’d get a visit. But him and Eddie aspired, right? And with that kind of aspiration, when you get called into a meeting, you go. You kidding me? You go. You got to be there yesterday.

  If he could ever find the place.

  Five left turns later, Sweeney pulled into a likely-looking cul de sac. Parked on the street and walked toward the sound of a lawn mower.

  There was about a half-acre of grass in the backyard, and Anthony was working it over with a push mower. Shirtless in Bermuda shorts and sneakers, the old man still had some meat in his shoulders, even if the belly skin hung loose and the hair on his back had gone gray.

  A pitcher of iced tea had been set out on a glass table. Anthony saw Sweeney and made a gesture. Help yourself.

  So Sweeney sat there drinking lukewarm tea, sole audience as one of the five or six biggest names in the Gambinos wrestled a mower around brick planters.

  Sweeney was overdressed. He took off his tie. Hung his suit jacket off the back of a lawn chair.

  Odd to be sitting there without Eddie. But the invitation had said come alone.

  Anthony finally shut down his mower, mopped his bald head with a towel, limped on skinny, old man legs over toward Sweeney. In the silence, Sweeney could hear the sounds of a barbeque across the way. He stood to shake hands. “Anthony.”

  Sweeney loomed over this old man. Four inches taller, forty years younger, fifty pounds heavier. You’d think, then, that Sweeney would have some advantage. But you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong.