We know Dani's got a gun. Say he pops Yuri and takes off. We wouldn't even know who to look for, just a Russian guy with a jacket that don't fit him too good. He's another guy with no last name. Must be a friend of yours, huh?"
"I think Yuri trusts him."
"He's probably family. Who else you gonna trust like that?"
"Anyway, it's not a million."
"Eight hundred thousand. You gonna make me a liar for a lousy two hundred thousand?"
"And almost a third of it's counterfeit."
"You're right, it's hardly worth stealing. We're lucky if these two jokers we're meeting are willing to haul it away. If not it goes in the basement, save it for the next Boy Scout paper drive. You want to do me a favor? When you're up there with a suitcase in each hand, you want to ask our friends a question?"
"What?"
"Ask 'em how the hell they picked me, will you? Because it's still driving me nuts."
"Oh," I said. "I think I know."
"Seriously?"
"Uh-huh. My first thought was that he was in the dope business on some level or other."
"Makes sense, but—"
"But he's not, I'm almost certain, because I had somebody run a check and he hasn't got a criminal record."
"Neither have I."
"You're an exception."
"That's true. How about Yuri?"
"Several arrests in the Soviet Union, no serious jail time. One bust here for receiving stolen goods but the charges were dropped."
"But nothing involving narcotics."
"No."
"All right, Callander's got a clean slate. So he's not in the dope business, so—"
"The DEA was trying to make a case against you a while ago."
"Yeah, but it didn't get anywheres."
"I was talking to Yuri before. He said he backed out of a deal last year because he sensed that some agency was trying to trap him with a sting. He had the sense it was federal."
He turned to look at me, then forced his eyes front and swung out to pass a car. "Jesus Christ," he said.
"This a new national law-enforcement policy? They can't make a case against us so they kill our wives and daughters?"
"I think Callander worked for the DEA," I said. "Probably not for very long, and almost certainly not as an accredited agent. Maybe they used him once or twice as a confidential informant, maybe he was strictly office help. He wouldn't have gone very far and he wouldn't have lasted very long."
"Why not?"
"Because he's crazy. He probably got into it because of a low-grade obsession about dope dealers.
That's an asset in that line of work but not when it's out of proportion. Look, I'm just going on a hunch.
There was something he said on the phone when I told him I was Yuri's partner. It was as if he was starting to say that explained why they hadn't been able to rope Yuri in."
"Jesus."
"It's something I can find out tomorrow or the next day, if I can get a hook into the DEA and see if his name rings a bell with them. Or take an unauthorized dip into their files, if my computer geniuses can swing it."
Kenan looked thoughtful. "He didn't sound like a cop."
"No, he didn't."
"But the guy you described wouldn't really be a cop, would he?"
"More like a buff. But a buff with the Feds, and fixated on the subject of narcotics."
"He knew the wholesale price of a kilo of cocaine," Kenan said,
"but I don't know what that proves.
Your friend TJ probably knows the wholesale price of a key."
"I wouldn't be surprised."
"Lucia's classmates at this girls' school, they probably know it, too.
Kind of world we live in."
"You should have been a doctor."
"Like my old man wanted. No, I don't think so. But maybe I should have been a counterfeiter. You meet a nicer class of people. At least I wouldn't have the fucking DEA on my back."
"Counterfeiting? You'd have the Secret Service."
"Jesus," he said. "If it's not one goddamn thing it's another."
"THAT the laundromat? There on the right?" I said it was, and Kenan pulled up in front but kept the motor running. He said, "How are we on time?" then glanced at his watch and the dashboard clock and answered his own question. "We're fine. Running a little early."
I was watching the laundromat, but TJ emerged instead from a doorway on the other side of the avenue and crossed over, getting in the back. I introduced them, and each claimed to be pleased to meet the other. TJ shrank back against the seat and Kenan put the car in gear.
He said, "They get there at ten-thirty, right? And we're due ten minutes later, and then we work our way up to where they're waiting. Is that about right?"
I said it was.
"So we'll be face-to-face across no-man's-land about ten minutes of eleven, is that about how you figure
it?"
"Something like that."
"And how long to make the trade and get out? Half an hour?"
"Probably a lot less than that, if nothing goes wrong. If the shit hits the fan, well, it's another story."
"Yeah, so let's hope it doesn't. I was just wondering about getting back out again, but I guess they don't lock the gates until midnight."
"Lock the gates?"
"Yeah, I woulda guessed it'd be earlier, but I guess not or you would have picked someplace else."
"Jesus," I said.
"What's the matter?"
"I never even thought of that," I said. "Why didn't you say something earlier?"
"Then what would you do, call him back?"
"No, I guess not. It never occurred to me that they might lock the gates. Don't cemeteries stay open all night? Why would you have to lock them up?"
"To keep people out."
"Because everybody's dying to get in? Jesus, I must have heard that one in the fourth grade. 'Why do they have a fence around the cemetery?' "
"I guess they get vandals," Kenan said. "Kids who tip over the gravestones, take a shit in the floral urns."
"You think the kids can't climb fences?"
"Hey, man," he said. "I'm not setting the policy here. It's up to me, all the graveyards in town'll be open admission. How's that?"
"I just hope I didn't screw up. If they get there and the gates are locked—"
"Yeah? What are they gonna do, sell her to white slave traders in Argentina? They'll climb the fence, same as we'll do. Matter of fact, they probably don't lock it before midnight. People might want to go after work, pay a late call on the dear departed."
"At eleven o'clock?"
He shrugged. "People work late. They got office jobs in Manhattan, stop for a couple of drinks after work, they have dinner, then they go to wait half an hour for the subway because they're like some people I know, they're too cheap to take a cab—"
"Jesus," I said.
"— and it's late by the time they get back to Brooklyn and they say, 'Hey, I think I'll go over to Green-Wood, see if I can find where Uncle Vic is planted, I never liked him, I think I'll go piss on his grave.'
"
"You nervous, Kenan?"
"Yeah, I'm nervous. What do you fucking think? You're the one's gotta walk up to a couple of stone killers armed with nothing but money.
You must be starting to sweat."
"Maybe a little bit. Slow down, that's the entrance coming up. I think it's open."
"Yeah, it looks like it. You know, even if they're supposed to lock up, they probably don't get around to it."
"Maybe not. Let's drive once around the entire cemetery, all right?
And then we'll find a place to park near our entrance."
We circled the cemetery in silence. There was no traffic to speak of, and there was a stillness to the night, as if the deep silence within the cemetery fence could reach out and suppress all sound in the vicinity.
When we were just about back where we'd started TJ said, "We goin' in a cemetery?"
Kenan turned aside to hide a grin. I said, "You can stay in the car if you'd rather."
"What for?"
"If you'd be more comfortable."
"Man," he said, "I ain't scared of no dead people. That what you think? That I scared?"
"My mistake."
"Your mistake is right, Dwight. Dead folks don't bother me."