“He says, ‘Fuckin’ caviar.’”
Here Roland snorted a laugh and said, “What is this shit? What does this have to do with Tomasian? Caviar?” He laughed again.
Karp noted that Frangi was not laughing, and seemed unduly nervous. Karp said, holding up his hand in a mollifying gesture, “Listen and learn, Roland. It’s a long story. Go ahead, Goom.”
Guma continued, “So I go, ‘Caviar?’ And he says, yeah, this guy’s been around the Domino and Ciro’s, where Carl and Lou used to hang, looking for somebody to take something off. It’s common. Like you want to buy stocks, you go down to Wall Street, hang around Merrill Lynch, somebody’ll come over, sell you some IBM.
“So this guy says he knows they’re shipping some prime caviar in by air freight, knows the flight and the freight terminal, and he wants a piece of it. He says this’ll be a continuing thing: the shit comes in every month, the boys’ll lighten the shipment, and they’ll get paid. He says he’ll give them thirty large.”
He paused, and Karp looked at V.T., as perhaps the only person at the table who could quote from his head prices for caviar in bulk. “Does that sound right?” Karp asked.
“How much was involved?” V.T. asked.
“He didn’t say, but he did say this guy needed two guys to lift the crate, so figure, what, two hundred, two hundred-fifty pounds?”
V.T. looked doubtful and said, “If it was actually beluga caviar, the thief isn’t making much. That’d be close to the wholesale price.”
Guma said, “Yeah, well, Carl and Lou probably weren’t that much into caviar. They figured it was a nice, safe sideline. It wasn’t like this guy they were boosting it for was a wise guy or anything, somebody who could tell somebody and it would get back to Joey. And thirty large, regular. They figured it was worth the risk.”
“Who was the guy if it wasn’t a wise guy?” asked Marlene.
Guma smiled broadly, showing a remarkable collection of mismatched yellow teeth. “Ah, yeah. It was a Turk, as it happens. Said his name was Takmad. Ran a restaurant, he said, which was why he wanted caviar. He said.”
“So they lift the crate,” said Karp. “What happened then?”
“That’s where Jimmy got a little vague. Lifting it-no problem. They’re so wired out by Kennedy, the clerks, the guards, it’s like going to a fuckin’ K Mart for them. So they deliver it. So I say to Jimmy, ‘So, you find out they went into business for themselves, you ratted them out to Joey.’
“He got a little testy there. He don’t rat, he says. So who, then? I ask him. Jimmy don’t know, but somebody dropped a dime the day after the boys delivered the box. Not only the caviar, but the snitch tells Joey they’d been doing it for months.”
Karp said, “Great. Hold that thought for a minute. The next act is the art business, starring V.T. and Marlene.”
Marlene summarized the interview with Sarkis Kerbussyan and the story of the search for the Gregory Mask. V.T. added what he had learned from his investigation into the financial life of the various Turks and Armenians involved in the case.
“Summing up,” he concluded, “Kerbussyan has been pursuing liquidity to an unusual degree for the past nine months. He’s sold some property he should have hung on to, and he hasn’t bought anything else, not in real estate anyway. So, a lot of cash floating around. Some pretty big wire transfers to Switzerland. Also he’s received very substantial inflows of cash from wealthy Armenians in the U.S. and overseas. In the neighborhood of thirty million. This is since mid-February.
“On the Turks, Ahmet Djelal has a modest bank account, but he spends like a pimp. Aziz Nassif, the cousin, bought himself a nice location for his restaurant, and nobody knows where he got the cash. Nobody buys real estate in New York for actual folding money. The seller recalled it clearly.
“Mehmet Ersoy had, as we know, a nice wad in a box when he died. What we didn’t know until a day or so ago is that in the past year he has sent a total of”-here V.T. paused to check through some sheets of scribbled-on paper-“a total of, $1,835,000 to the account of his brother, Altemur Ersoy, at Esbank, Istanbul.
“Another interesting thing. NYPD art fraud has been working with Interpol on a series of fake scams run across Europe in the last two years, centered on Rome and London. The period of these scams fits almost exactly with the periods that Mehmet Ersoy was stationed in those two cities.”
He paused. “Now to the letters Ersoy also had in his box. They’re in a kind of crude code. Family bullshit, but not really. ‘I’m sending you a nice present. I hope Fatima will like it.’ ‘Thanks for your recent gift.’ Always uses the same locutions, either a ‘special present’ or a ‘very fine present, just like the special present.’ Genuine art and forgeries? It makes a nice story. In any case, the Ersoys are apparently generous people. There are presents and thank-yous mentioned in every letter.
“Okay, late February, early March, there’s repeated mention of a ‘special present’ coming. Also, old Altemur seems pretty worried. Talks about ‘our unpleasant relations’ trying to look in his windows. I think the cops were starting to pinch at him. Probably why they didn’t use the phone. ‘This will be my last present for a time,’ he says on February 22. ‘I will send it air express on March 10.’”
“The Viacchenzas pulled their heist when, Ray?” Karp asked.
“March 11.” Everyone was silent, thinking about that for a while.
“Did he say what the presents were going to be, or just ‘presents’?” Marlene asked.
V.T. smiled. “Yes, interesting question. Not normally. It just indicates with a name-a present from so-and-so. Obviously they’d worked the code out beforehand. But for this last one he did. He said, ‘I’m sending you a big case of your favorite caviar.’”
Vinnie was taken to change his clothes and was then returned to his cell, a ten-foot box designed to house two prisoners in reasonable discomfort, but which now held six. He lay down on the lower bunk. He heaped his blankets on the upper part of his body, including his head, and began to groan and writhe, shaking the three-tiered structure. While he did this, he used the knife to peel strips of thick crusted paint off the wall opposite his face, until he had a crumbly little mound about the size of an ice-cream scoop. He placed the paint chips in his mouth, deep in his cheek, like the tobacco cud of a ball player. Then he stuck the blade inside his mouth and made a long slit on the inside of his cheek. It didn’t hurt much; the knife was extremely sharp.
His groans and cries increased in volume. He rolled out of the bunk and, after staggering a few steps, collapsed on his side in a fetal position. A trickle of blood oozed out of his mouth. His roomies began to raise an alarm, yelling for the guards, delighted with this opportunity of getting rid of a man who was possibly the least desirable cell mate in the Tombs.
A guard arrived, checked out the problem, went back to a wall phone, and called for Walker. That was the informal policy: when Vinnie moved, Walker moved him, and it was obvious that something was seriously wrong with the big son of a bitch. He was bleeding from the mouth, and his face was flushed and covered with sweat.
Walker arrived, entered the cell, and heaved Vinnie to his feet. Vinnie immediately began to cough spasmodically; then he vomited a crimson lumpy mass all over the front of his own jumpsuit, the floor, and the tips of Walker’s shoes.
Walker jumped back, his face expressing both distaste and concern. Ulcers are as common among criminals as they are in the advertising business. Most experienced jail guards have seen the typical bloody, granular vomit of a perforated ulcer, and many have learned how fast a victim can bleed to death through one. Walker thought of the investigations, of the paperwork he would have to do if Vinnie punched out on his shift.
“Vinnie! Can you walk? Should I get a trolley?” he asked nervously.
“I can walk,” said Vinnie in a thin, cracked voice.
So he could, barely. The other guard locked up the cell, and Walker half carried his charge down the barred corridors toward the jail infirmary.