Tower of Babel Read online

  He’d left out a few details, but everything he’d said was true.

  “I’ll call you back.” She hung up.

  Ted let out a long-held breath.

  “Did she go for it?”

  Lester’s face came into focus. Ted pushed away his coffee. It had grown cold and had been bitter to start with. “She’s calling him. We wait. You want a drink? I could use a shot of something.”

  “I might need a pain pill later on. I’d better not start drinking.”

  “I admire your restraint, but I want a jitters killer. What should I get?”

  “You’re not a whiskey drinker,” Lester said.

  His father drank scotch. The smell of it gave him a headache. “I stick to beer. Usually.”

  “These aren’t usual times. Vodka. There’s no sense in wasting good bourbon if you don’t have the taste for it. Vodka’ll get the job done. See if they keep a bottle on ice. It’ll go down a lot easier.”

  The lunch crowd had come and gone. Ted saluted Paulie McGirk in the mirror as he passed. Paulie’s eyes were open, but Ted wasn’t sure there were any functioning nerve cells behind those bloodred orbs.

  Lili’s eyebrows shot up when he asked her for the shot, but she pulled a blue-labeled bottle of Smirnoff out of the ice and poured a hefty slug.

  “You celebrate something?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said and returned to the booth.

  He braced for the burn, but the cold liquid went down like silken ice. A warm glow spread out from his belly, reaching fingers, lips, and cheeks moments later.

  “Oh, shit,” Ted said. “It works.”

  “One billion satisfied customers,” Lester said.

  “You want anything to eat?” Ted asked. He’d been too jittery to think about food before.

  “Like maybe a smoothie?” Lester flashed a metal-crusted grin.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Ted’s cell phone rang. Jill.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  “I don’t feel good about this,” she said.

  “Will he call me?”

  “No. He said he won’t talk on the phone.” She sounded small and frightened.

  Her paranoia must have been contagious—or the Judge already had a strong case of his own. “Okay. Thanks for trying.”

  “But he’ll meet you.”

  That was interesting, but now Ted’s own paranoia fluttered in his chest. All he said was “Ah.”

  “What?” The single word exploded in his ear.

  “Did he mention a place? A time?” Ted sensed a trap. Hired thugs wouldn’t grab him inside the Century Club, but there would be no way to avoid them if they wanted to take him on the street. A neutral location, on the other hand, might mean that Ted could actually trust the old bastard.

  “Keller v. Zuckerman/Scotto LLC. One o’clock tomorrow. He said you’d know what that meant.”

  A complicated case that had dragged through the system for years. A pair of shady lawyers had bought buildings in East New York and converted them to affordable-housing units, using government grants. Once these two sharks filled the apartments with Section 8 tenants, they had leveraged the buildings with loans from banks and private lenders, borrowing more than the properties could have ever drawn at auction. Then the mortgage crisis swept through Brooklyn, and Zuckerman/Scotto LLC stopped paying. For anything.

  Everybody sued, but the courts were swamped, and foreclosures took forever. Misters Zuckerman and Scotto managed to collect three years’ rent from their tenants without paying a dime for taxes, interest, insurance, maintenance, or heating fuel. Zuckerman, despite a vigorous defense by Hasting, Fitzmaurice, and Barson, eventually went to jail and was, no doubt, still there.

  Scotto wasn’t so lucky. On his way home to Staten Island one night, a delivery van sideswiped him on the Verrazano Bridge. When Scotto got out of his car to exchange insurance information with the van driver, two men burst out of the side door, grabbed the lawyer, and boosted him over the rail. Two hundred twenty-eight feet later, he hit the water on an incoming tide. His body was recovered near a pier at the end of Bay Ridge Ave.

  It was Ted’s first real-life lesson in the difference between justice and the law.

  Ted understood the Judge’s code. Lionel Keller, a tenant who had merely wanted his heat turned on, had lived in a Zuckerman/Scotto-owned three-building enclave on Dumont Avenue. HFB LLC had been forced to step down as counsel to the commercial real estate company while pursuing Zuckerman’s criminal appeals. Ted, having been lead counsel to that company, followed the progress of the various suits. Mr. Keller sought to recoup rent after living in his apartment for three years with no heat and intermittent water service. He was represented pro bono by a top-tier law firm that took his case all the way to Albany and the New York State Court of Appeals. Keller lost. Judge Fitzmaurice cast the deciding vote.

  That was Ted’s second lesson.

  He had no idea what had become of the unfortunate Mr. Keller, but the buildings were still there. It had been a rough neighborhood back then and probably still was. There was a good chance that Ted and the Judge would be the only white faces in sight. Loitering Russian mobsters would have nowhere to lurk. It meant that Ted could trust the Judge—possibly.

  All Lester and Ted had to do was stay alive until one o’clock the next day.

  -35-

  They needed both transportation and anonymity. A phone call, a ten-minute wait, and Mohammed pulled up in front of Gallagher’s. Lester and Ted hustled across the sidewalk and jumped into the car.

  “How’s it goin’, boss?” Mohammed said.

  “Your English is really coming along,” Ted said.

  “Not English. American,” Mohammed answered. “Where to?”

  “American,” Ted agreed. “For starters, how about you drive? Random. Anywhere. I want to see if anyone is following us.”

  “Now you’re speaking.”

  “Talking,” Ted said. “Now you’re talking.”

  Lester rolled his eyes.

  “How are you holding up?” Ted asked him.

  “Doin’ just fine for the moment, but I’m going to take one of these pain pills in a while, and then I’m going to want to sleep.”

  Ted kept watch out the rear window as Mohammed made a series of right turns, accelerating and braking in a fashion that earned him more than a few angry salutes from other drivers. He had a knack for squeezing through gaps in traffic. Lester closed his eyes and mumbled to himself. The only time Ted felt his heart stop was when they cut off a Q18 bus as it pulled away from the curb. Mohammed gunned it, only to discover a woman with a baby stroller in the crosswalk on the other side. He swerved and the car bounced over the curb, missing woman, stroller, bus, and the dark-eyed girl selling single roses on the corner.

  “Do you see anyone following us?” Lester asked.

  “No. I think we’re okay,” Ted said.

  “Then you can tell our man up front to go easy on the women and children,” Lester said.

  “And us.”

  “For a moment there, I forgot that I was in pain.”

  “Mohammed. Take us to Ridgewood.”

  “I’m down with Ridgewood,” Mohammed said. “You got an address?”

  “Not yet,” Ted said. “Head down Forest Avenue until I tell you different.”

  “Where we going?” Lester asked.

  “We need a place to hole up for the night,” Ted said. “McKenzie Zielinski. The protest lady. No one will connect us, so they won’t be looking for us there. She’s got friends. I’m hoping they can hide us.”

  “You got a number for her?”

  “No.”

  “You took her to lunch and couldn’t get a phone number?” Lester formed a thumb and forefinger into an L.

  “It was a business lunch,” Te
d said.

  “How about an address?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Good to see you’ve got this all planned out.”

  “Her last name is Zielinski. How many can there be in Ridgewood?”

  “In Ridgewood? Legions?”

  Quick Fix Repair was located in a storefront on Fresh Pond Road, next door to a deli that advertised stuffed cabbage—saturday only in large block letters across the front window.

  Ted told Lester to wait in the car with Mohammed. Lester had put the sunglasses back on, but they hid only the bruises around his eyes. He looked like one step up from roadkill.

  A muted buzzer went off as Ted pushed open the door to a shallow waiting room. A counter separated the client space from the work and storage area. Shelves held desktop PCs, laptops, a few antique lamps, and an assortment of ancient power tools. Everything was labeled with customer information and a dollar amount, presumably the cost of the repair. One hundred twenty-five dollars seemed a fair price for getting an HP reliably streaming Game of Thrones again, but Ted doubted that anyone was coming to pay the eighty-dollar ransom on a variable drill unless they had some deep emotional attachment to it.

  “Be right there,” a voice called from behind a curtained doorway.

  A sign over the counter read cracked screens fixed while you wait—all cell phone repairs must be paid for in advance. free estimate.

  “No rush,” Ted said. There were two plastic chairs against the wall. He took one and looked out the window. Mohammed’s car was idling in front of a fire hydrant across the street. Lester was slouched in the back.

  The curtain was swept away, and a man in his midfifties in a short-sleeved white shirt and rimless spectacles emerged from the back room. He had the tall, gaunt frame of Abraham Lincoln and a protruding Adam’s apple as sharp as an ax blade. His shirt pocket held a plastic protector bursting with plastic pens, tiny screwdrivers, and a metal flashlight the size of a cigarette.

  “How can I help you?” he said.

  “I’m looking for a Mr. Zielinski,” Ted said, though he was sure that he was looking at him.

  “I’m Peter Zielinski.” He was curious, not threatened. A man with a clear conscience.

  “I’m a friend of McKenzie’s. Ted Molloy.”

  If he recognized Ted’s name, he gave no sign. “Is she in jail again?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “’Cause you look like a lawyer. And it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “I need to get in touch with her. Can you get her a message?”

  “She’s not answering her phone?” His voice rose in pitch. Ted was scaring him.

  “I haven’t tried her phone for the very simple reason that I don’t have her number.”

  Now Ted had confused him. “I thought you said—”

  “We met last week. I’m old school, I guess. I don’t ask for a lady’s number. I wait until she offers it.” It was a weak excuse and sounded like one.

  The man was now on full alert. “And how did you find me?”

  “She told me you had a repair business. There aren’t many.”

  He nodded rapidly a few times. Stalling. Processing. “So, leave me your card. If I hear from her, I’ll tell her you came by.”

  The card would go in the trash the moment Ted walked out the door. He was losing.

  “Could you give her a call? Give her my name. She’ll talk to me.”

  “No. I don’t think so. You leave your card.”

  Ted had pushed too hard, too fast, and now he’d hit a dead end. Lawyers talk for a living. Thinking, arguing, persuading—these were his tools, his talents. When they failed him, he had no plan B. Grabbing the man and shaking him until he gave up his daughter’s number wasn’t going to work. He dropped a card on the counter but kept his expectations to himself.

  That buzzer sounded again as the door opened.

  “Is this the guy?” Lester asked. “The father?”

  He had removed the sunglasses. One eye was so bloodshot it looked as if he should have been weeping blood.

  “I’m with him, Mr. Z.,” Lester said. “You see all this?” He held up the cast and indicated his bruised face with the other hand. “Some very nasty people are upset with us.” He was doing much better at speaking around and through the metal in his mouth, but Ted could tell it was costing him to do so. “She may be next. I’m not asking you to trust us, but she ought to be warned.”

  “What in hell are you people involved with?” Zielinski said. He was scared. Lester had gotten to him.

  Lester ignored the question and turned to Ted. “Did you give the man your cell phone number?”

  “I did,” Ted said.

  “Then let’s go. We should keep moving.”

  He was right. Ted started for the door.

  Lester spoke to the man again. “Ted and Lester. Tell her. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Lester followed Ted out to the street.

  “You make a convincing case,” Ted said.

  “Let’s hope,” Lester answered.

  -36-

  It didn’t take long. Kenzie barreled around the corner and down the thoroughfare. People on the sidewalk stepped out of her way. She was heading for her father’s store.

  “Hold up,” Ted called, extricating himself from Mohammed’s chariot.

  She saw him and came wading through the light traffic, fists clenched.

  Ted’s relief at seeing her unhurt didn’t last long. The anger on her face was formidable. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve it, but there was no doubt in his mind that her wrath was aimed at him. “Can we talk?” he said. “Give me one minute. Thirty seconds.”

  She kept coming. The punch came from low to high. She didn’t have her weight behind it, but her long limb transmitted a ton of force. He let her hit him, trying to relax and flow with it. Her fist landed on the side of his head, above the ear and well back from the temple. It hurt, but he stayed upright.

  “You son of a bitch!” she yelled into his face.

  “Are you done assaulting me?” Ted said. “Can we talk now?”

  “How dare you come and frighten my family? Who the hell do you think you are?” Her hand had to be hurting, but she shook it once and formed a fist again.

  Ted held up both hands in defense. “You got your one shot. Now you’ve got to hear me out.”

  She swung again. He blocked it.

  “Ow,” she cried. “That hurt.”

  “Hey, lady,” a voice called from a Canada Dry delivery truck. “Get outa the street.”

  She flipped the driver off but moved exactly one step closer to the curb. The truck eased by.

  “Tough broad,” the driver called to Ted. The man was grinning.

  Ted pretended he wasn’t there. Half-assed misogynist male bonding wasn’t going to help the situation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare your father, but we had to find you. Take a look at Lester, will you?”

  Lester had stayed in the car. Ted stepped aside as Kenzie looked in. Lester was pitiful, shrunken, damaged, and barely capable of keeping his head upright.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, my God. Who did this?”

  “Russians,” Lester whispered in a pained rasp, playing the moment as if it were his final scene.

  “Holy hell,” she said. “Those fucking creeps. I hope the cops bounce them on the sidewalk a few times before bringing them in.”

  “We haven’t told the police,” Ted said.

  “What?” she said. “Why the hell not?”

  “Kenzie, listen to me. We don’t know who else they’re after. They roughed me up, too. Nothing like Lester, but they got me in the courthouse. Cops all around us. Nobody saw a thing. But I don’t think those guys would have cared. They’re very scary.”

  “And you’re here t
o warn me? Why would they be after me?”

  “I’m not saying they are. I don’t know. But they’re after us because we’ve been looking under rocks connected to the Spike. If they’re not looking for you now, they may be later.”

  “I’m no threat to them,” she said, but she didn’t sound certain. “But you are. We’ve got to hide you two while we figure out our next step.” She noticed Mohammed for the first time and raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question.

  “This is Mohammed. He’s new in town. We’re expanding his horizons.”

  “It is pleasant to meet you,” the driver said, not meeting her eyes.

  Kenzie stepped close to Ted. “Can you trust him?”

  “I think a fifty-dollar bill would buy everything he knows, but someone’s got to know to ask him,” Ted said. “I think we’re okay.”

  “Can Lester walk?”

  Ted looked down at him. Lester was milking his moment. “With encouragement.”

  Kenzie stepped between them, facing Ted and close enough to give them a moment’s privacy. “Does this mean you’ve resolved those ethical concerns you were so worried about?”

  Ted met her eyes. “No problem.”

  -37-

  They spent the afternoon huddled in Kenzie’s tiny office at the church. Lester, because of his wounds, got the comfy chair. Kenzie took an ancient secretary chair behind the desk, and Ted paced or perched on the cold radiator. They hashed and rehashed plans for the next day and the meeting with the Judge.

  “I need him to say something—anything—incriminating with Lester close enough to get it recorded,” Ted said. “He expects me to be begging him for help. It will make him less cautious.”

  “What makes you so sure he’ll let his guard down?” Kenzie asked.

  “Jill. That’s his focus. If Jackie takes a fall for defrauding Miss Miller, he believes Jill will be devastated. He will do anything to protect her. Including talking to me.”

  “Jackie’s the spouse, right?”

  “My ex-wife’s wife, yes.”

  “She’s also counsel for Barbara Miller on the buildings the old lady lost,” Lester said.