King of New York, page 14
Enzo shook his head. “You’re chasing ghosts. You can’t second-guess this shit; it’ll make you paranoid. We know something’s changed, but that’s the only thing that we know. That change in the landscape means he’s raking in the money again. Everything else is just guesswork.”
“Maybe, but I think I’m right about this,” Jimmy said. Maybe not the Russian mob, but someone who wanted to hurt the Martellos. Someone with a grudge against him, personally?
That could be any number of people.
He knew there were plenty out there who didn’t like how he was doing things.
Maybe they saw Sale as a route to him?
Was Sale going to invite someone to Sunday dinner and have them shoot Jimmy?
It wasn’t like he didn’t have form.
Or maybe Sale found himself a partner who was all about the green?
It never occurred to Jimmy that Alessandro could be the one helping Sale. Why would it? Never in a million years could he have guessed Alessandro’s motives, how he was driven by reputation and connection, or that the only thing that truly interested Alessandro was building himself up, cementing his name in the minds of the families as he made his move to become King of New York. Reputation could get a lot done in this city. Alessandro had his eye on the kinds of money and power and influence only a truly corrupt politician could want. That was the real power, the true crown he intended to wear.
But neither Jimmy nor Alessandro knew the figure lurking in the shadows behind Sale.
Even Sale himself had no real clue what he’d gotten himself into.
* * *
It took his team two days to make contact with Popov. Another to arrange for a call.
Jimmy felt a certain amount of nervous trepidation when he dialed, and that was something he wasn’t used to feeling. He didn’t particularly like it.
“Jimmy Martello, is it?” said a low American voice.
“It is indeed,” Jimmy said, thrown because he’d expected an ’80s-movie thick Russian accent. “Am I talking to Ivan Popov?”
“You are,” said Popov. “I don’t know why you’re interested in Chiara, but I am willing to talk.”
Jimmy thought it was interesting that the man didn’t automatically assume Jimmy had his daughter and was looking to negotiate. He decided not to pull any punches. Once they were through with the niceties, he made his play.
“Ivan Popov, I think you know who has taken your daughter. Am I correct?”
Jimmy heard the long sigh from the other end of the phone. “Chiara cannot be helped. I thank you for your concern.”
“Do you mean it would be impossible to help her, or do you mean that you can’t be seen helping her?” Jimmy pressed.
“I cannot help her,” Popov said. “And I cannot hire you to help her, if that was your plan, as tempting as it might be.”
“There doesn’t have to be payment, nothing to show I was working for you in any way. Could you owe me a favor?” Jimmy asked. “I’m not sure what the rules you’re playing to are. There would be nothing to tie me to you.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a little while.
“What a fascinating suggestion,” Popov said eventually. “I can’t imagine what sort of favor you think I could do you that would be worth the risk, though. Something related to your construction firm, I suppose? Smoothing the way with permits, helping you win some competitive clients? Hm, well, that kind of favor I could conceivably offer.”
“Ah, it won’t be a difficult favor, whatever it ends up being. I can promise you that much,” Jimmy said. “I have no interest in holding you ransom over this. Ask around. People will tell you that isn’t my style.”
“I have done my due diligence before making this call,” Popov assured him.
That raised a smile. He was dealing with a cautious man, not a stupid one. Good. “What can you tell me about the people who took her? What do they want?”
“They work for Lev Volkov. A very powerful man, very clever, a spider of a man, with a web of influence that runs across the entire world. He cheated me, put me in a compromising position, and stole my daughter to make me work for him in return.” This was the version of the story Popov had come to believe, neatly neglecting the details of his own shortcomings in the situation, including his inebriation and how, even in the cold light of day afterward, he had been willing to sell Chiara to save his own ass.
Jimmy heard what he wanted to hear—a family man in need of help.
He was particularly gifted when it came to not seeing things he didn’t want to see.
“Do you have any idea where he might have taken her?”
“Volkov has bases in Siberia, London, Paris, and Tunisia that I know of. Probably more that I don’t.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover,” Jimmy mused, thinking over the logistics, then smiled. “But it’s a considerably narrower search than the whole world, so that’s something.”
Popov almost laughed.
Almost.
“There’s nothing to say she is hidden just because we cannot see her,” Popov noted. “I still know he wants her alive for the time being, and that he will keep her alive if I do as he says. He also knows I would do anything for her, and wouldn’t for a second do anything that might risk her life, so he won’t expect me to come after her. That could be to your advantage.”
“Perhaps. If there’s anything you can think of that might help me, you can reach me through my team. You have their details. Otherwise, you won’t hear from me until I have your daughter somewhere safe.”
“It won’t be enough to get her out. You realize he will come after you, and keep coming after you,” Popov said. “She will have to disappear. A new name, a new life. She may never be safe. You may well need to do the same, if he ever learns who you are. Lev Volkov is not the kind of man capable of accepting the kind of theft you are contemplating. You do this, and he will hunt you both for as long as you live.”
Jimmy shrugged, though the gesture was lost on the phone. “If everyone did that when they said they would, there wouldn’t be a single crime family left on this godforsaken planet,” he said. “So, I think I’ll take my chances.”
Popov barked out a bleak laugh. “I like your attitude. It’s going to get you killed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”
* * *
By the time the plane landed, Chiara was beyond exhausted.
Despite everything, she’d fallen into a restless sleep a few times, but she kept waking up in a panic as her frightened mind took control of her dreaming one. It was so hard to stay focused, but she had to be alert, primed, ready to take any chance to escape, slim as it might be.
There could just as easily be none.
No one was coming to save her.
It stood to reason this was happening to her because of her father, so he wasn’t going to come rushing in like a white knight, and she didn’t have the kinds of friends who could launch a rescue mission.
From the plane, they bundled her into a car. There was nothing within view to assist in knowing where she was. She could have landed anywhere in the Western world, and the only reason she could guess that much was because the road signs were in English. It didn’t help much. But, if she got out of here, it dangled one hope in front of her: She would be able to make herself understood. She just had to get away first.
She couldn’t see the driver’s face, and he didn’t speak.
He was big and bulky, broad across the shoulders and bullish across the back of his neck. The man in the back of the car with her was also big and mostly silent. “Don’t make this hard for yourself. It doesn’t need to be,” was all he said to her.
She heeded his advice.
She tried to think like them. What did they stand to gain from taking her? What did they hope to achieve? Her best guess was leverage, a way of making her father pliable.
Would he have agreed to them holding her as collateral if he thought he could keep both of them alive that way? Yes, 100 percent. He was a practical man, more than capable of making the best of a worst-case scenario.
But how far did this branch of worst choices spread?
Sex?
Because that was what made huge parts of the world go round, not money.
Was she meant to perform for some rich man, a prisoner in his house? Or was it broader and more debasing than that, with her ending up in a brothel on Herbertstraße, in the De Wallen district, or somewhere equally tawdry?
Both options horrified her but in completely different ways, even though part of the reality they represented was very much the same.
If it was about to become her reality, she needed to be clever about reshaping it.
The question was, How?
How could she take control of that bad situation?
Resisting wasn’t going to work.
She harbored no illusions about what would happen to her if she put up a fight.
So, how could she take any sort of control? How could she still cling onto a part of her soul and not be utterly broken long before that single opportunity of escape arose?
By being the best whore she could be?
Was that even possible?
Could she do that to herself in order to survive?
More importantly, did she have a choice?
There was a difference between being given to some billionaire and being put to work on her back in a brothel—not just in how she’d be used, either, but in the reality of how hard it would be to find a way out. She was under no illusions. She had no passport. She couldn’t just hop on a plane out of there. Every aspect of her life was in their hands to crush.
So, to survive, she’d need them to think she was something worth preserving.
She’d been an expensive girl her entire life, so maybe—just maybe—she could keep being just that, now that her life probably depended on it.
Before they got out of the car, the man in the back seat put a coat around her shoulders and pulled the hood up over her head.
The two of them stood her into the street and ushered her toward a building.
She couldn’t be sure, but it was as though they were trying to hide her face. Security cameras?
Working on instinct, she succeeded in shaking her head momentarily free of the hood, turning her face right and left, praying that any camera in the vicinity would register her. Of course, that little rebellion would be worth nothing if no one was looking for her.
The two men led her down a side alley between two towering buildings. There were dumpsters and trash bags and other rubble, with a third building hidden behind them. Seeing it, she changed her thinking immediately. The place had an air of venerability about it, an impressive architectural gravitas that was both old and absolutely European. Not Bavarian, not Nordic. This was London, white-stone facades begrimed with soot and exhaust fumes.
The big, heavy door opened in front of her.
Now, from that next step until whenever she ran out of a future, everything she did had to be focused on survival.
* * *
The call came unreasonably early in the morning.
Jimmy scrambled to get it.
Daniel.
Jimmy had never been good with mornings. Usually, it took him a while to get moving. Not this morning. Adrenaline had him firing on all cylinders.
They had a plan in place. It was solid. Not that he wanted to be trying to make his moves half-asleep.
Before noon, he and Nicky were on a flight to Chicago.
Raul Cabrera was the corona of the Latin Kings.
As a younger man, he’d built himself a rep on a foundation of armed robberies and several particularly daring heists. The man was a thrill-seeker. He got his rocks off on the drama of a holdup, the rush of breaching vaults, and although he was arrested a couple of times, the cops had never been able to get much to stick. He was a slippery serpent. He’d done a few months in jail here and there, but his rap sheet was nothing close to what it should have been. Age brought a kind of wisdom to Raul. The attraction of selling guns began to outweigh the pleasures of using them. That was the tipping point. He was smart enough to know he was slowing down, and on a hot date with a box six feet under if he didn’t change focus, so he turned his mind toward business—making bank off other people doing the heists and the killing.
The Latin Kings operated out of the backs of arcades, billiard halls, small dance halls, and barbershops. They had a good setup. Young foot traffic, hotheaded and full of anger that needed to get out of their systems. And if it didn’t, well, the Kings had a way of helping with that too. Several of his customers served as guns for hire—hit men with very specific demands when it came to the tools of their trade, which kept life interesting for Raul, trying to source their wants and needs.
Amateurs might spray bullets from automatic weapons they barely knew how to use. But a professional who came to Raul would be looking for a single untraceable piece to take out a single target, then dispose of before they took their next commission. As of late, there had been high demand for a kind of bullet called a cop killer. Raul didn’t care who did the dying from his trades, as long as the bank kept rolling in.
Jimmy and Nicky approached the Lucky Loot Arcade.
The pair were dressed in sweats for the first time in over a year.
In a peculiar way, it felt like coming back to himself, but it was a version of Jimmy that he didn’t recognize. Now, it took effort to walk like someone wearing street clothes. It was an act, where before he’d been faking it whenever he’d walked into a club in a tailored suit.
Nicky had grown into his role of the unofficial capo of the Martello clan, too, but he looked more natural in the old uniform.
Once inside, they walked through the dimly lit arcade, with random lights flashing from every angle, alarms, bells, chimes, and so much other noise. A bunch of kids were hopping around on Dance Dance Revolution, and across the floor, another bunch clustered around a fake driving rig, playing Need for Speed.
No one paid them any attention.
Reaching the end of the machines, they spotted a tall man with a pencil-thin mustache and striped suit. He sat at a table outside of a small door. He was the only thing in the room that looked out of place, and weirdly at peace with it.
They headed straight for him.
He saw them.
One hand dropped beneath the table.
Jimmy could feel the gun pointing at his heart, even if he couldn’t see it.
“We’re hoping to get a few minutes with Raul Cabrera,” Jimmy said.
“Why?” the man barked. One word full of dismissal.
“I’m not about to tell the doorman, but you can tell him I’ve come into possession of something that I think would prove most beneficial for him,” Jimmy said, holding up a file folder containing information that the research and development team had put together for him.
“Guns on the table. Both of you. I’ll see if he wants to talk to you. Names?”
Jimmy and Nicky put their pieces on the table and gave their names.
As the man opened the door behind him, Jimmy saw that Raul was playing a game on his phone. Jimmy found it amusing that the man was surrounded by state-of-the-art games, yet he preferred to hunch over his Android, tapping at the screen while trying to squash an elusive piece of candy.
Raul’s man said something they couldn’t hear.
Raul looked up. “Sí, I find myself curious. What do you want with me?”
Jimmy laid the file folder at Raul’s desk. “I’m Jimmy Martello. My family has influence in New York City.”
“I know who your family is. What they are.”
“Good. That makes things easier. I want you to accept this as an offering of goodwill, from my family to you.”
Raul flipped open the folder and found himself staring at confidential information about his businesses, legitimate and otherwise, including falsified trails that legitimized the more suspect nature of things. The FBI transcripts were buried in the file. His puzzled expression was a thing of beauty.
“How did you…?”
Jimmy stopped him. “I know the cops are coming to you tonight. They’re looking to hit you with a RICO charge and shut down your entire operation.”
“How could you know that?” Raul shook his head.
“The world has moved on. I have some talented cyberattackers in my operation,” Jimmy explained. “Knowledge has always been power, but the knowledge that is out there now, waiting to be tapped, that is god-level.”
“This paperwork? Where…” Raul stammered.
“Trust me, it’s genuine and not merely a good-looking fake. Thanks to my friends, it looks to all the world like you’ve been legit for years.”
“Impressive,” said Raul. “But why are you doing this? Not simply to impress me; I assume you want something in return.”
Jimmy gave his favors speech.
“Well, I’ve heard some weird shit in my time, compadre, but you’re something else, for sure,” Raul said. “I guess we see what happens, and whether you’re full of shit.”
“Oh, they’ll come knocking. I promise you.”
The timing couldn’t have been better. The last word was fading to a loaded silence between them as the feds came slamming in through the front door.
Raul bristled. Then turned to his doorman. “If this goes sideways, shoot these fuckers in the head,” Raul said. Then he headed out to meet the cops with the research and development team’s paperwork in his hand.
