Sleight of Hand

CHAPTER Seventeen

Charles Benedict’s office was in a two-story house with a wide front porch that stood on the border between the commercial and residential sections of downtown Crestview, Lee County’s county seat. It had been built as a residence in 1875. When Benedict bought it, 130 years later, he kept the exterior but completely remodeled the interior.

Nikolai Orlansky loved meeting at Benedict’s office because nothing he said there could ever be used against him. Benedict had the house swept for listening devices every time Nikolai dropped by for an attorney-client conference but Nikolai was paranoid and he imagined that government agencies using NSA/CIA-developed technology were probably listening in. He delighted in pressing his finger to his lips, giving Benedict a wink, then spewing out confessions about the Kennedy assassination and any other weirdness he would think up on the spur of the moment.

Benedict put up with Orlansky’s shenanigans because he was a steady source of income and a good person to know if you needed untraceable weapons, high-grade narcotics, and beautiful young whores, or had a desire for animate or inanimate objects to disappear.

Nikolai Orlansky didn’t look like a crime lord or a psychopathic killer any more than his dapper lawyer looked like a hit man. The Russian did not have an imposing physique or cold, heartless eyes. If anything, he looked nonthreatening; a roly-poly fellow with a kind smile, a full head of floppy black hair, and a hearty laugh.

Orlansky and Benedict had met when Nikolai hired Charlie to represent a trusted lieutenant who was facing a murder charge. Two unimpeachable witnesses had been making out in a car two down from the scene of the crime. Orlansky’s man had not seen them, and he had been standing in a pool of light, so the witnesses had been 100 percent certain when they picked him out of a lineup.

Orlansky was a realist. He knew the prosecution had an airtight case. He told the lawyer that he did not expect miracles and had hired Benedict out of loyalty to a friend who had been at his side since they were teenagers in the Ukraine. Benedict had listened carefully. When Orlansky was through, he told him that he could make the friend’s problem disappear for an additional thirty thousand dollars.

“These people cannot be bribed,” Orlansky said.

“I don’t intend to bribe them,” Benedict had said. Then he’d held out his palm, dropped a quarter into it, and closed his fist. When he opened his fist, the quarter was gone.

“I said I would make the problem disappear. Once I have the cash, the witnesses will join the quarter in never-never land.”

Orlansky had missed the literary reference but had gotten the idea. Two weeks after he paid Benedict, the witnesses failed to appear for a court hearing and the charges against his man were dismissed. The witnesses were never heard from again.

Benedict had a real knack for practicing law, and he won a lot of his cases fair and square. But every so often he needed an edge. Nikolai was prepared to pay extra for special services, and Charlie loved being the recipient of his largesse, but today they were meeting because Orlansky’s lawyer needed a favor.

“I can do this,” Orlansky said when Benedict finished his explanation. “In fact, I have someone in place.”

“Oh?”

“You know Gregor?”

Benedict smiled.

“He beat up some a*shole in a bar. I am pissed because it was not business, but who can talk to Gregor?” Nikolai shrugged. “So I don’t bail him out. Is a lesson.”

“Gregor is perfect.”

“So, it is done,” Nikolai said. “But we are in America, Charlie, the land of the capitalist, where no lunch is free.”

Charlie wrote a figure on a piece of note paper, which he planned to burn as soon as Nikolai left. He anticipated collecting a lot more from Horace Blair when the millionaire hired him to defend him against a charge of murder.

Nikolai steepled his fingers and stared into space. Then he crossed out Benedict’s number and wrote another that was two thousand dollars higher. Charlie had anticipated Orlansky and even with the new number he was one thousand dollars ahead of what he’d been prepared to pay.

“Done,” Benedict said.

“I like doing business with you, Charlie. You are a no-bullshit guy. So, when do you need this favor?”

“Soon. I’ll let you know.”

Nikolai stood up. “Good, and you got that atomic bomb planted at Langley for me, the one disguised as a meatball hero?”

Benedict shook his head. “I wish you wouldn’t do that shit. One of these days, guys in Ninja outfits are going to crash through my windows and smoke both of us.”

“Ah, but that would prove I was right and you were wrong about the bugs, so I would have the last laugh.”