It was a mid-October evening. The light outside had long faded and only a single booth in the club was occupied. The man seated there was a Ukrainian known as the Priest. He had studied in an Orthodox seminary for three years before discovering his true vocation, which lay primarily in providing the kinds of services for which priests were usually required to offer forgiveness. The club’s unofficial name was a testament to the Priest’s brief flirtation with the religious life. The St. Daniil monastery was Moscow’s oldest cloister, a stronghold of the Orthodox faith even during the worst excesses of the Communist era, when many of its priests had become martyrs and the remains of St. Daniil himself had been smuggled to America in order to save them from harm.
Unlike many of those who worked for him, the Priest spoke English with hardly a trace of an accent. He had been part of the first influx of immigrants from the Soviet Union, working hard to learn the ways of this new world, and he could still recall a time when Brighton Beach had been nothing but old people living in rent-controlled apartments surrounded by little vacant houses falling into decay, a far cry from the days when this area was a beacon for immigrants and New Yorkers alike anxious to leave the crowded neighborhoods of Brownsville, East New York, and Manhattan’s Lower East Side for space in which to live and the feel of sea air in their lungs. He prided himself on his sophistication. He read the Times, not the Post. He went to the theater. When he was in his realm, there was no porn on the TV, no poorly copied DVDs. Instead, it was tuned to BBC World, or sometimes CNN. He did not like Fox News. It looked inward, and he was a man who was always looking at the greater world outside. He drank tea during the day, and only compote, a fruit punch that tasted of plums, at night. He was an ambitious man, a prince who wished to become a king. He paid obeisance to the old men, the ones who had been imprisoned under Stalin, the ones whose fathers had created the criminal enterprise that had now reached its zenith in a land far from their own. But even as he bowed before them, the Priest looked for ways in which they might be undermined. He calculated the strength of potential rivals among his own generation and prepared his people for the inevitable bloodshed, sanctioned or unsanctioned, that would come. Recently, there had been some reversals. The mistakes might have been avoided, but he was not entirely to blame for them. Unfortunately, there were others who did not see it that way. Perhaps, he thought, the bloodshed would have to begin sooner than expected.
Today had been a bad day, another in a succession of bad days. There had been a problem with the restrooms that morning and the place still stank, even though the difficulty had apparently been solved once the drain people, from a firm trusted by the organization, got on the case. On another day, the Priest might well have left the club and gone elsewhere, but there was business to be conducted and loose ends to be tied, so he was prepared to put up with the lingering bad odor for as long as was necessary.
He flicked through some photographs on the table before him: undercover policemen, some of them probably Russian speakers. They were determined, if nothing else. He would have them identified to see if there was some way of putting pressure on them through their families. The police were drawing ever closer to him. After years of ineffectual moves against him, they had been given a break. Two of his men had died in Maine the previous winter, along with two intermediaries. Their deaths had exposed a small but lucrative part of the Priest’s Boston operation: pornography and prostitution involving minors. He had been forced to cease providing both services, and the result had affected, in turn, the smuggling of women and children into the country, which meant that the inevitable attrition of his stable of whores, and the stables of others, could not be arrested. He was hemorrhaging money, and he did not like it. Others were suffering, too, and he knew that they blamed him. Now his club stank of excrement and it would only be a matter of time before the dead men were finally connected to him. But word had reached him that there might be a solution to at least one of his problems. All of this had started because a private detective in Maine could not mind his own business. Killing him would not get rid of the police—it might even increase the pressure upon him for a time—
but it would at least serve as a warning to his persecutors and to those who might be tempted to testify against him, as well as giving the Priest a little personal satisfaction along the way. There was a shout from the doorway in Russian: “Boss, they are here.”
One week earlier, a man had arrived at the offices of Big Earl’s Cleaning & Drain Services, Inc., on Nostrand Avenue. He had not entered through the brightly carpeted, fragrant-smelling lobby. Instead, he had walked around the side of the building to the maintenance yard and wastetreatment area. This area did not smell at all fragrant.
He entered the garage and climbed a flight of steps to a glass booth. Inside was a desk, a range of mismatched filing cabinets, and two cork boards covered with invoices, letters, and a pair of outof-date calendars featuring women in a state of undress. Seated behind the desk was a tall, thin man in a white shirt offset by a green and yellow polyester tie. His hair was Grecian-formula brown, and he was fiddling compulsively with his pen, the sure sign of a smoker deprived, however temporarily, of his drug. He looked up as the door opened and the visitor entered. The new arrival was of below-average height, and dressed in a navy peacoat buttoned to the neck, a pair of torn, faded jeans, and bright red sneakers. He had a three-day growth of beard, but wore it in a manner that suggested he always had a three-day growth of beard. It looked almost cultivated, in an untidy way. “Shabby” was the word that came to mind.
“You trying to quit?” asked the visitor.
“Huh?”
“You trying to give up cigarettes?”
The man looked at the pen in his right hand as if almost surprised that there wasn’t a cigarette there.
“Yeah, that’s right. Wife’s been at me to do it for years. The doc, too. Thought I’d give it a try.”
“You should use those nicotine patches.”
“Can’t get them to light. What can I do for you?”
“Earl around?”
“Earl’s dead.”
The visitor looked shocked. “No way. When did he die?”
“Two months ago. Cancer of the lung.” He coughed embarrasedly. “Kind of why I decided to give up. My name’s Jerry Marley, Earl’s brother. I came on board to help out when Earl got sick, and I’m still here. Earl a friend of yours?”
“An acquaintance.”
“Well, guess he’s gone to a better place now.”
The visitor looked around the little office. Beyond the glass, two men in masks and coveralls were cleaning pipes and tools. He wrinkled his nose as the stink reached him.
“Hard to believe,” said the visitor.
“Ain’t it though. So, what can I do for you?”
“You unclog drains?”
“That’s right.”
“So if you know how to unclog them, then you must know how to clog them as well.”
Jerry Marley looked momentarily puzzled, and then anger replaced puzzlement. He stood up.
“You get the hell out of here before I call the cops. This is a business, dammit. I got no time for people trying to cause other people trouble.”
“I hear your brother wasn’t so particular about who he worked with.”
“Hey, you keep your mouth shut about my brother.”
“I don’t mean that in a bad way. It was one of the things I liked about him. It made him useful.”
“I don’t give a shit. Get out of here, you—”
“Maybe I should introduce myself,” said the visitor. “My name is Angel.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn what—” Marley stopped talking as he realized that he did, in fact, give a good goddamn. He sat down again.
“I guess Earl might have mentioned me.”
Marley nodded. He looked a little paler than before. “You, and another fella.”
“Oh, he’s around somewhere. He’s—” Angel searched for the right word. “—cleaner than I am. No offense meant, but his clothes cost more than mine. The smell, y’know, it gets in the fabric.”
“I know,” said Marley. He began to babble, but couldn’t stop himself. “I don’t notice it so much no more. My wife, she makes me take my clothes off in the garage before I come in the house. Have to shower straightaway. Even then, she says she can still smell it on me.”
“Women,” said Angel. “They’re sensitive like that.”
There was a brief silence. It was almost companionable, except that Jerry Marley’s desire for a cigarette had suddenly increased beyond the capacity of any mortal man to resist.
“So,” said Angel. “About those drains…”
Marley raised a hand to stop him. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“I thought you were giving up,” said Angel.
“So did I.”
Angel shrugged. “I guess it must be a stressful job.”
“Sometimes,” said Marley.
“Well, I don’t want to add to it.”
“God forbid.”
“But I do need a favor, and I’ll do you a favor in return.”
“Right. And what would that be?”
“Well, if you do me my favor, I won’t come back again.”
Jerry Marley thought about it for less than half a second.
“That seems fair,” he said.
For a moment, Angel looked a little sad. He was hurt that everyone seemed to leap at that deal when it was offered.
Marley seemed to guess what he was thinking. “Nothing personal,” he added, apologetically.
“No,” said Angel, and Marley got the sense that the visitor was thinking of something else entirely. “It never is.”