to do with him.
“So what are you going to do?” Max asked.
“No idea.”
The two men fell silent, each lost in their own thoughts.
The night was full of light, the streets still wet from a too-brief rainfall. Taxis passing him, customers behind their windows. On the sidewalks, men and women desperately trying to find a cab in the small hours of the morning.
Max hesitated. There was something he could do for Kevin, but it might destroy their friendship. But Kevin was desperate. He needed help, and now; Max’s small, secret gifts weren’t enough anymore.
Or, Max thought, he could also do nothing. He could simply drive Kevin back home and return to Susan’s arms. He could let the marathon runner deal with his own problems.
Not a chance, Max decided. “Listen, Kevin, I’ve got to come clean with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t work in a bank. What I told you and Caroline, it was all a lie.”
Kevin turned toward Max, confusion on his face. Perhaps a hint of disappointment at being lied to by his friend all these years.
With a few words, Max told him everything. He was a con man, a thief, really, but a thief who made his life harder by making his victims consent to their own fleecing. He played on their worst instincts: vanity, greed, ambition. Max tried to reassure Kevin that he and Caroline had never been marks. Quite the opposite; he’d always seen them as friends.
“And, well, I’m not even called Robert Cheskin. My real name is Max O’Brien. But all over the world the authorities are after me. So I need to change identities early and often.”
Kevin looked at him, speechless.
“These days, for example, I’m playing a broker for an investment company, luring a large insurance company.”
“And how much is that going to bring you in?”
“A lot. But there are fees. Accomplices to pay, informants to compensate …”
Silence again.
Kevin could have reacted by ordering Max to stop the car and let him out here, now, on the wet pavement. Clearly, his ventures with criminality had been a complete failure; he might not want to fall into the same trap twice.
But Kevin remained silent, as if he were trying to guess his friend’s intentions.
Max told Kevin about his early days in the craft. The operations he’d been part of, then those he’d initiated. The bad experiences, as well. Painful memories. Time in prison, for example, time that had seemed to drag on even once he was out. The prison walls surrounding him now were made of fake names and counterfeit papers, of aliases and invented pasts.
“The work I can offer you is dishonest and illegal, of course,” Max added. “And might just lead you straight to jail.”
Kevin still seemed perplexed. He raised his head just as Max’s Saab stopped in front of his building in Sunset Park. “And what would I do, exactly? I don’t know the first thing about any of this.”
Back in his room in the Intercontinental in Bucharest, Max tried to reach Josée Dandurand. No dice; she must’ve still been sleeping. He emptied two tiny bottles of whisky he found in the refrigerator. His appetite teased, he went down to the bar to have a bite. The place was full of conference-goers, and it was happy hour. The barman poured a Scotch for Max before moving on to the other end of the counter to settle the bill of a couple of Brits.
A commotion all of a sudden.
Max turned around. There was a group in the corner of the bar surrounding an individual Max couldn’t yet see. Five or six people. The impromptu crowd was composed of ruddy, paunchy men, listening with interest to the speaker. The man got up suddenly to shake the hand of someone he knew, giving Max a view of him. Fifty-five years old, more or less, wearing a finely trimmed moustache over thick lips. Tanned skin giving him the look of a South American.
“Victor Marineci, the Gypsy MP. ” The barman was watching the man, as well. “This conference is quite the opportunity for him. With the elections coming up, Prime Minister Popescu-Tăriceanu is in trouble and Marineci might be part of the next government. Minister of the interior, maybe. Can you imagine? A Gypsy head of the police!”
Max turned around. “With you, no need to listen to the news. The lounge lizards in Romania must be the most informed in the world.”
“I’ve got a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Bucharest. I got my diploma the day Ceauşescu was killed. And so — barman for life!”
Max smiled.
“Would you like another?”
“Sure, thanks.”
“Me, too.” A young woman had just slid onto the stool next to Max. Heavy makeup, friendly smile, provocative short skirt.
“Let me guess, you’re an American,” she said with a strong Russian accent. She offered her hand. “You can call me Tatiana.”
Max saw Josée Dandurand walk into the bar. Tall, blond, elegant, her step confident. She scanned the room for Max among the sea of conference-goers. A man offered her a drink. She smiled politely, no thanks. Max turned toward her and she recognized him. She quickly closed the distance and they held each other in their arms hard, just as they’d done after the rivière Saqawigan tragedy a few years earlier. Max, comforter-of-all-trades. Josée hadn’t slept since she’d heard the news, doubly so because the trip over to Romania had been difficult.
“I thought they’d gotten back on their feet, the Romanians,” she said to Max. “This country is a disaster!” A crushing bureaucracy, lines in front of cash machines, the faces of the border guards drawn and heavy. “They took hours just to look through my papers!”
By the time she’d reached the hotel, she’d been so tired she collapsed on her bed. She was just waking up now.
Josée smiled. “You’re not going to introduce me to your friend?” She pointed at Tatiana.
But the young Russian woman had turned her back on Max already and was now speaking to two Italians who’d approached her. Max led Josée to a table.
“I spoke to a few journalists,” she began. “The authorities have no concrete proof. No witnesses. I’m sure we’ll be able to get Kevin out of his bind.”
“If we can find him.… Do you want to eat something?”
“I’m not hungry. All I can think about is Kevin.”
“He’s innocent.”
“The fact he’s vanished is rather incriminating.”
Josée informed Max that a liaison for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Marilyn Burgess, would be present the next day for their meeting with Adrian Pavlenco. Max had been expecting it. Canadian authorities would surely want to follow the investigation closely, given the nationality of the suspect.
“Did
