Chapter 1: Escrow
There are ten people in the back room of a Persian restaurant on Vermont, and seven of them are armed, and every single one of them is waiting for one unarmed man to open his mouth.
Dominic Reyes takes his time.
He sits at the head of a table with a duffel bag on it. To his left, Mrs. Sarkis, seventy-one, in a good coat, with two nephews behind her chair. To his right, Ochoa, who has brought four men and the particular stillness of somebody who expects to be cheated.
June Vasquez sits at Dominic’s shoulder with a leather notebook open and a pen uncapped, and she writes down everything, because the words are the only thing in this room that matters.
“Say the terms back to me,” Dominic says. “Both of you. Slowly.”
They say them.
“Four hundred and ten,” Mrs. Sarkis says. “The container is at Berth 214 by Thursday noon or my money comes home.”
“Four hundred and ten,” Ochoa says, “and if it’s there and she says it isn’t, he pays me out of it.”
“Anything else? Anything at all? Because after I speak, I can’t hear it.” Dominic looks at each of them. “Mr. Ochoa. Last chance to add a thing.”
“Nothing.”
Dominic puts his hand flat on the duffel.
“Then here it is. I will hold four hundred and ten thousand dollars in cash from tonight until Thursday at twelve noon. If the container numbered in June’s book is on the ground at Berth 214 by that hour, I will hand this money to Mr. Ochoa. If it is not, I will hand it back to Mrs. Sarkis. I will not open the bag. I will not lend from it. I will not tell either of you where it sleeps.”
He says the last part looking at nothing.
“You have my word.”
And the whole room breathes out.
That is the whole business. That is the entire product. Two hours ago these people were pricing each other’s funerals and now Mrs. Sarkis is asking Ochoa about his mother’s hip, because the money has been put somewhere it cannot be stolen from, which is inside a man’s mouth.
One of the nephews doesn’t get it. He’s young. He waits until the coats are coming off the hooks and then he says, too loud, to nobody:
“So what stops him just taking it?”
The room goes quiet in a different way.
Ochoa turns around slowly.
“You know Marwan Haddad?” he says.
“No.”
“In 2019 he put a thing in this man’s mouth. It went bad — not his fault, not anybody’s fault, a man died who wasn’t supposed to.” Ochoa is not enjoying this. That’s the thing that lands. “Six of us sat in a room in Glendale for eight hours and watched what happens to Mr. Reyes when he can’t keep his word, and I am telling you as a favor, because you are young: I would sooner rob a bank with my face out than take a dollar from that bag.”
“What happens to him?”
“Ask him.”
The kid doesn’t ask him.
Down in the parking structure, June walks a half step ahead with the bag, because that is how they do it — she carries, he talks — and the concrete is doing that echo thing it does at midnight.
There’s a man leaning against the pillar by Dominic’s car.
Sixty, maybe. Good coat, no gun, standing with his weight even and his hands out of his pockets so they can be seen. He waits until Dominic is close enough for a normal voice.
“Mr. Reyes.”
“You’re at my car.”
“I am.” The man holds out a phone. Flat on his palm, screen up, an audio file paused at 0:00. “My name is Ivo Karras. You won’t remember me and I’d rather you didn’t try tonight.”
June’s hand has gone inside her jacket. Dominic puts two fingers on her wrist.
“What’s on it?”
“You,” Karras says. “Twelve years ago.”
“I don’t do old business.”
“I know. It’s one of your rules.” Karras’s face does something that isn’t quite a smile. “Rule one, no promise longer than thirty days. Rule two, no promise that names a person you know. Rule three, nothing you can’t end yourself. Rule four, never say the word always.”
Dominic doesn’t move.
“You made a promise you forgot about, Mr. Reyes,” Ivo Karras says. “It broke three of the four.”
