The Family Hightower (7 page)

“But someone must know,” Petey says. “Someone must be coordinating things.”

Dino smiles. “If there is, I do not know who it is.”

“So if I can't see the operation, what guarantees do I have that you're not just going to walk off with my money?” Petey says.

Dino's smile doesn't break. “What guarantees do you ever have?” he says. “Newspapers around the world, every day, are full of stories of legitimate businesses walking off with other people's money. You could say that's the whole point, right? They're always just trying to get your money from you. The only question is what they give you in return.”

“And what kind of return do you give?”

“It varies, of course. But the way business is going right now, I would say it's very likely that you'll be quite pleased. Most quarters, I would say we—what is the phrase you like to use?—beat the market.” He says that in English. Then he's back to Ukrainian. “If you're not happy with the way things are going, you can always pull out.”

“So you say, except that there's no guarantee.”

Dino shrugs. “Of course not. You just have to trust us. Or maybe double-digit return rates are enough that you don't have to.”

“Double digits?”

Dino nods. “For the past few years, yes.”

Petey is quiet then, and Curly can tell he's not sure what to say.

“Mr. Hightower needs a day or two to think about it,” Curly says.

So Curly and Petey are sitting in Curly's room in the hotel, Curly on the hard bed, Petey in a curving wooden chair. They're drunk and wired and jetlagged, and they can't sleep. It's
2
:
37
in the morning. The TV's on but it doesn't work very well; a man is reporting the news from somewhere, but they can't tell where. Behind the hotel, two guys are giving yet another black Mercedes sedan the washing of its life. Petey's pouring another drink while Curly looks down at them through the thin curtain.
What makes a guy wash a car in the middle of the night?
he thinks. Then Petey hands him his glass.

“Well? What would you do?”

“It's your money, Petey. Your inheritance.”

“Well, pretend it's yours.”

Curly thinks about that. Pretend it's his money? If he had Petey's money, he realizes, he wouldn't be here right now. He'd be back in Parma, having bought a house for himself and his parents free and clear. Maybe he'd be loaning a bit to his cousins to help them out with their places. He'd have a little store, some kind of business, he doesn't know what. He just knows that it'd be his. Something to do with the trades, something that lets him give a few guys jobs. After that, he'd see about getting married, having a couple kids. Oh, he'd travel, too, maybe come to Ukraine, but it wouldn't be for business. He'd walk around this city, get out in the countryside with his family, and tell them all the stories he knew from his great-grandparents.
This is where you came from. This is what happened here. Don't forget. Otherwise, how can you know where you're going? How will you know how to get there?

Curly shakes his head. “No, Petey. It's your money. It's always been your money. What are you going to do with it?”

A look passes over Petey's face that makes Curly regret asking. He's an arrogant young man and a child all at once, with no sense of gravity or responsibility, the ugly side of the party boy Curly liked so much at first. This business of making big money is a game to Petey, the numbers almost meaningless to him. There's no inner monologue, no self-reflection. If Curly were to ask Petey why he wants to make all this money, he's afraid of what the answers would be.
Because it's money. Because we can. Because it's fun.
Never stopping to consider how big the numbers are, or what they mean to everyone else around him. It's Curly's first warning that he needs to watch out for himself, though even now, it's a little late.

“What do you think I should do?” Petey says.

“My honest opinion? Petey? I don't like it. I'm sorry we came all this way, but I don't like it.”

“Double-digit returns is a lot of money. We could make a fortune,” Petey says.

“You already have a fortune.”

“I haven't made
my
fortune. I could make enough to set myself up forever. Me and you too, Curly. Don't think I wouldn't do that.”

“Well, thank you so much.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” Petey says.

Yes you did, Petey,
Curly thinks. But says: “I know. Let's drop it.”

But Petey won't. “I just mean you could go back to Cleveland a very wealthy man,” he says. “Isn't it worth it?”

“I don't know. Is it? I don't like not being able to see the operation, to know anything about it. They could be into some bad, bad stuff.”

“Well, how bad could it be?”

And here, dear reader, is where their imaginations fail them. They just have no idea how bad it is. Which is why they call Dino the next day and tell them they're in.

For a time, Petey and Curly live like the princes to the new oligarchs do. The money from Dino starts rolling in. They move out of the Hotel Dnipro and into a string of apartments across Kiev, place remodeled only a year ago with as much going on in them as new money can buy. They go all over Europe—Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam. Change the cut of their clothes, the sweep of their hair, until they have the look of people who spend most of their time moving, on planes, in taxis, but haven't touched a steering wheel in months. They are driven around Kiev in twin black Mercedes of their own, windows tinted as dark as the metal. Their lives become a wash of vague business transactions, a certain thrill under the feigned casualness, of a stakeout, a spy movie, a bender, a wedding reception. Their tolerance for vodka climbs to heights few Americans ever reach, and they find themselves in slurred debates about the quality of caviar, the best Ukrainian rock band; Petey's developed a serious love for Vopli Vidopliassova, won't stop playing
Abo abo,
even though it's already a couple years old. And then there are the women.

It's too easy for these Cleveland boys. They're just ignorant enough, in the strange naïveté that America can breed, not to comprehend just how much money is part of—but only part of—the bargain. They don't see how a few people see them as walking, talking escape hatches out of a collapsing country, or how much their new bosses are using that image. They're not just dealing with Russians anymore, either; the contacts, the names dropped, seem to go across Asia, North Africa, Latin America. It's all very exciting to our boys, these phone calls in multiple languages that interrupt their conversations. It should be terrifying. Because their upbringing, their nation, was an invitation and a shield, opening doors and keeping them safe. They've left that behind now, and they don't see how the rules have shifted, been shaken. How dangerous it all is. Nobody cares who Petey's grandfather is. Nobody knows who either of them are, and the people who sit on the links of the chain of illegal commerce to either side of them are already scheming to cut them out after they've taken what they can get from them. A few of their associates are tapping their phone lines, reading their mail, to assess, if Petey and Curly went missing, how many people would come looking for them, how fast the search would start. These associates like what they see. Petey and Curly are a long way from the world that reared and sheltered them, and Petey doesn't notice.

Curly does. But it's only when Petey disappears that Curly starts to worry. Petey and his latest girl, Madalina, a pretty young Romanian woman with long, dark hair. They've both vanished. They said they were going on vacation; Curly saw them off from an apartment in Kiev, noticed how they talked to each other, standing close enough to touch. Her hand on his arm. His hand on her shoulder. Curly didn't realize it had gotten so serious, even though they've been together for a few months. For the first week they're gone, he assumes that they're just taking a longer vacation than usual. To the Carpathian Mountains, where Petey's always said he wants to go, or to Odessa, where he always goes. Or maybe Petey is going to meet Madalina's family, Curly thinks, to smile and speak in slow English that Madalina's parents don't understand. They'll look him over, trying to be cool, but unable to hide their joy for their daughter. That she's found someone she wants to be with, that nothing happened to her in Kiev that made them sorry they let her go.

Then Petey and Madalina have been gone for two weeks, no, fifteen days. It's too long. Curly calls Kosookyy in Parma, the weak thought in his head that maybe Petey went back; maybe he's standing right next to Kosookyy as the phone rings. Kosookyy will answer the phone, then turn to Petey.
You'll never believe who just called me right now. He never calls me. You guys are big shots now, don't need me anymore. Curly, Madalina's a lovely girl.
And then the relieved conversation.
I'm sorry, I should have told you I was leaving. No, no, I'm just glad you're all right.
But Kosookyy doesn't know where Petey is. They haven't spoken, it turns out, since Petey and Curly left for Ukraine. Curly didn't know that. Now he feels woozy. He starts to feel the loss of his friend, and with it, what little sense of safety he'd fooled himself into. As though he's been living in a town walled off from the woods outside, and every night, predators circle the settlement while he and his people sleep in peace inside. Now the gate's been left unlocked, the wind has blown it open, and the wolves are coming for the chickens.

By the beginning of the third week, Curly's in a cold panic. He'll give anything just to see Petey, imagines that when he does, everything will be better. He's wrong. It's almost four in the morning when Petey catches him outside his apartment, forces him into an alleyway, first by clapping a filthy, salty hand over his mouth, then by begging, in a fetid whisper in his ear, not to shout. He's shaking and jittery, his clothes yellowed, his shoes bruised. Like he's been homeless for days.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Listen.” He takes his hand off Curly's mouth.

“I'm listening.”

“Things have gone bad. You're not going to see me for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“Right now? It doesn't matter to you. But do yourself a favor and drop out of all this while you still don't know anything. Go back to Cleveland. Go back to Parma.”

“Where's Madalina?” Curly says.

Petey just shakes his head.

“Petey? How much trouble are we in?”

He won't answer. They just stare at each other, and Curly feels like he's spiking a fever. He can see Petey shaking through his clothes.
It's all been a goddamn act,
Curly thinks.
All that fucking swagger.
His panic breaks into anger, the divide between them fills with acid. He has a sharp and unkind thought, and their years of friendship can't blunt it. He never should have involved himself with this rich asshole, or imagined that the connection between them could change the world around them. Petey wasn't ever Ukrainian, even if his grandfather was. Fucker doesn't speak the language—still doesn't, not a word, though they've been here for almost a year. He didn't go to the schools or to church, in Tremont or Parma. His lineage mixed, and mixed again. His grandfather left Tremont eighty years ago, when Curly's family was still dodging trains. When Petey's clan moved its fingers, it knocked over houses in Curly's neighborhood. The Hightowers will come for their lost son, Curly knows, fish him out of typhoons with helicopters and lawyers, and once they have him, they won't look back to see if anyone was with him.

“I think you should go right now, Petey,” Curly says.

“I know.”

“And Petey? Don't screw yourself.”

“I won't. I know what you're saying.”

“Do you?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You know. Please tell me you know.”

Petey doesn't say anything, again, and Curly can tell he's angry, too. For a few seconds, they try to keep themselves from fighting it—the class war I mean—as only Clevelanders can. There's a good chance their friendship won't survive what they'll say to each other, and they both know it. Because Petey's grandfather put up the money to build a bridge that one of Curly's relatives died building. Paid for the train that crushed a great-great uncle under its wheels on the tracks running through the Flats. Petey's in the secret suite the Van Sweringens installed near the pinnacle of Terminal Tower while Curly's at the elevator doors in the lobby, polishing the bronzework. There's so much blood between them. Which is why Curly's way angrier than Petey is, why he throws the first punch and a dozen more.
You rich people,
he says.
You have everything in the world and no idea how it works. You're like babies, do you know that? If you had any idea what we really think of you. The things you get upset about, it's like a kid throwing a tantrum. And then you turn around and just ruin other people's lives without thinking twice. Boys with their toys.
You're going to kill me, Petey. I'm a dead man because of you, aren't I. But hey, don't worry. Mommy and Daddy'll fish you out of whatever trouble you're in. You'll be just fine.
He's just getting warmed up. It takes him three full minutes to unload all of it, and it ends in a long chain of profanity.
You rich fucking prick. You rich fucking prick.
Petey still doesn't say anything; he doesn't have anything to say. He just sits there and takes it, and Curly understands that he's won the only fight he can win with the Hightowers, even though it also means he's lost: Losing that fight, for Petey, is yet another part of the privilege, because Petey can get his ass kicked and still walk away with every cent he has, everything he's ever had, and leave Curly to hang. Curly can see what Petey's thinking:
I don't really have to listen to this.