Robin Cook - Death Benefit

“So what do we do, Berti?”

“You hold on, I can conference you through to Burim.”

“I need to make another quick call first,” Buda said.

“Okay. Do what you need to do, then call me right back.”

Buda was navigating a complicated course but calmly made his call to Prek. When Prek picked up, Buda spoke and didn’t give Prek a chance to respond. He told Prek that he had to talk to a man named Burim Graziani before he could say yea or nay about Pia Grazdani. He said he was about to talk with him, so he’d be getting back to Prek straightaway with a final answer. “Hold the course with our guest for another half-hour or so,” Buda said. “I thought I’d also let you know I’m only about a half-hour away. I’m in Wayne, on Route 23. I’ll be back to you shortly.”

As soon as Prek hung up from Buda the second time, after being told to hold the course, he jumped out of the van. For a moment he stood and listened. He had expected to hear muffled conversation from his two sex-starved underlings, but he heard nothing, which was disturbing. A half-hour earlier the men had been unable to stop talking. With gathering urgency, Prek headed for the front door, hearing in his mind Buda telling him the woman was to be treated as a guest.

With his intuition setting off alarm bells, Prek reproached himself: He should not have left the two alone no matter how much he had wanted to get out of the house. He went to open the front door and found it locked.

“What the . . .” he said. He ran around the corner of the house directly to the window of the master bedroom. Neri hadn’t even bothered to close the drapes. Prek banged twice on the window, then ran back to the van, grabbed his gun from the glove compartment, ran back to the window, and smashed it with the butt of the gun. He was furious. Reaching in awkwardly, he fired off a single round.

TURNOFF ON ROUTE 23 WAYNE, NEW JERSEY MARCH 25, 2011, 9:19 P.M.

Iunderstand you’re trying to reach me,” Burim Graziani said.

“Berti, are you still on the line?” Buda questioned.

“I’m getting off. You two men talk.” There was a click when Berti hung up.

“Yes, I need to talk to you,” Buda said to Burim. “We haven’t met each other, right?”

“No, I don’t believe so. But I know who you are, of course.”

In their line of work, everyone knew Aleksander Buda. This was going to be a complicated conversation, Buda could tell. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t also too compromising. Cell phones could be hacked, even new cell phones like the one Buda was currently using.

“For that reason, we need to be careful.”

“I understand.”

Neither of them was willing to start. Burim had been shocked to get Ristani’s call. He had been in his car, driving back to Weehawken from South Jersey where he’d concluded his business early. Ristani’s question had shaken him so much he nearly rear-ended the truck in front of him. “Pia Grazdani?” he’d repeated out loud, and he thought of his wife, not his daughter. He remembered her fiery personality, the fights, how Pia stayed out all night to party, leaving him alone with the baby. His sudden fury meant he wasn’t listening properly to what Berti was asking him.

“She’s about twenty-five,” Berti had said. “Apparently quite beautiful. Burim, shit, can you hear me?” The connection had not been good, going in and out. It was at that point that Burim realized Berti wasn’t talking about his late wife, but rather about his daughter, Afrodita Pia Grazdani.

Buda cleared his throat. “Berti told me you recognize the name Pia Grazdani. Is there any relation?”

“I remember her by a different name,” Burim said. “Afrodita, which is what I called her. Her middle name was Pia, like her mother. She was my daughter.”

Afrodita. The kid had been a pain in the ass almost as much as the mother since she’d inherited her mother’s personality. Drilon had been the only one who got along with her. A miserable little thing, very demanding at a time when Burim had been too busy trying to make the grade in the Rudaj organization. He’d had no time for a kid. After she’d been taken away by city services, Burim told himself that he’d go and get her back when he was legal in the country, but when he got his green card, he decided he was happier as a man without the burden of responsibility. Then he had to drop out of sight as Burim Graziani and he never got around to establishing his new identity beyond getting a driver’s license in case there was ever a traffic stop. He imagined he’d now have to explain all this to Berti Ristani, something that was a bigger issue to him than the fate of his daughter.

“So you think this girl might be your daughter?” Buda asked, not wanting to believe this was happening.

“It’s possible, for sure. It’s hardly a common name, and the age is about right, mid-to-late twenties.” Try as he might, Burim couldn’t remember Afrodita’s birthday-neither the day nor the year.

“What’s the story with the change of the family name?”

Burim related that issue. Since Buda, like all Albanian mafia, knew the details of the Rudaj debacle, he understood. When the FBI came bursting in, lots of people had to go underground.

“So you lost touch with your daughter a long time ago?”

“Yes, you know how it is in this business.”

Having been at the time a gofer in a neighborhood crew that was heavily involved in the drug business didn’t make him ideal parent material. Buda and Burim both understood. Burim didn’t think it was necessary to fill in the details. That the cops had come and taken the kid away and put her in foster care, that he hadn’t bothered to stay in contact, was all understood. Burim went quiet again.

“You think she’d remember you?”

“She was six, I believe, when she went away, and I guess a kid can remember back that far.”

Burim couldn’t help wondering why a man like Buda cared about this woman who might possibly be his daughter. “So how did this Pia Grazdani show up? How did she get involved with you?”

“She’s associated with a job I was asked to do,” Buda said vaguely. “She’s a medical student at Columbia University, doing work with some researcher who had an accident and died.”

Burim was shocked once again. Could his daughter be a medical student? And at such a famous university? It seemed incredible. If pressed, he would have thought the girl would end up on a similar path as her mother, would have been with a guy like him or maybe even out on the street. A medical student? He was surprised to feel something like pride.

“And is she pretty, like Berti said?”

“I haven’t seen her, but I’m told she is quite beautiful. And, er, scrappy.”

“You mean she likes a fight?”

“You could say that.”

“That sounds right,” Burim said ruefully. “Her mother was a tigress. So what is this about?”

“Where are you?” Buda asked. “With this development, we need to talk in person.”

It turned out that Burim was only about fifteen miles from where Buda was parked, near the Lincoln Tunnel exit on the New Jersey Turnpike.

“Do you know the Swiss House Inn?” Burim asked, and Buda did. The restaurant was just off Route 80, convenient for Burim and Buda and not far, as it happened, from Green Pond either.

“I want my brother to come,” Burim said.

“Okay,” Buda said, curious. The two brothers seemed to be like night and day. Why he’d want his moron brother there, Buda couldn’t imagine, but he didn’t care. It was, after all, a family affair.

“I will have an associate with me as well,” Buda said, thinking of Fatos Toptani. If he could get Fatos Toptani to get there in time, he thought.