Dave Zeltserman - Outsourced

“Gordon, come on.”

“You can’t tell me Peyton wouldn’t deserve it.” Gordon paused for a moment, choking back emotion. “He’s been dangling that restaurant in front of me for three years now – ever since I was laid off. That was all his idea, investing in an open-pit Texas-style barbecue for me to run. He came to me with it. And he’s been bringing it up for three years. Yesterday for the first time I tried asking him about it, and all of a sudden he doesn’t want to do business with a friend. Can you believe that, Dan? He’s sitting on eight million dollars and all of a sudden he doesn’t want to invest sixty thousand dollars to do business with a friend.”

“Let’s drop this, okay?”

“Sure, we can drop it, but I’ll tell you, I’d have no problem kidnapping one of his kids. Probably even enjoy taking care of that brat of his, Petulia.”

“I don’t want to hear this. We’re not hurting anyone, especially not a kid. For God’s sakes, we’ve known Peyton for years.”

“Sure, whatever, I was just throwing out an idea. What do you want me to do for this robbery?”

“Turn on your computer and I’ll show you.”

Gordon obliged. After the computer came on, Dan did a search on the Internet and brought up a color photo of a member of the Boston mafia named Raymond Lombardo. “I’m hoping all those years you’ve spent doing makeup for community theatre can finally be of some use. Can you make me look like him?” Dan asked.

“Depends. You need to be more specific.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have to look like him from a distance, from up close, or good enough to fool his mother? Stuff like that. How much do you need to look like him?”

“Enough so that he’s identified by video from a security camera.”

“How tall is he?”

“My height.”

Gordon squinted at the photo, appraising it. “He looks heavier than you.”

“Yeah, he is. About sixty pounds.”

“I think I can do it,” Gordon said, nodding to himself. “I’m going to have to add some padding, make you look heavier. What are you going to be wearing?”

“Work overalls.”

“Okay, no problem there. You’ll need a wig and facial hair. I should be able to build you a thicker jaw and nose. Maybe have you wear dark glasses to hide your eyes. Sure, I can do it.”

“I don’t need the dark glasses. I’ve already got cosmetic contact lenses to change my eye color. I’ll also be wearing a ski mask and taking it off so I can be captured by a security camera.”

“Well, that’s going to be a problem.”

“Why?”

“I can’t use putty. Otherwise, when you take the mask off it could bend your nose. That would give the police a good chuckle.” Gordon scratched his head as he thought. “I could use a rubber compound,” he said slowly. “That should work. When are we doing this?”

“Six days.”

“Not giving me much notice, are you? Well, if I can put together the makeup for Phantom of the Opera over a weekend, I can do this.”

“You really like this theatre stuff, huh?”

“I hate it. Absolutely can’t stand it.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve been doing this for years.”

Gordon gave a slight smile that could’ve been lifted directly from the Mona Lisa. “Since college, actually. That was when I started this simply to piss my father off, and you know, I don’t think I could’ve picked a better way. Joining the theatrical club was respectable enough that I had my mother bragging to all their friends about how I was involved in theatre, and my father just had to sit and listen and pretend he was fine with it. I keep doing this community theatre stuff so I can talk about it when I see them over Christmas.”

“You’ve been doing this all these years just to get at your old man?”

“As good a reason as any. You haven’t told me, do you want me just to do the makeup or am I going to be involved in the robbery? You know I did a tour in Vietnam.”

“I need you for the robbery. We’re going to meet at Joel’s house tomorrow to go over the details. I’ll pick you up at ten.”

“Will I have a gun?”

“Yeah.”

Gordon folded his arms, nodding. “Okay then.”

Yuri Tolkov pulled the Mercedes into the driveway of a small cape-style house on a dead-end street in Melrose. Petrenko sat in the passenger seat and an older soft-looking man sat in the back. Yuri checked the address against a piece of paper he had, then indicated to Petrenko that they had the right house. All three men left the car, Yuri and Petrenko leading the way to the front door. The older man carried a leather bag as he trailed behind, walking as if he had pebbles in his shoes.

“There will be three Arabs, right?” Petrenko asked.

“That was the agreement.”

After they knocked on the door, a window curtain was pushed aside and a man with an angry scowl opened up and signaled impatiently for them to step inside. He was in his early twenties, thin as a rail, and had a sub-compact Glock 9mm pistol shoved in his waistband. Sitting on a sofa were two other Arabs. One was a heavyset man with a thick beard trimmed close to his face, the other was also rail-thin, angry-looking and with features that looked sharp enough to cut paper. All three Arabs were wearing leisure suits.

Yuri told Petrenko in Russian that the angry looking man on the sofa was the one on the FBI’s ten-most-wanted list and went by the name Abbas.

Anger flushed Abbas’s face when he heard the Russian. “The agreement was we speak English only,” he said, his eyes simmering. “Another word in Russian and the hell with you!”

Petrenko showed a humorless thin smile. “Relax,” he said, “my employee was just being polite. All he said was that it smells like the inside of a shoe in here. I have to agree with him. Not only that, it is like an oven. Could you open a window or turn on an air conditioner?”

Abbas stared dumbly at Petrenko for a moment and then barked out a command in Arabic to the man who had escorted them in. With his scowl deepening, the man moved over to one of the windows and opened it a crack.

“We have ten diamonds for you to appraise,” Abbas said, his face still mottled with anger. “Eighty others just like these are being held in a safe place.”

Petrenko, unblinking, dropped his smile. “We can agree on a price, but later we will have to appraise all the diamonds and make adjustments as necessary.”

“You won’t have to make any adjustments, but we do not have to argue this now.” Abbas slipped a hand into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a small silk bag. He extended the bag to Petrenko who didn’t bother moving. Instead, the older man with the leather bag took the diamonds and was escorted to a table where he could examine them. He took a portable xenon lamp, a small scale, a Schneider loupe, and bottles of different solutions from his bag, then hunched over the diamonds, examining and weighing each one. When he was done, he hobbled over to Petrenko and in Russian told him the ten diamonds were of high quality and worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

“English! We agreed English only!” Abbas screamed. He barked out a string of commands in Arabic. The Arab standing near Petrenko reached for his Glock. Petrenko feigned a jab with his right hand and almost instantaneously rabbit-punched the man in the chest with his left, his fist moving as a blur. The punch knocked the Arab off his feet. As he hit the floor, his Glock bounced out of his waistband and landed a few feet from him. Before he could reach for it, Petrenko stepped on his hand and picked the gun up himself. The heavyset Arab started for his inside jacket pocket but stopped as he realized Yuri had the edge of an eight-inch switchblade against his throat.