The Consignment Read Online Free PDF Page A

see him. Which I do, of course. And I walk into the appointed hotel room at the appointed hour and Dimitri’s up on the bed eating pretzels, watching TV. Only he’s not alone in the room. There’s two guys in dark suits standing across at the window. I couldn’t believe it. Two guys I’ve never seen before. This is meant to be a safe meeting, just me and Dimitri. Then Dimitri introduces them. A pair of agents from the goddamned IRS.”
    I squinted. Internal Revenue?
    “Christ,” Channon went on. “Dimitri didn’t even have the guts to tell me himself. They had to do it for him.” The IRS, according to Channon, had picked up discrepancies between Dimitri’s tax returns and some investment accounts he had. His occupation led them to look a little closer. “They even put a tail on him for a few days. A guy going around after him picking up the paperwork on his transactions—credit cards, checks—they recorded his withdrawals from cash machines, got a fix on the times, and traced his account back through the bank.”
    “That was his tail, the IRS?” I was thinking about that feeling I had at the 7-Eleven.
    Channon nodded. “Makes you weep, doesn’t it? And by now they’ve got him by the shorts, they know something’s not right. So when they come knocking on his door they’re not just after back taxes, they want to know where this free money he’s got’s coming from. And the way they’re talking, Dimitri figures they’ve already got a fair idea. And he figures—correctly—that it’s not just a fine he’s looking at. So now he calls in the cavalry.” Channon thumbed his chest and screwed up his face. “The mystery man from Washington he’s told them about. Me. The guy he’s working for on government business. I was his escape route.”
    “He didn’t need money.”
    “Every gambler needs money, Ned.”
    We looked at each other. Dimitri’s inability to restrain a corrosive gambling habit was what had led, years earlier, to the collapse of his marriage. I’d never told Channon that. Dimitri had sworn to me that he’d slain the demon, and I’d believed him. But from the picture Channon was sketching—a guy floundering out of his financial depth, grasping for cash—it sounded like Dimitri’s habit had risen from the ashes and gotten a disastrous new lease on life. Channon had clearly made some inquiries of his own. I was appalled.
    “Why’d he set you up like that?”
    “Why didn’t he warn me? Because once I was there I was real. I couldn’t deny I knew him. He’d whistled, I’d arrived on the next plane. What was I doing, just visiting? Dimitri figured once I was there I’d have no choice, I’d have to lie for him. I’d have to say the money was the government’s, anything to get him out of the IRS’s clutches.” He shook his head. “Hell, he was in dreamland. The IRS had their teeth in him up to the gums, they weren’t going to let go. Once I produced my bona fides, they showed me what they had on him, stuff they hadn’t shown Dimitri. Jesus, you didn’t have to be Columbo. Dimitri was some kind of bagman—at it for at least a year—giving and taking bribes, cutting a piece for his own commission.” Channon lifted his eyes and spoke with real bitterness. “So that’s the story. Two years too late I find out you’ve recruited me a goddamn crook.”
    I flinched. A few weeks after the collapse of the World Trade Center and the strike on the Pentagon, Channon had summoned me down to Washington and made me an offer. It was a strange time. The usual civil restraints on the Pentagon and the federal agencies had been temporarily brushed aside, their leashes were off. The DIA decided to take the opportunity to do something about the increasing amounts of U.S.-manufactured materiel turning up in the wrong hands internationally. Alex, somewhere in the back of his mind, must have made a connection with me.
    During the Gulf War, one of the emplacements in our unit took a direct hit