The Blue Zone

CHAPTER SIX

It was a long, difficult drive back to Westchester that afternoon for Raab, in the back of the black Lincoln limo his lawyer, Mel Kipstein, had arranged.

An hour before, he’d been brought in front of Judge Muriel Saperstein in the United States courthouse at Foley Square for arraignment, the most humiliating moment of his life.

The frosty government lawyer who’d been in on his interrogation referred to him as a “criminal kingpin” who was the architect of an illicit scheme by which Colombian drug lords were able to divert money out of the country. That he had knowingly profited from this enterprise for years. That he had ties to known drug traffickers.

No, Raab had to hold himself back from shouting, that’s not how it was at all.

Every time he heard the judge read off a charge, it cut through him like a serrated blade.

Money laundering. Aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise. Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.

After some negotiation, during which Raab grew alarmed he might not even be freed, bail was set at $2 million.

“I see you own a fancy home in Westchester, Mr. Raab?” The judged peered over her glasses.

“Yes, Your Honor.” Benjamin shrugged. “I guess.”

She scribbled something on an official-looking document. “Not anymore, I’m afraid.”

An hour later he and Mel were heading up Interstate 95 toward Westchester. All he told Sharon was that he was okay and that he’d explain everything when he got home.

Mel thought they definitely had some wiggle room. He figured there was a reasonable case for entrapment. Up to now he had represented Raab on matters like contract disputes, the office lease, and setting up a trust for his kids. Just two weeks before, the two of them had come in second in the Member/Guest golf tourney at Century.

“The law says you had to assist them, knowingly, Ben. This Concerga never declared to you what he intended to do with the gold, did he?”

Raab shook his head. “No.”

“He never explicitly told you the money he was giving you was derived from illicit means?”

Raab shook his head again. He took a long gulp from a bottle of water.

“So if you didn’t know, you didn’t know, right, Ben? What you’re telling me is good. The RICO statutes say you have to conspire with ‘knowing’ or ‘intent.’ You can’t be a participant, nonetheless aid or abet, if you didn’t know.”

It somehow sounded good when Mel said it. He could almost believe it himself. He had made some critical mistakes of judgment. That was what he had to get across. He had acted blindly, stupidly—out of greed. But he never knew whom he was dealing with or what they were doing with the gold. Tomorrow morning they had a follow-up meeting with the government that would likely determine the next twenty years of his life.

“But this last thing, Ben, this Berroa guy … this complicates matters. It’s bad. I mean, they have your voice on tape. Discussing the same arrangements with an FBI agent.” Mel looked at him closely. “Look, this is important, Ben. We’ve been friends a lot of years. Is there anything you’re not telling me that could have an impact on this case? Anything the government might know? Now’s the time.”

Raab stared Mel in the eye. Mel had been his friend for more than ten years. “No.”

“Well, one thing’s lucky.” The lawyer looked relieved and jotted a few notes on his pad. “You’re lucky you’re not the one they really want here. Otherwise there’d be nothing to discuss.” Mel kept his gaze on him awhile, then just shook his head. “What the hell were you possibly thinking, Ben?”

Raab dropped his head back and closed his eyes. Twenty years of his life, gone … “I don’t know.”

What he did know was that the hardest part was yet to come. That would take place when he arrived home. When he walked in the door and had to explain to his family, who had trusted and respected him, how the smoothly climbing arc that had been their lives the past two decades had basically been blown from the sky. How everything they counted on and took for granted was gone.

He’d always been the rock, the provider. He always talked about pride and family. His handshake was his bond. Now everything was about to change.

Raab felt his stomach churn. What would they think of him? How would they understand?

The car pulled off the thruway at Exit 16, traveled north along Palmer into the town of Larchmont. These were the streets, stores, and markets he saw every day.

By tomorrow this would all be public. It would be in the papers. It would be all over the club, the local shops, Em and Justin’s school.

Raab’s stomach started to grind.

One day they’ll understand, he told himself. One day, they will have to see me the same way. As a husband and a provider. As a father. As the person he’d always been. And forgive me.

He had been a coach to Emily. He had given Kate her insulin shots when she was ill. He had been a good husband to Sharon. All these years.

That was no lie.

The limo turned down Larchmont Avenue, heading toward the water. Raab tensed. The houses grew familiar. These were the people he knew. People his kids went to school with.

On Sea Wall the Lincoln turned right, and then it was only a short block with the sound directly in front of them, to the large fieldstone pillars, and then on to the spacious Tudor house at the end of the landscaped drive.

Raab let out a measured breath.

He knew he had let them down—their faith, their trust. But there was no turning back now. And he knew that what happened today would not be the end of it.

When the truth came out, he would let them down a whole lot more.

“You want me to come in with you?” Mel asked, squeezing Raab’s arm as the car pulled into the pebbled driveway.

“No.” Raab shook his head.

It was only a house. What’s important is the people in it. Whatever he’d had to do, his family hadn’t been a lie.

“This I have to do alone.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kate was in the kitchen with her mother and Em when the black limo turned down the drive.

“It’s Dad!” Emily shouted, still in her squash clothes. She made a beeline for the front door.

Kate saw her mother’s hesitation. It was as if she couldn’t move, or was afraid to. As if she were afraid what opening that door would reveal.

“It’s going to be okay.” Kate took her arm and led her to the door. “Whatever it is, you know, Dad’ll make it okay.”

Sharon nodded.

They watched him climb out of the car, accompanied by Mel Kipstein, whom Kate knew from the club. Emily bolted down the flagstone steps and straight into her father’s arms. “Daddy!”

Raab just stood there for a moment, hugging her, staring up at Kate and her mom over his younger daughter’s shoulder as they stood on the landing. He had an ashen shadow on his face. He could barely look at them.

“Oh, Ben …” Sharon slowly came down the steps, tears in her eyes. They hugged. A hug aching with worry and uncertainty, deeper than Kate could remember seeing in years.

“Pumpkin.” Her father’s face brightened as his eyes met Kate’s. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Of course I’m here, Daddy.” Kate ran down to the driveway and put her arms around him, too. She placed her head on his shoulder. She could never remember seeing shame on her father’s face before.

“And you too, champ.” He reached out for Justin, who had just come up behind them, mussing his son’s shaggy brown hair.

“Hey, Dad.” Justin leaned against him. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He did his best to smile. “I am now.”

Together they went inside.

For Kate, the huge stone house by the water had never really felt like home. “Home” had been the more modest, fifties ranch where she’d grown up in Harrison, a couple of towns away. With her cramped corner room covered in posters of U-2 and Gwyneth Paltrow, the marshy little pond in back, and the constant whoosh of traffic off the back deck from the Hutchinson Parkway.

But Raab had bought this place in her senior year. His dream house—with its large Palladian windows overlooking the Sound, the gargantuan kitchen with two of everything—Sub-Zeros, dishwashers—the flashy basement theater some Wall Street guy had decked out to the nines, the five-car garage.

They all took a seat in the tall, beamed living room. Kate, with her mother, in front of the fireplace. Emily plopped herself on her father’s lap in the high-backed leather chair. Justin pulled up the tufted ottoman.

There was a weird, uncomfortable silence.

“So we gonna start with your day,” Kate quipped, trying to cut the tension, “or would you like to hear about mine?”

That made her dad smile. “First, I don’t want any of you to be afraid,” he said. “You’re going to hear some terrible things about me. The most important thing is that you understand I’m innocent. Mel says we’ve got a solid case.”

“Of course we know you’re innocent, Ben,” said Sharon. “But innocent of what?”

Kate’s dad let out a nervous breath and gently moved Emily to an adjacent chair.

“Money laundering. Conspiracy to commit fraud. Aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise—that enough?”

“Conspiracy …” Sharon’s jaw dropped open. “Conspiracy with whom, Ben?”

“Basically, what they’re saying”—he locked his fingers together—“is that I provided some merchandise to people who ultimately did some bad things with it.”

“Merchandise?” Emily echoed, not understanding.

“Gold, honey.” Ben exhaled.

“So what’s wrong with that?” Kate shrugged. “You’re in the trading business, aren’t you? That’s what you do.”

“Believe me, I tried to make that point—but in this case I may have made some mistakes.”

Sharon stared at him. “You provided this gold to whom, Ben? What kind of people are we talking about?”

Raab swallowed. He moved his chair a little closer to her and wrapped his fingers around her hand.

“Drug traffickers, Sharon. Colombians.”

Sharon let out a gasp—half laughing, half incredulous. “You must be kidding, Ben.”

“Now, I didn’t know who they were, and all I did was provide the gold, Sharon, you have to believe that. But there’s more. I introduced them to someone. Someone who altered what I sold them. In an illegal way. Into things like tools, bookends, desk ornaments—and painted them over. So they could ship them back home.”

“Home?” Sharon squinted. She looked over to Kate. “I don’t understand.”

“Out of the country, Sharon. Back to Colombia.”

Kate’s mother’s hand flew to her cheek. “Oh, my God, Ben, what have you done?”

“Look, these people came to me.” Raab squeezed his hand around hers. “I didn’t know what they were doing or who they were. They were some export company. I did what I always do. I sold them gold.”

“Then I don’t understand,” Kate cut in. “How can they arrest you for that?”

“Unfortunately, it’s slightly more complicated, pumpkin,” her father said, shifting back. “I set them up with someone, in order to accomplish what they wanted. And I also took some payments, which makes it seem like I was a party to what was going on.”

“Were you?”

“Was I what, Sharon?”

“Were you a party to what was going on?”

“Of course not, Sharon. I just—”

“So who the hell did you introduce them to, Ben?” Sharon’s voice rose, tense and alarmed.

Raab cleared his throat and looked down. “Harold Kornreich. He’s been arrested, too.”

“Jesus Christ, Ben, what have the two of you done?”

Kate felt her own stomach tie into a knot. Harold Kornreich was one of her dad’s business buddies. They went to trade shows together. He and Audrey had come to her bat mitzvah. It was like they were two stupid white guys who had walked into a scam. Except her dad wasn’t exactly stupid. And he had taken money—from criminals. Drug dealers. You didn’t exactly have to be a constitutional scholar to see that this wasn’t about to just go away.

“Now, there’s no grounds to prove I knew exactly what was going on,” her father said. “I’m not even sure they really want to focus on me.”

“Then what do they want?” Sharon asked, her gaze troubled and wide.

“What they want is for me to roll.”

“Roll …?”

“Testify, Sharon. Against Harold. The Colombians, too.”

“At a trial?”

“Yes.” He swallowed resignedly. “At a trial.”

“No!” Sharon stood up. Tears of anger and bewilderment flashed in her eyes. “That’s how we get to keep our life? By turning state’s evidence against one of your closest friends? You’re not going to do that, are you, Ben? It would be like admitting you were guilty. Harold and Audrey are our friends. You sold these people gold. What they did with it is their business. We’re going to fight this, aren’t we, Ben? Isn’t that right?”

“Of course we’re going to fight this, Sharon. It’s just that—”

“It’s just that what, Ben?” Sharon kept her gaze on him, razor sharp.

“It’s just that the payments I took from these guys all these years don’t exactly make me look innocent, Sharon.”

His voice had elevated, and there was something in it Kate had never heard in her dad before. That he was afraid, and not entirely blameless. That maybe he wasn’t going to be able to make this come out okay. They all sat there looking at him, trying to figure out just what that meant.

“You’re not going to go to jail, are you, Dad?”

It was Justin, in a voice that was halting and tight. The question that was suddenly front and center in everyone’s mind.

“Of course not, champ.” His father pulled him close and stroked his bushy brown hair and looked past him. At Kate.

“No one in this family’s going to jail.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Luis Prado didn’t ask too many questions.

He’d been in the United States for four years now. His papers said he was here to visit a sister, but that was a lie. He had no family here.

He’d come here to do work. He was handpicked because of the way he handled himself back home. And what he did, Luis did very well.

He did jobs for the Mercados. Dirty jobs. The kind you did because of the oath you had sworn. You didn’t look into someone’s face. You looked through them. You didn’t ask why.

That’s what had gotten him out of the slums of Carmenes. What enabled him to send money back home to his wife and child—more money than he could ever dream of there. What paid for the fancy suits he wore and the private tables at the salsa clubs—and the occasional woman he met there who looked at him with pride.

It’s what separated him from the desesperados back home. A man with no worth. No significance. Nothing.

The driver, a cocky kid named Tomás, played with the radio in the customized Cadillac Escalade while he drove. “Ha!” He tapped his hands against the wheel to the steady salsa beat. “José Alberto. El Canario.”

The kid was probably no more than twenty-one, but he had already cut his cherry and would drive through a fucking building if he had to get out the other side. He was fearless and good, if maybe a little reckless, but that was just what was needed now. Luis had worked with him before.

They drove north out of the Bronx. Through the kinds of neighborhoods they had never seen before. Places that when Luis was just a kid back home were only hidden behind high fences, with guards at the gates. Maybe, Luis thought as they passed by, if he did his jobs and played his cards right, one day he might have such a home.

They followed the route from the highway carefully. They retraced it, making sure they knew the lights, the turns. They had to be able to retrace it, fast, on the way out.

It went back a long way, Luis thought. Cousins, brothers. Whole families. They all made the same oath. Fraternidad. If he died for his work, so be it. It was a lifelong tie. However long or short that was.

They drove down a dark, shaded street and pulled up outside a large house. They cut the lights. Someone was walking a dog down by the water. They waited until the person was well out of sight, checking their watches.

“Let’s go, hermano.” Tomás drummed against the wheel. “It’s salsa time!”

Luis opened the satchel under his feet. His boss had been very specific about this job. Precisely what had to be done. Luis didn’t care. He had never met the person. He wasn’t even a name to him. All he was told was that they could do harm to the family—and that was enough.

That was everything.

Luis never thought too much about details when it came to work. In fact, only one word ran through his brain as he stepped out of the car in front of the fancy, well-lit house and drew back the TEC-9 automatic machine pistol with an extra clip.

You do the family harm, this is what you get.

Maricón.

CHAPTER NINE

Kate decided to stay on at the house that night. Her mother was a mess and closed the door to her room. Emily and Justin just seemed shell-shocked. Kate tried her best to calm them. Dad had never let them down, not ever, had he? This time, she wasn’t sure if they believed it. Around nine, Em put on her iPod and Justin went back to a video game. Kate went downstairs.

There was a light on in the den. Her father was there, a magazine on his lap, watching CNN on the oversize plasma TV.

Kate knocked, quietly. Her father looked up.

“This a good time to talk about my rent allowance?” She hung in the doorway with a crooked grin.

That brought a smile to her dad’s face. “If it’s you, it’s always a good time, pumpkin.” He turned down the volume on the TV. “Did you do your shot?”

“Yes.” Kate nodded with a roll of her eyes. “I took care of my shot. I’ve been to college, Dad. I basically live with a doctor. I’m twenty-three.”

“Okay, okay …” Her father sighed. “I hear ya—it’s just reflex.”

Kate curled up next to him on the couch. For a moment they just avoided the obvious. He asked about Greg. How things were going at the office. “With the leuskophy …”

“Leukoscopophy, Dad. And it’s called a lab. Not an office. And one day you’ll be proud of me for what we’re doing. You just won’t ever be able to pronounce it.”

He chuckled again and put the magazine aside. “I’m always proud of you, Kate.”

Kate looked around the room. Their den was filled with pictures from all the trips they’d taken. There was a Northwest Indian mask on the wall they had picked up skiing in Vancouver. An African basket they’d brought back from Botswana, where they’d been on safari. This room had always been a friendly place for Kate, filled with the warmest memories. All those memories seemed threatened now.

Kate met his eyes. “You’d tell me, Daddy, wouldn’t you?”

“Tell you what, sweetheart?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. If you really did something wrong?”

“I did tell you, Kate. Mel thinks we have a good shot at fighting this thing. He claims that the RICO statutes—”

“I don’t mean legally, Daddy. I mean if you really did something wrong. Something we should know about.”

He shifted toward her. “What are you asking, Kate?”

“I’m not sure.” The words stuck in her throat. “If you knew …”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on her, and clasped his hands together. He didn’t answer.

“Because it’s important to me, Daddy—who you are. All this stuff, these trips, how we’ve always talked about family—it’s not just words or pictures and mementos to me. All of us need to believe in something right now—to get through this—and the thing I choose to believe in is you. Because it’s what I’ve always believed in.” Kate shook her head. “I don’t really want to start looking for someone else right now.”

Ben smiled. “You don’t have to, pumpkin.”

“Because I can give Mom pep talks,” Kate said, eyes glistening, “and remind Emily and Justin how you never let us down—because you haven’t! But I’ve got to know, above everything, Dad, that the person who walked through that door tonight, who’s going in there tomorrow to fight this as I know you will, is the same one I’ve known all my life. The person I always thought I knew.”

Her father looked at her, then took her hand and massaged it, like she remembered from when she was sick.

“I am that man, pumpkin.”

Kate’s eyes welled up. She nodded.

“C’mere.…” He pulled her close, and Kate rested her head against him. It made her feel the way she always did in his arms. Safe. Special. A thousand miles away from harm. She wiped the tears off her cheek and tilted her face up to him.

“Money laundering, conspiracy …” She shook her head. “It just doesn’t fit you, Dad.”

He nodded wistfully. “I’m sorry. I know.”

“Now, tax felon.” Kate shrugged. “Or jewel thief. That would be a different story.”

Her father smiled. “I’ll try to do better next time.”

Suddenly she couldn’t hold back. Kate squeezed his hand and felt a rush of tears streaming down her cheeks—stupid and like a little girl, but impossible to hold back. It hurt her, how her father had always been so in control—how everything had always been so in control—and now, she knew, she couldn’t fight it, their life was about to change. No matter how he tried to pretend it would go away. This wouldn’t go away. This was going to hang over them. This was bad.

“You know, they’re talking fifteen to twenty years,” her father said in a low voice as he held her. “That’s federal prison, Kate. No plasma TV there. You’ll be married then. With kids—maybe the same age Em is now.…”

“You’ll do what you have to do, Daddy,” Kate said, squeezing him tighter. “We’re behind you, whatever that is.”

There was a shuffling of feet. Sharon looked in at the door. She was in her bathrobe, holding a cup of tea. She stared at Ben a little blankly. “I’m going to bed.”

That was when they heard the click of a car door being opened out front. Footsteps coming up the drive.

“Who’s that?” Kate’s mother turned.

Her father exhaled. “Probably the fucking New York Times.”

Suddenly the windows exploded in gunfire.

CHAPTER TEN

There was an ear-shattering barrage—glass splintering everywhere, bullets shrieking over their heads, flashing in the night.

Raab hurled himself on top of Kate. For a second, Sharon just stood there, paralyzed, until he reached over and grabbed her by the robe, dragging her onto the floor, and pressed his body tightly over both of them.

“Stay down! Stay down!” he screamed.

“Jesus Christ, Ben, what’s going on?”