They pecked and clawed at each other fiercely, and white and brown-black feathers were thrust into the air as they fought. Trickles of blood began to appear on the white rooster as they continued, but it was hard to tell whose blood it was. As each bird received more cuts and blows, they seemed to get more enraged and more oblivious to their injuries. It became obvious that the contest could only end with the death of one or both of the combatants.
There was a brief pause in the action, as if it was a planned timeout. The birds backed off and gave each other a fixed look. They breathed heavily. Suddenly, the brown bird jumped in the air and flapped his wings violently as if using a diversionary tactic. He then dropped on the white rooster with a forceful thrust, and the razor-sharp blade cut him deeply in the chest just below the throat. A large amount of blood now streamed from the wound and the entire chest area of the white bird was stained in red. He fell to one side, gasping for breath. Blood pooled in the hole where one of his eyes had been. His beak was split and broken on the end. As the brown rooster sensed a kill, he was relentless in his attack. The white bird tried to rally each time the red rooster charged, but he was hurt too badly to avoid the eventual outcome. Although the match was decided at this point, the men in the arena allowed it to continue until the smaller rooster finally broke his defenseless opponent’s neck with a savage thrust. The white bird’s body went limp, but his heart, which was now protruding from the deep, wide cut in his chest, was still beating outside his body.
The crowd, most of whom bet on the favorite, cheered and held up their brown paper slips, waiting for the house men to pay them off. As the noise subsided, the burly man in overalls picked up the exhausted brown rooster, held him up and turned around to the crowd as he had done before the fight. He then returned him to his cage. The bearded Cajun in the straw hat walked over to the bloodied and broken bird. I was touched as he knelt over the rooster, then realized he was only untying the blade from his talon for future use. He then scooped up the bird from the dirt with a shovel, walked over to a large garbage can, and with blood running off the end of the bird’s white wings, unceremoniously dumped the carcass into the can. The smell of death was now added to the dank arena.
* * *
CHAPTER 21
Cliff Dubroc stood out in the crowd of men who were dressed mostly in denim and khaki work clothes. He was sharp in pressed slacks and a heavily starched white shirt. His gold rings and Rolex watch rounded out his appearance. Two taller, more casually dressed men followed him around. He walked towards us counting a coarse fan of one-hundred dollar bills, followed by his two shadows.
“You guys bet the winner?” Cliff was bragging more than asking a question. Ritmo nodded and grinned. Cliff then put the money into his pocket, grabbed me by the elbow, and walked me aside. “We have some unfinished business. You still interested in those notes?”
“If you still have them and the price is right.”
The crowd noise grew loud again as another pair of roosters were taken out of their cages.
Dubroc was smart. He got me there to talk about the deal, in the middle of the noisy place, in case I was wearing a hidden microphone.
He knew that tapes or transmissions made over a wire were generally unintelligible in the backdrop of crowd noise. Defense attorneys have red-letter days when tapes are offered as evidence and played before juries. Cautious criminals had led me near loud jukeboxes in past situations in order to equalize the effect of wires. Cliff’s genius was that any discussion taped that night couldn’t be used. Even if we didn’t cut the deal and no transaction took place, the garbled tape precluded him from prosecution on a conspiracy charge. But his precaution was needless since I wasn’t wearing a mike.
“Here’s the deal, Tony. Two bits on the dollar. That's half price from our original discussion.”
“Twenty cents. That’s my last offer. But to sweeten the pot, I’ll take all you have.” He rubbed his chin as if he was making a tough decision, but we both knew we had struck a fair price.
“Done. . . if you can do it in forty-eight hours. Thursday night in my office.”
During the entire drive back from the swamp, Ritmo cited one scenario after another about how to use the Reagan visit as an advantage to pull a score. He was like a dog with a bone. Each time he brought it up, I answered with a reason why his plan wouldn’t work. I hoped to convince him. “Ritmo, you might as well just walk into the police station and turn yourself in.” He finally dropped the matter, but I could see that the wheels still turned in his head.
I contacted Lyle right away and told him about the deal with Cliff. We kicked around the idea of getting a search warrant for his office in The Gallop, but decided against it. First, we had less than two days to secure a warrant. We had no guarantee that the securities would be there. And, most important, whether the evidence was found there or not, once the warrant was served I would be heated up. My cover would be blown. Against Lyle’s objections, I also decided not to wear a wire during the meeting. I knew from Cliff’s savvy about wires that he might have me checked, and I didn’t want to take that chance.
“What about the hundred K?” I asked. “We don’t have much time to come up with it.”
“I’ll phone Jim King, but the local SAC office won’t have that much buy money. We’ll have to get it from the ivory tower.”
I kept a low profile for the next two days, except for taking a couple of Ritmo’s pestering calls. He did his part to keep the deal alive and secure his sliver of the pie. On Thursday afternoon, I met Lyle at a roadside country store we had used as a meeting place several times before. He got into the seat next to me in the Camaro. The stitches were gone from his chin and the thin cut line had turned pink. He handed me a medium-sized brown paper bag. I opened the bag and he said, “A cool hundred grand. Clean bills. Special ops hot-shot them from Washington.” He then handed me a standard government cash receipt form, which I signed.
“You think Cliff will sign one of these for me?” I joked.
We again discussed the wire, and Lyle pushed hard this time. “I want you wired, Tony. I want to hear what’s going on in there in case we have to kick the door in.”
“Relax, big boy. Cliff buys the act.”
“Yeah, but a lot of other things can go wrong.”
“No dice. Just tell me about the other security arrangements.”
“Our man at the bar will be wearing a blue t-shirt and a Yankee baseball cap. A man-woman team will be seated as a couple in a nearby booth. The female agent is blonde in a white top. She’s got big headlights so you won’t miss her.”
I arrived at The Gallop around eleven o’clock that night. I spotted Lyle and a partner circling around the club in his G-car and knew there was an additional surveillance team in the area. Inside, Ritmo paced back and forth behind the bar. I carried a small briefcase containing the buy money, and set it down next to me. There were a few regulars at the bar, as well as the undercover agent in the Yankee cap. Several tables were filled with patrons from the track. The ATF couple was in position, seated in a booth. The agents blended in well with the regulars.
Ritmo kept looking around the club and was not his usually cool self. He didn’t pour me the customary drink. “Cliff’s here, it’s all set,” he told me. He looked toward the front door several times and asked, “Anybody with you?”
“Should there be, Ritmo? Are you worried about me, or Cliff?”
“I just figured you might have some backup, but you won’t need it. Everything’s cool.” He then reached under the bar and pushed the button that signaled into the office. A minute later, Cliff Dubroc appeared in the doorway. He stared for a moment, and surveyed the club in his usual manner, standing behind his professor-like, wire-rimmed glasses. He looked at Ritmo, then me, and nodded toward the office door.
I took a deep breath, grabbed the briefcase, and walked into the office. Ritmo closed the door behind me and didn’t enter the room. I had gone over the deal many times in my head
and planned to make the transaction brief. But I wasn’t ready for the first thing I saw when I walked in. Seated in a corner chair behind Cliff’s desk was Phil Tanzini, the Ice Pick. He was neatly groomed, as always, and wore an expensive suit over an open-collared silk shirt. His legs were crossed, and he sat back in the chair in a relaxed manner. My heart rate shot up at this surprise. I tried to keep my breathing normal. I went directly on the offensive.
“What the fuck is this?”
Cliff answered softly, “Relax, Tony. We’re all friends here.” Tanzini said nothing. “Keep your piece if it makes you feel good, but we’re gonna check you for a wire.”
Tanzini got up and told me to kneel on the seat of a chair, facing him. I removed my coat and took the .38 from my waistband. I spread my arms out, and held the gun in my right hand. The muzzle was only inches from Tanzini’s head but didn’t seem to bother him at all. He unbuttoned my shirt, then had me drop my pants and shorts around my knees. What a picture this made. Tanzini was a pro, and had checked for wires before. Satisfied, he stepped back and said, “He’s clean.”
I barked angrily at both of them. “Are you guys finished looking at my nuts?”
“Okay, Tony,” Cliff answered. “Don’t be insulted, it’s business.”
“The business is between us. What’s this guy doing here?” I asked while I put my clothes back in place. I stuck the .38 back in the front of my waistband.
“He’s my responsibility. Let’s get on with it.”
I let the remark slide, but all three of us knew it was the other way around – Cliff was the Ice Pick’s responsibility. Law enforcement agencies knew Cliff Dubroc and The Gallop were connected, but until now nobody knew how. Some agencies even thought the connection was rumor and not fact, since Cliff’s mafia partners were so well hidden. Tanzini was Luke Trombatore’s protégé’, and it was now clear that their visits to the area were not coincidental.
“The cash is here, all of it,” I told Cliff. Five K stacks. Random Federal Reserve letters. Can’t be traced. Count it if you want.”
Tanzini stepped to the desk, clicked open the briefcase, then counted each of the thousand one-hundred dollar bills. He nodded, then shut the case and sat back down in his chair. Cliff opened the middle desk drawer and retrieved a sheath containing notes from the Commerce Bank and Trust Company of Louisiana. He handed it to me and I inspected the bundle. There were thirty notes in ten-thousand dollar denominations, and ten notes in twenty-thousand dollar denominations - a half-million dollars in negotiable securities.
The whole time I checked the notes, I kept an eye on Tanzini. I knew his reputation with the ice pick and that he could kill me swiftly and silently in a matter of seconds. If he did, they would have the cash and still keep the notes. I hoped they knew how hot the notes were and didn’t want to keep them anyway. Tanzini went to a small cabinet and turned his back to me. My eyes darted between him and Cliff. I wrapped my fingers around the butt of my .38 as he turned back around facing me with something in his hand. I relaxed when I saw it was a bottle of amaretto. He placed three shot glasses on the desk and filled them with the almond liqueur. He handed one to me and raised a toast with one of the few words he spoke the entire time, “Saluta!”
We downed the shots, then I buttoned my coat and headed to the door. I turned to Tanzini and said, “My regards to Luke.” He raised another shot, threw back his head, and slammed it down. I winked at Ritmo on the way out. He grinned so broadly at my gesture that he exposed a gold tooth on the side of his face I hadn’t seen before. I unbuttoned my coat, which signaled the undercover agents in the club that I was okay. The absence of my briefcase also let them know that the buy had gone down.
Back in my car, I flashed the headlights to give Lyle and the surveillance teams the same message. Lyle followed me in a circuitous route to the parking lot of the Lafayette Hilton. We got out of our cars and I couldn’t hold back a smile as I threw the bank notes on the hood of his G-car. I dated and initialed each note in the bottom right-hand corner. Lyle did the same, then placed them in a large manila envelope with ATF EVIDENCE stamped in bold print across the front. He sealed the envelope, and we both signed and dated it.
“Two cats in the bag,” he said.
“Three cats. Phil Tanzini was there, checked me for a wire.” Lyle’s face dropped, and he spoke quietly.
“Jesus Christ. If you wired up like I wanted, we’d be cutting an ice pick out of your belly right now.”
“Forget it, Lyle. Cliff and the local thugs might kill an agent, but the guys on Tanzini’s level wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not. But they would kill an informer, and they had no way to know if you’re an agent or a snitch.”
“Bullshit. I would have sung loud and clear, like a tenor in La Traviata.”
Lyle laughed. “I can picture that. Hey, I have to roll. Those assholes are holding a hundred grand of Uncle Sam’s money. We’ll need more agents to keep an eye on the cash. Poker keeps going up.” Lyle threw his car into gear and headed to meet the surveillance teams.
We now knew that Cliff, Ritmo, and the club were mobbed up through Phil Tanzini and Luke Trombatore. The connection was what probably made Ritmo’s pardon for his murder conviction possible. The Gallop was Trombatore’s club, or at least it operated under his control. We had Tanzini directly involved with the bank notes, but Trombatore had insulated himself from the buy. He was also insulated from the club as far as any documentation was concerned. Besides the securities case itself, we had put together the pieces of the puzzle for The Gallop.
I stayed away from the club for the next several days to let the deal digest and to stay out of Cliff’s face. I followed the local news about Ronald Reagan’s campaign visit, and watched part of his speech on television from my room. A pan shot of the candidate’s speech got my attention. Next to the speaker’s podium was the familiar, blue-black, mop-top haircut of Ernie Chinn. He assumed the usual stance with his back straight, hands held together in front of him. A coiled earplug wire ran down his neck. He occasionally lifted his left wrist to his mouth and spoke a few words into the mike hidden under the cuff of his sleeve. His head slowly turned back and forth and he reminded me of a Chinese bobble-head doll. I watched the rest of the speech, mainly to see Ernie and any other agents I might recognize on the detail. I decided to have some fun and phoned Lyle.
“Any of our guys on the Reagan detail?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Is the detail staying overnight or moving on?”
“I don’t know, and if I did I couldn’t tell you.”
“Yeah, sure. Find out and let me know where they crash for the night, okay?”
Fifteen minutes later, Lyle called back and gave me the name of the hotel. I waited until about three hours after the speech and called there.
“Connect me with Mr. Ernie Chinn.”
A sleepy voice answered. I imagined him jumping up from his sleep to answer the phone, a common occurrence for him.
“What is it?”
“Wake up you slanty-eyed motherfucker.” I used the best Cajun accent I could muster. There was silence on the other end, then the sound of rustling on the night table. I knew he was scurrying around for a pen and note pad. When he was ready, he answered.
“Who’s this?”
“One who knows. Go back to what you’re good at, cleaning laundry.”
He seethed through the phone. But he was a professional, and a potential problem for the detail from a crazy caller was more important to him than personal insult. He was fully awake by now and started asking lots of questions. I answered each one with a silly answer in my fake Cajun voice. Finally, I gave him a big clue and let him off the hook.
“Have you been surfing lately?”
“Well, if it ain’t Mussolini himself. How the hell did you find me tucked in here? My wife can’t even locate me.”
“My secret. Are you okay?”
“Sure, what about you? I thought you were some nutso I’d h
ave to write a report about. Are you back in the world yet?”
“Not yet. I’ll be in touch when I am. Hey, I thought you were sipping martinis with Rockefeller.”
“I am, but this is Reagan’s swan song and they wanted to rotate a few fresh faces around him. I’ll be back with Rocky after the convention. By the way, you lucky bastard, if you drag out your case a few more weeks you’ll miss the convention.
“Yeah, ain’t that a shame.”
“When I see you I want to know how you found me on a one-day whistle stop.”
“No chance. But I’ll leave you with this. . . If you’re still in Lafayette for lunch tomorrow, take Reagan to Prejean’s and order the seafood platter.”
“Huh?”
“Ciao, Ernie.” I hung up and enjoyed a laugh. The next morning, the papers and news reports made no mention of major robberies or burglaries during the candidate’s visit. Ritmo had taken my advice.
* * *
CHAPTER 22
Race 5...
Six Furlongs. Purse $15,000. For three and four year old maidens. Claiming Price $20,000.
The conditions of the fifth race on the program signaled an uneventful contest limited to horses that had never won a race. Most of the nags weren’t worth a fraction of the claiming price, and twenty thousand dollars probably could have bought all ten horses in the race. But horses have a better chance to get their first win against other maidens, then usually start at the top of the claiming ranks and work their way down in value. T-Red was running a four year old maiden for one of his trainers and invited me to come along.
“I don’t have a racing commission license, Red. I can’t get into the paddock or the backstretch barn area.”
“You don’t need one. The horse’s owner lives in Houston and he never comes to watch this cockroach run. Dress like an owner and act like one. Nobody will notice you don’t have an ID badge. Those who do won’t care.”
Assassin Hunter Page 15