Rostow came over. "What's the problem?"
Felix said, "He wants a priest."
"Uh-huh. So?"
"So."
Rostow shrugged. "It's always like this. When you want a priest, there's never one around."
"You Catholic, Rostow?" said Charley testily.
"Presbyterian."
"Then I wouldn't expect you to understand."
Rostow looked at Felix. Felix drew Charley off to one side. "I don't get it. You're saying you want to take him to a church, then shoot him?"
"No," said Charley. "I'm not sure that's feasible."
"Okay."
"My bill's going to be high enough as it is, Felix. I don't want that on my tab."
"Okay," Felix said, shrugging. "I'll shoot him."
"No. We got a Yellow Pages on board?"
"What?" said Felix.
"A Yellow Pages, a telephone book, damnit. Hell with it." Charley punched 411. "Operator, give me the name of a Catholic church, please. Any church. I don't have a particular church. Look, it doesn't matter. Oh, for cryin' out loud. St. Mary's Church. Any St. Mary's. First St. Mary's you got… Fine. Yes… Thank you. Christ in heaven, where do they get operators like that, in the Soviet Union?" He dialed.
"Excuse me," Rostow was whispering to Felix, "but what the hell is going on here?"
"He's calling a priest," said Felix.
"Hello?" said Charley. "I'm sorry, I know it's late, but I need to talk to a priest… You are? Good. All right now, Padre, now listen up. Got a man here gonna die-he's slipping fast-and he wants to say his piece to a priest… No, there's no time, believe me, he's almost gone as it is… No, this is not a joke, on my heart, this is very serious."
Charley stabbed at the "hold" button and pointed the pistol at Ramirez and said, "Okay, Emiliano, I got your priest on the line. You say one word not directly related to your immortal soul and you'll be in hell before he can give you forgiveness and you'll spend all eternity there wondering why you were so damn stupid."
Ramirez's confession went on for a full ten minutes. Even Rostow, McNamara and Bundy were impressed. Charley felt indecent holding the gun to old Ramirez's head like that while he unpacked his sorry soul, but there wasn't much he could do about that.
Tim was discovered on the floor of his apartment next to a crack pipe and several rocks of the same, dead of an acute heart attack. They found massive traces of it in his lungs and blood, enough to kill several people. Everyone was stunned. This obsession with authenticity was getting out of hand. Who was next, the set designer? Theater people were calling the play MacWired, because it was starting to look as jinx-ridden as Macbeth. Bernie and Karen were horrified, though the publicity was frankly having a tremendous effect on sales. Jimmy Podesta wrote a piece for the Times Op-Ed. Charley sent a nice floral arrangement to the funeral, along with his regrets that he couldn't attend. He remained in seclusion on his island in the Chesapeake, but he did issue a statement through his company spokesman saying it was a tragedy such young and talented lives were being taken while the government refused to get serious about the problem.
9
Senior Agent Frank Diatri (that's Dee-atri), holding his yogurt and bran, stepped off the elevator of the nineteenth floor of 555 West Fifty-seventh Street in New York City, Divisional Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and right away everyone made a fuss.
"Frankie! How ya doin?"
"Great," said Diatri.
"Yeah?" said Gubanovich unconvincingly. "You look great."
How the hell were you supposed to look, like you just got back from a Carnival Cruise? Alice and Marge came up and started kissing him. "Oh, jeez, Frankie, we were so worried," Alice said. "Didja get the card?"
"Do you want some coffee, Frankie?"
"I'm not supposed to drink coffee."
"Oh, Frankie, I'm sorry! What am I saying?"
"Marge, it's okay. I'm fine. It's these doctors. They don't want you to do anything."
Marge said, "My aunt had the same thing."
Diatri stared. "Your aunt got shot?"
"No. But they hadda take some of her intestine out." She whispered, "Do you have to wear a bag?"
"No, Marge. Listen, I gotta go eat this yogurt. If I don't eat yogurt every two hours, I die."
"Aw, Frankie, you're sure a-here, you get another kiss."
"I'm going to have to get shot more often," said Diatri. He must have been stopped twenty times on the way to his desk, everyone wanting to know the particulars. It was a little embarrassing, to tell the truth. He hoped Marge hadn't been going around telling everyone he had to wear a bag. His desk wasn't too bad, except for a Styrofoam coffee cup by his phone that looked like a bacteriological experiment, with gray fur growing out of it. But there were flowers-white carnations-with a note saying: "From NADDIS with love." Aw. He recognized Phyllis' handwriting. He was always asking Phyllis to run his Narcotics And Dangerous Drugs Information System searches on the computer. Phyllis used to have a crush on him, but now she was dating a guy in Asset Seizure. Should have-probably just as well. But that was nice of Phyllis. People are always so nice after you get shot; except for Suzie. Suzie actually seemed a little put out when he got back after getting wounded the second time, like she would have rather had the monthly VA checks instead. Turning on Cronkite every night during dinner. Sweetheart, I just got back, can we not watch the war on TV every night, please?-
"Frankie!"
"Gene, hey."
"You look good."
"That's what everyone is saying."
"Listen, Frankie, what happened with Kincaid was a fuckin' disgrace. Five to fifteen for illegal possession of weapons. I mean, they should've nailed the fuck's ears to the wall with a Hilti gun."
"Hilti gun?"
"Nail driver. What the hell is that?" he said, pointing at the Styrofoam cup.
"It's just an experiment I'm doing."
"It's disgusting, Frank."
The Special Agent in Charge called him down to his office. "You look great, Frank."
Diatri gave his stomach a loud whack. "Never better."
The SAC winced. "I was just going over your medical. You were leaking pretty bad there."
"Two quarts," said Diatri.
"You know what the worst part of being shot is these days?"
Not this again. "How's Ellen, Jim?"
"Same-same. The blood. The blood is what scares me. I mean, I'm sure you got good blood."
"Yeah," said Diatri. "They test it."
"Me, I'd make them run it through fucking chlorine first. Then charcoal. You know what I'd like to set up? Our own blood bank. You know, I sent a memo to the AA about it."
"Good idea, Jim. And what did the AA say?"
"I haven't heard back yet. You know how it is down there."
"Oh yeah," said Diatri.
"So, what are we going to do with you?"
This was a very strange question, he thought, the kind you'd put to a summer intern, not a Senior Agent who'd twice passed up a promotion to Group Supervisor and five extra grand a year just so he could stay on the street. Diatri told people he did it to keep the five grand from going to his two exes. "Your medical says you're fit, but I thought we might, you know, ease back in."
"We?" said Diatri. "You sound like the nurses." He gave his stomach another demo whack.
The SAC winced. "Frank, will you stop hitting yourself?"
"What does it say?"
"It says you're okay-"
"Okay, then. What do you got for me?"
The SAC handed Diatri a sheet. It was court order for a wiretap. Diatri said, "A T-Three? Are you serious?"
"I got Title Threes up to my crotch, Frank. I could really use you."
Diatri stared. He twisted the ring on his wedding finger. It was a leftover from a UC job a couple of years ago where he had to look like a pimp. He bought all this stuff at one of those community-conscious boutiques on Times Square that sell Ninja swords, bull-whips, blowguns, choke w
ires and kukri knives. It looked like a Sicilian version of a West Point class ring, with a tiny photo of the young Frank Sinatra underneath a hunk of cheap blue glass. People gave him grief about it. Diatri continued to stare.
"Okay," said the SAC. He handed Diatri a folder. "We got a call from the Ninth Precinct."
"The Fighting Ninth," said Diatri, untensing.
"They found a body on one of their sidewalks yesterday. A Ramon Antonio Luis, local crack dealer. Twenty-two caliber in the back of the head. Puerto Rican kid works at an all-night gypsy cab place on the block told them he saw some people wearing our raid jackets. It's all in the 61," he said, handing Diatri the police report.
"We have anything going down there?"
"No. We had two groups out that night, one in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx."
"Is Internal Security working this?"
"They're… no. We gonna work this ourselves, then if it turns out there's something, Internal Security can get involved."
"I see this is a real red-hot case."
"Look, Frank-"
"Luis' biggest prior was for," Diatri read, "two ounces. Ounces, Jack? You want me to work someone who does ounces?"
"Someone maybe wearing our raid jackets popped the guy. It could be an important case."
"Yeah."
"Hey, if you'd rather work the T-Threes…"
Diatri got up. "No no. I'm honored. I mean, we can't have scumbags going around popping each other wearing our raid jackets."
"Personally," said the SAC, "I think the kid probably needs glasses. Frank, I'm sorry about Kincaid. If it's any consolation, they went fucking berserk in Washington over it. The administrator went to Bennett and requested a meeting in the White House."
"Uh-huh," said Diatri.
"The White House doesn't want to piss off the State Supreme Court, so they ended up not having a meeting."
"Uh-huh."
"Jesus, Frank, don't be so fuckin' nonchalant. I'm telling you the Administrator himself took it all the way to the fuckin' White House."
"I'm grateful, Jim. Truly."
"Don't let it eat you up."
"Hah. Hey, I've only got so much intestine left, right?"
"Right. That's it." Diatri started out the door. "Listen," the SAC said, "take your time on it. Ease into it. Remember what happened to Shamalbach."
Diatri sat at his desk munching lactose tablets and read over the 61 on the shooting of Ramon Antonio Luis, male, Hispanic, five-eight, 145, mid-thirties, fourteen priors, mostly assaults, B and A, possession, possession with intent, possession with intent, possession with… babum babum babum. Nothing interesting here at all except the caliber of the bullet that had interrupted such a promising career. Twenty-two long rifle, the "Devastator," same that Hinckley used on Reagan, the roach motel of small-arms ammunition: bullet goes in, can't go out, breaks up into little pieces. Generally, dopers wanted a lot of bang for their bucks: 9mms,.357s,.380 ACPs, 7.65s,.44s,.45s. Some were using the new 10mms. In this market, a.22 was unusual. The mob used to use.22s because they went in fast and clean and ricocheted around inside the skull, pureeing the old cauliflower.
Diatri couldn't remember his NADDIS access code. It disturbed him. It was like forgetting your Social Security number. "Sylvia, give me Gubanovich's access code, would you?" Sylvia looked good. What was that she was wearing, seamed stockings? Who'd have thought those would come back. There was nothing in NADDIS on Ramon Antonio Luis. A million and a half files in the database, and nothing on him. Two ounces was just nothing to get excited over these days; certainly Diatri wasn't excited. His Sig Sauer 9mm felt a little tight against his stomach.
The Puerto Rican kid at the AMANECER CAR SERVICE ABIERTO 24 HORAS on East Eighth Street reacted the way people usually reacted when they saw Frank Diatri flash his badge. Diatri could inspire nervousness even without showing ID. He was strongly built, just under six feet, genetically pre-tanned, with liquid brown eyes that glommed on to yours and didn't let go until you'd accounted for yourself. Despite the permanently disappointed look, he smiled easily and people were usually grateful for that; the Puerto Rican kid was. Diatri spoke Spanish with him. The kid said he was sure the jackets said D-E-A. Diatri had him step out onto the sidewalk. He pointed to an ad in a bus shelter on Avenue C and asked him to read what it said.
"A-t l-a-s-t S-t-r-e-e-p t-a-l-k-s."
"Veintelveinte," Diatri grinned.
He stood on the sidewalk by the Church of Santa Brigida where Ramon Antonio Luis had died. The blood had congealed into a three-foot-wide brown patch. Diatri thought of lying in his own pool of blood and the elevator door closing and the elevator going up and the door opening and the woman seeing him and screaming and running back to her apartment-Thank you, ma'am-and the elevator door going down to another floor and a little girl seeing him and screaming and running away. He was going to die in the elevator going up and down, up and down, with the doors opening and people screaming.
Detective Korn showed him the photographs from the scene. "A real fucking tragedy," he said.
Diatri looked at the close-up of the back of Luis' head. "Powder burns?"
"Not a speck," said Korn admiringly. "And a twenty-two pistol. Look at that shot. Right in the ten ring."
"Marksman, huh?"
"This," said Korn, "was a Samaritan."
"I'm getting a sense here," said Diatri, "that you didn't like Ramon."
"He sold crack."
"I know, but look at him here. And in front of a church. Someone could slip."
"You know what you do with that? Throw a little sand on it. Look," said Korn, "just between you and I, if you guys had something going on and something happened-it's not a problem for me."
Diatri laughed. "Aw no, you don't mean that."
Korn looked at him. "No," he said. "'Course not. I got a seventy-nine-year-old woman in Peter Cooper this morning someone beat to death with a steam iron after they raped her. Also I got a three-year-old kid whose father squashed his head in between the radiator bars because he was crying." He sighed. "They get such terrible deaths, these kids. Luis here, on my scale of one to ten, he doesn't even show up."
10
"How many?" asked Miss Farrell.
"Two," said Charley, scanning the clipboard she always met him with at the elevator.
Two ducks over five days? Miss Farrell was not herself an aficionada of blood sports, but still it seemed an inglorious bag. It surprised her that Mr. Becker would be hunting at all, the season being closed. He looked tired, she thought, though certainly better than he looked at the funeral. Usually he came from the island with more color in his cheeks.
She was just bringing coffee a few minutes later when she heard him shout, "Goddamnit!" He had The New York Times spread in front of him. He often swore when reading it, especially Mr. Safire's columns, but as she set the coffee down she noticed the paper was open to pages 2 and 3 of the Metropolitan section, not the editorial pages.
"Get me Felix," he said, not lifting his eyes from the paper. She studied her own copy of the Times while waiting for the call to go through. She found no clue to the old man's explosion. Felix came on. It was not a good connection. He said he was on the New Jersey Turnpike. She put him through. She couldn't resist listening to the conversation.
"You read the paper this morning?" said Charley.
"The paper? No."
"They with you?"
"No. Is there a problem?"
"You bet there's a problem. There's a very significant problem. Where are they?"
"At the dock."
"I'm coming back to the island. I'll see you there tonight. Out."
She used the excuse of bringing in an updated list of people who'd sent condolence letters. He'd tossed the paper to the side, but he'd torn a piece from the bottom of page 63. Back at her own desk, she compared the missing piece with her copy. All she found was a small story, a filler item:
MAN SHOT TO DEATH IN EAST VILLAGE
A man with a history o
f narcotics violations was found shot to death early yesterday morning on East 8th Street shortly before dawn.
Police say Ramon Antonio Luis, 34, of no known address, was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head. A spokesman for the Ninth Precinct Detective Squad described the killing as "clearly drug-related," but added, "We're pursuing this as we would any murder, vigorously."
It couldn't have been that. Then she noticed next to the story was the runover from the story on page 81, about the opening of Felix Rohatyn's new restaurant. Must have been that. Perhaps Mr. Becker was upset at not being invited.
There was a fog on Chesapeake Bay and it was just as well since it matched his mood. Charley walked up and down the wood-plank pier, grinding an unlit Upmann into a chewy wet stub. Spook, having given up on being thrown something to retrieve, had jumped in anyway and swam alongside, keeping pace with his master. Charley reached the end of the pier and turned around, Spook following. Back and forth, back and forth, boots clumping on wood, Labrador grunts in icy water.
Charley was trying to decide which one of them had done it. Rostow, he'd bet. Rostow had been "allowed to retire" from DEA after shooting the bodyguard of a Peruvian narco. Self-defense, yes, but they're so touchy down there about our people killing their people. It's not legal, strictly speaking. Only a sudden infusion of U.S. aid, which the State Department wrangled out of DEA's appropriations, got him out. They found him doing security for a manufacturer of high-speed dental drilling equipment in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
McNamara and Bundy he found through his friend the colonel, who ran the Army's SERE school at Fort Bragg. Survival Evasion Resistance Escape. Charley had given four hundred POWs a week at the Greenbriar Hotel after they got back from Vietnam, and he and the colonel had stayed in touch over the years. Charley had come down to visit the school, and was impressed. The colonel could take men scared to death of snakes and after they spent thirty days in that school of his, every water moccasin in his swamp would have four, five, sometimes six hungry troopers following after it trying to get to it first. The instructors were impressive, most of them having served with the Special Forces in Vietnam-as the colonel had before his five and a half years at the Hanoi Hilton-a number of them recruited by CIA into the Special Operations Groups. "Some of my executives are getting a little flabby," Charley explained. "I have in mind a program that would combine exercise, diet and survival. We have offices overseas, and you saw what Ross Perot had to go through to get his boys out of Teheran after that maniac took over. I'm thinking of calling it 'Upward Bound.' I mean, show me a man who'd chase down a water moc for his dinner and I'll show you one hell of a motivated manager." The colonel was only too happy to oblige him with the names of some of his former instructors. Charley interviewed dozens of them. Word spread through the company that the old man was setting up some kind of horrible fitness program. Miss Farrell got a call from the VP for sales asking if it was true all the divisional heads were being sent to some swamp in Louisiana to eat snakes. She hadn't heard anything about that, she said, but the gentlemen Mr. Becker was interviewing certainly appeared to be the kind for whom a diet of reptiles would pose no problem. "Jesus," muttered the VP.
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