A Black Sail

by Rich Zahradnik

  Chapter 27

  Taylor shook with cold. He told himself to go back to sleep. The cold would go away.

  No, this wasn’t sleep. He’d blacked out on the dock. Still, better to keep his eyes shut, for the moment at least. He’d been in the water. Now, he was swimming again. Not in water. In images, trying to pull together what had happened. He didn’t want to step back into the world without knowing. He always needed to know. It was the thing he did. He sure as hell couldn’t shoot. That was why he hurt so much.

  His teeth chattered. He was soaked through. Maybe sleep was a good idea. No! He’d been knocked out. A concussion and sleep were a bad combination. A stupid way to die after what he’d survived today.

  A humming vibration came up through his legs. A car going fast, highway fast. His hand confirmed seat-of-car plastic, a seat worn smooth by many asses. The air conditioning was on. Had to be. Why else so cold in the middle of the summer?

  He slowly let his eyelids rise like window shades pulled up an inch at a time. Headlights flashed straight to the back of his skull, setting off a fireworks show of pain far worse than the dull thudding that’d been there when he’d come to.

  He closed his eyes.

  The part of his brain that did the thinking worked to make some headway against the part that only cared about avoiding pain. He couldn’t find out what was going on if he didn’t open his eyes. He always had to know what was going on. That was a law of Taylor. Freezing, head throbbing, leg burning—that’s right, leg injured too—he still had to know the story.

  He re-opened his eyes, endured the flashing pain this time and found he was leaning against the window in the car’s backseat. They were moving fast down a highway. He’d have to be stone dead not to know the Manhattan skyline. The car was on the Bruckner racing toward the Triborough Bridge.

  A light show danced on the highway, swirling blues and reds. He stared. No, it wasn’t his messed up brain. The car had a revolving light on top.

  He turned his head. The move set off more explosions.

  Lucco was slumped in the backseat with him. His arms were behind his back, which Taylor assumed—hoped—meant Lucco was handcuffed. Taylor had to check his own hands to remember he wasn’t. He took that to be a good sign. A big white bandage wrapped Lucco’s left foot. Taylor relived his two shots with the gun, first the miss, then the one that hit Lucco’s foot when the deck shifted. Lucco choking him. The speedboat crashing. Twice.

  The sedan only had a driver, a silhouette. Detective or fed? FBI agents always rode together. It was in their manual somewhere. Taylor closed his eyes. He needed a break from the flashing lights outside causing brighter flashing lights inside his skull. He had to get his questions together, put them in order. His extra reporter’s notebook was so much wet pulp. No note taking. He’d have to remember everything he heard. Which would be tough, because he couldn’t remember to keep his eyes open.

  He woke. The car rode south on the FDR Drive. Traffic was moving slower. He shifted, sat up a little, and squinted.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Why, I’m taking you home. You’ve done enough damage for one day.”

  “Gilly?”

  “Special Agent Gilly.”

  “You’re taking me back to my apartment?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Taylor glanced at Lucco’s bandage. “He should be in an ambulance.”

  “Lucky for him you’re a poor shot. Just muscle. I think. He’s very dangerous. An escape risk. I’m delivering him to a special medical facility.”

  “You could do that with an ambulance.”

  “You think he deserves better treatment?”

  “I’m not in the deciding-who-deserves business. He was feeding your detail bad info.”

  “What do you mean?” Gilly sounded more curious than surprised.

  “Someone in the bureau tipped Lucco you’d wired Collucci’s house. He forced Collucci to participate in invented calls and conversations. Phantom criminal activity you’d never be able to prove. Co-opted Collucci as a double agent. He fancies himself the mob’s double-oh-seven. He killed Bridget and Carl.”

  “That is some story. Lucco told you all that? Because it makes him look like a genius. Not that a guy like him is the self-serving type.”

  “Okay then. I fucking made it up.” Taylor shook his head, remembered why that was a bad idea. “Bridget Collucci recorded a tape during the time she and Carl were held hostage in their own home. I heard the tape.”

  “Where is this tape?” Urgency entered Gilly’s voice.

  They inched along in the traffic under Gracie Mansion.

  Lucco groaned. He lifted his head. If he hurt as bad as Taylor, it was this evening’s one consolation.

  Lucco had the same opinion of Taylor. “You little piece of shit.” He struggled. “If I weren’t cuffed, I’d finish squeezing the life out of you. Squeeze it slowly.” He struggled again, one more jerk, and rested his head back on the seat. “Where’re we going?”

  “You’ll be treated and charged with murder, racketeering, conspiracy. They’re working on the complete list now.”

  “Gilly?” Lucco’s voice rose, relief in it. “Thank God it’s you. What have you got me in cuffs for? What’s going on?”

  “I already told you. You do see there’s a reporter in the car?”

  “What do I care about fuckstick here? Why are you—”

  “Shut up or it gets worse for you.”

  Lucco fell silent. A missing piece to the story dropped snuggly into place. Fit perfectly.

  “You were Lucco’s source. You told him about the surveillance. You told him about everything.”

  “I can’t discuss operational details.”

  “You compromised your entire operation. What? For a bribe?”

  “Goddammit!” Gilly squeezed the steering wheel. He reached over and turned the air conditioning up higher. “The problem with allowing the press to cover crime is you don’t understand a single significant thing about law enforcement. The stakes. The thinking. The strategy—oh god—never the strategy. Listen carefully to this off-the-record news flash. I leaked the information on the surveillance to Lucco, and I expected him to feed us fake intelligence back. I did it to get closer to him, to the whole Fronti operation. We were going to use his false confidence in his ability to manage us against him. Slowly. Creeping closer and closer to the center of the organization. Until bang!” He hit the steering wheel hard. “We’d pull it all down. Collucci wasn’t a double agent. He was a triple agent and didn’t even know it. This was supposed to be the long game. I’d be running Lucco while he believed all the time we were buying his bullshit. Would have worked if Collucci hadn’t panicked, which from what I can tell had a lot to do with you nosing around everywhere you didn’t belong. Nosing around but never able to figure out what was actually going on.”

  Lucco lurched toward the front seat. “You’re a two-faced son of a bitch.”

  “A compliment from you.”

  They cleared the slow-moving traffic, all caused by one stalled Checker cab in the center lane, and cruised on the FDR, passing Bellevue Hospital, Stuy Town, the Jacob Riis Houses, went around Corlears Hook onto the approach ramps for the Brooklyn Bridge and rumbled toward the first tower, where the roadway passed through the cathedral-like opening.

  A river of people moved up the walkway between the two roadways, heading home to Brooklyn from Manhattan.

  Across the water, the Brooklyn piers stood waiting for ships that weren’t coming. Between two of them, Bridget Collucci’s body had been dumped. The last and final piece of the puzzle.

  “You would have known about Bridget,” Taylor said. “If you were Lucco’s source, you would have known your tip triggered her murder. Maybe you even knew before it happened.”

  Lucco grunted. “I’m not telling either one of you bastards anything.”

  “Not talking to you,” Taylor said. “It’s easy enough to put together. You tell Lucco a
bout the FBI setup. Lucco takes over the house. Starts running his double agent. Of course Carl has to be punished for agreeing to snitch. Lucco kills Bridget.”

  “Lucco will be charged with both murders,” Gilly said.

  “You let him murder her. Smash in her skull, shoot her twice, dress her with drugs and dump her. Could you have stopped it? What about Carl? Could you have saved him?”

  “You still don’t get it. We are in a desperate fight to save the United States of America. From the Mafia. From the radicals. From the communists. We have to be smarter than them. You have no idea what we’re fighting. That shitbag sitting next to you, he wants to suck the life out of our cities with narcotics. Corrupt our unions. Cripple shipping and trucking. And he’s not our only enemy. The Black Liberation Army and Black Panthers have one goal. Ending the United States of America. The Weathermen. The FLNA. We’re in an extraordinary war no one wants to hear about. It demands extraordinary means. There are victims every day in this war. Carl and Bridget Collucci were victims. But not mine. Nick Lucco’s.”

  “Might have to bring some of this up in my defense,” said Lucco.

  Taylor knocked on the car door absently. “Never trust people who use the full name of my country like I don’t know where the fuck I live. I’m going to write up this whole catastrophe. The murders. The surveillance. What the FBI could’ve done. What the FBI didn’t do.”

  “No you’re not.” Gilly spoke with a worrying confidence. “I’m driving you home to let you know how much I care about your work. After we met, I checked out the City News Bureau. It barely makes rent. Payroll taxes have been late twice. I know a lot of hardworking folks at the IRS. One push would collapse City News. A few of my guys are going through your office right now—”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Only a warning shot. I’m sure it will get your boss’ attention. Henry Novak, right? By the time you see him, he’ll know the rules. If anything appears about the electronic surveillance, any details at all, the U.S. Attorney will come down on you like one unholy ton of bricks. From what I can tell, the legal bill alone will put his news service out of business in days. The owners of the radio stations that run your stories are all good patriots. With FCC licenses. They won’t like the news. No customers. No more revenues.”

  Lucco whistled. “Gilly, you may be the bigger dick.”

  Coming off the bridge, with thick clots of pedestrians using the walkway right next to them, Gilly drove on Cadman Plaza West along the park. They sat at the light for the left turn onto Middagh Street. Taylor’s head hurt worse. His teeth chattered. A sense of futility had settled over him, robbing strength from his muscles in a way nothing else had done today.

  The car pulled up in front of Taylor’s building.

  What wouldn’t Gilly do to City News? He’d allowed Lucco to feed bad information through a surveillance operation to get close to the mobster. Did Gilly’s men even know it? He was willing to let a woman die, or at the least, would have let the murderer get away with it for as long as his operation took. How long? Years. Maybe Lucco would have never been arrested.

  Halfway up the block, Samantha and Mason had started a walk. Samantha turned. Taylor got out of the Plymouth.

  Samantha walked back toward him.

  Gilly rolled down the window. His square face wore a smile. There was no laughter in his eyes, which were a gray the color of glacier melt. Taylor wanted to punch that smile. The only real damage from the punch would be to put City News out of business.

  “Remember, Taylor. Simple stories. It’s what you’re good at. Lucco’s the bad guy in this.”

  “You call this the United States of America.”

  “I fucking-A do.” As the car pulled away, he added, “I know where you live. An old cliché. But so appropriate.”

  Chapter 28

  The New York Times of Sunday, July 25, had lots of room for stories that weren’t about the Democratic Convention or sailing ships. The politicians had finished a week and a half ago after confirming the inevitable: Jimmy Carter would be their candidate to face off against America’s appointed president, Gerald Ford, or the actor from California. The convention’s only news, on the last day, came when Senator Walter Mondale was named Carter’s running mate, kept to the end so there’d be some interest.

  Nowhere in the paper were to be found boats, vessels, ships, crafts, barks, barkentines, or sloops. They were long gone from the minds of the editors of the Times and the majority of New Yorkers. As was the sense of optimism that had washed over the city for 24 hours—okay, maybe 48—while the Bicentennial celebrations lasted.

  Front page: Three men were arrested with a pipe bomb outside a Union Square theater. Anti-Castro followers, they sought to blow up a pro-Castro performance. Taylor figured the big problem right now was that the pros and the antis both had bombs.

  Governor Carey refused to support Mayor Beame in a bid for re-election next year. Who in their right mind would? Beame had fanned the flames as the city’s finances burned. Almost 200 West Point cadets stood accused of cheating. So much for honor and glory and the code. In civilian higher education, City University of New York students accused professors of reducing services to save their own jobs in the face of budget cuts.

  He turned the page quickly when he came to another story on the city’s new fiscal year, which had begun July 1. Couldn’t deal with it on a Sunday.

  In contrast to everything else he’d read, the Viking Lander had actually done its job and landed on Mars. There was some good news. Of course, it couldn’t stay that way long …. A NASA official worried that if Viking failed to find life on Mars, money for space exploration would be cut. No little green men, no looking beyond the horizon. Not only was New York collapsing in on itself, so was the country, pulling away from the rest of the world, pulling away from the whole universe.

  He shared the story with Samantha, who’d grabbed the Daily News first, leaving Taylor to wade through the sober Times looking for a decent crime story. In that, he’d failed.

  “Here’s some interesting space news for you,” Samantha said. “NASA is accepting applications for astronauts for the new Space Shuttle. You have until June thirtieth of next year. No flight experience necessary for mission specialists. Maybe going up there is your next big story? Your next big job?”

  “Yeah, with my inner ear.” He countered, “They’re still trying to figure out who killed Don Bolles, the Arizona Republic reporter car-bombed for investigating corruption. The Times cares about that. Lots of papers care. Would the same thing happen if someone at City News were blown up?”

  “Things aren’t that bad. Are you serious about giving up your gun?”

  “Definitely. Don’t know what happened to it after the marina. I’m not asking the FBI. Call it a sign from the universe that I lost the thing. Billy gave it to me, and I wore it for him. In his memory. Mainly. There’s no point in having a gun at my ankle, and I don’t want a shoulder holster—like I plan to use it all the time. Supposing I was able to. I thought I had it for security. There’s no security if I’m a bad shot, can’t get at it, or get it taken away.”

  “I’d say I’m worried, but I’ve seen you shoot.” She picked the red leash off the plastic end table. “Let’s take Mason out.”

  The dog was up before the sentence ended. Only Samantha’s quick reflexes allowed her to pull her coffee cup off the table before his tail whacked it.

  The midday air was warm, mid-seventies, nice on the skin. Blue sky flashed between trees and buildings until they came out on the promenade. Lower Manhattan stood as if posing for a postcard with a perfect azure background.

  Mason did his usual, slaloming across the walkway. You could tell the dog lovers. They smiled. Many weren’t, and they didn’t, grumbling and yelling when Mason crossed up traffic. Taylor still limped a little on the leg where he’d been bitten. They’d bandaged him at the marina, and he’d gone to the emergency room after Gilly dropped him off that night. Three stitches. Th
e crazy spaniel checked out okay, thank Christ. Rabies shots would have been some cherry on that shit sundae.

  He pulled once on the leash. “C’mon, easy, Mason.” He led the dog over to some greenery on one side of the walk to get him deeply engaged in the smells there. There’d be 20 more minutes of this until Mason would calm down enough to almost walk along like every other dog out today.

  Samantha took Taylor’s hand. “What are you going to do with your résumé?”

  “Half a résumé. Don’t know. Don’t have anyone to give it to. Except NASA, of course.”

  “You know it’s not your fault.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not Novak’s fault either.”

  “Yeah.”

  Not Novak’s fault. No, not his either.

  The FBI had ripped apart the City News Bureau’s offices with real conviction while Taylor was being driven home by Gilly. God bless Novak. He stood his ground and said the feds wouldn’t be doing this if City News were the Times. He threatened City News would do a story on the search. The lead agent said no, that wouldn’t happen. If City News wrote anything about the FBI or anything about an ongoing investigation or surveillance operations, Novak would end up in federal court. There might be charges of obstruction of justice based on actions Taylor had taken. There could also be charges against Taylor for disturbing a crime scene and breaking and entering.

  “Oh yeah. A last thing,” the agent said. “Indictments will also be brought against any clients that run such stories.” He repeated Gilly’s threat for good measure. “The FCC will be informed, in the case of the radio stations, of course.”

  According to Cramly, that’s when Novak’s face went white.

  The agent laughed. “Give the fucking Times a call. Ask what their legal bills are.”

  The next morning, Taylor raced back to Country Club, retrieved the 8-track, brought it to the office, and took down everything Bridget had said. He couldn’t use it, but he wanted to have a record. Gilly’s agent came by to pick the tape up later that day.