Inside Job

by Levinson, Len

  After Ricci left, Brody washed his hands and face in the sink in his room, and went to bed. He couldn’t help thinking of how smoothly he had passed from honest upright citizen to criminal conspiracy to commit the biggest heist of all time. He was surprised that he didn’t feel any twinges of conscience, that he in fact felt satisfaction at what he was doing.

  He realized that he had no second thoughts because he was at the end of his line and he knew it. He had no place else to turn that made sense. And he’d be getting back at the organization that had shattered his dreams, and the society that had stepped on him ever since.

  It was go for broke. If he succeeded he’d be set for the rest of his life, and if he failed, he’d be no worse off that he was now. If something went wrong and he got killed, well, that’s the way it goes. Nobody lives forever.

  A man makes his own odds, he thought, and sets his own stakes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brody got off the subway train at the 14th Avenue stop in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. He bought a Daily News and walked east on Cornelia Street to the Palermo Restaurant, located amid a jungle of tenements and grocery stores.

  “One?” asked the headwaiter.

  “I wanna see Buddy DeFranco.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Mike Brody.”

  “Have a seat and I’ll see if he’s in.”

  Brody sat at a table in a dark corner in the rear. He opened his Daily News and read about a movie star who’d just left her husband.

  The headwaiter returned and whispered, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait awhile.”

  “Can I get a bottle of beer.”

  “Sure.”

  Brody leafed through the newspaper. On page four was the story of an old man who got mugged in Greenwich Village. His assailants hit him over the head with a lead pipe and now he was on the danger list at Saint Vincent’s Hospital. The old man had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Battle of the Bulge. A waiter brought a glass and the bottle of beer, and Brody took a drink. On page five was the story of a demonstration in the Bronx, because the city was closing a hospital as an economy measure. Brody lit a cigarette. Maybe the people ought to shoot the mayor and city council members, as an economy measure.

  The headwaiter returned and said, “Come with me, please.”

  Brody took a last swig of his beer, stood, and followed the headwaiter into the kitchen. They passed through a door at the left of the big range, walked down a long dark corridor, and came to a room where some men were watching a movie on color television.

  “These gentlemen will help you,” the headwaiter said to Brody, then turned and walked away.

  One of the hoods got up and swaggered over to Brody. “You got any heat on you?”

  “No.”

  “Put your hands over your head so’s I can check.”

  Brody raised his hands; the hood slapped him down.

  “You can go in,” the hood said, “but knock on the door first.”

  Brody readjusted the lapels of his jacket, walked to the door, and knocked on it.

  “Come in.”

  He opened the door and strolled into the office of Buddy DeFranco, who sat behind his big desk, puffing a cigar. There were thick maroon drapes over the windows, and although it was high noon, the only light came from a lamp on DeFranco’s desk.

  DeFranco got up and extended his hand. “How’re you doing, Brody.”

  “Not bad—you?”

  “Can’t complain. Have a seat.”

  Brody sat, crossing his legs.

  “What brings you here?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “ What kind of favor.”

  “I need four policeman’s badges that look real, and I figured you might know where I could have them made. I also figured you could keep your mouth shut about it.”

  “I didn’t get to being what I am today by talking too much.”

  “I know—that’s why I come to you.”

  DeFranco smiled. “What d’ya need four badges for?”

  “That’s nobody’s business but my own.”

  “You can’t be up to anything good.”

  “I’m not.”

  DeFranco laughed. “So you’ve crossed over to our side, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Great.”

  DeFranco’s teeth were straight and white. “Well, I always knew you had the potential to be a crook. Why don’t you come and work for me?”

  “I don’t want to work for anybody anymore.”

  “I could use a man who isn’t afraid of trouble.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Five hundred dollars a week.”

  “Still not interested.”

  “You’d be working in a massage parlor, keeping everybody in line. You can screw as many of the girls as you want, whenever you want.”

  “ What about the four badges?”

  “It won’t be cheap.”

  “You can have the work done?”

  “I can get any work done.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to somebody. You can probably figure on around a thousand dollars. You got a thousand dollars ?”

  “Not with me.”

  “How do I get in touch with you?”

  “I’ll get in touch with you. How long will the job take?”

  “A week or two.”

  “I’ll call you in a week.” Brody stood up.

  “Where you going?”

  “I gotta see a man about a horse.”

  “Stick around. Have a drink with me.”

  “I’ve got to get rolling along—sorry. Got a lot to do.”

  DeFranco sucked a tooth.” Afraid of being seen consorting with known criminal figures?”

  “It’s not the best thing that could happen to an ex-cop.”

  “Especially one who’s planning a job.”

  “Right.”

  “See you later, Brody.”

  “Right.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The yellow Checker cab drove toward the Hudson River on West 55th Street. Behind the wheel was Dennis Laganello, barrel-chested, wearing a black stocking-cap and a red and black checked wool shirt. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he was returning the cab to the garage. He’d been on the street since three in the afternoon of the previous day. He’d made fifteen dollars in tips, twenty dollars off the meter, and managed to book fifty dollars on the meter. It’d been a good night, but he was tired to the marrow of his bones. He was looking forward to getting home to his wife and infant son.

  He drove the cab into the garage and stopped beside the gas pumps. A black garage worker filled the tank as Laganello got out of the cab, carrying his trip sheet and coin changer. The garage stank of grease and was utterly filthy. Grease was on the walls and floor along with candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, and brown paper bags. Laganello walked to the dispatcher’s window and handed over his trip sheet.

  The dispatcher, a lean man with a mustache, added up the figures on the sheet. “You been a hunnert and twenty miles tonight and you only booked fifty dollars?”

  “I came back empty from Kennedy Airport twice, and it was a slow night.”

  “It wasn’t so slow for most of the other guys.”

  Laganello smiled. “Well, you know how it is. It can be slow for one driver and busy for another.”

  The dispatcher looked at him coldly. “Some night you’re gonna get caught ridin’ off the meter, and it’s goin’ to be your ass.”

  “I don’t ride off the meter, Joe.”

  “The fuck you don’t.”

  Laganello looked away. He was getting pissed off. “If you think you can prove something, fire me. Otherwise keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  “Don’t you like to work here, Laganello?” Joe asked tauntingly.

  “I work here because I’ve gotta work here.”

  “But we don�
�t have to keep you. If you keep booking below the average, we’ll let you go.”

  “There are a million garages in the city.”

  “We all belong to the Taxi Board of Trade, and we’ll blackball you.”

  “Okay-okay. I’ll try harder.”

  “You’d fucking better, Laganello.”

  Laganello wanted to beat his brains in, but he kept his rage down and smiled. “Can I go home now?”

  “Yeah.”

  Laganello walked out of the garage. West 55th Street was dark in that area, a neighborhood of factory buildings closed for the night. He walked east toward the subway on 8th Avenue, three long uphill blocks away. A figure stepped out of a doorway.

  “Hi Laganello.”

  Laganello looked and saw Tony Ricci, who’d also been a patrolman in the 23rd Precinct, which was in the Cortland Park area of the Bronx. “What’re you doing here, Ricci?”

  Ricci held out his hand. “I wanted to talk with you.”

  Laganello shook his hand. “What about?”

  “I wanted to know if you’ve had enough.”

  “Of what.”

  “Driving a fucking cab.”

  Laganello shrugged, and resumed walking toward the subway. Ricci walked beside him.

  “Well, it’s a living,” Laganello said.

  “Not much of a living.”

  “It’s keeping me and my family alive.”

  “It’s got a great future.”

  Laganello spat into the gutter. “Yeah.”

  “How’d you like to make a lot of money, Laganello?”

  “Doing what?”

  “A heist.”

  Laganello looked at him. “A heist?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You mean committing a crime?”

  “That’s what a heist is, isn’t it?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Nope.”

  Laganello shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”

  “You wanna hear about it?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You gotta understand that if you listen and decide not to go along, you gotta keep your mouth shut.”

  “I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Just thought I’d make sure, because the stakes are pretty high. If somebody talks, that somebody is gonna get killed.”

  “I know where you’re coming from, Ricci. Tell me what it’s all about.”

  “There’ll be four guys, and there’ll be a million dollars in it for each of them. Each of the guys is an ex-cop and a veteran of Vietnam. Each of. . .”

  Laganello interrupted him. “Did you say a million dollars apiece?”

  “It ain’t worth taking the chance for anything less. This is going to be a one-shot deal that’ll make every participant a millionaire for the rest of his life.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Like I was saying before, each of us will be an ex-cop and a veteran of Vietnam. Each of us has been shit on plenty and each of us has a right to tear off a piece of the world for ourselves because we fucking well deserve it. We’re going for the gold ring and we want you to be with us.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and two other guys. It’s not a good idea to mention names at this point.”

  “Can you tell me what the heist is all about, so I can make up my mind.”

  “We’re going to knock over the Property Room at Police Headquarters.”

  Laganello’s head jerked. They were waiting for the light to change at 10th Avenue.

  “The Property Room at Police Headquarters? Are you fucking crazy?”

  “No, I’m fucking sane. There’s seven million dollars in cash in there. I know because I used to work in the Property Room. It’s not guarded nearly as well as the vault of a bank. In fact, it’s hardly guarded at all. We’ll go in there with our police uniforms on and we’ll look like every other cop. We’ll know how to act because we were cops. We’ll even have badges. One man will be outside in a paddy wagon, and the other three men will find the Sergeant of the Day and tell him there’s a problem with the safe in the Property Room. We’ll all go downstairs, one man will post himself outside the Property Room and tell everybody who comes around that they’re inventorying the stuff—they do that from time to time—and to take all Property to the old station on Centre Street. Inside, we’ll pull out our guns and take the combination for the vault off the Sergeant. We open the vault, pile the money into wagons, tie up the Sergeant and the guy working in the Property Room, and wheel the money out to the paddy wagon, put it in back, and drive off. About a dozen blocks away we’ll have a rented van. We transfer the money into the van and disappear into the city. We hide the money and return the truck. Then we go home. The next day we meet and split up the money. After that we’re all on our own.”

  Laganello was silent. They were approaching Ninth Avenue. A young woman in a short blue jacket was walking a little dog.

  “It sounds pretty solid,” Laganello said. “We’ve got it worked out pretty well.”

  “Where are you gonna get the badges?”

  “We’re having them made up for us right now.”

  “Where are you gonna hide the money?”

  “You don’t find that out until you tell us whether you’re in or out.”

  Laganello shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “We can’t wait too long.”

  “Give me forty-eight hours.”

  “You got ‘em.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Monte Carlo Disco was on East 62nd Street near Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and existed as a mecca for all those fashionable East Siders who wanted to go out and boogie. On any night of the week sexy girls and sleek guys jump up and down to music played over a stereo system that cost more than the houses most people live in.

  The owners of the disco wanted to keep out people without class, so one of them stood at the door every night along with the bouncer, a powerfully-built black man of about thirty named Robert Hardesty, formerly with the 41st Precinct of the N.Y.P.D.

  On a particular Wednesday night, Hardesty stood at the door with his boss, a little twitching beaver of a man named Tannen, and tried to smile although he was chocking with frustration. He felt like an asshole, because he knew the male patrons thought he was a punch-drunk ex-pug or something like that, and the girls thought he was just a black stud, when in fact he’d got high grades during his two years at Brooklyn College, had received two departmental citations for bravery when he was a patrolman, and until recently had been a detective third class. He was also a brown belt in karate and a lapsed Black Muslim.

  Patrons showed up alone or in groups, and Tannen checked them out and admitted or rejected them according to some set of standards that no one understood. He didn’t go by dress, race, or any discernible attitude, but by his notions of what was class and what wasn’t.

  At one in the morning, Brody presented himself at the door, and Tannen checked him out while Hardesty wondered what he was doing there.

  Brody smiled at Tannen. “I’d like to speak to my buddy Hardesty for a moment, if you don’t mind. I’m not here to go disco dancing.”

  Tannen raised his eyebrows. “What’s the matter— my disco too good for you?”

  “No, I can’t dance.”

  “Neither can most of the people who come in here. Go in and have a drink at the bar on me, Abe Tannen. Tell the bartender I sent you. A friend of Hardesty’s is a friend of mine.”

  Hardesty stepped away from Abe Tannen a few paces and looked inquisitively at Brody. What’s on your mind, Brody?”

  “I wanna talk to you about something important. What time do you get out of this fruit bin?”

  “What do you wanna talk to me about?”

  “A job—a good job, or are you happy here?”

  “I get out at four in the morning.”

  “I’ll meet you out front.”

  Brody started
to walk toward the bar, but Hardesty grabbed his shoulder. “How come you’re offering me a job?”

  “I’ll tell you at four in the morning.”

  Brody walked away, and Hardesty returned to Abe Tannen’s side. He and Brody had never got along when they were patrolmen, so how come he was offering him a job? He knew Brody was a racist and a bigot; Brody never even tried to hide it. He was always telling nigger jokes in the station house, and putting down blacks and Ricans. What the fuck was he doing here? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  Brody made his way through the pack of people to the bar, and told the bartender what the boss had told him to say. He asked for a double Jack Daniels with a water back. He would’ve preferred to order a glass of beer with it, but you don’t order shots and beers in joints like the Monte Carlo Disco, and besides, they don’t have beer on draft. He slugged half the whisky down and took a sip of water. Then he turned around to see what was happening.

  The ceiling was covered with Mylar, and there were abstract paintings on the walls. In one section, people were sitting on sofas and chairs, drinking booze and talking shit. The dance floor was a spectacle the likes of which Brody seldom had an opportunity to see. Beautiful young girls who didn’t wear brassieres were dancing and wiggling to the music, and they knew they were beautiful. In fact, they seemed to be trying to drive onlooking males out of their skulls. Brody looked at some of the guys’ faces, and saw the girls were succeeding. The male dancers looked ridiculous to Brody. He couldn’t understand why grown men would make fools of themselves that way.

  “Hi there,” said a female voice.

  Brody looked straight ahead and didn’t see anything. He looked down and there she was, a little blonde with frizzy hair. “You talkin’ to me?”

  “ Who else?”

  “Hello.”

  “Let’s dance.” She was a perky little bitch and she looked whacked out of her head on speed.