by Robert Daley
Pulling in beside a fire hydrant farther up the street, Luang slouched down in his seat, and he watched the doorway in his rearview mirror.
It was early morning. He had his memo book open on his lap, and as he wrote down all he had noted so far, he kept glancing from the memo book to the mirror and back again.
About five minutes passed before a black car pulled up in front of the same coffee house. The driver ran around to open the back door. Two Italian-looking men stepped out and glanced around. They looked as self-conscious as bridegrooms. They kept pulling their suit coats down over their hips. Leaving the car double-parked, they went into the coffee house. The driver stayed with the car. Luang licked his pencil and wrote in his notebook: 10 A.M., 167 Mulberry Street, Italian espresso house. Black car pulls up, New York plates HT1134. Two Italians. One about 45, the other about 55. The older one has head like a melon. Melon head very pale. Younger one thin-faced like a prune. Big nose. Tanned.
Luang closed the notebook, shoved it into the glove box and slouched so far down that only the top of his head showed above the back of the seat. He sat there waiting, eyes fixed on the mirror.
Inside the coffee house the two Chinese, having ordered tea, were already sipping it when the two Italian-Americans entered. The Chinese rose to their feet. Simultaneously, having recognized the two newcomers, the waiter had come out from behind the bar. He looked nervous, for the newcomers were important men in Little Italy. He was anxious to perform any service they might require of him. The result was five men standing together in a kind of embarrassed silence.
They stood around the tiny table. It was circular, small as a tray.
The older of the two Italians, whose name was Marco, turned to the waiter: “Due cappuccini.”
The waiter bowed like a Chinese. “Si, Signore,” he said, backing away.
Marco said to Ting and Koy: “This is my brother-in-law, Mr. Casagrande.”
There was no shaking of hands, and no one sat down. Instead Ting and Koy glanced at each other, after which their eyes became veiled, as if blinds had been drawn. “We expected you to come alone,” said Ting.
Marco jerked his thumb toward Casagrande. “He was looking after my business while I was away.”
Still no one sat down. The men stared at each other. It was clear that a detail had to be settled before this meeting could begin.
Koy and Ting, eyes fixed on the Italians rather than on each other, began a conversation in Chinese. This annoyed Marco. As he saw it, the Chinese took him and his brother-in-law for dumb clucks who could not understand their language and who, furthermore, could converse in no secret language of their own. He turned to Casagrande. “Do you speak Italian?”
“I forgot it since I was a kid.”
So had Marco. As the Cantonese tones rose and fell, his mouth hardened angrily. He could not even return the insult. He had been bested.
The discussion between Ting and Koy ended. Casagrande, they had decided, constituted a security risk, and this meeting, therefore, could not take place.
“I’m sorry,” said Koy. “Mr. Casagrande is certainly most trustworthy. Nonetheless-”
A moment longer the four men, all still standing, stared at each other. Then Marco jerked his head toward the door. Casagrande nodded and went out into the street.
“I am sorry,” said Koy apologetically, “but it is a business in which one cannot be too careful.”
Marco gave a shrug. As the three men at last sat down at the small table, the waiter appeared with the two coffees on a tray. He began peering around for the missing customer.
“Put them both down on the table,” ordered Marco. “That’s right. Now beat it. Scram.”
“Si, signore,” said the waiter and he retreated behind the bar.
The three men, still staring at each other, ignored their cups. In the center of the table the fourth cup, belonging to no one, was ignored too.
“You’re looking well,” said Koy. “A bit pale, that’s all.”
Marco said, “Where I was, they didn’t give you too much opportunity to take the sun.”
“In any case,” said Koy, “We are glad to see you. We have been waiting for you for a number of years.”
“So who did you deal with while I was gone?”
“No one,” said Ting.
“You waited for me?”
“It seemed wisest,” said Koy.
Marco shook his head in a kind of grudging admiration. “You Chinamen are patient guys.”
Koy, who detested being called a Chinaman, frowned. “The river is patient,” he said coldly. It was as if he had resolved to teach this dolt some important truths. “The sky is patient. Man must live in harmony with nature. If one wishes to be certain, often one must wait. Would you require the same quantity of merchandise as in the past?”
“More. I lost a lot of time. If the price is right. If the quality is as high.”
Koy said: “The source is the same. Transshipment is still via Hong Kong. As for the price, that is what we are here to discuss. Once that and certain other points are agreed upon, then others can handle the details. We will not meet again. Much to our regret, of course.”
Out front Casagrande paced up and down smoking. From time to time they could see him as he passed in front of the plate glass.
Luang through his rearview mirror watched Casagrande also. Then Marco came out. After conversing briefly, the two men got into their black car and drove down the street toward Luang. As they passed him, he slouched so far down in his seat as to be virtually invisible. But as soon as they had turned the corner he again raised himself high enough to watch the espresso bar through the mirror, and presently Ting and Koy came out and stood waiting for their car. Either they had phoned for it, or else it was due at a certain time. Luang started his engine and waited. When the white Mercedes appeared in his mirror he pulled away from the curb and drove up to Houston Street, where he phoned Captain Powers from a street-corner phone booth.
Powers said that he would meet Luang at once at the Drug Enforcement Administration offices on West Fifty-seventh Street.
There, for over an hour, the two men paged through photograph albums of major drug traffickers, as brought to them by a DEA agent named Wilcoxon. Each album, once viewed, was added to the stack that stood on the edge of the desk. It was becoming a tall stack, floors of a building headed for the sky, each landing a staircase climbed to no avail. Powers was like a man trapped in the stairwell of this skyscraper. He kept running up flights but the doors were locked at each landing.
Luang, finishing with the final album, handed it to Powers. “No,” he said.
Powers hefted the latest thick sandwich. A moment ago it had represented hope to both of them, a prodigality of hope because it was the bulkiest yet, it could feed an army. Unfortunately it had proved to contain no nourishment at all.
“He meets two Italians in Little Italy,” Powers said. “It’s got to be drugs. It’s got to be a major guy.” He gestured toward the albums. “He’s got to be in there somewhere.”
But he wasn’t, meaning that Powers’ newest idea had failed as miserably as its predecessors. For all he knew, the Italian had been an undertaker just like Koy. Perhaps they had met only to discuss the price of coffins.
He stared at the stack of albums: another dead end.
“Come on, come on,” said Luang. “Bring out some more albums.” Luang, Powers had learned, was a man of incredible patience.
“There are no more albums,” said Wilcoxon. “That’s it.”
“He had a head like a melon,” persisted Luang. “That’s what I call him, melon-head. When I have to remember someone’s face, what I do is remember what his features remind me of. He’s got a nose like a cork, got ears like a cocker spaniel. Well this guy had a head like a melon. The guy who waited outside looked like a prune.”
“If you don’t have prune-face in your book,” said Powers, “that doesn’t surprise me. Maybe he’s new. Maybe he’s just musc
le. But melon-head you should have. Koy is not going to meet with anybody but an important guy.”
“Any man active over any period of time,” said Wilcoxon, “is in those books. Maybe he hasn’t been active.”
It was a small inside room. No windows. Airless. Powers paced it. It was like pacing a cell. A prisoner locked in a cell was locked also inside his own skull, and could concentrate on nothing except breaking out. Powers knew this. Most prisoners, he had learned, yearned so hard to break out that the yearning became actual physical pain, and it was centered in their teeth. They began grinding their teeth, even in their sleep. Prisoners were men whose teeth hurt all the time.
“What did you say?” demanded Powers.
“He may not have been active recently,” said Wilcoxon.
“Maybe he just got out of jail,” said Powers.
Wilcoxon left the room. While he was gone Powers and Luang stared at each other, and Powers’ hopes were blazing once more. Hope, the great arsonist. Calm down, he warned himself. You’re just going to be disappointed all over again.
Reentering the office, Wilcoxon dropped a new album in front of Luang. “Here’s a book of guys we’ve put away. Maybe one of them got out recently.” His tone was apologetic. “We update these books every once in a while.” He was like a man confessing a sin common to everyone in the room, making it, therefore, not such a bad sin. They were all guilty of it. If the DEA had not updated its albums in months, perhaps years, this could not be helped, and probably the New York Police Department had done no better. Law enforcement stumbled along on too little money. For the most part accuracy and efficiency were dreams that could not be paid for, and so did not come true. As cases moved from one jurisdiction to another, the records attached to them did also, usually by hand. Time then passed, usually a great deal of time, until hardly anyone remembered the original case, much less the whereabouts of the paper it had generated. One could not update files if the paper got lost.
Luang, who had been turning pages, rapped a glass-sine-covered photo with his knuckles, and said calmly, “That’s melon-head!”
Powers jumped to peer over Luang’s shoulder. “Bruno Marco,” Luang read aloud. “It says here he was eligible for parole last January.”
“I guess he got paroled,” apologized Wilcoxon.
Powers said elatedly, “Koy and Ting meet Marco and-”
But Wilcoxon attempted to blanket what he evidently considered too much enthusiasm. “It’s a nice bit of information, Captain. Unfortunately, I don’t know what good it will do you. That’s probably the first and last meeting between those two people.”
Most cops were defeatist, Powers reflected. It grew up out of their vast cynicism. They were like players on a last-place team. They expected to lose. The world was a malignant place. Justice rarely triumphed.
It was amazing that cases ever got made at all.
Wilcoxon said, “The Chinese have the best source of supply. They got Southeast Asia tied up. Here in this country the Chinese import only. They have no distribution network. That’s the way it was the last time we were able to hook into them. The Italians are their distribution network. The Chinese bring in the stuff via Hong Kong and Amsterdam. They make their deal with the Mafia and they arrange for Chinese couriers to deliver into Little Italy. They send some Chinese seaman ashore with a load off a freighter. He gets to take the risk and they pay him maybe a hundred bucks. Once it’s ashore they pay some Chinese waiter another hundred bucks to carry it to the Italians. At some point the money changes hands. A lot of money. The Chinese dump it in there with all that cash from their gambling houses. There is no way you can trace it, no way you can find it. We catch a courier now and then. Big deal. There is no way you can catch a guy like Koy. He’s much too cute. He never goes near the junk himself and rarely ever meets with anybody. Today’s business deal with Marco - it fits. The Chinese deal only with Italians they have dealt with for a long time. If the Italian goes away, most likely they wait until he comes out.”
There was no way, Wilcoxon told them, and never had been, to infiltrate the Chinese end of the operation. Ten years ago the DEA had managed to make cases against a number of major Chinese dealers. They had done it by sending in undercover agents who posed as Mafia buyers. Three or four major Chinese importers had fallen for it, and were still in jail. But with the Chinese the same technique never worked a second time. Most criminals, and especially most drug dealers, were morons. A successful technique, once developed kept working. Law enforcement kept dropping the same guys over and over again in the same way. But not the Chinese, who never repeated mistakes. Since those few ten-year-old cases, the Chinese had sold exclusively, it was assumed, to Italians they knew and could trust, and although the drug agency had continued attempting to infiltrate, they had never been successful again. Operations against the Chinese drug lords were now at a standstill. Nobody could think of a way to get a case going.
“I’ll tell our guys what’s probably going down,” Wilcoxon said. “But don’t expect too much.”
Wilcoxon showed them out of the airless little office, walking them as far as the elevator. “If we manage to drop anybody,” he said, just before the doors closed, “we’ll send you a thank-you card.”
Downstairs Powers and Luang stood in the sunlight in the plaza in front of the building.
“What next, Captain?” asked Luang.
But Powers’ euphoria was evaporating fast. It was clotting like blood. Scar tissue had begun to form over it. The scar tissue was called reality. He believed more strongly than ever that a Chinese Mafia existed and that Koy was the head of it. And yes, he had begun to discern the edges of the case he might make against Koy. But, no, he still had no hard evidence, nor even hard information he could take to Duncan or Cirillo or the PC. And he did not have the resources to break up the Chinese Mafia without their help.
“If I had a few more of you,” he told Luang, “I’d keep the tail going at least another week.”
Luang shook his head. He did not like the sound of this. He wanted no more of Koy who, if he was protecting a drug empire, would stop at nothing. “I’ve got to have some time off, Captain,” Luang said. Though nothing showed on his face, he was terrified of Koy, who would certainly order him killed, might already have done so. “The Chinese cop is not like you American cops,” he said and gave a broad grin. “We Chinese like to eat. We devote a lot of thought to it. I got to have a decent meal, Captain. Maybe some butterfly shrimps. I can’t take any more surveillance work for a while. Maybe a dish of stir-fried sliced beef with oyster sauce. Have you ever had that, Captain?” He tried the grin again, but this time it failed. “For me that is as close as you can come to ecstasy at a dinner table. You make it with black pepper, soy sauce, thinly sliced onions, chopped fresh ginger and-”
“Stop,” Powers said with a smile. He had failed to notice Luang’s fear - by American standards it simply did not show. “You are making my mouth water.”
“I want to sit down at a table and eat with chopsticks,” Luang said. He was grinning, pleading and sweating all at once. There were beads of sweat on his brow.
This time Powers did observe the mismatched symptoms but they only confused him. He could not figure out what they meant.
“And drink a pot of hot jasmine tea.” Luang said. “I can’t take any more hamburgers for a while, I can’t take any more of these meals out of a paper bag.” He watched anxiously for his commanding officer’s reaction.
Powers, brooding, thought of Koy as the lord of a fortified encampment. Not only did he rape and brutalize his own subjects within, he also manufactured poison in there, and sent it outside to contaminate the wells for miles around. Stopping Koy was more important than Luang’s dinner habits. On the other hand, there was probably very little more to be gained by tailing the man.
An idea came to Powers, a way to infiltrate the Flying Dragons and to go after Koy from inside the gang. For about a minute he was silent, mulling the idea over, knea
ding it
like dough, watching it take the shape he wanted.
His hand clapped down on Luang’s shoulder. “Take a week off, and when you come back we’ll try a different plan. It’s one I think might work.”
He did not notice Luang’s vast, interior sigh of relief.
“Thank you, Captain,” said Police Officer Luang.
HE TOOK Carol to the movies in a village ten miles from her house, and at the ticket window the woman in line in front of them turned around, recognized Carol, and gave her husband a violent dig in the ribs, causing him to turn and stare too.
“Oh,” he said, looking startled. “Oh, it’s you.”
Although this had happened before, each time Powers was both surprised and pleased. His pleasure was pride - for the moment this valuable object belonged to him. Carol gave the couple the frosted smile she reserved for such people and they advanced into the lobby where the man who tore the tickets at the door recognized her too. On came a friendly grin and he nodded to her, but Carol ignored him altogether and plunged forward into the darkness, Powers following.
They took places in the last row, and stared at the screen, and Powers tried to examine his emotions, which seemed to him unworthy. The ownership instinct was one of man’s strongest and most base. No human being owned any other, Powers thought. Carol certainly existed independently of him, they weren’t even married, so why did he continue to preen when she was recognized at his side?
He was experiencing many emotions these days that were strange to him. To be in love at forty-six was in some ways as vivid and compelling as at twenty-three, and the object of that love was just as irresistible, though she did not always seem as perfect. Because love then had blotted out all else, whereas now it had to compete for his attention. Often it produced sensations that only resembled those of the past, the way his face in the mirror only resembled a snapshot from his youth; the two faces were far from identical.