“Anybody find anything else?” Mulvehill shouted out.
“Negative,” came a couple of voices from the front of the apartment. “Okay, let’s take this lying piece of he glanced at the children, “—let’s take him down to the office,” said Mulvehill. He hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder. “More than two mil in here, I’m sure. Take this guy into custody,” he said to Castoro.
“Where are you taking my husband?” said the woman in Spanish, trying to block their way out the bedroom door.
“Take it easy, Senora,” said Santiago.
“You won’t be seeing him for a long time, lady,” said Mulvehill, “a long time.”
She began to cry with fright. “Where are you taking my husband. He don’t have nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, really? You know something about this money?”
“Only what my husband told you. He told me the same thing. That’s all we know about this money. You want it, take it. Leave my husband here.”
“We can’t do that,” said Mulvehill. “He’s in deep trouble. You won’t be seeing him for a long time.” Mulvehill made sure the husband could hear what he was saying to the wife.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, as the Agents led the husband out of the bedroom.
Santiago came into the bedroom. “Listen, Senora,” he said speaking softly in Spanish. “You know anything about this money, where it came from, how we can get in touch with the people who gave it to your husband?”
She shook her head, sobbing. “Only what he told you. What’s going to happen? I have two little kids, no money …”
“Don’t say anything,” Santiago assured her, continuing to speak in Spanish. “Everything’ll be okay. We’re not going to do anything to your husband. My boss is just trying to frighten you. We have to take him down to the office. If he’s telling the truth, which I think he is, we’ll just take his picture, his fingerprints, and then he’ll be home in a couple of hours.”
“You taking him to jail? You taking my husband to jail?” The woman started to writhe, trying to get past Santiago, to her husband. “Papi,” she screamed after him. The children began to cry, pushing against Santiago’s legs.
Mulvehill and the other Task Force members had made it back to the kitchen and were almost clear of the entrance door.
“Papi, Papi!” the woman screamed toward the entrance. The children were crying hysterically. “Papi, Papi,” they chorused.
“Meta, meta,” Santiago said, turning to the woman, holding her by both shoulders, looking into her face. “Listen. They’re Americans. I’m Spanish. I’m telling you, the gringos are only interested in the money. They’ll take his picture, then let him go. Don’t worry. I’m telling you the truth. Don’t worry. He’ll be back in a couple of hours. Here, here, take my card. So you know who I am. You know how to get in touch with me.”
The woman looked at the Detective’s business card with the gold embossed shield of the D.E.A.
“You sure he’s coming home, in a couple of hours?”
“Seguro.”
“Swear to Jesus Christ?” she said to him.
“I swear to Jesus,” said Santiago, making the sign of the cross.
The woman studied Santiago’s eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Bueno. Quiet, children, quiet. Papi is okay. He’ll be home soon.”
Mulvehill, Santiago, and the N.Y.P.D. detective were in a small, windowless room at D.E.A. headquarters on Tenth Avenue. They were seated around a desk on which there was a huge pile of currency. Mulvehill sent Castoro to join Geraghty in an in-progress surveillance of Senator Joe Galiber in the Bronx. He sent the other agents from the raiding party home.
“It takes a fucking long time to count this much money,” said Santiago.
“Yeah, and your griping don’t make it any easier,” said Mulvehill.
“How much we have, so far?” said Santiago.
“A hundred twenty thou’ over there,” said Mulvehill, pointing to the top of a file cabinet on which there were packages of currency that were already counted. “That’s the snitch’s share.”
“I thought he was getting ten percent of the seizure,” said Santiago.
“Fuck him. We seized less than they thought, right?” Mulvehill said, looking into the eyes of the other two Agents.
“Yeah, right,” agreed Santiago. The detective nodded.
“There’s eight hundred thou’ on the other desk, so far,” said Santiago, looking to packages that had been counted and placed on a second desk in the room.
“And look at the huge pile we still have to count,” said Mulvehill. “At least two mill.”
“We’ll be counting here all night,” said the detective.
“We still have to put, let’s say, twenty, forty, sixty,” Mulvehill was counting on his fingers, “seventy, eighty, ninety—for us.” He laughed mischievously. The others laughed with him.
“Let’s get this thing finished, so we can tell the boss,” said Santiago.
“He already knows,” said Mulvehill.
“You called him?”
“He called me, on my cell, when you guys were putting the car in the lot. I told him what we had. He said he’d be right down.”
“Was he happy?” said Santiago.
“He was ecstatic,” said Supervisor Becker who had just opened the door to the small room.
“Hey, Boss,” said Mulvehill.
Becker nodded, his eyes transfixed on the pile of money on the desk. “Fabulous, fabulous,” he said, looking around at the various piles of counted bundles. “A couple of million?”
“Looks that way,” said Mulvehill. “There were no drugs.”
“As usual,” said Becker. “They never let the people with money have anything to do with drugs. As usual, it’s just a private citizen—a dishonest one—like the hump who had this pile, picking up some extra spending money carrying the currency. Where’s the money for the snitch?” said Becker.
“Up there,” said Mulvehill, nodding toward the top of the file cabinet. “A hundred and twenty.”
“How do we know that, when we haven’t finished counting?”
“We didn’t get as much as we thought,” said Santiago, smiling at Becker.
“No need to cheat our informant,” said Becker. “The money carriers know exactly how much money they have. They’re responsible for every dollar. The little guy you took this from is going to have to make good for it—or they’ll take the eyes out of his family back in Colombia.”
“How the hell is that guy going to make up two mil?” said Santiago.
“Who knows? That’s the bargain they make going in,” said Becker, “and that’s one of the reasons we hit them for the money only. If the people in Colombia couldn’t get the money back there, they wouldn’t be sending the junk up here.”
“Poor fuck is never going to make it,” said the detective.
Becker shrugged. “That’s unfortunate.”
Santiago shook his head.
“Is there something for the boys?” asked Becker.
“The other three got ten apiece,” said Mulvehill. “This is for the three of us.”
“There’s sixty here,” said Becker, brushing his hand through the pile separated for the Agents. “You weren’t figuring that you’d take twenty each, and the others only ten?”
“It’s hard work to count,” said Mulvehill.
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“How about you take the difference, boss.”
Becker shook his head. “The others took ten, you three take ten each,” said Becker. “Everything has to be fair and square. You did good—no, great work, tonight,” Becker said to his Agents. “Go take a smoke,” he said to Santiago and the detective. He didn’t even remember his name. “I’ll count for a while. Don’t take too long. I have an appointment in midtown with another snitch.” Santiago and the detective stood, each taking a small bundle of cash and stuffing it into their pockets.
When the doo
r closed behind the other two agents, Becker turned to Mulvehill. “Don’t be teaching your men to cheat each other.”
“I just thought—”
“Don’t be teaching them to cheat each other,” Becker repeated. “They learn from your example. What is not corrected, is taught.”
“Sorry, Boss.”
“You give the guy a receipt for this?”
“Yeah, but I wrote ‘unspecified amount of currency’ on it, no actual number.”
“Good,” said Becker. He picked up a handful of cash and began to count. “How much in each package?”
“Ten thousand.”
When Becker counted ten thousand, he put a rubber band around the packet and added it to the pile of counted cash. “Did you hear anything from Geraghty about his surveillance of Galiber?” he said to Mulvehill.
“I sent Castoro up to join him. They’re both following him around the Bronx as we speak, political shit, fund raisers, rallies. They think they spotted the Senator’s girlfriend, some twist who works on the campaigns with him.”
“Did they catch them kissy face?”
“Not really,” said Mulvehill. “They’re still on top of it. Said they’d call in with more news in a little while.”
“Fine. Let me know when you hear anything. It’s important we nail the guy with something. This stuff,” he pointed at the pile of cash, “the money that we take from these criminals funds a host of Agency activities that the politicians in Washington don’t want showing up on any budget, you get me?”
Mulvehill nodded as he counted another packet.
“In a way, the drug business helps keep the U.S. of A. strong. The money Congress allocates for the drug war to the F.B.I., the D.E.A., the C.I.A. doesn’t provide for all the manpower and equipment we need. These seized funds—millions, more every day—funds a lot of covert activities that we can’t talk about or advertise, stuff in Iran, Iraq, to keep the infidels down. Galiber, thinking he’s doing good, starting noise about legalizing drugs, might upset the whole scheme of things, a lot of schemes of things that are important to national security. He has to be knocked down, hard, fast, so there’s no momentum generated.” Becker stopped talking as he counted. “We ought to have some of our bean-counters dig into his finances. If we can’t find him hiding the weeny tonight, maybe we can find him on the take, socking away some cash.”
“You want me to do anything about it?”
“That’s why I’m talking to you. Get some of those accountant types to start digging. If we can come up with something, I’ll talk to Dineen, get him to do a white collar investigation. Get some of our people to start checking on his bank accounts. We ought to be watching him to see what he spends, what he owns—cars, a boat, maybe, a summer place.”
Mulvehill nodded as he placed another packet on the counted pile.
Becker picked up another handful of cash. “Meanwhile, I’m going to see some of our friends in the newspaper business, some of our politician friends in State government, maybe we can put some weight in the legislature to put the kibosh on this legalization nonsense from the other end.”
Someone knocked on the door. Santiago and the detective looked in.
“Come in, there’s a lot more to be counted. I have to get uptown to speak to our Brotherhood snitch.”
“Have fun,” said Mulvehill.
“Oh, yes, really.”
The Bronx : June 18, 1996 : 9:50 P.M.
Marty Geraghty sat in the driver’s seat of a sleek, bright red Pontiac TransAm, sipping coffee from a styrofoam container. Lou Castoro sat next to him, a similar cup on the top of the dashboard in front of him. The vehicle had been drawn from the 10th Avenue pool of cars confiscated by the D.E.A. from drug dealers and the like; the Agency retained the flashiest and loudest for undercover operations. The TransAm was parked at a fire hydrant across the street from a Jehovah’s Witnesses’s Kingdom Hall.
“How long you figure he’s been inside?” said Castoro, looking at his watch. “It’s the third one tonight.”
“Long enough to make an appearance and milk the guests. His regular workers usually put together a spread—hopefully promoted on the arm, from a local eatery. People from the area—Spanish, Jews, old people, bag ladies, pregnant teenagers—come to dance and free load, then he shows up to shake a few hands. This is probably the last one tonight. Why, you in a hurry?”
“I have to take a piss.”
“Go to that joint over there,” said Geraghty, pointing toward a small bar with a neon Budweiser sign askew in the front window.
“Are you kidding? That’s a black joint. I’ll stand out there like a nun in a whore house.”
“Sit away from me when you talk like that, if you don’t mind,” said Geraghty. “I don’t want to get hit with your lightning.”
Castoro laughed. “I’ll find someplace peaceful and quiet.” He opened the door of the car. The interior light switch inside the undercover car had purposely been disabled so that agents on surveillance were able to slip in and out without calling attention to themselves or the car.
Geraghty sipped his coffee as he watched the front door of the Kingdom Hall. An occasional straggler would enter or leave. Some of the guests came out to the sidewalk to smoke or to cool off after dancing.
Castoro re-entered the car. “How do these politician bastards keep a straight face,” he said, leaning forward to take his coffee cup. “Damn, it’s cold. They’re always squeezing people to give them money so they can put their own pictures all over the place and get themselves a paying job. They ought to be paying the voters rather than the other way ’round.”
“They’re like movie actors,” said Geraghty. “Doesn’t bother an actor a bit to kiss a horse’s arse on screen if that’s what the script calls for. It’s their job, and they do it. Same with politicians. They do whatever it takes to raise money for themselves. The only thing bothers any of them, actors, politicians, same shit, is when nobody pays attention to them. Funny thing, people don’t seem to mind.”
“Reagan was both of them, actor and politician.”
“Reagan was a different story,” said Geraghty. “He was the best there was. Had the right ideas.”
Castoro nodded. He glanced past Geraghty. “Here he is,” he said as Senator Galiber came out of Kingdom Hall with an older man in a cap, and a young woman.
Geraghty turned. “Surprise, surprise. She’s still with him.”
The older man began to walk off to the right, as Galiber and the young woman stayed on the sidewalk in front of Kingdom Hall, talking with the people cooling off in front. The woman next to Galiber was a light-skinned black woman, in her thirties, attractive, with long, straight hair.
“Who’s the squeeze?” said Castoro.
“Don’t know the last name yet. We’ve seen her before. First name’s Jerrold.”
“Gerald, like the boys name, ‘Gerald’?”
“Sounds like ‘Gerald’, but she spells it funny, with a ‘J’, an ‘o’ and two ‘r’s. She goes around with him to a lot of these affairs, then takes off with him—when his old lady isn’t around. We’re putting together a folder on both of them.”
“Nice tits. You think the camera’ll work in this light?”
“That piece of shit camera the Agency gave you? I doubt it works in any light. Be careful he doesn’t see you.”
“I’m not going to use the flash.”
“I’m talking about light reflecting from the lens. We already have some pictures of them together at a daytime street rally last weekend.”
Just as Castoro took the first picture, a police car rolled up next to the TransAm blocking the Agents’s view of Kingdom Hall. “Move it,” directed a young, Hispanic officer in the passenger seat of the police vehicle.
“Shit,” murmured Geraghty as he leaned out the TransAm window. “We’re on the job,” he whispered toward the Hispanic officer.
At that very moment, three young men on the sidewalk, one of them balancing a rap blasting boom
box on his shoulder, passed by the TransAm. Galiber and the woman glanced directly toward the police car and the TransAm.
“Move it!” the cop repeated as the young men with the boom box moved a bit out of earshot.
“Hey, hey,” Castoro said urgently, “the old guy they came out with just pulled Galiber’s car in front of the place.”
Geraghty lowered his hand out the window, between the TransAm and the police car, displaying his credentials and badge. The cops eyes dropped to study the shield in Geraghty’s hands. “D.E.A. Surveillance. We’re on the job.”
“They’re getting in, they’re going to pull away,” Castoro said. Galiber’s gleaming black Cadillac convertible, facing in the opposite direction, began to move away.
“Sorry,” the young Hispanic cop said softly.
“We gotta go, we gotta go. Pull up, pull back, do something,” Geraghty directed the cops. The police car rolled back. Geraghty drove the TransAm away from the curb and straight ahead for a block, then made a quick U-turn. “We won’t even be able to find that big boat of his in the dark.”
“Oh yes we will,” said Castoro. “We’ll spot his tail light.” Castoro picked up a small, battery powered drill from the floor near his feet.
“You drilled his tail light?”
Castoro nodded with a sly smile. “While I was out taking a piss.”
“Good work.…” Geraghty floored the throttle. The TransAm burned rubber, its tailpipes splaying out a loud, deep sound as they sped back past Kingdom Hall like kids in a drag race.
“You see anything?” said Geraghty, searching forward and to the left through the windshield.
“Not yet,” said Castoro, looking ahead and to the right into the cross street as they started through an intersection. “There he is, there he is. This way, to the right,” he said suddenly.
About two blocks to the right, a tail lamp beamed bright white brake light through the hole Castoro had drilled. Galiber’s car was moving away from them, up a hill.
Geraghty tried to wheel the car right. There was a car waiting at the light on the right side of the cross street. He quickly twirled the TransAm steering wheel left, made a complete screeching circle in the middle of the intersection, and plunged into the cross street. Ahead, almost at the top of the hill, the car with the drilled tail light, smaller but clearly visible, made a right turn.
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