Codes of Betrayal

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  There were a couple of elderly people finishing their late meal. The food smelled spicy; the air was steamy. There were closing-up sounds coming from the kitchen. The bartender, a small man with dark, bloodshot eyes, glanced around, made eye contact with one of the waiters, who slipped into the kitchen and emerged a moment later. Nick saw it all. He leaned one haunch on a stool, facing into the restaurant; clear view of the front door. He calculated quickly: four, maybe five workers—the owners, two brothers, Juan and Victor, did the cooking and serving. The bartender was an uncle or a cousin.

  “Whut you want?” the small dark man asked him.

  Nick ignored him, noting he had been addressed in English. He shrugged; watched as the elderly people paid their bill and left. Dominicans. They were a very proud people; they owned Washington Heights. Before the war, the wide streets and well-built apartment buildings had been dominated by German Jewish refugees. The Heights had been something of an intellectual center. They were people who attended city colleges, lectures, symphonies, ballets, the theater. They sent their sons to war; they opened prosperous businesses, and when the war was over, they took in relatives who had survived the camps. Then, they moved out, moved on with the great American suburban migration. Dominicans had slowly settled in the now shabby buildings; brought in illegals, gun runners. And drugs. Main industries, drugs and money. Money because the Dominicans, smart, better educated than some of the others from down southway, were proficient at the complicated task of laundering. They handled millions of dollars a month with such skill that a twenty-two-year-old could retire back home and buy himself a village. Or a spot in the local graveyard.

  They made Nick for a cop from the moment he walked in, but that was okay. No problem.

  A tall, well-built man, a little heavy in the gut but broad-shouldered, solid chest, dark skin, Indian nose, tight lips, black eyes, came and stood before Nick. Neither pretended anything. Luis had dealt with cops before. Had paid the price of doing business; but he didn’t know this guy at all.

  Making sure no one was behind him, Nick said softly, “I need some money.”

  Luis shrugged. “Who don’t?”

  “I need some of your money.”

  “Hey, don’t you guys talk to each other? What, are you new around here? Who you work with, what squad? Who’s your boss?”

  Nick casually, but quickly, took hold of the man’s shoulder in a terrible grip. He dug the nose of his automatic into the man’s belly and whispered, “Tell everyone to back off.”

  Luis started to speak in Spanish, but Nick jerked him hard with the gun. “English. I know some Spanish, but you be very careful, right?”

  He backed them all into the kitchen and they lined up against the wall opposite the large dirty stove. There was a smell of rancid oil and fetid food everywhere. The men glanced at each other, but, as Nick knew they would, took their cues from Luis, the oldest of them.

  “Okay, you tell me what you want. No problem.”

  “No problaymo, huh?” Nick shoved Luis toward the large freezer next to where the men stood. “Get in there. Now. Reach into the bin where you keep the pork.”

  Luis was more stunned than reluctant. “What you talking about?”

  Nick slammed him across the face with his fist. “That young guy, what’s his name, Jose, he’s your son, right?” He gestured to the teenager whose eyes darted back and forth, from his father to Nick.

  Nick shoved Luis toward the freezer and held Jose tight against his body; his gun rested on the kid’s shoulder, pointed straight at his throat.

  Luis did as he was told. His face went blank, unreadable. He entered the freezer, kept the door wide open; dug out a package, caught Nick’s signal, dug out two more packages, and shrugged.

  “I swear, that’s all. That’s it.”

  “Two more,” Nick said.

  It was obvious the cop knew what he knew. Luis shrugged; fuck, it was only money. He put the packets into a heavy brown bag and carefully handed it to Nick, as he was told to do.

  Nick whirled around and ducked as one of the kitchen men came at him with a butcher knife. Propelled by his own momentum, the man slammed into the wall and slid down, stunned. The others moved in, but Nick moved too quickly, caught hold of the kid again.

  “He’s gonna come out back with me, got that? Then I’m outta here and you won’t see me again. Until next time. You been giving table money to some dumbbells. I know how much you pull in every week. I know exactly.”

  The kid tried to resist, but his father gave him a warning sign: Go with the bastard. Just go.

  Nick threw the kid into a pile of overflowing garbage cans, got into the car, turned the ignition, and took off toward the corner. He made a left turn onto 184th Street and was headed downtown when a large gray van cut him off. Ran him right onto the sidewalk. Someone pried open the passenger side door. Another man pulled his door open and grabbed Nick by the jacket so unexpectedly that he fell to his knees. Before he could look at his assailants, he was thrown into the back of the large gray van and it took him a moment to focus. All the equipment; the monitors; the reel-to-reel; the men with headphones. A police surveillance van.

  He was almost right. He had been tossed into a surveillance van run by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

  They were not happy with him at all. He had just disrupted a major drug money-laundering operation they had been tracking for nearly six months and were planning to close down within a week.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE INTERROGATION ROOM IN the federal building had been set up for intimidation: no windows, bright light, hard uncomfortable chairs. Only Nick was seated, dead center behind a narrow steel table as they stood around the room watching him: No one questioned him; he knew they were waiting for someone.

  When their boss arrived, he walked directly to the table in front of Nick. Carefully he placed Nick’s gold shield, his official notebook, his gun, methodically emptied, and his wallet on the table.

  “So, Detective O’Hara, what were you doing uptown?”

  Nick didn’t answer. He studied the tall, thin man with a cop’s interest. About forty-five; flat face with round beige eyes; heavy beige hair slicked back in the style models used in the expensive men’s cologne ads. Well-dressed; good shoes; good build. He had the whitest face Nick had ever seen. His skin was smooth as a child’s, as though he’d never had the need to shave. His lips were full and pink and pouty, again like a child’s. But Agent Rodney Coleman was not a child, and Nick did not underestimate him.

  Nick shrugged. “Picking up some money from some scumbags.”

  Agent Coleman pulled up a chair and leaned forward. “That much we know. That much we have on tape. Along with every word you said in that restaurant. What I want to know is this: How did you know about the money in the freezer?”

  Coleman’s eyes never seemed to blink. They were like round doll eyes. Nick wondered: If you laid him on his back, would they close?

  Nick shrugged. “I thought everyone knew about that.”

  Agent Alexander Kantor, a young man with an old man’s face, small eyes made tiny by thick horn-rimmed glasses, got into Nick’s face. He smelled of some strong cologne, and Nick rubbed his nose. He was about five seven or eight, thin. His clothing seemed too large for his body type. His hair was pulled back into a scrawny ponytail. He was the agent who had watched as the others tackled Nick in the van. He was the only one present who had clearly identified himself.

  “Only a very few select people had that information. Where did you get it from?”

  “Don’t I look like a very select person to you?”

  Kantor pulled back, crossed his arms, and shook his head. “You look like gutter scum to me, O’Hara.”

  Good-guy Coleman, the calm one, put his hand on Kantor’s arm. “Do you know how much money you walked away with, Detective O’Hara? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t get a chance to count it, did you? Sixty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Really? I thought it was
a helluva lot more than that.” He looked pointedly at Kantor.

  “How did you know how many bags were in the freezer?”

  Nick shrugged.

  Coleman positioned himself on the edge of the steel table. “See, here’s the thing, Nick. I may call you Nick? Here’s the thing. We’ve been set up on this money-laundering thing for quite a while. Our information is very privileged and you just blew it wide open. No one, not the P.D. or their renegade bum cops who regularly collect from Luis and Victor, know the extent—or the real nature—of the business that goes on there. Internal Affairs got a few anonymous calls about the cop payoffs; the shakedowns, interfering with drug trade. But they never made a case. Drug trade, per se, is not what these people are all about.”

  “Really? And what—per se—are these people all about?”

  Kantor picked up. “Who gave you the information on the money laundering? What else do you know about this setup? You been doing something undercover, what?”

  After a while, their voices became a humming inside his head. He remained silent. They gave him a plastic cup of lukewarm coffee, which he drank straight down and nearly threw up. He offered them nothing; no excuses, no pleas, no could-we-talk-about-this? No appeal to his better nature—if he had one—could penetrate his weary resignation.

  They watched him closely as Deputy Inspector Frank O’Hara entered the room. Nick stood up angrily.

  “What’s he doing here? This has nothing to do with him. You got me. You got me. C’mon, Frank, this has nothing to do with you.”

  Frank O’Hara seemed diminished; pulled into himself. His voice was hoarse, his color gray. He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Nick. How the hell did this happen?”

  Within hours, they knew everything there was to know about Nick O’Hara and his family. Sad about his kid, tough. And they knew how tough it was to maintain a marriage when you’re a cop with endless hours and far-reaching involvements.

  They knew about the gambling and his outstanding debt to some guys in Vegas. They didn’t seem to know about the fifty thou lien on his house. Or decided not to mention it for the time being.

  Agent Felix Rodriguiz, black penetrating eyes, kind face, reached out, squeezed his shoulder, leaned forward as though they were just two guys, in this together. The others were all busy elsewhere.

  “See, Nick, we’ve talked about all the pressure you’ve been under. Hey, your uncle is a good advocate. If this was a P.D. matter, something could be worked out. But you really blundered into something out of your league. We’ve been working a Dominican-Colombian-Nassau drug money-laundering deal for a long time.”

  Nick looked at the earnest face; the guy was just doing his job. “Yeah? Which one are you—or does Hispanic cover it all? I never could get it straight.”

  Rodriguiz was an even-tempered man. He continued talking as though Nick hadn’t said a word. “We even have a man inside. One of the kitchen workers. He was afraid he’d have to break cover when they came at you with the knife.”

  Curious, Nick asked, “Would he have?”

  The agent smiled. “It would have been his call, one way or the other. But see, Nick, what you’ve done is, you tipped them off. You knew there was a large amount of money, how many bags were delivered. Their whole setup is blown. You’re a cop—so the cops know, right? They are kaput and we’ve wasted six months of our time for nada. We risked the life of an agent for nada. We got to answer a lot of questions from people in Washington, D.C. You can understand our position. What have we got to offer? A narcotics dick from downtown who came uptown, just happened to hit the right place on the right night for what was the beginning of the largest stockpile of money being collected for shipment to the islands. The word is out; everyone is laying low.” He shook his head. “And all we got is you.”

  “I’m not much, huh?”

  “You’re a helluva lot less than much, my friend.”

  Coleman didn’t even have to exchange signals with Agent Rodriguiz, who left the room and was replaced by a couple of agents Nick hadn’t seen before, along with Agent Kantor.

  Nick stared at Coleman’s smooth face; not a line or a blemish—it might have been made of porcelain.

  Nick shrugged. “Hey, sometimes things just go wrong, right?”

  Coleman reached behind him for a clipboard being offered by one of his men. He studied it for a moment.

  “Well, we do have something else. Something that just might save my ass and the well-being of the rest of my squad. None of whom, by the way, would look forward to being exiled to the flat Midwest or cold regions of the Dakotas. These guys are all city boys—New York, Chicago, Philly.”

  He handed the clipboard to Nick, who rubbed his eyes, tried to catch the light. Kantor immediately put on a bright overhead light. Nick scanned the papers before him, then slammed the clipboard of the table. It made a loud ringing sound.

  “Nick. Your grandpa Nicholas Ventura is a big-time operator. Everyone knows about him. Very honorable citizen. Pays his taxes; gives to charities; keeps his property well groomed. No loud parties. Runs a lot of unionized companies; pays fair wages. He can afford to. Hell, everything he owns was established on blood money. He’s healthy, even in his old age—although who can picture Papa Ventura as an old man?” Coleman looked around at his agents. “You should see this guy. Strong, energetic. I hear he jogs two miles a day, rides his bike a coupla miles—hope I can do that when I’m his age. God bless him, no couch potato he.”

  Nick tried to blank out, but he heard every word the agent in charge said to him.

  “Your grandfather’s new alliance is with the China end of the worldwide drug trade, Nick. China White: purest, most potent, most valuable heroin beginning to flood our country. No way the China end can get infiltrated. It’s been tried, trust me. Five or six Chinese undercovers wound up floating, without eyeballs or ears or testicles. And three of the top experts, men with sterling records, fifteen, twenty years unblemished, honored service, selfless men who never were tempted by all the offers they received all their lives—they all of them became instant millionaires through the good graces of the Chinese Triads. They’re now retired in Taiwan or Hawaii; one guy is president of an import-export company in San Francisco, a semiretired man not worrying about his lousy retirement pay. The Chinese are smart enough not to murder top police officials. They don’t want all the attention that would bring to them. They buy them instead; so the public anger goes toward the corrupted man instead of the corrupters.” He raised his light eyebrows, an expression of admiration. “They are cool customers, Nick. That leaves us without a China infiltration. So, we have to go stateside—and you’re our only option.”

  “That leaves you with no option.”

  “Oh, Nick. C’mon into my office. Want to show you our videotape. You look pretty good, and your voice is nice and clear.” He leaned down and whispered, “We could send your ass away for twenty years. Of course, you wouldn’t last a week inside. Word would get around fast, Nick. Narcotics dick. And if that didn’t do the trick, we spread a rumor: that you ratted out your own grandfather.”

  Nick refused to make a statement of any kind. He asked for an attorney from the PBA. Instead, they sent in Frank O’Hara. He sat heavily in the small chair. His face was pained; he was suffering.

  “I’m not gonna ask you why. You can’t blame them for asking where you got the information. They’ve worked on this case a long time—now they’re in big trouble.”

  “Street source. A junkie owed me big time. He’s long gone. Don’t ask me how an informant knows anything. Sometimes they just do. Sometimes they’re wrong. This guy was right. What can I tell you?”

  “Nick, if this was Internal Affairs, I could intervene. Let you resign; take what’s available in your pension. You could start a new life. We all know how it’s been for you, but these guys—they don’t give a shit about you. If you take a deal with them, you turn in your gun and shield, and it all gets explained away: personal problems. You need a new
perspective. Nick, you’d never be able to take a fall. You know it as well as I do. Their case is loused up; their careers are loused up—unless they can give their bosses something bigger: the big thing, Nick, the China White trade. You’re just about their only hope for getting an inside line on the China connection. Even their longtime informants are deaf and dumb about this stuff.”

  Nick stood up and flexed his arms. “Can you see me working against my grandfather? Don’t turn away, Frank.”

  Frank rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling; he stared at a small hole adjacent to the ceiling fixture. The tape recorder used previously had been taken away. Nick had spotted the bug at once.

  Frank shrugged. “Look, kid, how about you give it some thought? A coupla hours, you go home, shower, get a few hours’ sleep. Nicky, you’ve been goin’ like a nut case. Shit, I shoulda looked at you more carefully … I didn’t realize. …”

  Nick slammed his fist against the metal wall. “Don’t start on that guilt trip. I did what I did. You have nothing to do with it. Frank, I’m all grown up. Whatever happens happens.” He rubbed his eyes, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “There is one thing, though, Frank. Christ, I hate to tell you this. About the house—”

  Frank was genuinely shocked by the loan Nick had taken out. To do that to Kathy. After going through their bank account. To wipe her out like that.

  “I can’t cover that, Nick. Damn it, the gambling, I sort of understand how that gets a hold on you. But to do that to Kathy …” He walked out, shaking his head.

  Within fifteen minutes, Frank was back. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. “They can take care of it for you. The fifty grand. From funds. Get the house back so you can give it to Kathy. Let her sell it. Hell, they’ll take it from the money you took—confiscated from the Dominicans. Kid, I don’t see any other way.”