Russell paused to let the ticket seller walk in front of him. The ticket seller roused a drunk, asleep on the bench. He began to usher the drunk toward the easterly doors. After Russell had his back to them, the drunk required less assistance.
Russell went to the baggage lockers on the westerly side of the terminal.
The man in the security force uniform watched from the top of the stairs. He spoke again. “Unit seven to all units. West side, west side.”
Russell inserted the key to locker 352 and turned it.
The men from the light green Ford entered the terminal through the easterly doors.
Russell opened the locker and took out a box wrapped in brown paper. He opened the bag and put the box in. Leaving the locker door ajar, he turned toward the front of the terminal. He carried the bag in his left hand.
The driver of the cab entered through the westerly door. The two men in the baggage room went out into the passenger area of the terminal. The men from the Polara came in through the front doors and the man in the security force uniform turned slowly away from the front doors as Russell approached them.
The men from the light green Ford walked up behind Russell, one on each side. When they were half a pace behind him, they took him firmly by the elbows. Russell’s body sagged.
The man on Russell’s right said: “Bureau Narcotics. You’re under arrest.” He had a chrome-plated forty-five automatic in his right hand. He stuck the barrel close to Russell’s face.
The man on Russell’s left had handcuffs in his left hand. He stepped backward without letting go of Russell’s arm and swung it behind Russell. He locked one cuff on Russell’s left wrist and took the bag from him. He pulled Russell’s right arm back and locked the wrist into the cuff. He patted Russell down. He shook his head.
The man with the automatic said: “You’re pretty fuckin’ obvious, my friend. Matter of fact, you’re so fuckin’ obvious I was afraid you’d forget where you left the stuff, or lose the key or something. You’ve got a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you at a trial in a fuckin’ court of law. You got a right to an attorney, and if you can’t afford an attorney, us long-suffering good and noble taxpayers’ll go out and treat you to the best fuckin’ shyster we can find. I think you also got a right to have your head tested, and in your case, I think you oughta, see if there’s anything in it at all.”
“I wanna make my phone call,” Russell said. The agents urged him toward the door.
“They got a real nice phone in the Marshal’s office, my friend,” the agent said. “It’s a great little instrument. You can call any place in the country on it. That’s if you know how to dial. If you don’t know how to dial, we’ll teach you how to do it. If you call long distance, we’ll put it on your bill.”
“Thanks,” Russell said.
“Buddy,” the agent said, “don’t thank me. I think you’re gonna be surprised when you get that bill. You’re goin’ in for all day on this one, my friend. Unless of course your friend down there in New York figured out how stupid you really are, and sold you quinine or something. All’s well that ends well, right, my friend?”
“Shut up,” Russell said.
The agents escorted Russell out of the terminal, into the darkness.
“That’s not one of your rights, my friend,” the agent said. “That’s one of my rights. But I got a little deal for you, all right, my friend? Any time you wanna talk, just tell me, and I’ll shut up. Just say the word and you have got the fuckin’ floor.”
“Fuck you,” Russell said.
The Polara made a U-turn on St. James and pulled up in front of the terminal.
The agent dug the barrel of the automatic into Russell’s rib cage. “That, my friend,” he said in a soft voice, “is not the kind of talk I meant. People’ve been known to fall down a lot getting in and out of cars and so forth when they talk like that. Got it?” Russell said nothing. “And another thing, my friend,” the agent said. “Not only are you stupid but you stink. I think you’re gonna get twenty years and a bath. I dunno which you need more.”
“THE STUPID SHIT,” Frankie said. He sat in Amato’s office. “You know who he picks to call, of course. Me. Only he don’t remember I moved, so he calls Sandy, and he got her up and she’s all pissed and she calls me and give me a whole ration of shit and then I got to call him and I hadda girl with me. And of course I got to give my name to them, they won’t let anybody else talk to him.”
“That’s good,” Amato said.
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “Oh, I’m gonna really enjoy this, I can tell. Wants me to come down and see him. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘sure, Russell, and I won’t have a hundred ballbusters following me around for the rest of my life if I do that, either. No thanks. I didn’t have nothing to do with it and I told you what was gonna happen and you wouldn’t listen to me.’
“ ‘Did you tell them?’ he says to me,” Frankie said. “ ‘Are you the fuckin’ bastard that told them?’
“ ‘Russell,’ I said,” Frankie said, “ ‘nobody hadda tell them. You told them yourself. What am I gonna tell cops anything for? Tell me that, huh? You wanna blame somebody, blame yourself.’ That calmed him down some. Well, will I make bail for him? ‘Depends,’ I said. See, he hasn’t got no money left. Spent it on his problem, which I don’t think they’re probably gonna let him go out and sell, now. ‘What’s the bail?’ Just what you’d expect, his record and a pound of that stuff. One hundred thousand dollars.”
“Ten K from you,” Amato said.
“Well,” Frankie said, “there’s guys that’ll write one for five per cent if you wanna handle some things for them now and then, but onna guy like him I doubt you could get it even from one of them. But either way, it’s too much, and besides, I tell him, ‘Keep in mind, I just got out of the can myself. Where’d I get all that bread?’ No, I said I’d call somebody for him, but that’s all, he can make his own deal. ‘You ask me,’ I said, ‘I don’t even think that’s gonna do it for you, though. You raise the hundred, they’ll go to double surety or two hundred or something. Those guys aren’t gonna let you out. Forget it.’
“So that’s what he tells me,” Frankie said, “and then he says: ‘Frankie, if I don’t get out of here, I’m gonna tell them you were in it with me.’ ”
“Nice guy,” Amato said.
“Ah,” Frankie said, “he was all pissed off. I don’t blame him. And what the fuck’s he gonna tell them? I said: ‘Russell, get off the pot, all right? You bring me into this, I’ll tell them everything you told me about Goat-ass stealing that other stuff, and all the dogs and the insurance thing you had with Kenny onna car and everything. So don’t hand me that shit.’ He’ll be all right. It’s just, he’s looking at a lot of time. You can’t blame him. I asked a guy, he said his guess is, probably eight, ten, something like that. So naturally that means, they probably told him guys’ve been getting fifteen or so, maybe more.
“Them guys,” Frankie said, “I mean, they are bad. This kid I talked to, he said they come at you from just about every place at once. ‘They tell you,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to say nothing to them. But that sure don’t stop them from saying something to you. They toss you in New York,’ he said, ‘it’s gonna take them, always, three or four hours, before you can see a judge, and all the time they’re talking to you. I think them guys’ve got cassettes in them. “You’re a lost dude this time. You’re gonna go in and you’re never gonna come out again. You’re crazy, that’s all. We know you’re not in it alone. You better talk about it.” ’ So, he was probably pissing his pants when he called me. So I told him: ‘Russell, I tell you what: I’ll get you a lawyer. That’s all I can do for you.’ ”
“The fuck’s a lawyer gonna do for him?” Amato said.
“He’s gonna do it for me,” Frankie said. “He’s gonna get Russell off my back. He wanted Mike Zinna.”
“I doubt if you can get him Mike,” Amato said. “I doubt if Mike’ll touch him.�
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“Oh, for Christ sake,” Frankie said. “Of course I can’t get him Mike. I can’t afford Mike, I couldn’t get Mike for myself. And Mike, Mike couldn’t do nothing for him. What’s he gonna do, the guy’s alone and he’s got it in his hands? Make it disappear? What Russell really needs is a magician. No, I got him Toby.”
“I dunno Toby,” Amato said.
“That’s because you never had nothing to do with junk,” Frankie said. “When they grab you with the junk, you call Toby and you pay him no more’n a grand and he gets you as good a deal as anybody could. The cops all know him. He’s cheap and all the good anybody can do for Russell, Toby’ll do it, and without going all ape-shit and telling the guy to give them the names of everybody he ever saw.
“Added to which,” Frankie said, “there’s certain things Toby won’t do, and that’s good for me. Because Russell’s gonna want something else, I figure.”
“Somebody hit the guy he thinks put him in,” Amato said.
“Right,” Frankie said. “So, all right, I’m a bastard, but there’s no way inna world he’s gonna be able, get Toby to tell me that, and I’m not personally gonna go down and see him.”
“Where is he?” Amato said.
“Charles Street,” Frankie said.
“You’ll get the message, then,” Amato said.
“I don’t object to hearing it,” Frankie said. “You hear it, you can always say, well, what the fuck, I wouldn’t go around and do something like that on what I heard. No, if the guy asked me, I’d have to tell him something, I guess, and I don’t wanna do that, you know? I like Russell. He was all right to me, and I told him, not to do this. But shit, Goat-ass just did what he wanted, he went out and stole four pounds of procaine or something like that, and I suppose some fuckin’ cop was bright enough, starts wondering who wants pounds of that stuff and that was it for Russell. Goat-ass didn’t do anything. And besides, who the fuck am I? I didn’t, I don’t know anybody.”
“I see where Trattman knows a couple guys or so, though,” Amato said.
“That poor bastard,” Frankie said.
“Well,” Amato said, “I mean, it wasn’t like, you didn’t expect it or something.”
“Sure,” Frankie said. “But, you know, when it didn’t happen, and Russell was telling me all that stuff there, then I was scared shitless, it wasn’t gonna happen. I thought it was gonna happen to me. That don’t mean, well, yeah, I’m glad it happened to him. But, I still wish it didn’t even happen to him, you know? Didn’t have to. Like Russell. I knew this was gonna happen to Russell. I told him. But the fuck, I know the guy. And I can’t do nothing to help him. I don’t know anybody.”
“He took his chances,” Amato said.
“Sure,” Frankie said, “and now he’s gonna take his time. And you’re taking your chances and I’m taking my chances and we’re gonna do this thing, sooner or later, and probably they’re not gonna get us this time, either. But I was thinking about it, right? Suppose, me and Dean go in the place, all of a sudden we got all kinds of cops around. Who do I call? Who do I call, that’s not gonna give me the same kind of shit I give Russell? You know why Russell called me? Because, who else’s he got to call? And it’s the same thing. If we get grabbed in there, Dean calls Sandy. And what do I do? Have him tell her, get me somebody too? I can’t call you, for Christ sake. They’d be waiting for that. I, we haven’t got no friends, either. You look at it, you and me and Russell’re in exactly the same position, except he’s in it now and we’re not in it yet.”
“Well, Jesus,” Amato said, “I mean, this was your idea and everything. It isn’t like, I came around and saw you on this one. Shit, you’re afraid of it, forget it. Won’t piss me off any. I just went down there and I did, I did what you wanted. I haven’t got no investment in this. I made almost four thousand yesterday alone. I can do without it.”
“Won for a change,” Frankie said.
“Yeah,” Amato said, “I kind of liked it too. Broke even about, the first part of the week. I got fifteen hundred or so Thursday after and then last night, another twenty-five onna Knicks. Knicks’re gonna take it, this time.”
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “John, you told me it was gonna snow in the winter, I’d go out and bet against it, you know that?”
“Nice when you win, though,” Amato said. “I figure, after what I been through, I’m gonna be winning pretty good when I start.”
“I figure,” Frankie said, “I’m never gonna start. I’m gonna stick to things I can figure out.”
“Well,” Amato said, “what is it, then?”
“How does it look?” Frankie said.
“It looks good to me,” Amato said. “It’s nice and dark, they backed the block up to where they put the fill and there’s a lot of brush and stuff there and signs on the roof that’ll cover you when you’re up on the roof. It’s brick in front, which don’t matter, and it’s cinderblock in back. The roof’s flat. Looks like tar and pebbles, some kind of cheap shit. I’d go in through the roof. There’s a grocery store on one side and a place that sells glasses on the other side and I suppose you could go in through there. But I wouldn’t. I’d go the roof. The guys in there in the daytimes’re those dopes from Northeast Protective that couldn’t see a hockey game in Boston Garden. The cops, I didn’t do the cops yet. Northeast always works on two, three hour schedules because they don’t hire enough guys. But if you don’t want to do it, it’s okay.”
“John,” Frankie said, “it’s not this job. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not this one and it’s not gonna be the next one, either, that’s giving me the yikes. It’s just, ah, shit, I dunno what it is. I don’t like having guys after me, you know? I don’t care who they’re working for, I don’t like having guys after me.”
THE BLACK GIRL, lanky, arched her spine and bent her arms behind her to fasten her bra.
“The first one?” Mitch said. “She wasn’t bad. She wasn’t good but she wasn’t bad, either. She was all right. Seemed like she was in an awful hurry, though.”
“Well, after all,” Cogan said, “it was probably pretty short notice for her and all.”
The black girl adjusted her breasts in the bra cups. Then she walked up behind Cogan’s chair on the apricot rug and used the heel of her left hand to touch his right shoulder. “My dress, honey,” she said, “you’re sittin’ on my dress.” Cogan moved forward without turning his head. The black girl pulled the white dress out from under him. She put it on over her head, her feet splayed on the rug.
“Shit,” Mitch said, “its not that. It’s the same thing as it is with everything else. Nobody does anything right any more.”
Cogan laughed.
“I mean it,” Mitch said. He picked up the glass on the end table next to his chair. “This’s empty,” he said, looking at it. “Want one?”
“Too early for me,” Cogan said.
“Early?” Mitch said. He stood up in his tee shirt and shorts. “After noon.”
“Still too early,” Cogan said. “You go ahead if you want, though.”
“I’m gonna,” Mitch said. He went into the bathroom.
The black girl arched her back again to zip the dress. “Honey,” she said, walking around in front of Cogan and stooping, back-to, “could you zip me up?”
“No,” Cogan said.
Mitch ran water in the bathroom. “Screwing’s no different’n anything else,” he said.
“You bastard,” she said, straightening up. She turned and looked at Cogan. “I thought you were kidding.”
“I never kid,” Cogan said. He inclined his head toward the bathroom. “Get your trick to do it.”
Mitch came out of the bathroom, the glass full of dark Scotch and water. “Nobody gives a good shit any more,” he said. “You ask somebody to do something and you’re willing to pay for it, and they say they’ll do it and then they about half do it.”
The girl backed up to Mitch. “Zip my dress, honey,” she said. “Your nice frien
d there wouldn’t do it.”
Mitch zipped the dress. “They still want all the money, though, bet your ass on that. No half money, no sir. All the money.” He went back to the chair, sipping from the glass. “Half the job. Pisses me off.”
The black girl sat down on the bed and put on her red shoes.
“For a guy that’s been having himself a regular party for three days or so,” Cogan said, “you sure bitch and moan a lot.”
“I’ve been paying for it,” Mitch said. “I been paying for it myself. I can bitch about it if I want. You know this broad, this Polly?”
The black girl stood up and straightened her dress. She looked at Mitch. “Honey?”
“Onna bureau,” Mitch said. He drank. “Wallet’s onna bureau.”
The black girl walked across the room, rotating her hips.
“Everybody knows Polly,” Cogan said.
“That’s what the broad you sent up said,” Mitch said.
The black girl picked up the wallet.
“There’s a hundred and seventy-three bucks in that,” Mitch said. “When I get up I wanna find a hundred and forty-eight, got that?”
“Oh-kay,” the girl said. She removed currency, counted it and put some back in the wallet. She put the wallet down. She picked up the shiny red shoulder bag from the bureau, opened it and put the money in. “No tip, Honey?” she said.
“No tip,” Mitch said.
“Because you know, Honey,” she said, “I got to give all this to my man. Girl needs something for herself now and then.”
“No tip,” Mitch said.
“You’re the original sport,” Cogan said.
“Fuck her,” Mitch said. He drank again. “This’s afternoon. She’s, this one’s gravy, right, Honey?”
“It’s better’n filing,” the girl said.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Mitch said. “I never did no filing.”
The girl walked toward the door. “Well,” she said, “it’s not much better’n filing, some times. But it’s, it’s mostly better. Some times, you know, you get an old guy, and then it’s just faster.” She opened the door.
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