Luther Campbell was brisk and funny, seemed competent and grateful for the tip-off, but he had company with him. And this is where Jack Vermillion for the first time meets Valeriana Greco herself, the assistant U.S. attorney for that sector.
She was a machine-tooled little number in her mid-thirties, with great legs and a sharp face and shiny black hair cut to her jawline and held back on the left with a sterling silver gecko with two emerald eyes. Jack noticed that her eyes were the same shade of green as the gecko’s eyes. She wore the usual federal power suit, a navy blue pinstripe number with a short skirt, and came equipped with a Dell Inspiron laptop and a chrome-plated cell phone the size of a hamster’s dick. She was all business and drive and managerial chutzpah and was extremely successful in pissing Jack off right from the get-go.
She sat them both down in her office full of mahogany furniture and wall-to-wall plaques citing her legal accomplishments and her influential Washington friends, and waited while Jack tried twice to get his burgundy leather briefcase to stand upright on a rug deep enough to conceal a leg-hold trap. Finally he let it fall over a third time and lie there. She looked down at it with an expression of pained interest.
“Nice bag, Mr. Vermillion.”
Jack looked down at the bag. It was lying on its left side, showing a sterling silver plate in a frame stitched under the handle.
JACK VERMILLION
HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY
FROM HIS FRIENDS AT LA GIOCONDA
JUNE 29, 1997
Jack raised his shoulders, let them fall in a very Italian gesture. “Thanks. Nice office.”
“I know La Gioconda,” she said.
“Do you?”
“It’s in Astoria, isn’t it? In Queens? On the boulevard?”
It was easy to see where this was going.
Jack decided to get there first.
“I grew up in Astoria. I have a lot of friends there. Including Frank Torinetti. If that’s a problem for you, we can stop right here.”
She had a small mouth, full lips like a cherub on a cathedral wall. In spite of this, her smile managed to be reptilian.
“Not at all. I was just making an observation.”
Flannery Coleman broke in with a flat statement.
“What specifically is your role here, Ms. Greco?”
She obliged him with a set speech. It took eleven minutes by the Seth Thomas on the sideboard, next to her graduation picture from the Kennedy School of Government. This was her case, she made that clear. Ms. Greco was very interested in Jack’s story. She of course applauded his loyalty to the cause of justice. Ms. Greco could of course make no promises regarding the incarceration of Daniello Vermillion, since Mr. Vermillion was being held by the state of California, but certainly there were ameliorating steps that could be taken as a cooperative effort between state and federal agencies, and depending upon the outcomes …
There was much more of that kind of crap, but Jack had extracted the clear impression, later supported by his lawyer, that cooperation with ATF in the matter of Earl Pike would very likely result in parallel, but not officially reciprocal, review of the terms of Danny’s imprisonment. This would include an immediate—and this was the important part as far as Jack was concerned—transfer to a medium-security detox facility in Fresno.
“That’s, like, right now, you follow?” said Jack, interrupting her aria. “Because if he goes back into gen pop where he is, he’s as good as dead and our deal is off. It ends here. Right here. That’s not negotiable.”
“I understand. I agree. Immediate. We’ll make the call today. Anything else?”
Jack had some ideas. Perhaps a real attempt to deal with Streak’s addictions and his … He paused to think.
“Dysfunctional lifestyle?” was how Ms. Greco phrased it, her lips shaping around the phrase like a nun blowing dust off a dildo.
However, Ms. Greco had some questions.
Luther, who had watched this extended warning label from under his white and bushy eyebrows while he toyed with a Ka-Bar letter opener and glanced occasionally at Jack, had then settled his gaze on Jack’s face. Jack had the feeling there was a warning in the look. What questions? Ms. Greco seemed to coil up.
Motivations, really. She had run an NCIC check on Mr. Pike and had discovered nothing at all against him. According to reliable sources, his firm, Crisis Control Systems, had a long and respectable history of corporate consultations. His associates were, as far as her people had been able to determine, retired naval and army personnel with unblemished records. He was a registered firearms collector and was even on the board of directors of the William Cody Museum in Cody, Wyoming.
She had also contacted the Department of the Army and they had given her a glowing report on the military record of the Pike family, which apparently went back to the War for Independence and the liberation of Texas, all the way up to the career of Colonel Earl Pike himself, which began with three tours of combat duty as a G2 officer in the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam and was followed by another twenty-four years of active service in Central America, the Middle East, Colombia, Peru, and lately in Central Africa.
So here we find a successful businessman, an ex-military professional, with many valuable and influential contacts, and yet, amazingly, he is apparently willing to risk all of this to execute a patently illegal shipment of apparently problematic weaponry down the Hudson and from there on to Merida, in Mexico, all of which was entirely contrary to highly publicized ATF shipping restrictions. And he contracts the shipment to a complete stranger, although, she had to admit, a man who—she hoped Jack would forgive her—a man who did have connections in some fairly colorful parts of the city. It was therefore odd, she said, and did not conform to her eleven years of experience in these matters. And there was the risk to Black Water Transit Systems. Here she paused and her lids closed and then opened again, as if she had just received a cosmic transmission or was having some intestinal problems—the fact that Jack had initiated an investigation against Pike, the fact of his status as an informant, would that not damage his relationships with legitimate businesspeople in Albany? She felt it must. And therefore what puzzled her, what troubled her in all of this, was the uniqueness of the situation. It had not been her experience that ordinary citizens, powerful businessmen such as Jack, were given to paroxysms of civic altruism, especially in a matter where they might suffer serious damage to their corporate interests. So, she said, all sweet reason, she was left with questions.
Jack understood her meaning completely. He leaned forward and spoke forcefully, right into her personal space.
“Before I get into why, let me say that I expect to remain completely anonymous in this matter, or I go no farther with you. Can you guarantee that for me? In writing?”
Ms. Greco sent a sidelong glance over at Luther Campbell, who shrugged back at her.
“Possibly. There are disclosure problems, of course, but the nature of the source can be sealed in the indictment and known only to the judge. Our interception could be at the Red Hook Terminus, or even out at sea. Perhaps an ocean interception would be the best way to go. We’ll have to work out the details … if we agree to this operation. But it’s natural that there will be reactions and … consequences. So my question remains, Why do this at all?”
“Two reasons. One, it might have been a sting. Pike might have been one of your informants already. He was wearing a suit jacket on a hot day. He made his approach outside, by a parking lot, where there was an opportunity for surveillance, for taping.”
“You assert that you intended to turn him down. If it were a sting, then, well, you were safe from it. You had behaved legally.”
“But if I failed to report the attempt? If it had been a federal sting? Illegal guns? My shipping company operates under a federal license. Under the terms of that license, a failure to report attempts to bribe or otherwise evade state and federal regulations is grounds for a summary cancellation of my permit. That’s the end of my business ri
ght there. That’s reason one.”
She nodded, waited, her face showing nothing.
“Two, you bastards wanted something to trade for my son. This is what I have. All I have.”
“As pure as that? A father’s love, then, is it?”
Jack’s look was all he needed to make his point about that.
“No need to become defensive, Mr. Vermillion. We’re aware that Black Water Transit has been the subject of … interest … by various federal and state investigative branches. As I said earlier, you have social connections with elements of the Italian community. You know La Gioconda is a Mafia-associated location. You make no secret of that connection. You have it on your very wonderful Hermès briefcase here. We know that Frankie Bulls is—”
“His name is Torinetti. Francis Torinetti.”
“He’s a friend of yours. You don’t call him Frankie Bulls?”
“He doesn’t call you Val the Greek.”
“Fine. I stand corrected. Mr. Francis Torinetti is an old school friend, but he has nothing whatsoever to do with Black Water Transit, and all you’re trying to do here is help out your troubled son. As I said in the beginning, a father’s pure and simple love?”
Jack had nothing to say.
One more brief trance for Ms. Greco. Luther put the Ka-Bar down hard. She opened her eyes at the sound, smiled.
“How admirable, Mr. Vermillion,” she drawled. “And how rare.” She sent Luther a wrap-this-up look and picked up her cell phone without another word to either Jack or Flannery Coleman.
Campbell got out of his chair and hustled them into the hall, offered to get them coffee.
“What’s happening now?” asked Flannery.
“We’ll have to discuss it. Can you give us ten minutes?”
“Five,” said Flannery.
“Okay. Five. Don’t let her get to you, Mr. Vermillion. She has to be a bit of a hard-nose in this line of work.”
“She’s a complete ball-breaker, Officer Campbell.”
“Agent Campbell. Five minutes? For the sake of your kid?”
It turned out to be fifty. Jack was already at the elevator, with Flannery Coleman on his heels, when Campbell caught up with him.
“Jack. I’m sorry. Ms. Greco wanted to discuss this with her superiors. There are several levels of enforcement involved.”
“Run another criminal intelligence check on Jack, you mean,” said Flannery. Campbell smiled.
“Not at all. Main thing, they all said yes. We’re in. It’s a go.”
“Disclosure?” asks Flannery. Campbell nods.
“Jack’s name never comes up. If Jack can make sure the container goes on one of his boats—”
“Ships. I have two. The Agawa Canyon and the Ticonderoga. The Agawa Canyon is the one I have in mind.”
“Okay, great. The Agawa Canyon ties up in Red Hook. Maybe the best thing is to take the shipment down there, we make it look like a random cargo check. Personally, I’m not happy about an interception in the open ocean. We’d have to involve the Coast Guard and the FBI, and who needs those mutts. The attempt to ship is enough for me. If it’s what we think it is, if even some of the weapons are banned or restricted, Earl Pike’s on the dock with a hook in his gills before sunrise.”
“And what do you think it may be?” asked Flannery.
Luther looked acutely uncomfortable and gave his answer some thought for nearly thirty seconds. Jack felt his heartbeat climbing. What was he getting himself into?
“We have … some reason to believe that Crisis Control Systems … may … be involved in the illegal shipment of weapons.”
Flannery’s reaction was a small controlled explosion.
“I thought you said there was nothing against his firm!”
“Nothing has been proven.”
“So it’s all supposition, then?”
Campbell pulled out his blankest stare.
“All we can say is that CCS has connections with certain political elements in Washington that tend to favor unilateral military aid to a number of right-wing governments in Central America and perhaps even in Mexico. Their client list is not … accessible … to our agencies, but according to a conversation we had with the State Department this morning, CCS is … a matter of interest to the current administration.”
“Which administration is that? And what part of which administration? Listen, my friend, don’t hand my client that sort of vague national-interest bullshit. If there’s more to this than you’re telling us now, if there are outcomes that damage Jack’s operation, I’ll make a project out of you and that Greco harpy and every federal agent in this whole damned building!”
Campbell had taken the eruption from Jack’s lawyer with widening eyes. His skin was flushed and dark.
“Look, Mr. Coleman, this is the ATF. We want to get prohibited weapons off the street. Even if this Mexican shipment Jack is describing really is a private collection, if even one of the pieces is banned and he’s trying to dodge that, that makes him a criminal asshole, and my job is to nail his hand to a door for even thinking about it.”
Flannery’s vestigial conscience bleated weakly from some distant corner of the lawyer’s soul and moved him to ask about Pike’s military service to his country. It got him a blunt answer from Campbell.
“With respect, fuck that. That was yesterday.”
Flannery looked at Jack.
“This Pike character, Jack …”
“Yeah?”
“You think he’ll buy the random check?”
“Forget about that,” said Campbell. “What Pike buys or doesn’t buy means sweet dick here. A weapons beef? The destination some military officer in a foreign nation? Hah! Personally, all that crap about Pike’s business, his influential friends, cuts no ice with me. Don’t try to move weapons around on my turf without a genuflection in the center aisle. I’m gonna bust his ass with a yard-wide grin. That’s my job. And don’t worry about what this mutt thinks. Next time we hear from him, Chelsea Clinton will be mayor of New York. Have some faith, hah?”
“In what?” said Flannery, but Campbell was already walking.
“Forget about it,” said Jack, watching him go.
“I wish you would,” said Flannery, but it was way too late for that, and anyway Jack Vermillion had stopped listening to his lawyer hours ago. He wasn’t even thinking how all of this might look to Frank Torinetti, who seemed to be involved in some way. Frank was a friend. He’d understand. He had a son of his own. Right now, all Jack could hear was Danny on the prison phone from Lompoc, the fear in his voice so loud you could hear it humming in the background like an overloaded circuit.
Please, Dad. Please help me.
JOINT TASK FORCE HQ
BROOKLYN
1300 HOURS
Casey Spandau was alone in the Jay Rats office that same day, holding down the duty desk at the HQ in a second-floor office suite in an out-of-the-way section of the Albee Square Mall, off Fulton Street. The rest of the unit—Detective Jimmy Rule, Sergeant Dexter Zarnas, and a white shield named Carlo Suarez—were all over at the academy on Twenty-first Street doing a surveillance seminar with the training cadre. Casey was happy to see the back of Jimmy Rule, known to the Jay Rats as Jimmy Rock. She’d spent an entire night shift in his 511 unit, and the blue-eyed rocky-faced Irish son of a bitch hadn’t spoken one word to her.
They’d blown the entire six-hour shift covering a meaningless stakeout location, sitting outside a dry-cleaning shop in Maspeth, doing a payback favor for a drug squad unit. Jimmy Rock had passed the time on his cell phone or listening to a swing station from New Jersey. He never slept and he didn’t move much. He was dressed in a lovely navy-blue silk suit and matching leather loafers, and his hands were smooth and white. In the darkness of the car, when he moved his hands to turn the dial or pick up his cell phone, they looked like luminous white birds. His breath smelled of mints and his cologne was something spicy with a sandalwood undertone. He was extremely handsome, and a total pr
ick.
Every time Casey tried to start a conversation—maybe explain why she had been transferred out of the Two Five—get the guy to see her point of view perhaps—or just to stay awake—he held up his hand, the right one, turned it so the gold detective’s ring on his finger glittered in the light from a street lamp, and then put his index finger on his upper lip. She got the message.
She was new, she was black, she was here under false pretenses, ducking an undisclosed career-crippling beef that ought to have seen her on a fixer in Coney for generations yet unborn. She was therefore invisible to him, a nonperson. It was a demanding position to take, but Jimmy Rock hadn’t softened up a degree all night. Casey had never before understood the power of absolute silence. Jimmy Rock used it like a skinning tool. When the replacement unit arrived, at the first skim-milk lightening of a fogged-up dawn in Maspeth, Jimmy Rock had tossed her the keys to the 511 unit and walked away to a subway station without a backward look. Watching him leave, Casey had found tears coming.
After a while, she pulled herself together and drove the unit back to the Jay Rats HQ, where she took the elevator up to the second floor. According to the brass sign on the wood-veneer-over-steel-plate front door of the Jay Rats base, the business operated inside Suite 2200 was known to the world as
BOSTON BAR INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
NEW YORK / LONDON / HONG KONG
Casey figured the investment firm had put a lot of somebody’s money into the place, security video cameras in the approaches and inside each of the nine separate offices in the suite, motion detectors everywhere, weight-sensitive floor pads as well, all of this connected to silent alarms running to a nearby Brinks station. Verizon had run secure data lines into the suite through shielded lead-armored piping, and the doors were reinforced with steel plates and frames.
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