by J. B. Hadley
He pulled off Canfield Road to the meeting place and looked at his watch by the street light. Ten minutes early. You could always depend on a working stiff being ten minutes early, no matter where you asked him to be. There ready for the whistle to blow. His father had been the same way. A girl had once told him he had a factory mentality or something of that kind. That wasn’t because he always got places early that time, but because lying in bed in the morning made him nervous and restless. She had said guilty. Maybe she was right. Making love in the morning was OK with him. It was just lying in bed and doing nothing that got to him. There had not been a day in his mother’s life, weekdays or Sundays, when she had not already washed the breakfast things and mopped the kitchen floor by the time the eight o’clock news came on the radio. His father and older brothers would be starting their day’s work in the steel mill. He had to leave for high school in ten minutes—to get there fifteen minutes early, of course. He dropped out soon after. He was one of the ones who had not been surprised or upset by the rigors and regimented way of life in boot camp …
Joe’s mind zeroed in on the car that appeared from the other end of the street, slowed, and parked opposite him. Indiana plates. A battleship-gray Trans Am with a red eagle stenciled on the hood. A tall dude with a seersucker suit and a preppy look got out. He carried an airline bag and gestured to the trunk of Nolan’s car as he approached.
This was the third time in three months that Joe Nolan had met with this guy, who called himself Charles. Not Charlie or Chuck. Strictly Charles. He wasn’t a fag. More an Ivy League sort with a high IQ and an arrogant manner, but not dumb enough to pull shit with Nolan—Joe could see that this Charles was real aware and careful about that sort of thing. He’d had a different car each time, two different Porsches before the Trans Am, all with Indiana plates.
Charles put the airline bag in the trunk of Nolan’s Chevy, and they drove back east along Canfield Road into Youngstown.
“I got three sales,” Charles said. “Around the State University.”
Nolan grunted.
He followed 62 across the Mahoning River. Near the university, Charles pointed out the way. Joe knew Charles had been around earlier in the morning or afternoon, making contacts and sales arrangements. Charles liked to be in and out of town in a single day, before he got noticeable to anyone as a stranger.
“How was it in Miami?” Joe asked.
“Raining.”
“I may go down with you next time if you let me know.”
“Sure, Joe.” Charles glanced at him with interest. “You want to get more involved?”
“You pay me a thousand bucks for one evening’s work. I got no complaint about that. But it’s only once a month. Maybe I could drive for you in some other local cities—like Cleveland, Akron—or even Columbus. Wherever.”
Charles looked at him sharply. “Who says I go to those places? Anyhow, when I sell in a place, I use a local man as a driver and bodyguard. You’re my man in Youngstown.”
“So what could I do?”
“Do the run from here in the Middle West down to Florida and back. It’s a helluva drive to do very often. You take care of that end. I take care of this end of the business.”
Joe thought about this. “What would be in it for me?”
“Twenty-five hundred a kilo.”
“If I bring five kilos from Miami to Youngstown, I make $12,500?”
“Right,” Charles said. “Why not? I got to trust you with almost a quarter-million dollars to buy five keys. You got to be sharp enough not to get ripped off for the bread at that end. You won’t have trouble with our suppliers—we’re chicken-feed to them, and they’re not going to mess up their reputations for us. It’s just that a lot of guys can’t stay cool with a quarter-million in a brown paper bag. They don’t have the nerve for it. You do.”
Joe pulled the Chevy over where Charles indicated. “You’d trust me?” he asked.
“Me? Sure. But it wouldn’t be just me. It’d be me and a lot of mean dudes with networks all over the world. If you tried to take off with the money, they’d probably flush you by cutting up your family here. One by one. These people aren’t macho mob guys. They come after the women and kids, too.”
Joe Nolan was silent.
He knocked out the lights and switched off the engine. They sat in the dark, waiting.
“Think about it,” Charles said after a while.
As if Joe wasn’t.
A car pulled up behind them. Its lights were extinguished. Charles got out, opened a rear door, got in the back seat and closed the door after him. The fellow from the car got in beside Joe and handed back an envelope to Charles. Joe listened to Charles flick through the money in the back seat.
“Give him one of the green bags,” Charles told Joe.
Joe got out and opened the trunk. He unzipped the airline bag. There were two smaller plastic green bags and one larger yellow bag inside. One green bag. He hefted it in his hand. Half a kilo.
Another place down the road the second sale, of the other half-kilo, went smoothly too.
They had the kilo left to sell. For fifty or fifty-five thousand. At least someone in Youngstown had money. Of course, the buyer would cut the coke and sell it for a hundred dollars a gram and more than double his money. Joe Nolan didn’t know anyone in Youngstown who could even afford to pay a hundred bucks for a gram. He knew no one. Except unemployed steel workers and their families. That was his trouble, Joe decided—no contacts.
The third buy was to go down on the other side of the State University. Charles remained in the back seat while they waited.
They weren’t kept long. A guy in a brand-new Camero pulled over, got out and climbed in beside Joe. He looked Joe over and said hi.
Joe said nothing.
“You got the stuff?” he said to Charles in the back.
“You got the money?” Charles responded.
The guy pulled out a manila envelope from his coat pocket and held it up.
“We got the stuff,” Charles said and took the envelope.
If the guy thought Joe Nolan was not watching him, was dumb and just staring ahead out the windshield, the guy was making a mistake. Joe spotted the gun in his right hand even as he was pulling it out of the shoulder holster. As it cleared the lapels of the man’s coat, Joe could see it was a revolver—not an automatic. As Charles in the back seat was peering into the envelope, holding wads of newspaper cut into the size of dollar bills, saying, “This isn’t …” Joe’s right hand was whipping across, and his fingers were closing around the gun.
“This is a bust—”
That’s all the guy had a chance to say before he had to squeeze the trigger as Joe’s hand tried to pull it from his grasp. Nothing happened. He squeezed on the trigger again, hard. This time too, nothing. Joe’s fingers were tightly around the chambers so that they could not revolve, thus blocking the action of the gun. He twisted the weapon upward against the Y formed by the man’s thumb and forefinger and broke his grip on the gun handle. Instead of trying to point the gun, Joe slapped him over the forehead with the heavy metal.
With his left hand, he switched on the ignition and pushed the gear into drive.
“Drug Enforcement Agency,” the half-stunned man beside him shouted. “You’re under arrest.”
Then he realized the car was in motion and jumped Joe before it could gather speed.
Nolan now held the revolver, a .357 Magnum, by its handle and brought the barrel down in a savage chop across the man’s face. The guy kept coming at him, and Joe pistol-whipped him to a daze as he steered with his left hand and picked up speed on the dark empty street.
Two pairs of headlights blinked on behind him almost simultaneously, and moments later he heard their sirens. Joe drove without lights and pressed the accelerator hard to the floor.
The agent, holding his bleeding face in his hands, was thrown back against the door as the car hung a sharp turn into a small street on the left. Joe kept up his s
peed and wove in and out of the almost-deserted streets. He pulled up to the curb and listened. The two sirens were far away and growing fainter.
Joe leaned across and opened the front door against which the agent was leaning. The man fell out on the sidewalk and crawled away.
After a few blocks, Joe pulled up again and removed the Pennsylvania plates clipped over his Ohio ones. Then he turned on his headlights and drove slowly and legally across town to Canfield Road, turned into the street where Charles’ Trans Am was parked, and got paid his thousand bucks in tens and twenties.
Joe clutched the notes in his hand. “If we’d been busted, how many years would they have sent us up for?”
“Hard to say,” Charles answered. “They’re not consistent. We could have got anything from five to twenty-five.”
“I risked five years for a thousand dollars? That’s two hundred dollars a year. I hope you do better than that.”
“Sure I do. But I take bigger risks than I’ve ever asked you to. So far. You want the bread, you got to take chances.”
“OK.”
“We’ll talk,” Charles said.
“Sure.”
Joe threw the .357 Magnum and the Pennsylvania plates in the Mahoning River, then headed back to the neighborhood bar. His friend had gone but had left the newspaper folded at one end of the counter. The “employment offered” column of the classified ads was short, and he soon found the ad his friend had mentioned. Big money for combat-hardened vets. A box number. It couldn’t be any worse than what he was thinking about now.
Chapter 7
HARVEY Waller’s friends said he was never the same again after being with the Marines in Vietnam. Even the ones who had sat next to him in class in high school and played basketball in the yard with him hour after hour claimed he came back real different—they maybe couldn’t spell it out for you in what way he was different, but different. Some even said that now he was strange. What none of them knew was that Harvey Waller was a great deal stranger and more different than anyone who knew him in Flemington, New Jersey, could imagine.
Harvey had gotten the freeze-out treatment when he got home from Nam, just like all the other veterans who had to add to the disillusionment they picked up in Asia the further disillusionment that awaited them at home. Baby-killer. Genocide. Fascist. People said these things who couldn’t find their way from a diner to a post office anywhere but in their hometown of Flemington—people who’d never been anywhere in their lives and hardly knew what was happening in front of their noses, let alone the real facts of what happened in Vietnam.
The real facts were clear in Harvey’s mind, but he found it hard—impossible—to explain them to people who had never experienced that reality. People laughed at him when he claimed that the Russians controlled the American press and TV—he didn’t mean controlled, he meant manipulated. But they were already laughing too loud. He didn’t believe Rather and Jennings were secret communists, Russian moles put there to subvert American opinion. He did believe that Rather and Jennings were unsuspecting victims of Russian propaganda and subtle machinations. He saw Vietnam not as an American military defeat but as a Soviet victory in psychological warfare. The U.S. Marines had not been defeated by the Cong and North Vietnamese—it was the American public at home who had been defeated by being duped by the Russians into believing they were participating in something wrong.
Most people were tired of the whole damn thing. They wanted to forget about it. Get on with the “me” generation and jogging and giving up cigarettes. The last thing they wanted to do was analyze the experiences of someone they regarded as a killer of women and children, even if they had gone to high school and played basketball with him.
It was everywhere. Penetrating every level of society. Espionage. Soviet agents buying secrets on how to make computers, Xerox machines, Coca-Cola, bombs … Americans being conned wholesale as they tried to abide by their principles and behave “decently” with a foe who was implacable and unscrupulous. The Soviets believed that anything which advanced their cause was acceptable—they claimed that a lie which helped communism thus became the truth. Most Americans could not really believe such people existed and intended to wipe them out. But some Americans did …
Harvey Waller met the first of them at a picnic on the Jersey Shore near Cape May. He had made some statements about his beliefs during the afternoon, casual comments, and was invited to a meeting the following week by the boyfriend of a Flemington girl who was along on the picnic. Harvey was amazed. Here were people who thought like he did, knew more than he did, and were prepared to do something about it. The possibility of doing something instead of only complaining had not really occurred to Harvey before. It took time for him to gain their trust and confidence, but when he did, he found his whole life changed. Money was no problem anymore. Some members of the group were very well-heeled and contributed generously to what were called the “active members.” This was not a spectator sport. No one sat on the sidelines. Every member had his own special skills and responsibilities. Some were information gatherers, others were financial backers. Still others were known as producers—they made all arrangements and smoothed the way for operatives. And finally the operatives performed the effective action decided upon in an open discussion. The group deliberately had no name, no leaders and no written policies. They referred to themselves only as patriotic and concerned citizens.
Harvey’s skills were those of a Marine with heavy combat experience in Vietnam. When he was accepted by the group as being fully trustworthy, he was put on PAD—preventive action detail. He was paid three hundred a week in cash, tax free, to be ready to move out at any time. A second phone was put in his mother’s house in Flemington, and he was given a new Buick Regal. The members of the group were the only ones who had his special phone number, and the phone had an answering machine so that he could call home from elsewhere and hear any messages left for him. All went well for more than two years.
“Goddammit, Harvey, we got the FBI and the NSA, not to mention the New Jersey State Police, all on our case and you won’t ease off!”
Waller looked at the man with the contempt he always felt for those who showed fear in the absence of physical danger. He himself had been scared shitless a number of times, but there was always a gook at the business end of a mortar or some other helluva good reason visible to all for a man to be frightened. This little creep was worrying about his reputation or his vice-presidency at the bank or whatever if it ever came out he was associated with a far-right paramilitary group—and the description paramilitary was a joke here, since only Harvey and one or two others were worth anything. The others couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. Including this little nothing who was whining at him now to take it easy.
“Ease off, you say?” Harvey bellowed at him. “You’re one of the biggest alarm-raisers about the Soviets and how we gotta stop ’em. Now you’re worried in case someone pisses on your front lawn.”
“Harvey, hear me out. The original concept of our activities in the field was to collect incontrovertible evidence and present it to the FBI in order to force them into action. Somewhere along the line, something went wrong, and now we end up with the FBI trying to find out who we are. We were supposed to be working together!”
“We tried,” Harvey said. “They wouldn’t take action. They promised to involve this agency and that person and take things to the highest levels, but they did damn all. Since Hoover died, the FBI has lost its go. I think they may be penetrated.”
“I’ve no doubt of that, Harvey! Every branch of government is rotten with fellow travelers and Soviet informers. Why should the FBI be an exception? But the point of the matter now is that they’re hot on our trail, and we all agreed to ease up our operations until the heat dies down. All except you, Harvey. You’re going to get us all crucified because you’re too damn stupid and stubborn to lie low till they call the hunt off.”
“And you’re just trying to protect your
ass,” Waller shot back. “Which is a real come-down for a superpatriot who one day is willing to die for his country and the next is willing to let the fucking Russians take over rather than risk his job or something. Remember what you used to say? Better dead than Red! Seems to me like you and the others have gone back on what you used to say. You guys were all big talk and flag-waving till you had your bluff called. Then your chicken-shit knees began to knock together.”
“Harvey, I got into this to help our government, not to form a vigilante group.”
“You got into this because you saw communists manipulating our society on every level. You backed me when I took action where no one else would. You were one of my big supporters.”
“I still am, Harvey.”
“Bullshit!” Waller exploded. “You’re a calm-sea sailor. Now that the going is getting rough, you’re backing away from me.”
“It’s not just me, Harvey. Everyone wants you to tone down things till we see where we’re …”
Harvey stubbed him with an index finger in the solar plexus and stopped his talk. “How do I know the commies haven’t gotten to you?” Harvey moved his unshaven jowls closer to the nervous little man. “Maybe you’ve sold out to the Reds, eh?”
“Me, Harvey?” A nervous laugh. “You know me, I’d die first.”
“Maybe you’re going to have to.”
Harvey did not know quite what he meant by that. It was just a vague threat. And it was taken as such.