Dirty White

by Brian Freemantle

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  The two men exchanged looks before replying. Then Brennan, who appeared to be the spokesman, said, “That’s why we’ve come to see you, Mr. Farr. What happens to your son really depends upon you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re offering you a deal,” said Seymour.

  “A deal!”

  “There’s two ways this can go down,” said Brennan. “One way, we charge your son, produce everything we’ve got and go for the maximum sentence, plus the seizure of all his assets, which the law allows us to do. Which would mean the end of any career or future, of course …” The agent paused. “The other way is for you to do what we ask. Which means no charges, no exposure. Howard will need a lot of treatment and a lot of help but you could afford it. And he might just be able to get to Harvard.”

  Farr looked between the two men, confused. Surely a bribe wasn’t demanded as blatantly as this! But what else could the bastards want? He needed time to think, someone with whom he could talk it through. He didn’t think they’d give him time and there was no one with whom he could discuss it. Cautiously he asked, “How does the second way work?”

  “Howard was into a million-buck deal but the fact is that that was popcorn stuff,” said Brennan. “We want to set up an operation to go after the traffickers who really matter. The guys operating out of Colombia and the truly organized-crime people working with them here!”

  Farr’s relief that he wasn’t being asked for a bribe was immediately overwhelmed by a fresh feeling of confusion. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We want you to set it all up. And make it work for us,” said Seymour simply. Farr didn’t feel complete or satisfied any longer. He felt very frightened.

  3

  The need to concentrate was even more important than before. He’d had to understand before—which he did, fully.

  Now he had to grasp what these two inconspicuous, almost clerklike men were proposing. To save Howard, whom he’d neglected. And what about himself? The question intruded irritatingly—deflecting him—but Farr forced himself to confront it, to begin purging himself of the guilt. Himself, too, he conceded. If he had to look deeply into the hidden rooms behind the always locked doors, Farr recognized that, although he disdained professional expansion and responded modestly to the sort of praise that had been piled on him only hours before by the Texan millionaire, he enjoyed—in the way that a favorite court confidant or even courtesan enjoyed—his esoteric fame. The loss of such a reputation as his would hurt as much as it would hurt the court confidant or courtesan to be discarded.

  So, yes, if there were a way to avoid Howard being hauled before a court and exposed as a drug trafficker, there was as great a reason for him to do it for himself as do it for the boy. Farr felt a burn of embarrassment at his thoughts and was glad there would never be a circumstance in which they would have to be revealed to any living person. He took off his jacket—feeling encumbered, despite the meticulous temperature control—and told Angela through the intercom that all his calls had either to be held or transferred. As an afterthought, he offered the two FBI men a drink. Dutifully, they took coffee, and Farr joined them, wondering if his control might have been better if he’d accepted the brandy Becage had offered at lunch; he certainly needed something stronger than coffee. The woman was as efficient as always, so the coffee came quickly and they didn’t attempt to speak until after it was served. Brennan, in his role as spokesman, set out the proposal and Farr sat tensed forward over a desk that held separate framed photographs of Ann and Howard.

  “Entrapment?” said the broker, when the balding man stopped talking.

  “No!” said Seymour at once, coming in before his partner. “Entrapment—or causing it to occur—has become the best established defense on any drug charge. We’ve lost more cases than we’ve made because some smart-assed lawyer has been able to convince a judge that their client was drawn by enticement into committing an offense he might otherwise have never considered or even dreamed of considering.”

  “Then what you want me to do doesn’t make sense,” said Farr.

  Brennan smiled, his patience this time not as forced as before. “This makes so much sense it’s practically a treatise for a Ph.D. in logic,” he said. “You’re not American: you live and work here as is your right, having married an American woman, now deceased?”

  Farr frowned at the description, which sounded as if it had come verbatim from some official dossier—which, he supposed, it probably had. “Yes,” he said, in tight agreement: Ann wasn’t—had never been—“an American woman.”

  “You have no connection whatsoever with any enforcement agency—particularly a drug enforcement agency—of the United States of America?” persisted Brennan.

  “Of course not!” said Farr, allowing the irritability.

  “You are an investment broker practically unique in Wall Street; anywhere else, for that matter. Someone who has become a millionaire not by shotgun expansion out by concentration on a selected and favored group of clients for few of whom—if any—you’ve ever created a losing portfolio?”

  Farr remembered that “not by shotgun expansion but by concentration on a selected and favored group of clients” had been an expression he particularly admired in a profile written about him in Barron’s about six months earlier; they’d done a great deal of research. He said, predictably modest, “That’s the way I’ve always preferred to work. It works.”

  “Sure we’ve done these sort of things before,” said Seymour. “There was Operation Greenback which became Operation Eldorado—which is still running—and Operation Bancoshares; but in all of them there’s been a failing. It looks good in print and on television, because Joe Six-Pack, Mr. Average America, reading the newspaper in Des Moines or watching 60 Minutes, has got to believe it’s good. And to be able to say we’ve seized six million or sixty million bucks’ worth of drugs and property does look good, until you know that’s a piss—and a very small piss—into the bucket for what’s being made every day of every week of every year by guys to whom losing sixty million is a budgeted-for expense, like IBM or ITT allow a few bucks for stolen paperclips and pencils, It’s made to look good and important because we need our budgets maintained by Congress, and the Drug Enforcement Administration needs their budgets maintained by Congress, like the Customs does and the coastguard does and the Internal Revenue Service does.”

  Farr’s hands were beneath the table again, out of sight, grasping his chair, as he tried to hold onto what the two men were saying. “You telling me it isn’t working?”

  Seymour snorted a laugh. “I said a piss in the bucket, Mr. Farr: if you blink, you miss it.”

  “Why is my cooperation important?” asked Farr, who thought he understood but was determined to get everything spelled out.

  “I said Howard was The Man in Boston,” reminded Brennan. “In a very small part of Boston. A million bucks might sound a lot—although, I suppose, to you it doesn’t, not necessarily—but in the sort of figures and the sort of trafficking that we’re thinking about, and more importantly trying to stop, it’s another hardly heard piss into the bucket. Which is why all the sting operations are insignificant. We seize a few million bucks’ worth of shit and we arraign a few people and talk about a million-buck buy and—shall I tell you what that is! It’s important, certainly. It lets Joe Six-Pack know we’re out there in the dark streets and the dark alleys, pitching. Makes him feel safe. But twenty-four hours after we roll up punks like Howard …” The FBI agent hesitated, the irritation at the lapse obvious. Farr waited for the apology and respected the man for not attempting one. Instead, Brennan said, “That’s what he is, Mr. Farr. A drug-taking punk who thought he could make the big time. I’m not going to lie to you about anything; certainly not that. Like I was saying, twenty-four hours after we roll up people like Howard, he’s replaced by someone else. We’ve seized maybe two kilos, probably more, in arresting Howard
. Logic decrees that there should be a shortage on the streets; panic buying and panic price hikes. It hasn’t happened. Won’t happen. Because whatever’s been lost can be replaced. At once.”

  “You want the people who matter?” anticipated Farr.

  Brennan smiled, coming forward in his chair to match in intensity Farr’s head-bent attention. “Exactly that!” he said. “We want the guys in Colombia and Bolivia and Peru. And the organized-crime people here. The names. Like Escabar and Lehder and O’Campo and Moreno and Suarez in Latin America. And the Gambinos and the Gen-oveses and the Bonnanos and the Trafficantes and the Brunos here, at home …” The man had to pause, breathless in his urgency. “… We don’t want to sting; we want to burn the bastards. Get the biggest names possible and make sure they’re arraigned and that we can get not just a criminal conviction to put them in jail but get also the sort of seizure decision we could go for against Howard. This time I’m not talking about millions, Mr. Farr. I’m talking about billions. We want to create an operation to take the big guys, the really big guys, by the neck and frighten the living shit out of them. Make them realize that they’re not as invulnerable as they’ve been for far too long.”

  “Which is why you’re important, Mr. Farr,” interrupted Seymour, constantly hurrying the discussion. “The Escabars and the Lehders have stayed rich and free because they’re careful. Clever and cunning. All the other operations like this have been set up entirely in-house; it’s been our accountants and our agents spending a few months setting up a front and coming on strong. The Colombian and the Bolivian and the Mafia barons have knowingly used us—aware that we needed time to establish ourselves and operate as we are supposed to—but they’re never within a thousand miles of the front operation when the trap’s sprung. They can afford to employ the best lawyers available, to make sure everything is kosher.”

  “And I’m kosher?” said Farr, who was a gentile.

  “Kosher and established, to anyone who makes any sort of inquiry. We’ll put behind you an operation that will make the invasion of Europe look like a Boy Scout practice, but you’ll be the bona fide, one hundred percent financial investor they can trust to wash their drugs money and make them richer still.”

  “If it works,” said Farr. “If I agree to set up the sort of scheme you want and there are arrests, there will be a trial?”

  “A sensational one,” agreed Brennan.

  Farr gestured around the luxurious office. “To the detriment of this business.”

  Seymour shook his head. “One of the undertakings we’re prepared to give you right here, today, is that without any reference to Howard or his arrest you agreed willingly to act for us. Any reflection upon you or your business will be one of admiration, not condemnation …” The FBI man’s pause was exactly the right length. “The detriment to yourself and possibly to this business will be if the case goes ahead against Howard and he faces a court on the charges that could be made against him—and you’re called into that court. I told you earlier that I couldn’t account for where he got the buy money. I think it’s from an earlier drugs deal, but I couldn’t say that as evidence in court because I couldn’t prove it. The court—and the public—would be left to conjecture where the money came from.”

  “Bastard!” erupted Farr, seeing the blackmail.

  “I’m trying to catch the bastards. Mr. Farr,” said Seymour, unperturbed at the outburst. “If I’ve got to cut some corners to achieve that, pull a few shitty tricks, then I’m prepared to do that. All I’ve just said is that I won’t perjure or conjecture in a court of American law.”

  ‘I know what you’ve just said,” insisted Farr. “You’re prepared for it to be inferred that I was financier of the deal.”

  “We’ve no control whatsoever over what people infer from any court hearing,” said Brennan. “I said earlier that I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m not lying to you now …” He gestured sideways to his partner. “… Neither’s Jim. He’s setting it out, clear and simple.”

  Farr knew well enough that he didn’t have a choice but he determined against giving them the satisfaction of an immediate capitulation. “I want to see Howard,” he said. “I won’t make any decision until I see my son.”

  “We didn’t expect you to,” said Brennan, denying him even that small satisfaction.

  4

  Walter Farr was a meticulous man and he acted in a meticulous way, despite having to face the biggest crisis in his life since Ann’s death. He told Angela Nolan that he would be away for a few days and asked her to advise the other brokers of his absence—remembering even to warn her of an approach from someone named Donald Rawlings, who would be coming to them with Becage’s recommendation. While the FBI men waited patiently in an outer office, he called the Dean of Admissions at Harvard, arranged a meeting, considered calling his lawyer, and then abandoned the idea. Farr had already decided what to do so there was no need for any criminal attorney. The preparations made, he became impatient to reach Boston.

  At his suggestion, the three men helicoptered to La Guardia, enabling a shuttle connection far earlier than they could have managed if they had traveled out to the airport by road. No one bothered with conversation on the crowded commuter flight. As they touched down at Logan, Farr decided he should have rented a car, but an FBI vehicle was already waiting.

  “You know I’m going to do it, of course,” said Farr, as the car moved out of the airport complex.

  “Thank you,” said Brennan politely, as if the broker had been allowed an independent decision.

  “Could Howard be released into my custody today?”

  “I could try to Fix it,” said Brennan.

  “I’d like to get him into care as soon as possible.”

  “Sure,” said the FBI man.

  “He’ll have been seen by the court’s medical people,” offered Seymour. “Maybe they could recommend a place. I guess you’d want him treated somewhere close to school.”

  Farr’s half-considered intention was to take the boy back to New York, so that he could personally keep an eye on him, but then he realized that, if he went along with the deal, it was likely he would be away from the city for long periods at a time. “I guess so,” he said. “I haven’t really thought it through.”

  Boston began to take shape ahead, and Farr looked out at the initial straggle of clapboard and shingle houses, as if he were seeing them for the first time—which he probably was, he thought: he certainly hadn’t been aware of them during the last visit. Forcing honesty, Farr admitted to himself that the last time had been a duty visit: the to-and-from flights planned and the car planned and the restaurant planned, and the conversation between himself and his son stilted and difficult, with gaps while each sought for something to say, as if they were courteous strangers encountering each other on a train or a plane, just passing the time.

  “We’re here,” announced Seymour, breaking into the reverie.

  Farr followed the two men past the bustle of the other desk and rooms, down a corridor off which ran a honeycomb of boxlike squared offices which Farr thought fitting for the beehive atmosphere.

  Toward the end of the corridor the construction became more solid and he realized they were approaching the detention section. Howard’s room was numbered 6; there were no obvious bars but, even so, Farr decided it was a cell. Brennan nodded to a uniformed man sitting at a control desk and the man unlocked the door, standing back for them to enter.

  At the door Farr said, “Can I see him alone?” and Seymour said, “Sure.”

  The room was fetid with Howard’s smell, sweat and urine and, unaccountably, cabbage. Farr was a fastidious man who sometimes showered twice a day and who had always believed that he had inculcated at least the habit of cleanliness into his son. He swallowed against the distaste and realized that that was something else about which he had been wrong. Howard sat balled up on the top of a disheveled bunk, hands clasped around his legs, which were pulled up tight against his chest, knees hard agai
nst his chin: a childlike position of comfort. Scuffed, dirty track shoes were haphazardly discarded by the side of the bunk and Farr saw that there was a hole in the boy’s left sock. He wore jeans and a thick woolen shirt. Farr remembered Howard wearing the same shirt when they last met and was surprised at the unimportant recollection. From the smell in the room he wondered if the boy had bothered to change it, since that time.

  “Hello,” said Farr, not knowing what else to say at the moment of confrontation.

  “Wondered if you’d come,” said the boy. His skin was greased waxlike with perspiration; the dampness had spread up to his hair, which hung lankily because of it. He was rocking back and forth very gently in his hunched-up position, as if he couldn’t bear to be still.

  “Was it likely that I wouldn’t!” Farr tried to keep the annoyance from his voice; he’d decided on the flight that fighting wouldn’t achieve anything.

  “Don’t know,” said Howard. While he talked, he stared down at his holed sock, refusing to meet his father’s gaze.

  “How long?” said Farr.

  “How long what?”

  “Have you been taking drugs?”

  The boy shrugged as if it were unimportant. “Year, I guess, maybe longer …” He looked at his father at last. “I feel like hell … like I’m coming apart. I burn, deep in my stomach. The bastards won’t give me anything.”

  Farr bit against the instinctive angry response. “They said you were freebasing. Speedballing, too. So you’re addicted.”

  “Kick it if I want to,” said Howard, with little-boy bravado.

  There was a hardbacked, upright chair against the wall opposite the bed. Farr looked intently at it, to see that it was clean, and sat down uncertainly. “You’re a mess,” he said. “You look like hell.”

  Howard tightened his lock around his legs, physically holding on. “Need something,” he said, denying his boast of seconds before.