Dirty White

by Brian Freemantle

  “Scarletti,” offered the American.

  “Gomez,” said the Colombian.

  “Let’s talk,” said Brennan.

  “It’s your deal,” said Scarletti.

  “You got coke?” said Seymour.

  Gomez nodded.

  “How much?”

  “Much as you want,” said Gomez. “You got heroin?”

  “As much as you want,” offered Brennan.

  “Distribution?” said Scarletti.

  “No problem,” said Brennan. “Let’s talk specifics. How much coke could you supply?”

  “It’s a question of how much you want,” said Scarletti. “Ton? Two tons. Just place the order.”

  “Could you move a similar amount of heroin?” said Brennan.

  “Like that,” said Scarletti, snapping his finger. “I’ve got tie-ups throughout America. Countrywide.” He looked at Yoshisuke. “Shipping from the Golden Triangle?”

  Yoshisuke nodded. “Bringing it out through Thailand,” he said. “Got good chemists. Purity’s high.”

  “How high?” asked Gomez.

  “Ninety, nearly all the time,” said Yoshisuke. “How’s that sound?”

  “Good,” said Scarletti.

  “Tell us about the coke?” said Seymour.

  The question was never answered. Seymour’s radio message threatening to withdraw had warned the other boats, but the coastguards had still been extremely close. They diverted, running a parallel course until the AWAC reconaissance plane reported the contact and then they resumed too soon the heading. Orleppo saw the approaching cutter, not even needing glasses to identify it. He recognized it at the same moment as one of the coastguard crewmen from the Mary Ann. Orleppo hesitated, moving first toward the binocular container for the grenades, then changing his mind and going for the shotgun. He managed to get it clear of its securing clips before the coastguard man got to him without time to grasp it properly, holding it in only one hand pointing toward the deck. Orleppo tried to lift up, but the coastguard seized the barrel and the Cuban fired. The blast jerked the gun out of his insecure grasp and threw the coastguard off balance. The shot spread through the fantail, shattering part of the rail. The main force hit the second coastguard, who was trying to move into the fight, fracturing his left thigh.

  From the Mary Ann the sound of the explosion and the injured man’s scream appeared almost simultaneous.

  “What the …?” said Scarletti, thrusting for the cabin door. Yoshisuke, moving sideways, tried to intercept the man, but the American clubbed out backhandedly and caught the FBI agent awkwardly, so that he collided with Seymour. Gomez was only slightly slower. He kicked out, catching Seymour in the groin, and was at the door before Brennan jumped at him awkwardly, only managing to get an arm half around the Colombian’s throat. It was sufficient to keep Gomez from the door, however; Brennan’s weight threw him forward so that they both fell through the hatch and out onto the deck. Seymour was still writhing on the floor, retching, but Yoshisuke leaped over the two struggling men and kicked out at Scarletti, catching him in the back of the knee and bringing him down in a stumble against the coastguard helmsman, who fell away from the wheel, jarring the boat against the smaller craft. The Japanese didn’t attempt to do anything more; instead, he snatched at the engine cowling, hauling it up and seizing the hidden Smith & Wesson. He fired harmlessly out to sea, wanting only the sound of the shot: it achieved the purpose. Scarletti stopped, foolishly astride the rail, trying to get back into his own boat, where the coastguard had already knocked Orleppo unconscious with the rifle butt; and Brennan rolled away from Gomez, who pulled himself against the bulkhead and then stopped moving, staring up at the gun.

  The nearing coastguard vessel, with a customs launch now visible about five hundred yards behind it, started sounding its siren; the noise screamed across the water and then the helicopters fluttered in, equipped with floats so they could land on the gently rising and falling swell.

  “Hurt bad?” Brennan called across to the uninjured coastguard in the smaller cruiser.

  “He took it in the leg,” said the uninjured man. “Bleeding a lot. Thank Christ for the helo.”

  Brennan waved to the settled machine, indicating the smaller ship alongside and beckoning it closer to evacuate the injured man. From the cabin behind, Seymour emerged, still bent forward in pain.

  “You OK?”

  “Caught it right in the balls,” said Seymour. “Hurts like a bugger.”

  Brennan took the second gun from the wheelhouse cowling, easing himself onto the helmsman’s seat. He went from Gomez to Scarletti and then back to Gomez again. “Know something, assholes?” he said. “You just been busted.”

  25

  Events developed so quickly after the high-seas seizure that it was later difficult for Farr logically to separate them into days and weeks. There was a kaleidoscope of legal meetings and chartered air flights and arguments followed by apologies followed by arguments. But throughout he was with Harriet, so none of it seemed to matter.

  The most frantic period was immediately after the seizure, from the moment of the flashed radio signal from which, waiting apprehensively in the Caymans office, they realized everything had gone well. Self-consciously, they shook hands with each other, and Harvey Mann actually apologized for some of his earlier behavior and admitted he never thought it was going to work, and the FBI personnel took a series of congratulatory telephone calls from their Washington headquarters. From the calls Harriet gathered that the attorney general himself wanted to announce the arrests but was being persuaded, with difficulty, against doing so until everyone was detained. The operation was well coordinated and came without serious mistake—which was surprising, considering the number of arrests necessary. Lang was seized at his Westchester home. The computer embezzlers were picked up in a series of house swoops throughout Illinois, and the members of the minor drug ring that Mann had detected were all arrested except for one Cuban who must have seen the sudden arrival of cars in Brooklyn and fled, never to be caught. The coastguards and customs men took the Mary Ann and the traffickers’ cruiser back not to the Caymans but to Miami, which meant a late arrival and caused the attorney general to miss the prime-time television slot he wanted—and Brennan said the man could kiss his ass. In the immediately succeeding days, there were protests from the Cayman authorities at how the island had been used, but the publicity generated by the arrests minimized any effective outrage, although Washington apologized. The business closed, of course, and Farr and Harriet set up permanent house in the Manhattan brownstone. Harriet offered her resignation from the FBI but was persuaded first by Brennan and then by an interview at the Washington headquarters to delay her actual departure until the grand jury hearings and the ensuing trial, so that she could appear as a witness still employed by the Bureau.

  An encounter that Farr remembered clearly, with no confusing overlay from other events, was the conference just prior to the grand jury hearings, with the nervous district attorney, William Harrop. The lawyer asked them all to attend, because it was a planning meeting for the indictments, and it was the first time for several weeks that Farr had seen the other members of the group, apart from Harriet. There were smiles and greetings but Brennan was serious-faced, giving Farr the first hint that things weren’t going as well as the FBI supervisor wanted.

  “Review time,” announced Harrop, when they had assembled. “And as we’re all together for the first time since the actual seizures, I want to congratulate you all on an absolutely first-class operation. That’s not just my opinion: I was in Washington earlier this week, talking to the attorney general himself.”

  “Everyone’s happy then?” demanded Brennan.

  The district attorney concentrated upon the man. “You know from our earlier meetings the answer to that,” he said.

  “I’d like everyone else to hear, as well.”

  “Let me set it out as completely as I can,” said the lawyer. “We’ve held Scarletti an
d Gomez on fifteen different charges, predominantly conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and heroin. Under the seizure legislation agreements we’ve got the Cayman Islands and Switzerland to open up the records, so we can establish an effective chain. Lang is linked and charged on every count. We didn’t think there was sufficient evidence to tie in the captain of their boat, Orleppo, but he’s charged separately with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon …”

  “Sounds pretty complete,” said Seymour.

  “It’s complete but there could be problems,” warned Harrop. “I just can’t quite understand the strategy they’re adopting, not now. Lawyers for Scarletti and Gomez are obviously going for entrapment: they’ve already tried at prehearings to get everything quashed on the grounds of high-seas seizure, beyond territorial waters, but the fact that an agreement exists between England and America permitting such boarding got that thrown out.”

  “So where’s the problem?” asked Farr.

  Harrop smiled at him. “Something that I consider is going to involve you quite a lot,” he said.

  “I don’t understand,” said the broker.

  “The fact is that the coastguard and customs people arrived too soon,” said Harrop. “What we’ve got on the tape is good—certainly for Scarletti, who appears to have done most of the talking—but I’m not happy about Gomez. Sure, we’ve got access to company records, attesting to a number of directorships for someone called Jorge Herrera Gomez. But you couldn’t identify the photograph you were later shown; in fact, you said quite categorically that the person pictured on the records to be Gomez wasn’t the man whom you met. But you did meet him, just that once, in Lang’s office. It comes down very much to a question of positive identification in court. Whether you can say that the Gomez we seized on the ship is the Gomez you met in Lang’s office.”

  “But the tape was good,” insisted Brennan.

  Harrop shook his head in immediate contradiction. Appearing to have anticipated the dispute, he handed to them all transcripts of the conversation that had occurred in the saloon of the Mary Ann and then said, “Go through it, while I play the tape.” The man depressed the start button, sitting back to watch as they obediently followed the recording.

  “Introductions were fine, establishing the names,” said Harrop, itemizing the points. “Neither Scarletti nor Gomez responds to the invitation when Brennan invites them to talk. Instead it’s Scarletti who invites …” The lawyer stopped and then replayed the tape. Into the room clearly came the voice of the Mafia chief saying, “It’s your deal,” then Seymour’s question about coke.

  “There!” said Seymour eagerly. “I asked him and he said he did.”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Harrop. “The next voice on that tape is yours again, asking how much.”

  “He nodded!” insisted Seymour. “We’ve got three witnesses, me, Brennan and Yoshisuke, who can swear to it.”

  “It makes entrapment an easy defense,” insisted Harrop. “The only identifiable remark that can be attributed to Gomez after this is in reply again to your question. He seems to be agreeing that he can let you have as much as you want and asks about heroin. That’s the strongest entrapment argument on the whole tape. It’s the sort of argument that got DeLorean off. Gomez’s lawyers are going to plead that he was enticed into a situation by the temptation of making a lot of money but that normally he wouldn’t have considered any such enterprise.”

  “Bullshit!” exploded Brennan. “We all of us know that’s absolute bullshit.”

  “I know we do,” agreed Harrop. “A lot of defense arguments and pleas are bullshit. Too often they succeed.”

  “You said this was going to involve Walter a lot,” the alertly apprehensive Harriet reminded him. “Do you mean that, if he can’t identify the man in court, Gomez could go free?”

  “I think there’s a possibility of it.”

  “Holy shit!” said Brennan. “We came to you with a good case before and you said you wanted seizures, and we get you the seizures and still you tell us it’s not guaranteed.”

  “Yes,” agreed Harrop. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I don’t want anyone to have any illusions about this. We’ve got a damned good case: one that everyone is extremely happy with. But it’s not a fait accompli by any means.”

  “Lang can’t plead entrapment,” insisted Seymour.

  “I don’t think he can,” agreed Harrop. “I suspect that his defense will be ignorance of the money source, acting as a professional man in good faith.”

  “And taking his payment in cash!” jeered Brennan. “That isn’t going to work!”

  “No, I don’t think it is,” said Harrop. “I just think that’s about the best he’ll be able to mount. He’s got bail, incidentally. It was refused but he applied to a judge in chambers.”

  “What about Scarletti and Gomez?” asked Mann.

  “No.” Harrop shook his head. “They’re being held separately, only able to communicate through their respective lawyers.”

  “When’s the grand jury convene?” asked Seymour.

  “A week’s time,” said Harrop. He smiled, in contrast to his usual nervousness. “I gave you all the bottom line,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to go fine, just fine.”

  Gomez made contact through his lawyer, whose name was Winthrop, with Ramos in Medellin, but there was a delay in the Colombian reaching New York because of the care he had to exercise in entering. Winthrop was uncomfortable with the further demand that Ramos be allowed to accompany him during one of the final briefing meetings.

  The exchange of pleadings had taken place between the district attorney and Winthrop, so the defense lawyer had an indication of the prosecution’s case. He went through it with Gomez, as Ramos listened intently, going into detail to the extent of recounting some of the tape-recorded evidence he believed the prosecution to possess.

  “You think entrapment will succeed?”

  “It’s got a good chance,” offered the lawyer.

  “I want more than a good chance; I want a certainty.”

  “Identification is the key,” said Winthrop. “Your meeting that day with Farr, in Lang’s office; it establishes you as someone embarking with premeditation upon a criminal enterprise. If that hadn’t taken place—if you’d managed always to deal through Lang—I think we’d be in the clear, with what they’ve got.”

  Gomez indicated Ramos and then said to the lawyer, “Give us a few moments.”

  Winthrop, who was only thirty and saw his role in the defense of a case that had received so much publicity as a takeoff point in his career, looked uncertainly between the two men. “I’m your defense attorney, right?”

  “Other business,” said Gomez. “Nothing to do what what we’re discussing here.”

  Winthrop went to a far corner of the interview room and Gomez said softly but vehemently to the other Colombian, “You were supposed to check, independently of Lang! Stop me getting set up! You let it happen!”

  “I did check!” insisted Ramos. “There was nothing I could have done; they spent a lot of time and money.”

  “The man Farr …” said Gomez. “He can’t identify me.”

  Ramos nodded. “How?”

  “I don’t know!” said the furious Gomez. “I’m shut up here, for Christ’s sake! You make it work. That’s why you’re here.”

  “You want him hit?”

  “Of course not,” said Gomez. “He’s got to stay on, for the jury to hear. I want a proper acquittal.”

  “Lang’s report talked of a son,” reflected Ramos.

  “I want it guaranteed; no more mistakes.”

  “I’ll try,” promised Ramos.

  “You’ll do it,” insisted Gomez.

  “OK. I’ll do it. It’ll mean bringing some people in.”

  “Bring as many as you need. And fast.” Gomez nodded toward the hovering lawyer. “Go through everything he’s got; there might be something in what the prosecution has made available.”r />
  “Soon now,” said Harriet. “At last.”

  “I’ll be glad finally when it’s all over,” agreed Farr. “I want to get it done with and for us to settle down. Be normal again.”

  “I want that, too,” said Harriet.

  “I thought we’d take a vacation, straight afterward,” said Farr.

  “Where?” asked the woman, surprised.

  “Wherever you want,” said Farr. He hesitated and said, “In fact, why don’t we make it the honeymoon? There’s no reason for us waiting before getting married, is there?”

  Harriet smiled at him slowly. “None, darling,” she said. “In fact, I think it would be a good idea for it to happen as soon as possible.”

  Farr frowned at her across the lounge. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m pregnant,” said Harriet. “I’m going to have your baby.”

  Less than a mile away from Farr’s 63rd Street house, Orlando Ramos stretched the cramp of concentration from his shoulders, staring over the trial dossier made available to him by Winthrop. He had practically decided he would have to go for the boy alone and almost missed the extra when it came, because it was in a separate file not considered relevant to the main thrust of the evidence—which, in strict accuracy, it wasn’t. Harriet Becker’s announcement, picked up by the Cayman monitoring system, that she and Farr were getting married. She must be the woman he’d seen constantly with Farr at the Manhattan house, Ramos decided—so he even knew what she looked like. Ramos checked his watch for the arrival of the people he was bringing in from Colombia. Providing they got through immigration without difficulty, everything should go according to plan.

  Ramos rose, sighing in sudden irritation. After all he had done for Gomez, he didn’t deserve to be treated like shit. He’d sort everything out, now that he knew the way. And then Gomez would apologize: they were blood relations, after all.

  Scarletti was held in Albany. The day of Gomez’s meeting with Ramos, Scarletti also made his private arrangements with the intention of getting an acquittal. He had already considered it might be necessary, before the briefings with his trial lawyers. That was why he hadn’t pressed as much as he could have done—and as they advised—to obtain bail. Jail was an excellent alibi. They would obviously suspect that he’d blown Norman Lang and his notarizing bank clerk away, but they’d never prove it. Everything would be difficult to prove, in fact.