“They will work with us,” Mitchell said. “I’m in charge of Project Seawall.”
“Yes, your reputation is well known, Harold. I will need, through you, the cooperation of the DEA and Coast Guard. We will require clear passage to Canada. Please impress upon these agencies that this is a Canadian operation. Otherwise they will try to grab the ship. They are hungry for big busts, too, Harold, because everyone likes a promotion.”
“If this doesn’t work, we owe you nothing?”
“Yes.”
“And if you succeed?”
“You understand that these matters are expensive. I have my own staff, of course, I run my own agents. There is no extra fee for them. Everything is included, even the mordida.”
“The mordida?”
“The bite, in Spanish. Often, in Colombia, there are people who have to be paid to make the way smooth. When there is a big shipment of drugs, there is often much mordida involved. Everyone likes to take a little bite.”
“And what is your . . . bite, Rudy?”
“You would, of course, be circumspect. The essence of all good operations, as you know, is a very tight lid. There is a maxim by La Rochefoucauld: ‘If you cannot keep your own secrets, do not expect anyone else to keep them for you.’ At the outset, I ask for one thing: not your confidence — I will earn that — your confidentiality.”
“Of course. And what will you charge?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars.”
Mitchell’s throat went dry.
“You will pay only if I succeed, of course. Only if I succeed.”
***
The starboard engine of the government surplus B-26 sputtered as Billy Lee Tinker gave it throttle and urged it up, up towards the banks of dry cloud that sat squat upon the hills of the Serrania de Jarara, cloud banks moving like a slug high over the red-dirt airstrip.
“Git up, sweet baby, git up. Git up, you rotten fart!” His words were lost in the lament of ancient engines.
Tinker’s body was aflame with the itch of the tiny floating hemp fibers that infested the aircraft. One of the twenty-eight pillow bags of marijuana had broken open and the odor in the cockpit was suffocating and sweet.
The plane grunted into the clouds and Tinker began to count — his altimeter had died many months ago. “One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three. Git up. Git up.”
Fifteen seconds. The clouds broke, and the scrubby trees on the peaks of the Jarara cerros were fifty feet below the tip of the starboard wing. Tinker went into a furious straining bank and pulled the plane over the hills towards the Caribbean Sea. The snowy crest of the Sierra Nevada shone in the distance far to the west.
In Viet Nam, the F-14s had flown themselves. But his World War Two bomber was a wobbly old lady who needed care and patience and the right instincts.
Tinker made a course adjustment to the Yucatán Channel to avoid Cuban airspace, and watched the Guajira coast fall away behind him. When he entered the Gulf Air Defense Identification Zone, he descended beneath radar level, pulled out a fat joint of Santa Marta gold, and lit it with the wooden match that he had been working furiously between his teeth.
It was harvest time in the Guajira. Tinker would be flying like crazy for the next three weeks. If his plane held out.
He nudged his John Deere peaked cap back over his head and drew deeply on the joint.
This is how he liked to fly. Fairly stoned.
Chapter Seven
Johnny Nighthawk
We could have used the navigational hardware — the Omega, the Loran, the radar — for our next expedition, but Pete needed a fast injection of capital, so we sold everything from his dragger, right down to the dinghies and life jackets, for three thousand bucks. A thief’s price.
It was a matter of speed. We were right into the spring crop season, it being April, and we were going to have to hop quick to get down there on time. You would not believe the amount of hassle that is involved in running an import-export business. The romantic end of things is much exaggerated. The truth is that a major smuggle usually involves months of meticulous preparation, lots of bucks, excellent timing.
We had neither time nor bucks, and also making it difficult was The Bullet, who had his people on our ass every waking minute. You buy a pair of socks; there’s a guy on the other side of the counter examining jock straps. You take a leak in the public john; there’s a guy at the next urinal studying his pecker. They never look you in the eye.
For instance, we had to stop over in Montreal to make the stateside border arrangements. We were tailed all the way on the plane from St. John’s. At the Montreal airport the undercover man was replaced by no less a personage than The Bullet himself, who acted stunned as if we were not supposed to know him. Words were bandied. Mitchell is a humorless man.
We rented a car at the airport, and it took us an hour and a half to shake the bulls. Then we slipped across to the south shore, down to the border. Pete has an old friend in southern Quebec who got out of the trade at the right time and put his savings into a farm that straddles the Canada-Vermont border. He has gone back to the land, as they say, but that does not mean he is not a shrewd businessman. He always charges a big toll for us to truck our goods across his property into the States. We spent the day with him, smoking his musty homegrown and setting up communications for later in the spring.
Back in Montreal, we decide to stop over for the night to fortify ourselves before braving the rigors of Toronto and James Peddigrew.
We start about Atwater Street and work our way slowly, by foot and taxi, east along St. Catherine Street. The narcs have by this time caught up to us again. They had all the Hertz offices staked out, I guess, and spotted us when we dropped off the car. Pete keeps sending drinks over to them.
Later, we are in a bistro, hanging around with some low-lifers. Pete, who is dressed in black Stetson, leather vest, and cowboy boots — it is the year of the cowboy and Pete is into it — has managed to surround himself with a gaggle of hustlers, and has them wide-eyed with farfetched tales and fictitious exploits. Then suddenly he is no longer with us. I do not mean physically, because he is there in the flesh. His spirit has, however, drifted across the bar to a little round table in the corner.
The table is covered by a linen cloth. There is a candle in the center. One chair is empty. Upon the other sits — what can I say? You know the rock singer Debbie Harry, from Blondie? Color the hair a touch more sand, thin her out a tender fraction, maybe lift the cheekbones a nibble. Somehow work in a note of unsuppressed vanity. You have her. She is excellent.
She is looking directly into Pete’s eyes. You may say bullshit as you listen to this, but across the room, in the dancing glow of that candle, I can see the color of her eyes. They are as green, if I might be allowed, as the winter sea.
Suddenly, Pete is no longer with us in spirit or in flesh.
His conversation with this lady, later described to me by the great romantic himself, is as follows:
“Hello,” he says. “Bonjour. You are beautiful. Tu es belle.” That’s about all the French he knows.
She says, “Merci. Thank you. And before you ask — no, you cannot buy me a drink. I am sorry I was staring at you.”
“I didn’t think you were staring at me,” Pete says. (This is his version.) “I thought we were looking into each other’s eyes.”
She smiles. I see a flash of whiteness as her lips part. She is very tanned.
Pete goes on. “You are a Madonna.”
“Thank you. And you are a cowboy. But where is your horse?”
“Can I buy you one drink?”
She tosses her hair lightly. There is a fleeting whisper of a smile. “It is, I am afraid, impossible.”
And that is when her escort, with a gruff “Excusez-moi,” shoulders past Pete, sets a carafe of wine and two glasse
s on the table, and sits on the empty chair.
Pete touches his hand to the brim of his Stetson and retreats.
Pete is dour now, and he depresses everyone at our table.
We continue down the street, visiting a jazz club, a strip joint, a high-class blind pig.
“That lady has laid me in ruins,” Pete says. “I am haunted.”
He is poor company.
“There was an eye flash,” he tells me. “You know the thing that happens — a connection, a message, a conversation of eyes.”
I have never had any such conversation with women. I am unsympathetic.
Later, as we get drunk, events become clouded. We find ourselves at a party in someone’s swish apartment.
“I don’t believe this,” Pete says. I follow his eyes. There she is, the same girl. Talking gaily to a group of friends. She sees Pete and their eyes lock again.
Her friend does not like the vibrations and soon brings her coat and takes her down the stairs to the street.
Drunken Pete Kerrivan goes stumbling down after them, trips on the middle step, and bounces on his ass to the landing below, stopping just at her feet.
“I’ve fallen for you,” he says. “What is your name?”
“Marianne.”
“Phone number?”
“So many questions.” She blows him a kiss, shatters him with a wink of a sea-green eye. “Au revoir, cowboy.”
Pete stumbles to his feet and follows her outside. But her escort tugs at her, and they climb into a taxi. From the top of the staircase I look down at Pete. He seems destroyed. We go to our hotel. We crash.
***
Once you have done fairly big time, as I have on a couple of rough beefs, you are sucked against your will into a low-life network. You meet guys you have known on the inside, and it is considered polite to sit around with such people and catch up.
This underground meshwork has already spread the fact of my presence in Montreal, so I am not particularly surprised, although not happy, when Joe the Fish and another gentleman sidle up to me and Pete in the coffee shop of our hotel, where we are having breakfast at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Joe the Fish is Joey Bart, a numbers man who was in the joint with me over a racetrack thing.
“Hello, Hawk,” he says. “Mind if we have a coffee?”
I give Pete a quick look to let him know that this is unsavory company. Joey Bart introduces his friend. “This is Hymie Solomon,” he says. I say to myself: Uh-oh. I know of this man. He is known as Cut-’Em-Up Hymie. He is a captain for a very heavy operator in Montreal. These men are dressed as if they have come from a funeral, which is as likely as not.
“I have heard about you, Mr. Kerrivan,” Hymie says. “I am told you and Mr. Nighthawk are in town.”
They order coffees, and there is a half hour of social intercourse. How long are you in Montreal? Can we be of any help? That sort of thing. You want tickets to the Canadiens–L.A. Kings series? You want ringside seats at the Steve Martin show? Girls? Some real lookers? Just ask. Also, there are funny stories. Hymie turns out to be a lot of laughs when he gets going.
Ultimately, he slides into the business part of it. “I hear you might be a little short of cash.”
“I’m not looking for partners,” says Pete.
Hymie smiles, pats Pete on the shoulder. “No, no, no,” he says with a big chortle. “You like to run your own show. I understand that. I appreciate that. I like that.” Real smarmy. “Nobody ain’t talking about partners; nobody ain’t talking about dealing theirselves in. Where do you think we are? Chicago? Nineteen-twenty?” He and Joe the Fish are laughing. I am smiling to be friendly. Pete is cleaning his teeth with a toothpick.
Hymie says, “We can work one of three ways. We can bankroll for a cut of the product. You get a fair cut — the fat, naturally. Or, second way, we can just loan you, repayable say two, t’ree months.”
These will not be Royal Bank rates. Figure ten percent a week.
Pete looks Hymie in the eye and shakes his head.
“Do you want to know the third way, schmuck?” Hymie is smiling like a Mexican. “The third way is we break your spine.”
Pete is still working at his toothpick, engrossed. He finally dislodges something, probably bacon rind, and flicks it. It lands on Solomon’s lapel and stays there.
“Let’s get some fresh air, Johnny,” Pete says, and stands up. The Fish and Hymie get up, too, blocking our route to the aisle.
“Get out of my way or I’ll drive you,” Pete says. Calmly, not loud.
The capos stand there for a minute, then step back a bit.
“You a hard guy, eh?” hisses Joey Bart. “Get out of Montreal. Or we’ll send you home by river express.”
We brush past these guys. My asshole is clenched tight as Aunt Milly’s change purse.
When we return to our room, I suggest: “Let us make hasty retreat from this city.”
“Yes,” says Pete. “Leave us fold our tents like the Arabs and get the fuck out of here.”
But as luck would have it there is half a bottle of tequila left on the dresser, not worth the trouble to pack. After finishing that, we have room service send some more rounds up and, thus emboldened, venture down to the bar, thence to the street. Ultimately, as if drawn by a magnetic force, Pete Kerrivan and his faithful Indian companion find themselves in the little East End bar where Pete first saw Marianne of the Emerald Eyes, as he calls her.
And by God, she is there. And when she sees Pete, she bolts, out the door, into a cab, before Pete can say anything.
I run outside with Pete, whose mouth is hanging open. “Does she think I’ve got leprosy?” he mumbles.
We are about to go back into the bar when we are greeted by four messengers from Hymie and Joe. Where are the police when you really need them? We have accidentally slipped our tail.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter much. The Fish and Cut-’Em-Up Hymie must have felt it was beneath them to wrinkle their Dacron suits over us, because they send some really inexperienced fellows. The worst I get out of it is a sprained knee and a dislocated toe in exchange, I believe, for some cracked ribs. Pete tears his shirt and breaks the damn frames of his glasses again, but three of those boys check out fast after a few seconds, and the fourth, we just leave him on the sidewalk spitting out teeth.
The message from Hymie is, however, clear. He is not going to give us tickets to the Canadiens–L.A. Kings series after all. He is a man whose good humor cannot be stretched too far.
Anyway, we have girded our loins, and we are ready to hear what James Peddigrew has to tell us.
Chapter Eight
There was a rush of excitement from Potship headquarters when Mitchell returned from Miami. Constable Bechard, who had been in Montreal, provided the good news.
“Kerrivan’s made the connection,” he told Mitchell. “Angelo Peritti. Kerrivan and The Hawk met with a couple of his capos yesterday, Joe Bartolucci and Hymie Solomon. Looks like Peritti is trying to set up a Colombian operation.”
“How close did you get?”
“Nobody could hear nothing. It was in a hotel coffee shop. They split up and must have met later to work out the details. Next time we picked up on the targets they looked pretty beat-up.”
“That’s how Peritti puts a deal together,” Mitchell said. “If the other guy doesn’t like the terms he gets his teeth kicked in.”
“Assuming a deal was put together,” came the voice of Sergeant Theophile O’Doull.
“The deal was put together,” Mitchell said. “Kerrivan isn’t floating down the St. Lawrence River, is he? Peritti gets his way.” He studied O’Doull for a long moment. “What’s eating your ass, anyway?”
“I didn’t expect that,” O’Doull said. “I never thought Pete would get involved with that kind of people.”
“W
hat kind of people?”
“Organized crime.”
“Organized crime?” Mitchell snorted hard. “What do you think this is all about, Theo? Kerrivan is organized crime. Get with it.”
Mitchell wished that O’Doull would act more like a cop. If the man had not made himself invaluable, Mitchell would have given him the can.
Theophile O’Doull, Thewf the Newf, had come out of the bowels of the central crime detection laboratory in Ottawa. He had been flown to Newfoundland — where he had been born and raised — and showed up in Mitchell’s office in a lumpy, off-the-rack suit, pale and stammering and apologizing. He told Mitchell he had been up all night worrying; Kerrivan and Kelly had been his boyhood friends. He was too close to them. Mitchell gruffly explained that a professional puts emotion aside.
That did not seem to content O’Doull, but he became Mitchell’s voice man, anyway.
Mitchell could not quite bring into the focus of his mind a picture of O’Doull playing right wing on a line with Peter Kerrivan. But that’s what his talent scout had said: O’Doull and Kerrivan played hockey together for St. Joseph’s Secondary in St. John’s. Along with Kelly, they shared a dormitory for four years, shot pool, and dated girls together, worked together one summer on the same fishing boat.
Mitchell’s mind, not given to fantasy, composed these 1960s pictures with blurred images. O’Doull was given to fantasy, and seemed to daydream through his shifts while still managing, in a manner not understood by Mitchell, to do the work of ten.
The experienced drug team which Mitchell had assembled for Operation Potship — even before the budget was approved — would describe O’Doull as straight. The street-wise undercover experts ranged from mod to longhair. The wiretap people and the surveillance group were, at worst, contemporary in their choice of grooming. O’Doull, on the other hand, looked like a throwback to the 1950s — not a hint of sideburns; basic cowlick hairdo. He was sallow and rangy, there was a boyishness about him, a quick, nervous manner of speaking. Bob Newhart, with a St. John’s brogue.
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