In the living room she found Porges standing in front of the stone fireplace, looking out at the distant view. He turned toward her and said slowly, “I’ve been given three weeks to train you. That’s not a whole lot of time.”
“I’m a quick learner,” she said confidently, sitting on the long white sofa without any newcomer awkwardness.
Sitting beside her, Porges said, “The narco-crowd calls the U.S. ‘I-95’ because their lines of white stretch from coast to coast like the lines of the interstates. In order to protect their highway, they’ve developed some highly sophisticated techniques to spot undercovers. You’re going to have to be good, real good, or else you’re gonna be real dead.” He crossed his legs and looked thoughtfully at the backs of his weathered, tanned hands. “Most times when the dopers make an undercover they first try and turn him. If that doesn’t work, they kill ’im. But when they discover one of their own has turned informer, they murder him slow and painful like. But before they take out the informer they’ll murder his entire family, even the pets. Most folks figure they do that to discourage others with similar inclinations. But there is another, more important reason for wiping out an informer’s entire family. Can you tell me what that reason might be?”
She crossed her legs, her foot jiggling, eyebrows knitted in concentration. She looked at Porges. “They don’t want to leave anyone alive to even up the score in later years.”
“And what does that tell you about our macho drug barons?”
“They aren’t in a hurry to die.”
A grudging smile appeared on Porges’s mouth. “You just passed your first test.” He turned and looked out the window at the twilight inching over the mountains. “Dinner’ll be soon, so why don’t I fill you in on the rules of this hotel.”
Three days later, a little before nine in the morning, Captain Dave Katz, the XO of Narcotics, walked into his boss’s office on the ninth floor of police headquarters and handed him an envelope marked “Personal.”
Too Tall Paulie took a pull at his morning coffee, put down the cup, took a switchblade out of the top drawer, and sliced open the flap. The letter was from his niece, Fiona, who was a junior at UVA. She wrote to tell him that she loved her classes in the summer school and was studying hard.
Sliding the note back into the envelope, Chief Burke got up from his seat, switched on the shredder, and fed the envelope into the slot until the growling machine devoured it. Slipping back onto his seat, he asked his XO, “Anything on the leaks?”
“I did backgrounds and currents on all our people, and only came up with two in-house relationships.”
“No one driving around in a Lamborghini?”
“Like all good cops, they’re deep in hock. And the lovers are all single, and straight, so there’s no blackmail card to play. I don’t believe that there is a leak out of this office.”
Rolling his cup between his palms, Too Tall Paulie asked matter-of-factly, “What do you know about the deep undercovers in the Job?”
Katz was obviously startled by the question. “Only rumors. They’re supposedly run by Joey-the-G-Man. Paid lieutenant’s money, and covered by medical plans of corporations with Agency or DEA connections.”
Adopting a serious expression, Burke said, “Our own undercovers leave a paper trail, don’t they?”
“Not much of one. Their records are pulled, and they’re given phony legends, including yellow sheets.”
“I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how the dopers made our people.”
“Me too.” Katz’s gloomy countenance suddenly lit up. “Well, anyway, I’ve got some good news for a change. Lloyds of Medellin is going to be making a run off Sandy Hook sometime in the next few days. A freighter left Cuba four days ago, and has been off-loading keys of coke and some heroin along our eastern seaboard. The Joint Task has been angeling off it since she made her first drop.”
“Where did their information come from?”
“A DEA subagent in Mexico.” A gleeful sparkle glowed in Katz’s eyes. “And the mule who is going to make the pickup is Roberto Barrios.”
“The Thin Man?”
“The one and only. A Joint Task Force CI named Cupcake has been working Barrios for about a week. He’s using a rented cabin cruiser to make the pickup. There should be at least three hundred keys. And when Barrios ties up, our people are going to swarm all over him. The Thin Man is going to have to roll over or spend the rest of his life doing push-ups in a twelve-by-nine cell.”
Roberto Barrios slid out of bed and padded into the bathroom. After urinating, he stepped on the scale and frowned upon seeing that he had gained two pounds. He quickly resolved to go back to his own apartment and get on his exercise treadmill. That disgusting weight was going to be burned off by that evening.
Back in the bedroom, he gathered up his clothes and dressed. Buttoning his shirt, he looked down at the sleeping face and thought regretfully, What a waste. Too bad you asked one too many questions about my business, my love, he thought, sliding a tinfoil packet out of his pocket and placing it on the night table. Tenderly brushing a wisp of hair from her face, he bent down and kissed her lips.
Her eyes flashed open. Stretching, she asked, “What time is it?”
“A little after ten.”
“Do you have to go so soon?” she cooed, holding up her arms. She was a tall woman with straight, dirty blond hair and small but beautifully shaped breasts and gray eyes.
“Business, my love, regrettably.”
She pouted and asked tentatively, “Will I see you tonight?”
“Of course. Why don’t we have dinner?”
“Oh, I’d love to.” She flopped back on the bed and watched Barrios tie his shoes. “Hey, that was a super party at that club. Thanks for introducing me to Alejandro. He’s someone really special.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a dead fuck.”
She sat up, startled. “What do you mean? I thought he was your friend.”
“No, chica, he’s not my friend. He’s Che-Che’s friend—and if you fuck him, you’re dead.” Tapping the packet, he said in a more friendly tone, “I’ve left you a little present.”
She yawned amorously. “Oooooo, thank you, Roberto.”
Later that morning, Cupcake would get up and make herself a cup of coffee. While sitting at the kitchen table, she would empty the contents of the foil onto the Formica and, using a razor blade, rake the white powder into a thin line. With her face lowered to the powder, she would press one nostril closed with her finger and with the other suck up the line into her beautiful young body. Six minutes later Cupcake’s heart would come to an abrupt, dead stop.
Barrios liked to call his special blend of heroin and cocaine the “Fink’s Fizz.”
Alejandro and Seaver had long ago developed an elaborate signaling system to arrange a meeting. They had memorized a list of meeting places that were determined by what day the meet was set for. If Seaver needed to see him, he would telephone Alejandro’s home and ask for “Frank.” The meeting would always be scheduled for 1:00 P.M. when Seaver called it.
When Alejandro needed to see Seaver, he would telephone a local number cutout and, using his code name, Chilebean, tell the person who answered the day and time of the meet. The day he called the meeting would determine the meeting location.
Early this morning Alejandro had received a wrong numbers call for Frank. He grabbed a sneaker out of the wastebasket on the side of his bed and tossed it across the room.
The wide steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were crowded with people, lounging, eating, and taking in the Fifth Avenue view. The air smelled of spring, and the sky was blue.
Alejandro entered the museum and strolled into the Equestrian Court, a great room filled with ornate swords, helmets, and shields; suits of armored figures on horseback; and flags bearing the coats of arms of knights of the Round Table. Taking his time, he studied each exhibit, moving slowly over to the sumptuously and exquisitely detailed parade armor o
f Henry II; but periodically he would glance around carefully to check out the people around him. After viewing the armor, and seeing nothing to be concerned about, he thought, Now’s a good time. Quickly but unobtrusively he left the great court, passed through the rotunda, left the building, and stood under the entrance portico.
Bright early summer afternoon sunlight fell across the avenue, reaching halfway up the museum’s steps before the huge building’s shadow cast the rest in deep shade.
It was just after 1:00 P.M. when a taxi with a roof billboard advertising Coors Light pulled away from the curb on the west side of Fifth Avenue and drew up in front of the museum.
Alejandro climbed into the rear and told the driver, “Union Square Park.”
Andy Seaver reached out and turned on the meter. Watching the traffic, he inched out into the roadway, saying, “The CI who introduced Levi and DiLeo to the Cleopatra network was publicly executed Friday. They used an anaconda to crush him to death on the stage of a crack movie house.”
Alejandro slumped back onto his seat. “That’ll send a powerful message to the faithful.”
“Narcotics had three undercovers inside. They reported that the leader of the assassination team was a tall, well-dressed guy, with pockmarked cheeks and a streak of white hair running down the center of his head.”
“So?”
“So after DiLeo and Levi were whacked, Too Tall Paulie had every Ghost assigned to the Savoy caper questioned. No one saw anything, except two female detectives who had been assigned to the lobby. They remembered a tall, handsome, well-dressed man with pockmarked cheeks and a streak of white hair down the center of his head. They watched him get off the elevator around the time of the hit and walk out of the lobby.”
Alejandro leaned forward. “What else did they notice about this guy?”
“That’s it.”
“Did you try and match up the description with anyone in the files?”
“We did and came up with zilch.” He stopped for a red light at Sixty-seventh Street. “We have information that Lloyds of Medellin will be making a run off the coast sometime soon, and that Roberto Barrios, the mule from the Savoy, is the one who is going to be lassoing the dope from the sea.”
“Is Barrios a mule, a transshipper, or is he in business for himself?”
Seaver cursed softly as he swerved to avoid a jaywalking pedestrian. “Dunno. Barrios and White Streak could be freelancers hired by Cleopatra for specific jobs.”
“All the big narco-guys are full of that macho loyalty bullshit; they use only family to carry out important jobs. Remember, the real queen demanded loyalty from her subjects and her court.”
The light turned green.
Seaver said, “The joint NYPD and DEA task force are angeling off this shipment. They’re planning on scooping Barrios up and turning him.” His eyes darted up to the rearview mirror. “How do you want to work this?”
“I think me and Barrios should become amigos.”
8
Alejandro paid Seaver what was on the meter and got out at Union Square Park. Always act normally in public, was one of the sacred tenets taught him at the Hacienda. Porges constantly reminded him of the DEA undercover who was blown in Chicago several years ago because a doper saw him get out of a decoy taxi without paying the fare.
Head lowered in thought, he walked up the steps leading into the commons. There was a farmers market today outside the park’s northern boundary, where he could get corn tortillas and beans. He was in the mood for some Mexican home-style food. He thought better with the taste of authentic home-grown in his mouth.
During the ride downtown, he and Seaver had decided to warn Barrios that the Joint Federal Task Force was on to the Medellin shipment. They had figured that it was worth exposing a small part of the operation to the dopers in order for Alejandro to ingratiate himself with the only known link to the Cleopatra network. The problem Alejandro now faced was to think of some plausible way for him to have come into possession of this information and to think of a way of warning Barrios.
He strolled through the park. A big area around the ornate flagpole had been fenced off to keep out the junkies. A large fence also surrounded the children’s playground, which formerly had been littered with hypodermic needles. Homeless men, their stolen shopping carts overflowing with their possessions, hogged most of the benches. Schoolgirls from Saint Mary’s Academy, sparkling clean in their white blouses and black-and-gray tartan skirts, cast their eyes downward and quickened their steps as they passed the drug dealer stationed at the Park Avenue South entrance. The dealer hissed buzz words at the hurrying girls, “Yo, girls, free golden blow, makes you feel gooood.”
Alejandro checked the time: 2:10 P.M. He had a three o’clock call to rehearse new material with the band. Wandering toward the dealer, he looked out across Fourteenth Street at the construction skeleton of a high-rise building, one of many around the city that had been abandoned as a result of the savings and loan debacle.
Moving into the farmers market, Alejandro saw a laborer off-loading crates of fruit from a truck. He was a short man with the flat cheekbones and thick lips typical of the people who came from the harsh mountains of Guerrero. Going over to him, he said in Spanish, “You’re a long way from home, amigo. How goes it?”
The man slid a crate of grapes onto his shoulder and said, “I was a peasant at home and I’m a peasant here.”
“You’re making a lot more money here.”
“What you make here, you leave here,” he said, and walked off with his burden.
Alejandro shrugged and walked over to the mobile restaurant and ordered his lunch. Biting into a hot tortilla, he became conscious of the conversation of two Spanish women standing a few feet away. They were drinking espresso from plastic cups. One of them was lamenting how she thought her husband was cheating on her because of his sudden need to work late every night. Leaning closer to her friend, she confided, “He hardly touches me anymore.” Her friend suggested that she search his clothes for telltale credit card receipts and matchbooks.
Alejandro finished his tortilla and tossed the napkin into the plastic-lined trash barrel. Hurrying out of the market onto Seventeenth Street, he saw that traffic was bottlenecked at Park Avenue South. A jackhammer’s harsh rat-ta-ta added to the urban clamor. He looked across the street at an abandoned five-story stately building with rich cast-iron architecture. A lone ventilation fan on the top floor was spinning. He was barely able to make out the fading sign over the entrance: American Drapery and Carpet Company. A dead business in a dying city, he thought, deciding to walk to the club.
The acrid odor of cleaning solvents and disinfectants perfumed the air inside of the Environment.
It was three o’clock, and the club was beginning to stir. Deliveries of food and liquor were being invoiced under the steward’s watchful eyes. Two cleaning men mopped, and swept, and polished. On stage Alejandro rehearsed a bachata, a pan-Hispanic salsa. The band, which included a güiro and a two-headed tambara drum, played the rhythm while the trumpeter belted out the melody. Alejandro was next to the conga player woodshedding the lyrics, “Chu, chu, chu, cha, cha, du, du, ba, cha.” His lips began swaying to the bachata’s propulsive rhythms. Then he sang the words, summoning up the atmosphere of tropical love-making. He had just finished making the song fit his style when a familiar voice called out his name. He looked up to see his manager, Josh Budofsky, approaching.
A tall, saturnine man in his early thirties clad in black jeans and a black leather blazer, Budofsky had taken Alejandro on as a client eighteen months ago on the recommendation of Che-Che Morales. “Great lyrics.”
“Glad you like it,” Alejandro said, sitting at the edge of the stage and dangling his feet.
“I really wish you’d join the twentieth century and buy an answering machine. You’re never home, and whenever I need to talk to you, I have to hunt you down.”
Alejandro made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I don’t like machine
s. What’s up?”
“I gave your tape and the live video to Paul Belmont at Epic, and he liked it. A lot.”
“So when do we sign the contracts?”
“Belmont likes your style, the way you control your audience.”
“Cut to the ‘but,’ Josh.”
Budofsky looked down at his black Nikes in embarrassment. “He sees a problem packaging you. Says you’re too Latin. Your kind of music gets ’em clapping and shouting in the Caribbean and South America, but it doesn’t have staying power in the States. He suggests we repackage you.”
“Yeah? What does he have in mind, bluegrass and salsa?”
“More the international type,” Budofsky said. “We change you, make a real video that would do for VH-1, and then go back to Belmont.
“Josh, my style of singing is who I am; it’s me.” Me! he thought. I’m not sure who “me” is. An Irishman? A Mexican? A Tarascan Indian? A singer? An undercover cop?
“The majors have all brought over big-name Latin singers and spent a fortune trying to break them into the American market. Every one of them flopped.”
“Julio?”
“European, and he draws big with men and women.”
Alejandro shook his head wearily. “I don’t know what to tell you, Josh. What you see is what you’ve got.”
“We’ll change you, just a little. Maybe hire someone to create a new persona for you, mixing the old and the new.”
“I’ll think it over.”
“And I’ll be in touch in a few days.”
Watching his manager walk across the dance floor, Alejandro wondered what Josh would say if he knew about his secret life. Getting up, he looked at the band and said, “Let’s do it.”
Lopez’s tire store, on the north side of 119th Street near the corner of Manhattan Avenue, was another dilapidated building on a street that belonged only to the poor. Most of the buildings on the block had all their windows and doors cinder-blocked. But on this street of blight there were three designer jewelry stores, four high-fashion boutiques, and two travel agencies, all of which were fronts to launder drug money. These businesses were the first stop for millions of drug dollars that would go overseas dirty and come back clean.
Cleopatra Gold Page 7