Cleopatra Gold

by William Caunitz

  “This one is unusually dangerous. It has too many pitfalls.” Seaver was clearly digging in his heels.

  “I want Cleopatra.”

  Seaver heaved a resigned sigh. “How’d you ever think this one up?”

  “Last time you sent me back to the Hacienda for training, I got friendly with some of the Delta Force guys. They were demonstrating Parapoint. They explained to me how it worked, and I just filed it away in the back of my head. And bang, I’m talking with Barrios and it popped out.”

  Seaver lit up a cigar and blew smoke at Alejandro. “I’m familiar with that system, and I know that it happens to have NO-FORM stenciled all over it: ‘No Foreign Dissemination.’ That includes undercovers of the NYPD. So how the hell do you expect to get your hands on one of them?”

  Alejandro’s voice took on an urgent, pleading note. “The club is closed Sunday. Early Sunday morning we’ll hop a flight to the Hacienda, schmooze around with some of the Delta Force guys, tell ’em what we need, and they’ll lend it to us.”

  Seaver laughed and said, “Bullshit. Those guys won’t even give you the time of day unless they get the word in quintuplicate.”

  “What do we have to lose, Andy?”

  “You realize, I guess, that this stunt would more than likely require you to go outside the country, without any backup.”

  “So?” Alejandro felt the tide was beginning to flow his way.

  “So the United States, by treaty, is pledged to notify nations of the insertion of any U.S. police officer on official business into their sovereign territory.”

  Alejandro brushed aside the objection with a wave of his hand. “Andy, I’m a singer. ‘Soy un hombre sincero …’” he sang.

  Seaver examined the glowing end of his cheroot. “Barrios is playing with you. Before he dances he’s going to want to see how you’re going to get his stuff in. Then he’ll try to steal it from you. Then he’ll kill you if he has to. But before any of that, he’s going to need answers to questions. Like why the sudden change from singer to doper.”

  “Greed. ’At’s something every doper can bond to.”

  Seaver still looked doubtful. “And how does a singer of enchiladas know about Parapoint, and how does he manage to get hold of one, or two, or three of them?”

  “I read about them in a magazine; then I bribed someone in the military or the Agency to get them.”

  Seaver shook his head. “Bribery won’t work. They’ll want to meet your source.”

  Alejandro scratched his neck, smiled, and told Seaver the legend he’d thought up to explain how he came into possession of Parapoint.

  Seaver laughed. “That’s good. Those Latinos can’t deal with that. It blows their minds. I’ll research and see if Parapoint was ever mentioned in the public media.” He dragged on his cigar. “You’re going to need a public source for this thing to work.” He took the cheroot out of his mouth, studied the glowing ember, and asked, “Is Barrios working for Che-Che?”

  “I asked Che-Che that. He told me no. I don’t believe him. Recently I saw two Chinese dopers engaged in some heavy-duty conversation with him. And the shipment that they had to turn back was part China White, which the Chinese control. I’m beginning to think that maybe Che-Che has branched out from transshipping to dealing heroin.”

  “Cleopatra Gold?”

  “Could be.” He moved close to Mother Hen. “We’d deliver the stuff, let them bring it to their distribution warehouse, and then leak the locations to the good guys. We might even be able to get a line on their money warehouses.”

  Seaver plunged the cheroot back into his mouth and said, “We could really hurt them.”

  Alejandro knew he’d just made a sale.

  Whiggham Associates was located on the ninth floor of a gray building on Duane Street, close to the city’s old butter and egg market.

  The reception area’s floor and ceiling were laid with a blue acoustical tile, and the windowless room was floored in an orange shag carpet. A painting of Christ on the cross had three plastic roses stuck on top of the golden frame. Two husky men, both of whom needed a shave, were playing dominoes on a low-slung coffee table with an imitation marble top. A burly man with a scar running from his right ear to the edge of his thick lips was sitting at the desk flipping through Gentlemen’s Quarterly. A short, fat man sat in front of the television, kneading and rubbing his hands as he watched a pornographic movie.

  A door led into a large, tastefully furnished office where Hector Pizzaro, the doper with the signature white streak of hair and pockmarked cheeks, spent a good part of his day working behind a rosewood desk on which stood stacks of photographs of NYPD graduation classes. A computer at the side of the desk had intelligence banks that contained copies of the City Record, the city’s legal newspaper that published the names of all civil servant appointments, and all other information affecting the municipal government, from contracts to the schedule of road repairs. Another file contained the name of every municipal civil servant filed by the department or agency they belonged to, including the NYPD’s Force Record File. Another contained the city comptroller’s payroll sheets and a complete list of subscribers to the city’s various health and welfare plans. There was a special file containing the Police Department’s Special Orders, which listed all appointments, promotions, transfers, assignments, resignations, retirements, suspensions, dismissals, and leaves of absence. And deaths.

  Most of Whiggham Associates’ records came from easily obtainable public sources. The payroll records cost Pizzaro two grams of cocaine and two hundred dollars a month. The police records were more expensive, five grams and five hundred dollars. It was a small price to pay for such high-grade intelligence. Pizzaro brushed a hand through his hair and looked over at the table containing stacks of SPRING 3100, The Magazine for the Department by the Department. He pulled out one that had a paste-on attached to its pages and flipped it open to the page.

  The seven-year-old magazine had a photograph in the middle of page forty-two of the members of Brooklyn North’s TNT Unit, which had recently shut down two warehouses for manufacturing and distributing crack. Money and weapons and bags of glassine envelopes covered a table in the photograph, and behind it stood the members of the arresting team. Levi and DiLeo were in the middle of the group, their arms around each other.

  Pizzaro was constantly amazed at the incredible stupidity of the police in allowing its members to pose for pictures in a Department magazine that anyone could subscribe to. He flipped through the pages, looking at grinning faces at picnics and boat rides. “Stupid,” he muttered, sitting squarely in front of the computer and inputting “Alejandro Monahan” into the data bank containing the Force Record File. No record. He next ran the name through the Article Two Retirement list. No record. After finding no record of the name in the health plan data bank, he called up the names of all Monahans employed by any of the city’s departments or agencies. He pressed the Print button and watched the laser printer churn up printouts. His beeper went off; looking down at the number in its LED display, he grabbed his cellular telephone.

  Without ceremony, Morales’s voice at the other end asked, “What have you discovered about Roberto and the dead crack-head?”

  “She might have been an informer. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Make sure.”

  Pizzaro bit down on his lip. “I will.”

  “Levi and DiLeo got too close to us. I will not want any weak links.”

  Pizzaro’s stomach went hollow. “I understand.”

  “I hope you do, Hector,” Che-Che said, and he disconnected.

  Pizzaro inputted the code that admitted him into the Associates File, a data bank that contained the names and pedigree of every person who introduced outsides to members of the crew. These names were then cross-referenced with those of any member of the crew who was later arrested. When Pizzaro had seen that Jordon Hayes had introduced members to someone who had turned out to be a cop, and then the same Jordon Hayes had introduce
d Levi and DiLeo, he knew that he was dealing with a police informer and a couple of undercover narcotics detectives. The reason he had not caught it sooner was that the Associates File had been not his idea, but Judith’s, and had only recently been opened.

  Alejandro’s name elicited one response: Alejandro Monahan had introduced banker Franklin Penzer to the network. Hector leaned back, knitting his hands behind his head, staring at the screen. After remaining in that position for several minutes, he arched his finger down on the intercom button and said, “Judith, I need to see you.”

  A door opened on the side of his office to reveal a console of sophisticated communications equipment and a bank of computers. A statuesque, well-dressed woman in a very short skirt and white silk blouse, fortyish, with dense black hair, high cheekbones, thick lips, and deeply tanned skin, came in holding a white legal pad. She sat on the chair at the side of his desk and asked in a throaty voice, “What’s up?”

  “One of Roberto Barrios’s loves OD’ed. She’s being buried Tuesday, and I want you to attend the funeral. There’s a good possibility that she was an informer, and if she was, her control will show up for her funeral. Cops bond with their informers. They feel a misplaced sense of guilt whenever one of the pigs is exposed and eliminated. Take some people with you and get photographs and license plate numbers.”

  “Okay.” She crossed her legs.

  “A shipment had to be diverted because of a leak. If Roberto’s girlfriend was an informer, then our dear Roberto was the source, which means he’s getting pussy blind. So he’s a liability.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “Mix with the mourners, and—”

  She rolled her eyes. “Hector, I know what to do.”

  “I know you do,” he said, looking down at her long, legs. “One more thing. A singer named Alejandro Monahan introduced some of our people to a banker named Franklin Penzer from Tortola in the British Virgins. His bank is in Road Town, the island’s capital. We’re laundering some of our money with him. I want to send someone to the islands to have a look at the bank and Mr. Penzer, make sure it isn’t being run from Washington.”

  “Want me to go?”

  “No. I need you here.” Looking down at the shiny black stockings hugging her thighs, he added, “Besides, I’d miss you. Send one of those asshole lawyers we have on the payroll.”

  “I’ll see to it,” she said, and got up to leave.

  His eyes slid over her body, fixing on her lips. Taking hold of her hand, he said, “Before you go, I’d like you to do something for me.”

  A smile crossed her mouth, and she slid her pad onto the desk and said, “Don’t mess my hair.”

  9

  A lazy Sunday morning hush had fallen over Charlottesville, Virginia. The parking lot of the First Presbyterian Church was filled with worshipers’ automobiles. On the campus of the University of Virginia students strolled toward the library. And in the distance a ribbon of puffy clouds drifted over the mountains. Off in the west a Mooney 201 single-engine aircraft skimmed over the gently rolling hills of the Jenkins farm.

  Fiona Lee eased back on the yoke, and the craft zoomed up into the sky.

  Ted Porges was in the copilot’s seat. “You’re a natural behind that stick.”

  “I’ve been flying since I was fifteen.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  Four minutes later Fiona Lee eased the yoke forward, cut back on the throttle, and lowered the flaps as she lined up the Mooney 201 with the Hacienda’s landing strip.

  Porges deliberately watched the avionics as the runway rose to meet them. The wheels touched down as the craft glided to an effortless landing. Fiona taxied over to the Jeep parked on the edge of the tarmac, cut the engine, and watched the propeller come to a complete stop.

  During the ride back to the Hacienda, Porges said, “The narco boys are always in the market for pilots.” Fiona’s face glowed at the understated praise.

  A short time later Porges and the woman known to him only as Mary Beth were seated in a timbered room with a large stone fireplace and a glass wall facing the mountains. Porges picked up a remote module and flicked on the VCR. The surveillance film that filled the screen showed two men crossing Manhattan’s Canal Street. One of them was carrying a gray cloth bag.

  “The guy on the right is Reyes Costas, and the other one is Che-Che Morales. Reyes is the head honcho for the Medellin in the States. Morales is in charge of transshipping their drugs into the States, mainly from Mexico. He also handles shipments for the Calí. He’s an inventive guy, it makes him valuable to both cartels. That bag that Reyes is lugging around with him is full of quarters. He only conducts business from public telephones. Now, here are some things I want you to remember about these two men.…”

  The man standing on the soccer field wearing army fatigues was Sergeant Dave Pollack, of the Delta Force’s Garbage Disposal Machine. He, Alejandro, and Seaver were all staring off to the southeast. Alejandro was holding a handset that resembled a portable telephone with an extended telescopic antenna. There were two toggle switches on the handset’s faceplate.

  The three men watched the sky.

  Sixty miles away, flying at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, a “black” Beech King Air 350 with only registration markings banked to the south. Aboard the craft, a Garbage Disposal Machine sergeant wearing an oxygen mask opened the floor hatch in the depressurized cabin and stood back, tugging on a static line. Seeing it was secure, he moved over to the opening and tossed out the parachute.

  The bundle toppled to the earth.

  The static line went taut, unzipping the pack. The Ram Air canopy streamed out of the bundle and billowed open, the force of the deployment jerking the chute upward before it settled into its graceful glide toward the earth.

  “Chute deployed,” radioed the sergeant aboard the Beech King.

  The men on the soccer field searched the sky. Seaver bit down on the end of his cheroot. Alejandro turned to the Delta Force sergeant and said, “Tell me again how this thing works.”

  Pollack stuck his thumbs behind his olive-colored webbed belt and said, “The Parapoint delivery system can deliver up to one thousand pounds of equipment onto a dime from sixty miles away and an altitude of thirty thousand feet. The risers—those are the lines coming down from the canopy—are connected to the steering toggles. A black box fifteen inches square and two inches deep is attached to the steering lines, and suspended between the servos. Inside this box is a motor that’s powered by a nicad, nickel cadmium battery, and a radio receiver that gets its signals from the homing transmitter in your hand. Those signals reel in and let out the steering toggles according to the messages the black box gets from the homing transmitter; it acts like a magnet drawing the chute to it.”

  “What about the switches on the transmitter?” Chilebean asked.

  “They’re only used if you need to operate the system manually. Like if you were in a forest and had to guide the chute through trees in order to prevent it from getting hung up.”

  Squinting at the speck gliding toward them in the distance, Chilebean asked, “What about wind?”

  Pollack said, “The chute must be deployed upwind so that there is no wind resistance. When it’s over the homing transmitter it’ll automatically turn itself into the wind in order to decrease its rate of descent.” Pointing, he said, “Here it comes.”

  They watched in silence as the white blossom grew larger and larger.

  “The revolver is the weapon of choice of narco assassins,” Porges was telling Mary Beth. “They like them because they don’t jam, they’re safe, and they’re double action. Now when they have to take out more than one person at a time, they’ll use …” His voice trailed off when he realized that she had focused her attention elsewhere. He followed her gaze outside to the gliding parachute. “Delta Force must be having a Sunday training exercise.”

  “But there’s nobody strapped in the parachute,” she said, getting up and walking over to th
e glass wall.

  The white canopy panels reminded Alejandro of a swan, elegant and princely, gliding smoothly down to earth. It passed directly over their heads, made a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn into the wind, and toppled onto the grass.

  Going to the chute, Alejandro, known to Pollack only by his code name Chilebean, asked the sergeant, “Does it work like this every time?”

  Gathering up the canopy and enfolding it within its own lines, Pollack said, “Yeah. It’s a picture-perfect operation all the time.” He stopped gathering the chute and said as an afterthought, “Unless you try to use it in high winds. These babies proved highly effective when the company guys used them for drops in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

  Helping him wrap it, Chilebean said, “I need to borrow a few of them for a couple of days.”

  Pollack went about his work, his brow lowered in concentration. “Well, guess you’re going to have to contact someone high in the Agency, DEA, or Army, ’cause sure as shit ain’t no one here with the authority to lend ’em out.”

  Seaver plucked the cheroot from his mouth, spit out a piece of tobacco, and asked the sergeant, “Ever read anything about Parapoint in any civilian magazines or newspapers?”

  Anchoring the equipment under his boots, Pollack studied the sky thoughtfully. “Yeah, a while back I read an article in the New York Times about how we supplied the Mujahadin. I think there was something in Aviation Week, too.”

  “Parapoint’s maximum load is a thousand pounds?” Chilebean asked.

  “Yes,” the soldier answered, “at least this new model. The early ones handled a lot less.”

  Chilebean’s mental calculations told him that worked out to 2,200 kilos a chute. Five chutes, 11,000 kilos of China White. “Can four or five chutes be deployed at the same time and guided in by one transmitter?”

  “Don’t see why not, if they’re deployed all at once. I mean, shoved out real fast,” Pollack said.

  Chilebean looked at Mother Hen and asked, “Wanna go into the parachute business?”