The Pierre Hotel Affair

by Daniel Simone

  NICK SACCO

  Since the night of the robbery, I hadn’t spoken to Comfort or Nalo. I had no reason to. I didn’t even stay in touch with Frankos, Visconti, and Germaine because we all got lost somewhere away from the New York area. I for one had taken a hike and flew to Miami Beach not only to get away from the Pierre heat but to get some sun as well. I stayed at the Fontainebleau and never in my life did I see so many hookers in a hotel. But the real shocker was when the headlines in the Miami Herald jumped out at me.

  A SUSPECT IN THE MANHATTAN

  PIERRE HOTEL ROBBERY APPREHENDED

  Naturally, it threw me for a loop, and from down there I couldn’t find out anything else. Under no circumstances would we talk about things like this by telephone. The possibility of one of our phones being tapped was always there. And yes, I was shitting a brick, losing sleep that Comfort might rat us all out. But as much as I had been itching to know what was happening, until it all cooled down I sure as hell would not chance going anywhere near New York.

  CHAPTER 46

  The assistant manager at the Circus Club told Matt Hammer and John Masters that he did know of a regular here by the name of Sammy the Arab, and it was likely he might be here at this very moment. Tonight, the Circus was a full house of approximately 310 debased, horny rowdies, a hoard of chimpanzees in heat.

  “Oh yeah,” the manager said, snickering in the manner that said, I know a secret you don’t know. “Sammy comes in and goes. A lot of times he waits ’til that one there dancing right now ends her gig, and he takes her wherever.”

  “Is her name Felicia Blanca?” Masters asked.

  “Yep, that’s her,” said the obese, pear-shaped manager. “If you wanna talk to Felicia, she’s about to end her last gig of the night.” He let that hang a while, deciding whether to ask a question that maybe he shouldn’t. “By the way, are you cops or something?”

  “Something like that,” Hammer answered. “Know Sammy’s last name?”

  “Nope. What kind of business are you guys in anyway?”

  “The kind that’s none of your business,” Masters answered.

  Rotating lights, yellow, red, white, blue, and green flounced from one end of the stage to the other, and a pinkish spotlight shone on Felicia. Her gyrations and provocative gestures that left nothing to the imagination were inciting thirty or forty male spectators who were sidling, or rather hugging the edges of the square stage, flinging dollar bills and hollering obscenities at the unabashed performer. Judging by the hypertensive body language of the roused crowd, these men’s faces, laced with perspiration, were the picture of savage sexual hunger as they, so overly excited, pounced on the stage floor, tongues pitching at the dancer, whose body was her only asset. And under the hot lights, disco music was beating loudly, and the topless Felicia, the Chiquita Latina, thrust parts of her petite but well-endowed build in sync with the song’s tempo. She was dancing to an Eddie Kendrick’s tune: Boogie Down . . . Boogie Down, the catchy beat stirring the adrenaline, stoking the untamed libidos.

  Fitzgibbons and Bermudez were at home in this atmosphere. Hammer and Masters, on the other hand, were repulsed. On the whole, FBI agents are academically educated and more polished than the typical NYPD detective. Bermudez had only mustered a GED certificate, though he blamed his lack of focus as a child and scholastic failure on not having known his biological father.

  “Here’s something interesting, Ed. It’s a rarity for two Puerto Rican siblings to have the same father. When into a relationship, the minute the woman gets pregnant the man moves on. This is true. No joke,” Masters imparted to Hammer.

  Bemused, Hammer pursed his lips. “I didn’t know that.”

  Masters moved in close to where Bermudez and Fitzgibbons were standing. The two seemed enraptured by the stage show. “Instead of getting your dicks hard over the pole dancer, scan the crowd for our target.” He stepped back and spoke into Hammer’s ear, “It’s going to be a long night with these guys. I can’t wait to get away from these two and their low-life mentalities.”

  “I hear you, John. I hear you,” Hammer said.

  The search for Sammy the Arab at the Circus Club was a futile exercise, but not all was lost. The quartet of lawmen was bringing the barely-of-legal-age Felicia Blanca to her Manhattan apartment for a change of more, relatively speaking, decent clothes—even when off-duty this class of ladies put on display lots of skin—and, who knew—she might lead them to Sammy. Felicia, too, was an illegal immigrant and had vowed to Masters and Hammer she’d help anyway she could. “I no want problem with Immigration.”

  Throughout the drive to New York City, Hammer asked Felicia, who was a bundle of nerves in the rear seat, a host of questions, beginning with, “What’s Sammy’s surname?”

  “Surname?”

  For a moment, Hammer had forgotten Felicia’s limited English. “A last name.”

  “Oh, I no know. When we go out, he use new name.”

  Hammer could not understand how was it possible for these girls, who knew this Sammy, not to bother to ask for his last name? But for that element the answer was not a complicated one. The likes of Felicia were only interested in what they could siphon from a man addicted to women—dinners in fine restaurants, fur coats and jewelry, nightclub-hopping, and non-repayable loans—so who cared what Sammy’s last name was? By the same token, Sammy wasn’t interested in love affairs but only dalliances.

  “What’s your relationship with Sammy?”

  She answered tentatively, “Oh, nothing. He take me to good restaurant or night club, you know.”

  “And what do you do for him,” Masters asked coyly.

  Hammer waved at Masters and said in a hush, “I’d lay off that, John. We don’t want this girl to feel we’re putting her on the spot.” He swung behind him and asked Felicia, “Does Sammy have another place?”

  A few moments of silence passed. “I . . . I know he got apartment on Long Island . . . his wife there.” Felicia paused. “He got place in the Bronx too, but I there one time. I no remember the street.”

  “You don’t know where in the Bronx?”

  Felicia shook her head, fearing her helplessness might push Hammer and Masters to refer her and Lulu to the INS for a free flight back to Colombia.

  Hammer discerned Felicia’s apprehension and said, “It’s all right. Take your time and think, and maybe something will come to mind. For instance, was the apartment near a landmark or something that you remember?”

  “I . . . I think it was not far from that big place where you Americanos play with the ball and the bat.”

  “Yankee Stadium?” Hammer said in a higher octave. This could be the breakthrough to trap Sammy.

  “Yes, yes, Jankee Stadiom.”

  “Yankee Stadium,” Hammer repeated to ensure they both meant the same landmark. “Well, good. We’ll take you to that area in the Bronx, and you may recognize the street.”

  “Can my roommate, Lulu, come too?” she asked timidly.

  “If it makes you feel better, yes,” Hammer answered.

  When they entered Felicia Blanca’s sparsely furnished studio apartment, Lulu looked perturbed as she saw her roommate in the company of four men. She towed Felicia by the arm into the bathroom. “¿Porqué usted se volvió aquí con estos americanos? Usted sabe que no tengo gusto de estar alrededor de americanos.” Why did you bring these Americans here? You know I don’t like to be around Americans.

  “Tengo que cooperar con ellos, o bien pueden hacernos deportar,” Felicia said fervently. I have to cooperate with them, or else they can have us deported. “Nos llevarán al Bronx para buscar Sammy apartamento.” They’ll take us to the Bronx to look for Sammy’s apartment.

  “¡Nosotros! ¿Por qué debo ir?” complained Lulu. Us! Why should I go?

  “Porque quisiera que usted fuera con mí en caso de que suceda algo,” answered Felicia. Because I want you to go with me in case something happens.

  The two reappeared from the bathroom, and Lulu was t
otally against going on a chase for Felicia’s boyfriend. She put her palms together in prayer. “Oh, Dios mio!” Oh, my God! And she made the sign of the cross.

  Hammer and Masters were incredulous. Lulu, a prostitute, calculating and selfish, yet she was fanatically religious. And those saintly statues propped throughout apartment, the home of two lewd topless dancers, seemed . . . well the FBI agents couldn’t quite define that mix. But why were they surprised? Ruthlessly violent Mexican drug traffickers are unwavering Catholics as well.

  En route to the Bronx, Masters, Hammer, and the two girls were in the FBI car, the Colombian’s cheap perfume stinging the agents’ sense of smell. Bermudez and Fitzgibbons rode in the Ford LTD, and snowflakes, as if they were thousands of white butterflies, started swirling in the yellowish glow of the automobiles’ headlights. At 161st, the two vehicles exited the Major Deegan Expressway, and the 140-foot-high, unmistakable top cornices of Yankee Stadium came into a faint view, the snow blurring that structure.

  Felicia recognized one of the streets in proximity to the stadium, and her angst was heightening. She had never been in this predicament, acting as a police informant to arrest a friend, Sammy who had treated her royally, and had recently gifted her with a silver fox three-quarter length coat. And here she was in the rear seat of an FBI car about to seal his doom. “Pobre Sammy . . . pobre Sammy.” Felicia murmured to herself. Poor Sammy . . . Poor Sammy. Even a whore could have a heart.

  As they drove on, Hammer swiveled his neck backward and said, “Felicia, anything look familiar?”

  “No,” she said weakly, resting her head on the cold window, staring pensively. Then a thought struck her. “The street was like hill, and I remember the firemen house.”

  “You mean a firehouse?”

  “Yes, firehouse.”

  The two-vehicle motorcade had been driving aimlessly, and in the Ford LTD Bermudez and Fitzgibbons had no idea where the FBI agents were taking this reconnaissance, if anywhere at all. The detectives were both chain-smokers, and the interior of the car smelled worse than a chimney. Bermudez saw the lead vehicle stop by the curb, and Hammer jumped out, covering his head with a newspaper, the storm intensifying. He trotted to the Ford LTD, sliding on the light coating of snow, and Fitzgibbons rolled down the window. “What’s up?”

  “Radio the local precinct and find out where the nearest fire station to Yankee Stadium is,” Hammer said.

  “Get in the car while we call in,” Bermudez said.

  Fitz radioed as told, and the fire station in question was four blocks north of Yankee Stadium. They drove to it and past it, but Felicia didn’t see any familiar buildings on that street. She was becoming more agitated and increasingly difficult to understand. Lulu spoke even less English, and Masters parked to figure out what to do. Hammer said, “Bermudez should ride with us and be the interpreter.”

  “Good idea,” said Masters.

  Again, Hammer trudged back to the second car. “George, ride with us. We can’t understand these girls.”

  Bermudez, happy to oblige, snuggled between the two sizzling Latinas.

  They drove here and there, crossing Grand Concourse, then south to Walton Avenue, and right on 161st, halfway circling the stadium. Bermudez and the Colombians prattled on in an avalanche of Spanish, though the conversation was immaterial and bore no fruit. It was 12:45 A.M., and the snowfall had lessened. Hammer and Masters decided to abort the reconnoitering cruise and return to Manhattan. But the twisting and turning left and right, and east and west, had disoriented John Masters, and instead of heading west on 161st for the ramp to the Major Deegan, he swerved north on Anderson Avenue, a steep, hilly block. When they were on the lower end of the street, Felicia cried out, “There, there is!” She was tapping the car window, pointing at a six-story brick apartment building with dimly glowing sconces on either side of the entrance, and the numbers 832 etched at the peak of the archway: 832 Anderson Avenue. “Das it, das it!”

  CHAPTER 47

  They reversed direction and parked five hundred feet from 832 Anderson Avenue, presumably the address of Sammy the Arab’s playpen and love nest.

  Hammer said to Masters, “John, stay in the car with Lulu. George and I will take Felicia inside the building. Hopefully she can point out Sammy’s apartment.” He eyed Bermudez and said, “George, go tell Fitz to wait in the car and keep a lookout for anyone coming and going into the building.”

  Bermudez did so and jogged back to join Hammer and Felicia as they were entering the building. The snowfall had lessened, and a ceiling of low, pewter clouds had stalled in the stinging cold. Felicia was sniveling, and Bermudez comforted her, “Calma de la estancia. Todo todo correcto.” Stay calm. Everything will be all right.

  Two thirty-watt bulbs on the rusty wall sconces lighted the corridor, and you couldn’t see past your nose, a permanent stench of cooking odors reeking. They stepped into the elevator and Felicia, now the one leading, pushed the fourth floor button. “I think is on four floor.”

  “¿Es usted seguro?” asked Bermudez. Are you sure?

  “Sí.”

  Sure of herself, she walked right to Sammy’s door. “Das it.” It was apartment 4E.

  Quietly, they soft-stepped into the elevator and left the building. Outdoors, sloshing in the thin layer of snow, Hammer and Bermudez hustled Felicia into the FBI car. “We found Sammy’s apartment, John. Meantime, keep her low. We don’t want anybody seeing her here,” Hammer said.

  She crouched in the rear seat and laid her head on Lulu’s lap, tears on her light brown cheeks. The improvised role as an FBI informant was overtaking her.

  Hammer and Bermudez once again went into the building and located the superintendent’s door. Bermudez knocked. A hefty, rugged woman answered, and bleary-eyed, sized up these late night callers. “What would make you wake me up in the middle of the night?” she asked in a German accent, curlers in her salt-and-pepper hair that decades ago might’ve been blonde.

  Hammer showed her his badge. “FBI.”

  She glanced at it for three or four seconds, unsure of what she was seeing, and an instant later she was fully awake. “Should I be delighted?” she remarked, aloofness in her disposition. “What do you want?”

  Hammer caught himself staring at the lady’s padded, carbohydrate-fed face, which looked remarkably close to that of a Cabbage Patch Doll. “What’s your name?”

  “Wanda Rousch. I’m the super’s wife. What could you possibly want at this time of night? For me to make you dinner?”

  “We certainly didn’t come here for schnapps and sauerbraten,” Hammer jibed in a dead-pan stare as Bermudez bit his lip to stifle a laugh.

  Not appreciating the racial slur, the wisecracking Mrs. Rousch crimped her lips and huffed at the intruders.

  Her husband, a shorter, much smaller man, whose white hair sprung in every direction, peeked inquisitively from behind her. “I’m Mr. Rousch. What can I do for you? This is an ungodly hour. You better have a good reason for waking us up.” He, too, spoke in a Teutonic cadence. “C’mon in. I don’t want you to wake up the rest of my tenants.”

  Inside the Rousches’ foyer, an enduring smell of fried schnitzels greasing the air, Hammer described Sammy the Arab to the German couple, and the husband said, “Sounds like you’re looking for Lenny Jameson. He’s in apartment 4E. I don’t know why the law wants him, but it’s none of my business.”

  “You’re right, it is none of your business,” said Matt Hammer. “We’re putting you on notice that we may make an arrest here.”

  The miniature German shrugged as if to say Do what you want.

  Suddenly, as if something had spooked Mrs. Rousch, she touched the tip of her nose. “Shhhh. I heard the front door in the hallway slam shut.” She ran to a window, parted the venetian blinds, and peered out onto the sidewalk. She pointed down at the floor and said in hush, “Mr. Jameson, there he is! Just walked outside, and he’s under this window.”

  Bermudez hastened to the window and spied throug
h the blinds. Though the street lamps did not provide much light, the snow on the ground brightened the night, and he could see a silhouette that sketched Sammy’s figure as represented by the FBI informant. “Yeah, that could be him.”

  In the car, John Masters, too, spotted the same person and said, “You girls get down. Get down below the car windows!”

  Fitzgibbons also saw that party. But where he was parked a few hundred feet down the hill and looking through the crust of ice that had frozen on the windshield, his line of sight was compromised. He took a pull of nicotine and fixed his stare on the entryway of 832 Anderson Avenue. In less than ten seconds, he watched Hammer and Bermudez hurrying out onto the sidewalk.

  The obscure Lenny Jameson must’ve heard Hammer and Bermudez’s footsteps. Who’s prowling in this neighborhood at one-thirty on a snowy January night? Without looking behind him, he quickened his pace. He was carrying a black duffel bag under his arm, and fifty feet farther ditched it under a blue panel van. Lenny Jameson changed direction and hurried west toward Jerome Avenue, Hammer trailing him, maintaining an unsuspecting distance, though at 2:00 A.M. that was impossible on this desolate block. Bermudez, nearly falling to his knees on the slippery snow, ran to the van, knelt by the curb, and lugged the duffel bag out from under it. He unzipped the bag and saw what in the dark appeared to be burglar tools, or at least utensils that could’ve been used to pry a locked door, or a safe deposit box. This was the “probable cause” to take into custody this Lenny Jameson, or whoever he was. Hugging the bag onto his chest and striding up to Hammer, Bermudez whispered, “Look what he threw under that van over there.”