O'Farrell's Law

by Brian Freemantle

  “There would need to be a completion date,” Rivera pressed. The letter accompanying the order, a letter only Rivera had read, had insisted on six months as a maximum.

  “Four,” Belac said.

  The moment for which he’d been patiently waiting, Rivera recognized. ‘This is not the business of legally binding contracts,” he said. “What guarantees will exist between us?”

  “Mutual, reciprocal trust,” Belac said easily.

  Horseshit, thought Rivera. “Would it not be better, perhaps, if I took some of the smaller items elsewhere, spread the order among lesser dealers?”

  “No!” Belac said, greedily and too quickly. “I can handle it all. It’s far better to keep it all simple, just between us two.”

  “You can guarantee the four months then?”

  “My word,” Belac said. He couldn’t be forced to keep it.

  “We haven’t yet discussed price,” Rivera said, spread-eagling himself upon the sacrificial stone.

  Belac went through the charade of examining the list again, as if he were only then making his calculations. Rivera guessed he had nearly everything priced practically down to the last half-dollar.

  “Ninety million,” Belac announced. Hurriedly again, he added, “But that would merely be for the purchases. In addition there would have to be allowances for transportation. Money will also have to be paid out for the switching of the End-User Certificates. So there will need to be provision for extensive commission payments. Say another ten million.”

  Most definitely the need for extensive commission payments, thought Rivera; the euphoria swept through him. Even if he modestly maintained his own personal commission at ten percent on the purchase price, that would mean ten million. Keeping any excitement from his voice, Rivera said, “Won’t there also need to be a substantial, instantly available sum to enable the on-the-spot bidding for the tanks?”

  “A further fifty million,” Belac declared at once.

  Which meant a further five million for him, mentally echoed Rivera, feeling another flush of excitement. He would keep his share to ten percent: on such figures it would be greedy to think of more. On a profit of fifteen million he’d definitely quit, when the deal was completed. “There will be a need to consult, of course,” he said. “But I don’t see the slightest problem with those figures.”

  Immediate anger surged through Belac. He’d thought a clear twenty-million-dollar profit, which was what he’d allowed himself, to be as high as he dared push it, but from the other man’s reaction he could have gone even higher! “That’s good to hear,” Belac said, although it hadn’t been good to hear at all.

  “I would expect a response within a week.”

  “Let’s meet again in a week, then?” The Belgian sat with the complacency of a winner in everything, the anger going. There still might be ways to edge the profit up. And twenty million was a lot of money anyway.

  “And this time let me come to you in Brussels,” Rivera offered. The man would feel more confident in his own surroundings.

  Belac hesitated briefly. “As you wish.”

  Rivera worked for an hour after the Belgian’s departure, setting out accurately everything about the encounter until it came to Belac’s estimate for transportation costs and the necessary bribes. To the Belgian’s figure of ten million Rivera added the majority of the fifteen million he intended diverting to himself. He attached a separate sheet setting out the implacable insistence of his unnamed supplier that all finance and communication should channel through him, in London, with the unnecessary reminder that it was how every successful transaction had been conducted in the past. He personally sealed the communication in the special satchel and personally again ensured it was safely placed within the diplomatic bag. Back in the seclusion of his office, Rivera stood looking out over High Holborn, satisfied with his day’s work. With his personal commission added to the price set by Pierre Belac, the whole deal amounted to $165 million.

  How much cocaine would be needed from Colombia for worldwide sales to raise such a sum? Whatever, Rivera knew it would be available. It always was just as there were always buyers. He thought once more how glad he was not to be involved at that end of the chain.

  The investigation into Pierre Belac’s illegal movement of American hi-tech prohibited under the Export Administration Act of 1979 was originally begun by the U.S. Customs Authority, the regulatory body for such policing. When the scale and enterprise of the Belgian’s activities were realized, the operation was necessarily extended to include the Federal Bureau of Investigation to work within the United States, and the CIA to liaise externally. It was therefore a CIA task force that monitored the man’s flight from Brussels to London and followed him from Heathrow Airport to the door of the Cuban embassy at 167 High Holborn. A number of photographs were taken of Belac entering the building and more of his leaving. He was followed back to the airport, and on the returning aircraft a CIA officer sat just two rows behind in the economy-class section.

  A complete report was included in that night’s diplomatic dispatch from the U.S. embassy in the Belgian capital to Washington. A cross-reference noted that the report should be considered in conjunction with a report upon Jose Gaviria Rivera that was being separately pouched from London that same night.

  FIVE

  AT THE end of the O’Hare concourse there was a liquor booth and O’Farrell stopped and bought a bottle of Bombay gin and some screw-topped tonic.

  Jill stood apart from him, frowning, and when he went back to her she said, “What did you do that for?”

  “Ellen doesn’t usually have any drink in the apartment.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought it might be an idea to take some in.”

  “Why? We never have before. Who needs it?”

  “It might be an idea, that’s all.” O’Farrell’s voice was weary rather than irritated; trained always to subdue any extreme emotion—and certainly anger—he never fought with Jill. In the early days of their marriage she’d sometimes tried to provoke arguments, to blow off steam, but he’d never responded, and over the years she’d stopped bothering. She’d never openly said so, but he guessed she despised him for that, too. Another clerklike weakness, unwillingness to fight on any level.

  He’d set up the car rental ahead of time, so all the documentation was ready. O’Farrell started to put the luggage on the rear seat but then changed his mind, stowing it in the trunk, so the plastic bag containing the liquor was out of sight.

  They drove for a long time without speaking, and then Jill said, “You all right?”

  “What sort of question is that?”

  “The sort of question a wife can ask her husband.”

  “Of course I’m all right. I’m fine. Why?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “There must be a reason.” That had been the time to drop it, not persist with any further challenge.

  “You’ve just seemed kind of strange a couple of times lately, that’s all.”

  “Strange like what?” Stop it! he thought, let go!

  Beside him the woman shrugged. “Nothing I can point at. Why don’t we forget it?”

  O’Farrell opened his mouth and then closed it again, taking her advice. Damn the stupidity of buying the booze. She was right; who needed it?

  Ellen had a ground-floor apartment on the Evanston side of Chicago, not quite close enough to the lake to be cripplingly expensive but not far enough away to be reasonable, either. She and Billy must have been watching through the window, because they both came running out before O’Farrell and Jill got completely from the car. There were kisses and hugs, and Billy kept thrusting an electric toy into O’Farrell’s face until he paid attention. Closer, O’Farrell saw it was a spacecraft that worked off batteries, and that it could be manipulated to turn into a space figure as well. Billy said there was an entire fleet of different designs.

  Inside the apartment, O’Farrell offered his daughter the plastic bag and anno
unced, “Supplies!”

  Ellen accepted it without any surprise and said, “Great!” and O’Farrell was relieved.

  Ellen had moved the boy into her room. O’Farrell hung up his garment bag and stored Jill’s small case where Billy slept, a bedroom festooned with posters and with toys neatly in a box, a catcher’s mitt uppermost. There was a plastic cover over the video machine and its game-playing keyboard. O’Farrell guessed Ellen had tidied up the room before their arrival.

  Outside Billy was on the living-room floor, squatting with his legs splayed beneath him but actually sitting, the way kids his age were able to do. Jill and Ellen were in the kitchen, talking soft-voiced by the coffeemaker. As O’Farrell entered, he heard Ellen say, “Mother, I’ve told you: you’re panicking about nothing!”

  “I don’t regard it as nothing!” Jill said.

  ‘There’ve been incidents and so there was a precautionary meeting, that’s all!” said Ellen. “The school has behaved very responsibly and I’m grateful.”

  O’Farrell stood without intruding into the conversation, comparing the two women. They were very similar, unquestionably mother and daughter. And Jill stood up to the comparison very well, O’Farrell judged, proudly. Maybe just a little thicker around the hips but still pert-breasted, as firm as her daughter. Stomach was as flat, too: she worked out at the clinic, he knew, practicing the fitness exercises with which she treated others. Certainly as clear-skinned and practically as facially unlined as Ellen, and only he knew that Jill needed a hairdresser’s help now to keep her hair matchingly blond. Very beautiful; very beautiful indeed. He felt a positive jump of emotion, a stomach churn: he loved her so much.

  “What are the police doing about it?” Jill persisted, setting out the cups.

  “The best they can.”

  “What’s that?” O’Farrell came in.

  Ellen gave her father a sad smile, wishing he had not asked. “Just that,” she conceded lamely. “One of the drug officers talked at the meeting. Said it was easy enough to pick off the street pushers—which they do, of course—but that they’re replaced the following day. It’s like a pyramid, he said: if they get lucky, they might catch the guy from whom the street dealer gets his supplies, but rarely the one above him. And hardly ever the real organizers, the guys who are making millions … billions.”

  “You know what I think!” Jill said with sudden vehemence. “I think they ought to kill the bastards! Make it a capital offense and execute them; no appeal, no excuse, nothing. Dead!”

  “They do in some parts of the world, apparently,” said the younger woman.

  O’Farrell supposed it was easy for Jill to feel as she did. He said, “Is there anything we can do?”

  Ellen smiled at him again, gratefully this time. “Nothing, in a practical sense. Just knowing you’re around always helps.”

  “We’re always around,” O’Farrell said sincerely.

  Ellen said she still hadn’t done any grocery shopping, but Billy protested he didn’t want to do something as boring as that, so the two women went off in the rented car, with Jill driving, and O’Farrell used Ellen’s car, another Toyota, to take Billy to the theme park nearer into town. He chose Lake Shore Drive because it was a more attractive route than remaining inland, and at the traffic light at its commencement he had to snatch up the emergency brake as well as pump the footbrake to get it to stop. He gasped, frightened, only inches from the car in front. When the lights changed, he set off carefully, taking the inside lane and testing the footbrake again when he was clear enough of following traffic. The only way to stop satisfactorily was to start pumping a long way from where he wanted to halt. He pulled over into a bus stop and got out, able without lifting the hood to hear the whine and shuddering unevenness of the engine.

  Back in the car he said to the boy, “Things don’t seem too good with the car.”

  “Mom says she’s going to get it fixed,” said Billy.

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  O’Farrell drove very slowly, ignoring the horn blasts of protest, and found a service station just at the beginning of the high-rise area. The manager insisted the work would be impossible to do at such short notice, and O’Farrell said it was an emergency and that he guessed it would involve overtime working on the weekend, and after thirty minutes of persuasion the man agreed to take it in. It took another thirty minutes for them to check through the work necessary, the manager clearly impressed with O’Farrell’s knowledge of engines.

  “Four hundred is only an estimate, you understand?” the mechanic warned.

  “Whatever,” said O’Farrell. It gave them carte blanche to rip him off, but so what? The only consideration was getting the vehicle roadworthy over the weekend.

  They took a cab to the theme park and O’Farrell indulged Billy on whatever ride he wanted and then let himself be tugged to a store practically next door to be shown the range of electric space vehicles. He bought one that changed from a vehicle to a warrior, like the one Billy already had.

  On the way to the park, O’Farrell had seen a restaurant with an open deck stretching toward the lake, so he took Billy back there to eat. They sat outside, the silver-glinting lake to their left, the upthrust fingers of the Chicago skyscrapers to their right. Billy chose a cheeseburger and fries with a large Coke and insisted his new toy should remain on the table between them. O’Farrell ordered gin and tonic and tuna on rye; by the time the food came his glass was empty, so he ordered another.

  “Hear there’s some nasty things going on at school,” O’Farrell said.

  “Huh?” The child’s mouth was full of fries.

  “Mommy had to come to talk to some people this week?”

  “Oh that,” Billy said dismissively.

  “What was it about?”

  “Drugs,” the boy announced flatly. He moved the toy along the table, toward the Coke container, making a noise like explosions.

  “You know what drugs are?”

  “Sure,” Billy said, attention still on the spacecraft.

  Not yet nine, thought O’Farrell: long-lashed, blue-eyed, red-cheeked with uncombed hair over his forehead and his shirttail poking curiously over his belt, like it always did, and he knew what drugs were. And not yet nine! He said, “What?”

  “Stuff that makes you feel funny.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Miss James.”

  “Your teacher?”

  “Uh-huh.” He was biting into his cheeseburger now, ketchup on either side of his mouth.

  “What did she say?”

  Billy had to swallow before he could reply. “That we were to tell her if anyone said we should try.”

  “Would you tell her?”

  “Boom, boom, boom,” went Billy, attacking the Coke container. “Guess so,” he said.

  “Just guess so! Has anyone ever said you should do it?”

  “Nope. Can I have a vanilla ice cream with chocolate topping now?”

  O’Farrell summoned the waitress and added another gin and tonic to the order. “You know anyone who has tried it?”

  “Couple of guys in the next grade, I think.”

  Ellen had talked about Nancy Reagan seeking pledges from nine-year-olds, O’Farrell remembered. He said, “What happened?”

  “They sniffed something. Made them go funny, like I said.” The toy ceased being a spacecraft and was turned into a warrior so that it could attack from the ground.

  “What happened to them?”

  “They had to go to the principal. Now they’re in a program.”

  “You know what a program is?”

  “Sure,” Billy said, letting his warrior retreat. “It’s when you go and they keep on about you not doing it.”

  It was a good enough description from someone so young. O’Farrell said, “You love me?”

  Billy looked directly at him for the first time. “Of course I love you.”

  “Grandma too? And Mommy most of all?”

  “S
ure. Dad too.”

  What about Patrick? O’Farrell thought for the first time. He’d have to ask Ellen. “I want you to make me a promise, a promise that you’ll keep if you love us all like you say you do.”

  “Okay,” the child said brightly. The warrior became a spacecraft again.

  “If anyone ever comes up to you, at school or anywhere, and tries to get you to buy something that will make you go funny, you promise me you’ll say no and go at once and tell Miss James or Mommy? You promise me that?”

  “Can I have another Coke? Just a small one.”

  O’Farrell caught the waitress’s eye again and insisted, “You going to promise me that?”

  “ ’Course I am. That’s easy.”

  “And mean it? Really mean it?”

  “Sure.”

  O’Farrell felt a sweep of helplessness but decided against pressing any further. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried at all. He hadn’t suggested to Ellen that he should discuss it with the child; perhaps there was some established way of talking it through—something evolved by a child psychiatrist—and he was being counterproductive by mentioning it at all. He felt another sweep of helplessness.

  O’Farrell considered stopping at the service station on the way back to Ellen’s apartment, but decided against it; there did not seem to be any point. The women were already home, hunched over more coffee cups at the kitchen table with the debris of a sandwich lunch between them.

  “Steak for dinner, courtesy of Grandma!” Ellen announced as they entered.

  “Great!” Billy said. “I got a new spaceship! Look!

  “Gramps bought it for me. And a vanilla ice cream with a chocolate top!”

  “Looks like our time for being spoiled, Billy boy,” Ellen said.

  The child scurried into the living room to locate the previous toy and begin a galactic battle; almost at once there came lots of boom, boom, booms and a noise that sounded something like a throat clearing.

  O’Farrell said, “Your car’s in the garage.”

  “You had an accident!”

  His daughter’s instant response caused a burn of annoyance. Never get mad, always stay cool, he thought. He said, “I could have. It’s a miracle you haven’t. That car’s a wreck: at least five thousand miles over any service limit! Didn’t you know that?”