Charlie Muffin U.S.A. cm-4

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘It’ll need proper planning,’ said Chambine, ‘but it won’t be too much of a problem.’

  Terrilli smiled, impressed with the answer. Most people trying to please, as Chambine was, would have boasted that it would be easy and that would have shown worrying immaturity.

  ‘Fixed the number of people you’ll need?’

  ‘Six, like I originally estimated.’

  ‘Got them?’

  ‘All arranged,’ said Chambine. ‘Two from Vegas, one from Chicago, one from Philadelphia, and two from Los Angeles.’

  ‘Why the spread?’

  ‘I didn’t think it would be sensible to recruit all from the same city. It might have been noticed.’

  Chambine was good, decided Terrilli.

  ‘What do they know?’ he demanded.

  ‘That they’re getting $50,000 for a heist, no questions asked.’

  ‘Organisation men?’

  ‘Every one. Just doing a little freelancing.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘Me,’ said Chambine. ‘I saw no point in involving you.’

  ‘You’re very thoughtful.’

  ‘I’ve tried to be, Mr Terrilli.’

  ‘I’m very grateful,’ said the older man. ‘And I intend to show it.’

  Chambine smiled, a hopeful expression. ‘I’d like another meeting, if it’s possible, to discuss the final planning. And I’m a little concerned by the security at your house.’

  ‘It’ll be arranged on the night, don’t worry,’ promised Terrilli. ‘You’ll be expected.’

  ‘There won’t be any trouble?’ asked Chambine.

  Terrilli smiled, knowing the meaning of the question.

  ‘My people do as they’re told. There’s no cause for them to resent an outside operation.’

  ‘What about Mr Santano?’

  Terrilli let the other man know by the silence before he replied how near he was coming to impertinence.

  ‘Santano will do as he is told, like everyone else. If you join my operation after everything is over, it’ll be for the two of you to create a working relationship.’

  Realising he had gone far enough, Chambine said, ‘Unless you think otherwise, I intend to be the only person to remain on the island after the robbery. I’ll bring the rest in and out the same night. It cuts down the risk of a chance arrest if the robbery is discovered earlier than I plan it to be.’

  ‘These guys got records?’ demanded Terrilli instantly.

  Chambine coloured. ‘I’ve been as careful as I can. They’re all minor things… juvenile stuff…’

  Terrilli took several moments to reply, apparently thinking. ‘In and out the same night,’ he agreed, finally. ‘It won’t matter how minor the convictions if they get arrested.’

  ‘If the worst were to happen, they could only identify me,’ reminded Chambine.

  ‘And you could identify me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Mr Terrilli. Whatever happened, I’d never point the finger at you.’

  ‘You’d die,’ said Terrilli, unemotionally. ‘Irrespective of any trouble it might or might not cause, you’d have to die.’

  ‘That’s why I wouldn’t do it,’ said Chambine, and Terrilli laughed aloud at the honesty.

  ‘I think we are going to get on well,’ said Terrilli. ‘Very well.’

  ‘I thought our next meeting should be at least four days before we actually lift the stuff, to give me time to make alternative plans in case you don’t like those I put forward.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Terrilli immediately.

  ‘I’m assembling everyone in Disneyworld,’ announced Chambine.

  ‘Disneyworld!’

  ‘Fifty thousand people a day, none knowing the other,’ pointed out Chambine. ‘It’s got to be the perfect place.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Terrilli, with obvious reluctance.

  ‘You and I could always meet elsewhere, of course,’ offered Chambine, discerning the other man’s attitude.

  ‘No,’ replied Terrilli, after thinking. ‘I like it. I really do. When are you bringing the other people in?’

  ‘The two from the West Coast are arriving tomorrow. The others at daily intervals.’

  ‘Will you put them together immediately?’

  ‘No,’ said Chambine. ‘It’s always possible they may know each other, of course. Vegas isn’t far from Los Angeles. But I won’t establish the link until the weekend. There’s no point until then. And six men hanging around might attract attention.’

  ‘Do you need any more money?’ asked Terrilli, indicating the briefcase beside him.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Chambine.

  Terrilli lapsed into silence. Chambine sat attentively, not attempting to lead the conversation.

  ‘I like very much your keeping me out of it,’ said Terrilli, breaking the pause. ‘On the night of the robbery, when the collection arrives at my house, I’ll not meet any of them personally. I’ll pay you off in a separate room and you can pay them in turn…’

  Chambine nodded.

  ‘It wouldn’t take anyone long to discover who lived in the house, of course,’ went on Terrilli, thinking aloud. ‘But if no one actually sees me, then they can’t prove anything.’

  ‘I think that’s a wise safeguard,’ agreed Chambine.

  Terrilli sat back in his chair, the movement indicating that the discussion was over.

  ‘I’ve rooms at the Contemporary Resort in Disneyworld,’ said Chambine. ‘Would Sunday be convenient to you?’

  ‘Noon,’ agreed Terrilli, rising.

  The two men shook hands and Terrilli went out into the foyer, nodding to the doorman’s query about taxi. He asked for the Omni complex on Biscayne Boulevard, paid before he left the car and took the elevator as if going into the shopping complex. Instead he cut through to one of the linking entrances into the Omni Hotel, descending to the foyer and within fifteen minutes was in another taxi, going uptown towards the Tuttle Causeway joining the mainland to Miami Beach. He paid the taxi off a block away from the Fountainbleau, finishing up the journey on foot, and entered the hotel through one of the side doors near the golf course.

  At the desk he enquired for messages, said he was checking out and sat waiting for his luggage to arrive. It came out of the service lift at the same time as his chauffeur entered, looking for him. Without speaking, Terrilli indicated the cases, walking out ahead to the waiting car.

  It was rare to find anyone as efficient as Chambine, Terrilli decided. The man would make an excellent lieutenant: better than Santano, who was becoming over-ambitious. He nodded to himself, reaching the decision. He would allow a proper length of time, after the robbery, for Chambine to become fully acquainted with the operation and then have Santano put away.

  ‘Turn up the air conditioning,’ ordered Terrilli as the driver pulled out on to Collins Avenue. Walking to the Fountainbleau had made him sweat.

  How long would it be until Chambine became ambitious? he asked himself. They all did, in the end. And had to be killed. Terrilli sighed. He had always considered it unfortunate, having to waste such talent. It was a pity a way could not be found to suppress their aspirations, as eunuciis were treated in order to become caretakers in harems.

  ‘Will we be stopping anywhere, Mr Terrilli?’ asked the driver.

  ‘No,’ said Terrilli. ‘Straight home.’

  He had decided to spend the afternoon with his stamps. When the Romanov Collection arrived, he would have to get more display cases and racks installed.

  Whatever the permutations, there could only be one conclusion, decided Charlie. With it came the sweep of nausea similar to that he had known eight years before in the Sussex churchyard in which Sir Archibald Willoughby was buried, when he had realised he had probably been recognised and was only a pistol shot from disaster.

  Pendlebury had unquestionably lied about working in New York. Yet Heppert considered him genuine. The man had practically dated the photograph of his over-indulgent wife by talkin
g of her two-month Weight Watchers membership. Pendk-bury couldn’t be a criminal because he could not possibly have inveigled himself into such a position of seniority within a security organisation in that time. So he had to be there by consent. To whom would Pinkerton consent to provide such a cover? A policeman, obviously. Yet the exhibition had opened in New York and was now in Florida. Not a local policeman, then, but Federal. Why would the F.B.I. want to attach a man to a stamp exhibition? And not just attach, Charlie corrected himself; put in over-all security control.

  The solution fell into a neat, logical sequence. But Charlie still felt the need for confirmation. He reached out for the telephone, realising before attempting it that the test might not work.

  Directory information gave him the Houston telephone number of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he dialled it himself so that there would be no operator record of the call.

  Had the professionalism not been so deeply ingrained, Charlie might have made the mistake of enquiring for Pendlebury the moment the call was answered. But he didn’t, knowing that it would be at the switchboard that the man would be best protected against such an approach.

  He asked instead for the station manager, refused to be deflected to an assistant, and when the man finally came on the line did not ask a question but stated a fact.

  Jack Pendlebury had told him he would be out of town for a few weeks, Charlie said. But he had the information that Pendlebury had asked him to obtain and was anxious to know when he would be returning.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ said the F.B.I. manager. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘No,’ replied Charlie, putting down the telephone. The man already had more than he would ever know.

  11

  Pendlebury’s visit to Washington had been scheduled to finalise the plans for the back-up support with which he was to be provided in Palm Beach, but what had been discovered on the separate videotapes gave extra point to the interview with Warburger and Bowler. Every night, since the New York opening reception of the exhibition and now, in Florida, the duplicate tape had been flown to Washington for both visual examination by recognition experts and a scan from a computer programmed with the physiognomic characteristics of every known Mafia associate on the files. Because of the speed at which it could be operated, it had been the computer which twice registered Robert Chambine. Upon re-examination, the visual experts had confirmed the identification.

  The three men sat hunched forward in the viewing room, watching the latest film of Chambine touring the exhibition in Palm Beach, occasionally slowing the film to establish better any idea which occurred to them. Then they sat through the first film, as if it were important they recognised Chambine there as well.

  It was Warburger who put up the room lights, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the one in front.

  ‘Right again,’ he said. There was a self-satisfaction in his voice.

  ‘We’ve run the tapes through until they’re almost frayed at the edges,’ said Bowler. ‘Chambine is the only face that so far has any connection. Surely it’s not going to be a one-man operation?’

  ‘Couldn’t be,’ said Pendlebury immediately. ‘The stamps aren’t heavy, certainly. But they are difficult to handle. One man couldn’t do it. It would take too long.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a spotter,’ assessed Bowler.

  ‘Or the man whom Terrilli has entrusted with organising the job,’ suggested Warburger.

  The Deputy Director went back to the file. ‘Only a soldier,’ he read aloud.

  ‘Ambitious, you said,’ Pendlebury reminded him. ‘What about surveillance?’

  ‘Initially we’ve moved in a twelve-strong team, three women included. No one is to maintain observation on two consecutive days. We’ll change the whole shift before the weekend.’

  Pendlebury nodded. ‘Any contact with Terrilli?’

  ‘Not that we’ve picked up so far.’

  ‘Telephone monitor?’

  ‘It’ll be in place by tonight. Then he’ll be sewn up tighter than a Thanksgiving Day turkey.’

  ‘Chambine has got to be the man,’ said Pendlebury, more to himself than the other men in the room. ‘It doesn’t check out any other way.’

  ‘It’s better than I ever expected,’ confessed Warburger.

  ‘What’s known?’ asked Pendlebury, who had not had the advantage of previously seeing either film.

  ‘Robert Chambine,’ recited Bowler, from the file before him, ‘soldier attached to the New York family, minor conviction for loan sharking, suspicion of homicidal assault in 1975, released through lack of evidence, happily married with two children, no known connection with Giuseppe Terrilli or any of the Florida people. Thought to be ambitious, as I said earlier.’

  ‘And not a stamp collector,’ said Pendlebury quietly.

  ‘We played back every video taken at the Waldorf Astoria,’ said Bowler. ‘We’ve only the sighting of him the night before the exhibition ended.’

  ‘Do I control the surveillance team on Chambine?’ asked Pendlebury.

  Warburger nodded. ‘Pointless our trying to do it from here. It would lead to confusion. We’re assigning a total of fifty people, just for him alone. That enables you to shift-change every two days.’

  ‘What’s the rest?’ asked the dishevelled man.

  Warburger stood up, went to a desk in the screening room and took up a clipboard.

  ‘Besides the people covering Chambine, we’re allocating you another one hundred men. In addition, there’ll be a communications section, answerable to you, plus three helicopters which we’re placing at Miami rather than at Palm Beach. Terrilli’s air division is installed there and he might have some intelligence set-up which could get suspicious of the sudden arrival of three helicopters, even though the company owning them has no traceable association with us.’

  ‘I don’t want an army like that on the island,’ Pendlebury warned the Director. ‘There’s no way it could go undetected.’

  ‘We accept that,’ said Bowler. ‘But at all times during the day and night I think we should have a moving group of maybe twenty to thirty people within five or ten minutes of the hotel.’

  For several moments Pendlebury didn’t speak, considering the planning. Then he said, ‘Controlled by the communications unit?’

  ‘Right,’ said Warburger. ‘Who in turn would transmit whatever orders you gave. Give you instant mobility.’

  ‘Should work,’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘In addition to your immediate team, I’m moving thirty men to Miami and another thirty to Fort Pierce, for extra support should you need it.’

  ‘Lot of men,’ said Pendlebury reflectively.

  ‘The first time we met, I told you I meant this to work,’ said Warburger vehemently. ‘Now we know we’ve got him hooked, I’m even more goddamned determined.’

  ‘Where are we putting those not on shift?’

  ‘Howard Johnson hotels and Holiday Inns at Lantana, Lake Worth and Boynton Beach. Even off duty, they’ll be tuned to the communications division, so that they’re on instant call.’

  ‘What about the sea?’ asked Pendlebury. ‘There’s a lot of water to get lost in.’

  ‘We haven’t forgotten that,’ said Warburger. ‘We’ve got two cutters, each containing six men apparently on an extended fishing trip, moving in and out of Jupiter…’

  The Director saw Pendlebury move to speak, but held up his hands, stopping him.

  ‘I know Terrilli has got a sea division and I know our guys are amateurs. I don’t see them bringing off any sea interception, if it becomes necessary. They are there as first defence. If it become obvious there’s need for sea expertise, we’ll call in the coastguards.’

  ‘We’ve put a lot of work into this,’ said Bowler.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘So what have we overlooked?’ asked the Director.

  Pendlebury considered the question, seeking the flaw. Then he said, ‘
I can’t think of anything.’

  Warburger smiled at the assessment. ‘There isn’t anything we haven’t thought of,’ he said.

  ‘And there’s been luck,’ said Pendlebury, careless of giving offence. ‘Chambine’s appearance after Terrilli’s was something we could never have expected. Or hoped for.’

  ‘Chambine is going to be the key,’ agreed Warburger.

  ‘How closely have you briefed those watching him?’

  ‘I personally instructed them,’ said Warburger.

  ‘How are things going with Senator Cosgrove?’ asked Bowler.

  ‘Good enough,’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘He’s not demanding too much involvement?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Pendlebury. ‘But I kind of imagine he wants to be around when it happens.’

  ‘He won’t get in the way,’ promised Warburg again. ‘He’ll be present at the press conference, of course.’

  ‘Press conference?’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘I thought we’d stage one in Palm Beach after the arrests,’ said the Director. ‘Might even come down myself.’

  Bowler saw Pendlebury wince. The man tried to disguise the expression by looking down and slightly moving his wrist, so that he could see his watch.

  ‘Anything more?’ asked Bowler.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Pendlebury. ‘I’d like to get back. And I don’t think there’s any point in my coming here again, not until after it’s all over.’

  ‘What about the Englishman?’ said Warburger, remembering Charlie suddenly.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pendlebury. ‘It’s going fine.’

  The Director leaned forward, to give emphasis to what he was going to say. ‘Now that the pattern is establishing itself, I think we have wasted a lot of time over that man.’

  ‘I don’t fully agree…’ started Pendlebury, but Warburger talked over him. ‘He creates an uncertainty. And I don’t like uncertainties. I went along with you this far, but I want you now to take a positive directive. At the slightest indication of any difficulty, you’re to have him removed.’

  ‘It would be a shame to frighten away Terrilli or his people,’ said Pendlebury.

  ‘And an even greater shame to lose them,’ argued the Director. ‘That damned man can do nothing but get in the way.’