by Marc Olden
The line went dead; then the dial tone filled Neil’s ear.
In the darkness of Neil’s apartment, the light from his small kitchen threw a long, thin yellow island on the gray living-room carpet. Neil stood with the receiver pressed hard against his ear, eyes closed, wondering what was happening to him. Whatever it was, he’d better fight it, because he couldn’t let anything crazy happen between him and an informant. It was too crazy, too impossible even to think about.
But he sat alone on the couch for a long time before turning out the kitchen light and going into the bedroom to lie beside his sleeping wife.
Walker Wallace sat behind his desk scratching his chin with one finger, eyeing Neil with the mild disbelief one accorded a man who’d just announced he planned to kill himself.
“You beat him, Neil. God help your ass.” And Walker Wallace got up, walked out of his office, leaving Neil alone there. He had fled as though Neil were a leper.
You beat him.
Neil had beat Saul Raiser, and Lydia wasn’t going to be sent to Miami; she was being kept in New York, and Neil was still assigned to work her, to continue investigating the super deal being put together by Mas Betancourt, his Cubans, and the blacks. Justice and New York both felt the case Neil was trying to make could be a big one. At the rate Neil and Lydia were rolling over dealers and distributors, in six months this case could involve as many as forty narcotics traffickers, more than enough to give Neil’s career the one big boost it needed.
But watch out for Saul Raiser.
God help your ass.
Saul Raiser was now an enemy, and in Neil’s excitement at the good news, he took a moment out for sober reflection. If he failed now, if Lydia’s information turned bad or she betrayed him or if his luck just exploded in his face, Raiser would be down on him like a hungry hawk swooping down on a crippled lamb. Neil couldn’t afford to fail now.
His heart jumping with excitement, he sat behind Walker Wallace’s desk and dialed Lydia. Her line was busy. Come on, come on.
He hung up, chewed on his thumbnail, and gently pounded the desk with his fist. He dialed again. Still busy. Come on, Lydia, give me a chance to play God. Get off the phone.
Lydia gently patted the bruises on Shana Levin’s face with a washcloth soaked in cold water.
“He’ll kill you one day, you know. I keep telling you, but you won’t listen.”
Shana sniffled. “He’s … he’s crazy. One minute he’s nice, the next minute, I just don’t know.”
“René’s my cousin … Hold still. He’s my cousin, but he’s not right in the head. Something, I don’t know. Something is wrong with him, but he won’t see a doctor. There. Can you see out of that eye? God, it’s ugly! Turning purple, and it’s almost closed.”
Shana Levin gently pushed Lydia’s hand aside, blinking and flinching as the hand passed close to her face. “I can see, kinda.”
“Kind of, huh. René know you’re here?”
“Don’t think so. He had to go to the airport to pick up something.”
Lydia patted Shana’s blond hair into place. “Something. Sure, something. We know what something is.”
Shana nodded, then shivered. “Snakes.”
“Snakes?”
“Swear to God. He tells me snakes, and I look at him like he’s nuts or something. He says Blind Man has a package coming in today, and it’s in a glass case full of snakes, hidden on the bottom. Nobody’s going to stick their hand in a case full of snakes from Chile, so what ever’s in there ought to be safe, right?”
“Guess so. Snakes. Dios mío. René don’t know nothin’ ’bout no snakes.”
“You’re right, He’s just going to drive out there in a panel truck, pick up the case, then drive it to some zoo over in Brooklyn. That’s it. He wasn’t all that happy about it, but you know how it is. Somebody tells you to go, you go.”
Lydia sighed. “Yeah. What did you two argue about this time?”
“What did we argue about? Oh, God. Nothing, believe me, it was nothing. I said something about my parents having two homes. He just came on with an attitude. Like I was putting him down, so he starts beating on me.”
Lydia gently pushed Shana ahead of her and out of the small bathroom. “Shana, you love René?”
The battered woman nodded yes, eyes welling with tears.
Lydia’s voice was soft, as she put her arms around Shana. “You’re a fool. Don’t ever love nobody who can’t love you back.”
And Lydia thought of Neil Shire.
19
BARBARA POMAL ORDERED LANGOSTA a la catalana, stewed lobster; Rolando, the priest, ordered frijoles colorados, red bean soup to start, followed by filete de puerco, filet of pork; Mas Betancourt ordered gazpacho, with a main dish of ropa vieja, “old clothes”—shredded beef, green peppers, black beans, tomatoes; Luis DaPaola, Mas’s third trusted lieutenant, ate lightly, ordering rueda de serrucho frita, fried swordfish and nothing else. In Casa Cervantes, a Cuban restaurant on West Seventy-ninth Street and Broadway, the four were carrying out a ritual common to Cuban narcotics dealers, the discussion of business over a long, leisurely meal in a public place surrounded by other Cubans, where strangers or intruders would be immediately obvious.
Luis DaPaola owned Casa Cervantes. He was a quiet and brutal man, slim and handsome, chain-smoking Turkish cigarettes and wearing only expensive double-breasted suits in pinstripe gray, except in summer, when he wore gray short-sleeved jumpsuits.
Called Mr. Gray because of this wardrobe, Luis DaPaola followed the Cuban custom of hiring as waiters only those men who wanted to work for him in narcotics as subdealers, couriers, cutters in mills, hit men. In a restaurant owned by any Cuban dope dealer, a waiter’s job was a trial period, a time for the dealer to observe and indoctrinate, to investigate a recruit while teaching him the narcotics trade.
Rolando, the priest, held Barbara’s hand, fingering the blue-diamond bracelet on her left wrist. “Bonito mi Barbara. Very, very pretty. Expensive?”
“Sí.”
“A bargain?” He meant was it stolen.
“You know better.”
Rolando winked at her. He did know better. Barbara Pomal avoided stolen goods as well as the use of all credit cards, since both could only bring her unwanted attention and increase the risk she ran working for a major heroin and cocaine importer. Credit cards meant a record of her trips to Europe, Mexico, South America. So she paid for her plane tickets in cash, using a different airline for each trip, arranging to fly out of the country from New York as well as from Washington, D.C., Toronto, Montreal, Cleveland, Chicago. Barbara Pomal, so careful with her travel plans, was also too careful to buy stolen diamonds.
Under the table, Rolando’s right foot scraped against the aluminum suitcase containing two and one-quarter million dollars, the final payment of the seven and a half million dollars due Jacquard for five hundred kilos of white heroin. When tonight’s dinner ended, Luis DaPaola and three armed guards would take the aluminum suitcase to Washington, D.C., by car, to be smuggled on board a Brussels-bound flight by two members of the crew. DaPaola would also be on that flight to Brussels, where members of the airline ground crew, who had been bribed by Jacquard, would remove the suitcase.
With DaPaola watching, the money would be counted by Jacquard’s men, who would then return to Marseilles to begin plans for smuggling the five hundred keys of white from southern France to Barcelona, Spain. It was now the second week in December; the heroin was due in Spain by February, where Mas Betancourt’s lieutenants and two chemists would test it before breaking it down into twenty loads of twenty-five keys each.
Mas Betancourt added ground black pepper to his beef dish, then passed the black wooden pepper mill to Barbara Pomal, on his left. He said, “I don’t want any of the mules to be waiting around Barcelona for us to break down the white, so let’s have it ready to go when they arrive. No mule should be in Barcelona longer than necessary. Remember, they will be strangers there, and strangers stand out, no matter what. O
ne more thing: I don’t want the mules leaving here and going directly to Barcelona, so let’s talk about that, about where they go before reaching Barcelona, about the routes we want them to follow going there and coming back.”
Barbara Pomal nodded, her mouth filled with stewed lobster. Swallowing, she took her pink cloth napkin from her lap, then wiped sauce from her thin lips. “Mas is right The last thing we want is a small army marching from New York directly over to Barcelona and back again. We might as well drop a dime ourselves and let the agents know what we’re doing. I say the mules leave from different cities here in North America like I do: New York, Miami, Washington, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City. Not everybody has to fly; some can go by ship. No two people traveling together, and if somebody says they want to bring a wife or a boyfriend, we check that out first. In some cases, a couple traveling together might be a good thing. But not in all cases.”
Using her fork for emphasis, she gently sliced the air. “For God’s sake, everybody’s got to have a legitimate passport, because a small thing like that can start a great big wave, and most important of all, nobody, but nobody, carries a gun or a knife or any kind of weapon that’s going to bring airport security into the picture and bring down an investigation. That’s an ironclad rule, and all the mules have to know it up front. Anyone caught with a weapon and bringing us trouble from the authorities will get worse from us.”
The men nodded, grunted, agreeing while continuing to eat.
Mas said, “Better that some of the mules arrive first at some city besides Barcelona.”
Luis DaPaola paused with a forkful of fried swordfish in front of his mouth. “Spain. Some gotta go to different cities in Spain. That puts them close enough, and it just looks like they are taking a tour and Barcelona’s another city.”
Mas nodded. “Good. I like that. Barbara, you and Rolando do that while Luis is gone. You work out the route for each mule. For now, number the routes: one, two, three, four, like that. Later, we just give a number to each mule. I know you have to use maps and papers, but use only one set of everything. No copies. The both of you work from that one set, and, Barbara, you keep it with you. It never leaves you, understand?”
She nodded. “I have three safe-deposit boxes.”
Mas said, “It is important that the mules returning through American customs have different cities stamped on their passports, not just New York and Barcelona. When they call in from the checkpoints, well have a chance to make changes if we have to. Alternate routes, dates of arrival, things like that. What are the plans for mules who won’t be returning through customs?”
Barbara Pomal frowned. “That’s been a challenge. Many routes have been closed down, so we’ve been forced to pick routes we haven’t used before, routes that agents and informants haven’t touched. Rolando and I have worked out two that will come through Canada, and we’re planning two across the Mexican border that will involve small planes, pilots we’ve used before, reliable people. They are experienced; they know how to fly low, to stay under radar, and they know about abandoned airfields that can still be used, or where you can land in the desert, for that matter.”
Mas said, “Fine. Just remember, no combining loads. Twenty-five keys to a mule, no two mules cross together. There’s no way we can lose it all if we follow my plan. Tell me about the Canadian routes.”
Rolando put down his knife and fork. “Nikitas. You know him. Greek freighter captain, ship registered in Panama. He’s the one with three wives, literally married to three different women in three different countries. Mousy, dirty little man; don’t see how he does it. Anyway, he’s sailing out of Barcelona end of February, beginning of March, with a cargo of olive oil for Cape Town. He’s stopping in Mombasa to pick up cotton, and he’ll make a stop in Liberia to drop it off. He sails through the Suez Canal and all the way around Africa before crossing the Atlantic to Montreal. He says he’ll probably make one other Africa stop, dropping off some guns, but that’s not definite. Depends on whether one party comes up with money in advance for somebody else. Besides the dope he’ll be carrying for us and maybe those guns, he won’t have any other contraband. Only he and the first mate will know about our package.”
Mas Betancourt had stopped eating to concentrate on what the priest was saying. “After he lands in Montreal, what then?”
“We pick up the shipment, then drive north and cross over into the States in Maine, near a small town called Thetford. There’s a lot of woods and snow up there, and nothing in the way of border patrols on either side. We change vehicles, switch the load, switch drivers, and just come down to New York, taking our time. Second Canadian route is a freighter out of Sicily. Captain is Potenza, and—”
“I know Potenza,” said Mas. He smiled. “He did some smuggling for the Italians I used to work with in Cuba. That was years ago. He lost a ship in the Far East. I heard the insurance company tried to take away his license, and that’s the last I heard about him.”
“He’s stayed in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, doing a little work for the Sicilians and the Arabs. Potenza will be sailing around the first week in March, arriving in Vancouver. He says he has no contraband, but that he’s expected to do something in Vancouver for some people when he gets there, and I didn’t ask him what. He also said he has to pick up three people in Tangier and drop them in Dublin; then he goes to Vancouver.”
Mas nodded. “Tangier. Dublin. He’s doing a deal with the IRA, and they are probably buying guns in Morocco, or maybe they are getting their guns in Libya like everybody else and just don’t want anybody to know. Potenza. He likes to gamble, I remember.”
Rolando said, “That’s why he needs money. He doesn’t know you’re involved. I’m dealing with him through somebody else, through Germán Burgos.”
Mas nodded approval. Germán Burgos was a Cuban narcotics dealer living in Toledo, Spain, in retirement, but who had found retirement costly and was now doing narcotics deals on a small scale to support himself, his wife, and two sets of aged parents. Germán wasn’t young anymore and was dealing out of desperation, and sooner or later he would get killed either by the police or by his competition. Germán was the type of dealer who would end up dead because he didn’t know when to stop dealing.
Mas said, “What’s Potenza asking?”
“Twenty thousand American.”
“He’ll take ten.”
“Should I mention your name?”
“No. What he doesn’t know, he can’t tell anybody. Potenza’s a good man but a rotten gambler.” Mas turned to Luis DaPaola. “Spanish customs.”
DaPaola stopped eating. “Jacquard’s got somebody in Barcelona, and in Valencia, but he says you’re better off using small towns on the coast. There’s Alicante, Altea, Sagunto, a lot of little seaports we can leave from if we have to. Jacquard says the man he uses in Barcelona is high in customs, somebody who can get us the papers we need to clear any port. He’s expensive, though.”
“He’s Jacquard’s man?”
“Yes.”
“Means he’s good. He’s reliable. We use him, but make one thing clear. We pay his price, but we pay it once, no more. If he comes back to us again for more money, or if he threatens us with blackmail, tell Jacquard I’ll kill his man. Let them both understand this.”
DaPaola nodded.
Mas massaged the muscles of his withered thighs. Cold weather was hell. Each winter, his legs pained him more and more, and the joints in his thighs, knees, ankles would stiffen, making it hard to walk. He thought about Spain’s warm sun. He said, “What about crossing the border into France?”
A few of the mules would be driving into France, to leave from there or from Holland or from Belgium.
Da Paola said, “Jacquard’s got that area sewed up. He says we’ll be dealing with some Basques who do a lot of smuggling around there. We talk to a guy named Cáceres, who’s got his own people working that area. We can go through the mountains, through the Pyrenee
s, and that way we skip the border patrol, or we can pay off somebody at the border and—”
“The mountains,” said Mas Betancourt. “Saving money’s not what I’m concerned about. But we use the mountains and we got that many fewer people knowing what we’re doing. The French port customs—Rolando?”
“Sí. Same people we always use, but it’s going to cost more. Duclos always charges by the size of the load, that fat greedy bastard.”
“No problem. Pay him what he wants. Don’t haggle money if you don’t have to. The fewer questions, the better. But be firm, insist on respect. One thing, and this goes for all of you: if it’s necessary to kill anyone, no matter who, no matter what the reason, that decision is mine. Tell me about it, tell me who, and I’ll decide if he dies. The wrong killing, or killing for the wrong reason, can bring us all down. We don’t need the attention a killing might bring now, understand? Remember: I decide who dies.”
The others nodded, because Mas’s tone did not invite disagreement. As far as this dope deal was concerned, Mas had the power of life or death over many people, some of whom were unaware of it, but who would die just the same if he wanted them to. His lieutenants had never seen him as firm, as decisive, as attentive to even the smallest of details as he was on this deal, la última.
“Stash points,” said Mas. “One change on that: we don’t bring it all to New York. We still keep five different stash points, but maybe two are going to be in a different city, and as soon as we get one hundred keys together in one place, we deal. We don’t keep nothing any longer than we have to. We turn it over fast, and we absolutely don’t do business on consignment. Doesn’t matter who the customer is, we don’t front anything this time. Tell your customers that, make sure they understand that on this deal it’s cash for dope, dope for cash. Hand-to-hand all the way, understand?”
“Something I want to say about Kelly Lorenzo,” said Rolando, wiping his hands with his napkin.
Mas lifted a hand, signaling the priest to begin talking.