by Marc Olden
“No bust, Red. Got us all wrong, soul man. Whatever makes you think we’re the man? We’re just hard-ass ginzos out to cop good powder. Nothin’ but.”
And placing his .38 Police Special next to Bad Red’s right ear, barrel pointing at the snow-covered roof, Katey fired once, the bullet spraying snow, the crack of the gunshot an explosion in Bad Red’s ear, a huge and painful roar. Facedown in the snow, Bad Red was trapped with thunder roaring inside his skull and back and forth across his brain, and he screamed.
Katey stood up, slipping his piece back into his belt holster, his hard blue eyes on Bad Red writhing in the snow, face contorted in agony, teeth clenched, eyes closed, knees drawn up to his chest. “Say hello to Charisse for me, jungle bunny, and if you ever come near our friend Miss Constanza again, give your soul to Jesus, ’cause your ass belongs to me.”
Katey, brushing snow from his overcoat, walked toward the door. Neil, an arm around Lydia, followed.
At the door, Katey turned and grinned. “Be’s that way sometimes.”
Neil was too cold to argue.
Lydia would have stopped it if she could, this tension between Neil Shire and Jorge Dávila, the immediate distrust between the two men, the bad vibes as the agent and the dapper little Cuban informant from Miami encountered each other for the first time. Her fingers were bright with large square-shaped red, blue, and green stones, but her hands shook as she brought a coffeecup half-filled with dark brown Cuban rum up to her mouth. What had happened to her on the roof twenty minutes ago still had her frightened. Her nerves were stretched tight and about to snap, so she didn’t need this, this heavy, silent scene going down between Neil and Jorge. Her side ached from Bad Red’s kick.
The three of them were in Lydia’s bedroom, each one deep in silent concentration, as though listening to a ticking bomb. Lydia sat in front of her dresser mirror staring at Neil’s reflection, while Neil stood with his back to the bedroom door, eyes almost shut, but not quite; he was watching Jorge Dávila, whom he had just met for the first time.
Neil said, “Nobody told me you were working here.”
Jorge sighed, a man about to use his talent for survival. “I got in from Miami last night.”
“Nobody told me you were working here,” repeated Neil.
Dávila, sitting on the edge of Lydia’s bed, used his thumb to trace small circles on the green-and-white bedspread beneath him. He looked up at Lydia’s back, seeing her slowly combing her waist-length dark hair while looking into the mirror at the two men. Kirk Holmes had been sent downstairs again, this time to telephone the bureau that Lydia was safe and that Bad Red was no longer a problem. Katey, in the living room with the Cuban kids and their parents watching Enrique Ruiz do his magic tricks, whistled and applauded loudly, unaware that Jorge Dávila was a bureau informant.
Dávila, said, “I do what they tell me to do, I have no choice. I’m sure you read the reports on Lydia’s work with me in Miami, so you know a little about me, what I do, how I work—”
“Why you work,” interrupted Neil, his tone saying: You’re a snitch because you don’t have any choice. It was meant to be insulting to Jorge, but unfortunately, it was also insulting to Lydia, who turned around quickly, her face rigid with an anger she found hard to control. “Neil! You are in my house! Tonight is my daughter’s birthday party, do you understand?”
He did, and was ashamed. Inhaling deeply, he relaxed against the door. Pride wouldn’t let him be corrected and silenced by a woman, so he said to Dávila, “I’m working New York just fine, just fine, understand? This is my case, and I don’t need any help, is that clear?”
Dávila stroked his thick mustache with his thumb, then smoothed the lapels on his double-breasted pinstripe brown suit, remembering to keep his voice cautious and respectful, in no way offensive, because the man he was talking to was an agent, and agents could give an informant trouble. Informants had enough trouble without seeking more.
“Mr. Shire, Saul Raiser had a lot to do with my coming here. I just assumed he told you about it”
“He didn’t.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I wish I could say something, but I can’t. I’ve only been in town twenty-four hours.”
Lydia’s eyes met Neil’s in her mirror as he said to her, “And you didn’t tell me he was in New York?” The hurt in his voice was also an accusation of betrayal.
“Neil, I … I thought you knew. It just didn’t come up today. I mean, I didn’t see you all day. I worked on the party, and I didn’t do anything else but that. We didn’t have no more time to talk tonight.”
She felt the tears come suddenly and her face grow extraordinarily hot, and she turned her back to the two men, covering her face with both hands. On the other side of the door, the crowded living room of party guests clapped, whistled, cheered, and shouted, “Olé! Olé!” Enrique Ruiz was an excellent amateur magician, his skill unimpaired by the drugs he dealt and used.
Neil, confused by Lydia’s weeping, became angry and turned that anger on Jorge Dávila, an informant he’d now have to work with on the most important case of his career, but wouldn’t be able to officially control. “Dávila, I don’t know who you spoke to, but I’m the controlling agent on this case, and it would have gone down better for everybody if you’d made a point of speaking to me.”
“I agree.” Both men watched Lydia weep. “But blame Mr. Raiser, not me.”
“I ain’t about to get myself killed because you come onto my set and you don’t know—”
Lydia snapped her head around quickly, a finger aimed at Neil, surprising the hell out of him. “He knows! You don’t know! He knows El Indio, Cristina Reina, and René Ateyala. Do you know them?”
Neil shook his head.
Lydia wiped running mascara with a tissue. “Th-they are Cubans, all of them in dope, all of … of th-them from Miami, but now they are in New York to work with Mas Betancourt”
“Why?”
Lydia remained silent, continuing to dry her face. Jorge Dávila took his cue, keeping his voice soft and hoping he could finish the night without making an enemy of Neil. “Mr. Shire; these men, these Cubans, are what you call ‘on loan.’ Betancourt, he borrows them because he needs qualified people, people he can trust, who know what they’re doing. His top lieutenants are out of the country, so these other people are working for him until they get back. Cubans help each other out like that, you know.”
Neil, alert and listening to every word Dávila said, eyed the dapper little man from the tips of his two-hundred-dollar alligator shoes, past his paunch, and on up to his greased black hair parted in the middle and graying on the sides. Dávila sounded righteous, but that didn’t mean Neil should trust the little bastard. Meanwhile, Lydia was sniffling, and since Neil didn’t know what to say to her, he said nothing.
He said to Dávila, “How come you know so much?”
Dávila, still sitting on the edge of Lydia’s bed, turned to face Neil, his voice still polite, still controlled, still feeling Neil out. But there was an undercurrent of confidence in Dávila’s voice, because he was talking about what he knew, about what he did well and was proud of. He was a good informant, and knew it. “Barbara Pomal, Luis DaPaola, the priest Rolando. They’re all out of the country; they’re in Spain or Mexico, maybe France or Belgium. It’s tied up with this deal you’re working on, the one with Mas Betancourt, the reason you sent Lydia down to Miami. I know Barbara Pomal is going to Mexico City, and from there to Paris. I know because she stopped off in Miami first to talk to some people who work for John-John Paco. You know that name, right?”
“Yeah. I know that name.”
“Yes, well Barbara Pomal talked about moving money to Europe quickly, about looking for mules and picking routes for them. Twenty mules, twenty different routes.”
“Whoa. Slow down. Run that by me again. Twenty mules? Did I hear you right?”
“You heard me right, Mr. Shire. Twenty mules, twenty routes. Mas is being careful with this load. It�
�s only a guess, because Barbara didn’t discuss this, but it looks like Mas does not want to lose his dope, so he is spreading it thin, bringing it in at different spots. Cristina Reina told me this. She’s Barbara Pomal’s cousin, and she works for John-John Paco. She’s one of his top lieutenants.”
Lydia, who had stopped weeping, said, “Jorge sleeps with Cristina.”
Jorge Dávila’s smile was somewhere between sly and embarrassed.
Neil nodded in reluctant admiration. Cubans stuck together, slept together, probably licked the same ice-cream cone, and because they did, because this snitch with the expensive alligator shoes was jumping a broad who worked for a top Miami distributor, Mas Betancourt’s biggest dope deal was that much more in the open. Made sense. Don’t bring the white in all at once and in the same place. Spread it thin. Some of it’s bound to get through. Can’t miss. Smart. Leave it to the Cubans.
“Twenty mules,” he said. “That’s a lot of hired help.”
“I agree,” said Dávila. “But it makes sense. It means a large shipment, which is what you have to expect when Mas Betancourt mixes Cubans and blacks together for the first time.”
Lydia smoothed on lip gloss with her little finger. “Tell Neil what you told me about the money.”
“Yes, the money. Seven and a half million dollars.”
Neil stood up straight, eyes on Dávila. “Seven and a half million dollars?”
“Betancourt.” A relaxed Dávila knew he had Neil’s attention. “Cristina says Barbara Pomal has completed moving seven and a half million dollars to Europe for Mas, and that’s just for the dope, not for expenses, not for bribes. Just for the dope.”
Neil whistled. “Holy shit! You serious? Seven and a half million just for dope?”
Davila nodded and smirked. “Big package, wouldn’t you say?”
“Seven and a half million just for the package?” Neil was stunned.
“Yes. That is what you agents call level number one, I believe. Barbara says this is Mas’s last deal. He wants to retire to Spain after this, so he’s going out in style. That’s why he needs manpower. Cubans, blacks, twenty mules, you name it. Based on my experience, a package that size means almost half that again for planning and for expenses—mules, transportation, hotels, bribes. What we’re talking about is the biggest shipment anybody’s ever seen. We’re talking about maybe ten, eleven million dollars up front. Now, that much dope on the street means an epidemic. That much Turkish white has a street value of a billion dollars or more in nickel and dime bags. If this load gets through, there’s going to be a lot of trouble, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Shire?”
Neil didn’t want to be awed, but he was forced to be. He was still trying to deal with numbers, statistics, the size of the package, the size of the deal, the number of people. What had started out as a rumor, as a maybe, was now hard gospel. Lydia Constanza was worth her weight in gold. Even without knowing when the load was due, just adding up what she, Neil, and Dávila had learned, made this case the biggest thing to hit the bureau in its history. And Neil Shire had the case in his two hot hands.
When the door opened behind him, he jumped. Olga. Her hair in braids, a new red-and-white party dress on, along with white socks and tiny black patent-leather shoes. There was chocolate ice cream around her mouth, framing a gap-toothed smile. “Mommy, mommy! Come to the party, please come!”
Lydia, now composed and wearing a silver lamé gown and black platforms with yellow rhinestones across the straps, crossed the small room to her daughter, scooped up the child in her arms, and rubbed noses with her. Mother and child giggled at each other, before Lydia turned to Jorge Dávila and Neil. “I have to go.” And she left the room with Olga in her arms, the two of them giggling and talking softly in Spanish.
“I hope we can work together,” said Dávila, lighting a tan Cuban cigar and offering one to Neil, who refused. Dávila decided that Neil was impressed with what he’d just heard, but was unsure of how to deal with Dávila. There was a tapping on the bedroom door.
Neil said, “Who?”
“Holmes Sweet Holmes, and Coyote Man.”
Neil turned to Dávila. “I’ll be talking with you.”
Jorge Dávila understood. He smiled, stood up, and decided not to offer his hand to be shaken, since it was obvious that Neil Shire didn’t trust him. The relationship between an agent and an informant struck Jorge Dávila as a rather intricate and bizarre ballet danced on ever-dangerous ground, with the dancers allowed one miscue and no more. The one thing you never did was rush the pace. Go slow, don’t hurry. Speed kills, especially in narcotics. Being in a hurry involved an urgency, and Dávila, an informant who believed that no secret could remain undiscovered forever, knew that one’s urgency would eventually be found out. That’s why he made a policy of never appearing to be urgent about anything, and that’s why he was still alive when other informants were dead.
He left the room quietly and without a fuss, the way Neil Shire wanted him to leave.
When Kirk Holmes and Katey were inside the bedroom, Neil stood with his back against the door. “That was a C. I. from Miami.” C. I. meant “cooperating individual,” a term preferred by some to “informant, “snitch,” “fink,” “Judas,” “stoolie.”
“Name’s Jorge Dávila, Cuban, in town because Saul Raiser and God knows Who else wanted him here to work on some Cubans up from Miami to work with Mas Betancourt. Dávila says Mas has borrowed manpower from Miami, a quaint Cuban custom. Those fucking people stick together like white on rice. No wonder we can’t beat ’em. Mas’s lieutenants are all in Europe, according to Señor Dávila, and that’s why he needs a little help, from his friends. To get by and score high. It may be temporary, it may not, I don’t know, since the movers and shakers at the bureau didn’t see fit to take me into their confidence. So you don’t know, ’cause I don’t know. I didn’t introduce you, ’cause I don’t know him well enough to blow anybody’s cover. He’s probably made you anyway. The dude’s been around, he’s been on the set long enough to know what’s going down.”
Neil let what he’d said sink in. Then he added, “There’s at least five of us in this crib right now who know what Mas is planning. There’s also some other Cubans out there in dope. Some of them, we know, have a piece of this thing, little piece, big piece, don’t matter. I don’t know if it’s a good idea two informants together like that, I don’t know. I mean, anybody out there in that room could get a pile of money from Mas Betancourt for betraying us. Some of them people out there would even blow us away for a thimbleful of snot because we’re ‘the man.’ ”
Katey smirked. “Lydia’s yours. I mean, she’s your talent. Don’t matter what Raiser does with Dávila, does it?”
“Raiser’s always on fire,” said Kirk Holmes. “The man’s got ambitions. He makes up the rules as he goes along. Like Neil said, he’s tied into people down in Washington, not all of ’em in our line of work. He wants to please them people, see that they don’t get embarrassed, and that’s why he sent Dávila an airplane ticket. Raiser wants to learn if anything we dig up can hurt his Washington friends. One thing, though. Got to remember that Raiser couldn’t shift a C. I. from Miami to New York without some kind of clearance from somewhere, and I mean up there.” Kirk Holmes jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “We’d best go easy till we see what’s shakin’. Cut-’Em-Up’s got hisself a crowd ’round him on this one.”
Katey, who had watched Neil to see how he was taking the news that Lydia now had a partner, suddenly realized that he—Katey—had a problem because of this news. A new snitch meant that the feds could get information they didn’t have to share with the New York Police Department. Walter F. X. Forster wouldn’t like that He’d probably tell Katey to find a way to get Dávila’s information included in Lydia’s reports or in the other reports the bureau was passing on. Hell, Walter F. X. Forster would probably tell Katey to steal a copy of anything the bureau got from Dávila; to hell with waiting for a handout that might never come. Jorge
Dávila hadn’t been in Katey’s life more than a few seconds and was already a problem.
Neil said, “Let’s split. Well talk some more outside. Cool it with Dávila. Don’t say anything to him. Not yet, anyway. Let’s see what’s going down with Raiser first. Tell you this: what Dávila just told me means we have got ourselves one hell of a chance for a big one. We make this case, and we get breakfast in bed for a year and egg in our beer with whipped cream on top. Blow it, and we go down the toilet nose-first. We let a load this size get past us with what we already know, and we won’t be able to get a job smelling a dog’s asshole. All right, let’s go somewhere and talk.”
On the way out, Katey waited by the front door with Holmes and noticed that when Neil and Lydia drew off to one side and talked, Lydia kept her hand on Neil’s arm the entire time. “Ain’t that something?” Katey said under his breath, and Kirk Holmes, thinking Katey was talking about a trick Enrique Ruiz was doing with three glasses of water and two white pigeons, nodded his head in agreement.
22
RENÉ VEGA STOOD IN the bedroom doorway buttoning his overcoat and watching small yellow and blue flames crawl slowly along the edge of the tan blanket, turning the edge a dark brown, the line of flame creeping toward the huge black-and-white toy panda that lay beside Shana Levin’s left leg. Smoke rose gently from the burning blanket, a soft gray cloud growing fatter each second. Suddenly the pink sheets beneath the blanket caught fire, and those flames were brighter, louder, a hard red and orange that began snapping like a whip. On the bed, Shana Levin lay on her back, naked and dead, one leg pulled up under her, her long blond hair scattered across her face like carelessly tossed straw, her right hand covered with her own blood and resting on her breasts.
René’s eyes widened; he’d forgotten something. Fifteen minutes ago, he’d been seized by one of his black rages, and this time he’d killed Shana, pressing a pillow down over her face to stifle her screams while he stabbed her in the heart, stomach, and side forty times with a screwdriver. But he’d forgotten to take her money. Her purse. Through the growing smoke he saw it on the small table near the bed.