by Marc Olden
“Waxler vouches for the dealer. They do business in stolen antiques from time to time. Last load to those stewardesses Waxler knows through a vice cop. The cop doesn’t know about this deal. The ladies will hand-carry suitcases on board in Geneva. Plane lands in Miami, our people take over. That’s my hundred and fifty keys.”
Barbara Pomal, a hundred and fifty kilos. “Two loads—fifty keys—through Cherbourg customs. Duclos on duty, no problem. Raphael drives one load up from Barcelona, the Arnstein couple drive the other, arriving two days after Raphael. The Arnsteins’ load goes on the Brazilian freighter, which stops in Rio de Janeiro before arriving at New Orleans. Raphael’s load is on the Ecuadorian ship, directly from France to Baltimore. Coria in Paris accounts for two loads. His son drives one to Germany, to Bremerhaven, where it goes on the Liberian tanker. The captain is our old friend Frederickson, and the load will be wrapped in plastic bags hidden inside drums of oil.
“Coria’s other load will be driven to Brussels by his daughter and her husband. They’ll be in a camper, taking their time. The load goes on the plane piloted by our friend from Colombia, the one with hairy nostrils and a tendency for raping his stewardesses. In Colombia, our friend Guajira takes over. His private plane will land in Georgia. That’s one hundred keys.
“One load to Richards. It’s with the ski equipment he’s shipping back from Austria—ski poles, boots, skis, jackets. Everything will be in packing cases.
“Richards wanted an advance. The people holding his gambling IOU’s won’t wait. I said fine, we’d give him half up front. I knew you wouldn’t mind.
“Last load goes to Milagro. We knew about him even before Waxler told us. Milagro will use his mother again. She’s religious, and he takes her to Lourdes every now and then. Some of it will be hidden under her wheelchair. She’ll be in it, covered with blankets from the waist down, so that helps. She’s genuinely crippled, no hope of walking again, which is good for us. She always has the proper medical papers when they travel. Milagro picks up his load in Lourdes. Germán Burgos has somebody driving it from Spain into France. That’s my hundred and fifty.”
Luis DaPaola, a hundred and fifty kilos. “Two loads for Rupert Logroño, like we agreed. The diplomat gets the most, fifty keys. One load for Germán Burgos’ nephew and his Algerian girlfriend. They drive south from Madrid to Cartagena. It goes on a ship there, one of Burgos’ men is captain, somebody who can be trusted. The ship lands in Colombia, where our man takes over. We fly out of Barranquilla to Florida. One load to the French singer. He picks it up in Toledo, puts it in musical equipment, speakers, amplifiers, then goes south to Málaga and takes, the cruise ship that tours the Mediterranean before going to Cuba. Our friends on the ship have been well paid. In Cuba, they throw the load overboard—it is in plastic garbage bags—and a boat will pick them up and come to Florida. That’s a hundred keys.
“One load to the American air-force captain, who will go from Madrid to Maryland. He says it will be easy to get our people on base there to pick up. The last load to Simon Waxler’s friend, the young man who almost went to jail for receiving stolen goods. The young man buys boots and leather goods in Spain because they are cheap. He owns three stores in New Jersey, but he has a friend at a well-known Newark department store who will receive for him. The well-known department store is never questioned, because they make a point of declaring everything and paying exact duty. That’s the other fifty.”
Mas’s turn. “That’s four hundred and fifty keys. Cristina Reina has taken care of the remaining fifty. Through her CIA contacts, she’s met Cubans at military bases in Georgia and Florida. She can arrange for the proper paperwork needed to have ‘corpses’ shipped from army bases in Europe to bases here in the States. The coffins can be flown over, properly weighted down, and Cristina’s friends will get us on the base to accept delivery. All of her contacts, here and in Europe, are Cuban, which is good. That takes care of all of it. Five hundred keys of white. La última.
“Now, for the five stash points. One hundred keys in each place. New York: one in Manhattan, one in Queens. Our heaviest markets are here. One in New Jersey, Union City. One in Washington, and naturally, one in Miami. The customers won’t be told where to go until the last minute, the day before, or that very morning. They are to move fast. We turn it over quickly; we sell it as fast as it comes in. Rolando, you’ll be here in Manhattan, Barbara in Queens, Luis in Union City: Have people with you. John-John will have Miami. And, Luis, your man Alfredo goes down to Washington.
“If we lose a load en route, we should know quickly enough when someone telephones or doesn’t telephone from a checkpoint. We’ll have to make it good or stand ready to refund the money. No one gets cheated; we keep our word, as always. We shouldn’t lose much, we definitely will not lose it all. If it looks as though we’ll be short of heroin at any stash point, we’ll tell certain customers not to show up. The smaller buyers will have to wait; take care of the big ones first. Barbara?”
“Yes. Mas, you said something about Cristina and some trouble with a customer.”
“Not with a customer, with Lonnie Conquest, one of Kelly’s men. He kidnapped somebody who Cristina said might buy twenty or thirty keys. He calls himself the Hundred Dollar Man. I see you’ve all heard of him. He’s an Italian, buys steady. Small but steady. Checking out suppliers, it seems. Now, he and his people on Long Island are getting ready for some sort of big move, and they need white.”
Rolando said, “Trouble for us?”
“No, not yet. First they must dispose of the old men, Cristina says. Then they will probably fight among themselves to see who leads, and after that, perhaps we should look to see what they will do next. First they must kill themselves, slaughter each other, so to speak.”
“What did Cristina do?”
“She lured Conquest out of his home for a so-called important meeting, leaving his wife alone. Then the woman of this Hundred Dollar Man kidnaps Conquest’s wife and forces a trade. You three are laughing. I admire such a woman. She is loyal, strong.”
“And lucky,” said Rolando. “Formidable. The courage of an Amazon and the luck of a blind man in big-city traffic. What is this incredible female’s name?”
“Lydia. Lydia Constanza. She is a Cuban. We should all be proud of her.”
In a few minutes, Lydia would take the shuttle to Washington, but first, one more telephone call to Neil, the second time she’d spoken to him today. His voice was flat, tired. Life was pressing him down. Sounded as though he were catching a cold. She worried about him living alone, working hard on the case, trying to live with politicians now making trouble for him. Impossible to keep them away, he’d told her. They always get you in the end, he’d said. They always win. They eat the goodies, the rest of us eat the wrapper and the paper bag.
“Neil, you sound awful. You sleepin’ at all?”
“Here and there. Goddamn reports. Stacked from floor to ceiling. Been having meetings with the federal attorney who’ll try this case. Jesus, what a self-loving, ambitious little prick this one is. He’s going over everything we’ve done—wiretaps, reports, buys, you name it. He’s one of those, the kind who doesn’t want a case he’s going to lose. One of those bastards with a last name for a first name.”
Lydia turned to look out of the telephone booth, eyes going quickly to the two agents who would guard her on the trip to Washington. They were bulky in winter coats and scarves, standing back-to-back, eyes on the people walking past them in the airline terminal. Lydia shivered with nerves.
“You better take somethin’ for that cold.”
“I am. It ain’t working. How’s Olga?”
“Fine. She’s with me. Neil, these people Raiser says I gotta meet, are they gonna give me a hard time?”
He cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t. They have to be polite to you, up to a point, but don’t quote me. There’ll be a few tough questions. Got to be that way, since it’s politics from here on. Nobody wants to get Venezuela pissed of
f. Rupert Logroño might even get to tippy-toe past customs with all that white dangling from his neck and nobody laying a damn hand on him. Enough to make you cry. Anyway, just answer their questions and don’t worry ’bout anything. This thing is big, and we’re gonna carry a lot of people with us. Up or down, I ain’t too sure.”
“I’m gonna miss you,” she said. “A week I’m back on the street, and they send me away.” She laughed quickly, too quickly, but she had to cover up just how badly she missed him. During the time she was in safe houses, she thought only of him. She had lost weight, smoked too much, and thought of Neil. When the bureau let her work again, she literally cried with joy.
She said, “Katey still complaining?”
Neil snorted. “What else? His people blame him for the case turning out as well as it has. They think they’re missing out on something, that when it goes down, the bureau will get all the credit and the police department will get nada. Katey’s taking a beating, but he’ll live.”
“He goin’ with you tomorrow?” Neil had an important buy scheduled for tomorrow. Two keys of cocaine from Alfredo Donat, a subdistributor under Luis DaPaola. DaPaola was one of Mas Betancourt’s top lieutenants. Neil was getting close, and Lydia was proud of him.
“Yeah, Katey’s coming. Two keys is a lot of bread. Sixty big ones.” He laughed. “Wasn’t for you being such a famous celebrity, we never would have met Donat.”
“Oh, Neil.” She smiled. The two of them had been in a Cuban nightclub on East Seventieth, when Israel Manzana had brought some people over to their table to meet Lydia, now well known because of what she had done to get Neil away from Conquest. The Cubans had kidded Lydia about “the great rescue,” but they had respected her for it, too. Israel had introduced Donat, who’d shaken hands with Neil, slipping him a note offering to do business with him anytime.
When Neil learned who Donat was, he decided the time was now.
Lydia watched one of the two agents guarding her pick Olga up in his arms and nuzzle her face. “Neil, we can talk, right? I mean, you’re outside.”
“Right. Same number as always. Same crappy drugstore that nobody ever cleans. What’s up?”
“Sometimes I have doubts, you know? I mean, we’re settin’ up people for jail. One day it’s easy. I can do it, and no sweat. Another day, it bothers me. When I’m with you, everything seems all right. By myself, I worry sometimes.”
“I understand,” he said. “My position is different from yours. With me it’s a job, and I don’t even think about it. I mean, I get off the plane in some city, and I might as well be walking right into a closet. I don’t see anything of the city, I hardly ever go anywhere that doesn’t involve dope. Hell, ask my wife, she’ll tell you. I been in New York over a year, and I don’t know anything about this town except after-hours joints, Cuban restaurants, shit like that, but it don’t bother me. I’m doing what I want to do, what I think’s important. For you, it’s keeping out of jail, staying with Olga, and I think … I think it’s right for you to do that. Look, your cousin René, he’s dead, OD. Street says he got a hot shot, but they don’t know for sure why. You were at a safe house, so you couldn’t even go to his funeral. Wouldn’t you like to get the people who did it, I mean, if he didn’t just OD?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I would like them to go down for doin’ that.”
“See, that’s what I mean by the right thing. Okay, so you’re doing a job on your friends, on people you know. But look at it this way. They would do you if it came down to that. Same way they would have done you and me if Cristina Reina hadn’t stepped in. And she did that because she thinks I’m a big-time Italian. I’m saying you can’t worry too much about it, ’cause in the long run, it’s dog eat dog. Eat or be eaten. Everybody’s out there using everybody else, and when they get tired of chewing on your behind, it goes into the trashcan.”
Olga knocked on the door, waved at Lydia, who waved back. “Neil, I know it’s your job to use me, but would you throw me away like them people you just mentioned?”
The telephone-booth door was yanked open quickly, and Lydia flinched, her heart leaping into her throat. It was one of the agents, a tall, thin man named Alan. “ ’Bout that time, Lydia.”
She was about to say “Neil,” then decided not to mention his name. He’d told her it was best if the bureau didn’t know they were speaking often, especially since they weren’t speaking on Neil’s tapped line. He’d also told her he didn’t want to talk about what happened to Dominic León and what Lydia believed Neil’s part in it was. More of her jungle religion, he’d told her. She was only guessing that he’d flaked Dominic. Neil didn’t want to talk about it
“Lydia?”
“Gotta go.” She hung up.
In the knife-sharp February cold that slashed at her face as she walked up the metal stairway leading into the plane, she suddenly remembered that Neil hadn’t answered her question about using her and throwing her away.
Elaine said, “You were only a guest here, Neil, and a guest usually knows when to leave. We saw each other only in passing.”
“You weren’t lonely.” Jesus, why did he say that? He wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want to hurt her. What for?
Over the phone, he heard her sigh, accept the pain, then try to struggle back. “Neil, your excuse for turning your back on me was your job. Whatever I did can’t be justified that way. I wish I could call what I did survival, but you probably won’t accept that either. What excuse am I allowed?”
“Elaine, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have … Look, I’m going down to Miami. Getting near the end of this thing, I—”
“It’s getting near the end of everything, Neil. How long will you be gone?”
“One or two days. The bureau will send my next check directly to you. Deposit it, then make withdrawals. Any problems, call personnel.”
“Yes.”
“How’s Courtenaye’s cold?”
“Better. It’s gone from her chest up to her head. Progress, I suppose. Is it dangerous, Miami?”
“Hope not. I’m supposed to convince them I’m ready to spend over two million dollars.”
Elaine chuckled. “Try buying coffee and fresh strawberries in winter. That’s one million right there.”
Neil relaxed. “Always told you this job wasn’t like any other.”
“Neither is our marriage. At the moment, it reminds me of a jewel that’s just been crushed. It’s pretty, but there’s only pieces left.”
“Elaine, I—”
“Talk to me when you get back, Neil, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Talk to you when I get back.”
When he hung up, he left the drugstore, got a pint of vodka, and headed back to his new apartment, remembering Katey’s remark that life is nothing but a shit sandwich and every day we take another bite. Aloud, Neil said, “Christ Almighty, how about a different menu for a change, okay?” In the cold, with people bundled up and leaning into the February wind, nobody paid attention to him.
33
“I GET THOSE DAYS,” said Katey, “when I just want to go in and tell Forster I can’t dance, the music’s too fast. Tired of getting my chops busted over this Lydia-Betancourt thing. I mean, who do you have to fuck to get out of this movie?”
“You’d quit?” Margaret sat up in her hospital bed, arms behind her to adjust pillows.
“Quit, she says.” Katey sighed, letting his head flop back against his chair. “Had any sense, I’d put on a tight dress and black garter belt and let some guy keep me. Get the hell out of this business. Jesus. Forster’s out of his tree over this case, and he’s got nobody to take it out on but me. Lydia’s turned out to be a gold mine of information, and now everybody in the department wants to know why Forster turned her over to the feds in the first place. Nothing but buck-passing, but that’s life in the big city. That’s how it goes; the department doesn’t trust the feds when it comes to sharing the credit.”
“Edward, I thought you said that was all taken care of.
You both were to share the credit.”
He kept his head tilted back, peering at her through slitted eyes, seeing how thin she was now, with a face the color of week-old snow. First Russell Gormes, now Margaret. Katey was spending as much time in hospitals as he used to spend at porn movies.
Margaret was in the hospital because of her plumbing. A hell of a thing to happen to an ex-nun who had never gotten that much action anyway. God had his funny little ways, didn’t he? No wonder the world was a Technicolor shithouse.
After Margaret had noticed the bleeding, she’d gone to a doctor, who’d found the growths and told Margaret that a little cutting, some scraping, and she’d be all right But then another X ray had turned up more bad news, and that meant the knife would have to carve deeper, much deeper. To stop the growths from returning meant removing the uterus, a hysterectomy, and Margaret, who’d once planned to spend her life in a convent, had wept bitterly because now she’d never have children. Katey had sat and watched her weep, feeling confused and uncomfortable as usual whenever anyone around him shed tears. Today she wasn’t weeping. Thank God for that.
Katey turned his hands palms up. “Not a question of sharing the credit. It’s just that nobody trusts nobody in this business. Cops, agents, politicians, they all want to come out lookin’ good, standin’ tall. You do that by producing, by getting results. Arrests, convictions. That’s why you got all that plea bargaining goin’ down today. Results. And to get that, you got to watch out for number one.”
Margaret looked into a compact mirror, patting her short red hair with her hand. “You and Neil getting along any better?”
“Yeah, better. Like you said, it wasn’t his fault I didn’t go down to Miami. Feds were the ones with the two million, and they wanted their own men around that much money. Neil says when they showed Cristina Reina and René Ateyala the suitcase full of hundreds, both of ’em almost wet their pants.”