by Robin Moore
Egan hustled to his partner's car. As Sonny swung around to start after the other two vehicles, Frank Waters's voice greeted them: "We're right behind you now. What's been happening?"
Sonny grabbed the mike. "Did you guys see a big, light sedan just make a U and take off in this direction? Patsy's car looked like it was following."
"Negative."
"I saw it," Egan exclaimed, still a little breathless,
"but I couldn't see who was driving. Was it Patsy?"
"I think it was. It happened fast. The car was like a tan colour."
"What about the plates?"
"Looked white to me."
"Out of state."
"Look!" Sonny exclaimed. Two blocks ahead, the Buick was turning right. The sedan was not in sight. As the detectives neared the corner, which proved to be Montgomery Street, Sonny slowed almost to a stop, and Egan jumped out and ran to peer around the corner of a loft building, raising his left arm in a cautioning signal. Down the dark street, toward the river, he could see two pairs of red taillights moving. About three blocks down, the car in the lead started to turn right again, the other still following. Egan dropped his arm and ran back to Sonny's car. They turned into Montgomery, Auletta and Waters now trailing close.
The third cross street was Cherry. Again Sonny braked the Olds, and Egan once more crept to the corner of a large apartment building. Now the red pinpricks were about two blocks away . . . and now again they were turning, left this time. Egan dashed back to the car, signalling the detectives behind. The two cars turned onto Cherry and moved slowly past the sprawling LaGuardia high-rise apartment project. The street was poorly lit and, except for the empty automobiles along both curbs, it was deserted. Looming high before them was the Manhattan Bridge.
They crossed Clinton and eased up approaching the next street, Jefferson. For the third time, Egan was out of the car before it stopped rolling and running across the sidewalk ahead on silent feet, like a burly toe dancer. At the corner of another loft building, he crouched low, right arm up stretched to keep his partners back. There were empty cars parked at the near curb, blocking his vision, but he thought he heard the low hum of an idling motor, and then he could make out the pale red glow of a taillight. His posture must have suggested impending action, for light footsteps came up behind him now. Egan glanced around, his fingers to his lips. It was Frank Waters. Egan looked back around the corner and, just as Waters reached his elbow, saw a flash of dull light across Jefferson and heard a car door slam.
"What is it? What was that?" the agent whispered urgently.
"Dome light. Somebody just got out of a car, I think. But I don't see nothing."
Then there was another click, possibly of another car door being closed gently, and the sound of a motor accelerating. The red glow moved off.
Egan grabbed Waters's arm and started back
toward their cars. "They're going!" he said. "Sonny and I will take them. You and Dick wait here until we call you. I don't know if Patsy switched cars again or not." He piled into the seat next to his partner, barking: "Let's go! They went down Jefferson!"
Sonny swerved around the corner. The taillights were just approaching South Street, underneath the elevated viaduct two blocks down. It was the only vehicle in sight now. Sonny stepped on the gas. The car in front of them turned right on South Street. It was Patsy's little Buick. The detectives could make out a blur of heads in the front seat — it could have been three, or perhaps only two.
As Sonny drew around onto South Street, Egan motioned him to pull into a darkened service station just off the corner. At the same time, he reached for the radio mike. "Frank, Dick! It's his car all right. He may be in it, we can't be sure. You guys pick 'em up."
"Ten-four."
" — they're moving down South, going slow. Now they look like they're turning up Pike . . . "
Seconds later, Egan and Grosso saw Frank Waters's white hardtop sweep out of Jefferson and disappear down South Street after the blue compact. "We're gonna take a look around Jefferson where they stopped. He must've dumped the big car. Come back if nothing happens, 'kay?" Egan added into the mike.
"Ten-four."
Sonny eased the Olds out of the back end of the service station, onto Water Street, and slid it around the corner facing Jefferson. Switching off the engine and lights, he and Egan got out and, one on each side of the street, started walking cautiously up Jefferson toward Cherry, inspecting each automobile along the curbs. About midway in the block, Egan hissed across the quiet street to Sonny: "Tan-coloured, you said?"
"I thought so," his partner rasped back. "White plates?"
"C'mere. I think I got it."
Egan was standing behind a four-door Buick, tan or light brown, with whitewall tires. It was fairly new, about 1960 they guessed. Embossed on the right front fender was the designation Invicta. But what fascinated the detectives were the license plates: they were Canadian, from the Province of Quebec.
While Sonny jotted down the plate numbers and other items about the car on a match cover, Egan prowled further up the dark street, looking into each parked car. There was nobody about, not another vehicle moving in the vicinity. He glanced at his wristwatch: it was barely past 1 A.M. It had seemed like hours. What was the significance of all this, of Patsy driving into Manhattan so late with his wife and her girl friend, picking up a Canadian Buick, riding around and then leaving it in this small, obscure street? Had he been scared off, or had he dropped it for somebody else to pick up? And who would that be? His uncle, maybe? But why a Canadian car?
Egan returned to Grosso, and his partner greeted him: "Did you know it was open?"
"I never tried it. Anything inside?"
"Nothing. It's clean."
"Well, that don't mean anything," Egan said. "If there's anything valuable in it, they wouldn't leave it lying on the seat. How about the trunk?"
"Locked. Let's go back to the car and tell the other guys."
They had hardly crawled into the Olds when the radio squawked: " . . . do you read me? Acknowledge, kay?"
"Popeye and Cloudy here, kay," Sonny replied.
"We been trying to raise you guys," Frank Waters exclaimed. "What's up?"
"We found the car he dropped. Tan Buick, Invicta, about a sixty. Canadian plates . . . "
"Canadian! Hey, great!" The spunky little agent was excited. "This is getting good! Canada — !"
"What about you guys?"
"We are now in the middle of the Manhattan Bridge, practically right over your heads. They're going back to good old Brooklyn — home, I hope."
"So our boy is with them!"
"Correct. He was in the car, all right. They let the girl off around Canal Street, then he got out of the back and took the wheel, and he and the other one drove onto the bridge. The other broad, she got a taxi. Looked like she was headed uptown. We got the cab number; we can check his trip list later. I don't figure where the redhead fits, though."
"Me neither. She could be just a cover. Well, we're gonna stick around here. Somebody might be around to pick up this Canadian car."
"You better believe it!" Waters cried. "You could be sitting on dynamite! Soon as we put this guy to bed, we'll be back. We'll signal when we get in radio range, kay?"
"Ten-four."
Egan leaned over and pointed past Sonny, back toward Cherry Street. "There's a parking lot up there in the housing project. It'll give us a good view down Jefferson."
They drove up Jefferson, and Sonny positioned the Olds inside the parking lot near the exit. With the motor off and lights out, they stretched out in the blackness to wait and to ponder. Quietly, they reviewed the situation, and the more they talked the quicker rippled an undercurrent of enthusiasm that Waters probably was right, they had indeed stumbled upon Patsy in the middle of a big operation. For some time Canada and specifically Montreal had been a prime point of origin for narcotics smuggled into the States, so it was hardly stretching plausibility to deduce that this Buick cou
ld well be a medium of exchange, either having brought stuff down from the border or to carry back the payoff, possibly both. If that were the case, then surely somebody would come by to retrieve it. In any event, in their mounting anticipation it did not occur to them that this was the first time since they'd become interested in Patsy Fuca that their chief preoccupation was not solely the discovery of his uncle, Angelo Tuminaro.
"Waters here," the portable radio interrupted thinly. "Cloudy? Popeye? Do you read — ?"
"Popeye here, kay," Egan responded into the mike. He looked at his watch, surprised. It was almost ten minutes to two. They had been sitting for forty minutes. "They went home all right. We turned right around and headed back. Look, we'll be with you in a few minutes."
"Ten-four."
Hardly, it seemed, had they settled back again than headlights, sweeping into Cherry Street to their left, illuminated the darkness around them. Eddie and Sonny slumped low in their seats. It was only the second vehicle to have entered the block since they had been there; the other was a panel truck, and it had continued down Cherry past Jefferson without any sign of loitering. Now the oncoming lights, approaching slowly along the perimeter of the housing project, eased to a stop abreast of the parking lot, and then the lights went out. It was an automobile, white. Peering over the ledge of his window, Sonny saw someone getting out, a man, husky, bareheaded. He was moving, gingerly, toward the entrance to the lot. Auletta.
Sonny sat up. "It's them," he breathed. "Dick and Frank."
He and Egan got out and silently directed the others into the lot, near their own car, then climbed into the back seat of Waters's car.
"Christ, you scared us!" Egan complained. "We'd just finished talking with you and here comes a car down the block. Why didn't you say you were so close?"
"We just wanted to see if you were alert," Waters chuckled. "So what's new?"
Sonny and Eddie briefly summed up what they thought as Waters nodded vigorously. City police detectives and officers, who had mixed feelings about the effectiveness of many of their Federal counterparts, admittedly compounded by a combination of jealousy of the Feds' superior equipment, admired Frank Waters.
Though short in stature (they had nicknamed him "Mickey Rooney"), he was canny and tough, with unerring instincts and the courage of an astronaut. Him they liked and respected— he was "a good cop," the highest compliment they could pay any investigator.
"You know what we got here?" Waters exclaimed.
"You guys are sitting on promotions! — Sonny to first grade, Dick to second." Egan already was a detective first grade; he could go higher only by civil service exam. "We have lucked into a major score! Patsy Fuca, car down from Canada, dark streets, waterfront, two in the morning — it's gotta be a shipment, right? You watch, pretty soon there's going to be a truckload of Dons down here to unload this Buick.
We're going to have us a little war. And man, you an' me, we's gonna be hee-roes!" he enthused, imitating the stereotyped Negro dialect.
The others looked at each other and then back at "Mickey Rooney," bubbling over in contemplation of the scenario spinning across his imagination. And as they thought about it, they began to get nervous.
Now it was almost 2:30 A.M., Sunday. The streets were still; no other vehicles had entered the area since Auletta and Waters arrived. Only a few windows remained lit in the tall apartments behind them.
Other than sporadic bursts of new conjecture by the keyed-up Waters, the four were silent, each with his private thoughts. The only constant sounds were mournful groans of tugboats on the river, two short blocks east beyond the shuttered, gloomy piers; and they could hear the occasional clatter of an unseen truck on the cobblestones of South Street and the distant hum of tires skimming over the grated roadbed of the Manhattan Bridge high above them. The night was black and cold. They slouched there, daring neither to light cigarettes nor even to chance listening to the radio for fear of giving away their presence to any unknown persons preparing to retrieve the Buick.
The silence grew more ominous.
Just before 3 A.M., headlights flashed again, coming toward them along Cherry Street. The four detectives hunched down out of sight, Egan and Grosso, in the back, curling onto the floor. Auletta, crouched in the right-hand seat, kept bobbing his head up to follow the progress of the car, now slowly passing abreast of their position in the parking lot. "What's happening? Who is it?" Waters kept hissing, doubled over on the driver's side.
"It's an old sedan," Auletta reported. "Maybe a forty-nine or fifty Chevy. Beat up. It looks like a bunch of guys in it, four or five maybe."
"It's them! See, I told you!" Waters exulted. "It's the Dons. Oh, baby!"
Auletta whispered: "They're turning on Jefferson . . . slowing down, near the Buick . . . No, they're still going, toward the river . . . I can't see them now."
The air was taut inside the car for several minutes.
Then Waters rasped: "What d'ya see, for Chris — ?"
"Hold it," Auletta snapped, his eyes raised just over the top of the dashboard. "A car's coming back on Cherry off the next block down — it could be them again . . . Coming up to Jefferson . . . turning, real slow . . . It's the same heap, all right. Looks like it's filled with guys . . . They're going past the Buick . . . slow . . . pulling into a space about three cars in front of the Buick . . . "
All four detectives had their hands on the butts of their service revolvers. They waited. Auletta's voice rose: "Four of them. They're around the Buick . . . trying the doors. They're trying to bust into it!"
"Let's hit 'em!" Waters barked. He started the ignition. Crouched behind the wheel, the others still doubled out of sight, he swerved out of the lot onto Cherry without headlights, turned sharply into Jefferson and lurched to a halt abreast of the tan Buick. Before he'd even pulled the hand brake, the two right-hand doors were open and Auletta, Grosso and Egan burst from the car, .38's in their fists, Egan shouting, "Police!"
It had happened so fast that the startled men around the Buick were unable to move more than a stride or two back toward their own car. All were short and swarthy. Within seconds, the detectives had them leaning, arms outstretched against the Buick Invicta, a pair on either side. A frisk produced three knives, one a switchblade, a length of tire chain and a set of jagged homemade brass knuckles. The men appeared to be Puerto Ricans. At least one spoke English. The detectives interrogated them harshly for several minutes. Both sullen and frightened, they answered little. And the cold realization settled upon the officers that these were not Dons.
"Nothing!" Egan finally exclaimed disgustedly.
"Just a bunch of punks out to boost a new car," Sonny complained.
"They don't look like much," muttered Waters.
"But you can't tell."
"Shit!" Egan spat. "Let's get 'em booked."
As Dick Auletta herded the suspects aside, Sonny got on the radio to alert the local precinct for assistance. Egan and Waters, dejected, strolled around the Buick. Egan gestured up toward the apartment towers. "Well, if anybody was up there watching over this baby, we just blew the siren." He knitted his brows at the little agent. "Why don't we see what we got here, anyway?"
"You want to shake it down?"
"So let them sue us. Maybe this car is loaded, maybe not. It could have been unloaded already. Or maybe the whole bit was just a dry run. We might be sitting here for another week. So we find out at least."
Waters agreed, "Yeah, you're right. But let's wait until we dump these other punks first."
In ten minutes, two patrol cars arrived and the four prisoners were hauled away, Auletta going along as arresting officer. It was 4:10 A.M. before the remaining three detectives reluctantly conceded that their "prize" did indeed seem to be a bust. They had examined the interior with minute care: glove compartment, dashboard, beneath the floor mats, ash-trays, under seats, upholstery on the door panels finding only, as Sonny's cursory inspection previously had indicated, that the car was well care
d for, clean.
Waters removed the rear seat and backrest and, armed with a flashlight and what he called his "burglar's tool," a bent knife that could open almost any regular lock or latch, he crawled into the trunk compartment and unfastened the lock from the inside; but there, too, they discovered only the usual auto implements. Egan looked under the hood, Sonny even slid on his back underneath the chassis.
Nothing. The Buick was clean.
Disillusioned, laden with weariness, the three went back in Waters's car to the parking lot. They sat there in the dark, and even Waters was out of words now.
After about twenty more minutes, Auletta was seen walking up Cherry Street from the direction of Pike Street. Approaching the comer of Jefferson warily, Dick peeked toward the Buick, and, not seeing anybody, looked across toward the lot. Waters flicked his parking lights on and off.
When Auletta settled himself in the front seat, his face was grim. "I had the patrol car drop me back at Pike, just in case. What's with the Buick?"
"Nothing," Waters growled. "We gave it a toss, and nothing."
Auletta sighed. "Same with the gloms we collared. They're nothing more than thieves. And now I got myself a little chore in the morning," he scowled at his wristwatch, "in a little over four hours, in fact. I gotta appear in court to make the complaint. Thanks a lot, partners," he said with a touch of bitterness.