by Robin Moore
Sonny's man returned to the Edison Hotel. He stopped at the front desk for his key and walked toward an open elevator. The detective stepped aboard before him. At the ninth floor, the man got off. Sonny went up to eleven, then caught another elevator back to the lobby. He found the house telephone and asked for the hotel security officer, a former city policeman whom he knew. In a few minutes, off in a quiet corner of the lobby, Sonny was asking the security man to check the hotel register. He wanted the names and points of origin of recent foreign check-ins who had rooms on the ninth floor.
Sonny wandered around the Edison lobby while he waited, pausing by the newsstand, examining window displays, but always remaining within view of the elevator bank. Within twenty-five minutes, the house officer caught his eye from near the main entrance. There, shielded by a billboard on an easel advertising the hotel's Green Room, Sonny was told that the individual he was interested in was the single gentleman from Canada. He had come in the previous day and was registered in room 909, a Mr. Jean Jehan of Montreal.
Sonny didn't know the name, but he was going to get to know Mr. Jehan very well. He called in to report his location and to get additional men sent to the Edison. Then, through the security officer, he borrowed an off-duty bellman's jacket and posted himself at the bell captain's desk to wait.
Egan, meanwhile, had tailed the younger man to the Victoria Hotel at 51st and Seventh. Following their standard technique, he got into the elevator with his subject and watched him get off at the eleventh floor. Downstairs, twenty minutes later, Egan learned that his quarry had arrived early the previous day from Montreal; he was in room 1128, and his registered name was François Barbier.
Egan telephoned base and was told that his partner was staked out at the Edison Hotel on an individual named Jean Jehan. He bought a magazine, looked about for a comfortable chair, and made himself at home.
A little over three hours later, at 6:45 P.M., François Barbier emerged from an elevator, bundled warmly in a heavy black overcoat with a furry collar, and walked through the lobby, downstairs and out into icy winds on Seventh Avenue. A big electric sign a few blocks away in Times Square put the temperature at ten above zero. Egan following, Barbier hurried over to Broadway and down to 47th Street, where he turned off and entered the Edison Hotel. Jean Jehan was waiting for him in the lobby, wrapped in greatcoat and muffler, the ever-present black walking stick in hand.
Stationed at the bell captain's desk, his sad brown eyes taking in everything, was Sonny Grosso. Sitting casually in an easy chair on the far side of the lobby, reading a newspaper, was Federal Agent Frank Waters.
Without the flicker of an eye, Eddie Egan strolled in and stopped by the newsstand to scan the magazine rack and final editions of the newspapers. After a brief conference, Jehan and Barbier went out into 46th Street together and began walking west toward the Hudson River. Sonny doffed his bellman's jacket and put on his overcoat, and the three detectives followed, one by one. It was a little after 7 P.M.
The foreigners were in no hurry passing through the greying, scarred area of midtown Manhattan's west side once notorious as Hell's Kitchen — now reduced to stark clusters of crumbling tenements, warehouses, parking lots, service stations and garages. It took them fifteen minutes to negotiate the five long blocks from the Edison to Twelfth Avenue, a wide, dreary thoroughfare running alongside the river underneath the elevated West Side Highway.
The avenue is the outlet for the piers of most of the major shipping lines. At the corner of Twelfth and 46th, Jehan and Barbier stopped to gaze up at the mighty prow of the S.S. United States, which had docked but a short time earlier.
The two Canadians, or Frenchmen or whatever they were, stood huddled on that corner, in a cutting wind off the river, hands buried in their pockets, dancing little steps against the cold, for more than an hour and a half. Across Twelfth Avenue, the pier at first had been a minor bedlam of passengers flocking from the ship, porters manipulating bulky luggage, honking taxis and private autos trying to maneuvere closer to the exit gate. But as eight o'clock wore on toward eight-thirty, the pedestrian and vehicular traffic thinned out, and still the two men waited on the opposite corner.
To the frozen detectives — Sonny in a doorway on Twelfth Avenue between 46th and 47th streets, Egan and Waters on either side of 46th, midway in the block behind the subjects — their wait was puzzling. If the two had come to meet someone disembarking, surely they had missed connections; all but a few stragglers and the ship's crew seemed to have departed the pier. The detectives' fingers and toes were numb and actually beginning to ache. Their ears were burning, and each in his own way cursed the "goddamn Frogs," as Egan had taken to referring to the pair.
Once, Sonny had additional cause for indignation. As he shivered on Twelfth Avenue, a car rolled by him, and he saw a man's face pressed against the right front window, grinning at him. Sonny started as he recognized Jack Fleming of S.I.U. and Federal Agents Jack Ripa and Bill Carrazzo. Ripa had the middle finger of his right hand pointed skyward in the harsh unmistakable masculine gesture. As they passed, from his frozen doorway Sonny threw a sign back, his left hand clapped into the crook of an upraised right arm.
One of the Frenchmen finally made a move about eight-fifty. Barbier left his companion and walked across Twelfth Avenue toward the pier. He stood a few minutes, gazing on tiptoe into the unloading area.
Then, he turned and came back, striding rapidly and, the watching detectives felt, with just a hint of jauntiness. Whatever he reported, Jehan patted his shoulder, and they started walking back along 46th Street.
This time they passed by the Edison and crossed glaring Broadway, just beginning to accelerate its blurred pace, assimilating the streams of nightly theatre-goers and fun-seekers. They continued west all the way to Fifth Avenue, where they turned left and walked north, still meandering like two old friends out on an evening's constitutional.
Comparing notes along the way, the officers were convinced that these two foreigners were the big heroin connections whom Patsy Fuca had been waiting for. Either they were the suppliers themselves or represented the principals directly. It was also evident that the big shipment being buzzed about by local pushers and junkies either was already in, and it remained only for the conspirators to accomplish distribution, or it was due at any moment. For the first time, Eddie and Sonny were particularly buoyed by visions not of finally zeroing in on Angelo Tuminaro, who had been the unwitting target originally, but perhaps of lucking into a bigger score than they had ever imagined. Thus, despite the cold, they were almost exuberant as they tailed the mysterious Frenchmen —whom Egan had whimsically dubbed "Frog One" for Jehan and "Frog Two" for the man Barbier.
The three officers deployed into the classic on-foot surveillance pattern known to intelligence agents the world over as "A-B-C" or "parallel" pursuit.
Two of them, one behind the other — in this instance, Egan (A) trailed by Grosso (B) — followed the subjects at a respectable distance on the same side of the avenue; the third, Waters (C), walked on the other side of the avenue approximately abreast of the Frenchmen. Waters kept his eye on the subjects; Egan watched both them and Waters across the way; Grosso followed the leads of his two fellow officers. Every few blocks, the three would switch positions. It is a near foolproof method of maintaining visual contact with the pursued, because C can always keep the subjects in view regardless of what corners they turn or evasions they attempt. And shortly the effectiveness of the pattern was demonstrated.
Near St. Patrick's Cathedral at 50th Street, the Frenchmen crossed over to the east side of Fifth Avenue, and continued their casual trek north. But then, turning the corner of East 55th Street, they ducked quickly through the revolving doors of the elegant Hotel St. Regis, only a few yards from Fifth.
They might have eluded their trackers right there but for Agent Waters on the far side of the avenue who caught a glimpse of their sudden move.
The pair lingered in the St. Regis lobby for severa
l moments, probably to watch for anybody coming in behind them who might look like a cop, and just long enough to give the pursuing officers a chance to regroup outside. When apparently satisfied that they had been unobserved, Jehan and Barbier walked the length of the lobby and down the carpeted stairs to the luxurious Maisonette supper club one flight below.
Egan and Sonny decided not to follow them into the Maisonette, on the off-chance that either might be recognized from earlier proximity to the Frenchmen, so Waters went down. Sonny said he would wait around the main lobby, and Egan volunteered to post himself out on 55th Street within view of the canopied separate entrance to the Maisonette.
When Egan bundled up and went outside, it was nearly 9:30 P.M., and the temperature had fallen to eight degrees.
Jehan and Barbier sat in the softly lit Maisonette for an hour. Unmindful of the lilting music of the hotel orchestra or of the dozen or so smartly dressed couples dancing, they sipped cocktails, picked at light salads and talked, as Agent Waters watched from across the room. At about ten-thirty, Jehan rose and went upstairs, and his companion remained at the table.
Sonny, slouched in a chair near the entrance to the St. Regis's King Cole Bar, started as Jehan passed him and stopped at one of a row of partly enclosed public telephones just off the lobby. Sonny stepped into an adjoining cubicle, keeping his face averted, and tried to eavesdrop. Jehan's conversation, which lasted some ten minutes, was entirely in French; all Sonny was able to distinguish was a tone of urgency in the man's speech. When he had finished, Jehan returned downstairs to the Maisonette and, after a few more minutes of discussion, the two Frenchmen called for the check.
Waters waited until they had ascended the stairs before leaving his table. Above, Sonny watched them exit into 55th Street; and outside, a frostbit-ten Egan, hat pulled down over his red mop, saw them come out and walk toward Fifth Avenue again. All three detectives trailed the Frenchmen back down Fifth to 50th Street, then east two blocks to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. It was approaching 11 P.M.
The subjects went to the 50th Street side of the Waldorf and down the ramp into the hotel garage.
Feeling it wiser not to follow them into such close quarters, Egan and Sonny waited on the street, watching the garage entrance, while Waters hurried to the elevator bank in the lobby of the hotel. In about ten minutes, Jehan and Barbier came out of the garage and entered the front door of the hotel. Barbier found a house telephone and, as Jehan stood by, held a lengthy conversation with somebody, probably —judging by his frequent gesticulation — in French.
The officers could only speculate whether Barbier was conversing with the same party Jehan had called from the St. Regis. They could not understand the implication of the brief visit to the Waldorf garage.
Barbier rejoined Jehan and, without pausing, the two men strode to the elevators, entered one and disappeared behind the sliding doors. It happened too fast for the surprised officers to follow. There was nothing they could do now but wait. The "Frogs" might be anywhere in the huge Waldorf.
Nearly an hour passed, but there was no further sign of the subjects. It was past midnight now, and the detectives had been tailing these people for more than half a day with barely a chance to eat or even relieve themselves. Their enthusiasm of only a few hours before had waned considerably, and they were growing irritable, at themselves, mostly, because now they seemed to have lost their men. They knew the hotels where each was staying, but their experience had taught them never to take anything for granted.
Still keeping an eye on the main elevators, the officers half-heartedly prowled the great lobby of the Waldorf. Sonny and Waters were becoming resigned to having lost the Frenchmen for the night, but Egan, with his stiff-necked Irish temperament, was nettled. An inexplicable intuition persuaded him that their Frogs had not left the hotel and that there might be a lot more to do yet that night. Drifting off from the others, he wandered downstairs at the Lexington Avenue end of the Waldorf and looked into the Bull and Bear Bar. The neo-English pub atmosphere still was lively with night-capping banquet refugees and convention guests, all male, some in black tie.
There, relaxing at a corner table, two fresh drinks before them, were Jehan and Barbier. Egan ducked out and raced upstairs to inform Sonny and Waters.
Either the Frogs had visited somebody up in one of the rooms and then slipped down to the bar in the lower lobby by the rear elevators, or they had taken a circuitous route there in the first place. Either way, they had them again. They could only hope that nothing significant had occurred in the interim.
The S.S. United States had docked about seven P.M. that evening. For Jacques Angelvin, the tortuous edging of the great ship into the pier had seemed almost interminable. The trip had been a terrible bore, even though he and the girl Arlette, who would continue on to Chicago the following day, had made plans to meet later at her hotel, the Summit. He could barely wait to disembark and get his car to the Waldorf-Astoria as instructed by Scaglia. He was curious, also, to meet the young lady who he had been told would meet him ashore. He envisioned a youthful beauty, charming and agreeable.
Lilli DeBeque was lovely, and charming. Before Angelvin went through the lineup for Customs, he waited to watch his precious Buick unloaded and set down on the pier. At almost nine P.M. he was still waiting for Customs clearance when the girl approached him. She was tall, with long, shiny black hair, shapely, her clothes chic. And a woman, not a girl — twenty-five, perhaps older, he guessed. With his meagre English he was having difficulty explaining to the inspectors who he was and why he had brought his American-made auto to America from France.
Lilli came to his rescue. Introducing herself in French, she told him how pleased she was to meet the television personality known throughout all of France. Then she turned to the inspectors and, in what sounded to Jacques like charming English, described him as '‘the Jack Paar of France . . . "
They waited together, chatting easily, as the Buick was brought off the pier. Lilli was French, but she had been in the States for several years, and was a secretary in a law firm. Jacques, always sensitive to women, felt a spark between them.
Following her directions, he drove through the midtown traffic to the Waldorf on Park Avenue. The broad boulevard, its rich glass towers aglow with night lighting, thrilled him. Angelvin deposited the car in the hotel garage, then invited Lilli up to his room. She declined, suggesting that she wait for him in the lobby.
Disappointed, but realizing that he would have at least a week to pursue Lilli and that Arlette undoubtedly was waiting, and presumably willing, at the Summit Hotel, he in turn pleaded fatigue and arranged to telephone Lilli the following day.
Also, he remembered that he should be hearing from François Scaglia.
Jacques had not long to wait. Near ten-thirty P.M., a Monsieur Jehan called to make sure he was comfortable and that his car was in the garage. The man said that he was with Scaglia and that they wished to visit Jacques in his room. Angelvin asked if it couldn't wait until tomorrow because he was very tired.
Actually, he wanted to pursue his affair with Arlette as soon as possible. Jehan was insistent on a meeting that evening, and finally Angelvin reluctantly agreed after the five-million-franc fee was mentioned.
The meeting in his room lasted about twenty minutes. Jehan and Scaglia were satisfied, having seen the Buick in the Waldorf garage with their own eyes.
Petulantly, Angelvin asked to be able to use his car tomorrow, but Scaglia was adamant. They arranged a meeting for noon the next day, the place to be determined by Scaglia in the morning. Then, to Angelvin's relief, the two left him alone. He had tried not to think about his part in this unsavoury affair, and now he was determined to find diversion.
He left his room, going out of the Waldorf at the Lexington Avenue entrance, across the street and down a block to the Summit Hotel. He called Arlette from the lobby and she soon joined him, and they went back to the Waldorf for a drink at Peacock Alley. After the drink Ang
elvin invited the girl up to his room and she readily accepted. By now, it was after midnight and the hotel security system was operating in full force. Angelvin threw dark looks at the house officers and hotel servants, and Arlette became nervous when on Angelvin's floor a security man followed them to his room. They decided to go back to the Summit and found the situation the same. They were obliged to sleep in their separate rooms in separate hotels that night.
About 12:30 A.M. of January 11, Sonny Grosso was at the Waldorf's Bull and Bear Bar, a foot on the rail, apparently staring moodily into a sweet vermouth.
Egan and Waters were out on East 49th Street, clapping hands and jigging to ward off the biting cold.
Egan's feet were pinched and stinging again. At first he'd had the sudden fear that he might literally be suffering the first stage of frostbite; but then he remembered the new pair of brown shoes he had bought too hurriedly that morning. Egan was cursing the ill-fitting shoes, the cold, his feet, himself, the job, the whole lousy world, when at 1:00 A.M. Jehan and Barbier emerged from the side door of the Bull and Bear and walked east on 49th Street.
Egan and Waters stayed with them, well to the rear and on the south side of the street. Grosso left the bar and took up the chase, far behind the Frenchmen on the north side. Jehan and Barbier turned downtown at Third Avenue. They walked past 42nd Street . . . and 34th. The detectives changed places with each other, alternating back and forth to either side of the avenue, even switching hats occasionally to minimize any chance of the subjects perceiving a pattern of men following them. And they grew more puzzled; surely any minute something would have to happen.
The Frogs would make some significant move; who just walks on such a night, with the mercury sinking toward zero, and the wind whipping at a man's body?
But Jehan and Barbier went on down Third Avenue, hardly looking about them, past 23rd Street, to 14th Street. There, finally, without hesitation, they turned right. It was 1:45 and they had strolled thirty-five blocks, almost two icy miles. The chilled, weary officers perked up: this might be it.