The French Connection

by Robin Moore

  In matter-of-fact fashion, he repeated the fiction about a robbery and a red Dodge to the attendant and then came back up to the street, and pausing only to check for traffic, walked across East End Avenue toward yet another apartment house with a garage in its lower level. The individual from No. 45 had come out of the entranceway and was on the corner of 81st Street now. Egan could feel his eyes follow him as he descended into the third building.

  The sandy-haired attendant was still lounging outside when the detective emerged again. By now, Egan thought the guy could have slipped down into the second garage and checked the cop's story. Let's hope so; and the other one too. If the Dodge story keeps Patsy from panicking, I'm lucky. What the hell is he doing here, anyway? Egan made a note to pull the files on No. 45 East End Avenue to learn about its occupants, owner, renting agent, garage concession-aire and even its employees.

  The detective entered a stationery store a block and a half away and found a telephone booth from which he could still observe the building. At any moment he expected to see Nicky's gray Cadillac speed out of the ramp, and he was ready to take up the tail. He dialled base control. Ben Fitzgerald answered.

  "Fitz, I got Patsy!" Egan cried.

  "Where?" Fitzgerald boomed.

  In a minute and a half, Egan outlined what had happened from following one of his famous hunches. Suddenly he tensed: "Hold it, Fitz. A car's coming out. Maybe it's Patsy."

  There was a silence as Egan squinted up the block.

  But it was not the familiar 1956 gray Cadillac that emerged. It was a black Buick Invicta that turned north as it gained the Avenue.

  "No, Travato's car is still in the garage," he said into the phone.

  "Are you sure you saw Fuca?" the supervising agent persisted.

  "Am I sure? Do I know Patsy? Look, scramble Sonny and Waters and the other guys, get them up here!"

  While Egan listened, Fitzgerald switched on the all-cars transmitter and alerted available officers to converge on No. 45 East End Avenue.

  "Fitz," Egan called, remembering how some cops enjoy speeding to a scene of operations, "tell them not to come on too strong and to fan out around this building. I'll be around some place close."

  Fitzgerald complied, then came back on the line.

  "I sure hope you're right, Popeye," he said, sounding a little quizzical. "What the hell is Patsy doing in that neighbourhood?"

  "I don't know. But it's the same spot I tagged him to last Friday."

  "You did? I didn't know."

  "Look, I gotta go," Egan cut him off. "I'll talk to you later. Oh, wait. See if you can get me a rundown on the management and tenants of Forty-five East End Avenue, okay?"

  Leaving the store, Egan climbed into his Corvair and eased it into a parking space near the corner of 82nd Street and East End, from where he could watch the comings and goings at No. 45. Switching off the motor, he sat back, content that Patsy had to come out sooner or later.

  Assistance was not long in arriving. It was just past one-thirty when Egan spied Sonny Grosso approaching on foot along East End Avenue. Egan rolled down his window and whistled, and Sonny came to the car and got in.

  By 2 P.M. every street in the vicinity was covered by narcotics officers, some in unmarked cars, others, in a variety of attire, on foot. Lieutenant Vinnie Hawkes headed the large surveillance unit. About 3:00 P.M. Sonny, who had left Eddie's car, returned, concern etched deeper into his already sad features. With his radio being repaired, Eddie depended on Sonny to bring him the latest news. The entire investigation team staked out around No. 45 East End Avenue had serious doubts that Egan had actually seen Patsy, Grosso reported.

  Agent Waters casually ambled over to Egan's car, pulled open the back door and slumped inside. Eddie felt the scepticism in the aggressive little agent's eyes and tone as he expressed his disbelief that Patsy would be in this neighbourhood at all. Egan struggled to hold his temper in check as the Federal agent needled him.

  At 4 P.M. Dick Auletta approached. Lieutenant Hawkes wanted to see Popeye. Wearily Eddie slid out of the car and followed Auletta to a delicatessen around the corner. Hawkes, tall and spare, with the bleak look of Gary Cooper nearing a showdown, stood in the doorway. He was unmistakenly convinced that he was wasting the time of a large segment of the Narcotics Bureau following up Egan's alleged sighting of Patsy. He said as much.

  Popeye staunchly maintained he had seen Patsy and suggested infiltrating someone into the garage to see if Nicky Travato's Cadillac which Patsy had last been seen driving might not be there. Hawkes mused aloud on who would walk into a garage for an "inspection" and not seem out of the ordinary.

  "Sanitation? Rent control? Welfare?" Egan offered.

  Hawkes chuckled. "Welfare? Around here? "

  "You're right," Egan agreed, grateful for a smile from the dour lieutenant. "How about a fire inspection?"

  Hawkes displayed immediate enthusiasm, remembering that Egan's stepfather was now a city fire chief.

  Hawkes and Egan repaired to the nearest telephone.

  Ten minutes later, Dick Auletta was dispatched to the fire station on East 75th Street. Auletta would be one of the inspecting "firemen."

  It was nearing 5 P.M. and the streetlights had just blinked on, when a red fire truck rumbled around the corner of 79th Street, three blocks away from the garage. As the pessimistic surveillance team watched, rubber-booted firemen jumped from the glistening cruiser and began inspecting each garage as they came to it on East End Avenue. At 5:25 three firemen entered No. 45 and ten minutes later reappeared.

  Tense and worried, Egan watched from his car a block and a half up the Avenue as only two of the "firemen" jumped back onto the cruiser; a third proceeded southward on foot, rounding the corner where Hawkes was waiting. After five more long, anguished minutes Hawkes appeared beside Egan's car and slid in.

  "Well?" Egan blurted. "Have I blown it?"

  Hawkes's mouth softened. "You were right, Eddie. Nicky's Caddy is in there."

  The detective slumped and looked at the lieutenant. "Man, you guys had me talking to myself!"

  "Go ahead and say it: 'I told you so.'" Egan brushed off the gratuity. "Who needs it?"

  Then he grinned. "Anyway, I already said it — before."

  "The car is holed way down in the back of the lower level, Auletta says. It looks as though it's been there for some time."

  "That fits. What about Patsy?"

  "No sign of him in the garage," Hawkes related.

  "He could be anywhere in the building, of course."

  "Just like last time I saw him here. He went up in the elevator. Did you get anything on the building, or the tenants?"

  "Yes. The building seems okay, tenants well-to-do, all apparently respectable — did you know Don Ameche, the actor, lives there? — but the garage itself, that shows promise.

  "It's a concession," Hawkes went on, "and the guy who runs it, Sol Feinberg, has been through the mill more than once on suspicion of, let's say, under-the-counter enterprises, including possible interest in junk."

  "Hey, now — !" the detective smiled.

  "We have never been able to nail him, and right now he's clean," continued Hawkes. "But he has a business partner who has a piece of this operation and also owns another commercial garage in the Bronx. But more than that he is an active suspect in a couple of major violations, also including narcotics . . . . So does this make you feel better?"

  "Beautiful!" Egan exclaimed. "You know, I think I will say it again."

  "Say what?"

  Egan grinned: "I told you so."

  Before Hawkes returned to his own post, he told Egan that as soon as Auletta had reported confirmation of the Cadillac on the premises, Sonny Grosso had proposed setting up an observation and command post in the building facing No. 45 across East End Avenue. The lieutenant had charged Sonny with making arrangements with one of the building's occupants. "And Sonny asked me to give you this message," Hawkes added. "Up the Irish!"

  Egan w
as hungry all of a sudden. It was close to 6:30P.M., and he had not eaten since breakfast. He accompanied Hawkes around the corner as far as the delicatessen where several hours earlier he had felt so demoralized as his boss chewed him out. His step was lighter now, buoyed by renewed confidence, and he indulged himself by ordering two roast beef sandwiches and two Pepsis to take back to the car.

  Finding Patsy was the most important development in the past two days. The three Frenchmen were still missing, and a few hours earlier the Edison Hotel had received a handwritten note from Jean Jehan in which he enclosed $82 .50 in Canadian currency to settle his room bill. The note asked that his belongings be forwarded to an address in Rosemont, Montreal. But even now Egan and the others had to face the possibility that any time during this long day of Patsy's absence he might well have been meeting the Frenchmen, finalizing the deal.

  There was only one way to find out: wait for Patsy— and any other of his fellow conspirators who might happen along. Egan munched his sandwiches, relaxed but alert and primed for anything.

  Two more hours passed slowly, as the sharp wind whipped off the East River. Egan was grateful for the protection of the car, but still he felt chilled and cramped. He couldn't postulate what Patsy might be doing all this time. Probabilities and possibilities spun around in his head, but the only facts at hand were that Nicky's Cadillac was still in the garage and Patsy had not come out of the building. He would have to show himself sometime.

  Patsy did appear, about five minutes later. But not from No. 45. He was walking up the far side of East End Avenue from the direction of 79th Street.

  Egan started, and then watched tensely as the subject, still wearing coveralls, sauntered across 81st Street and, with scarcely a glance about, serenely turned into the garage.

  Holy Mother! He must have been out all afternoon. Jesus H. Christ. Egan thought he knew when Patsy had slipped away: it had to have been when the detective had visited the other garages in the vicinity.

  Or it might have been during the few minutes he'd taken to telephone base, or while he was driving around the block to position himself on 82nd Street in view of the building. Patsy had enjoyed practically twelve hours of unobserved freedom this day.

  It was a hell of a time to be without a radio, Egan swore, as the shock wore off. He shouldered the car door open and ran into East End Avenue, waving his arms and pointing to No. 45 across the way. Out of a doorway popped the lanky figure of Vinnie Hawkes, waving Egan back. Okay, at least everybody knew. He returned to his car and started the motor.

  In five minutes the gray Cadillac loomed up from the garage and paused a moment, astraddle the sidewalk. Egan vowed to tail Patsy to the moon, if necessary. Just then, the right front door of the Corvair was yanked open and Agent Luis Gonzalez tumbled inside next to him. He was carrying a portable radiophone. "Good boy, amigo! " Egan cried.

  He seized the microphone: "Okay, Popeye here. I'm gonna take this bird, wherever he goes!"

  Patsy turned right onto East End, passed Egan and signalled for a left on 83rd. Egan eased the Corvair out of 82nd and followed, Gonzalez barking the course into the radio.

  Patsy drove through York Avenue and continued on 83rd Street to First Avenue, where he made a right and proceeded uptown. Egan and Gonzalez stayed with him as the Cadillac swung around into the downtown lanes of the East River Drive at 96th Street.

  "Christ, he's still playing games," Egan complained.

  " . . . somebody get to Seventy-ninth and pick us up on the Drive!" Gonzalez was radioing smartly.

  They glimpsed a car waiting in the 79th Street access as they flew past. It turned into the traffic flow after them, but Patsy now was veering off the Drive at the 73rd Street exit. He drove the block west to York Avenue, then went right, uptown again. At 82nd Street, Patsy made another right and, midway between York and East End Avenue — not a hundred yards from the spot where Egan had sat for some eight hours —squeezed the big Caddy into a space by the curb.

  "He's parking on Eighty-second," Gonzalez reported.

  "We'll have to keep going past him. Somebody got him, ‘kay?"

  "We see him." It was Sonny Grosso responding.

  Egan drove down to East End and turned right and drew over in the middle of the block, directly opposite the garage from which Patsy had emerged a quarter of an hour earlier.

  "Oh, ho!" — Sonny again, and gleeful — "Guess who we found?"

  "What's happening?" Egan shouted toward the radio.

  "Patsy meets a guy on the sidewalk, and they're talking. And who is it but Mr. Mouren — Frog Number Three!"

  So the ball game is not over! Egan exulted.

  Minutes passed, the speaker crackling with the voices of officers in other cars crosschecking locations and logistics. Then Sonny broke through: "The two of them are getting into the Caddy. They're moving out."

  The Cadillac came around the corner and passed Egan and Gonzalez in the Corvair. Egan waited until it had gone another block south on East End, then pulled out. Patsy turned up 79th Street to York. When the light changed, he made a wide left, and the Caddy stopped near the southwest corner of the intersection. Mouren got out and started walking west on 79th. Patsy drove on, headed downtown.

  " . . . the Frog is out!" Gonzalez broadcast.

  Egan tailed Patsy down to 63rd Street, where he turned onto the Drive again. They were making good speed downtown when word was flashed that Mouren had succeeded in melting into the night.

  "One minute he was there, the next he was gone," Vinnie Hawkes reported in discouraging tones.

  Patsy led them over the Williamsburg Bridge to his luncheonette in Brooklyn. His father-in-law had been minding the store, and Patsy sent him home.

  Egan and Gonzalez were soon joined by other cars, including one carrying Sonny and Waters and another with Dick Auletta. Gonzalez switched over to Auletta's car, and they left. Finally, at 11 P.M., Patsy closed up.

  Followed by the remaining officers, he drove the Caddy onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and south to 65th Street. But instead of going directly to his own house, he scooted across 65th to New Utrecht Avenue, where, under the elevated structure, he rounded the block and parked in front of Nicky Travato's tenement building on 66th Street. Locking the Cadillac, Patsy went inside.

  He was out again within ten minutes. He walked along 66th and entered an automobile at the curb fifty yards east of Nicky's house. Sonny recognized it as Patsy's own blue Buick compact.

  Patsy drove over to 67th Street and into his open garage, and entered the house. The porch light darkened. Sixty-seventh Street was quiet.

  At either end of the block, three tired detectives in two cars settled back in the silence and darkness.

  "Who wants to sleep first?" Eddie Egan inquired into his radiophone.

  C h a p t e r 1 4

  Tuesday had been a long, exhausting day for Patsy Fuca. He looked over at his young wife Barbara, asleep in the bed across from him. He ought to rap her in the teeth. If the word ever got out she had been hooking him, he would be lucky if he could get a job sweeping the subways!

  Patsy couldn't sleep. He rolled out of bed, pulled on a woollen robe and walked over to the window in his bare feet. Barbara stirred. He shrugged. She wasn't really a bad kid, he thought. With all that bread around, he couldn't blame her much for digging in.

  How much had she taken? A few grand? What had hung him up was the size of the load the Frenchies brought in. For fifty or fifty-one kilos, he had to front at least half, like $275,000. And he had been shy about fifty grand. As much a demand as everybody said there was for the stuff, it was tough getting his customers to put so much money together. Had he handled the business well? He wondered what Uncle Angie would think.

  So he had to stall the Frenchmen. His mind wandered back over the past seven days. It was just a week ago that he had received the call from Giant to meet him the next day at the Roosevelt. Patsy hadn't been ready; he had needed maybe another week to get all the advance payment. H
e visualized the tall, elderly dandy. Slick as they come, but what a kookie old fart!

  Mamma mia, the way he dresses, alone, would be enough to get the cops on him. But a real cool one, Giant. The other two Frenchmen, they would have kicked the whole operation when they thought the fuzz had the big heat on. But not Giant; he just says let's go underground, the deal is too big to bury, nobody can touch us without possession, and who knows where the stuff is?

  Patsy hadn't been worried about the law. Maybe they were on him, maybe not. He always assumed that cops were around; that way, you didn't get too careless. Were they tailing the other night — when was it, Friday? He didn't know. But he had been quick to encourage the Frenchmen to check out of their hotels: not only would that put off the cops, if they had been keeping tabs, but cooling the operation for a few days would also give him that much more time to collect the necessary front money.

  At the first couple of meetings, the Frenchies had been talking about wrapping everything up by Saturday. And, going along with them, fearful of admitting that he needed more time, on Friday he had even driven up to East End Avenue to check the setup.

  But then came the long ride around town Friday night, and Patsy knew he had lucked into a grace period. The Frenchmen went up to the motel in Yonkers, and he had the whole weekend to push his contacts.

  He grinned and congratulated himself on some fast thinking when Giant had called and said the heat was too much and maybe they should cut. Those cops, the Decency League or whatever it was, the city censor had sent in to take the dirty books out of his paperback racks had really done Patsy the favour of a lifetime.

  Could he have ever thought up such an alibi for heat?

  Patsy didn't understand why they were so nervous.

  He had gone out Saturday night with Nicky to test for a tail, and there didn't seem to be any fuzz around; if there was, they weren't sticking too close, anyway. He wouldn't have any trouble moving the actor's Buick when the time came. Besides, when the chips were down, he could always lose cops.