by Robin Moore
The officers in the cabinet shop overlooking No. 45 East End Avenue had been beside themselves, at first with disbelief, then the anger of humiliation, and finally, as Egan surmised from afar, the frenzy of panic rising out of the growing realization that they had blown everything. Sonny and Waters, on top of the scene when Patsy's car, with the two Frenchmen as passengers, drove out of 82nd Street and north on East End, both had dashed back to the command post, where Hawkes and Fleming told them that the Olds had been placed westbound on 83rd Street.
And then — nothing. There were detectives in vehicles and on foot spotted at each intersection and some in between, all the way to Second Avenue, and yet, somehow, inexplicably, the subject car apparently had been able to slip through unnoticed!
But, realistically, they knew that the stunning evasion was not at all mysterious. Similar disappearances had happened to each of them in other supposedly airtight surveillance situations. The effectiveness of a surveillance depended upon the alertness of the officers involved and the accurate relay of the subjects' movements to the next possible point of observation. Any one of several unforeseen things were liable to have happened this time: one detective team along the skein may have been distracted for the mere seconds it would require for an automobile, which some of these officers had not seen before today, to pass them by. Or perhaps, through some misfortune in logistical timing, a man on foot patrol might have been switching positions, or exchanging notes with a cruising radio car, at just the moment that Patsy and the Frenchmen swept past. Whatever, once the relay was broken at one point, odds would multiply rapidly that detectives farther along the line of flight, in any direction, might also miss observing the subject vehicle. When a pattern is no longer in effect, the officers don't know which way to look, and in such conditions often even the obvious is ignored.
The mortifying reality magnified with each passing minute that they had three or four suspected major felons in their net, and might well have scooped up the fourth along the way, and suddenly the whole catch had disappeared. And then, shortly after 10:00 A.M., the radio spluttered: "One of the Frogs is back — Frog Two! He's alone, walking down Eighty-second to East End . . . "
The officers again crowded to the window. For several minutes past, they had noticed a rather handsome man in a striking black leather overcoat pacing expectantly in front of No. 45; but other than Fleming's remark that the fellow had a certain "foreign" air about him, no particular significance had been attached to his presence. The neighbourhood abounded in well-turned-out gentlemen and fashion-conscious women. But now, as they watched, Barbier had reappeared at the corner of 82nd Street and was striding directly across the avenue toward this stranger. They shook hands and talked.
"Another one!" Waters exclaimed, his field glasses trained on the two. "Who the hell is this guy? I've never seen him before. About five-ten, looks in his forties." Waters broadcast the new suspect's description on to base radio and the men patrolling the area. "Solid build, good head of brown hair."
Then Barbier drew a small piece of paper from his coat pocket and handed it to the other man. Waters said it looked like a ticket stub, maybe a garage ticket. The newcomer stepped to the mouth of No. 45's garage and motioned to someone inside. In a moment, the Negro attendant appeared to take the ticket or slip and then turned down the ramp.
"I don't like this," Waters complained. "They're getting a car out of there. Barbier's going for a ride. We can't let him take off again!"
"Let's see," Sonny breathed at his elbow. The hulk of an automobile loomed out of the shadows of the garage. They watched. Sonny fingering the radio mike, describing the scene for detectives listening throughout the area.
Barbier and the stranger climbed into the sedan, the latter taking the wheel position. "Frank!" Sonny cried. "It's a foreign Buick! Remember the Canadian — !"
"Christ, let's get out in the street!" Waters bellowed. "This could be the delivery!"
The two ran down the stairs. As they reached the sidewalk, the black Buick was turning out of the driveway across the avenue and driving off uptown. Waters's white Oldsmobile was parked at the corner of 81st Street, facing downtown. They piled into it, and almost before the doors slammed shut the agent had the engine racing, and then he was hauling the hardtop around in a screeching U-turn. The Buick now was beyond 83rd Street and picking up speed.
"We're not gonna hit them yet . . . " Sonny's remark was half-statement and half-question.
"We'll have to see how it plays," Waters replied uncertainly.
"They're going fast," Sonny observed. "They broke the red light at Eighty-fourth!"
"Barbier's looking back. Look, he's telling the other guy to move it."
The Buick was approaching another red signal at 85th Street, but instead of braking, the big sedan raced through and ahead on East End.
"Look at that!" cried Waters.
"They're making a run! There must be something in that car!"
"Barbier's still watching."
Waters stomped on the accelerator. "Should we hit?"
"I don't know."
"If we stay with them like this, they're gonna make us anyway . . . "
"I hate to burn it too soon . . . . Oh, hell, we better hit!"
With a burst of speed, the Oldsmobile roared through the stoplights at 84th and 85th streets, gaining rapidly on the Buick. They passed 86th, 87th. Barbier appeared increasingly agitated as the white car closed the gap. Crossing 88th Street, the nose of Waters's Olds was just off the left rear fender of the Buick. Waters was pressing hard on the horn now, warning the other car to the side. Sonny, leaning out the window, waved at the other driver to stop. The Buick slowed abruptly, and Waters swerved and cut it off with a squeal of brakes just before 89th Street.
Sonny was already on the radiophone: "Popeye! If you read me, get back here to East End Avenue, quick! We bagged two Frenchmen!"
It was not until the officers had hopped out and were flanking the Buick with guns ready that they realized that the scene was being acted out directly in front of the mayor's residence, Gracie Mansion. The driver looked frightened and was jabbering in French. His companion, Barbier, glared at the detectives sullenly.
"All right, quiet down," Sonny said. "Let's see your identification. Your identification! "
The detective took out his own wallet and displayed it. "Identification, both of you," he repeated. The driver reached into his inside jacket pocket — Sonny pointed the nozzle of his .38 at him — and, slowly, he pulled out a billfold, which he offered to the officer. "No, empty it on there," Sonny instructed, indicating the shelf atop the dashboard.
Waters gestured similarly to Barbier. Now other cars were pulling up, and detectives clustered around them.
"Jacques Angelvin," Sonny read awkwardly from one of the papers, all written in French, which the driver nervously had extracted from his billfold.
"Looks like this one is on the television over in France. He's even got clippings on himself."
"And our friend Mr. Barbier here," Waters commented, "is not Barbier after all. His passport says his name is Scaglia, François Scaglia."
Scaglia stared at the agent. "I am known to you?"
"He speaks!" Waters exclaimed.
"My English is little," the Frenchman said thickly. "But pardon, how it is that I am known?"
"We know plenty about you, fella," Sonny said, leaning in the opposite window. "And you know we do."
Scaglia spoke sharply in French to Angelvin. Then he turned to Sonny: "We are of France. For what is it you stop us? We are in arrest?"
Sonny glanced across at Waters, whose eyes had been scanning the interior of the car. They didn't have a warrant to search the vehicle, nor did they even have the right to frisk the subjects yet; to do so without a warrant would make even damaging evidence inadmissible in court. Waters, his expression glum, shook his head. "You went through two red lights," Sonny said. "We are going to hold you for questioning."
"We wish to ha
ve interpreter," Scaglia demanded.
"Yeah, sure . . . "
Such was the uncertain scene as Eddie Egan and Luis Gonzalez drove up, among Federal agents and city police officers appearing from all quarters. Egan ran from his car to the crowd of detectives around the Buick and elbowed through to Sonny's side. "What happened?" he cried. "Are you okay?"
"Eddie!" Sonny took his arm and, turning him away from the captured car, told him what had happened.
"So, what'd you come up with?" Egan asked anxiously.
Sonny's face sagged. "Nothing."
"Nothing? You pull me off Patsy for nothing . . . ?"
"What do you mean, ‘off Patsy'? You were on him?"
Waters had come around to join them. "Not only Patsy, all of them!" Egan declared. "I even had Frog One."
"That's crazy," Waters scoffed. "There were only the two Frenchmen with Patsy."
"Well, between when you guys lost them and I found them, they picked up Jehan. The whole four were together. I kept trying to tell you, but my transmitter is shot."
"But where were you?" Sonny insisted, eyes wide.
Egan described tersely his pursuit of Patsy's car and the agony of watching one after another of the suspects walk away unmolested. "I saw this bird get out," he said, tossing his head toward Scaglia, "and then Mouren, and finally Jehan, and it was killing me, but at least I still had Patsy with the Frog's suitcase still in the car. And then you call like you're getting raped, and I leave Patsy go. I got to be the prize dummy of the year!" He spat disgustedly into the gutter.
"But how were we to know — ?" Sonny moaned.
"I don't know. I also don't know how so many Feds and cops could lose these guys in the first place.
Well," Egan looked at his wristwatch — it was 10:20A.M. — "there's no use standing around here shootin' the shit. I'm gonna go find Patsy."
"Where?" Waters demanded.
"I don't know, but I'll find him, and I'll hit him. It's probably too late now, but I'm gonna use those warrants before the day's out, I guarantee you."
"What do you think we should do?" Sonny beseeched.
Egan eyed the crowd of men around the French Buick and then turned his glare directly on Agent Waters. "You can start out by telling them it's normal procedure for seventeen cops to stop a car for going through a red light."
As Egan and Gonzalez piled back into the Corvair, Grosso and Waters herded the two Frenchmen into Waters's car. They placed a guard over the Buick, then took Angelvin and Scaglia back to No. 45. By now, Lieutenant Hawkes had commandeered the office at the garage there as temporary headquarters.
"You want an interpreter?" Sergeant Fleming asked.
Both Angelvin and Scaglia nodded solemnly.
Fleming, Grosso and Agent Waters went to the back of the office and conferred with Hawkes. The lieutenant shook his head dourly. "I don't know. We've got two French nationals and we got nothing on them. This could be embarrassing."
"We haven't tossed the car yet," Agent Waters pointed out.
"We do that without a warrant and we're in even deeper," Hawkes growled. "But let's hold them as long as we can."
Waters nodded. "I'll call our office for a French interpreter," he offered.
"Tell him to take his time," Hawkes cautioned.
"Of course," Waters said, picking up the phone.
He contacted the Federal Bureau and talked to Agent Martin F. Pera, a French translator. "Now take these directions how to get here, Pera." Waters outlined a route for the translator which would take him winding through lower Manhattan, out through Brooklyn to Jamaica and back through Queens, past LaGuardia Airport and then back downtown. "If you get lost, call us and we'll give you new directions," Waters counselled. Sonny, at his side, laughed grimly at the circuitous itinerary.
"O.K.," Waters said, hanging up. He sighed wearily. "I knew we shouldn't of hit."
"What do you mean?" Sonny yelped. "You said to hit these guys!"
"The hell I did," Waters contradicted. "You wanted to hit."
"Come on! Let's still try to save this case," Hawkes interjected gruffly.
Meanwhile, Luis Gonzalez and Egan raced downtown on the East River Drive. Egan was angry but remained hopeful. They would all be mental cases before it was over. Patsy had about a fifteen- or twenty-minute head start, but that was sufficient time to get rid of the stuff. There was only one real hope: that Patsy felt free and easy and was not in a big hurry to dispose of the merchandise. But this too was a slim hope, considering the presumed magnitude of this particular transaction.
Egan had decided that the first place to look was Blair's Pike Slip Inn. That's where the man always seemed to go when things looked bright and he was relaxed. Besides, it wasn't much out of the way to any of the bridges to Brooklyn. If Patsy wasn't at Blair's or elsewhere around his old neighbourhood, the only other place to go then was Brooklyn and hit every place with the warrants, which were fast running out.
It was 10:45 A.M. when he turned off the Drive at Grand Street, and, manoeuvring through side streets, aimed the Corvair down South Street toward Pike. It was a different thoroughfare by daylight: the warehouse piers were bustling with the loading and unloading of small trucks and massive vans backed against the platforms, some cutting the wide avenue in half with their bulk. At night, it was eerie down here, the shadows of the silent piers deep and forbid-ding under cover of the broad Viaduct overhead. It was a stretch of riverfront that could look and feel as ominous as any fictionalized Barbary Coast. But, by daylight at least, it was alive; the only smell was of fish.
Egan slowed near Pike; the Inn was just around the corner. He made the turn cautiously.
Gonzalez gasped. "You're making me a believer!" the agent croaked.
Patsy was standing outside Blair's, chatting with Inez, the barmaid. His blue Oldsmobile was parked a few feet away.
Egan could not repress a grin as he drove past, up Pike Street. "Sonofabitch!" he gloated. "Sonofabitch!"
Two blocks up he drew over to the curb. "Don't look," he told Gonzalez. "I got him in the mirror."
"Do you think he still has the stuff on him?" the agent wondered.
"He could've dropped it in the joint there, or any place in between. We hit him now, and he ain't got it, we can kiss it off. All we can do is stay with him and hope he shows it. This case goes up, down, up, down, like a roller coaster," Egan marvelled.
It wasn't two minutes before Patsy re-entered the compact and, with a wave at the girl on the step of Blair's, drove up Pike toward East Broadway. Another couple of minutes and they would have missed him again, Egan mused.
They followed Patsy up onto the Manhattan Bridge and across into Brooklyn. Gonzalez continued to report to the radio in the vain hope that some act of mercy by the electronic gods would make it work.
In the excitement they had forgotten to exchange it for a new one, and now there was no time.
The trail led south through Brooklyn, to 65th Street. Patsy was going home. Egan pulled up to the corner of 12th Avenue as Patsy turned into his driveway on 67th Street. The detective tried the radio again: "Popeye here. If anybody reads me, I have just tailed Patsy to his house in Brooklyn. Does anybody read me?" There was no reply.
"It's no good, Louie. Look, there's a garage around on Sixty-eighth. Why don't you hustle over there and telephone base where we are, while I sit here and see what happens?"
"Right." Gonzalez slid out his side and strode quickly toward the next corner.
Egan realized in a moment that Patsy had not left his car. It was still idling in the driveway, straddling the sidewalk. And then Egan saw Barbara Fuca, wearing her furry car coat, come down the steps from their house and get into the front seat alongside her husband. The detective searched Twelfth Avenue for signs of Gonzalez, but the agent already had turned the corner of 68th Street. Now Patsy was backing the Olds out of the driveway, and he started off east on 67th. Egan had no choice: he had to follow alone.
Patsy drove back to the Gow
anus Expressway, northbound. Egan stayed close, taking no chances. The blue compact exited at Third Avenue and 16th Street, still in Brooklyn. He was going to the parents' house!
Patsy found a space for the Olds only a few yards from the entrance to No. 245. Egan, turning off Third Avenue into 7th Street, which was one-way eastbound, spotted him and Barbara just as they were getting out of the car. The officer drove slowly past as the couple walked to the front door. Patsy was not carrying the blue valise which Frog Three had carried into the Olds two hours earlier. Either he had stashed it somewhere during the twenty minutes he had been missing, Egan calculated, or it was still in the car.
Egan pulled over near a fire hydrant on the opposite side of the street, about two thirds of the way toward Fourth Avenue.
Fifteen minutes passed, and twenty, and the detective shifted in his seat with irritation.
Impatience urged him to take a crack at Patsy's car, for which he also had a warrant. He could grab the heroin if it was there and burst into the house in a dramatic single-handed confrontation. But the rules of the narcotics game insisted that no less than two officers effect a seizure and arrest, so that there would always be one corroborating witness. At the same time, anxiety prodded him to chance a dash to a public telephone — he could see a glass booth outside a service garage near the corner of Fourth Avenue. But, finally, prudence counselled him not to take his eyes off the car and the house until Patsy made some kind of move.
And then he saw Patsy come out of the house —not from the front door, but up hidden outside stairs from the basement. In shirt sleeves now, he went to his car, glancing up and down the street before unlocking it. He bent into the rear, and when he straightened up he was gripping the blue valise.
Patsy relocked the left door, looked about him again, and disappeared into the basement down under the main entrance.
Flushed with excitement, Egan scrambled from the Corvair and hurried up the street to the sidewalk telephone booth. With No. 245 only partially in view, he dialled base radio with quick, nervous fingers.