The Saboteurs

by W. E. B Griffin

  The train came to a complete stop, and Canidy slipped the page back into the folder and then the folder into his leather attaché case—being careful to keep it clear of the Colt Model 1911 .45 ACP semiautomatic—as he and the other passengers on the packed train gathered their belongings to disembark.

  The door at the end of the car opened and two New York City transit cops came through. Canidy noted that the policemen were making a fairly thorough visual inspection of the passengers as they passed.

  He didn’t think anything more of it until he was walking through Penn Station, en route to the cabstand, when he noticed what appeared to be a heavier-than-normal presence of cops. Then he seemed to remember that there had been quite a few D.C. cops in Union Station.

  It struck him as odd that he was just now noticing it—I’m supposed to be more situationally aware than most people—but then he recalled that that famous sociologist, Dr. Whatshisface, found that everyone allowed people in uniform to be invisible to them.

  It was a fact not lost on criminals, who commonly put on, say, a postman’s uniform to get an edge when committing a crime. When it came time for witnesses to be interviewed by police investigators, the witnesses would not remember seeing a face—“Just a mailman.”

  Still, I need to pay better attention, Canidy thought.

  The cabstand had a long line of people waiting.

  Canidy walked past it, headed east on Thirty-second Street. Two blocks later, he was able to hail a cab from the corner of Broadway.

  He got in the backseat, gave the driver the address—117 South Street—and the car shot south down Broadway.

  Someone had left a copy of the New York World-Telegram on the seat and he picked it up and scanned the headlines. One was about FDR—what had become the World’s usual daily headline taking the President to task on what he had said—or not said—the previous day about the war, or the economy…or the price of blue cheese.

  Another headline announced a story on Lieutenant General George Kenney’s Fifth Air Force attack on a Japanese convoy in the Bismarck Sea that sank four of its destroyers and all eight of its transports—with half of the seven thousand Japanese troops lost.

  And yet another led into an article that carried newly released details on the Allied convoy ON-166, which had fourteen ships sunk by U-boats in the Atlantic in late February.

  Then there was one, and the short piece beneath it, that caught his attention:

  * * *

  DEATH TOLLS RISE IN GEORGIA & FLORIDA

  10 Dead After Explosions in Train Stations Official: “No Connection Between Blasts”

  By Jeffrey Csatari/

  New York World-Telegram

  ATLANTA, Mar. 5th—Two more people died to day from injuries suffered in an explosion Sunday night at the Atlanta Terminal Station here and in another explosion earlier at Florida’s Jacksonville Terminal.

  * * *

  * * *

  Today’s deaths bring the total dead from both blasts to 10. Another 32 people were injured; 4 remain hospitalized.

  While some witnesses have called the two explosions at the train stations “highly suspicious,” local and federal officials investigating the incidents say that there is nothing to link them except simple coincidence.

  “There is no connection between the blasts,” said Christopher Gilman, Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta office of the F.B.I. “End of story.”

  An official close to the investigation in Jacksonville, who asked not to be iden tified, aid: “It’s looking like a faulty gas line to a heater in the men’s room was responsible, but we’re unable to confirm that at this time.”

  When asked about the report of a Ger man pistol being found at the scene of the Atlanta Terminal Station explosion, Gilman said, “We have no other comment.”

  * * *

  The cabbie accelerated heavily down Broadway, honking the horn steadily, and Canidy looked up from the paper to find that the driver was trying to make it through the light at Seventeenth Street before it turned red.

  After another ten minutes of such mindless driving—and countless near collisions along the meandering route—the driver turned off of Fulton onto South Street, passed the fish market, and came to a sudden stop with a squeal of brakes and screech of tires.

  A New York City traffic cop had South Street blocked off, his patrol car parked at an angle, the fender-mounted emergency lights flashing red.

  “What is it?” Canidy asked the cabbie.

  “Dunno,” he said, his head out the window, straining to see past the cop.

  Canidy could see only traffic backed up and some cops getting out wooden barricades with orange and black stripes and starting to assemble them.

  He looked at the street addresses just out of his window and realized he was only a half block shy of the address Gurfein had given him for Meyer’s Hotel, where Joe “Socks” Lanza kept a regular room to conduct business away from the fish market nearby.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a bill to pay the fare, said, “Here you go,” and grabbed his attaché case, then slid out of the backseat.

  He made his way along the sidewalk, past the line of cars stopped by the police car and around one of the cops who was just now erecting a barricade on the sidewalk.

  “Hey, buddy!” the cop called. “You can’t—”

  Pretending he didn’t hear him, Canidy kept walking toward 117 South Street.

  A moment later, he heard the cop mutter, “Awfuckit.” Ahead, at Meyer’s Hotel—a shabby establishment four stories high with maybe thirty rooms, half of which were at any one time being used by the mob—Canidy saw a small half circle of cops gathered at the entrance of the building. They were looking at something slumped against the building.

  Canidy looked closer.

  Not something. Someone.

  He knew what the body of a dead man looked like.

  As Canidy approached the building, he saw that a burly guy in a leather cap and wearing the outfit of a fishmonger—flannel shirt, greasy overalls, knee-high rubber boots—was leaning against the wall.

  The fishmonger stepped forward and blocked his path.

  “Nobody goes in,” the huge guy said.

  He was six-two, two-fifty—at least—and Canidy found himself having to look up at him.

  “I’ve got a meeting,” Canidy replied, undeterred. “You a cop or what?”

  The guy eyed him. “Your name Kennedy?”

  When Canidy studied his eyes, he saw a no-nonsense look. “Canidy,” he said.

  “Yeah. He told me to take you to meet him.” The guy looked over his shoulder at the crime scene. “Something came up.”

  “Apparently,” Canidy said.

  [ ONE ]

  Nick’s Café

  Pearl at Fletcher Street

  New York City, New York

  1240 6 March 1943

  Major Richard Canidy, in the uniform of the United States Army Air Forces, carried his leather attaché as he followed the monster of a fishmonger two blocks south, then, turning onto Fletcher Street, another two blocks west.

  We must make a curious-looking pair, Canidy mused.

  “In here,” the guy said when they got to a twenty-four-hour restaurant on the corner where Fletcher met Pearl. It was all he had said the entire four-block walk from Meyer’s Hotel.

  They entered, and Canidy saw that the restaurant—a diner, really, small and not brightly lit—was mostly full, with a working-class lunch crowd of truck drivers, heavy-construction workers, postmen, even a couple of street-beat cops.

  There was the murmur of conversation mixed with the clanking of forks and knives on plates and, just now, the breaking of a water glass accidentally dropped on the black-and-white mosaic tile floor by the lone busboy hustling to clear a table. The smell of garlic and onion was heavy in the air.

  The layout of the rectangular room was long and narrow. On the left, at the front by the plate-glass window looking out onto Pearl Street, was a wooden cou
nter with a dozen vinyl-cushion-topped swivel stools on three-foot-high chrome pedestals. Along the right wall, a series of wooden booths and tables ran from the front window to the back wall, each table set for four customers, and each with a black-framed photograph of a Greek island scene nailed to the wall beside it. At the very back, through a single swinging metal door with a window, was the busy kitchen.

  A waiter, having kicked open the swinging door, came out of the kitchen balancing on his shoulder a huge, round serving tray piled high with plates of sandwiches and potato chips and bowls of soups. The light from the kitchen briefly illuminated the darkened booths near the back wall. Then the door swung shut, making a flap-flap-flap sound before finally becoming still.

  For a moment, Canidy could better see, sitting in the farthest booth and facing the front door, a rough-looking Guinea about the age of fifty, with a cup of coffee in his hand and talking to someone seated across the table and out of Canidy’s view.

  “Back here,” the fishmonger said.

  As the guy made his way toward the rear of the restaurant, some of the workers looked up from their meals and nodded and he wordlessly acknowledged the greetings.

  They reached the booth, and Canidy saw that the man was dressed like the fishmonger he had followed—long-sleeved flannel shirt, dirty overalls, rubber boots.

  And Canidy saw that the man seated across from him, in a cheap black suit, was about five-eight and one-fifty, midthirties, with slight features and pale skin. He also was drinking coffee—but an espresso—and next to his tiny cup there was a copy of Il Nuovo Mondo, the anti-Fascist newspaper published in New York, with a photograph of Benito Mussolini on the front page.

  “This is the guy,” the fishmonger said to the two at the table by way of greeting.

  The man in the cheap suit looked up.

  “I’m Joe Guerin,” he said, moving so that he was half standing with his hand out.

  The lawyer, Canidy thought, remembering Murray Gurfein’s description.

  He shook the offered hand and replied, “Dick Canidy. Nice to meet you.”

  “This is Mr. Lanza,” Guerin added, “my client.”

  Joe Socks—short and pudgy, with a pockmarked face and a bad haircut—looked at Canidy with cold, hard eyes. Canidy knew from Gurfein’s background information that Lanza was forty-one years old, but he sure didn’t look it. The hard living showed.

  Canidy offered his hand and Lanza shook it with a very firm grip.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Canidy said, impressed by the mobster’s heavily callused hand.

  Lanza, stone-faced, replied only with a nod.

  “Have a seat,” Guerin said, motioning to a place beside himself and opposite Lanza.

  As Canidy sat down, putting his attaché case at his feet, the monster fishmonger stepped away from the table and positioned himself in the back corner of the restaurant, out of the kitchen traffic, with a clear view of both the front door and the booth with Canidy, Lanza, and Guerin.

  “Our friend contacted me,” Guerin began, “and I in turned asked Mr. Lanza if he would be open to this meeting.”

  “Thank you,” Canidy said to Guerin, then looked at Lanza and said, “Thank you.”

  Lanza made a slow blink of acknowledgment.

  Guerin took a sip of coffee, then said, “Oh, excuse me. Would you care for something to eat? The food is very good here.”

  “Thank you, but nothing right now,” Canidy replied. He looked at the cup. “Coffee would be nice.”

  Guerin got the fishmonger’s attention, held up his cup and pointed to it, then to Canidy. The guy walked over to where a waiter was putting cups of coffee and espressos onto a tray, took from it one of the espressos—earning him a sharp look from the waiter—and a moment later slid the steaming cup in front of Canidy.

  “Thanks,” Canidy said.

  The fishmonger wordlessly returned to his post.

  Guerin said, “Now, what is it that you need, Mr. Canidy?”

  Canidy looked at him a moment, and thought, Whatthe hell am I supposed to do? Come out right here in public and tell a Guinea gangster that I want the Boss to set me up with the mafia in Sicily? This is unbelievably surreal, even for me.

  “Did Mur—” Canidy began, then caught himself. “Did our friend give you any indication as to the subject?”

  Guerin shook his head. “Only that it is of the utmost importance,” he said.

  Well, that’s just great.

  Canidy glanced at the fishmonger, who was staring at the front door. He wanted to look that way, too, to at least see if anyone would be able to overhear what he was about to say. But that did not seem the proper thing to do at this point.

  “I’m not sure here is the best place to discuss this,” Canidy said finally.

  Guerin looked around casually. “Here is fine. Nothing happens without my client’s say. Nick, the owner, is protected.”

  Canidy wanted to reply, Like nothing happens at your hotel?

  He instead said, “With respect, this is not the place. Things—”

  “Things what?” Guerin said impatiently.

  Canidy picked up on that.

  Oh, to hell with it.

  “—Things happen, like the surprise at the hotel.”

  “That,” Lanza said, suddenly and coldly, “was a misunderstanding and it is being dealt with.”

  “It is not what I want to happen here,” Canidy said evenly. “A misunderstanding.” Now he looked around the room, then back at Lanza. “A misunderstanding after someone overhears something that they shouldn’t.”

  They stared at each other a moment, then Lanza said quietly, “After some guys at Brooklyn Terminal thought they could slow down the ship loading, we had them kicked in the ass. That led to this other thing just now. All a misunderstanding.” He shrugged. “These things, they happen. Then they’re dealt with.”

  “Dealt with”? Canidy thought, looking at the emotionless eyes. As in, made to go away?

  Lanza went on, his manner conversational: “Let’s get back to why we’re here. You came to us because of our mutual friend. We have an understanding—an honorable one—with our friend, as you clearly do. That makes you gli amici, friend of friend. Capiche?”

  He paused, glanced at his coffee, looking bored.

  “So,” he went on, “tell us what it is that you need.”

  Canidy raised his eyebrows.

  “Yessir, Colonel Donovan, mission accomplished. I secured an ‘honorable understanding’ with the murderous mob!”

  Jesus, this is incredibly surreal.

  But, okay…

  “Okay,” he said. “I need to speak with Charlie about getting some help like our friend got.”

  Lanza looked at him with renewed interest. “‘Charlie’?”

  Canidy nodded.

  “And what more could you want?” Lanza said. “We are already giving every kind of help possible. Here, and all up and down the coast.”

  Canidy leaned forward and quietly said, “Charlie’s home.”

  “We got Brooklyn covered,” Lanza said.

  Canidy shook his head. “His real home.”

  “Yeah, and we got it—” he said, then stopped, and his right eyebrow went up. “You mean…?”

  “Yeah,” Canidy said.

  Lanza’s eyes darted to Guerin, who looked back and shrugged.

  “What would you be needing in his…home?” Lanza said to Canidy.

  “Contacts,” Canidy said. “Locals with connections, with information, who would be willing to build an underground resistance against”—he put his right index finger on Mussolini’s photograph on the front page of Il Nuovo Mondo—“certain individuals.”

  Lanza, showing no emotion, considered that. He said, “Why didn’t you go straight to him with your request? Why me?”

  Canidy nodded; he had expected Lanza might ask that.

  “Respect,” Canidy said.

  When he said it, he saw Lanza’s eyes light up a little.

>   Murray Gurfein, the onetime New York assistant district attorney, had explained to Canidy that, despite the general perception of the underworld as ruthless and cold-blooded, the mafia prided itself on respect—or at least the appearance of respect. They considered it a vital component in keeping their social order intact. Without respect for the bosses, respect for the organizations, their society would devolve into nothing more than bitter bloody turf battles—conflicts no one would ultimately win.

  “When I discussed it with our friend,” Canidy went on, “I said I wanted first to develop a relationship with those who I’d be working with, then with their blessing take it higher.”

  Lanza studied Canidy without saying anything.

  “We could have just as easily called Mr. Polakoff as Mr. Guerin here,” Canidy said, mentioning Luciano’s attorney as a matter of fact. “But it would not have been respectful to the people I also would be asking for help.”

  Lanza did not respond to that. He said, “And what would Charlie be getting in return?”

  Canidy thought of Murray Gurfein being defensive at dinner, and grinned.

  “Something funny?” Lanza said.

  Canidy heard a Lower East Side tough-guy tone of voice that he figured had to be close to what Lanza used when he was about to put the screws to someone who had not paid his protection money or his kickback.

  “No, not at all,” Canidy said, earnest but unnerved. He took a sip of his espresso, then looked Lanza in the eye. “To answer your question, he would be getting what he is getting now, a deep sense of patriotism for his part in helping to win the war.”

  Lanza held the eye contact for a long moment, then looked away deep in thought. He drained his coffee cup, set it down in its saucer with a clank, and nodded.