(1982) The Almighty (16 page)

Armstead was becoming increasingly impatient with the pointless chatter, and made up his mind to be direct and candid. He drained his coffee cup and put it down.

‘Gus,’ he said, ‘I want to discuss something important with you. But I must be assured from the start of your loyalty to me.’

Pagano’s beaky countenance was bland. ‘You pay good. That’s my loyalty.’

‘I can pay better,’ said Armstead, ‘much better.’

‘You have my complete loyalty. You mean, can you say something to me that’s strictly between us? You can.’

‘Not enough,’ said Armstead. ‘I need more. I have to be absolutely positive that you are one hundred percent trustworthy.’

Pagano sat up, curious. ‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning this.’ Armstead reached for the folder on his desk and opened it. ‘Whenever we hire anyone, we set up a dossier on him. And we keep it up to date. When we hired you as an informant, we set up such a dossier.’ He glanced up at Pagano. ‘And we’ve kept it up to date.’ He dropped his gaze to the contents of the folder once more. ‘The Acme Jewelers of Lexington. There was a stickup there two years ago. There was some shooting. Ring a bell?’

Pagano made no reply. He sat sullenly staring at the publisher.

‘During the shooting, in the cross fire, a customer was killed, the widow of a well-known millionaire was killed, a

guard was wounded, but the guard managed to kill the stickup man.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Pagano. ‘I’ve never killed anyone in my life.’

‘I never implied you had,’ said Armstead with feigned innocence. ‘I’m merely saying a stickup man named Restell shot a woman to death during a holdup, and in turn he was shot to death. I’m also saying Restell had an accomplice. The accomplice got away. He was never caught. Because this was a big-name killing, one of my father’s better crime reporters followed through. The reporter spent a lot of time with the jewelry shop guard showing him photographs of criminals on parole or with records. The guard identified one positively as the accomplice. The picture was of a man named Gus Pagano.’

Pagano did not stir, did not even blink. He remained silent.

‘We could have turned this over to the police,’ said Armstead, ‘got a minor story out of it, and the accomplice would have wound up back in jail. For a long time, I’m sure. But my father did not want to have the paper’s good name tarnished by having one of its employees mixed up in a tawdry bit of violence. My father chose to confine the information to this private dossier. I hope to keep it there.’

Armstead waited.

Pagano wriggled to reach the cigarette package in his pocket. He shook a cigarette loose, and calmly lighted it. He blew out some smoke, squinted through the smoke, and offered a half smile. ‘Mr. Armstead, you want to know if I’m one hundred percent trustworthy.’ He skipped a beat. ‘Mr. Armstead, I’m two hundred percent trustworthy.’

Armstead’s face was wreathed in a smile. ‘Good. Very good.’ He cast aside the folder. ‘We will never refer to this matter again.’ Satisfied, Armstead was prepared to plunge ahead with no further hesitation. ‘Let’s begin with this,’ he said. ‘Do you know any gangs?’

‘Gangs?’ Pagano showed his surprise and relief at what he evidently regarded as an unexpected and childish question. ‘Mr. Armstead, I grew up with gangs - in the Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey -‘

‘No, no,’ Armstead interrupted, ‘not street gangs. I am

speaking of international gangs.’

‘I - I’m afraid I don’t get you.’

Armstead tried again. ‘Terrorist-type gangs who work abroad.’

‘Oh, those,’ said Pagano, ‘like those Red Brigade kooks in Italy? Naw, I don’t know any of them.’

Armstead’s heart fell.

Pagano was going on. ‘But international, like you said -yeah, I do have some connections to one outfit. It’s not in Italy, though.’

‘I don’t give a damn where it is. All right, where is it?’

‘In London. They’re not exactly what you’d call terrorists.’

‘What are they?’

Pagano was momentarily confused by semantics. ‘Maybe you could call them top-level crooks. When they need money, they get together and pull off a job.’

‘A job?’

‘Like a robbery.’

This offered a tantalizing possibility. ‘Little or big robberies?’

Pagano was positive now. ‘Oh, fat stuff, juicy ones.’

Better. ‘And you have some connection with that gang?’

‘Sure thing. It’s through another Green Haven graduate -guy named Krupinski. For good behavior, he was assigned to the farm outside the wall. Not being a rural type, he got bored. So one day he skipped out. Krupinski made it all the way to London. He needed money. He had some introductions. He contacted the Cooper gang. Being a good man with dynamite, bombs, Krupinski was a natural for them. They took him on. I had a postcard from him not long ago. He’s still in London. Even invited me over.’ .

‘Did you consider going?’

‘Naw. I got a legal passport, you understand, but I don’t want to live with foreigners. Besides, I have this steady job with you. Why go with them?’

Armstead lifted himself from behind the desk and went thoughtfully to the coffee table. He found a cigar in the humidor and readied it, as he returned to his desk. ‘Gus, who’s in it?’

‘What?’

‘This London gang. Who is in it?’

‘It’s a loose outfit that gets together every once in a while to plan and pull off a big job in England or in France. They’re not amateurs. They’ve got savvy, and what you call credits. One of them goes way back to the Brink’s robbery in Boston. There were seven of them wearing Halloween masks. They hit the Brink’s building, the vault, for almost three million. A couple of them had a part in the Glasgow-to-London night mail train robbery. That took nineteen members of two gangs to pull off. That’s the one that involved Ronnie Biggs - the guy who was caught, and escaped, and used a French plastic surgeon to fix him - he got away to Brazil, where he was abducted by British security people and taken out of the country, then returned to South America. That was a seven-million-dollar job.’

‘Not bad,’ said Armstead, impressed.

‘There was better,’ said Pagano, warming to his subject. ‘There was the - I don’t know if I can pronounce it right - the Societe Generale bank heist in Nice, in France, where they used the city sewer system to get into the bank, spent the weekend inside, emptied 317 safe-deposit boxes, made off with twelve million dollars.’

Armstead was definitely impressed. ‘And you say some members of the Cooper gang in London were in on those -uh, jobs.’

‘Absolutely. A realbig-time crowd.’

‘How many are there in this Cooper gang?’

‘About a dozen, Krupinski told me last year. He was over here for a week to see his old lady who was sick. Headman is this Cooper, an American now British. Krupinski says he’s a wizard brain. Then there’s another dozen of them either on the lam in other countries or still serving time in jail. They’re all pros at forging, safecracking, bombing, robberies. They’re not interested in politics. Only in money. Lots of it.’

Armstead smiled. T have lots of it.’

Pagano also smiled. ‘Yeah, I heard.’

‘And I’m not interested in politics, either,’ said Armstead.

Pagano’s eyes held on the publisher shrewdly. ‘What are you interested in?’

‘News.’

Pagano tried to make sense of it. ‘News,’ he echoed. ‘You’ve got me kind of lost. I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean I’m interested in making news - creating it - for my newspapers and television stations. I need exclusive news for my papers and TV news network.’ He paused. ‘A gang could create that kind of news for me.’

Pagano tried to absorb it, and wagged his head slightly. ‘That’s kind of -‘ He did not want to sound disrespectful. ‘- far out.’

‘You mean crazy?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose there is a business side to it. But it’s far out.’

They were down to bare bones, Armstead decided. Now he would go all the way. ‘You gave me the original idea,’ he said to Pagano, ‘with the lead about Yinger’s tunnel. That led to Yinger’s escape. It was a set-up happening, an invented one. And I had it all to myself. Yes, it was good business, the best. It doubled the circulation of my newspaper here in New York, and it upped the circulation of my other newspapers around the country, and it hyped the attention given the story on television stations everywhere. That gave me the idea of setting up and creating more news. Do I make myself a little clearer, Gus?’

‘Yeah,’ said Pagano, with slight uncertainty. ‘I’m catching on.’

‘You see,’ Armstead tried to explain, ‘there’s not enough hard news around, exclusive news. Usually my competitors have the same thing to sell that I have. But we here want our news alone. Since it’s not around, we might have to invent some of it. That’s my big idea.’

‘For that, you need a gang?’

‘Who can pull off big jobs for only the New York Record to write about. To put it bluntly, I need an outfit of experienced, organized thugs to do what they do best. I want them to work for me full time. I want them to make news for me. No killing, no murdering. But a hijacking, a sensational robbery, most of all a name kidnapping. High-class stuff. Front-page caliber.’

This was closer to Pagano’s area, and he understood completely. ‘This could be dangerous.’

‘So is deep-sea diving and riding a space capsule.’

‘People’ll be putting up their lives for - for news.’

‘For money.’ Armstead enunciated each word. ‘The Cooper gang wants money, you said. I’ve got money.’

‘What kind of money would you be talking about?’

‘Maybe three million dollars a job.’

Pagano emitted a low whistle.

‘Think they’d be interested?’ Armstead wanted to know.

‘Depends what you want them to do. But three mill. Yeah, they’d be interested.’

‘Of course, I don’t want them to know who I am. They must not know whom they are working for - or why. I want to assign them jobs - through you. No questions to be asked. I want the jobs done professionally, cleanly. For each job they’ll get paid. You believe they’ll be interested?’

‘I’m guessing. I think so.’

‘Can you find out for sure?’

‘You mean make contact with Cooper?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can make contact,’ said Pagano.

‘Then make it,’ said Armstead. It was an order. ‘There’ll be plenty in it for you, Gus. Go to London and find out if they’ll cooperate.’

‘You sound like you mean right away,’

‘I mean tonight. I’ll make arrangements for you. I expect to hear from you in forty-eight hours.’

At eleven o’clock in the evening, two days later, Armstead received his call.

He had just walked through the door of his Fifth Avenue penthouse overlooking Central Park when Hannah, from her wheelchair, a telephone receiver in her hand, raised her voice. ‘Is that you, Edward?’

‘It’s me.’

‘There’s a longdistance call for you. From London.’

Armstead’s heart quickened. ‘Tell them to call me back on my private line. I’ll take it in my study.’

He yanked off his raincoat, threw it aside, hurried to his study, let himself in, and carefully relocked his door from the inside. He strode to the white telephone, his very private telephone that had an unlisted number different from the one for the other rooms of the penthouse. He waited a few moments for the phone to ring. Finally it rang.

Hastily he lifted the receiver. ‘Hello.’

A female operator’s voice. ‘Is this Mr. Armstead?’

‘Yes, this is Edward Armstead.’

‘Mr. Pagano calling from London, person-to-person.’

‘Okay, put Mr. Pagano on.’

The line from London crackled, but Pagano’s voice came on distinctly. ‘You there, boss?’

‘Hi, Gus. Okay, what’s the word?’

‘All signals Go.’

‘All signals Go. What does that mean?’

‘Cooper is definitely interested,’ said Pagano. ‘But there’s just one thing -‘

‘They are interested, you say - but what?’ • ‘They want to meet with you in person, over here. I think they want to know exactly what you have in mind for them. We can fix it so’s you won’t be recognized. If it’s not too much trouble. I think it would be worth -‘

‘It’s not too much trouble,’ Armstead cut in. ‘If they want to see me first, I’ll see them. I’ll be there.’

‘Can you make it by tomorrow?’

‘Yes, tomorrow’s okay. I’ll take the Concorde. I’ll get on the first flight.’

‘If you’ll let me know your arrival time, I’ll meet you at Heathrow. Set you up for a suite in the Ritz.’

‘I’ll let you know the time. You’ll meet me at Heathrow? Fine. The suite at the Ritz is also fine.’

‘You won’t be bringing anybody along?’

‘Bringing anybody? No, don’t worry. I’ll be alone. See you tomorrow.’

He hung up slowly.

He felt exultant.

He was almost - almost - in the terrorist business for himself.

The chauffeured black Rolls-Royce turned off Piccadilly, moved around the block to draw up before the Arlington Street side of the Ritz Hotel in London.

Gus Pagano quickly stepped out of the car, with Edward Armstead right behind him. The doorman tried to take Armstead’s Mark Cross bag and wardrobe, but Pagano insisted on carrying them himself. The evening was chilly, and they ascended the steps and hastened into the warmth of the hotel lobby.

Pagano guided Armstead away from the registration alcove to their left. ‘I’ve already registered you under my name, Mr. Armstead. We better go straight to your suite.’

They proceeded through the long lobby, turned right to the waiting elevator, and rode up to the fifth floor. Rounding a corner, they arrived at 518, Armstead’s suite. After getting rid of his hat and light topcoat, Armstead was eager to learn more about what lay ahead. At Heathrow Airport they had hardly been able to talk, since the hired chauffeur had joined them almost immediately. After that, during the drive to London, even though the chauffeur’s window partition was closed Pagano had cautioned his employer against conversation.

Now, in the Ritz suite parlor, at 9:35, Armstead was at last able to ask Pagano, ‘How interested are they?’

‘I’d say Cooper was very interested. Enough to tell me to bring you over to London right away. The three-million-dollar paycheck hooked him.’