American Gangster (24 page)

“Are you sure you should be getting out of bed? It was just two days ago, Frank. . . .”

Frank had changed into a fresh shirt and slacks and was currently sitting on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes. “Two days in bed is plenty. Two days in bed is too much.”

Cattano stayed near the doorway; he hadn't been offered a seat and the only one available besides the bed was at Mrs. Lucas's dressing table. “If there's anything I can do, Frank. . . .”

Frank, on his feet now, gave Cattano a rictus of a grin. “Anything you can do? Why, Dominic, you've already done it—you've guaranteed me peace of mind, doing business with you.”

“Now, Frank . . .”

Rage barely controlled, Frank gestured to himself. “Do I
look
like a man with peace of mind to you, Dominic? They shot at my wife. Would they shoot at
your
wife, Dominic? Who
does
that?”

Cattano gave a small shrug; his expression was bland. Frank's anger began to bleed out: “Who
was
it, Dominic, which of your people? I'll take his gun away and shove it up his ass.”

Lifting a peacekeeping palm, Cattano said, “I don't know that it
was
any of them, Frank. And neither do you.”

Frank came over and stood a foot away from the mob boss. “Then maybe I'll kill them all. Just to make a goddamn fuckin' point.”

With a faint smile, Cattano said gently, “You want to know who it was? I can tell you.”

“Who?”

“It was a junkie. Or a business rival. Or dumb-ass kids trying to make a name. Or someone who you forgot to pay off, or slighted without realizing it. Or even one of my people, unhappy with me doing business with a moolie. Or most likely? Somebody you put
out
of business by being too successful.”

Frank, still agitated, said, “You can afford to be philosophical, Dominic. They didn't shoot at your ass.”

“No. But my ass
has
been shot at, Frank, and more than once. You know why? Because I'm a success, and success has a lot of enemies. Your success
itself
is what took a shot at you.”

Frank frowned.

“How are you gonna stop that, Frank? How you gonna kill
that
—by being
unsuccessful
?” Cattano laughed harshly. “Be a successful somebody and have enemies; be an unsuccessful nobody and have friends. It's the choice we make.”

Frank said nothing.

Neither did Cattano, who had said his piece.

Then Frank sighed, grinned, and said, “Can I get you something, Dominic? Glass of vino, maybe?” He took his guest's arm. “Kind of you to stop by. . . .”

In a pay phone at
the Regency Hotel, with several rolls of quarters at the ready, Frank called Nate Atkins at the Soul Brothers Bar in Bangkok.

In the comfortable alcove beyond Frank's phone booth, hotel guests were gathered around a TV watching helicopters pluck diplomats off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon.

Half a world away, Nate's friendly baritone fought through the long-distance crackle to say, “That you, Frank? Hello?”

“I'm watching the news,” Frank said. “Where the hell's everybody going?”

“Where else when a war's over? Home.”

“Just like that? We're going to leave the fuckin' country to those evil communists 'cause some fuckin'
hippies
don't like it?”

“Frank—we been in Nam since '61. Enough's enough.”

“Well, I ain't had
close
to enough! Before this motherfucking war ends, I want
three thousand kilos
in the air! I don't care if you have to recruit the
Flying Fucking Nun!
”

Crackly silence.

“Okay,” Nate said. “When can I expect you?”

After several days of
winding through the jungle, Frank and Nate and a small army of black servicemen and black thugs arrived with their pack mules at the opium farm where it had all begun.

And once again a khaki-clad Frank was seated in the bamboo hut with the hard-eyed Chinese general who had made Blue Magic possible. No one but Frank and the general was in the small room, seated at a table having tea—a table on which were stacks and stacks of banded bills, C-notes adding up to four million dollars.

“Wars end,” the general said, as philosophical as Dominic Cattano, “but opium goes on. These plants are hardy enough to outlive any war—they'll still be here long after the American troops have gone. But after the last U.S. plane goes home, what will you do for transportation, Mr. Lucas? How will you import our product?”

“I'll figure something out,” Frank said easily. “You'll see me again.”

The general cast an openly affectionate gaze on his American business partner. At four million bucks, the old boy could afford to be friendly.

“It's not in my best interests to say this, Frank,” the general said. “But getting out while you're ahead, in such a business as this? Is not the same as quitting.”

“Have you been talking to my wife?”

The general chuckled. “No. And I take it you don't think she's right in her opinion?”

“I think she has a right to my opinion.”

The general smiled. “Very good. I like that, Frank. I will remember that.”

So the general and his American visitor drank tea, made their transaction, leaving the door to the future open.

Frank lost track of
the number of mules they'd brought along—it took a lot of the animals to carry three thousand kilos of heroin in burlap bags.

The journey back was tedious and slow. Nate's Thai thugs would go ahead and take sniper positions in the trees, then the mule train would inch along below; and the process would repeat, with the snipers ready to open fire on any hostile action. The humidity and heat, the bugs and snakes, were a constant; and Frank was weak, for Frank anyway, in the aftermath of the attempted hit. He was on painkillers and antibiotics and salt tablets; his eyes were burning and his shit was runny.

After two and a half days, the mule train winding down through the jungle, Frank began to feel better—he began to feel, in fact, that they had it made.

That was when a barrage of gunfire from the trees up ahead rained down on them; their own snipers had not yet taken their new positions, so Frank's little army was vulnerable, and two of the Thais went down immediately, leaving bloody mist behind, everybody else diving for cover, to shouts of “
Vietcong!
”

As his people returned fire, Frank dropped from his mule and, with the beast between him and the attackers,
shot his pistol up into the trees. Bullet-severed fronds rained down, but no bodies fell, and the onslaught continued, anonymous gunfire chewing up jungle and men.

Frank noticed the mules were taking no hits.

Nate was pinned down with the tethered train of the beasts.

“
Give them half!
” Frank yelled.

Nate couldn't make it out at first, squinting at Frank, shaking his head as slugs chewed up bark and shredded foliage.

“
Cut half of 'em loose! The mules!
”

Nate nodded, and got out his big sharp knife and cut the mule-train tether midway, then slapped at the nearest animal's ass, and the freed mules went bounding into a wall of trees.

With this the shooting subsided, then stopped altogether, as smoke rose like fog around half a dozen dead Thais and Americans, flung to the jungle floor to feed the earth with their blood.

This deadly high tariff paid, the remaining men and mules trudged on to what passed for civilization in this part of the world.

At the Soul Brothers
Bar, the American entertainers were gone, just as were most of the American patrons. On stage a little Thai teenager lamely tried to sing Otis Redding's “Dock of the Bay.” Pitiful and comic.

Frank, in a sportshirt and white slacks, sat at a table with a drink and a phone. He sipped the former and talked into the latter.

“Did you get that, Huey?” he asked. “Newark. Short Term Parking Lot Three.”

“When do you need it?” his brother's voice asked. “Today?”

“Tomorrow will be fine.”

“Short Term Lot Three. This the Mustang we're talking about?”

“No. The Camaro.”

“Camaro. What's the plate number?”

“KA 760. You get that?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“You sure?”

“I got it, Frank! . . . KA 760.”

Back in that other jungle called Harlem, Huey—who briefly before had been making out with a girl who wasn't his wife in the backseat of his car—had been parked near the pay phone on the corner, waiting for his brother's call.

It was nighttime and Huey's driver and cousin Jimmy Zee was standing on the sidewalk, looking like he was watching hoochie women strut by when actually he was picking up on every word of Huey's end of the conversation, watching Huey jot down the info on an old cocktail napkin.

Every jungle had its surprises.

The next morning, Jimmy
Zee showed up at the squadroom, bright and early—around eleven . . . bright and early for Jimmy Zee.

He had a wild-eyed, incoherent story to tell, which Richie Roberts was not much enjoying, figuring a touch for a C-note would be the darkness at the end of this tunnel. Jimmy was seated in a desk chair and Richie sat on the edge of another desk nearby, with Abruzzo, Jones and Spearman encircling the snitch, prompting him, trying to get him to cough up something that made an ounce of fucking sense.

“There's no Short Term Lot Three at Newark, Jimmy,” Abruzzo was saying. “They're lettered A, B, C, D—like the alphabet?”

“I don't care about the fuckin' alphabet,” Jimmy insisted firmly. “I'm just tellin' you what I heard—”

“Then maybe you heard . . .” And Abruzzo leaned in and got in Jimmy's face. “. . .
wrong!
”

Jimmy's head bobbed back, as if Abruzzo's breath was bad, which may well have been the case, but Jimmy's flinch was more to avoid a possible blow.

Spearman, tired of asking Jimmy questions, tried Jones instead: “Maybe he means the time? Three o'clock maybe?”

Jones shrugged, and zeroed in on Jimmy again. “Look, Jim, this isn't a Jersey plate. Or a New York one, either . . . not with just two letters. It's three and three,
not
two and three, get it?”

Jimmy, not getting it, shook his head. “I'm just tellin' you what Huey said. You guys say keep you ears open, so I keep my ears open, and I tell you what I hear, and then you fuckin'
ride
me. . . .”

“If it's not a plate,” Jones said, ignoring this outburst, “then what the fuck
is
it?”

“How the fuck should
I
know?” Jimmy blurted. “
I
ain't the detective!”

Abruzzo was shaking his head, looking like he wanted to hit somebody. Looking like he wanted to hit Jimmy, who Richie had to agree was as frustrating a snitch as he'd ever come across.

“If you're fuckin' lying,” Abruzzo said menacingly. “If you're fuckin' yanking our
chain
. . . .”

“It's what Huey said. On the phone. To Frank. I'm
sure
.”

“KA 760,” Spearman said skeptically.

“Yes! Yes! Fucking
yes!
”

Jimmy gazed up helplessly at the cops surrounding him. The cops gazed helplessly at each other.

All except Richie, who slid off the desk and onto his feet, smiling. “None of you assholes ever been in the service?” he asked.

The three cops and the one snitch gaped at Richie.

“It's an Air Force tail number.”

By early afternoon Richie
and his entire staff of detectives—fifteen strong plus their big boss Toback standing next to the task force leader—were grouped along the edge of the tarmac at Newark Airport, watching a military plane with the tail number ka 760 taxi toward them.

Soon the big silver bird had rolled to its stop, and the cabin door slid up, passengers emerging, including military officers, embassy personnel and families, all looking as haggard as they did relieved to be trading Vietnam for their homeland. Richie, Toback and the squad watched with some concern as official passengers, met by a host of assistants, filed past—to Richie, everybody on that plane was a suspect, and seeing VIPs get special treatment did not thrill him.

Finally a seasoned-looking captain approached the assembly of law enforcement officers, and Richie stepped forward to meet him.

“Captain, I'm Richard Roberts, director of the Essex County Narcotics Bureau. We have reason to believe this aircraft has been used to smuggle contraband.”

“Contraband.”

“Heroin, sir.”

“ ‘Reason to believe' doesn't cut it, Director Roberts.”

“No, sir . . .” Richie held up the folded papers. “. . . but this warrant does.”