American Gangster (27 page)

But he was not surprised. He carried his glass of milk with him to the phone and when Richie said, “We've got it. The full shipment.”

“By ‘got' it, you mean . . . in hand? Arrests have been made?”

“Well, no. We saw it delivered.”

“Where to?”

There was a pause; this was apparently a reluctant admission on Richie's part. “Stephen Crane.”

“The fucking
projects
?”

“The fucking projects.”

“That's a war zone.”

“I appreciate the briefing. Now I need a warrant.”

“For the whole place?”

“No.”

Toback shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs. “Where
is
the stuff?”

“Somewhere in the South Tower. Lou, it's what we've worked for, all these months. We can take Lucas down.”

“You didn't see Frank himself?”

“No. Huey, though. Various other Country Boys.”

Toback sighed. He allowed himself a sip of milk. Then he said, “You
know
it's there. You're
sure
.”

“Positive.”

Toback mulled it. “Lou, we're ready to go in there, knowing there's a good chance we won't all be coming back out. That's what this squad is willing to put on the line. All I'm asking you to do is get me a warrant.”

“How many guys you got?”

“Counting me, four of us. Lou . . . we don't exactly have a lot of time to fuck around. We're a bunch of mostly white faces hanging around outside Stephen Crane, if you catch my drift.”

“. . . I'll call in the warrant. I know an atheist judge I can probably catch at his country club.”

“That'll do fine. But pray for us anyway.”

“Pray for us all. My job'll be on the line right there next to yours, Richie. And Rich—I'm sending some backup. Don't you guys go in there before either the warrant
or
the backup gets there. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Richie hung up, and left the battered pay phone
across the street from the projects to join the nearby Spearman, Jones and Abruzzo, standing outside their respective cars, waiting for the go-ahead.

“Well?” Spearman asked, lighting up a smoke.

“Toback's on board. Getting us a warrant.”

Jones asked, “How long we gonna wait for it?”

“It'll be here.”

On the seventeenth floor
of the South Tower, five female workers were preparing for business as usual. Red Top's operation had long since outgrown the little apartment in Harlem, and this empty apartment was perfect for their purposes. First the women spread (and taped down) plastic sheeting to half a dozen card tables; then they began changing for work, which in this case meant stripping down from their street clothes to their skin.

Within minutes the naked, surgically masked quintet was at work, pharmaceutical scales balanced to their counterweights, the women cutting the heroin with quinine to the exacting standards of their absent boss, Frank Lucas. Over in the kitchenette area, Red Top put on some coffee.

The ruby-crowned former girlfriend of Frank's was, as usual, in charge, but brother Huey Lucas was supervising. He never tired of watching good-looking young naked women make Blue Magic.

The work proceeded, a paper-cutter blade slicing sheets of blue cellophane. The women at their tables, displaying the expertise of Cuban cigar makers,
wrapped pieces of the blue plastic like tobacco leaves around precisely measured quarter-ounce drifts of powder.

At the same time, in the Baptist church in Harlem, Frank and his momma were joining in the Call and Response of the minister as his sermon built, though Eva just sat there, lost in her thoughts.

Barely half an hour
after Richie hung up, two black-and-whites and several undercover vehicles approached, sirens off. Richie was impressed by the response time, though the other three detectives had been after him every two minutes like kids in the backseat asking daddy how much longer. Spearman had looked at his watch so often, the action had turned into a kind of tic.

But now Toback himself was climbing out of the first unmarked car, and striding over with the warrant, handing it to Richie.

“Let the four of us go in first,” Richie said, gesturing to the trio who'd become his inner circle within the squad. “An army invades Stephen Crane, and you might get a war . . . and I think you know which side the residents are gonna jump in on.”

“I'll meet you halfway,” Toback said. “Take three more of my men with you—then you four can lead the way.”

“Done,” Richie said.

“And let's get some walkies distributed. When you get the lay of the land, you call it in. No cowboy action.”

Richie nodded. Then he said, “Let's leave the black-and-whites out here for now, and the uniforms. Why call attention?”

Toback went along with that, and soon three unmarked cars piled with detectives laden with weapons wormed their way through the pothole-flung lanes of the projects. Long shadows cast by these ominous towers turned even the most innocuous activities into fear-inducing threats—a woman pushing a stroller, some teens shooting hoops, a couple getting in each other's face, kids laughing as they raced by on their bikes, even the old winos lounging on graffiti-obscured benches seemed to bode danger. . . .

The shipment had been loaded into the South Tower—that was all Richie and his three teammates knew. Where those laundry bags of heroin had wound up in the scarred cement monstrosity had yet to be determined. What lay ahead was both tedious and terrifying.

First step was Richie removing the cover plate of the elevator, cutting the wires, shutting down service. Then he, Spearman, Jones and Abruzzo—followed by three of Toback's backup dicks—ventured into the debris-strewn, graffiti-enveloped stairwell. To say it compared to Beirut would be to insult Beirut.

Floor by floor, they went, working their way up the tower, commando-style, handguns and even rifles and shotguns at the ready, which sent residents scurrying; Richie lugged a sledgehammer along—opening up doors without a key was, after all, his speciality. Somehow the higher they rose, the more squalor, decay and
hopelessness they found. Cooking smells joined with scents of disinfectant and urine and feces as a sad reminder that human beings actually dwelled here. This, for many, was home.

At the seventeenth floor, as Jones—who was leading the way—paused outside the fire door, a strange, creaking sound could be made out, coming closer, closer. . . .

Jones cracked the door and they all saw a little kid on a big wheel go pedaling by, the sound fading with him. The invaders grinned at each other and sighed and enjoyed one light moment, at least.

Then they returned to grim reality.

This floor was the worst yet, easily, half the apartments lacking even front doors; TVs and radios and record players echoed, a cacophony of gospel music and rock 'n' roll and preaching and cartoon voices, joined by loud arguments between men and women, and topped off by the wailing of babies.

Jones peeked around the corner.

He held up two fingers to Richie, just behind him. “Shotguns,” he whispered. “I'll go.”

The black detective in blue denim was the natural emissary—it wasn't like Richie was wearing an Afro.

Richie risked a peek as Jones confidently strode up to the two guys seated on folding chairs outside one of the apartments that still had its door—a closed door; both watchdogs had sawed-off shotguns in their laps.

“Huey in there?” Jones asked with casual authority. “I gotta talk to the man.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” said the one nearest Richie's position.

Jones leaned in, irritated and unimpressed. “What the fuck kinda mouth is that? I got business with Huey, which is none of
your
fuckin' business except to get off your dead ass and knock on the fuckin' door and
get
him!”

The guy got to his feet, pumped his shotgun, and Jones latched onto the weapon and brought it up hard against the guard's throat, then whipped behind him and used the barrel of the weapon like a garrote to force the bastard to his knees. The shotgun went off, but didn't hit anybody, though plaster and pellets showered all over the place, as Spearman and Abruzzo came around quick and a rifle and a handgun were in the other guard's face before he could blink away the plaster spray.

The second guard put down the sawed-off, held up his hands in surrender, and Spearman cuffed him and tossed him on the floor like a filled garbage bag.

At the same time, Richie was swinging his sledgehammer, turning the door into splinters.

And when Richie shouldered in, tossing the sledge, getting out his revolver, the room was already in chaos, naked women in surgical masks screaming and bumping into one another, almost comically, knocking over tables, sending packets of Blue Magic to the floor and knocking piles of heroin off onto the floor with stray powder getting into the air to offer a top-dollar contact high.

“Get
down
!” Richie yelled to the girls, and Abruzzo was behind him, giving the same order.

Then a shot came from somewhere, ringing off the walls, winging Abruzzo, and Richie hit the deck, other detectives entering the apartment to do the same, getting on their bellies to crawl like infantrymen taking a beachhead.

As he'd burst through the door, Richie had glimpsed somebody running toward another room, a male, probably Huey, and as no other gunfire had as yet followed, he got to his feet and ran in that direction, down a hallway.

Revolver in hand, he edged into a darkened bedroom, but found no Huey or anybody else—just a big tapestry of a tiger almost covering a wall.

Instinct told him to tear the tapestry down, which he did, exposing a humongous hole knocked through the wall, probably with a sledgehammer like his, connecting the bedroom with the next apartment. He climbed through into another darkened space, a living room (he soon realized) with light from the hallway slanting in through an open door.

Richie rushed out into the hallway and saw no one, but he could hear footsteps echoing down the metal stairs of the nearby stairwell. He and his revolver followed, and he started down the steps one at time, then two at a time, and finally five at a time, two flights worth.

It was Huey, all right, down there on the next landing, yanking open the door and exiting the stairwell onto the fifteenth floor. Huey had a pretty good lead on Richie, who followed him down the corridor, watching him duck into a doorless apartment.

Through that open portal he saw Huey step through to an exterior balcony and run, left. Instead of cutting through the apartment, Richie ran down the hallway, staying parallel to Huey, seeing him through other open apartment doors as his prey hustled along. And Richie smiled as he saw Huey tripping over some toys in his path; the balcony was enclosed with chain-link, and with hanging wash and assorted crap in the way, Huey had picked a hell of a cluttered escape route.

So Richie put on the steam and got ahead of Huey, and cut through into another doorless apartment; but access to the balcony was boarded shut! His strategy failing him, Richie saw Huey through the window, running by, and, impulsively, the detective grabbed a tiny portable TV off a nearby counter and hurled it like a baseball, shattering the glass . . .

. . . and knocking Huey alongside his head.

By the time Huey was back on his feet, Richie had found his way to the balcony, and was standing there facing Huey.

“Give it up, Huey.”

Huey, dazed, somehow shook it off and charged into Richie, pummeling him with blows. Richie, tired of fucking around, kicked out once, hard, breaking Huey's femur.

This time Huey went down and didn't come back up, being busy howling in agony.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Richie advised him.

But Huey didn't seem to be listening.

Over the next twenty-four
hours, the Lucas brothers and their cousins would all be arrested—Dexter at his dry-cleaning establishment, Melvin at his metal works, Turner at his tire service, Terrence at his electrical shop—cuffed and led to patrol cars and driven away.

But on Sunday, barely half an hour after he had broken Huey Lucas's leg, Richie went out of his way to make the most satisfying arrest of all. He was hardly dressed for church, and was by any reasonable assessment a sweaty, rank mess, when he pulled up to the Baptist church in Harlem. He'd used the siren to make good time and Toback had called ahead, so half the police in New Jersey were already waiting, having surrounded the church as if it were a gangster's hideout.

And wasn't it?

Frank Lucas, his wife and his mother were among the surprised members of the congregation who exited the service and started down the steps only to realize police and police cars were everywhere. Frank's driver, Doc, had already been cuffed and taken into custody.

And all of the many shotguns, revolvers and automatics were pointed at Frank, making two things clear: he was their target, and he wasn't going anywhere. . . .