Badger Games (36 page)

“Sir,” Tucker said, eschewing any familiarity by not using his superior's first name, although they were on good terms, “I take full responsibility. I've got to admit, it looks like we—I—accepted too readily Ostropaki's evasions and explanations. But if you'll allow me a word of caution here … sometimes in the morning mist the ducks look a lot like the decoys.”

The DDO liked that metaphor. He narrowed his eyes with a little half smile, perhaps recalling some morning in the blind. He opened a desk drawer and took out a large black cigar. “Care for one?” he said. “They're not Havanas, but good chewers, Honduran. No?” He put the cigar in his mouth and began to chew, gently. “Okay, Vern, I take your point. Why don't you get up there to Brooklyn and see which of these ducks can fly? It looks a little murky right now, but no need to panic. Hell, we may end up giving this guy a medal. But if it plays out like it sounds, it's your mess. I'm going to let you clean it up.”

There was a slight emphasis on those closing words. Tucker relaxed. The DDO would be happy if all this could be explained in
some defensible way. And if not, even a familiar plot line might suffice: it wasn't as if the community was unfamiliar with the sad story of a contract agent who had played a double game. Happened all the time. The manly thing to do was own up to a mistake and then sweep it under the carpet.

The DDO even rehearsed the well-known scenario: Ostropaki had allowed them to snatch a few shipments, diversions, so that the real shipments got through. The “real dent in the flow” was instantly reduced to a paltry leak. The best deal might be to find out if Ostropaki could be turned again, give them a real handle on the main villains. That would get Ostropaki out of the country, away from congressional oversight committees and possible publicity of their failure.

“The NYPD's task force is going to pick him up the minute he shows his face,” the DDO said. “They're happy to cooperate. It was our coup that identified him. They'll want some quid pro quo, of course. I'm counting on you to handle this with discretion, give them something, but don't let them see that our faces are red. Don't be arrogant, Vern. We can't just hustle this guy off to some safe house. It's got to be done in plain sight, with them looking on. Think you can handle that?”

That was a nasty swipe. As much as to say, You blew it, you bungler. Now make us look good.

“I'll get on it right away, sir.”

In fact, the shuttle got him from National to La Guardia a little after eleven o'clock. Ten minutes later, Max Kravfurt was driving him to a rendezvous with a Detective Porter, in Brooklyn.

“How are you getting along with Barnes, Max?” the colonel asked, as they drove.

He listened with interest to Kravfurt's cautiously worded complaints about bureaucratic pusillanimity. Tucker wanted to hear genuine gripes, not sour grapes. He had sounded Kravfurt out in the
past on this and found him a potential candidate for the Lucani. Now was a good time to audition Kravfurt's song, to hear if he at least got all the notes right.

“You don't have to sugarcoat it, Max,” he said. “We're in this together. You should have seen me kissing the cardinal's ring about an hour ago. What a desk jockey!”

Kravfurt was eager to yodel. He immediately launched into an aria about an operation he'd been on a few months earlier.

“Are we talking about that Congressman Heller sting?” the colonel asked at one point, interrupting the diatribe. “I didn't know you were involved in that. Who else was on the case?”

“It was a cousin of mine who tipped me,” Kravfurt assured him. “We grew up in the same neighborhood as Heller. Mike knew him better than I did. He called me, said Heller was living pretty rich, new cars, a house in Florida, shtupping some kid half his age, a dancer at Tori's. Twenty-year marriage crashing. Worse, he's hanging out with some old neighborhood mopes. Well, you know a congressman: he's got backers, they throw him stock tips, pad his campaign fund—he's bound to be doing all right. But it was more than that. These are mob guys, dealers, he's hanging with. They're cutting him into the distribution end, and Heller's into the coke himself. He was making an ass of himself.

“I developed the whole case, me and Aaron. Then what happens? When I set up the buy, Heller sends some hood Aaron remembered from that LaGuardia case, doesn't show himself. We brought in that babe that worked on the Franko stuff overseas, Jamala Sanders—you remember her?”

“Sanders? Sure. Why her?” the colonel said.

“She can look black,” Kravfurt said. “Plays it real good. And she hasn't been seen around here. Anyway, she's the buyer. When Heller doesn't show, she pitches a monumental bitch, takes a hike.
Smart gal. So we go through the whole thing again. Aaron tells Heller that she got spooked, something about the contact. She thought he was a rat, maybe working off a rap for the feds. Heller says that's bullshit. Anyway, to make a long story short, he finally agrees to meet her himself. We had a man with a long lens, got photos, tapes, the coke, marked money he deposits in his own bank account, the whole schmear.”

“So what happened? How did Heller walk?”

“Politics,” Kravfurt said, a clear, pure note of disgust. “Somebody owed somebody. All I know is Barnes calls me and Aaron in, says the evidence was tainted. We're transferred to another case. Lucky we weren't sent to another division, even fired. We'd messed the whole thing up. Heller quits Congress, pleads bad health. That was the deal they worked with him, obviously. He's down in Florida, now, free as a bird.”

This was the sort of thing that the colonel wanted. He could check it out with Jammie. The sooner the better. But first, Ostropaki.

Detective Porter and his assistant, Detective Cook, met them in a coffee shop on Flatbush Avenue. Some NYPD undercover cops were watching the house. It was an apartment building, actually, an older place just a few blocks away. A number of Muslims lived in the building, Albanians. Ostropaki could be staying with any of them. They couldn't be sure which apartment. The plan was to wait for him to come out. As soon as he tried to drive anywhere he could be pulled over for some real or imagined violation. Then Porter and Cook would be called in. Ostropaki would be taken to the precinct. Tucker could talk to him there. If necessary, some coke could be “found” in the Ostropaki car.

“That won't be necessary,” the colonel said. “We've got legitimate reasons to ask him questions about operations outside the country. But if you want to …”

Porter and Cook could wait on that, they said. They'd like to see what came out. “Hell, with any luck,” Cook chimed in, “the guy will be making another delivery.”

They all went for a drive-by, to look at the house. It was an ordinary brick building, three stories, no elevator. Four apartments on each floor, but from what the undercover guys had seen, it looked like a couple of hundred people lived there, Porter told them. Well, maybe not that many, but many more than one would expect. Could be a violation of housing ordinances—a dozen apartments converted into two dozen, or more. Almost bound to be. Foreign types coming and going more or less constantly. Nobody seemed to work. Women in shawls, men in funny hats.

The four men returned to the diner to wait, chatting, talking shop. Tucker was anxious to get away, not only from the detectives but from Max. He wanted to call Jammie, find out what was going down in Montana. He had a feeling that Joe would be able to wrap that up. Maybe the thing to do was simply go back to the Manhattan office with Kravfurt, since Ostropaki didn't show any sign of moving. He and Max could always be called when the pickup occurred. The only thing was, he wanted to be on the spot, in case Ostropaki began to talk. Tucker wanted him to talk, but not too freely. He wanted to get Jammie back, now. Let Joe do his thing.

About one, the watchers called in. An unexpected type had shown up at the apartment house, in a cab. A burly man in a black suit, carrying a briefcase. He'd gone into the house.

“A delivery!” Cook declared. “Mr. Big! Let's go in.”

“Mr. Big?” Porter laughed. “We don't have a make on him. We don't know which apartment he went into. Maybe he has nothing to do with our delivery boy. We'd never get a warrant on that.”

“A burly guy, in his sixties?” Cook said. “We give him an ID! Sounds like Boomie Karns,” he said.

They amused themselves trying to attach a name and face to this “burly” visitor. About forty minutes passed, and Tucker began to think that he could reasonably plead a lunch date. He had a feeling that if Ostropaki had been up all night, he might not be going out, if at all, before late afternoon. By now, he thought, Jammie and Joe had probably taken care of Bazok. He was anxious to know.

Then the word came: Ostropaki was on the move. The detectives took their car, Tucker rode with Kravfurt. The cops had allowed Ostropaki to get well away from the house but stopped him before he got on the freeway. The cops had pulled him over on a side street.

“Thanks, guys,” Porter told the uniforms as he approached Ostropaki's car. “We'll take him. Get this car towed. We'll want a thorough search of it.”

The colonel and Kravfurt watched from their car. “That's him, all right,” Tucker said. They followed the detectives to the precinct. The detectives had Ostropaki in an interrogation room when the colonel and Kravfurt entered.

“Colonel!” Ostropaki said. He looked relieved. He smiled and stood up to hold out his hand. But the colonel ignored it, giving him a cold look. Ostropaki, chastened, sat down again.

The colonel took a chair across the table from Ostropaki. A tape recorder sat on the table, but not turned on. The colonel knew that they were being recorded, however. This was a delicate moment.

Tucker gestured at the tape machine and asked Porter, “How does this work?” Porter showed him. Tucker turned on the machine and gave the date, the time, the place, then identified himself and those present. Ostropaki watched quietly.

“The subject is known to me as Theodore Ostropaki,” the colonel said. “Is that your correct name? Please speak up. Give us
your nationality and date of entry to the United States, how you arrived …”

Ostropaki was very cooperative. He had entered two days earlier, was visiting friends and professional contacts. He gave the address of the apartment and the names of the friends. They were Albanian immigrants. He worked for an international refugee organization and was here to provide information about missing relatives, that sort of thing. It all sounded quite legitimate and reasonable. The colonel had his passport. It had been issued by the Albanian government, where he now resided. The date on it was a week old.

The colonel asked him about that. Ostropaki explained that he had been a refugee himself. He'd been caught in the outbreak of hostilities in Kosovo and had fled with people who protected him, to Albania. There, for many reasons, he began to involve himself in the refugee problem. Ultimately, he went to work for the agency that had helped him. He hadn't needed a passport before this, his first trip out of the country.

“What did you do in Kosovo?” the colonel asked.

“I was sales representative for a large firm in Athens,” Ostropaki said. “Building supplies. I traveled all over … Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia. I have very good languages, you see. I speak Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Romanian …” He went on, describing this good, well-paying job. He seemed calm, as if he knew that all this was a mere formality and soon he would be allowed to return to his friends.

“Where were you going just now?” the colonel asked.

“Breakfast,” Ostropaki said. “I was up late last night and slept in.”

“What were you doing last night?” the colonel asked.

“I had to meet a man whose family is still in Serbia,” Ostropaki said. “He works what he calls a graveyard shift? In Serbia he was surgeon, here he is emergency-room technician at a hospital in
Manhattan—I think he operates the machines that say if one is still alive, something like that. I delivered to him some letters from his family. He has an uncle in Albania, at one of the camps, waiting to return to Serbia.” He gave the man's name and where he worked.

The colonel looked up at Porter, who nodded to Cook, who left the room, obviously to check on this alleged hospital technician. This was not going as they'd expected. Every one of the officers in the room had the dull feeling that the man just described would turn out to be a solid witness for Ostropaki. The colonel, however, felt his spirits lift.

“I was hoping to see you, while I am here, just a few days,” Ostropaki said to the colonel. “You were so”—he hesitated, then found the right word—“amiable, when we met in—”

Before he could say “Athens,” the colonel reached over and punched the stop button on the recorder. He got up and went outside. Porter and Kravfurt followed.

“Well, that's a loser,” Tucker said in the hall, with a rueful look on his face. “We interviewed him in Athens a couple of years back, thinking he might be a useful correspondent, since he traveled to Serbia quite a bit. Then we lost track of him. Nothing came of it.”

“That was your interest?” Porter said.

“It looked different,” the colonel said. “There was always the possibility that he might have contacts with the Zivkovic group, in Serbia. But now, it sounds to me like someone set him up. What do you think?”

“Why would someone set him up?” Kravfurt said.

“Who knows? Maybe to discredit him with this refugee organization,” the colonel said. “It could have been some internal dispute. These people are notoriously divided among themselves. One faction opposes another, and they're all engaged in the same cause! Or it could have been some Serb group that found out about
Ostropaki's mission, got some inside information on this meeting with the doctor, or whatever he is.”