Shoot the Moon (41 page)

Luis Sandoval makes a right turn off Park Avenue at Ninety-Second Street and heads down the hill in the champagne-colored Cadillac.

“Take it slow when you get into the next block,” Lenny Siegel tells him. “We’ll see what’s going on.”

What’s going on is that there’s a light on in Michael Goodman’s fifth-floor window, and two guys can be seen walking around inside.

“That’s strange,” says Lenny Siegel.

The retreating caterpillar of Johnnie Delgado, Mister Fuentes, Papo, and Julio inches its way down the five flights of stairs to ground level. Johnnie Delgado is about to lead them out of the building when he sees a champagne-colored Cadillac pull up in front and double-park. Something about it - perhaps the dual antennas, perhaps the unlikely combination of the two men inside, the young Hispanic driver and the older white passenger - causes him to hesitate.

“
El Hombre,
” he whispers to Mister Fuentes.

Mister Fuentes nods. They look around for some sign of a rear exit from the building but see none. What they do see is another stairway, this one leading down. With no other avenue of escape, they take it.

* * *

“He’s coming!” Jimmy Zelb hisses. The red light on the locator device is suddenly blinking faster and faster, and the intervals between the beeps have almost disappeared, leaving a shrill pulsating tone. The only shortcoming of the device is that it has no directional capability: It tells them how close they are to the sending unit (in this case, the suitcase full of money), but not the heading they need to follow in order to reach it. But there can be no doubt that their target’s heading their way and must be almost on top of them - the red light is constant now, and the beep has turned into a steady, piercing whine. They look around frantically, expecting to spot their quarry any second among the mass of people on the corner.

A roar goes up from the crowd once again, and all eyes are suddenly turned to a group of marchers dressed up as O. J. Simpson and his defense team. There’s a strutting Johnnie Cochran, a chart-carrying Barry Scheck, an F. Lee Bailey wrapped in a marine flag, and a Robert Shapiro distancing himself off to one side. O.J. himself is smiling broadly and blowing kisses to the crowd, who respond with a tumultuous mixture of cheers and boos: No one seems undecided about this particular entry in the parade.

And then Zelb spots him.

Not twenty yards away, a small man wearing a bright orange jacket and carrying a large yellow-and-green floral-print suitcase is disappearing into the crowd. By the time Zelb reacts, the man has turned the corner and is heading west on Tenth Street.

Jimmy Zelb, an offensive lineman in his football days - very offensive, according to some of his opponents - was never known as fast; nevertheless, he was what professional scouts termed “quick off the ball,” meaning he had an explosive quality about him, an ability to catapult himself from a set position into the opposing team’s secondary and toward a linebacker, cornerback, or anyone else foolish enough to get in his path. Only a serious knee injury his senior year kept him out of the pro draft and deprived him of a promising career in the National Football League.

It is that same quickness, that same explosive quality that Zelb exhibits now as he bolts forward toward the receding orange jacket. Much as he used to knock opposing linemen aside as though they were tenpins, Zelb now clears a broad path through the crowd that his fellow DEA and NYPD teammates quickly fill as all six of them - a half a ton of hurtling human beef - zero in on their target.

So intense is Zelb’s concentration that not once does he take his eyes off the combination of the orange jacket and the suitcase in front of him. He shortens the distance to fifteen yards, to ten, to five. Away from the avenue, the crowd is thinner and finally parts altogether, giving Zelb an unobstructed path to his prey. Gauging the speed at which the orange jacket is moving away from him, Zelb now instinctively adjusts his stride to that of his quarry, closing the gap between them to three yards, to two . . .

Offensive linemen are trained to block, not to tackle. They’re schooled in the art of using their shoulders, their bodies, even their
heads
to fend off opponents and open holes for teammates. They’re drilled for hours on end on how to avoid costly penalties for holding, or illegal use of the hands, or face-mask grabbing. They must endure bitter envy and endless frustration, as the same rules that hamstring them freely encourage their defensive counterparts to grab and tug and hold to their hearts’ content. So - just as every receiver has always longed to turn the tables and throw a touchdown pass, just as every nose tackle has always imagined scoring a touchdown off a tipped pass or a bouncing fumble - every blocking lineman who ever played the game has at one time or another found himself dreaming of making the perfect open-field tackle: of being allowed,
just once,
to use his hands, his God-given
arms,
to grasp the enemy and bring him crashing down to earth.

Not that any of the specifics of this rationale go through Jimmy Zelb’s conscious thought process as he closes in on his target, to be sure. But years of frustration are at play here nonetheless: frustration from his hand-tied football days, frustration from his career-ending knee injury, frustration from a life in law enforcement, in which he’s paid a meager salary to uphold inadequate laws against millionaire drug dealers, frustration from the traffic jam earlier in the evening, frustration from losing sight of the Mole once already tonight.

Jimmy Zelb’s frustration is about to end.

A yard from his target, he takes a deep breath and launches himself into the air, head down, arms spread wide, every ounce of his body prepared for impact: a perp-seeking missile locked onto his target with an intensity that is awesome to behold.

It takes Johnnie Delgado, Mister Fuentes, and the two others a few minutes to get acclimated to the darkness of the basement. One of them finds a book of matches, and halfway through it, they discover an overhead lightbulb that responds to the pull of a cord.

They look around and are able to see that it’s a storage area of some sort that they’ve taken refuge in. There are individual bins, each full of household items, each secured with a padlock.

While Johnnie Delgado listens for noises upstairs, Papo and Julio, still panting from their exercise on the stairs, find a small bench and sit down on it. Mister Fuentes spends his time walking down the row of storage bins, looking at the contents. He sees a dusty TV set, a broken green chair, two pairs of skis, a child’s bicycle, a black duffel bag, an old vacuum cleaner-

And he stops right there.

Taking two steps back, he stares at the bin in front of him. He doesn’t even notice the tiny “5F” scratched into the gray paint above it. He doesn’t have to. Mister Fuentes has found the gringo’s storage locker, and in it the black duffel bag.

He looks at the lock, the only thing in the world that at this moment separates him from the bag. It is a small combination lock, the kind they sell in Kmart or Target for a dollar or two. He allows himself a broad grin.

“
Compadres,
” he says, “I think we may have avenged the tragic death of Raul Cuervas.”

Jimmy Zelb’s tackle turns out to be a wonder to behold, a perfect ten, a one-play human highlight film. He hits his target around the waist, just below the bottom of the orange jacket. Zelb’s shoulder drives into the small of the man’s back, simultaneously lifting him into the air and knocking him prone. For a long moment, both tackier and tacklee are airborne, as though the beefy Zelb is stretched out atop a sled that’s suddenly lifted off and taken flight.

Then, gravity doing what it generally tends to do, they begin descending for what can only be described as a
series
of landings. Witnesses (and there were quite a number) will later disagree whether the pair bounced two times or three before finally coming to rest against a trash can. According to measurements taken for a civil suit filed sometime later, the trash can was a full forty-seven feet seven inches from the original point of impact, that point being assumed from the position of a pair of shoes from which the man had apparently been ejected at the instant of the big bang. As for the suitcase, it took a slightly different flight path, somewhat to the north, traveling thirteen feet two inches before hitting the pavement, springing open, and spilling its contents onto the roadway.

It is the nature of these contents that first alerts the agents and officers to the possibility that something has gone slightly wrong with their game plan. Instead of $3.5 million of the government’s money being strewn about, all that can be seen are four wallets, three change purses, two credit card cases, a pocket watch, a badly wrinkled jacket, and (upon closer inspection) a miniature device called a sending unit, said to be capable of transmitting a variable-range electronic signal to a second device.

And instead of it being Michael Goodman who lies face-down on the sidewalk, struggling to regain consciousness, it is, of course, Francis Teller Nelson. Or, as all his friends at Rikers Island call him, Fingers.

It takes Papo and Julio all of thirty seconds to break the combination lock on the storage bin. As Mister Fuentes watches, Johnnie Delgado reaches forward, grabs the black duffel bag by its handles, and pulls it out onto the basement floor. He crouches over it, unzips it about four inches. He sees blue plastic packages.

“Let’s go,” he tells the others.

Mister Fuentes nods in agreement and leads the way to the stairs. In their greed and their haste, both Mister Fuentes and Johnnie Delgado have completely forgotten about the Cadillac outside and the two men who looked like
el Hombre.
Papo and Julio, if
they
remember, understand that it’s not their place to say anything.

Ray Abbruzzo and Harry Weems are inside Apartment 5F before the two burglars know it. They have the handcuffs on them without a struggle. Both are charged with first-degree burglary, a class B felony punishable by up to twenty-five years imprisonment. A search of one of the two - the one who answers to the name Hammer - reveals a fully loaded 9-mm semiautomatic pistol.

“There’s something going on up there,” Lenny Siegel tells Luis Sandoval. “Let’s go take a look.”

They climb out of the Cadillac and head for the entrance of Michael Goodman’s building. They find the front door locked.

“You got a credit card?” Siegel asks Sandoval. Siegel hates the things himself, refuses to carry them.

“Let me see, sir,” Sandoval says. He pulls out his wallet, finds one, and hands it over to Siegel.

Siegel works at the lock. He was a good field agent in his day, but as a group leader, he spends most of his time at his desk or somebody else’s, and his street skills have grown rusty. He’s still working at the lock when the door suddenly swings outward, knocking him onto his butt.

A short, middle-aged Hispanic man stands on the other side, backed by three younger Hispanic men. One of them is carrying a large black duffel bag. They look startled.

Startled
is hardly the word for Luis Sandoval. Ever since Siegel said, “Let’s go take a look,” Sandoval’s adrenaline has been pumping. In his seven weeks with the DEA, he’s yet to make an arrest, or even be
present
at one. After graduating from his training class “Most Eager to Succeed,” he’s succeeded at nothing, in fact, but chauffeuring senior agents around. Now, the sight of his superior being knocked to the ground, coupled with the sudden appearance of what to Luis Sandoval looks like a band of Cuban thugs, causes the tightly wound Sandoval to spring into action.

“
Freeze!
” he shouts, pulling his service revolver and pointing it at the forehead of the Hispanic man nearest him.

The man’s jaw drops open, joined by the jaws of his three companions. There is a loud
thud
as the duffel bag drops from the hands of the second man and lands heavily. All four men raise their arms as though they’re part of some mass surrender of string puppets.

“Jesus, Luis!” Siegel shouts, still sitting where he landed. “You can’t
do that!
They’re just four guys coming out of the
building.
They didn’t mean to knock me over. It was an
accident,
for Chrissakes.”

Accident or fate, Luis Sandoval is far too pumped to back down now. He uses his handcuffs and Siegel’s to secure all four men to the handrail of the outside steps.

Lenny Siegel continues to sit. “We’re going to be sued; we’re going to be sued,” he mumbles. “My mother was right; my mother was right. I’ll never work again.”

Farrelli, the two other DEA agents, and the two NYPD officers are far too preoccupied with the injuries to Fingers Nelson and Jimmy Zelb (who also had been knocked unconscious by his landing on top of Nelson), and the contents of the suitcase, to pay attention to anything else. The cold seems not so cold anymore. The crowd noise fades into the background. The parade continues to march by, only a half a block away.

There are Bill and Hillary Clinton, the reincarnation of Richard Nixon, and all manner of ghouls, goblins, and ghosts. There are dancing bears and bare dancers. There are creatures from other galaxies. There is even a strange family of five: a man, woman, and child all draped in black satin material and wearing witches’ hats (the man’s looking suspiciously like the material’s been wrapped around an orange traffic cone). The man and the woman wear inexpensive masks, the kind they sell at stationery stores for $3.95 apiece, that make you look like the Lone Ranger, or Zorro, or the Cat Woman. The woman carries a slightly spooked black cat in her arms, while the man lugs a huge stuffed animal that looks as though it must weigh close to forty pounds.

But all the agents and cops are too busy to notice any of these things.

Lenny Siegel finally gets up off the sidewalk. It’s not his own job he’s worried about, he decides. All he did was land on his rear end while trying to sneak into a building, a relatively minor transgression, certainly nothing more serious than a criminal trespass. It’s what Luis Sandoval has done. Sandoval, still a probationary agent, has just arrested four men and chained them to a building, all because they happened to have opened a door at the wrong moment.