Shoot the Moon (42 page)

BOOK: Shoot the Moon

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Siegel walks over to the first man, the one who appears to be the leader. “My apologies, señor,” he says. He starts checking his pockets, trying to remember where he keeps his handcuff keys, so he can release the man.

Luis Sandoval walks back over to the door. It’s propped halfway open at the moment by the black duffel bag the second man dropped. Sandoval gives it a tug and is surprised to find out how heavy it is. He peers inside where the zipper has worked its way open an inch or two. Sees a bunch of blue plastic packages. They seem to have a grayish white substance inside them.

“Excuse me, sir,” he says to Lenny Siegel. “I think you might want to have a look at this.”

“No, we’re not checking any luggage,” the man says. “We’ve just got these carry-on items.” He points to a large stuffed animal he’s carrying, as well as an oversized shoulder bag that the woman’s wearing and a trick-or-treat bag the little girl’s got.

“Must be nice to travel light,” says the ticket agent.

“It’s the only way,” the man agrees with a smile.

“Your flight will be ready for boarding in ten minutes. Gate twenty-two is right down that corridor. And have a nice time in the islands.”

“Thanks,” the man says. “We’ll do our best.”

And they head down the corridor - the man, the woman, the little girl, and the stuffed animal. Every once in a while, the woman’s shoulder bag appears to shift just a little bit, all on its own. But nobody seems to notice.

The days following Halloween prove to be busy ones at the laboratory of the United States Chemist in lower Manhattan. First, the suitcase delivered by Michael Goodman to Agents Jimmy Zelb and Frank Farrelli is brought in. It’s found to contain nineteen packages of a grayish white powdery substance. Each package weighs approximately 2.2 pounds, or one kilogram, although the weights turn out to vary considerably, as though someone has used a bathroom scale to weigh them instead of the precision equipment generally favored by wholesale drug dealers. Extensive laboratory testing reveals that the grayish white powdery substance is a compound consisting of 97 percent highly absorbent nontoxic clay, 2 percent coloring, and 1 percent deodorant. It is known commercially as Kitty Litter.

The large black duffel bag, seized by Agent Luis Sandoval from Johnnie Delgado, Mister Fuentes, Papo, and Julio, is brought in next. It, too, contains nineteen one-kilogram packages of a grayish white powdery substance. These packages are wrapped in blue plastic, and considerably more attention seems to have been paid to their weighing. Testing reveals them to be uniformly 99.8 percent pure heroin hydrochloride.

That leaves only a large quantity of “white stuff” recovered by Detectives Ray Abbruzzo and Harry Weems during the arrests of Dwayne (“Big Red”) Reddington and Leroy (“Hammer”) Pendergrass for the burglary of Michael Goodman’s apartment. Microscopic analysis reveals the substance to be a synthetic material in the polystyrene family patented by Du Pont under the trade name DuoFill, and commonly used as stuffing in the manufacture of pillows and toy animals.

The Ballistics Unit of the NYPD is busy, too. There, the 9-mm semiautomatic pistol found by Detectives Abbruzzo and Weems in Hammer’s waistband is test-fired into a large water tank. The weapon is found to be operable with the ammunition found in it. Microscopic examination of the test-fired slugs establishes that they contain the identical land-and-groove markings as the bullets removed several weeks earlier from the body of one Russell Bradford, up on 129th Street, over by the Hudson River.

In a word, the gun is “dirty.”

Charged with Bradford’s murder, Hammer quickly “turns” and agrees to testify against Big Red as the one who ordered him to kill Bradford. Both men ultimately plead guilty in exchange for sentences of twenty-two years to life.

Papo and Julio agree to cooperate with the United States Attorney’s Office against their bosses, Gustavo (“Mister”) Fuentes and Joaquin (“Johnnie”) Delgado, who are as a result convicted of possessing heroin in excess of ten kilograms and sentenced under the federal guidelines to seventeen and fifteen years in prison, respectively. In exchange for their testimony, Papo and Julio themselves receive eighteen-month sentences.

In time, investigators locate all of the rightful owners of the various items that spilled from the suitcase being carried by Francis (“Fingers”) Nelson at the moment of his tackle by Jimmy Zelb. Three of them even come downtown to view lineups.

The lineups are somewhat unusual, to be sure, in that all of the look-alikes are required to wear huge bandages across their noses, so as not to be readily distinguishable from Fingers, with his own bandaged and painfully broken nose. In addition to the broken nose, Fingers turns out to have severely bruised elbows and knees, as well as several cracked ribs. Nonetheless, Fingers is identified not only as the man who was carrying the suitcase but also as the one seen picking it up and walking off with it (along with a shiny orange jacket that had been folded over it) only moments earlier, just inside the lobby of an apartment building on the corner of Sixth Avenue.

In addition to his injuries, Fingers turns out to have a lengthy record for larceny arrests, mostly as a pickpocket. He eventually pleads guilty to criminal possession of stolen property as a felony, and receives a sentence of two to four years. He also receives a settlement of $75,000 under the Federal Tort Claims Act, as compensation for the pain and suffering he underwent as a direct result of the “unreasonable and excessive force” inflicted upon him by Agent Zelb.

In the days following Halloween, several physicians and medical institutions receive checks in the mail for the full amounts of balances they’ve been owed for some time by one Michael Goodman for services provided his daughter. Checks are also received by Marvin Krulewich (permitting him to go to a private hospital to get his cataracts operated on and his diabetes brought under control), by Lehigh Valley (enabling him to buy a modest home for the foster parents who raised him), and by Wilbur (“the Whale”) Bishop (who donates half of the money to Gamblers Anonymous and is last seen heading to Atlantic City with the remainder).

All of the checks are drawn against an account entitled Larus International. It turns out that a recent deposit of cash more than covers the total amount of the checks.

A hastily called press conference is announced to celebrate the success of Operation Clean Sweep, the first in what is promised to be a continuing series of joint ventures between the DEA and the NYPD. With the well-executed seizure of forty pounds of pure heroin (estimated to be worth upward of $50 million on the street) and the arrests of major interstate traffickers all the way from the Bronx to South Florida, the authorities hail the breakup of a ring that they say they’ve been investigating for many months. “This will put a serious dent in the narcotics business on the East Coast for years to come,” announces the mayor. All of the agents and police officers involved in the operation receive promotions. All but one, that is.

That particular agent, one Carmen Cruz, vanishes, as do Michael Goodman and his daughter. For a time, there is a discreet search for them, as well as a certain $3.5 million of missing United States currency But a number of hints are received from Agent Cruz that she’s been offered almost as much to sell the networks her version of the events leading up to the success of Operation Clean Sweep. There is considerable disagreement and debate, but over time, top officials at DEA decide to permit Cruz to retire quietly, and they write off the loss of the money as a “miscellaneous operating expense - no further information available.”

To this day, Michael Goodman, Carmen Goodman-Cruz, and Kelly Goodman live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan with their cat, their memories, and a slightly lumpy stuffed animal, exact species unknown. Mr. Goodman is employed several days a week as an accountant in the Bronx and also manages the family trust. Mrs. Goodman-Cruz works as a paralegal and a homemaker.

The Ballerina Princess (Concluded)

And so it came to pass that the Ballerina Princess took the last test of all, the one in which the royal doctors tried to scare her and hurt her at the same time, first by sticking the needle in her back, and then by putting her in the big machine.

But they hadn’t counted on just how brave and strong the Ballerina Princess was, and she came through the last test with flying colors. The spot in her eye gradually grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared altogether.

As for the Ballerina Princess, she flew off and disappeared for a while, too, along with her four faithful companions, the Keeper of the Numbers, the beauteous Lady Carmen, the brave and loyal Prince Larus, and the strange and peculiar Kat Mandu. They all played in the sand by the ocean, drank juice straight from coconuts and pineapples, and lay in the sun, smiling a lot.

After a while, when they were all nice and warm and tan and rested, they returned to Yew Nork, which was still their favorite city in the whole kingdom, so that the Ballerina Princess could be near her grandmother and her friends from school, whom she had begun to miss.

Needless to say, she never had another headache, and she lived happily ever after.

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