Shoot the Moon (6 page)

Michael Goodman sits looking out the window of the plane, watching the Florida coastline recede beneath him into the distance, and wondering exactly what it is he’s doing.

He has lived on this planet for a shade over forty years, and his entire life has been conventional to the point of absolute boredom. Or so it seems to him. For as long as he can remember, he has gotten up in the morning, showered, shaved, and gone to school or to work. He has a wife and a daughter.
Had
a wife. He has a studio apartment he rents, debts he owes, and cards made out of plastic that somehow manage to get him to the next crisis.

Up until this moment, Goodman’s only link to the world of illicit drugs has been the two marijuana cigarettes he puffed unsatisfactorily years ago. He knows nobody who traffics in narcotics, and can’t even come up with anyone who he knows for sure even
uses
narcotics, though he has his suspicions about the McPherson’s teenage son, the one who wears the earring.

Yet now he suddenly finds himself sitting in a plane, resting his feet on top of a duffel bag containing thousands of dollars’ worth of narcotics, while stapled to his ticket is a claim check for another duffel bag containing twice as much. He has absolutely no clue as to what he can do with the white powder inside those duffel bags in order to convert it somehow into money. And yet he knows that that’s precisely what he’s going to try to do.

* * *

Unable to get onto the same plane as Mr. Softee, Raul Cuervas toys with the idea of getting a ticket on the next available flight, but there are no nonstops to JFK for another hour, which means he’ll miss the guy at the other end. He heads to a bank of pay phones, feeling as if he’s about to enter a confessional booth. Only difference is, he knows Mister Fuentes isn’t going to be satisfied with telling him to say five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers.

It takes him twelve minutes and three phone calls before he finally gets to speak with Johnnie Delgado and explain things. Then he holds on for Mister Fuentes. But when next he hears a voice, it’s still that of Johnnie Delgado.

“
El viejo
is so pissed off, he won’t talk to you,” Delgado tells him.

“Tell him I’m real sorry,” Cuervas says. “Tell him I make it up to him, however I can.”

“He wants to know if you got a good look at the guy,” Delgado says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Cuervas assures him. “I could spot this guy in the fuckin’ Orange Bowl, man.”

There’s a pause. Cuervas can hear Delgado relaying his answer to Mister Fuentes in the background.

“Okay,” Delgado says. “He says for you to come to the hotel. Right away.”

It will be another fifteen minutes, while he’s driving back to Miami, before it dawns on Raul Cuervas that his ability to recognize the man may turn out to be the only thing that’s going to keep him alive. At least until they get the stuff back, that is.

In his business, that’s called reassurance.

Goodman drinks a Bloody Mary, emptying only half of the vodka in the tiny Smirnoff bottle they give him. He figures half will calm him down a bit, without depriving him of his ability to function. But then he uses a little more of the vodka to mix with what’s left in the can of Bloody Mary mix. Never much of a drinker, he feels a definite buzz even before draining the last of the mixture.

The person to his right, a young man with a ponytail, listens to music through headphones. The music is so loud that even Goodman can hear it. It sounds like rock ‘n’ roll, though Goodman actually isn’t too sure what rock ‘n’ roll really is. The music and the ponytail cause Goodman to wonder if the young man knows anything about narcotics. But he figures it would be a mistake to bring up the subject with a total stranger.

They bring him lunch, a turkey and cheese sandwich on a hero-type roll. Goodman knows that most people hate airplane food, and he understands it’s fashionable to complain about it. But the truth is, he secretly likes the meals you get on planes. He spreads mustard onto the sandwich from a little plastic packet, shakes on just the right amount of salt and pepper from individual containers, and eats slowly. Even the fig bar that’s supposed to be dessert is moist and good.

Tommy McAuliffe is working steady days at Kennedy all week. McAuliffe is a member of the New York Port Authority Police. He’s been given a computer-generated printout of a dozen incoming flights he and his partner are to meet that afternoon. “Meeting” a flight means checking the bags as they come off the baggage trains, right before they’re put on the conveyer belts that take them into the claim areas.

The seventh flight McAuliffe and his partner are to meet is due in at Gate D-17 at 3:37 p.m. It is Delta 562 from Fort Lauderdale. As always, McAuliffe and his partner will be looking for drugs. Almost all of the flights on their list are from South Florida. Statistical studies have consistently demonstrated that, along with Houston and New Orleans, those are the ones it pays to meet.

Because all of the flights are domestic, McAuliffe knows that only an external examination of the bags is permitted under law. Except in the case of customs agents dealing with international flights, the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits opening bags in the absence of a search warrant or probable cause to believe that they contain controlled substances.

Under different circumstances, the prohibition might constitute an insurmountable obstacle to McAuliffe, given the fact that luggage tends to be opaque rather than transparent, and the further fact that controlled substances have a way of not showing up as much of anything on the X-ray machines.

This is where McAuliffe’s partner comes in handy. He has an uncanny ability that makes him ideally suited for his work. He is a four-year veteran of the K-9 division, a ninety-five-pound German shepherd named Rommel, trained to lie down whenever his nostrils detect an airborne con-centration greater than three parts per 100,000 of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or methamphetamine.

Goodman is one of those travelers who follows the suggestion to keep his seat belt fastened throughout the flight. (He even pays close attention to the demonstration on how to inflate the life jacket he’s assured is under his seat, and studies the laminated card that locates the emergency exit nearest him.) So he’s ready to descend long before the first announcement comes over the intercom.

He dries his palms on his pant legs. He tends to perspire at normal times, and this is no normal time. He’s worried about his daughter and her headaches, and how he’s going to pay for the tests she needs. He’s worried about the landing: Planes make him nervous, especially right before they touch down. He worries they may go into a skid, may blow a tire. The brakes may fail. The pilot may overshoot the runway. A little plane may be crossing in front of them as they roar down the tarmac. The possibilities are endless.

He’s worried about how to get home from the airport. He doesn’t think he’s got enough cash for a cab, which could run $30 into Manhattan. He’s heard about the “train to the plane,” but he doesn’t really know what it is. Certainly there’s no subway stop at Kennedy. But if there’s a “train to the plane,” doesn’t that mean there’s got to be a “train
from
the plane,” too?

Most of all, he’s worried about his bags.

The one he’s carrying is okay. It’s the one he checked that he thinks about now. Did they search it? Run it through an X-ray machine? Suppose it’s been stolen or lost? Does he dare put in a claim for it? Is he going to be able to manage it on the train from the plane? Can his back take the weight?

About the only thing he
doesn’t
worry about is the one thing he
should:
Rommel. And, in particular, Rommel’s nose. But he has no way of knowing about that.

He tightens his seat belt and prepares for impact.

Bobby Manley is “catching” this afternoon for Delta Baggage Crew 2. This means that his partner, Teddy Siskowitz, will lift each bag as it comes off the unloading ramp of the plane and, in the same motion, toss it to Bobby. Usually, the toss isn’t really a toss at all: The bag is in Bobby’s hands even before Teddy lets go of it. But occasionally, mostly with smaller items, the toss is really a toss, especially with Teddy, who’s got muscles in places where some people don’t even have places, and who likes to show off a lot.

It’s Crew 2, Teddy Siskowitz and Bobby Manley, that is assigned the first run to Delta 562 at Gate D-17. Teddy drives a little tractor that pulls five baggage cars snakelike to the belly of the plane. Bobby walks to meet him. Regulations prohibit anyone but the driver from riding on the tractor or the cars, ever since Walter Mayberry slipped between two of the cars he was straddling and broke his leg.

The walk is a long one, and it’s made worse by Bobby’s hangover. He woke up this morning with a major-league headache, vowing never again to mix rum and vodka, no matter how cool it may seem at the time.

It is this same hangover that has kept Bobby’s sense of balance slightly off all day, as well as his sense of timing. Usually, he and Teddy get a nice rhythm going: As Teddy brings each bag up, Bobby’s reaching for it. But today they’ve been just a hair off at times. It’s cost Bobby a number of close calls and two outright errors, which Teddy has been quick to broadcast to an invisible crowd on his imaginary public-address system.

It just so happens that Bobby makes one more error this afternoon, as they’re unloading Delta 562.

Not only is his timing off again but the weight of the bag surprises him. True, Teddy isn’t supposed to call out “Heavy!” unless the bag is heavy for its
size.
But for some reason, Bobby just doesn’t expect the weight of this one, and it slips right through his hands, hitting the tarmac with a thud.

“And the big
E
lights up once again!” Teddy announces for anyone within earshot.

Since it has landed upside down, Bobby has to stoop to roll the bag over before picking it up. But even if he wasn’t tired and hungover, Bobby Manley’s nose is simply too insensitive to pick up the faint odor of Florida Breeze that has just been released by the breaking of a small glass bottle at the top of the black duffel bag.

But that same odor proves to be the undoing of a far more sensitive nose than Bobby’s. While not noticeable enough to arouse the suspicion of Tommy McAuliffe five minutes later, the odor is just strong enough to mask the scent of anything else in the bag, and Rommel obediently stands his ground as it passes him. He will, in fact, suddenly lie down twenty-seven bags later, alerted by the smell of a $5 bag of marijuana inside a backpack belonging to the young man who had sat alongside Michael Goodman during the flight from Fort Lauderdale.

Goodman thanks the flight attendant as he steps from the plane and begins the long walk to the baggage-claim area. Some of the passengers are met by families and loved ones. Little children run forward for hugs and presents, causing Goodman to remember his own daughter and worry about her headaches.

Although he feels a momentary pang of jealousy toward those lucky enough to have people waiting there to meet them, in a sense, he need not: For the truth is that Michael Goodman has a waiting party, too. As Goodman walks, clutching the smaller of his duffel bags tightly against his side, two men fall in behind him at a distance. Their names are Antonio Rodriguez and Sixto Quinones, but on the street, they are known as “Hot Rod” and “Six.” They work for one Pedro Aguilar, who in turn answers to a Mister Fuentes from Miami. They tend to kill people. But not today. Today, they have come to the airport with instructions to meet Delta Flight 562, spot a little middle-aged gringo who’ll be wearing turned-up jeans and carrying a black bag, and follow him to find out where he goes.

By 3:45 that afternoon, as they walk through the terminal, they’ve already completed half of their assignment. Michael Goodman, of course, is totally oblivious to their presence.

He reaches the baggage-claim area, where for the first time, he glances around to see if there’s anyone who looks like he might be a police officer. But Goodman realizes he has no idea what a police officer would look like out of uniform. Would he be a big man, of Irish or Italian extraction? Might he be wearing mirrored, aviator-type sunglasses? Would he look like Clint Eastwood or maybe Sylvester Stallone?

All he sees are people like himself, intent on retrieving their luggage, paying him no attention whatsoever. He decides things are as safe as they are going to get.

There is a ringing noise, and the carousel belt begins to move. Bags appear - brightly colored suitcases, duffels of all shapes and sizes, and cartons wrapped with rope and tape. It isn’t long before Goodman spots his own large, black duffel bag. He lets it go around once, not so much out of caution, but because he’s simply unable to get close enough to the conveyor belt to grab it the first time. The second time by, he pulls it free, noticing as he does so that there’s a wet stain near the zipper. There’s also an odor coming from it, a perfume smell he can’t quite place.

The train from the plane turns out to be a thing of the past. These days, the poor man’s trip to the city starts out with a bus ride. Goodman boards, lugging his two duffels, envious of the business travelers who have only their attaché cases to carry, and, in particular, of the two Spanish men across the aisle, who are empty-handed. One of them is nice enough to help Goodman lift his larger duffel onto the overhead rack, grunting under its weight.