The Crasher (34 page)

Tense, she waited for him to go on, but instead he clinked his glass against hers and now, all business, outlined what he
had in mind for the following evening.

“I want you to stand outside the theater with the paparazzi and cover what they say and everyone says about the stars and
wannabe stars arriving. Just before curtain up I want you to use this ticket.” He handed her an envelope. “I was specific
about where I wanted to sit…”

When she looked surprised, he added, “All part of the plan, partner. I don’t usually care where I sit, although many
columnists do, stomping out, saying they don’t like their seats in order to get better ones. This time I made a point of asking
for a certain row, so the press agent will notice I’m not sitting there.”

“He won’t like that.” This week of all weeks. Ginny wasn’t sure she was up to being publicly bawled out.

“It’s a she. Of course she won’t, but you can say I sent you.”

“Then what?”

“You describe the reaction; who you’re sitting with, who’s behind, in front, et cetera, and how they behave toward you— in
other words, a rundown of first-night priority seating, then you go over to Tavern on the Green for the first-night party
in the Crystal Room…”

She was about to say, “I can’t; I’m not up to it right now,” when he went on, “Whatever happens, I’ll be there soon after
with all the credentials, and if it’s fun we’ll stay. If not…”

“What about Duane Dickens?” The question was out before she could stop it.

A strange look, half amused, half puzzled appeared. “Duane… who the Dickens… Dickens? Who’s that?”

Ginny bit her lip. “Your new squeeze,” she stuttered. “It’s none of my business, sorry…”

“You’re damned right it isn’t.” His arm was on the back of the sofa. He began playing with a piece of her hair. “It certainly
isn’t any of your business, little Ginny…” Then, almost absentmindedly, “I wonder why I always think of you as little? You’re
almost as tall as I am in your perennial stilts. Then I think of you as vulnerable, too, and you’re about as vulnerable as
a rhinoceros.”

When she leaned forward to get away from his playful fingers he gently yanked her back. “In another life I reckon you could
have been another Marguerite Higgins…”

“Who?”

“Oh, just another squeeze of mine. One of the most famous female war correspondents ever, who washed her undies in her tin
helmet at the front line in World War II, as pretty as a
picture, but as tough as nails. You are as tough as nails, aren’t you, Ginny?”

He laughed, but he was looking at her in a searching, sweet way, as if he really wanted to know; and goddamn it, one of the
tears escaped. Johnny pretended to pick it up on the tip of his finger to examine it. “I don’t know if this has anything to
do with Ms. Dickens, I seriously doubt it and I seriously hope not, but if it means anything at all, I think I met an aspiring
actress of that name recently for the first time and I haven’t seen her since.”

He got up to pour some more champagne. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Ginny said in a small voice. Then, “I saw your picture with her at a book party for your father.”

“Oh, yes.” Total uninterest.

“I’d love to meet your father sometime.”

“Oh, yes,” he repeated.

“Can I?”

Johnny frowned. “Don’t push your luck, Ginny. There’s absolutely no reason for you to meet my father, just as there’s absolutely
no reason for me to meet yours. Okay?”

“Okay.” It wasn’t, but what else could she say?

When Ginny left, Johnny went back to his Toshiba and reviewed the first chapter of The Book. Ginny’s visit had upset him.
He’d been looking forward to seeing her, had even thought he might take her out to one of his favorite places, Café des Artistes,
for dinner, but all desire for more of her company evaporated when she’d come on strong about meeting his father.

The Duane Dickens mention had amused him, but it really wasn’t funny. Thinking about it now, he wondered whether Ginny should
continue, as he put it to himself, as “his secret agent.”

There was something very appealing about her… her high energy, her faith in her fashion designing, her astonishing degree
of chutzpah, not to mention her knockout legs and kooky face. He thought about her face a lot, more than he wanted to,
more than he should… and that was why he questioned his judgment in working with her, seeing her so much. Perhaps it was because
in some inexplicable way, Ginny Walker still reminded him of Dolores, and the last thing in the world he wanted was another
entanglement.

He rubbed his nose reflectively, half smiling. All the same, Ginny was one of a kind, a mixture of wistfulness, little-girl
wonderment and cheeky urchin.

Perhaps he should have taken her to Café des Artistes after all, if only to see those strange green-brown eyes light up in
appreciation. When it came to behavior, Ginny was the antithesis of Dolores, who had never known how to say those two simple
little words, let alone understand them. Ginny, on the other hand, not only said “thank you” all the time, but also obviously
meant it.

On the screen Johnny stared at the opening paragraphs of his first chapter. He changed a word or two, moved a sentence around,
then put it back as it was, added, subtracted. It was slow, but it was coming. How his father rattled off a book in less than
a year, he would never know. That reminded him of what he’d read in his morning
Times.

It was just as well he hadn’t taken Ginny to dinner. The President had just announced a new drug czar and it was important
he watch
Nightline
tonight, where he’d read his father was joining a panel to discuss (with Ted Koppel’s usual impeccable timing) the war on
drugs and the pros and cons of drug legalization.

He ordered Chinese takeout and settled down to work until the eleven o’clock news. He got on so well, he didn’t notice the
time until it was just past eleven-thirty.

“Oh, shit.” He quickly switched on the television. Tom Constantine, one-time cop, now chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration,
was speaking. “I ran the organized crime force in New York from seventy-four to seventy-eight and, as you know, Ted, Quentin”—Constantine’s
steely glance flicked from Ted Koppel to Quentin Peet—“we had some big successes against the Mafia back then. I probably
don’t have to remind pros like you, but the public should understand that dealing with those old-style families, the Genoveses,
the Joe Bonanos, was like dealing with elementary-school kids compared to the people we’re up against today, drug lords like
the Rodrigues brothers in Cali, Colombia, for instance. Those guys have been earning seven to eight billion dollars a year,
unchecked, unsanctioned for years, and they’ve used that kind of wealth to build an incredibly sophisticated empire of intimidation
and influence.”

Johnny was cynically amused, even pleased, to see that Constantine was not easily interrupted, even by a seasoned TV pro like
his father, who was trying, he guessed, to get in as many mentions as he could about his latest book. Every time his father
tried to butt in, Constantine calmly carried on, explaining, with facts and figures, why legalization would worsen, not lessen,
crime and addiction.

Siding with the DEA boss on the anti-legalization issue (against two other heavyweights on the program, William Buckley and
the
New York Times’s
Anthony Lewis), Peet’s moment finally came.

“In my new book,
Green Ice,
I explain how for years the Cali guys have adopted the attitude that the drug trade is really no different from any other
commodity business,” he said sternly. “One side of the organization moves the commodity; the other side collects the proceeds,
pays the producers, processors, shippers, and returns the net to the home office. A single U.S.-based branch office or, to
use the correct language, ‘cell’ of the Cali cartel, may take in twenty million dollars a month. There are dozens of cells
in New York alone. Now other organized crime gangs, domestic and from other parts of the world, want some of that action.
And how does the Cali cartel describe that? ‘Competition, to be expected, just like in any other business’… except unlike
‘any other business,’ they move immediately to snuff it out with violence. That’s at the root of all the increased crime.”

Johnny grimaced. He knew that already.

How long had his father been paying attention to big-time drug trading? Ever since his days in Albany? That would make it…
at least four years. It didn’t seem possible. No wonder his father’s book was so revealing, but not revealing enough. Johnny
had scoured it, searching for clues, leads that would help him understand which faction in the drug underworld might be connected
to Rosemary’s death, the Villeneva robbery, or the Licton-Licone bust. If his father knew, he wasn’t telling, not in this
book anyway, although he’d used other deaths, other bombings, other major crimes to illustrate how drugs were today so often
to blame.

Did his father know he’d asked his old cop pal, Freddy Forrester, about the Peter Licton/Pietro Licone robbery? Probably,
although he’d never mentioned it.

Johnny wouldn’t make the mistake of going to Freddy or any of his father’s old friends again. He hoped he wouldn’t need to.
He’d begun to develop his own information network, starting with an acquaintance at Princeton, Matt Fisher, who’d become a
friend in New York and who was now with the FBI.

Through tenacious sniffing around, Johnny had learned that the FBI was now involved in both Long Island heists and the Villeneva
robbery, where apparently a fingerprint had been found.

“At the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C.,” Matt told him, “the FBI operates a computerized system containing
the world’s largest database on known criminals. If the print can’t be identified there, it won’t be anywhere.”

If Matt could only help him get to the FBI on the West Coast, to find out what prints, if any, had been found among the ashes
at Rosemary’s house. Johnny sighed. He was out of his depth, but something still urged him not to give up, to do as Rosemary
had once told him to do, keep his eyes and ears open and “put the pieces together, one by one, until the jigsaw begins to
make sense.”

He hadn’t been paying enough attention. What was Constantine saying now? Johnny turned up the volume.

“Puerto Rico’s beginning to resemble New York. There’s at least a hundred different illegal drug operations there now, and
with the island’s two hundred miles of coastline it’s-”

“I often wonder why it took Cali so long to use it as a major drug corridor into the United States,” Peet said, sailing in
unperturbably. “What do they say? With no Customs to worry about, Thursday in San Juan, Friday in South Dakota.”

Constantine scowled as Peet added, “Now it’s the number-two route after Miami, with about eighty-four tons of cocaine and
high-purity heroin coming in a year. You’ve opened another DEA office in Puerto Rico, right, Tom?”

“Right,” Constantine said in clipped tones. “Puerto Rico now has a serious crime situation, a forty-percent increase since
1991 with transporters often paid in narcotics instead of dough.” He shook his head ruefully. “There’s a different kind of
wrought ironwork decorating the entrances to San Juan homes today and there’s razor wire at the back door.”

A few blocks away from Johnny’s apartment, in his penthouse towering over Central Park, Svank, sitting perfectly still, watched
the same program.

The phone rang. Svank picked it up, listened intently, grunted and without saying a word, replaced the receiver. He looked
again at the screen, where Constantine was reiterating his commitment to the drug war. He yawned and switched it off.

Beside him was a copy of
Green Ice.
Although one of his little-known forms of relaxation was reading nonfiction (particularly the lives of self-made, tyrannical
rulers), he didn’t usually waste time on subjects he knew more about than the authors, but Peet’s book fascinated him. Peet
didn’t exaggerate; he knew a lot. There was a great deal he didn’t know, but that wouldn’t stop the book’s success. He knew
that Peet’s name on the cover meant instant sales.

In the next couple of months, Svank recollected, he would have an opportunity to tell Peet so. He smiled at his own private
joke.

Svank had recently given a million dollars to the New York
Public Library, toward a new reading room. As a major donor, he had been invited to something called the Literary Lions dinner.

At a million dollars, it was an expensive ticket, but he’d been told by those advising him on charitable donations that it
was an important occasion and could only add to his social clout to be seen there.

Peet was one of the Literary Lions to be honored—there were eighteen illustrious writers in all—and during
Nightline,
Svank decided it would amuse him to meet some of these men of letters.

He opened Peet’s book at random. “… there’s a hitch. U.S. law requires banks to send the Internal Revenue Service extensive
information identifying anyone who deposits $10,000 and up in cash. Since the Colombians cannot risk being fingered by the
IRS, they need the help of a third party with legitimate-sounding reason to churn huge amounts of money through the banking
system.”

There was a discreet tap on the door. Svank pressed a small button on his chair and the door opened. “He’s at Miami airport,
boss,” said Hugo. “Do you want him back in New York? He’s waiting for instructions.”

“Let him wait.” The door closed.

It would be a long wait. Although his reputation had certainly been earned as the cool mastermind behind some brilliant jobs
over the past couple of years, Alex Rossiter was showing an increasing greediness, recklessness, which Svank knew from a lifetime
of dealing with both big and small crooks could lead to ruin for everyone.

He didn’t mind that Alex had come close to disaster a few times before working for him. Those who thought nothing could touch
them were the ones to avoid.

No, it was always the same problem, whatever the sex. Greed. Despite the fact that Alex was well rewarded, very well rewarded
for the big jobs that provided collateral when he’d needed it for start-up operations, in Ireland, for instance, Alex still
wanted more. He’d agreed at the beginning of their
arrangement that, providing there was no conflict of interest, and no involvement on his part, Alex could continue to carry
out a few of his own operations, but this latest heist had definitely been one too many.