Under Siege (21 page)

“The rule is no four-letter words. His cock is always his love remember.”

“Looks fine to me,” Yocke said, and handed it back. He bent down to retrieve his trousers.

When he straightened up she was reading carefully. After a moment she tossed the pile of paper back in the drawer. “It’s shit, I know, but that’s what sells. And goddamn, if shit sells, that’s what I’m going to write.”

Twenty minutes later, in front of her apartment building, she said, “Don’t get out. I can make it to the door.” He bussed her on the cheek. “Are you going to call me again, or was this just a one-night stand?” “I’ll call you.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

After he drove away he felt grubby. Oh well, what’s one more lie in a world full of them.

Harrison Ronald-Sammy Z-got off work at five a.m. One of his colleagues dropped him at the apartment house he called home. He went upstairs and made a pot of coffee. Then, at the kitchen table, he tackled the crossword puzzle in the early edition of the Post.

After Tony Anselmo left Freeman, Sammy Z and one of the other lieutenants were sent to a crack lab in a sleazy

on New York Avenue. There they picked up a bundle, the chemists at work, and flirted with a saucy with straw-sized nipples-and an aversion to brassieres-while they waited for their escort car to arrive. When it did and the three gunmen it contained had leered over the up-thrust nipples, the group set out to deliver the crack to street rings at two locations. There the distributors had turned over the night’s receipts, about sixty grand by the looks of it. And Freeman was currently selling at eleven locations in the metro area!

Sammy Z drove the money to Freeman’s brother in a little house he was using for three or four nights. The elder Mcationally was the treasurer and accountant and payroll man. His office changed regularly and randomly. Freeman always knew, and he gave Sammy the location as he walked out the door. . Delivering dope or money was tricky. The lieutenant rode in the backseat of the car with the Uzi loaded and ready on his lap. The pard car behind always contained two or three men also armed with Uzis and pistols. The lead driver kept the two-car motorcade well within the speed limit, obeyed all the traffic laws, and never sped up to make it through a yellow light. The routes were agreed on in advance and snaked through the city without pattern. The same vehicle was never used two nights in a row.

The whole operation reminded Harrison Ronald of those old black-and-white Untouchables TV shows, with Also Capone and Frank Nitty delivering beer in Chicago and all the hoods packing Thompson submachine guns. Big guns and big bucks. White hoods and white cops-well, maybe things are a little different today.

The sky was graying nicely through the dirty kitchen window when Harrison Ronald finished the crossword puzzle and his third cup of coffee simultaneously. He turned off the coffeepot, got a conservative cloth coat out of the closet, and locked the door behind him.

Right now he was driving a fifteenyear-old, rusted-out Chrysler that belonged to Freeman Mcationally. It had once been royal blue. Now it was just dirty and dark. The seats

were trashed. Damage to the left front fender and hood had been repaired with a sledgehammer by an ignorant enthusiast. The windshield was chipped and cracked. The only feature that might capture the eye of a careful observer was the new Michelin radials, mounted backward to hide the manufacturer’s name on the sidewalls. All in all, the car looked like a typical D.c. heap.

As an observer might suspect, the Chrysler was difficult to start-damn near impossible on cold mornings. This particular December morning Harrison Ronald ground and ground with the starter while he played with the manual choke.

Eventually the engine fired. It strangled when he pushed the choke off too soon. With a sigh he engaged the starter again. Finally, with coaxing, the engine rumbled to life and gave signs of sustained combustion.

Still, she idled rough and spewed a gray haze that was visible in the rearview mirror. That, however, was because the original six-cylinder mill had been replaced with a huge old V-8 hemi that had been breathed upon by someone who knew exactly what he was about. Under the crinkled hood was a work of art, complete with racing cams, valves, and pistons, hogged-out valve ports, a high-capacity fuel pump, and a four-barrel carb. To handle the extra power the go-fast man had added a four-speed transmission and beefed up the suspension and brakes. This car could lay rubber for two hundred feet.

When the engine had warmed and the idle smoothed somewhat, Harrison Ronald slipped the clutch to get out of the parking place.

He couldn’t resist: he goosed it once on the street and the tires howled and smoked. With a little paint and bodywork, he told himself, this would be a nice car.

He checked his rearview mirrors constantly and darted through lights as they turned red. Finally satisfied that no one was following, he headed for the beltway. Rush-hour traffic was still flowing into the city, so the trip outbound was unimpeded. Once on the beltway, he followed the signs for 1-95 south, toward Richmond.

The morning was gray and windy. The rain of a few days had soaked into the thirsty earth and settled the dust. 1, as dry as the fall had been, the earth needed more. He exited the interstate at Fredericksburg. Five minutes later he drove past the office of a motel and went around to the back side, which faced a hill, and parked. Harrison Ronald stood in the nearly empty lot and stretched. He should have been in bed two hours ago. Get a good job, his grandmother had said, something regular, with a future. He knocked on the door of room 212. “Just a minute.” The door opened. “Come on in.”

TT-HE white man was tall and lean, with a prominent Adam’s apple and a nose to match. He grinned and shook Ford’s hand. His name was Thomas F. Hooper. Special Agent Hooper was in charge of the FBI’S drug enforcement division. Hooper had recruited Ford from the Evansville police department. A little temporary undercover work, he said, that will do wonders for your police career. Both lies, be now cheerftdly acknowledged. “Want some breakfast?”

“I could eat something.”

“Great. Freddy’s over at McDonald’s getting a bagful. He’ll be back in a bit.” Ford fell into a chair and stretched out full-length. “So how’s it going?”

“Freeman’s a busy fellow. Making money like he owned the mint.”

Hooper got a cassette recorder from his leather valise and plugged it into the socket under the desk. He dictated his name and the date and Ford’s name, then played it back to make sure it was working.

Harrison Ronald watched this operation with heavy eyelids. “You’re tired.”

“Amen.”

“Coffee will perk you up. You want to start now?”

“Okay.”

It had been a week since Ford had talked to Hooper. So Ford covered the past week minute by minute-names, descriptions, addresses, drug quantities, estimated amounts of money, everything Ford could recall. He had taken no “notes, written nothing down: that would have been too dangerous. Still, after eight months, he knew exactly what Hooper and the Justice Department wanted, so it flowed forth without prompting. Freddy, Hooper’s assistant, came in ten minutes after they started. Ford kept on talking as the men shared coffee and breakfast biscuits stuffed with eggs, cheese, and sausage.

Ford talked for almost an hour. When he finished Hooper had questions, lots of them. That went on for another hour with only two short pauses to change cassettes. When they were through Hooper knew what Ford had observed this past week almost as well as Ford did.

Finally Hooper said, “So what do you think?”

Harrison Ronald held out his coffee cup for a refill, which Freddy provided from a thermos. “I think there’s too much crack in the city. They can’t move the stuff fast enough. And I think Freeman is getting, or is about to get, a lot of pressure from the Costello mob to wash his money with them, probably at a higher cost. Somebody removed Walter Harrington and Second Potomac from the game. Freeman and his fellow dealers got some problems.” con’What do you think Freeman’ll do?”

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get a hint. I do know this: the guy is sharp as a razor. He didn’t get where he is by letting people cut themselves in on his action, by taking less and liking it. I think Freeman might fight back. He’s definitely the man for it.” Freddy disagreed. He was in his late forties, also white, and had chased dopers since he joined the FBI. “I think Freeman and the others will cut back on the amount of coke they’re bringing in. They have to do that or expand the market by fighting each other. They all have a real good thing here and they’ve made a lot of money. A lot of money. They won’t be able to retire and live the good life if they get into heavy ordnance.”

“There’s no love lost between the big hitters,” Harrison objected. “Business is business and money is money,” Freddy said. “What do you guys want me to do if the shooting startsr” “Run like hell,” Hooper muttered.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t kill any civilians,” Freddy added. “Cut and run?”

“Yep,” said Hooper. “You’re no good to anybody if you’re dead.”

“Do you guys have enough?”

“We got enough to lock up Freeman for thirty years, and most of the people he works for.”

“And the cops and politicians on the taker’

Hooper turned off the recorder and removed the cassette. He marked it with a pen from his shirt pocket. “And the cops and politicians?” Ford prompted.

“You got a lot. More than we hoped for. But if someone puts you in the cemetery we got nothing. Oh, we know a ton, but we won’t have a witness to get it into evidence.”

I don’t think I’ll get into the inner circle anytime soon. Freeman’s got four lieutenants, and two of them are his brothers. They’re all millionaires many times over and each of them would go to the grave for Freeman Mcationally.”

“Maybe that can be arranged,” Freddy said. “What d’ya mean by that?”

“Nothing to worry about. Gimme some particwm on each one.” Freddy pulled out a pencil and a pocket notebook.

“Now wait just a fucking minute! We’re cops. I’m not going to ice any of these guys, except in self-defense.”

“We’re not asking you to kill anybody and we’re sure as hell not going to. Jesus! This isn’t Argentina! But maybe we can get one of these guys off the street for a while and leave a vacancy at the trough for you.”

The undercover officer talked for ten minutes. He told them everything he knew; the names of the wives, the mistresses, the kids, what they ate, what they laughed at,

how they liked their liquor, and how often they used their own products. . In the silence that followed his recitation, Hooper asked, “How’s that car running?”

“Real sweet.” Ford smiled faintly. “You gotta go for a ride sometime. It’s the hottest thing I ever sat in.”

“Stay alive, Harrison. Please.”

“I’ll do my best.” Harrison Ronald’s smile broadened into a grin. “That’s a promise.”

“You can quit anytime, you

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. We’ve got a lot more than we ever thought we’d get. If you want to go back to Evansville, just say so and you’ll be on your way today.”

“I’ll stick a while longer. I confess, I’m curious about Tony Anselmo and how he fits in.”

“Curiosity has killed a lot of cops.”

“I know that.”

On the way back to Washington the thought occurred to him, not for the first time, that he should have stayed in the Marines. At the age of twenty, after two years of college, he had joined the Corps. He had done a four-year hitch, the last two on Okinawa where he had been an instructor in unarmed combat. He had grown to love the Corps. But his girl was in Indiana and she wouldn’t leave. So he took his discharge and went home and took the test for the police while he was trying to talk her into marrying him.

He got accepted by the police the afternoon before she ditched him. The oldest story in the world. She had dated other men while he was gone. He was a great guy but she wasn’t in love. She hoped they’d always be friends.

He had learned a lot in the Corps, things that would keep him alive now, like managing stress and self-confidence. And unarmed combat. As a rule street gangs didn’t contain experts at fighting with their hands. Oh, occasionally you ran into a karate guy who thought he was pretty tough. But while he was getting ready to give you one of those lethal kicks, you went for him in an aggressive, brutally violent

and broke his leg, then crushed his windpipe. And these zi toters never practiced with their weapons. Murder was their game, not combat. He thought about murder for a while. His murder.

When this was over, he might go back to the Corps. Why not?

Jake Grafton had no more than walked through the door Wednesday evening when the telephone rang. Callie answered it. After exchanging pleasant greetings with whomever was on the other end, she offered the instrument to Jake. “It’s for you.”

“Hello.”

“Captain Grafton, this is Jack Yocke, Washington Post. “Hi.”

“Sorry to bother you at home, but we just got a story from a stringer in South America that perhaps you can help me with. It seems that the U.s. Army sent some people to Colombia and they shot it out with Chano Aldana’s bodyguards and arrested him. Apparently there were some Colombian police along, but the word we get is that it was a U.s. Army operation all the way.”

“Why do you think I can help you with that story?” Callie was standing there watching him, futilely trying to push her hair back off her forehead. She must really like this jerk, though Jake hadn’t the foggiest idea why. “I’ve been doing some checking,” Yocke said, “since I saw you at Aldana’s arraignment. Apparently you’re the senior officer in the antidrug operations section of the Joint Staff. So this little matter had to cross your desk.”

“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Yocke. Why do you think I can help you with your story?”

“You’re saying you won’t?”

“Mr. Yocke, I drink coffee in the morning and go to lunch every day. Everything else I do at my office is classified. I cannot help you.” Callie frowned. Jake turned his back on her. “I suggest you try the Pentagon’s public information office. dis.m YOU have that number handy, Captain?”