Body Guard

by Rex Burns

  CHAPTER 20

  VINNY SQUAWKED ABOUT wearing a wire to work.

  “What you do, Vinny, is make sure Martin doesn’t put his hands all over you. Why the hell are you letting him feel you up anyway?”

  “He doesn’t feel me up, Homer! But you goddamn well know he could spot it. I’ll be wearing the thing all fucking day.”

  Bunch finished taping the transmitter to the inside of Vinny’s skinny shin and started dropping the microphone wire down his shirt collar. “He won’t spot it. His mind’s on bigger things. Just keep your pants leg pulled down.”

  Vinny studied his profile in the washroom mirror. “These things never work anyway.”

  “Sure they do. Besides, if you have to call for help, you want someone to hear, don’t you?”

  That gave him food for thought and provided Bunch and Devlin with a couple minutes’ relief. Bunch pinned the tiny microphone inside Vinny’s T-shirt and plugged the other end of the wire into the AR-8 transmitter on his shin. Vinny, sweating about someone coming into the gas station toilet where they were working, tugged his shirt back on and urged Bunch to hurry up. “If I’m late, Scotty’s going to nose something, Homer. Finish up!”

  Vinny was right about the limitations of body transmitters. They could only work on line of sight and at a maximum distance of two hundred feet. And they picked up every sound: Vinny’s excited breathing, the static of his shirt rubbing across the mike, background noises. Moreover, it wasn’t unknown for a transmission to be broadcast over a neighboring television set, much to the embarrassment of the undercover agent. But Vinny was assured that this unit checked out, and that Bunch and Devlin would be close enough to catch his transmissions. Then they sent him on his way into the morning traffic while Bunch and Devlin followed in the rental van.

  “I screened the tap on Arnie’s phone last night, Dev. Vinny hasn’t called him yet.”

  “Well, he won’t have anything to sell Minz anyway.”

  “Yeah. The little shit.” Then, “Good thing we didn’t tell Miller about that. Now he won’t be disappointed.”

  “Right.”

  They pulled into the visitor’s lot just after the day shift punched in. Reznick waited for them in the warehouse manager’s small office, which looked down through a series of windows into the cavernous warehouse. Bunch slid open one of the windows to make radio transmission a little easier for Vinny’s body pack; Devlin turned on the manager’s desk lamp to make the place seem normal. Then he and Reznick moved back into the shadows away from the glass while Bunch set up a chair as a rest for his telephoto lens and peeked over the lower sill into the dim alleys of cartons and dark gray, barrel-like canisters. Hague, the warehouse manager, tried to work at his desk as if nothing were going on.

  “This is really the payoff?” Reznick’s excitement showed in his tense whisper and the way his fingers fidgeted continually with the monogrammed pewter buttons on his blazer.

  “It’ll be a while yet, Mr. Reznick. These things get pretty boring before they get exciting.”

  Reznick laughed nervously and tried to settle back into the folding chair Hague had bustled around to find for him. The warehouse manager had been both surprised and worried when Reznick led them in, and the man’s eager compliance was meant to show he had nothing to do with whatever it was the three men were investigating. He also made it clear that he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary or he would have reported it.

  “It’s all right, Hague,” said Reznick. “None of us noticed.”

  On the floor beside Bunch, the receiver popped into static and mechanical noises. The open-reel tape recorder began turning slowly. Bunch quickly damped the volume to a murmur and scanned the warehouse floor with his binoculars.

  “That’s Vinny. He’s driving the forklift.”

  The morning dragged into noon, then through the lunch hour. They saw Vinny cross the parking lot to his car in the long, sun-glinted rows of vehicles. Then he came back. The radio was silent. Reznick’s early enthusiasm shifted into bored yawns, and finally he said he had work piling up in his office and told Hague to call him the moment something happened. Bunch and Devlin were glad to see the man go.

  “Roast beef or ham?” Bunch lifted cellophane-covered sandwiches from cardboard boxes and tossed one to Devlin. He had enough photographs of Martin and Atencio for identification purposes, and only occasionally now did he follow the men through the binoculars. Vinny’s conversations with the suspects revealed nothing except that Atencio liked blondes with big tits and Martin had a thing for girls with short hair and tight buns.

  “Christ, it’s getting near quitting time, Dev. You think that little fart had the wrong scoop?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.” And it wouldn’t be the first time a surveillance failed to pay off.

  Hague’s telephone rang and he covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Mr. Reznick again. What should I tell him?”

  “Tell him we’re still waiting—hold it …” Bunch leaned to the tape recorder and turned up the sound. Vinny’s voice came faint but clear: “How do you know which one it is?”

  A second voice answered, “Got a stenciled code on it.”

  Bunch, straining through the binoculars, muttered, “There they are. They’re going down aisle four.”

  Devlin crept to his side and peered through the lenses while Bunch set up the camera. Aisle 4 was lined with shipping drums stacked three high toward the dim ceiling. Each unit was six feet tall, and the towering walls broke up Vinny’s transmission as he tried to pump Martin about the method of identifying the right drum.

  “Don’t worry about it, Vinny. I know what to look for. You just—” The transmission faded again. Then came the clatter of something hard banging on the microphone and muffled grunting and static. “Okay, Johnny. Here.”

  Through the binoculars, Devlin saw the three men wrestle one of the drums toward an empty corner of the quiet warehouse. Behind him, the door opened quickly and Reznick’s hot breath stirred against the back of his neck.

  “Is this it? Are they getting it?”

  “They’re taking it out now.” Bunch’s camera clicked rapidly. “There goes Atencio.”

  They watched the man stroll casually down a cross aisle to act as a lookout.

  “How many kilos we got, Scotty?” It was Vinny’s voice.

  “Twenty, man.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I told you it’d be a big mother. But don’t get excited—it ain’t all ours. We hold five; the rest gets shipped out later.”

  “Where we stashing it?”

  “We stash it where I say, so don’t worry about that, man.”

  A third voice said, “All clear. You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  Vinny, equally casual, walked toward the door leading off to the locker rooms. His voice came softly over the receiver. “I hope you can hear me, Kirk. It’s twenty kilos. The drum’s number is 488244-88220. We’re taking the stuff out after work. I’m the mule. Scotty wouldn’t—” A door cut his voice off. A couple minutes later, Atencio wandered toward the doorway. They came back for their next load from Martin, who stood guard by the drum.

  “What do we do now?” asked Reznick.

  “Wait,” Devlin said. “When they punch out after work, I’ll secure the canister. Bunch will wait for me outside and we’ll follow them.”

  “Can they escape?”

  “Not likely,” said Bunch. “I put a bumper bug on Vinny’s car. We can sit a mile off and know where he is.”

  An electric bell rang the end of the workday and almost immediately men started for their cars. Hague and Devlin trotted down the metal stairs to the warehouse floor while Bunch packed the electronics gear. The drum had been moved into a line of other empties but it wasn’t hard to locate. It was the last in the row and had an additional line of digits in white paint below the stenciled invoice codes.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Hague. “I never noticed something like that. Somebody looking for
it would see it, maybe. But nobody else.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Kirk.

  He and Hague tipped the barrel on edge and rolled it aside. He wrote his initials on its lip and asked Hague to lock it in a safe place. Then he found Bunch waiting in the van, engine idling, as he tuned the locater on the receiver.

  “Got him?”

  “Yeah. He’s still waiting to clear the gate.”

  “You think they had Vinny carry it because he’s the new man?”

  “Makes sense—if somebody gets popped, it won’t be them. But you can bet your grandma’s teeth they’re following him.”

  They fell into the traffic that slowly drained from the parking lot onto the streets surrounding the plant. Ahead, Vinny’s car was only one of many roofs edging forward, and somewhere on each side of him the automobiles of Atencio and Martin must be standing guard. Bunch, his borrowed GE radio pack on the prearranged police channel, asked, “Dave, can you read me?”

  “Four by four,” came the terse answer. Miller and his people would join them when they passed through the gate. Devlin operated the locater and they were finally off and running.

  The small convoy led west on I1-70 and then north on the Valley Highway a short distance to the Forty-ninth Avenue exit.

  “Where’s he at, Dev?”

  “He turned again. South—must be heading for Forty-eighth.” That was one of the few streets that crossed the Valley Highway. “Yeah. Going west now. Has to be Forty-eighth.”

  Bunch relayed the information to Miller, and in the side mirror Devlin saw an unmarked car slowly turn to follow them.

  “He’s stopping, Bunch.”

  Heavy traffic choked the artery as Bunch slowed. They saw two cars on the shoulder: Vinny’s Chevy and Martin’s metallic-blue Pontiac Firebird.

  “Drop off, Dave. They’ve stopped to check for tails. We’ll pass them and stop down the block.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Devlin stared straight ahead into traffic as the van rolled past the two parked cars. Atencio’s dented Mustang was missing. “Keep going, Bunch. I think they’re leapfrogging.”

  “I don’t want to get too far out of range.” Bunch pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and coasted toward the outdoor telephone. A few minutes later, the locater began moving again, and in a short time Devlin saw Atencio’s Mustang go by with Vinny following three or four cars back. Martin was gone.

  A static-fractured voice came over the receiver: “… following Johnny now. Scotty’s on his … .”

  “Damn,” muttered Bunch. Then into the radio pack, “Dave, sit tight. Martin’s gone somewhere. Probably checking their backside. Target’s still headed west on Forty-eighth.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Let’s go, Bunch. Signal’s getting weak.”

  They followed them to Pecos and then south. There they sat out of sight while Atencio led Vinny in a series of repeated loops around a residential block in the Chaffee Park neighborhood until he was satisfied there was no tail. Then they took Forty-fourth Avenue straight to Federal and turned north.

  “They’re headed for it now, wherever the hell it is.” Bunch fed the information to Miller, and, dropping back into heavy traffic, they followed the straight signals from the locater as Atencio steered north on Federal for a couple miles. Just beyond Sixty-fourth, Vinny’s car made a right turn, then a left, and halted.

  Bunch and Kirk turned and drove past the spot far enough so the signal weakened. They swung onto a parallel street and moved back.

  “I bet it’s that storage lot,” said Bunch.

  Over the low roofs of scattered small homes and cinder-block buildings that housed generator repair shops, distributing companies, novelties wholesalers, was a sign for U-Rent-M Self Storage.

  “Dave, two of them are at the U-Rent-M just off Federal north of Sixty-fourth. We can’t see the main man.”

  “You want us to move in now?”

  “Not yet. We’re going closer. Maybe we can pick up something from our man’s wire.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Martin was smart enough to delay his arrival, figuring that if Atencio and Vinny were going to be busted, they’d get hit just after they stopped at the storage bin.

  “Pull into the parking lot of that RV place, Bunch.” The locater bug hadn’t moved and they could see both Vinny’s Chevrolet and Atencio’s Mustang parked at the end of one of the rows of garage doors that opened to the storage bins. Bunch fiddled with the antenna of the receiving unit while Devlin watched in the rearview mirrors. Vinny and Atencio began loading something from the trunk of Vinny’s car into the open bin.

  “I got him,” said Bunch.

  Vinny’s voice came thinly out of the speaker. “When the hell’s he supposed to get here?”

  “Don’t worry, man, he’ll be here. Let’s get this crap inside— we ain’t got much time.”

  The voices gave way to the rustling crackle of hands busy at something. Then Vinny’s voice again: “That it? You done?”

  “Yeah. Pull that up there.”

  Silence.

  “He’s taking his fucking time.”

  Atencio’s voice laughed something indecipherable.

  “I just want to get it over with.”

  “Chill out. He’s not going to leave this crap alone for long.”

  “Here comes the fucker. You set?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bunch radioed Miller. “He’s pulling in now. There’s only one gate. You ready to move?”

  “We’re on our way.”

  “Remember, Dave, cover our man.”

  “I remember.”

  It happened quickly. Martin’s Firebird crackled across the gravel as he coasted through the gate toward the two waiting cars. It stopped and the man got out and they heard Martin’s voice distant on the speaker: “Everything okay?” Then Miller’s unmarked sedan squealed through the gate, tires spraying dust and gravel in a hard slide to block the cars. Someone said, “Jesus Christ!” and Vinny’s voice came loud: “What the hell! What the hell, Scotty—they followed your ass!” Four plainclothes officers leapt out of the rocking vehicle, guns drawn, as another voice shouted excitedly, “Get ‘em up! Lift ‘em, God damn you, or you’re dog meat!”

  Kirk and Bunch watched as the officers separated the three men and spread them over the hoods of the cars. Vinny’s voice came again. “Take it easy, shitbird—ow!” The transmitter went dead and the three, arms shackled behind, were hustled into the police car. Then the vehicles pulled away and Bunch, too, drove to the station.

  Miller was waiting in the Vice and Narcotics offices. “I put them in separate rooms, Bunch. There’s the stuff.” He pointed to the stack of plastic-wrapped bundles on a desk. One of them was open, and a small pile of white powder sat on waxed paper beside a bottle of liquid and an eyedropper. Behind it, covering two walls, rows of identification photographs pictured arrested prostitutes. One section was for women, another for female impersonators. Additional photographs showed the impersonators stripped of their disguises. A third panel was for homosexual prostitutes. Here and there red marker pen over a photo spelled AIDS.

  “Any trouble?”

  “Naw. It was sitting out waiting for us. It tests positive; it’s a good bust.”

  Bunch eyed the stack of bags and whistled. “All that ninety percent?”

  Miller, too, was impressed with the quantity. He should have been—it was one of the biggest hauls in V and N history. The swing of his leg as he sat on the corner of the desk and stared at the packets matched the satisfied nod of his head. “The lab will give us a breakout tomorrow. But I bet my badge we got us a kingpin. And we got him by the balls!”

  “How’s my man?”

  “Uh? Oh, he’s okay.” The detective fished in his pocket. “Here’s the wire. I pulled it when I patted him down. You know, sitting cheek-to-cheek in the same car with the others … .”

  “Thanks. We talk to him?”

  Miller led them to
the holding cells. Vinny, like the other two, was in isolation. He stood up from the single metal bench bolted to the bare wall. “It’s about goddamn time. They get the stuff checked yet?”

  “It’s positive,” said Miller.

  “No shit, Dick Tracy. Where’s Martin and Atencio?”

  “Down the hall,” said Bunch.

  “You’ll let Atencio go, right? That’s the deal, right?”

  Miller cocked an eye at Bunch.

  “That’s what I promised him, Dave. Atencio’s only a mule. Martin’s the one behind it all. Vinny thinks if we let both of them go, Martin won’t know which one snitched.”

  Vinny nodded quickly. “Johnny’ll turn state’s, too. He told me. And he’s not the one you want anyway.”

  Miller grunted. “He’ll have to testify. You too.”

  “Yeah, he knows that. It’s okay with me, too. Better cover.”

  “All right. I’ll book the both of you and take statements— go through the motions, like.” He led Vinny away to an empty desk and started filling in the paperwork. Another detective had already begun marking and registering the unopened packages.

  Martin, alone in his cubicle, was handcuffed to an eyebolt anchored into the wall. He said nothing as Bunch and Devlin entered and told him who they were.

  “You’re facing twenty to thirty, Martin.”

  He shrugged as best he could against the pull of the cuffs. “We’ll see. We’ll see what my lawyer says.”

  “He’ll say Kingpin Statute, Scotty. Twenty to thirty.”

  “Uh huh. Now I got something for you: I know who snitched. You tell Vinny he’s dead meat.”

  Bunch pulled a locater transmitter from his pocket and held it up. “Here’s your snitch, Scotty. A bug. Your car’s been bugged for the last three weeks.” The big man smiled widely. “You led the cops to it yourself.”

  The man stared hotly at Bunch, his straight hair hanging raggedly down over his collar and forehead.

  “The cops are going to offer Vinny and Johnny a deal,” Devlin said. “All they have to do is tell the truth and they both walk.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Think they won’t do that? What do they owe you?”

  “They won’t fink! They know what’ll happen if they fink!”