“You through?” said Forrest.
“No,” said Bressio. “I want you to understand the framework you’re working in.” Bressio noticed Forrest’s right arm twitch. Apparently he had a gun under the table. If this would make the lad feel more secure, perhaps it was not so bad. Bressio then explained the nature of heroin, its incredible liquidity. Despite all this, there was a generally orderly market in New York City, with an occasional connected person or so being punished for some transgression.
But then came 285 Pren Street, and what Forrest was sitting on was something else altogether. It was of such proportions, such awesome wealth that it created a new empire unto itself. There was enough capital sitting out open in 285 Pren Street to be worth the while of a small army in attempting to take it.
Forrest cocked an eyebrow and sat back, a bit more comfortable in his chair.
“And you’re thinking, Forrest, that’s just your strategy, right?”
Forrest shrugged.
“Well, I heard that same kind of silly thinking from someone who doesn’t know anything about your business, and it was so absurd I thought it couldn’t be.”
Bressio could see confidence surface in the young man’s face.
“Well, we just do our job,” said Forrest. “You did pull a gun on me after I had identified myself as a federal officer, and from where I sit, Mr. Bressio, I think you’re the wrong person to be lecturing anyone on anything.”
“You can’t protect that smack,” said Bressio. “There is no conceivable way that heroin is not going to walk. It is of such value that men with money who know how to use that money are after it. In your brilliance at FBNC, you have created something that is worth any risk to get. You have done this knowingly, I see now, but what you do not know is that men willing to risk money and their lives, so many men, so many people, that they will succeed. You will be destroyed in your attempt to do the impossible. My god, Forrest, they couldn’t even hold heroin as evidence in New York City police headquarters.”
“That’s New York City police,” said Forrest. “We haven’t had the time yet to become that corrupt—if we ever will.”
“What do you think New York City police are made of? You think they’re Martians or something?”
“They are of a culture, Mr. Bressio, that tends to tolerate moral laxity.”
“Where are you from, Forrest?”
“Troy, Ohio, near Dayton. I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Well, Forrest, you think of who has the major political jobs there and how they’re passed around, and you out there think it’s all very harmless and not really serious, but that’s only because there isn’t enough temptation to make it look serious. You’re the same people out there that you are here. You are no different, Forrest. Believe me. You’re dealing with people. And people are greedy and short-sighted. I guarantee that already some of your people have been reached. Guaranteed. No question about it.”
“Mr. Bressio, what do you want from me?”
“I don’t want the smack is what you’re thinking, right? You were thinking that, right?”
“I would not have been surprised.”
“Okay. J. Edgar Hoover kept his bureau out of this thing, this sort of thing, right?”
“It is not under the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Bressio.”
“Well, it’s not because Washington says so. We have different agencies for different national functions.”
“And you don’t think Hoover could have gotten the FBI into narcotics up to its armpits if he wanted? You don’t think narcotics could fall in his jurisdiction, coming in from overseas and crossing at state borders? I’ll tell you what Hoover did before he died, he got it shoved in the laps of the CIA foreign and the Treasury Department local until your FBNC came onto the scene with flags flying to show everyone else how it was done.”
“So?”
“So, why is it a kid of your age is heading up this cool house with all that smack there? Don’t you think that if there was any potential for career advancement, senior men would be in there? Don’t you think you’ve been set up? Hasn’t that crossed your mind?”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but there were three men who had this house before me. One got an infection of some sort, one got transferred, and the other took a real early retirement. Ruined his career.”
“All those men working for you who have not reported being offered bribes have either been reached or are thinking of making a deal,” said Bressio. There was a flatness in his voice now. No pleading for understanding. “The connected people—Sally Bugellerio, Tomalino and Willie Knuckles—were killed because of the unrestricted competition for what you’re sitting on.”
“The papers called it a gang war because of the shooting in that restaurant a couple of years ago.”
“That is not so, Clyde Forrest.”
Forrest sighed deeply. “Well, quite frankly there’s nothing I can do but hang in there and hope it works out. So I’m taking you in, Bressio, because it’s the right thing to do. I think you’re right, if you want to know the truth, but there’s nothing I can do. I got to do what I got to do. Dumber things have worked out just fine.”
Bressio felt the barrel of Forrest’s gun press against his testicles underneath the table.
“Don’t move, Mr. Bressio.”
“You think you’ve got me, right, Forrest?” said Bressio.
The redhead’s chin was almost in his coke.
“Deed I do.”
“Would you believe me if I tell you you don’t really understand the gun? It’s not magic. It just fires a projectile which can kill.” Bressio cracked into the hard shell of his cannole with a fork, lifting out a glob of white sweet paste from inside.
“That’ll do, Mr. Bressio.”
“It would do if I agreed that your gun at my balls was something I should be most afraid of, Forrest. But there is a minor problem with that move you’re making. I got to be part of it.”
With his excellent reflexes, Bressio shifted quickly and ever so slightly so that the gun was suddenly pinned between his buttocks and the chair. Forrest’s freckled nose was in his untouched cannole. Bressio put the fork prongs underneath Forrest’s left eye, which had a very close view of a salt shaker. What had been Forrest’s threat was now his trap.
“So now which is more deadly? A fork that can take out an eye or a gun that can shoot off the fatty part of my ass?”
“Okay. Let go,” said Forrest.
“How can I?” said Bressio.
“Just get up.”
“And then you’ll have me. You haven’t really left me much choice.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m gonna finish your cannole, for one,” said Bressio.
“Hey, I look queer with my hand down there. I feel stupid.”
“Both of us maybe have fifteen minutes to live if one of anyone of maybe fifty people out there decides to do a job on us, and you’re worried about how you look. You frighten me, Forrest. You’re unreasonable.”
“I’m reasonable as hell. Let me go.”
“I can’t,” said Bressio. “Let go of the gun.”
“I can’t. I can’t get my fucking fingers to open. You got muscles in your ass, you bastard. I thought you were mostly fat.”
“We’re gonna have to do this together, Forrest,” said Bressio. He put down his fork, and with both hands grabbed Forrest’s gun arm.
“Now you let go of your gun when I release my weight, okay?”
“Release your weight first.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Okay, I promise. Jeezus, we look stupid,” said Forrest.
As he jumped up, Bressio threw Forrest’s gun hand away from him. The pistol went flying across the tile floor.
“I told you I was going to release. You didn’t have to do that with your hands,” said Forrest. “Can I get my gun?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” said Bressio. “Do you understand what I’m talking about now, kid? If you understand what I’m talking about, you can better my odds for getting out of this thing alive and even saving your career.”
Forrest got his gun from underneath a far table. The coffee shop was empty but for three couples, two of which were staring at him with extreme nervousness; the third was involved in a conversation of its own. Forrest stuffed the gun into his shirt and Bressio looked for the cannole. Apparently, the shoving had knocked it off the table. The checkerboard tablecloth was soaked with Forrest’s coke and Bressio’s espresso.
“You want something to eat, kid?” asked Bressio.
Forrest shook his head. Bressio ordered two rum cakes in case Forrest changed his mind and then explained what he needed from the young man. He also told him about himself and why he was now a target because those “people let out of their cages by your smack look at everyone near the place as competition.”
Bressio had to know how this thing started, when he was thought by Forrest’s people to be involved, the connections with Fleish and Mary Beth Cutler, and if anything even zanier was planned by the new FBNC. In return for this, Bressio would show Forrest how to save his career.
It began, said Forrest, with a little success. He explained how he had been living with Terry Leacock, known to be involved in getting financing for heroin operations. Forrest had even been there when Terry had shown the heroin to some purchasers. He was her gun, she thought. What Terry had invented was a new system to sell the stuff. Bidding, like a commodity market. Did Bressio know that Terry’s father was in commodities in a small way?
Bressio shook his head.
Well, all of a sudden, Forrest knew the names and whereabouts of maybe eight pushers the FBNC did not have any line on. Terry was killed possibly by one of the pushers, Forrest didn’t know. But the interesting part was that dealers were coming out of their holes looking to buy. So it only followed logically to add some more to the stash and see if there were bigger dealers interested. There were. Well, one thing led to another, and the FBNC kept increasing the ante by shipping into the cache all the evidence of busts made around the country.
“But you can’t do that with evidence,” said Bressio. “It won’t hold up in court if you have it wandering across the country. Any good defense lawyer will use its shipment to undermine its credibility as evidence. Was this the heroin seized? Was it another package? Maybe another package didn’t really have heroin, but sedlitz powder. Do you follow?”
“Well, we were gonna get it all back without anyone knowing. I mean we got twenty, maybe thirty guys in the basement of 285 Pren and in surrounding buildings. Like upstairs said, we’ve got some spit into this thing now.”
“Yeah, spit,” said Bressio. “You know, if you should get that smack scattered back around the country to different trials and whatever the evidence will be used for, you’ll have to have a whole department lying itself blue in the face to get a conviction on those little cases.”
“Well, they won’t know.”
“Do you know?”
“Sure.”
“Do at least four other people know?”
“Yeah. I would imagine. Maybe twenty or thirty.”
“Do you know it is a proven fact that five people cannot keep a secret? But go ahead.”
Well, the cache started building, and Forrest got a promotion because he was first in with the Leacock thing, and then the first guy running it bugged out and then the second and just yesterday was the third and here he was. And the funny thing about it was sometimes at night he thought about Terry and believed she really loved him. Did Bressio understand that?
Yes, Bressio did. What about Fleish and Cutler?
Two loony tunes, according to Forrest. Fleish was bothering everyone. Not really coming down into the basement or anything important.
“Why was the basement important?”
“’Cause that’s where most of us were. He’d stop some of the other guys on the street and because we dress like this, he’d insist on rapping. He gave us everything on both busts both times. Sometimes I even felt sorry for the people he dealt with. But after he broke into the second floor loft, upstairs wanted him the hell out of the way. So we tipped off Arizona and made the bust ourselves up here. We had no choice. We weren’t into grass, but that dumb Jewboy brought us into it. Funny. Till I came to New York City, I always thought all Jews were smart, or at least not stupid. But that’s not so, you know.”
“And Cutler?”
“Oh, she’s a freaky one. We couldn’t figure her out. Thought she was pushing for a while, but that’s not so either. She loses tails real good, just like a pro. And then you and that Dawson fellow were the worst part of the whole thing. When we found out Dawson was defending Fleish, wowee. Upstairs went out of its gourd. We were certain for a while that this Fleish was really into smack big. I mean, otherwise why would he have someone that expensive on his side, right? We thought you were an emissary from the Brooklyn don until we finally found out you work for lawyers. Yeah. We’ve had a tail on you, Alphonse Joseph Bressio, forty-two, Caucasian male, five feet ten inches tall, two hundred and forty-five pounds.”
“Two thirty-four,” said Bressio. “Got a pencil?”
“What for?”
“We’re going to save your career. I got what I want. I don’t like what I see, but I see the pieces fit. So now for you.”
Forrest found a ballpoint pen in a hip pocket and Bressio gave him a napkin. He dictated a memo. It was to Forrest’s superior. There were to be two carbons, one to Forrest’s superior’s superior and the other to the head of the FBNC.
“This is kind of risky,” said Forrest.
“You like what you got now? Take my word for it, kid, all the animals have been let out of their cages. Somebody farts loud on Pren Street, it’s gonna be a shooting gallery. And you people are outgunned. That is, if the smack is still there now.”
“The original goes to my boss?”
Bressio dictated a somber-sounding bureaucratic message warning about the insecurity of enough heroin to supply the East Coast narcotics trade for eight months. The use of the house on Pren Street was called a danger to the nation and to the department. In Forrest’s view there was no good that could come of it, and he regretted going over his superior’s head, but he felt for the good of the department and country, he had to do it, since the three verbal warnings and the memo of last week apparently had no effect.
“I never warned him and never sent a memo.”
Bressio smiled.
“This means I’m putting him on the spot,” said Forrest. “Wowee. Well, he put me on the spot. At least it will get that disaster on Pren Street back out where it belongs.”
“No it won’t,” said Bressio. “It’ll get you shipped to Washington with a label as an untrustworthy schemer.”
“Well, that’s not doing much for my career.”
“When that heroin walks, you’re gonna look great, kid. They’re gonna promote you with fanfare and by the time the dust settles, it will look like your point of view was your agency’s all along and only a few misguided fanatics were for it. But the agency will be in the process of weeding them out.”
“But that didn’t happen in Vietnam,” said Forrest, wise for his twenty and some years.
“Too many people on public record. It happened too slow. This will be fast and obvious. In this stupidity, you’re going to come up as the wave of the future.”
“I’ll say I sent two memos. Yeah.”
“Don’t forget the carbons of those memos as proof. You got a typewriter in that basement fortress of yours?”
“Yeah. And loads of electronic stuff, too.”
“Don’t let anyone see you at work.”
“I got a couple of buddies—”
“No, you don’t,” said Bressio. “Not at all. You got no one. Look out for yourself, okay?”
“Sure will,” said the young man. “And when I�
�m the wave of the future, you’ll have a friend at the FBNC—that is, if you don’t deal narcotics.” Forrest smiled.
“Yeah, the future,” said Bressio and he picked up the candle that had fallen from the table when he released the young man’s gun hand. He molded a loose piece of wax to the base of the candle, and shook hands goodbye, certain they were being watched and certain that those watching would calculate he had just made a deal for the heroin. It didn’t matter. He knew how their minds worked. They were sure of that already. He cleaned the wax off his fingertips and left Gino’s.
XVI
Clarissa was adamant. How should she have known the message from that old geezer was important. She hadn’t seen Bressio around the office for three days. He was running around like some private detective, probably peeking into motel windows if not privately occupied by himself on the other side.
“You through, Duff?” said Bressio.
“Reasonably,” said Clarissa, making the last preparations of the day to close down the office, which included unraveling Bressio’s expenses which ended with the plane arrival at Kennedy Airport that morning.
“You’re leaving town,” said Bressio. “I need some work done for me in Montreal. Get a plane this evening and wait in Montreal for my phone call.”
Clarissa stopped adding the bill for the new Cutler account. “You’re in trouble, Al. You don’t need me in Montreal. You just want to get me out of town. What’s wrong?”
“I think I’m going to be killed,” said Bressio.
“Can you tell me what it’s about?”
“No. It’s better that you don’t know.”
“It’s got something to do with that old man who kept leaving messages, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Clarissa covered her mouth with her hands. A horrible thought terrified her. “Did my failure to relay that old man’s messages have anything to do with it?”
Bressio shook his head as though the messages were such a minor thing they could have nothing to do with his life.
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