“Oh yeah, and what if she does ID me as the guy? Banged up like that, what she’s been through, maybe her head’s all fucked up. She makes me anyway. Then I’m screwed.”
“So you think she might ID you?”
“Well, you already said I looked like the composite, I mean.”
“So you won’t do the lineup, just to help out?”
“No. No way. Anyway, I wasn’t there.”
“Where?”
“Uptown. In Harlem. Anywhere. I didn’t do anything to anybody. Look, fuck this. What’s all this got to do with a sodomy charge? Am I under arrest here? Or what?”
“For the sodomy thing? Not yet. Should you be?”
“Fuck that too. I saw that little shit, Two-Pack. He’s a hustler. Everybody knows it. Charging me with sodomy for a meatpacker like that, why not beef an ATM for giving you cash. Look. You’re not really serious about that charge. Even if I did pork the punk, he’s a whore, it’s just a misdemeanor, I won’t do a day. So you can shove that where Two-Pack likes it. You just wanted an excuse to squeeze me about the Harlem thing. Am I right?”
“Hey, when you’re right, you’re right.”
“So we go down to the station, you book me on consensual sodomy, I walk in three minutes on a desk appearance ticket, I’m back in the club an hour later, having a gin fizz. Right?”
“That’s the way you want to play it?”
Tony nods, one short sharp jerk, and his lips thin out.
Levon nods, grins.
“Yes? Okay, Casey. Anytime you’re ready.”
“One last thing, though?” says Casey.
“Yeah? What?” says Tony, now with a slight eye tic.
“Who says it’s a misdemeanor?”
Tony takes a breath, speaks as if reciting a prayer.
“Consensual sodomy is a class B misdemeanor. Read the code, lady. No court in this town will bother with it.”
“How old are you?”
“What? I’m … twenty-nine.”
Casey noticed that Tony had knocked a couple of years off his age. It made her smile. He’s in the back of a police car, he’s going down for a felony kidnap charge, he’s going to be in Attica or Ossining until Jesus gets a decent haircut, and he still has the idea that knocking a year or two off his age is a good public relations move. Ladies and gentlemen, please observe one Tony LoGascio. Your complete criminal moron.
“So that’s not a class B misdemeanor, then,” says Levon. “It would be okay if you were, like, eleven years old.”
“But you’re not, are you?” says Casey. “At least not physically.”
Tony’s face muscles convulse. He looks pained. Thinking hurts.
“I don’t get it. What are you saying?”
“Two-Pack,” says Casey, the soul of patience, “is sixteen years old. Sixteen. Under Section 130.40 of the penal code, having consensual sodomy with a person less than seventeen years of age is in fact a class E felony, unless the perp is also underage, which you’re not, and so it could get you a year in jail. And you’ve been popped under 130 a couple of times already, as well as—What is it, Officer Jamal? You got the sheet.”
Levon makes a ceremony out of reading the LoGascio menu.
“Let’s see … Section 220.46, criminal injection of a narcotic, 221.35, criminal sale of marijuana, and a big hit under 120.11, aggravated assault of a police officer—”
“That was dropped!”
“That was plea-bargained, as they usually are, Tony. So they still count as felony beefs. Anyway, add to all that this beef for Section 130 and you start to look like a Section 400 of the CPL. Persistent violent felony offender.”
“I got suspended sentences on some of that shit.”
Casey smiled sweetly at Tony.
“Section 70.06, Paragraph B3 of the code, even suspended sentences apply. You’re still a predicate felony offender. So either way you’re going away for a long—Hey, are you okay there? You look all of a sudden kind of all pale and clammy. You want we should get you some water or something?”
“I’m okay. Jesus! No … hey. I’m fine. I’m … Goddamn! That little son of a bitch!”
“Yeah,” said Levon, shaking his head. “Who knew?”
Tony LoGascio now began to look on the world as a very different place than he had imagined it to be, a place filled with duplicity and double dealing and faithless friends. Casey saw this inner change being manifested mainly as a slight greening under LoGascio’s milk-white skin, concentrated chiefly under his jaw and around his eyes. Although work in the Sex Crimes Unit was nasty and brutal, every now and then it handed you a moment like this, and she was enjoying it very much.
RIVEREDGE PARK
KINDERHOOK, NEW YORK
1800 HOURS
Jack Vermillion and Earl Pike met again that same evening in a tourist park on the east side of the Hudson. The sun was much lower now and shadows were crossing the water. When Jack pulled in, Pike’s big blue Mercedes 600 was already there. He noticed it had a broken left front headlamp and there was a scrape on the fender. Other than that, it was a mint vehicle, shining like a sapphire. Pike was standing at the river’s edge, looking out at the opposite shore.
He turned and waited as Jack parked his black Cobra.
“Mr. Vermillion. That’s a very fine vehicle. A real Shelby?”
“Yes. It’s a nice ride. Look, can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Can you take off your suit jacket?”
Pike frowned, and then his face cleared.
“You think I’m wired?”
“It occurred to me.”
Pike took off his jacket. Under the pale-blue shirt, heavy muscles slithered and rippled. The man was built like an armored car. He patted his chest and thumped his flat belly twice, gave Jack a twisted smile.
“You want the shirt off, too?”
“Never mind. How about you tell me what you have in mind?”
Pike nodded and sketched out the details. The collection was already inside a sealed container, sitting in a freight yard in Oswego. One of Jack’s truckers could pick it up as soon as Pike made the call. Jack would then ship the container by one of his river barges down the Hudson to the Red Hook Container Terminals in Brooklyn, to his freight storage yard there. From the Red Hook Terminal it would be transferred—still under a customs bond supplied by Jack’s brokers—onto a freighter at the Jersey docks and take a seaboard route to Merida, on the Gulf of Mexico.
Upon the safe transfer of the container to the freighter, and as soon as the freighter reached international waters, Jack would receive $250,000 in negotiable instruments, delivered by Federal Express to a destination of his choosing. Jack listened, his face getting harder by the second.
“So we’re clear on one thing, anyway. You’re definitely offering me a bribe to ship this … collection?”
Pike gave him a stony look.
“This is an administrative fee. Standard practice. Maybe I should ask you to take off your jacket.”
“I’m not wired. I’m confused.”
“Don’t be confused.”
“I called Dave Fontenot.”
“And?”
“He knows you. Says you’re in the security business.”
Pike reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a card, handed it to Jack.
CRISIS CONTROL SYSTEMS
CORPORATE CRISIS MANAGEMENT SERVICES
EARL V. PIKE, COL., U.S. ARMY (RET.)
“What does this mean?”
“What it says. CCS is an association of retired military professionals. We handle negative operational developments for a range of corporations across the United States, South America, Europe.”
“Negative operational developments?”
“Kidnappings. Breaches of site security. Intellectual property protection. Civil unrest that affects a branch plant. Anything that a corporation wouldn’t want handled by a federal agency. Anything that requires a tactful and extremely low-profile so
lution. Situations that the corporation wouldn’t like to have tossed around on CNN.”
“What’s the V stand for?”
Pike didn’t get it at once, and then he smiled.
“Varus. My father was a military historian.”
“Didn’t Varus lose his eagles?”
“Yes. To the Germans. My father fought in the Second World War. He thought it would be a cautionary reminder.”
“The shipment. Why not use your own connections?”
“I did. I used Dave Fontenot.”
“You do work for Chase?”
“I’m not in a position to confirm or deny that.”
“So I’m still confused. Why run the risk of doing business with me this way? The ‘administrative fee’? The secrecy? You must know how to move … goods … without asking for help from a stranger.”
“I don’t care to involve my firm in this matter. My collection is a purely personal matter. I’m asking you because Dave Fontenot said you were a solid guy, you went your own way, had the balls I was looking for. Maybe he was wrong.”
Jack watched his face. The guy was angry, but for some reason he was working hard to hold his temper. It made no sense to Jack. Here was a man with connections, a man who knew how to slip-slide down the back roads. Why was he working so hard to sell Jack on this stunt? Maybe Pike saw the look.
“Enough of this, okay? I’m being a pain. I’ll tell you something I didn’t think I’d have to say. I talked to one of Frank Torinetti’s people about you. Guy named Carmine DaJulia.”
Jack failed to hide the effect this had on him.
Pike watched him.
“How do you know Frank?”
“I don’t. We know the same people, that’s all. I helped Carmine with a problem in Central America. We had a good business relationship. Carmine mentioned that Frank has a firearms collection of his own. Carmine had a word with him, your name came up, among some others. You were first on my list. That’s why I’m here today.”
Jack was completely rocked and tried not to show it. But Earl Pike could read a man, and he spoke again more softly.
“Look, Jack … let’s start fresh. I’m just a man trying to preserve a degree of personal freedom in the face of an intrusive firearms policy. I gotta tell you, as a man who knows them well, the feds mean none of us any good. They’re screwing with gun owners today. Next week it could be you. Whoever gets their attention, whoever looks like they can be skinned alive to entertain the voters. I believe with all my heart that this government has become an enemy of the people. But that’s not your problem. Not yet, anyway. The fee I was offering was merely a recognition of the enhanced service level I was asking for. If I expect you to maintain a degree of confidentiality concerning this shipment, then I should be prepared to compensate you for the extra work entailed. It’s crazy that you see this as a bribe. You don’t hit me as a guy into melodrama.”
“Getting my corporate charter revoked isn’t melodrama.”
Pike nodded and let out a long breath.
“I see your point. I was trying to transport a firearms collection that is important to me, a collection the Pike family has spent six generations gathering together. People in my family died for some of these pieces, or in the getting of them, in places like Ciudad Juarez, Gettysburg, Belleau Woods, the Falaise Pocket, the Reservoir, LZ Bitch, Co Roc. I was a soldier, like my father and his father, all the way back. Two hundred years. That’s what our family does. We soldier. How does the nation repay us? I have to get my collection out of the country just to keep it together. I don’t want to see this inheritance—this blood gift from my ancestors—grubbed up or sold on the sly to ATF insiders or lost in a federal warehouse like Kane’s wooden sleigh. My friend in Merida will cherish it. And I’d be happy for the money, to be honest. The collection is worth millions. And perhaps the relief from the burden. I have no … family … anymore. There’s no one left in my line. I have to hand it on somehow. I admit this issue of my collection is irrational, emotional. I’m being a pest. I’ll say good-bye.”
Pike offered his hand and seemed ready to walk away.
Jack didn’t take it.
“I’m not saying I won’t do the work.”
“What are you saying?”
“I suppose I’m saying I resent the offer of a personal fee.”
“Then don’t take it. I have already apologized for insulting you. Does this mean you’ll consider the shipment?”
Jack said nothing for almost a minute. Pike waited in silence and showed no impatience in the waiting. He was a very self-possessed man. Finally Jack nodded.
“Yes. I’ll consider it.”
“I’ll be in touch with you then? About the details?”
“Yes. But no ‘administrative fee.’ Understand?”
“Understood.”
He offered his hand. Pike suddenly beamed at him like a boon companion. They shook on it. Jack watched him drive away, fired up his Cobra, picked up his cellular, thought about it, and two minutes later called Creek Johnson from a pay phone at an ARCO station a little outside Ravenna.
Creek picked up his cell phone on the fifth ring.
“Damn, Jackson—I got a ball hanging on the lip of the cup here. I get a good crosswind, that sucker’s in for a birdie.”
“It’s a Mexican ball.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It needs one more revolution.”
“I like that. Is it yours?”
“Creek, I gotta run something by you.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Okay. We’re on the sixteenth. Meet me at my place. I’ll cook up some steaks. Bring me one of your good old reds from out of that vault you got.”
“What’s this? A date?”
“One of the good ones, okay? Don’t be bringing me none of that Sonoma crap. Frog’s Leap or whatever. I want something French.”
“I will. Creek, be alone, okay? No naked dental technicians in the swimming pool this time.”
“You sound a tad intense, Jackson. Is this serious?”
“Yes. I think it’s serious.”
“I’ll be there. Alone.”
GREENWICH VILLAGE
NEW YORK CITY
1830 HOURS
They let Tony LoGascio think about the unpredictability of street life for an hour, sitting in the back of the cruiser while Levon went to a White Castle and got them all some burgers. While he was gone, Casey refused to respond to any conversational openers from LoGascio. Let him cook awhile longer.
Levon came back and handed LoGascio a burger and a Coke and they all ate in a heavy silence. When they were through, Levon gathered up the wrappers and tossed them, then climbed back into the cruiser. Tony was staring at his half-eaten burger with the look of an honest and good-hearted man deeply wounded by a trusted friend.
“So, now what?” said Levon, watching Tony LoGascio jump at the sound of his voice and go through more color changes than Michael Jackson.
“Now,” said Casey, “we Mirandize Hopalong here and—”
Tony bounces off the seat.
“Wait a minute. Wait!”
Casey shook her head sadly.
“Too late. Can’t wait. What you don’t appreciate is, you get to stop talking and we read you your own personal rights. Officer Jamal, be my guest and read Mr. LoGascio his very own personal and totally custom-fitted rights.”
“Thank you, Officer Spandau. It will be my pleasure. Mr. LoGascio? Listen up. You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Do you understand?”
“I want to talk to the DA. I know some shit. Serious, heavy shit. We can do a deal. Listen to me.”
“Now, if you plan to talk about some other crime,” says Casey, “and I say this to you very sincerely, you keep it to yourself. Just answer the Miranda question. Now … anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You follow this?”
“Yes.”
“You have the right to c
onsult an attorney and to have an attorney present during questioning. You understand?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let the record show,” says Levon, “that the subject replied in the affirmative.”
“What’s the charge? What am I charged with?”
“Like we said, sodomy with a minor, Section 130.40. Let us finish here, please? I lose track easy. If you cannot afford an attorney, we’ll pay for one for you. If an attorney is not available, you have the right to remain silent until you can talk to one. You following? It’s very important, Tony. Try to focus.”
“Look … we can work this out. I can—”
“Shut up,” said Levon. “Please? Now, Tony LoGascio, you have been advised of your rights. Do you want to answer questions at this time?”
“About what? No. I want a lawyer.”
“Got anybody in mind?” asked Casey.
“No—yes. Maybe. I don’t know. Shit.”
“Okay, relax, we’ll get you one at the station.”
“This sucks, you know? This is wrong, what you’re doing.”
“Life is just one big Shop-Vac,” said Casey. “But there’s an upside. You get job skills training. Hell, by the time you get out of Sing Sing, you’ll be able to suck-start a leaf blower. Shall we proceed, Officer Jamal?”
“Wait,” says Tony. “There’s gotta be something we can do here!”
“What’s that, Tony? Not a thing, Tony. Now, you asked for a lawyer. Once you do that, there’s nothing we got to say to each other. Nothing we can do. Out of our hands. We can’t even ask you what day it is. Once you say that magic lawyer word, the whole thing runs on automatic pilot.”
“I want a plea bargain. I can give you both of them.”
“A plea bargain?” Casey shakes her head. “We can’t discuss a plea bargain. We can’t even hint at a plea bargain. To do so would be very wrong. Am I right, Officer Jamal?”
“It would be very wrong, Officer Spandau. It would be, like, totally wrongfully wrong. It would be … egregious.”
“Egregious?” said Casey, raising an eyebrow.
Levon nodded.
“Egregious,” he said again, savoring each syllable. It came out as “a-gree-juss.” Casey fought against an outright laugh. In the meantime, Tony LoGascio’s cup of sorrows ran over the brim. His voice reached a sort of strangled soprano squeal. Down the block, lapdogs were sitting up and cocking their pointy little heads. Bats became disoriented and flew into walls all along Gansevoort. Goldfish rolled over and died in their goldfish bowls. Casey watched with interest as a large purple vein began to bulge along the left side of LoGascio’s throat. It looked extremely promising. Casey hoped he’d have a massive stroke or at least pop a vasectomy clip.
Black Water Transit Page 4
