Cleopatra Gold

by William Caunitz

  After studying the plaque for a few minutes, he picked up the radio and encoded, “Ascertain ID of female Oriental named Jasmine. Works as bartender at Environment. Age twenty-seven to thirty-three.” As he spoke into the transmitter he suddenly remembered something that had puzzled him at the time, early one morning when everyone had been smashed on booze. It was the sight of Morales casually untying the ribbon from Jasmine’s hair and winding it around his finger.

  26

  The two fabric-cutting tables inside the Thirty-sixth Street loft were fifty feet long and five feet wide. There were big empty spaces where racks of ladies’ dresses awaiting shipment once lined the concrete floors. Glued to the cinnabar-colored cinder-block walls were peeling travel posters and old advertising layouts showing models wearing out-of-date dresses.

  When Alejandro arrived at the rented loft on Thursday morning, carrying a container of coffee in a brown bag, he found the duffel bags strewn over one of the tables. He switched on the overhead lights. Sipping at his coffee, he meandered about through the loft, attempting to locate any bugging or surveillance that Pizzaro might have left behind. Finding none, he gulped down the remainder of his coffee and tossed the container into the wire wastebasket, then walked over to the utility closet. Just because he hadn’t found anything, he couldn’t assume the loft was free of bugs.

  The tiny space smelled of disinfectant. A black sponge lay stiff on the floor. A mop was stuck into an orange bucket, and a plastic jug half-filled with a pea-green cleaning solvent was on top of the shelf, along with coarse brown paper towels and six spray cans with labels that claimed they were air fresheners.

  He reached up and took down the cans and went over to the table with the duffel bags. He put down the cans and picked up one of the bags, checking its seams for any sign of wear or tampering. Seeing nothing suspicious, he picked up a spray can, gave the nozzle a three-quarter turn counterclockwise, and sprayed the inside of the bag with a liberal dose of adhesive diodes. As he sprayed each bag, he kept wondering about the head of the Cleopatra network. Whoever it was, he had enough self-confidence to allow his identity to remain hidden. Maybe it was someone who had a need to remain hidden. Someone in the public eye? Every working network that I’ve ever heard of had a boss who was known to everyone, he thought. Maybe Che-Che is the boss after all. The sound of the freight elevator stirred him out of his reverie.

  The elevator’s tin-plated door clanged open. Pizzaro and three crew members wheeled in a large dolly covered with a tarpaulin that was tied around the bottom of the dolly. Alejandro’s heart quickened when he spotted the woman he knew as Belle Starr walk in with the others. When did they get back from Thomas Cay? he wondered, waving at them.

  “How ya doin’, amigo,” Pizzaro said, coming over to him and giving him a hug. “You did good, real good.”

  “Thanks, he said, his eyes staying almost too deliberately away from hers until he realized that ignoring her so obviously was in itself a possible giveaway. So he looked directly at her and said, “Hi. What’s your name?”

  Fiona was helping the others untie the tarpaulin. She glanced over at him and said, “None of your business.”

  “Is that your new head of public relations?” Alejandro asked Pizzaro.

  “Yeah. She’s cute, isn’t she?”

  “If you like the type.”

  “Can you repack the chutes by tonight?” Pizzaro asked.

  “I’ll have ’em ready,” Alejandro said, watching them throw the tarpaulin off the dolly. The Ram Air canopies and their shroud lines were wrapped around their rigs and secured there by webbed belts. The men lifted them up off the dolly and put them on the table containing the duffel bags.

  “Put them in a line,” Alejandro told them.

  Pizzaro asked Alejandro if he had the two homing transmitters.

  “Yeah, I have ’em.”

  Pizzaro then looked around the loft with an almost proprietary air and ordered, “When you get all the chutes repacked, stack them back on the dolly, and leave. We’ll pick them up.”

  “Okay,” Alejandro said, noticing Fiona edging back behind the others and looking at him intensely as she tucked a stick of gum into her mouth. “I hope your guys were careful when they tied up those chutes. We don’t need any rips or holes in the canopies,” he said to Pizzaro.

  Pizzaro didn’t respond, merely walked off toward the freight elevator, followed by the others.

  Alejandro lifted the first rig in line over to the other table, untied the belt, and began unsnaking the shroud lines and the canopy from around the rig. After bridling the lines through his fingers, untangling them, he stretched them down the table, aware that Pizzaro and the others were still there.

  When he heard the elevator door open and close, he made sure that they were gone and then walked over to where the female undercover had been standing. He searched the floor thoroughly for the gum wrapper. Unable to find it, he bent down and looked under the table. He spotted it lying among dustballs and used coffee containers, a balled-up yellow wrapper with a fringe of silver sticking out of its fold.

  Stretching his arm under the table, he fingered it closer so that he could grab it. Then he stood and unraveled the paper, pressing it out on top of the table. With his thumb and forefinger he pried it open along its seam.

  The message “16 Alice” was written on the inside. He balled it up again, took it into the filthy bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet.

  Back at the table, he worked the lines of the Ram Air canopy to their full length and secured the canopy’s apex to the cotter pin that he had inserted in the table’s top. Patting each of the panels to see if any were blown or burned, he smoothed out the curls and folds, then opened the black box that contained the power source for the steering mechanism that reeled the shroud lines in and out, checking the nickel cadmium battery with a meter. That done, he S-rolled the canopy and its lines into the skirt and spring-loaded the pilot chute on top of the canopy before closing up the rig and inserting the curved locking pin through the rig’s grommets. He took the rig over to the dolly and went back to the table to get another one.

  A simple code that could be used when they wanted to set up a meet was taught to the students at the Hacienda. Unscrambled, it consisted of an odd name, preferably the only one, of a person or place listed in the local telephone directory; that was to be preceded by the first two numbers of the appointed hour stated in military time.

  Alice Tully Hall was located on the northwest corner of Broadway and Sixty-fifth Street. Posters in glass cases announced that Helen Whitehead was giving a piano recital at 4:00 P.M. that included Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Major.

  Alejandro arrived at the hall eight minutes before four o’clock in the afternoon. He was informed by the woman in the box office that the recital was sold out. When he asked her if a ticket had been left for him in the name of J. James, he watched as she began flipping through a handful of windowed envelopes.

  “Mr. J. James,” she said, passing the envelope through the slot.

  Inside the crowded lobby, he looked around until he found her standing in the far right corner. She had changed out of her jeans and was wearing a tailored black-and-white-checked suit with black pumps. Making his way over to her, he realized that she was almost as tall as he was. Once he was standing beside her, he said, “What’s your name?”

  “Fiona, and yours is Alejandro.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I asked one of the crew.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  She looked at him askance. “Not even a ‘Hello,’ or a ‘Nice to see you again’? You really do get right into it.”

  “We don’t have time for pleasantries. You and I broke rule numero uno by exposing ourselves to each other. And now we have to try to fix it, and maybe even stay alive. So why don’t you tell me who you are with?”

  Her expression became serious. “NYPD Narcotics Division. And you?”

  “We work for the
same people,” he said, deliberately leading her to believe that he was an undercover working for the junk squad. “Did you tell your control about me?”

  “No. I’ve been waiting until we had a chance to talk. This assignment is important to me, I don’t want to be pulled out.”

  “If our controls find out that we know each other, that is exactly what they’ll do,” he said, surveying the faces about the hall. He felt deeply uneasy about being there with her. Moving closer, he asked, “How did you manage to work your way into Che-Che’s crew?”

  “I was told to apply for a pilot’s job with a company named Executives Unlimited. It’s run by a renegade CIA guy named Lyle Caswell who did heavy time with Uncle for dealing high-tech weaponry with the camel drivers.”

  “Caswell sees you and puts you on the payroll?” he said with a tone of disbelief.

  “Not exactly. He took me on a checkout flight out of Newark Airport. But it was mostly timing. I walked into his office the same time he was shopping around for a pilot who still had a working liver.”

  Alejandro folded his arms across his chest, noticing her fine, silken hair and the scent of her perfume. “Working together, we might be able to get the job done sooner.”

  “I’m for that. But we’ll need a cover that will allow us to be seen together. Sneaking around like this won’t work.”

  “We’ll become lovers.”

  Her lips formed a knowing smile. “Pretend lovers works for me.”

  “That’s what I meant,” he said, but he was surprised to find himself feeling a definite sense of disappointment. “Have you gotten close to any of their crew?”

  “No, but two of the assholes have come on to me.”

  “Try and get close to them, especially when they’re sloshed on tequila. Find out if Pizzaro or anyone else maintains an office, or a business front of any kind.”

  “It’s important?”

  He nodded. “Very. They wash a lot of their money in Road Town in the British Virgins—and they smurf some of it. But this is a network with a large cash flow, and it doesn’t all add up, in my mind.”

  Fiona thought for a moment, then suggested, “Maybe they’re warehousing it until they can get it out of the country?”

  Alejandro looked unconvinced. “You were down in Thomas Cay. You saw those facilities. This is a sophisticated network. They tell everyone that they store it, but I think that’s disinformation. They’re getting a large part of the money washed somehow.”

  “I’ll check around.”

  She made a move to leave, but Alejandro asked her, “What do you know about Judith?”

  “Only that she’s supposedly Pizzaro’s girlfriend.”

  Again letting his eyes check out the faces of people nearby, he said, “She’s more than a girlfriend. Any idea when they’re going to bring in the next load?”

  “No. I’m on standby.” She opened her pocketbook and showed him a beeper. “Pizzaro gave me this. Whenever he buzzes me, I’m to call and be ready to go on another trip.”

  “Pizzaro gave you that?”

  She saw the concern on his face, then quickly got his point. “Don’t worry. I took it apart, there’s no transmitter hidden inside.”

  “I hope you’re positive, because if you’re not, we’re both dead.”

  She put a reassuring hand on his arm. “I’ll see you tonight at Environment. I’ll introduce myself to you; then we can begin our big romance.”

  Chimes rang; people began moving out of the lobby and to their seats. “Are you going to stay for the recital?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said, and walked away.

  Fiona sat through the program until intermission, then left to keep her appointment.

  Too Tall Paulie stared at the surveillance photographs for a long time, saying nothing. The vertical blinds made sun strips across his desk. Looking up at Lieutenant Elia, he finally asked, “Where were they taken?”

  “Across from one of Che-Che’s known pads on East Seventy-seventh Street.”

  Too Tall Paulie looked back at the shot of Alejandro walking into Che-Che’s lobby. “So? We knew they were amigos.”

  “Boss, I believe that this mutt is a worthwhile subject of an investigation.”

  “Is there any evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, linking this Alejandro to the dope business?”

  “No. Our informants tell us he’s just a singer.”

  Burke shot him an exasperated look. “So why the hell do you have a bug up your ass over him?”

  “A feeling,” Elia responded. “Something about this Alejandro”—he pronounced the name with a mockingly exaggerated stress on the “han”—“just isn’t kosher.”

  “We don’t have assets to squander on feelings. It’s the policy for this division to work the major networks and leave the nickel-and dime-baggers to the local precincts to take care of.”

  Elia persisted despite his boss’s resistance. “I dug up some more background on him. Wanna hear?”

  Too Tall Paulie sighed in resignation. “Okay, tell me.”

  “Alejandro Monahan. His father was a senior noncom in the U.S. Army. Retired to Mexico with his Mexican wife. The father was killed in an ambush with the town’s chief of police.”

  Too Tall Paulie’s eyes opened wide in surprise; he looked away from Elia and asked in apparent indifference, “What town did all this happen in?”

  “Zihuatanejo.”

  An icy chill gripped the boss of the Narcotics Division. “What was his father’s name?”

  “Eamon Monahan.”

  Those bastards, they’re using Eamon’s kid, he thought, concealing his feelings by keeping a bored expression on his face. “Forget this guy, Lieutenant. He’s nothing. If we had extra assets, I’d humor you and let you do him, but we don’t. So do me a favor and shit-can this guy and get on with the important stuff.”

  “Okay,” Elia said, leaning up out of his seat to retrieve the pile of photographs from the desk.

  “Leave them,” Too Tall Paulie said, “in case any more photos of him come across my desk.”

  After Elia was gone, Too Tall Paulie slipped one of the photographs of Alejandro into a manila envelope and walked grimly out of the office.

  The esplanade of Battery Park City fronted Hudson River, directly across from Jersey City. The tide was high. Walking west on Public Place, Burke spotted his undercover leaning against the railing watching a container ship making for the open sea.

  “She sure is big,” he said, standing beside her.

  “There is something romantic about a big ship rushing to meet the hazards of the sea.”

  “Almost like your job.”

  “Not quite,” she said, pushing away from the railing and carefully sweeping the area around them with her eyes. A young man wearing a shiny black-and-chartreuse bodysuit, his arms flailing in front of him, sped past them on Kelly green roller blades.

  “Talk to me, Fiona.”

  She told him about how she had flown the doper’s plane to Thomas Cay, then went into considerable detail describing all the activities she observed on the island, along with a description of the facilities. Almost as an afterthought, she added, “They’re dropping dope somewhere outside the city by parachute.”

  Too Tall Paulie cursed under his breath. “Where are they making the drop?”

  “I’m not sure, someplace west of the city up in the Catskills, I think. The settings in the on-board navigational computer were preset, so once I left New York TAC I didn’t have a specific destination, just coordinates.” She smiled at Burke and said, “They’re as paranoid as we are.”

  27

  A Cuban mambo blasted over Environment’s speaker system as Alejandro climbed into the balcony Friday morning after his last show. Che-Che and Pizzaro were huddled in a banquette talking to the same two Oriental men he had seen on Thomas Cay. Fiona, along with three other dopers and their girlfriends, was sitting at a table near the bar. She was laughing at something one of the other women had just
confided.

  Seeing her with the dopers and their girlfriends made Alejandro stiffen involuntarily. Ignoring her, he went over to the bar.

  “What’ll it be, handsome?” Jasmine asked.

  “Club soda,” he said.

  Jasmine put the glass in front of him and, as she was turning to leave, smiled and trailed her fingers across his hand.

  Sipping his drink, he turned to watch the dancers on the loft’s tiny dance floor, but out of the corner of his eye he focused on Che-Che’s table. One of the Oriental men was emphasizing his words to Pizzaro with vigorous gestures. A few minutes later the two Oriental types got up abruptly and left. Che-Che saw Alejandro watching and waved him over.

  “What was that all about?” he asked, sliding in next to the drug lord.

  “Nothing important,” Che-Che said, picking up his glass of champagne and staring at his two guests as they disappeared down the stairs.

  “Che-Che tells me you want to drop our money onto boats,” Pizzaro said, pouring more of the golden wine into his glass.

  “Why not?” Alejandro said. He picked up his empty glass and signaled a waitress for more club soda. “It works the same at sea as it does on land,” he explained confidently. “At sea you could drop the chutes directly into the cargo hatches.”

  Pizzaro looked at Che-Che and nodded in agreement. “It’s clean and it’s simple.”

  “The problem is that every time we come up with something new, the cops or the DEA eventually find out about it and screw it up for us. Someone either talks or is turned, or some wise-ass cop gets close to us,” Che-Che said, watching a woman dancer wearing a dramatically short skirt.