The French Connection

by Robin Moore

  They were silent for a while longer. Then Waters asked no one in particular, "Well, what'll we do?"

  Egan thought of Carol for the first time in several hours and hoped she'd be waiting at his apartment.

  "It's been a lovely evening," Auletta grumbled, "but one of us has to get to work bright and early."

  "Well, we can't just leave! " Sonny protested. "What about the Buick?"

  "It's going to be light soon," Egan mused to himself.

  Waters had been pensive. Then he said, "Look, I think I'm going to bed down over at our office. Sonny, why don't you take the guys back to their own cars, and meanwhile I'll see who's around the office and send somebody out to sit on the Buick."

  "Well, okay," Sonny acceded. "Tell you what: after I drop them off, I'll ring you and see if you got anybody. If not, Christ, I'll come back and sit on it myself."

  It was agreed. Before they separated, Egan reminded Waters to put a trace on the Buick as soon as possible.

  Egan and Auletta climbed into Sonny's Olds and they drove out to Brooklyn, near Patsy's luncheonette, where twelve hours earlier they had met. Egan and Auletta retrieved their own cars and started home.

  Alone, Sonny prowled the Bushwick-Grand Avenue area and found an all-night cafeteria near the BMT subway entrance. Feeling seedy and bleary-eyed, he took a few minutes to sit over a hot cup of tea. It seared his tongue, and was weak, but it was delicious; he hadn't eaten a thing since about ten Saturday night. At last he went to a telephone booth and dialled Frank Waters's number at 90 Church Street in Manhattan. When Waters got on, his tone was funereal.

  "We blew it," he growled.

  "What?"

  "When I got back, Jack Ripa was here, and I hustled him over to Cherry Street. He just called in. The Buick is gone."

  "Oh, goddamn! You're sure he knew the right spot, he didn't — ?"

  "No, no. He went through the whole area. Pfftt. Lost."

  Sonny ground his teeth together, every muscle straining, then all at once he went limp as fatigue and despair finally overwhelmed him. "Okay," he sighed weakly.

  They both were silent for a moment. "Oh, that girl Marilyn?" Waters remembered. "The cab took her to the Hotel Chelsea on Twenty-third. Mean anything to you?"

  "No."

  "Me neither. Well, you might as well go home and get some sleep," Waters suggested kindly.

  "Yeah. You too. Hey, don't forget to get a make on that car anyway."

  Egan was only half awake when he reached his apartment in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. It was a two-room third-floor walk-up which he called Popeye's Den. He was almost glad Carol wasn't there waiting for him, although her presence was always felt. She had decorated the place in tropical isle style, with grass carpets wall to wall and draperies which closed out the dingy street and presented a serene seascape of the sun setting over the ocean. Preserving this motif, Eddie had taken an old Central Park row-boat and, cutting out the seats and keel, made a bed from it. Driftwood decorations abounded.

  In slow motion, he removed his coat, sports jacket and tie and emptied his pockets on the top of his dresser. He unclipped the holstered .38 from his belt and laid it amidst his wallet, keys, tie clip and small change. Then his eyes slowly widened. Off to the side on the dresser top were six bullets. He removed his revolver from its holster and flipped open the cylinder.

  All the chambers were empty. Good God! Suppose the Dons had showed up! His memory refocused on early Saturday afternoon, when his niece had visited him at the apartment for a couple of hours. He found her reaching for the gun on the dresser, and to be safe he unloaded it. He threw himself on his bed, slipping into restless unconsciousness.

  Egan was jangled awake by the telephone at just past 9:30 A.M. Sonny was on the other end.

  "You awake?" he asked.

  "No," croaked Egan.

  "Well, wake up. The Canadian Buick, it's missing."

  Egan sat up. "What?" he shouted. As his partner sombrely related what had happened, Egan sank back against the headboard.

  "There's some good news, too," Sonny added —"and a laugh. Frank queried the Canadian Mounties, and they say the car is registered to a Louis Martin Maurice of Montreal, and this guy happens to be the biggest connection in Canada!"

  Egan sat up again. "So there was something there!"

  "Wait, wait for the laugh. Now the Mounties go on to say they have this Maurice under constant surveillance in Montreal, and there's no way his tan 1960 Buick Invicta could have gotten to New York. How's that grab ya?"

  Bristling, Egan snapped: "Did Frank tell the Royal Canadian Police that he and three New York cops were sitting on that goddamn car all Saturday night and if they don't believe it, they oughtta get their ass down here and find out?"

  Sonny chuckled. "You know Frank. He's like you —he told them. Doesn't make any difference now anyway, with the car gone."

  "Well," Egan grumbled, "I hope they make the trip for nothing, then."

  "You sound punchy, Popeye. Go back to sleep. I'll talk to you later."

  Neither Eddie Egan nor any of the detectives could have known of course that what they'd been sitting on, and let slip away, was more than a quarter of a million dollars in United States currency, ingeniously stashed within that "clean" Buick — cash payment for some twenty kilograms of the highest-quality heroin which only Saturday afternoon had been removed from the same secret hiding place in the same automobile.

  C h a p t e r 5

  On the afternoon of November 29, 1961, a dapper Frenchman of forty-eight jauntily strode into a Paris agency for General Motors on Rue Guersant to take delivery of an automobile he had ordered earlier. He was immediately recognized by everyone in the showroom as Jacques Angelvin, an emcee on France's most popular television show, "Paris-Club." Throughout France, five days a week the program was broadcast at twelve noon, prime time because most Frenchmen went home for lunch.

  The automobile to which Angelvin took title was a secondhand 1960 Buick Invicta. It had required a month for the General Motors agency to locate this particular model, and for a secondhand car it was remarkably new, only 1669 kilometers, or 1043 miles, on the speedometer. Until now, Angelvin had always driven one of the smallest and least expensive cars obtainable, a Renault Dauphine. Time payments on the Buick would cost Angelvin the equivalent of six thousand dollars, which was a thousand dollars less than his total income for the previous year. With great pride and a pleasurable feeling of luxury, which he so enjoyed, Angelvin accepted the keys to the virtually new Buick and drove away from the showrooms . . . .

  Jacques Angelvin had started with the television show as a casting agent, one who was familiar with the nightclubs. He was a part-time emcee at various botes in Paris and one of the three on-camera hosts of "Paris-Club."

  Roger Feral, whose brother Pierre Lazaroff was the editor of the influential newspaper France Soir, interviewed personalities of general interest. Jacques Chabanner, a writer, talked with the literary celebrities. Jacques Angelvin took on the nightclub and show business people. Since he could "plug" any restaurant or nightclub in Paris at will, he never paid for his evenings with the beautiful women with whom he occupied himself at every opportunity.

  An associate of Angelvin's for several years before the purchase of the car was a youthful-looking thirty-four-year-old Corsican named François Scaglia, who sometimes used the aliases "François Barbier" and "Yves Systermans." Scaglia was also known in the Paris underworld as "the Executioner" because he was widely believed to be the most successful contractor for gangland liquidations in France. Scaglia was useful to Angelvin in securing emcee jobs because he was the owner of one nightclub, and had an interest in several others.

  The records of the French Sûreté show that Scaglia was the prime suspect in three kidnappings from 1959 to 1962. In each case a rich man was abducted, taken to an obscure hideout near Paris and there tortured until he assigned all his valuables to his captors — jewelry, money and even his automobiles. However, the Corsi
can was never convicted of any of these crimes.

  The police suspected Scaglia of another, perhaps even more unsavoury enterprise, the white slave trade, and in this Angelvin helped, although possibly unwittingly. Pretty young girls from the provinces of France, and from Germany and other European countries as well, flocked to Paris hoping to get into the cinema and show business. Angelvin managed to meet most of them at the nightclubs he frequented. When a girl —blondes were preferred — expressed her interest in a career as a performer or actress, Angelvin would suggest that she try her act out of the country and then, with this experience behind her, she would be ready to take Paris by storm. Beirut in Lebanon was an excellent place to start out. And, as a matter of fact, he knew an individual who owned a nightclub there.

  From here Scaglia took over. The pretty blonde did indeed have great talent, he would decide at an audition held in his apartment. He would give her a one-way ticket on Air Lebanon to Beirut, where his associate would meet her, get her a hotel room and start her working.

  In a week, after she had run up bills, her employ-ment was suddenly terminated and she found herself without a ticket home, and unable to pay her hotel bill. Now another associate appeared, a corrupt police official who would jail the girl for inability to pay her bills.

  The girl was grateful when yet another Scaglia associate bailed her out of her deep trouble. But now she was in his custody. Willing to do anything to get out of this whole Arab-world nightmare, she would consent to work for a few weeks for a wealthy Arab trader, and before she realized what was happening she had been sold for as much as $50,000, if she was a blonde, to some oil-rich sheik for his desert harem, from which sand-locked fastness she would never escape . . . .

  Largely through Scaglia, Jacques Angelvin was on intimate terms with much of the Paris demimonde —notorious homosexuals and lesbians and purveyors of exotic sexual experiences. His address book also contained, besides top theatrical names, a catalogue of helpful police and government officials, who were among his circle of acquaintances. Something of a hypochondriac, Angelvin was also the patient of six doctors, specialists in various maladies.

  Angelvin had become a famous name in a short time, but Jacques himself was frustrated that financial reward constantly eluded him. He had been thoroughly spoiled as a youngster in a well-to-do professional family in Marseilles on the southern coast of France. By the time he was twenty, he had attended fifteen different schools without receiving a diploma.

  At the start of World War II, when he was twenty-five, he had escaped military service because of "poor health." Later, to protect him from the Germans, his family hid him away on an obscure farm.

  When the war was over, Jacques moved to Paris, where he met a girl, Madov, and was married. A son, Daniel, shortly was born to them, and his family celebrated by giving them a posh apartment in the Invalides. Jacques's only responsibility remained to find himself a job.

  He decided to try his hand at journalism, about which he knew nothing. For a while he did work on a paper, Voici Paris, collecting items for the cabaret columns. From there he moved into small-time radio as assistant producer of a French-American broadcast on which he, as emcee, introduced young entertainment hopefuls of the future.

  He graduated from this to a bigger show, "Paris by Night," which originated from the Club Le Vernet.

  Angelvin had a certain style and he started to attract attention. It was at Le Vernet that he caught the eyes of the producers of a top-rated television show called "Paris Cocktail." They felt he had both the warmth and natural sex appeal to sustain the show that all of France looked upon as the "journal of Paris."

  The money was not great on "Paris-Club," as the program was renamed. Angelvin made less than three hundred dollars a month, but he had learned how to turn his new popularity to good advantage in other areas. He became, as he was fond of boasting, "the one man who can call everyone in Paris, tu." Yet, fortune always hovered beyond his grasp. Two movies were flops. His wife left him, taking their two children, a girl, Veronique, having been born two years after the boy. Past forty, he had little but his superficial celebrity, his souvenirs and fan mail, and a bitter loneliness.

  A "dancer" whom he dated, named Jacqueline, once voted "Queen of Strip-Tease" of Paris, suggested that Angelvin get into his own nightclub business.

  Jacqueline said she had well-placed connections who would finance such a venture. And, with the help of mysterious capital produced by Jacqueline, Angelvin took over an inn called the Ile d'Amour, which he made over into an indoor cabaret featuring swimming, tennis and miniature golf along with the dining and dancing.

  Within a year, however, the character of the place had changed. It gradually became a meeting place for high-priced prostitutes and well-heeled underworld types straight from Pigalle, and legitimate customers began to stay away. When Angelvin protested to Jacqueline, she walked out on him. Like almost everything else he touched, Angelvin watched the Ile d'Amour go down the drain.

  When his ex-wife Madov died early in 1961, leaving their son Daniel, sixteen, and daughter Veronique, fourteen, Angelvin brought them to live with his parents, and then he himself took a sabbatical. He stayed out of sight for weeks. It was rumored that he'd been to Rome, or to Beirut; others said he'd gone to his parents' country place near Saint-Tropez. Wherever he did go to try to recharge his battered life, it was when he returned to Paris and his television show that he began to associate regularly with François Scaglia.

  Scaglia entertained him at nightclubs and introduced him to women including Scaglia's own sister, with whom Angelvin found himself in an affair. Scaglia helped the groping performer to land master-of-ceremonies jobs in some of the gaudier Paris clubs.

  Jacques's ego, so long deflated, stirred again. And, after having interviewed on his TV program a representative of the U.S. Travel Service, who suggested flatteringly that Angelvin should visit America and shoot film to be shown on "Paris-Club," just as the famous Ed Sullivan had done in France and other European countries, Jacques began to entertain sparkling notions of launch-ing himself upon America. He thought of going to Canada as well, and perhaps doing some French broadcasting in Montreal or Quebec City. It could be the entry to a new avenue of life for him.

  François Scaglia was watching "Paris-Club" in early November when Angelvin ingenuously told his viewers of his bright plans, promising more information soon on his proposed trip to America.

  Suddenly Scaglia was hit with an inspiration. Instinctively, he had always known that Angelvin could be of major use to him, far more than a mere scout for white flesh to be sold in the Middle East.

  Scaglia was very much involved in the heroin trade, both in Lebanon and Marseilles. He was a regular patron of a Paris bar, Trois Canards, on Rue de la Rochefoucauld, known to the Sûreté as a den for narcotics traffickers. He well knew the great hazard in transporting heroin manufactured in Marseilles to its most lucrative marketplace, New York. Who could be a more innocent-seeming courier than a French television star visiting the United States for the first time?

  And Angelvin was no stranger to drugs, either. In 1958, one of his own mistresses, a wealthy Paris matron, had died from an overdose of heroin. The Corsican made immediate preparations to accept a transportation contract from the international heroin syndicate which he knew intimately.

  First, Angelvin would need the right kind of car in which to smuggle a large load of heroin. The New York end of the ring had discovered that the 1960

  Buick Invicta had a peculiarity in body construction conducive to the installations of special traps. Jacques Angelvin renewed his passport and secured a visa to enter the United States just one day after Scaglia made similar travel arrangements in mid-November — even before delivery of the car.

  C h a p t e r 6

  The day after it was discovered that the Canadian Buick had disappeared, Sonny Grosso contacted a close friend in the Federal Bureau of Investigation who maintained a widespread network of reliable informers.
The FBI is not normally concerned with narcotics control, but they are adept at keeping their fingers on the pulse of most illegal operations current in the United States. Sonny asked the agent to find out whether a major shipment of heroin had hit the streets in the past twenty-four hours. The agent called back later in the day to report optimistic rumblings but nothing definite.

  The next day he communicated with Sonny again.

  This time he said he had heard the "panic" was off. The junk was in circulation. The Canadian car had done its job.

  By early December, however, the Narcotics Bureau perceived new indications that the November shipment had succeeded in alleviating the heroin shortage only temporarily. Apparently the well had been very dry, for police stools hinted that the city's addicted wretches already were beginning to whine about coming up tight again. The inference drawn was that another big load might have to be smuggled in soon.

  Egan and Grosso, along with Dick Auletta and Federal Agent Frank Waters, continued their close surveillance of Patsy Fuca. Their original target, Angelo Tuminaro, remained in the background, as they focused on the interception of an important delivery of drugs, which they were now reasonably sure would pass through Patsy's hands. This second time, they were better prepared. If they kept on their toes, and were very lucky, they might drop the net over the whole gang, including maybe even Little Angie.

  Patsy was rarely out of their sight. But, then, he didn't make it difficult during this period; he seemed relaxed, unhurried, living what appeared to be the predictable life of a workaday small businessman. He continued to spend most of his waking hours in the luncheonette, relieved by his father-in-law when he wanted to go anywhere, or, on weekends, by his brother Tony. He still hopped over to Manhattan some week-nights after closing up, to visit with his little friend Inez at the Pike Slip Inn, but he was not seen again on the street where he had dropped the Canadian Buick. And other times he repeated his familiar tours through several boroughs with Nicky Travato, presumably making collections or delivering goods. But he seemed to be absorbed by nothing out of the ordinary.