The French Connection

by Robin Moore

  The Frenchmen walked west on 14th two blocks to Union Square and there, by Klein's department store, with the frigid wind gusting mercilessly across the broad, deserted square, they turned right on Park Avenue South (Fourth Avenue), and started back uptown.

  Wracked by the cold and fatigue and mounting despair, the three detectives maintained pursuit. Egan was hobbling now, on feet sodden with pain.

  They trudged all the way back up Park to 46th Street, thence west again, past Madison Avenue and Fifth and Sixth, until at last, at twenty minutes before three in the morning, on the corner of 46th Street and Seventh Avenue, with no more than curt nods and a small handshake the Frenchmen bade each other good night after nearly eight hours.

  Jehan continued west on foot, apparently heading back to the Edison, Sonny and Frank Waters staying on him. Egan dragged himself along after Barbier, who walked north on Seventh five more blocks to the Victoria Hotel. Inside, he went to the front desk and retrieved his room key, then made straight for an elevator and was gone. Egan watched the elevator indicator stop at eleven before he went to the public telephone to call in. He requested relief at the earliest possible time.

  It was 3 A.M., Thursday, when with a weary groan, he plopped himself on a couch in the lobby and wrestled with his senses to stay awake. It was a tough fight. His eyes, stinging with fatigue, kept drooping shut, and when he felt that warm blanket of relaxation begin to creep over him, he shook himself back to alertness.

  About three-thirty, he decided to walk around the lobby, despite the acute soreness of his feet. He strolled back and forth for fifteen minutes, feeling like a house detective, then, hoping that enough adrenalin had been stirred up, sat down to rest his feet. But minutes later he caught himself drifting off again, and he jumped up. The lobby was empty now, except for a clerk behind the front desk, a porter shuffling cigarette butts from the floor into a silent butler at the end of a stick, and the night bell captain slouched behind a waist-high desk near the elevator bank. The bellman had been watching him, sympathetically Egan thought; he wondered if the fellow had guessed he was a cop. He decided to see if he could enlist some free help.

  "Say, pal," Egan smiled, approaching the desk, "maybe you could do me a big favour."

  The slight, sallow bell captain studied the big red-eyed man with indecision. "Such as?" he asked.

  "You probably seen me around here," the detective said. "I've been waiting for a friend to come down from upstairs" — he winked — '‘"you know . . . and I can hardly keep my eyes open. I was wondering, maybe you'd keep an eye on the elevator for me, and if it starts to come down from eleven, you could let me know, in case I doze off?" He patted his back pocket as a hint that he had a ready wallet there.

  The bell captain shrugged. "Sure, why not? The eleventh floor?"

  "Right," Egan smiled. He turned away, about to return to a comfortable chair, when the bellman hissed behind him: "It's coming down from eleven right now, mister!"

  Caught virtually in the middle of the deserted lobby, Egan tried to hustle around the corner of the elevator bank before the doors slid open. He didn't quite make it. A haggard-looking young man stepped from the elevator in a rumpled suit, and when he glanced over and spied Egan, half hidden behind a pillar, he simply stopped and stared.

  The detective blushed, hoping it was not noticeable. Who is this character? What the hell is he staring at? Does he make me as fuzz? The man had come from the eleventh floor; could he be somehow connected with Barbier? These thoughts sped through Egan's mind in a split second, and in the next he was walking toward the man, determined to bluff.

  "Can I help you, sir? I'm the house officer," he announced quietly.

  "No — no, I guess not," the young man stammered, obviously ill at ease. "I thought you looked familiar . . . but I guess . . . "

  "Is anything wrong?" Egan persisted. "It's kind of late to be roaming around."

  The other's eyes widened. "Aren't you Egan of Narcotics?"

  Now it was Egan's turn to stare. "Who are you?" he demanded.

  '‘"Johnson. Federal Bureau." He seemed to sag, both in relief and weariness. "I wasn't sure you'd be down here."

  "I didn't know you were up there! " Egan declared, leading him to a corner of the lobby. "What were you doing on eleven? We don't want to burn these guys, you know."

  Agent Johnson sighed. "I'm in the room next to Barbier, trying to bug him. There's this ventilator between the bathrooms . . . I've been sitting in the bathtub all day, getting practically nothing. And, well, I just about had it, you know, I had to get out of there, get some air, something to eat."

  Egan started to laugh. "Okay, go ahead and grab a bite some place. I'll be here. But don't stay out all night."

  "Thanks a lot," the young agent responded brightly. "I'll come back right away." As he turned to go, Egan called after him:

  "Hey, Johnson, how long you been with the bureau?"

  Johnson blushed, and on him it was noticeable. "Just a couple of days. They needed someone who could understand French."

  "Okay, I'll see you later." He won't stick, Egan thought, watching him go.

  It was past four now. Egan wandered around the lobby, sat down, got up, sat again in another chair, stood again, then slumped down on a divan. He was becoming depressed at his inability to ward off the urge to sleep. His head was nodding once more when a hand on his shoulders roused him. It was the bell captain.

  "That wasn't your friend a while ago, eh?"

  Egan struggled to an upright position. "No," he yawned, "that was another friend."

  "Look" — the man glanced about with practiced caution — "I got something that'll perk you up. It'll cost you a coupla bucks, but it's worth it."

  This woke the detective up. The sucker was trying to sell him a goofball! He managed to mask his renewed interest with another yawn. "Two bucks, huh? What is this stuff?"

  The bellman grinned, "Come with me." Egan hauled himself up and followed him over to the desk.

  The bellman reached into a pocket of his trousers and withdrew a small green metal box, which he opened carefully beneath the desk top. Egan glimpsed an assortment of tablets of various sizes, shapes and colours, as the other extracted a familiar pink, heart-shaped pill and dropped it into Egan's palm. It was a "benny" — Benzedrine. "Swallow that down," the man said, "and in a few minutes you'll be doing a jig."

  "Thanks a million," Egan said, mustering great sincerity. He passed two dollar bills across the counter and walked away. He was thinking to himself: Easiest "score" I ever made. When this Fuca business is over, first thing I'll do is come back here and bag this monkey.

  C h a p t e r 8

  It was 8 A.M. on Thursday, the eleventh, before a young Federal agent named Luis Gonzalez arrived to take up the vigil with the bleary-eyed Egan. Joints stiff, muscles aching, his stomach contracting with hunger, unshaven, feeling seedier than he ever had as a Marine after a week's bivouac, the detective hauled himself off the couch in the hotel lobby and stumbled downstairs to the coffee shop. Testily, Egan realized that even now he could not leave, because the relief agent couldn't pick up Barbier until Egan could point the man out to him.

  He and Gonzalez waited miserably in the Victoria lobby for four more hours. By noon, Egan's frustration had about reached the point where he was ready to barge up to Barbier's room, with Agent Gonzalez in tow, kick down the door, and shout, "There, that's him!" and then go fall into the nearest bed. Finally, shortly after twelve the elevator doors glided open for what seemed the thousandth time, and out walked Barbier. He looked crisp and well-rested — lousy bastard, Egan damned him, nudging the agent. The Frenchman in his heavy overcoat went down the front steps of the hotel and out. Then, light-headed, Egan walked over to the desk and asked for a room.

  At 4:30 that afternoon, Egan returned to the lobby, refreshed after a sound three-hour nap, a shower and a shave. Luis Gonzalez had been replaced by Jack Ripa. The agent looked sour. "I hope you had a good rest," he greeted the detectiv
e. "You may be up all night. Barbier's lost."

  Ripa explained that when the Frenchman had left the Victoria around noontime Gonzalez followed him on foot down to the Edison. Barbier had entered through the main entrance on 47th Street and lingered in the hotel lobby only a few seconds, where he was seen by other detectives staked out on Jehan there. Then he ducked out the 46th Street exit, jumped into a taxi and disappeared before anybody could react.

  Egan's eyes rolled in exasperation. "Great!" he croaked. "Well, we'll just have to stick here. What about the other Frog, and Patsy?"

  "Quiet. Patsy's covered in his store. Nothing with Jehan at the Edison. Sonny is there with some of our people. We got a guy who speaks French next door with a bug on his room. The same as here."

  "Okay. Look, I'm gonna go out for a few minutes. I'll be back." Egan went out onto Seventh Avenue.

  The frigid air braced him. Before he did anything else, he was going to his car and get a change of shoes; it could well be a long night again. He walked across Broadway toward the garage where he'd left his Corvair the previous afternoon, and there put on a well-worn, soft-soled pair of shoes kept in the trunk among assorted changes of clothes. Then he walked back toward the Victoria, stopping first at a corner lunch stand for two hot dogs and a Pepsi. It was about 5:05 P.M. when he returned to the hotel lobby. Ripa was stationed off in a corner, and when he saw Egan the agent shook his head. Egan nodded and sat in an armchair facing the stairs from the street.

  A few minutes after seven, he saw Ripa summoned to the telephone at the assistant manager's desk. The agent conversed briefly, his eyes shifting to Egan. When he put down the phone, he strolled over to the detective.

  "They just spotted Barbier again over at the Edison. He came back in the lobby from the same door he went out, looked around a minute, and went out on Forty-seventh. Jim Gildea's on him."

  "Probably coming back here."

  "We'll soon find out."

  At 7:25, Detective Gildea walked up the lobby stairs and came over to Egan. "Barbier's downstairs in the bar having a drink."

  "Right. You stick up here with Jack Ripa, he's over by the desk. Watch the elevators. I'll go down and keep the Frenchman company."

  Egan went out the front entrance, bypassing the door to the bar off the lower lobby, and walked into the dimly lit Parasol Lounge from 51st Street. The place had a long curved bar which was about half filled, with booths along the 51st Street wall and tables in the back, most of which were occupied by couples or groups of men. He spotted Barbier alone at a small table next to the outside entrance. Egan went straight to the end of the bar, where he could follow any movement of the Frenchman's without looking directly at him. After ordering a shot of Seagram's with ginger ale on the side, Egan sipped the ginger ale, tipping only a few drops of the whiskey into it.

  After about fifteen minutes, he was aware of a waiter at Barbier's table, and then Frog Two rose and walked toward the front of the lounge with his overcoat on his arm. In the lower lobby he turned up the steps to the main lobby. Egan paid his check and followed. When he got upstairs, Gildea was alone by the elevator bank.

  "Ripa took him up," he said, his eyes on the floor indicator over the closed elevator doors. "Eleven —okay. Looks like he's in for a while." Egan and, soon Agent Ripa settled down in the Victoria lobby.

  That morning, Patsy Fuca, who had been quiet all the previous day after dropping Jehan, had left his home on 67th Street in Brooklyn, driving his compact Buick. Agent Frank Waters, keeping a light tail, had followed him east on 65th Street all the way to Coney Island Avenue and then lost him in traffic.

  Two and a half hours later, Patsy was observed by Detective Jimmy O'Brien entering Blair's Pike Slip Inn in lower Manhattan. At 3 P.M., Patsy left the bar, and the officer tailed him back to his store in Brooklyn. When he arrived, Detective Dick Auletta, sipping a Coke at the counter, heard Patsy's father-in-law tell Patsy in Italian that "you-know-who" had telephoned to confirm that "the meeting is on."

  But afternoon wore into night without Patsy making any move to leave the luncheonette. About 11 P.M., his brother Tony was seen arriving in his old, dusty Chevrolet station wagon. The two were in the store together for thirty minutes. At eleven-thirty, Patsy doused the lights and, coming out, locked up. Tony got back into his Chevy and drove off, followed by Agent Artie Fluhr, who later reported him safe at home in the Bronx.

  Patsy, meanwhile, in his blue Buick, had headed into Manhattan, with Dick Auletta not far behind giving other unmarked radio cars at various points in Brooklyn and Manhattan a running report on the subject's itinerary. He drove across the Williamsburg Bridge ("He's going to the Lower East Side, maybe back to Blair's," Auletta speculated); but at the Manhattan end Patsy turned north off Delancey Street instead of south toward Pike Slip; and at Houston Street he turned right again and, after a few blocks, swung onto the East River Drive. ("Everybody look alive. He's going uptown. Maybe the meet's at the Roosevelt again?")

  This time, the trailing detective was proved correct. Patsy got off the Drive at 42nd Street, continued up to 45th, then went left and proceeded west as far as the Roosevelt, where, passing by the hotel entrance, he turned the corner and parked the Buick on Madison Avenue. Auletta turned the other way on Madison and parked across the avenue. He watched Patsy glance about with nervous caution and walk back around the corner to the Roosevelt's main entrance, where he joined two men standing under the marquee. One, of medium height, wearing a gray hat and a dark overcoat, was a stranger to Auletta.

  The other was about the same size, hatless, with a healthy shock of brown hair, and he was familiar to the detective: it was François Barbier, "Frog Two."

  Remembering that the last information he had heard was that Eddie Egan was on Barbier, Auletta radioed his observation to all cars.

  At that moment, a car bearing Sonny Grosso and Frank Waters was also turning onto Madison Avenue, one block north and to the rear of Auletta. When Sonny heard the report that Patsy was now in front of the Roosevelt with two men, one of them Barbier, he chortled with anticipation. For he and Waters had just tailed Frog One, Jean Jehan, to the same location. Less than ten minutes earlier, at about 11:45P.M., Jehan, inactive all day, had rushed from the Edison Hotel, carrying a blue valise, and hailed a cab.

  Sonny doffed his bellman's jacket, changed back into a jacket and overcoat, and ran outside to be picked up by Waters. The taxi had gone straight east on 46th Street and turned south on Madison, depositing Jehan at the corner of 45th opposite the Roosevelt.

  The tall Frenchman was now crossing the avenue toward the hotel.

  "This could be it," Sonny said to Waters, "Patsy's got his French connection."

  "I don't know," the agent mused, "that doesn't look like any fifty kilos he's carrying in that bag."

  "Unless the tip was wrong. Or it could be just a sample." Sonny threw open the car door. "I'm gonna walk down to the corner and take a look."

  "Keep an eye out for Auletta," Waters reminded him as Sonny strode away.

  Coming within view of the Roosevelt entrance, he could see the four of them there, Jehan still holding the valise. Sonny tried to make out the fourth man, but the distance and the night shadows intensified by the bright lighting under the hotel marquee made identification difficult. He didn't think that he had seen the man before. The four, standing close together amid the trickle of people moving in and out of the hotel and the bustle of late commuters hurrying toward last trains at Grand Central Terminal, might have been a group of business associates separating after a night on the town. They were conversing animatedly now, and Patsy seemed to be doing much of the talking.

  Then the sidewalk conclave broke, and they started walking abreast toward the corner. Sonny's wristwatch read 12:05 A.M. He turned and strolled back to Waters' car. The quartet had entered Patsy's little Buick, and it was pulling away from the curb, going uptown on Madison. Sonny grabbed the radiophone and alerted all cars. Waters moved out and at 45th Street began a screeching U-
turn, only to jerk to a halt in the middle of the avenue to avoid colliding with a taxi. (Dick Auletta, who followed the same procedure between 45th and 44th, came back northbound to find himself blocked by a red light and cross-town traffic streaming west on 45th.) In those few seconds, Patsy's blue Buick was out of sight.

  Sonny and Waters prowled the east midtown area, as did Auletta in his car as well as half a dozen others, hoping that one of them would regain contact with the fugitive Buick. Radios squawked with frantic exchanges among the searching officers: "He was going up Madison." "Did anybody see him turn off?"

  "Who's on Fifth Avenue?" "Who's on Park?" "Didn't ANYBODY see him?" Then, at just past 12:15 A.M., base reported: François Barbier had re-entered the Victoria Hotel minutes before and was in his room.

  "That's funny," Waters commented as he cut off Madison on 53rd Street, toward the West Side.

  "What?"

  "We never did hear from Egan. Wasn't he supposed to be with Frog Two?"

  "Yeah . . . " Sonny mused.

  There was no trace of the blue Buick in the vicinity of 51st Street and Seventh Avenue, and the two were driving westbound again on 51st, listening glumly to the discouraged commentary from the various radio cars, when an authoritative voice broke in: "This is Gaffney. I make Patsy's Buick at Fifty-seventh and Fifth. Somebody get up here!" Following the Federal regional director's terse directions, Waters raced up Fifth Avenue and east on 57th Street, and, back at Madison Avenue, going south, they overtook Gaffney's car, still behind Patsy.

  There were only two others with Patsy in the blue compact now, Jehan and the unknown man, and for another half hour they continued to drive unpredictably through the elegant east midtown rectangle, crisscrossing streets, cutting corners haphazardly, moving uptown and down, east and west. But now other police vehicles had converged on the area, and they initiated their own complex in-and-out surveillance pattern, practiced many times before.