The French Connection

by Robin Moore

  Suddenly shafts from two flashlights pierced the darkness. One swept the entry hall, then in a quick step one of the visitors reached up to pull the chain dangling from a ceiling bulb. Simultaneously the cellar entry was flooded with light and a voice barked: "All right! Police! Who's down here?"

  They were two patrolmen, massive in their heavy blue over-coats, revolvers and flashlights in their hands. One whirled as the agent pushed open the paint closet door and stepped out, shotgun laid aside.

  "Who the hell are you, mister?" the cop demanded.

  There was no time for a reply, for the other officer cried: "Wait! Look out!" The two agents in the alcove were emerging from the shadows, revolvers in hand.

  The startled cops crouched, prepared for violence.

  But a sharp voice rang from the blackness of the boiler room: "Hold it, f'Chrissake! We're all police officers!" In a moment, a light blinked on in the rear of the cellar, and the Narcotics Bureau's Jimmy O'Brien was advancing with his gold shield in hand.

  They had to explain to the patrolmen, who had received a radioed complaint from the 41st Precinct about strange men in the basement of 1171 Bryant Avenue, that they were narcotics investigators, without actually revealing details of their mission. It was delicate. The patrolmen were uncertain of what to do at first, but they agreed hesitantly to keep the stakeout quiet.

  The following afternoon a uniformed Transit Authority patrolman ventured tentatively into the cellar and was sent packing with the firm admonition to forget that he'd seen them. Within the next forty-eight hours they had two more visits, first by a pair of plainclothesmen from a neighbouring precinct whom the desperate house painter had encountered on the street while they were making an arrest several blocks away. He had told them a harrowing tale of a round-the-clock crap game going on in his basement. And then even a green-uniformed Sanitation Department inspector was importuned to come down, the befuddled old man appealing to anybody he could find wearing a uniform. Each time, the men in the cellar had to explain something of what was afoot.

  "Security" was coming apart.

  Perhaps just as bad, the officers themselves were growing jumpy. One night during this first week, Detective Jimmy O'Brien awoke from a half-sleep in the pitch-black boiler room to see a tiny red glow hovering over him. O'Brien froze: somebody was standing there in the dark, smoking a cigarette! "Sonny?" he called in a small voice. "Waters?" He heard only the hum of the boiler. With a loud cry, O'Brien rolled off the mattress onto the cold floor, pulling his revolver in the same motion. There were scuffled footsteps, and then the lights went on. Sonny Grosso, Frank Waters and Jack Ripa crowded the end of the corridor opening into the boiler room, guns drawn.

  "What the hell's happening?" Sonny demanded.

  "There was somebody in here," O'Brien said from his prone position. He looked about him, perplexed. The others, crouching, tense, prowled every shadowy corner.

  "You must've been dreaming," Sonny drawled at last, holstering his revolver. "There's nobody here."

  The lights were switched off. O'Brien crawled back onto the mattress. In a moment he screamed again:

  "There he is!" Again the running feet, the lights on, and again no one but four edgy detectives.

  Sonny stared at the boiler. He walked over to the square, sooty machine and, looking down at O'Brien, scowled: "Here's your guy smoking." He pointed a finger at a small red pilot light at about eye level, an indicator that the mechanism was working.

  Every day the tension thus increased in the dingy basement. The officers had to struggle with themselves to hold tempers in check and, more important, to curb their tendencies to point guns around at strange noises. The shifts were watching eighty-eight pounds of a commodity worth many millions of dollars to the Mafia Dons, and they never knew when a raiding party of Italians might burst into the basement and try to take the heroin.

  Occasionally some piece of interesting news would filter in from the outside and give the detectives something to talk about. The most absorbing tidbit came when Lieutenant Vinnie Hawkes paid one of his regular visits to the stakeout. He found Eddie Egan in his accustomed position in the paint locker.

  "Hey, Popeye, the machine gun you pulled out of the ceiling at Fuca's? What if it was the same chopper used to kill the guard and wound a cop in that bank job at the Lafayette National on Kings Highway?"

  Eddie jumped to his feet in excitement. "I tailed Patsy there just two days before! I remember at the time thinking he looked like he was casing the place."

  "It seems our boy Patsy was always busy. I wouldn't put it past a bum like him to rent out that machine gun and other weapons too." The officer smiled cynically at the speculation.

  The superintendent of the apartment building wandered into the basement from time to time, but he paid no attention to the stakeout, and the narcotics officers said little to him. In the thickening atmosphere, he almost brought about violent death for himself. One morning he calmly took a plank and rested it on two sawhorses. He stood over the middle of it, breathing heavily, and with a sudden shout, he gave a sharp blow with the edge of his right hand, breaking the board in half with the karate chop.

  Frayed nerves reacted instantaneously and five weapons were brought to bear on him. The startled karate student stared into the barrels of a machine gun, two rifles, and two pistols. Slowly the guns were lowered and that was the last appearance the superintendent made in the basement.

  During the long days and nights the detectives sat on the heroin, it was impossible for each of them not to think about the value of the white powder in Tony Fuca's trunk. It would be a simple matter to sell the junk back to the Mafia for a million dollars. It was worth ten times that amount. The heroin hadn't been analyzed yet, but they figured it had to be almost pure. It was a temptation they all were used to; it teased every narcotics officer.

  Egan toyed with the fantasy. A life of luxury was within his grasp, he knew. By now Carol Galvin had declared to Egan that she was getting out of his life because she could no longer adjust herself either to his schedule or to his limited income as a cop. He could take this stuff and . . . but his daydreaming ended as it always did: he was a cop, and he'd probably always be one, so that was it.

  Two weeks went by without any real action or discernible progress toward wrapping up the case. Aside from the visits by other unsuspecting policemen, there were a few occasions when tenants of the building entered the cellar to retrieve some household articles from storage. (At such moments the men on stakeout acted the roles of repairmen, electricians or boiler mechanics, which proved to be welcome breaks in the frustrating monotony.) But there had been no sign whatever of an approach by anybody interested in the cache of heroin. No one had gone into the carriage room at all; the winter cold was keeping babies indoors.

  Except for infrequent shopping trips, Peggy Fuca, Tony's wife, had stayed put on the fifth floor with her two small daughters. She had not ventured near the cellar and presumably was unaware of the lawmen holed up there.

  It had now become apparent that only the Fuca brothers knew where the treasure was stashed, and evidently there would be no overt move to recover it until such time as one of them was at liberty. Through informers, the police had received indications that agitation among the various vice lords over disposition of the missing junk had noticeably subsided in recent days. This suggested that word had been passed from jail, probably via the prisoners' mother, that the load was safe and would reach the proper hands as soon as one of the principals was released.

  Chances were small that it would be Patsy, who, with his father and the two Frenchmen, was being held in $100,000 bail. The police felt that such a price would be too high, and too incriminating, for even the Tuminaro organization to front again for Patsy's temporary release.

  Tony Fuca also was being held in $100,000 bail for conspiracy and an additional $22,500 for possession of narcotics, and the lawyer hired to represent the Fucas had been vainly pressing for reduction of the bail. Now the
police decided that it would be advantageous to allow Tony to get out so they could study his movements. With the consent of the district attorney, the $100,000 for conspiracy was finally waived, and Tony's bail dropped to $22,500.

  On Monday, February 19, the Narcotics Bureau was informed that bail had been secured for Tony Fuca and he was about to be set free. Immediately, additional men were dispatched to the stakeout in the Bronx.

  That same morning, a police stool telephoned a tip that there might be an attempt by a local mob not affiliated with the Fucas and Tuminaro to intercept Tony and hijack the reputed fortune in "H" whose existence, at least, by now seemed to be common gossip in "the street."

  By midmorning on February 19, Detectives Eddie Egan, Jimmy O'Brien, Jim Gildea and Jim Hurley and Federal Agent Jack Ripa were on duty in the cellar at 1171 Bryant Avenue, the Bronx. A half-dozen other officers watched the house from the street and unobtrusively patrolled the general vicinity. And now two more were positioned on the roof of the building; they had been rehearsing another extemporaneous signal system for the time that Tony actually returned to his top-floor apartment. Henceforth, one officer would remain on the stair landing between the fifth floor and the roof itself, and whenever Tony or his wife left their apartment the detective outside would drop a tin can from the roof down into the alleyway below to warn the men in the cellar to be on the lookout for a possible visit. The dreary basement vigil suddenly became a tense, electric experience.

  Egan was stationed in his favourite nook, the paint locker near the entryway. He did not enjoy playing cards, as most of the other officers did, and he wanted to be closest to where the action was liable to take place. This morning four men with him were back in the boiler room, shuffling about, talking in low, nervous tones.

  When the door from the alley squeaked open, Egan tensed, put down the book he had been trying to read, and gripped his service pistol. He hoped the others had heard the plaster-filled bucket hit the floor behind the boiler; several times previously they had found that the device was ineffective during daylight hours, when the boiler churned away so loudly that its clanking drowned out the warning thud. Egan edged the closet door open an inch or two, just enough to see out.

  His breath caught and icy currents raced across his skin as he saw two swarthy gunmen bent low, creeping silently past his hiding place toward the carriage room. They were grimly intent. He started to nudge the closet door farther ajar, when a third intruder whipped open the door before him and pushed a revolver close to his mouth. A gravelly voice snarled: "Come out of there, you sonofabitch, or you're dead!"

  Egan crouched absolutely still, unable to react, mesmerized by the gun six inches from his face. In a split second a shudder swept his body and he thought about death.

  "Drop it!" the harsh voice ordered. The other two men had turned toward them.

  Egan looked down at the pistol drooping in his hand. And then his mind started working again. He drew upright and tossed his gun toward the passageway to the boiler room, and as it clattered loudly on the cement floor, he blustered loudly: "What is this all about? Who the hell are you guys?"

  He heard movement from the rear of the cellar, shuffling and quick footsteps. The intruders had heard it, too. His guys would come out shooting. It was going to be war, and he was right in the middle.

  His eyes darted to the gloomy storage alcove. It was his only chance, however slim. If he could just keep under the machine-gun slugs. Behind, someone new entered the cellar as Egan braced himself to shoulder aside the man next to him and dive for the alcove.

  "Hey, lieutenant, don't shoot!" the voice behind him shouted. "It's Bullets Egan. He's a cop — narcotics squad!"

  "A cop? Hold it — police officers!" the man beside Egan yelled into the cellar.

  They were all limp when identifications and explanations had been exchanged. The "gunmen" were detectives of the 41st Squad from the local Simpson Street station. The old painter had marched up to the precinct and related a chilling tale of "mobs of hooligans and gangsters" occupying his basement work area, "plotting murder." It had sounded just improbable enough for there to be something to it.

  Although some of the precinct's uniformed patrolmen had been aware of the narcotics stakeout almost from the beginning, nobody had passed the word to the detectives. And so five of them had converged on the cellar. They had the windows and exits covered.

  Although they would have been outgunned, a fire fight probably would have resulted in a massacre of both groups of police.

  Egan was unnerved by the near disaster and drained of his normal optimism. When he telephoned his superior, Lieutenant Hawkes, and described the experience, he emphasized that someone was going to get hurt unless they talked more openly with the local police: "Either we're going to kill somebody, or some of us are going to get it," he said.

  Hawkes was sympathetic, but he said: "We're too close to the payoff to pull out now, Popeye, or even to tip our hand. Now that Tony's out, something has to break soon. Why don't you take a day off? You'll feel better."

  "Hell, I'd kill myself if this thing got nailed down while I was beating the sheets," was Egan's reply.

  Tony Fuca seemed to be playing it very cool during the first several days he was at home. Time and time again the augmented force in the cellar tensed when the empty beer can ricocheted in the alleyway, but Tony left the house only to go to neighbourhood stores.

  Thursday of that week he returned to the shape-up on the East Side docks, where he was welcomed back with guarded enthusiasm by his fellow longshoremen. He worked part of the day, and, returning home in mid-afternoon, he stopped at a grocery store near his house and then went upstairs with a small bundle. But he didn't come near the cellar.

  Friday, his movements were about the same. He came home early and remained upstairs with his family. None of the police in the area had seen Tony's wife or children for some days, and after Tony had visited a local pharmacy a couple of times, the speculation was that one of the kids or perhaps Mrs. Fuca herself was sick.

  Was it possible that Tony, regarded as the strong-armed, thick-headed link in Little Angle's apparatus, might not have been entrusted with the crucial knowledge that the valuable load was hidden in his own building? This question began to nag the waiting police. Yet this seemed too devious even for Patsy and his uncle. Still, they were ending their third week of unremitting surveillance of Tony's house. It had been over five weeks since the first important seizure in Brooklyn, and the Kings County Grand Jury was well into hearings for indictments. But nothing had happened at 1171 Bryant Avenue.

  On Saturday, February 24, Sonny Grosso was taking a break. A close friend of his, a fun-loving "perennial bachelor," had asked Sonny to be best man at his wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral. "I wouldn't miss that if Luciano himself came back to life and offered to sing," Sonny had said to Egan. Shortly before noon that day, Egan, hunched in the paint locker in Tony Fuca's basement, was daydreaming. He felt so soiled, grimy and lifeless, it was a pleasure to imagine the clean, gay people who would soon be gathering at St.

  Pat's downtown on handsome Fifth Avenue. He visualized the long, marbled aisle, the bride, pink-faced, in white, flowers on her arm, trailing satin; the smiling faces in the pews, craning eagerly; the groom, standing up front before the altar rail. He tried to picture Sonny, waiting there with his friend, nervous, probably even panicky; scrubbed, shaved, hair neatly brushed, wearing a jacket and pants that matched, shoes shined. Egan could barely remember the last time he had seen Sonny slicked up and fresh — or himself, for that matter . . .

  A tin can rattled off the tenement walls outside in the alley. Tony was coming out again. The agents and detectives in the rear scurried to dark recesses of the boiler room and storage alcove. The cellar door opened and squeaked closed. Egan heard a man's steps pause in the entryway. Then they scraped slowly, past the paint closet.

  Through his door crack Egan saw a squat form in bulky gray sweater and shapeless trousers. Tony!r />
  The detective's heart pounded as he watched Tony halt before the wooden door of the carriage room and peer for several moments to his left, along the dim corridor into the depths of the cellar. Egan bit his lip: Now all we need is for some clown to cough or sneeze back there. Tony looked the dim entry over very deliberately. His face was toward Egan, and enough daylight came through the glass panels of the outside door to enable the hidden officer to study his features. Tony was square-jawed and heavy-lipped, with a wide nose; as with so many unintelligent physical types, his eyes were blank films. Tony turned back toward the carriage room door, unhooked the clasp and disappeared into the darkness.

  Egan stared hard but could distinguish only vague movements inside. Tony appeared to climb on to something and remain still for a minute or two; he stepped back to floor level and poked around dark corners of the cluttered closet as though searching for something. Then he backed out and closed and latched the door. In one hand he carried what looked like a short crowbar, a tire iron perhaps. He hesitated and glanced again toward the boiler room. Finally he walked past Egan and went out into the alley. He started to whistle a sprightly tune.

  "He knows damn well where that stuff is," Egan told the others after it was reported that Tony had returned to his apartment. "He was just checking to see if everything was the way they left it. I figure he's getting ready to make the move. We better get some more guys down here."

  Egan called on the portable radiophone to report that they expected someone would pick up the heroin very soon. It was just past 1:00 P.M.

  About three-thirty, as the winter afternoon's light began to ebb out of the gray, sooty cellar, four additional men arrived, including Lieutenant Hawkes and Dick Auletta and another pair of Federal agents who stayed up on the street.