American Gangster

22. Rush

Christmas for Richie Roberts had not been half-bad. Laurie had invited him over to her folks’ for Christmas Eve and he was able to spend some “quality time” (to invoke the phrase Laurie had started using lately) with Michael. His capitulation at the hearing had won him some visitation time with his son, and a personal truce with Laurie. She would never love him again, and he supposed he didn’t love her anymore, either. But between them, now, was an unspoken respect for what they’d once shared, as represented by the boy they both still loved very much.

So all was right with Richie’s world, on that sunny January morning, the stained glass turning everything lovely shades of brown and yellow, and even having Detective Trupo troop in as if he and his black leather topcoat owned the squad room couldn’t spoil it.

Richie was at his desk and scarecrow Spearman came over, lifting an eyebrow, saying, “Said he’ll only talk to you.”

“Lucky me,” Richie said, and got up and joined the SIU detective off to one side of the big bullpen.

“How’s it goin’?” Trupo said, not offering a hand but giving Richie a friendly nod that indicated a whole new attitude.

“It’s goin’,” Richie said. “Christmas okay?”

“Yeah, cool. If in-laws was illegal, I’d be a happy guy.”

They moved to a nearby break table where they sat and had coffee, black.

Trupo sipped steaming hot liquid, then said casually, “Hear anything about this Lucas hit?”

Richie sipped at his own cup, then shook his head. “No. Just that whoever-it-was put Frank’s wife in the line of fire, which if you don’t a kill a guy can be a problem.”

Trupo, nodding, lighted up a cigarette. “From what I hear, it was maybe the Corsicans.”

“Yeah?”

“French Connection, Fernando Rey, the exporters Frank’s put out of business.”

“Makes sense.” Richie was wondering what this had to do with him, and for that matter, Trupo.

Trupo told him, in a brashly conspiratorial manner: “Now, I can watch out for Frank’s ass on the New York side of the bridge, but I don’t wanna have to worry every time he drives over to Jersey for whatever, and somebody takes another potshot at him.”

Richie was stunned that Trupo would talk this openly about his business ties to Lucas; but he gave nothing away as he said, “Hit went down in Chinatown, what I understand. Chinatown is not Jersey, last time I looked.”

“No. But now the radar’s up, my side of the river, and what I need to know is, you know, that yours is up over here.”

“I follow.”

“Good.” Trupo’s mustached grin had a certain charm, but Richie had to work at it not to shudder when the detective laid a chummy hand on his shoulder. “We need to start workin’ together, Richie. Need to step up, need to coordinate, our efforts. Next time whoever-the-fuck’s aim could be better.”

“Could,” Richie admitted.

Trupo’s laugh was damn near a cackle. He blew dragon smoke out his nostrils. “And, of course, we want to keep this cash cow alive, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying.”

Then, as luck would have it — bad luck — Jimmy Zee came waltzing into the squadroom through the back door; immediately the snitch caught a glimpse of Trupo, and hauled ass back out.

But Trupo had made him. “What’s that nigger doing here?”

“What, Jimmy? I don’t know. We had him in for questioning on some domestic beef a while back, and shook him loose. He comes in and lies to us now and then, and we pretend to believe him.”

Richie hoped that would pass muster.

Trupo was a lot of things, but a fool wasn’t one of them; his detective instincts were tweaked, and his eyes searched the squadroom, landing on the bulletin boards and the revised flow chart of drug criminals.

The SIU dick got up and wandered over to the bulletin boards. Richie followed. Trupo was taking a good long look at the table of criminal organization, and his eyes widened and his jaw dropped, when he saw Frank Lucas up top, in Public Enemy Number One position.

“Jesus,” Trupo said. “What the fuck’s this about? You’re not actually working to arrest Frank Lucas? What’s the matter with you, man? You fuckin’ crazy?”

“Yeah, matter of fact I am fuckin’ crazy,” Richie said pleasantly. “Haven’t you heard? Crazy enough to shoot somebody and make it look like an accident next time he comes over the bridge without my permission.”

Trupo’s shark eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Roberts?”

“I’m saying, Trupo,” Richie said, not at all pleasantly, “get the fuck out of New Jersey.”

Trupo glowered at Richie for a long five seconds, and Richie looked back coldly; then the bent detective turned and went out quickly, before an accident could happen.

In Frank Lucas’s penthouse, in the bedroom where he was recovering, a big television set had been brought in down at the foot of the bed, so Frank could be propped up behind pillows and relax in front of the tube.

But the tube wasn’t cooperating: chaotic scenes of activity in Saigon told a story Frank did not want to hear, namely that the U.S. was pulling out of Vietnam. His pipeline in and out of the Golden Triangle was about to get seriously fucked up.

Dominic Cattano was in the process of paying Frank the rare honor of a personal visit, looking solemnly urbane in a dark suit and striped tie from Savile Row, and expressing concern about Frank’s recovery.

“Are you sure you should be getting out of bed? It was just two days ago, Frank...”

Frank had changed into a fresh shirt and slacks and was currently sitting on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes. “Two days in bed is plenty. Two days in bed is too much.”

Cattano stayed near the doorway; he hadn’t been offered a seat and the only one available besides the bed was at Mrs. Lucas’s dressing table. “If there’s anything I can do, Frank...”

Frank, on his feet now, gave Cattano a rictus of a grin. “Anything you can do? Why, Dominic, you’ve already done it — you’ve guaranteed me peace of mind, doing business with you.”

“Now, Frank...”

Rage barely controlled, Frank gestured to himself. “Do I look like a man with peace of mind to you, Dominic? They shot at my wife. Would they shoot at your wife, Dominic? Who does that?”

Cattano gave a small shrug; his expression was bland. Frank’s anger began to bleed out: “Who was it, Dominic, which of your people? I’ll take his gun away and shove it up his ass.”

Lifting a peacekeeping palm, Cattano said, “I don’t know that it was any of them, Frank. And neither do you.”

Frank came over and stood a foot away from the mob boss. “Then maybe I’ll kill them all. Just to make a goddamn fuckin’ point.”

With a faint smile, Cattano said gently, “You want to know who it was? I can tell you.”

“Who?”

“It was a junkie. Or a business rival. Or dumb-ass kids trying to make a name. Or someone who you forgot to pay off, or slighted without realizing it. Or even one of my people, unhappy with me doing business with a moolie. Or most likely? Somebody you put out of business by being too successful.”

Frank, still agitated, said, “You can afford to be philosophical, Dominic. They didn’t shoot at your ass.”

“No. But my ass has been shot at, Frank, and more than once. You know why? Because I’m a success, and success has a lot of enemies. Your success itself is what took a shot at you.”

Frank frowned.

“How are you gonna stop that, Frank? How you gonna kill that — by being unsuccessful?” Cattano laughed harshly. “Be a successful somebody and have enemies; be an unsuccessful nobody and have friends. It’s the choice we make.”

Frank said nothing.

Neither did Cattano, who had said his piece.

Then Frank sighed, grinned, and said, “Can I get you something, Dominic? Glass of vino, maybe?” He took his guest’s arm. “Kind of you to stop by...”

In a pay phone at the Regency Hotel, with several rolls of quarters at the ready, Frank called Nate Atkins at the Soul Brothers Bar in Bangkok.

In the comfortable alcove beyond Frank’s phone booth, hotel guests were gathered around a TV watching helicopters pluck diplomats off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon.

Half a world away, Nate’s friendly baritone fought through the long-distance crackle to say, “That you, Frank? Hello?”

“I’m watching the news,” Frank said. “Where the hell’s everybody going?”

“Where else when a war’s over? Home.”

“Just like that? We’re going to leave the fuckin’ country to those evil communists ’cause some fuckin’ hippies don’t like it?”

“Frank — we been in Nam since ’61. Enough’s enough.”

“Well, I ain’t had close to enough! Before this motherfucking war ends, I want three thousand kilos in the air! I don’t care if you have to recruit the Flying Fucking Nun!”

Crackly silence.

“Okay,” Nate said. “When can I expect you?”

After several days of winding through the jungle, Frank and Nate and a small army of black servicemen and black thugs arrived with their pack mules at the opium farm where it had all begun.

And once again a khaki-clad Frank was seated in the bamboo hut with the hard-eyed Chinese general who had made Blue Magic possible. No one but Frank and the general was in the small room, seated at a table having tea — a table on which were stacks and stacks of banded bills, C-notes adding up to four million dollars.

“Wars end,” the general said, as philosophical as Dominic Cattano, “but opium goes on. These plants are hardy enough to outlive any war — they’ll still be here long after the American troops have gone. But after the last U.S. plane goes home, what will you do for transportation, Mr. Lucas? How will you import our product?”

“I’ll figure something out,” Frank said easily. “You’ll see me again.”

The general cast an openly affectionate gaze on his American business partner. At four million bucks, the old boy could afford to be friendly.

“It’s not in my best interests to say this, Frank,” the general said. “But getting out while you’re ahead, in such a business as this? Is not the same as quitting.”

“Have you been talking to my wife?”

The general chuckled. “No. And I take it you don’t think she’s right in her opinion?”

“I think she has a right to my opinion.”

The general smiled. “Very good. I like that, Frank. I will remember that.”

So the general and his American visitor drank tea, made their transaction, leaving the door to the future open.

Frank lost track of the number of mules they’d brought along — it took a lot of the animals to carry three thousand kilos of heroin in burlap bags.

The journey back was tedious and slow. Nate’s Thai thugs would go ahead and take sniper positions in the trees, then the mule train would inch along below; and the process would repeat, with the snipers ready to open fire on any hostile action. The humidity and heat, the bugs and snakes, were a constant; and Frank was weak, for Frank anyway, in the aftermath of the attempted hit. He was on painkillers and antibiotics and salt tablets; his eyes were burning and his shit was runny.

After two and a half days, the mule train winding down through the jungle, Frank began to feel better — he began to feel, in fact, that they had it made.

That was when a barrage of gunfire from the trees up ahead rained down on them; their own snipers had not yet taken their new positions, so Frank’s little army was vulnerable, and two of the Thais went down immediately, leaving bloody mist behind, everybody else diving for cover, to shouts of “Vietcong!”

As his people returned fire, Frank dropped from his mule and, with the beast between him and the attackers, shot his pistol up into the trees. Bullet-severed fronds rained down, but no bodies fell, and the onslaught continued, anonymous gunfire chewing up jungle and men.

Frank noticed the mules were taking no hits.

Nate was pinned down with the tethered train of the beasts.

“Give them half!” Frank yelled.

Nate couldn’t make it out at first, squinting at Frank, shaking his head as slugs chewed up bark and shredded foliage.

“Cut half of ’em loose! The mules!”

Nate nodded, and got out his big sharp knife and cut the mule-train tether midway, then slapped at the nearest animal’s ass, and the freed mules went bounding into a wall of trees.

With this the shooting subsided, then stopped altogether, as smoke rose like fog around half a dozen dead Thais and Americans, flung to the jungle floor to feed the earth with their blood.

This deadly high tariff paid, the remaining men and mules trudged on to what passed for civilization in this part of the world.

At the Soul Brothers Bar, the American entertainers were gone, just as were most of the American patrons. On stage a little Thai teenager lamely tried to sing Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay.” Pitiful and comic.

Frank, in a sportshirt and white slacks, sat at a table with a drink and a phone. He sipped the former and talked into the latter.

“Did you get that, Huey?” he asked. “Newark. Short Term Parking Lot Three.”

“When do you need it?” his brother’s voice asked. “Today?”

“Tomorrow will be fine.”

“Short Term Lot Three. This the Mustang we’re talking about?”

“No. The Camaro.”

“Camaro. What’s the plate number?”

“KA 760. You get that?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“You sure?”

“I got it, Frank!.. KA 760.”

Back in that other jungle called Harlem, Huey — who briefly before had been making out with a girl who wasn’t his wife in the backseat of his car — had been parked near the pay phone on the corner, waiting for his brother’s call.

It was nighttime and Huey’s driver and cousin Jimmy Zee was standing on the sidewalk, looking like he was watching hoochie women strut by when actually he was picking up on every word of Huey’s end of the conversation, watching Huey jot down the info on an old cocktail napkin.

Every jungle had its surprises.