Under Siege

CHAPTER NINE

Bernie, this is Jefferson Brody. I got it! The widow signed.”

“Glad to hear it, Tee.”

“She was reluctant but—”

“Yeah. Ya did good. I thought you would. That’s what I told the guys. Tee screwed the pooch but he’ll make it good. Wait and see.”

“I appreciate—”

“Send me the papers. I’ll be talking to you in a few days.”

“Bernie, have you found that woman? I’d—”

“Working on that, Tee. I’ll be in touch.”

The phone went dead on T. Jefferson Brody. He cradled the receiver and sat staring at the dark cherry paneling on his office walls. He had had to pay Mrs. Lincoln $450,000 for the check-cashing business, but now didn’t seem to be the time to lay that on Bernie. Although Bernie was a good client, he had his rough edges.

The black bitch with the big tits who had conned him and robbed him — she was going to pay. T. Jefferson Brody intended to teach her a lesson she would never forget. And that little weasel ambulance chaser who helped her. He rubbed his hands together as he contemplated his revenge.

But that would have to wait.

He buzzed his secretary on the intercom. “Hilda, get me Senator Cherry’s office, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Brody.”

Thanos Liarakos completed the paperwork at the hospital’s administration office, then took the suitcase to his wife’s room on the third floor and helped her select an outfit from it. She made only one or two swipes at her hair with a comb and didn’t bother with makeup or lipstick, although they were in the case. Liarakos said nothing. She was dressed and nervously pacing the room when a nurse arrived with a wheelchair for the grand exit.

“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked, finally, when they were in the car.

As if she didn’t know. Liarakos muttered, “To the airport.”

“You mean we’re not even going by the house so I can say good-bye to the children?”

“Oh, can it, Elizabeth! You talked to them this morning on the telephone and they’re both in school right now.”

“Well, I just wanted to see my home again for a few minutes. And I need some other outfits.”

“I packed exactly the outfits you told me to pack.”

“I forgot a few.”

“You’re going to the clinic now. Right fucking now!”

“You are a bastard.”

He pulled over to the curb. The driver behind honked and gestured as he went by. Liarakos paid no attention.

“You can get out here or you can go to the clinic. Your choice.”

“I don’t have any money.”

He put the transmission in park and stared out the window.

“Oh, Thanos, you know how much I love you. You know how much I love the children. I’ll leave the stuff alone. I promise! Tell you what, darling. Let’s go home and put on some soft music and I’ll put on that gorgeous negligée you got me for my birthday. I’ll show you just how much I love you.” She caressed his arm, then his hair. “Darling, it’ll be just like it was when we were first married, on those Sunday mornings when there were just the two of us. Oh, Than—”

“You don’t know what this costs me, Elizabeth. You really don’t.”

“Darling, I—”

“You don’t have any idea!” He pushed her hands away.

“You don’t love me,” she snarled, “You’re just thinking of your precious law practice, what your boss might think. Well, by God, I—”

Liarakos reached across her and opened the passenger door.

“Out.”

She began crying.

He sat watching the traffic flow by, his face averted, his right hand on the wheel and his right shoulder up.

She was still sobbing uncontrollably when a police cruiser pulled up alongside. The officer twirled his finger. Liarakos rolled down his window. “Move it, Mac.”

He pulled the lever down into drive and got the car into motion. Beside him Elizabeth blew her nose on tissues and continued to sob.

Traffic on the expressway to Dulles rolled along at slightly illegal speeds all the way to the airport. Liarakos parked and got the suitcase out of the trunk. He came around the car and opened the door for Elizabeth. She made a production out of blowing her nose one last time and stuffing the tissue paper into the trash bag hanging from the cigarette lighter.

He took her arm and guided her toward the terminal.

“I’ve got five dollars and seventy-two cents in my purse.”

“You don’t need money at the clinic.”

“But what if I want to get my hair done somewhere else? And I may need to take a taxi to the clinic.”

“They’ll meet you at the airport. They have all the other times. Remember?”

“But Thanos, what if they don’t? I’ll be stranded. Give me a hundred to cover incidentals.”

“Elizabeth, for Christ’s sake! You’re just making it harder on both of us.”

“You have no idea how difficult this is for me. That’s the problem. You only think of yourself. If you love me, think about me! I’m your wife, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

He gave the ticket to the agent and checked the bag. “Window seat, please.”

“Just Mrs. Liarakos?”

“Yes.”

The agent gave them the gate number. “Boarding in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks.”

They waited near the gate. Liarakos stood by the windows where he could see the shuttle buses going back and forth to the airplanes. Elizabeth walked away and found a seat by herself.

He watched her reflection in the glass. Every movement she made was like something from an old memory that you remember with pain. In the past when she had a moment she would remove her compact from her purse and check her reflection, touch up her hair, see that her eye shadow and lipstick were just so. Not today. She just sat there with her purse in her lap, her hands resting upon it, while she idly scanned people coming and going and sitting and reading.

When they called the plane Liarakos escorted her to the gate agent and handed him the ticket. He leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “Get well.”

She glanced at him, her face neutral, then went through the door into the shuttle bus.

He went back to the glass and watched her through the bus windows. She didn’t look back at him. She sat staring straight ahead. She was still sitting like that when the passenger door closed and the bus pulled away.

That evening Captain Jake Grafton informed his wife that Lieutenant Toad Tarkington was getting orders to the staff of the Joint Chiefs, just as he desired.

“That’s very nice,” Callie told Jake. “Did you have to twist many arms to make it happen?”

“A couple.”

“Does Toad know yet?”

“Not yet. I think they’ll tell him in a day or two.”

“You’ll never guess who stopped me after class today to chat.”

Jake Grafton made an uninterested noise, then decided to humor her and take a stab at it. “That commie professor, ol’ what’s-his-name.”

“No. It was that Washington Post reporter, Jack Yocke. He thanked me for the party and …”

Jake went back to today’s newspaper think-piece on Soviet internal politics. For generations the forces at work inside the Communist Party had been Soviet state secrets and the subject of classified intelligence summaries that circulated inside the U.S. military. Those summaries had been mere guesses made by analysts based on poor, fragmentary information. Now the Soviets were baring all with an abandon that would make even Donald Trump blush.

As he mused on this curious miracle, Jake Grafton became aware of a questioning tone in his wife’s voice, which had risen in pitch. “Say again, dear?”

“I said, Jack suggested you and he have breakfast some morning. Would you like to do that?”

“No.”

The captain scanned the column to find his place.

“Well, why not?”

He lowered the paper and scrutinized his wife, who was poised with a ladle in one hand, looking at him with one eyebrow raised aloft. He had never been able to figure out how she got one eyebrow up but not the other. He had tried it a few times in the privacy of the bathroom with no success.

“We are not friends or social acquaintances. We haven’t said two dozen words to each other. And I have no desire to know him better.”

“Jack is a brilliant, socially concerned journalist whom you should take the trouble to get to know. He’s written an excellent book that you would enjoy and find informative: The Politics of Poverty.”

“He wants to pump me on what’s going on inside the Pentagon. And there’s absolutely nothing I can tell him. It’d be a waste of time for both of us.”

“Jake …”

“Callie, I don’t like the guy. I’m not about to waste an hour listening to him try to pump me. No.”

She sighed and went back to stirring the chili. Jake rustled the newspaper and raised it ostentatiously.

“I’ve been reading his book,” she said, undaunted. “He gave me a copy.”

“I saw it on the nightstand.”

“It’s excellent. Well written, lots of insights that—”

“If I ever become CNO and get an overpowering itch to leak something to the newspapers, Jack Yocke will be the first guy I call. I promise.”

Callie changed the subject. Her husband grunted once or twice, then she abandoned conversation. Jake didn’t notice. He was engrossed in an account of Fidel Castro’s latest speech, in which the dictator announced that the rice and meat ration of the Cuban people had been cut in half. Again. To two ounces of meat and a pound of rice per week. In addition, Cuba would henceforth purchase its oil from Mexico, not the Soviet Union, and it would cost more, a lot more. This meant more sacrifices, which Castro was confident the Cuban people would take in stride. The Cuban comrades had been betrayed by their Soviet brothers in socialism, but viva la Revolución!

The socially concerned journalist of whom Callie spoke was thinking impure thoughts. He had picked up Tish Samuels at the apartment that she shared with a mousy girlfriend and they had gone to a postwedding party at the home of a fellow reporter who had eloped several weeks ago with an oral surgeon. Earlier in the evening Yocke had been miserable company, but now, several drinks and two hours later, he was feeling fairly chipper and more sociable. Perhaps it was the cheerful bonhomie of his colleagues, who were ribbing the newlyweds unmercifully. Whatever, in spite of himself Jack Yocke had absorbed some of the glow.

Just now he stood half listening to one of the sports columnists expound on the coming NFL playoffs while he watched Tish Samuels on the other side of the room. She had glanced this way several times and was aware of his scrutiny.

The next time she looked, he gave her a wide grin. She returned it. He raised his glass at her and took a sip. She gestured with her glass in reply and nodded.

Yes indeed, in spite of everything, life goes stumbling on. And Jack Yocke did like life.

So he sipped his drink and listened to the sportswriter and assessed Tish’s womanly charms as she moved along talking to everyone. She was a tall woman, but she certainly had it in all the right places. Jack Yocke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he waited for her to turn his way again.

The sportswriter rambled on. The most interesting events in the world were happening in the NFL. This was the Redskins’ year. Hallelujah!

Tish turned. She smiled broadly and blew him a kiss. Jack Yocke grinned foolishly, exposing every tooth in his head.

An hour later in the car, she hummed softly while he kissed her. He kissed her again and she returned it with a fervor that he found most pleasant.

Finally, reluctantly, he inserted the key in the ignition and brought the engine to life. “Where to?” he asked.

“Your place?”

“Got a roommate too. He’s home tonight.”

“The bookstore.”

He put the car in motion. In the empty parking lot in front of the strip shopping center, he parked and sat staring at the blank windows.

“Come on,” Tish said, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s.”

Jack Yocke dug in the glove box and pulled out something red and frilly. “Would you wear these?” he asked hesitantly.

There were two of them. She held the soft cloth up so the light caught it. “What are these? Garters?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged and grinned hopefully.

His grin was sort of cute, in a pathetic sort of way, Tish decided. “A little kink, eh?”

“Well, they’re just—”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I just thought …”

“Garters.” She sighed. “Jesus, I haven’t worn garters since the senior prom.” She took a good look at his face. “Oh, all right, you pervert.”

She fumbled for the seat belt release. He reached down to help. She pushed his hands away. “I’m not going to put them on here in the car, for Christ’s sake!”

“I—”

“Oh, shut up! Garters!”

Really, Tish thought as she walked toward the door of the bookstore, feeling in her purse for her keys. Is this my fate at thirty-one? Sex with oversized adolescent boys whose ideas of erotica came straight from a whorehouse?

“Are there no men left?” she murmured.

Jack Yocke missed that comment. He was furtively scanning the parking lot.

If he weren’t so good-looking and so thoroughly nice …

She opened the door and held it for him, then relocked it. The only light in the store was that coming through the display windows from the big lights in the parking area. She walked by the light switches without touching them and led the way between the book racks toward the little office by the back door. Behind her she heard Yocke stumble over something.

The second time he stumbled she heard books fall. She took his hand and led him around the racks to the office. Yocke helped her with her coat. The scruffy couch held a half dozen cartons of books, which they set on the floor.

As they undressed in the darkness, she couldn’t resist. “Why garters?”

“You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Well—”

He touched her bare skin and all her doubts dissolved.

Afterward, with him on top and panting, she said, “We forgot the garters.”

He caressed her thighs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re a pretty good lover, y’know. For a pervert.”

He kissed her.

“Really, be honest about the garters. I want to know.”

“You mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve found that women sometimes change their minds. Yet if I give them something innocuous to think about, it takes their minds off sex and I get laid more often.”

“Oooh … youuu …”

“Now admit it, you were so busy thinking about the garters that you forgot to have second thoughts. Isn’t that so?”

Tish bucked once and pushed and he flopped off onto the floor with a thud. She closed the office door and flipped on the lights. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust. Yocke was on his back amid the boxes, looking a little dazed.

She found the garters and pulled them on. Then she stood beside him on one leg and used the other foot to rub his chest and stomach.

“Do you like?”

“Gawd almighty,” Jack Yocke said.

Evansville, Indiana, patrolman Harrison Ronald Ford, alias Sammy Z, watched the fat white man stroll down the sidewalk looking neither left nor right. Watching him, you would have thought he owned the sidewalk and all the houses and was out collecting rent. Everything about him said he was the man.

Harrison Ronald shifted his buttocks on the cold concrete stoop where he was perched and watched the man check house numbers. When he arrived in the dim glow of the nearby streetlight, he glanced at Ford, then started up the steps on which Ford was sitting.

“Going somewhere, Fatty?”

“Got an appointment.”

“Great. I’ll bet you got a name too.”

“Tony Anselmo.”

“Why don’t you wait down there on the sidewalk and I’ll check inside. Okay?”

As Anselmo retreated to the sidewalk, Harrison Ronald checked the street again. No traffic. No one in the parked cars. No strollers or tourists other than the guards posted on each of the corners. Although the guards weren’t armed, each of them was within ten feet of a concealed Uzi. Except for the guards, this appeared to be a typical lower-middle-class black neighborhood. No crack was sold here.

Everything appeared normal to Ford’s practiced eyes.

Harrison rapped on the door and disappeared through it when it opened.

Inside the hallway sat another guard with an Uzi on his lap. He nodded as Harrison walked by. The second man locked and bolted the door behind him.

Freeman McNally was in the kitchen eating cake, drinking milk, and reading a newspaper. He was twenty pounds or so overweight and had a hairline in full retreat. Still, encased within the fat was muscle. When he moved he was light on his feet. As Ford entered he looked up from the paper.

“Guy named Tony Anselmo says he has an appointment.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Fat honkey, about fifty or so. Prosperous.”

“Let him in. After you frisk him, go on back out front.”

“Sure, Freeman.”

Out on the sidewalk, Ford said, “They heard of you. Go on in.” He followed Anselmo up the stairs.

Inside, the guard with the Uzi centered it on Anselmo’s ample middle. “Against the wall and spread ’em.”

Ford quickly patted him down, checked his belt front and back, his crotch, and his ankles. “You do that like a cop,” Anselmo rumbled.

“He’s clean,” Ford told the guard, then went back out onto the stoop and resumed his seat.

Harrison Ronald had heard of Fat Tony Anselmo. Sitting on the stoop smoking a cigarette and listening to the noises of the city at night, he tried to recall what he had read in the police intelligence briefing books. Anselmo was a soldier for a New York crime family, the Zubin Costello outfit. Bernie Shapiro was one of the three or four key lieutenants, and Anselmo was supposed to work for him. Suspected of a dozen or so hits in his younger days, Tony Anselmo had once plea-bargained a murder charge down to carrying a concealed weapon and was back on the street after six months in the can. That was the only time he had ever been in jail.

It would have been nice, Ford mused, if Freeman had invited him to remain. Sooner or later, if he lived long enough, but not yet.

As he sat on the stoop smoking, Ford speculated on whether Anselmo had asked for this meeting or Freeman had. And he formed various tentative hypotheses about the business being discussed. Certainly not the purchase of raw product: Freeman got all he could handle from the West Coast.

Money, Ford decided. They were probably doing a deal to wash or invest money. Ford assumed the Costello family had a lot of experience in both activities.

Or perhaps bribery of public officials. That was certainly a possibility.

When the glowing tip of the cigarette reached the filter, Ford lit another one from the stub. He automatically checked the street-corner guards yet again, then watched the smoke swirl on the gentle breeze.

Cold. Tonight was going to be cold. Harrison Ronald turned up the collar of his leather jacket and glanced at his watch.

“Why a bookstore?” Jack Yocke asked.

He and Tish were lying on the couch in the bookstore office in the darkness with Yocke’s coat thrown over them. She was still wearing the garters.

“It sounds silly now,” she said. “But I had to make a living at something, and I like books, so I drove around until I found a spot without a bookstore for two miles in any direction, and I rented that spot.”

“Sensible approach.”

“I thought I was very conservative. I love books. I was so certain the store would be a surefire hit. Ha! I’m barely eating. Still, two years in the business and I’m current on all my bills. That’s something.”

“Indeed it is. A lot of people can’t say that.”

“Now tell me, why a newspaper?”

“Oh, amazingly enough, in spite of the hours, in spite of the deadlines and the editors, I thought I’d like it. Talk about optimism! Sometimes I feel like a mortician. Or a minister. All the shattered lives. I spend my days galloping from tragedy to tragedy. ‘Who what when where why, ma’am, and can you spell the perpetrator’s name one more time?’ I see as much blood as an ambulance driver. I ask the kinds of questions the morticians and chaplains don’t have to ask. ‘Why do you think your husband stabbed you, Ms. Butcher?’ ‘What did the gunman say before he shot you, Mr. Target?’ ‘After he raped, mutilated, and murdered her, why do you keep insisting he’s such a good boy, Mrs. Spock?’ ”

“It must be challenging.”

“It would be,” Jack Yocke agreed, “if you had enough time to do it right, to write it right. You never do. You look at the blood — when you can get to the scene before they cart out the bodies — telephone everyone you can think of, then write six hundred words for the first edition which the editor chops in half or doesn’t like at all. Then wait, wait, check, check. Up one blind alley after another. Finally you get a good story, only to get buried under a human wave attack of other reporters as some editor finally decides that there really is a good story here on Yocke’s supposed beat but Yocke can’t cover it all by himself.”

“So why do you do it?”

“I don’t know.” He really didn’t. At night he went home to his apartment either completely drained or completely frustrated. The stories, when he got some, were never good enough. The black ink on the newsprint never captured the insanity, the fear, the terror, the grief, the desperation of the people who live the lives that make police news. The waste, the future smeared all over the floor — he could never get that into the stories.

“People just read the paper while they drink their morning coffee,” he told her, “then throw it away. Or wrap the garbage in it. Or use it to line the cat box. Then, hi-ho, off to work or aerobics class or luncheon at the club.”

“What else could you do?”

“I’ve never been able to think of anything. And this police beat can’t last forever.”

She got up off the couch and turned on the light. She took off the garters as he watched and handed them to him. Then she began putting on her clothes.

“Get dressed and run me home. I have to get a little sleep, then be down here scrubbed and cheerful to open this place at nine. That’s when the little old ladies like to come in to see if we have any new ‘spicy’ books.”

“ ‘Spicy’?”

“Bodice rippers. Soft-core porn. That’s what pays the rent around here.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were. I sold three Amy Tans last year and just one Fay Weldon. It’s enough to make you cry.”

“Maybe you need a better location.”

“What I need is to write a sizzling world-class fuck book, one so hot it’ll melt an old maid’s panties.” She eyed him as she buttoned her blouse. “That’s what I’m scribbling on. You want to see it?”

“Sure.”

Tish opened the desk drawer and pulled it out. She had about a hundred pages of manuscript that she had whacked out on the old typewriter on the corner of the desk. He flipped through the pages, scanning.

“The rule is no four-letter words. His cock is always his love member.”

“Looks fine to me,” Yocke said, and handed it back. He bent down to retrieve his trousers.

When he straightened up she was reading carefully. After a moment she tossed the pile of paper back in the drawer. “It’s shit, I know, but that’s what sells. And goddamn, if shit sells, that’s what I’m going to write.”

Twenty minutes later, in front of her apartment building, she said, “Don’t get out. I can make it to the door.”

He bussed her on the cheek.

“Are you going to call me again, or was this just a one-night stand?”

“I’ll call you.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

After he drove away he felt grubby. Oh well, what’s one more lie in a world full of them.

Harrison Ronald — Sammy Z — got off work at five a.m. One of his colleagues dropped him at the apartment house he called home. He went upstairs and made a pot of coffee. Then, at the kitchen table, he tackled the crossword puzzle in the early edition of the Post.

After Tony Anselmo left Freeman, Sammy Z and one of the other lieutenants were sent to a crack lab in a sleazy motel on New York Avenue. There they picked up a bundle, watched the chemists at work, and flirted with a saucy nineteen-year-old with strawberry-sized nipples — and an aversion to brassieres — while they waited for their escort car to arrive. When it did and the three gunmen it contained had leered over the upthrust nipples, the group set out to deliver the crack to street rings at two locations. There the distributors had turned over the night’s receipts, about sixty grand by the looks of it. And Freeman was currently selling at eleven locations in the metro area!

Sammy Z drove the money to Freeman’s brother in a little house he was using for three or four nights. The elder McNally was the treasurer and accountant and payroll man. His office changed regularly and randomly. Freeman always knew, and he gave Sammy the location as he walked out the door.

Delivering dope or money was tricky. The lieutenant rode in the backseat of the car with the Uzi loaded and ready on his lap. The guard car behind always contained two or three men also armed with Uzis and pistols. The lead driver kept the two-car motorcade well within the speed limit, obeyed all the traffic laws, and never sped up to make it through a yellow light. The routes were agreed on in advance and snaked through the city without pattern. The same vehicle was never used two nights in a row.

The whole operation reminded Harrison Ronald of those old black-and-white Untouchables TV shows, with Al Capone and Frank Nitty delivering beer in Chicago and all the hoods packing Thompson submachine guns. Big guns and big bucks. White hoods and white cops — well, maybe things are a little different today.

The sky was graying nicely through the dirty kitchen window when Harrison Ronald finished the crossword puzzle and his third cup of coffee simultaneously. He turned off the coffeepot, got a conservative cloth coat out of the closet, and locked the door behind him.

Right now he was driving a fifteen-year-old, rusted-out Chrysler that belonged to Freeman McNally. It had once been royal blue. Now it was just dirty and dark. The seats were trashed. Damage to the left front fender and hood had been repaired with a sledgehammer by an ignorant enthusiast. The windshield was chipped and cracked. The only feature that might capture the eye of a careful observer was the new Michelin radials, mounted backward to hide the manufacturer’s name on the sidewalls. All in all, the car looked like a typical D.C. heap.

As an observer might suspect, the Chrysler was difficult to start — damn near impossible on cold mornings. This particular December morning Harrison Ronald ground and ground with the starter while he played with the manual choke.

Eventually the engine fired. It strangled when he pushed the choke off too soon. With a sigh he engaged the starter again. Finally, with coaxing, the engine rumbled to life and gave signs of sustained combustion.

Still, she idled rough and spewed a gray haze that was visible in the rear-view mirror. That, however, was because the original six-cylinder mill had been replaced with a huge old V-8 hemi that had been breathed upon by someone who knew exactly what he was about. Under the crinkled hood was a work of art, complete with racing cams, valves, and pistons, hogged-out valve ports, a high-capacity fuel pump, and a four-barrel carb. To handle the extra power the go-fast man had added a four-speed transmission and beefed up the suspension and brakes. This car could lay rubber for two hundred feet.

When the engine had warmed and the idle smoothed somewhat, Harrison Ronald slipped the clutch to get out of the parking place.

He couldn’t resist: he goosed it once on the street and the tires howled and smoked. With a little paint and bodywork, he told himself, this would be a nice car.

He checked his rearview mirrors constantly and darted through lights as they turned red. Finally satisfied that no one was following, he headed for the beltway. Rush-hour traffic was still flowing into the city, so the trip outbound was unimpeded. Once on the beltway, he followed the signs for I-95 south, toward Richmond.

The morning was gray and windy. The rain of a few days ago had soaked into the thirsty earth and settled the dust. Still, as dry as the fall had been, the earth needed more.

He exited the interstate at Fredericksburg. Five minutes later he drove past the office of a motel and went around to the back side, which faced a hill, and parked.

Harrison Ronald stood in the nearly empty lot and stretched. He should have been in bed two hours ago. Get a good job, his grandmother had said, something regular, with a future.

He knocked on the door of room 212.

“Just a minute.”

The door opened. “Come on in.”

The white man was tall and lean, with a prominent Adam’s apple and a nose to match. He grinned and shook Ford’s hand. His name was Thomas F. Hooper. Special Agent Hooper was in charge of the FBI’s drug enforcement division. Hooper had recruited Ford from the Evansville police department. A little temporary undercover work, he said, that will do wonders for your police career. Both lies, he now cheerfully acknowledged.

“Want some breakfast?”

“I could eat something.”

“Great. Freddy’s over at McDonald’s getting a bagful. He’ll be back in a bit.”

Ford fell into a chair and stretched out full-length.

“So how’s it going?”

“Freeman’s a busy fellow. Making money like he owned the mint.”

Hooper got a cassette recorder from his leather valise and plugged it into the socket under the desk. He dictated his name and the date and Ford’s name, then played it back to make sure it was working.

Harrison Ronald watched this operation with heavy eyelids.

“You’re tired.”

“Amen.”

“Coffee will perk you up. You want to start now?”

“Okay.”

It had been a week since Ford had talked to Hooper. So Ford covered the past week minute by minute — names, descriptions, addresses, drug quantities, estimated amounts of money, everything Ford could recall. He had taken no notes, written nothing down: that would have been too dangerous. Still, after eight months, he knew exactly what Hooper and the Justice Department wanted, so it flowed forth without prompting.

Freddy, Hooper’s assistant, came in ten minutes after they started. Ford kept on talking as the men shared coffee and breakfast biscuits stuffed with eggs, cheese, and sausage.

Ford talked for almost an hour. When he finished Hooper had questions, lots of them. That went on for another hour with only two short pauses to change cassettes. When they were through Hooper knew what Ford had observed this past week almost as well as Ford did.

Finally Hooper said, “So what do you think?”

Harrison Ronald held out his coffee cup for a refill, which Freddy provided from a thermos. “I think there’s too much crack in the city. They can’t move the stuff fast enough. And I think Freeman is getting, or is about to get, a lot of pressure from the Costello mob to wash his money with them, probably at a higher cost. Somebody removed Walter Harrington and Second Potomac from the game. Freeman and his fellow dealers got some problems.”

“What do you think Freeman’ll do?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get a hint. I do know this: the guy is sharp as a razor. He didn’t get where he is by letting people cut themselves in on his action, by taking less and liking it. I think Freeman might fight back. He’s definitely the man for it.”

Freddy disagreed. He was in his late forties, also white, and had chased dopers since he joined the FBI. “I think Freeman and the others will cut back on the amount of coke they’re bringing in. They have to do that or expand the market by fighting each other. They all have a real good thing here and they’ve made a lot of money. A lot of money. They won’t be able to retire and live the good life if they get into heavy ordnance.”

“There’s no love lost between the big hitters,” Harrison Ronald objected.

“Business is business and money is money,” Freddy said.

“What do you guys want me to do if the shooting starts?”

“Run like hell,” Hooper muttered.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t kill any civilians,” Freddy added.

“Cut and run?”

“Yep,” said Hooper. “You’re no good to anybody if you’re dead.”

“Do you guys have enough?”

“We got enough to lock up Freeman for thirty years, and most of the people he works for.”

“And the cops and politicians on the take?”

Hooper turned off the recorder and removed the cassette. He marked it with a pen from his shirt pocket.

“And the cops and politicians?” Ford prompted.

“You got a lot. More than we hoped for. But if someone puts you in the cemetery we got nothing. Oh, we know a ton, but we won’t have a witness to get it into evidence.”

“I don’t think I’ll get into the inner circle anytime soon. Freeman’s got four lieutenants, and two of them are his brothers. They’re all millionaires many times over and each of them would go to the grave for Freeman McNally.”

“Maybe that can be arranged,” Freddy said.

“What d’ya mean by that?”

“Nothing to worry about. Gimme some particulars on each one.” Freddy pulled out a pencil and a pocket notebook.

“Now wait just a fucking minute! We’re cops. I’m not going to ice any of these guys, except in self-defense.”

“We’re not asking you to kill anybody and we’re sure as hell not going to. Jesus! This isn’t Argentina! But maybe we can get one of these guys off the street for a while and leave a vacancy at the trough for you.”

The undercover officer talked for ten minutes. He told them everything he knew; the names of the wives, the mistresses, the kids, what they ate, what they laughed at, how they liked their liquor, and how often they used their own products.

In the silence that followed his recitation, Hooper asked, “How’s that car running?”

“Real sweet.” Ford smiled faintly. “You gotta go for a ride sometime. It’s the hottest thing I ever sat in.”

“Stay alive, Harrison. Please.”

“I’ll do my best.” Harrison Ronald’s smile broadened into a grin. “That’s a promise.”

“You can quit anytime, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. We’ve got a lot more than we ever thought we’d get. If you want to go back to Evansville, just say so and you’ll be on your way today.”

“I’ll stick a while longer. I confess, I’m curious about Tony Anselmo and how he fits in.”

“Curiosity has killed a lot of cops.”

“I know that.”

On the way back to Washington the thought occurred to him, not for the first time, that he should have stayed in the Marines. At the age of twenty, after two years of college, he had joined the Corps. He had done a four-year hitch, the last two on Okinawa where he had been an instructor in unarmed combat. He had grown to love the Corps. But his girl was in Indiana and she wouldn’t leave. So he took his discharge and went home and took the test for the police while he was trying to talk her into marrying him.

He got accepted by the police the afternoon before she ditched him. The oldest story in the world. She had dated other men while he was gone. He was a great guy but she wasn’t in love. She hoped they’d always be friends.

He had learned a lot in the Corps, things that would keep him alive now, like managing stress and self-confidence. And unarmed combat. As a rule street gangs didn’t contain experts at fighting with their hands. Oh, occasionally you ran into a karate guy who thought he was pretty tough. But while he was getting ready to give you one of those lethal kicks, you went for him in an aggressive, brutally violent way and broke his leg, then crushed his windpipe. And these Uzi toters never practiced with their weapons. Murder was their game, not combat.

He thought about murder for a while. His murder.

When this was over, he might go back to the Corps. Why not?