Black Water Transit (4 page)

Earl made a gesture with his huge right hand, moved a lot of air with it, moved it too close to Jack’s face. Jack held his temper.

“Pennies. An insult. I’ve been contacted by a collector in Mexico, a retired Mexican cavalry officer. An old friend of the family. We’ve talked it over, and I know he’d value it, he’d ensure its intact survival for another hundred years. The problem is getting the collection to the buyer. It’s rather large and needs to be shipped with care, by a professional.”

“Large shipments of weapons must be reported to the ATF, even in-state. I keep them informed because they demand it. You do it or I do it. I won’t ship weapons across the street without doing the paperwork. Mr. Pike, I sympathize. I don’t like the nanny state any better than you do. But the law is clear. I break it, I get caught,
I lose my license, lose my business, maybe go to jail. Can’t do it. Sorry.”

Pike didn’t seem fazed.

“I’ve done some research on the issue. Collections of historical pieces do not need to be completely itemized for the ATF. You can declare key elements of the collection and refer to other items as attachments and accessories. As long as the basic declaration is accurate in principle, the ATF will never question it. They’re understaffed, anyway—they have less than two thousand agents nationwide, and few of them are field agents. Most of those have been directed to monitor gun shows and do random inspections on licensed dealers. The ATF management is busy supporting class-action suits against the gun manufacturers or helping to rape the cigarette companies. You could very accurately say that the attention of the ATF is likely to be elsewhere. And I am prepared to pay whatever is required to move this collection safely. Whatever.”

Jack took a long calm look at the man’s face. Pike did not flinch or break eye contact.

“What are we talking about here, Mr. Pike?”

“Business. Simply business. You have a service for which I am prepared to pay well. I would expect to pay an administrative fee. Well beyond the standard rates. You understand?”

Jack looked away from the man, scanned the parking lot. They were in the open, under a broad, arched wooden shelter in front of the Frontenac. The parking lot was full of cars. It was a bright clear day. Any one of those cars could be crammed with federal agents with minicams, directional mikes. Mr. Pike here could have more wiring in his underbra than Diane Sawyer. Jack felt his heartbeat increasing. This might be a federal sting. Or not.

“Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else?”

Earl’s face grew redder, and his eyebrows knotted across his forehead. He squinted out at the sun-bleached lot.

“Yes. Perhaps we should.”

The place on Gansevoort was lit like an Anne Rice novel, but smelled worse. It was a little after five, but it was already packed. By the time Casey and Levon had extracted Tony LoGascio from the place, Two-Pack was bailing out of the neighborhood at a dead run.

They tossed Tony LoGascio into the back of the unit and threw him a blanket, since all he was wearing was a kind of black latex jockstrap and a pair of floppy rubber leggings tied to a belt around his waist. His torso was thin but well muscled, his skin milky white and covered with spidery veins. His hair was long and fine as black silk. He came across as a homeless ferret with a skin disorder.

“So what’s this bullshit about a sodomy charge?” he says, taking a major attitude right off the mark.

“In a minute,” says Casey. “While we’re here, what can you tell us about a snatch, happened up in Harlem today?”

He made the kind of face you make when you’re giving something very serious and intense thought. He shook his head, eyes very wide. The Wagner Houses thing? Oh goodness. He heard all about it on the radio. Terrible thing. Times we live in. Man, I really wish I could help, Officers. I mean, I feel for the little kid, you know?

Casey knew there was nothing in the department press releases about the victim’s age. She let Levon deal with it.

Levon moved in the seat and flexed his shoulders. Heavy muscles jumped and rippled under his shirt.

“Let me put the question to you again another way,” said Levon in a soft voice. “Where were you and what were you doing at the time this kidnap occurred in Harlem?”

They both watched as a cartoon “thinks” balloon appeared in the air over the guy’s head.

“Golly. Let me see. Yes. I was in Flatbush. Playing soccer with some friends. In Prospect Park.”

“You can prove this?”

“Sure. All afternoon. Let me make a call—”

“We’ll do that for you. So maybe you can explain why a witness at the scene gave a description of one of the kidnappers and the description matches you perfectly?”

“Easy. He’s wrong.”

“How do you know the witness was a male?”

“I … I guessed. It’s always gonna be fifty-fifty.”

They show him the witness sketch. It’s obviously Tony LoGascio. He stares at it for a while—they can both hear the gears in his skull grinding like a rusted gate—and then he shrugs.

“So you got a problem coming in and doing a lineup?”

“A lineup? For this witness?”

“No. A lineup for the victim.”

“No way. Anyway, she can’t.”

“And why can’t she?”

“The victim? I mean, well, she’d be all shook up there, not be able to make a good ID. And a little black kid, right? Hurt, like.”

“How would you know that? We didn’t release her
age. We never said she was black. Maybe she wasn’t even a she, right?”

“Well, I just figured, you know, a sex thing. A kidnapping? That would probably be a sex thing. Right? A little girl. Anyway, it said on the news there that the vic was a nig—a black child, so, you know, I guess I just assumed that was what you were saying. And it’s Harlem. So she’s a little black kid, like.”

“Of course,” says Casey. “Everybody in Harlem is black, like. We all know that. Why do you think the victim couldn’t, like, ID you?”

“I didn’t say that. I mean, I did, but that’s because it wasn’t me.”

Casey nodded. Raised a finger of caution and tapped her nose.

“Because she can, Tony. They picked her up a while ago. She’s in rough shape, but she can do a lineup. She wants to do one real bad.”

“Yeah? She can, hah? So, that’s … that’s good, okay? She’s okay, huh? That’s gotta be one tough little girl, hah? Assuming she is a little girl, I mean. No offense, right? But that’s … that’s good, hah?”

“Yeah. Okay, so you have no objection to the lineup, then? Be a good citizen, help us eliminate you as a suspect?”

“Oh yeah, and what if she does ID me as the guy? Banged up like that, what she’s been through, maybe her head’s all fucked up. She makes me anyway. Then I’m screwed.”

“So you think she
might
ID you?”

“Well, you already said I looked like the composite, I mean.”

“So you won’t do the lineup, just to help out?”

“No. No way. Anyway, I wasn’t there.”

“Where?”

“Uptown. In Harlem. Anywhere. I didn’t do anything
to anybody. Look, fuck this. What’s all this got to do with a sodomy charge? Am I under arrest here? Or what?”

“For the sodomy thing? Not yet. Should you be?”

“Fuck that too. I saw that little shit, Two-Pack. He’s a hustler. Everybody knows it. Charging me with sodomy for a meatpacker like that, why not beef an ATM for giving you cash. Look. You’re not really serious about that charge. Even if I did pork the punk, he’s a whore, it’s just a misdemeanor, I won’t do a day. So you can shove that where Two-Pack likes it. You just wanted an excuse to squeeze me about the Harlem thing. Am I right?”

“Hey, when you’re right, you’re right.”

“So we go down to the station, you book me on consensual sodomy, I walk in three minutes on a desk appearance ticket, I’m back in the club an hour later, having a gin fizz. Right?”

“That’s the way you want to play it?”

Tony nods, one short sharp jerk, and his lips thin out.

Levon nods, grins.

“Yes? Okay, Casey. Anytime you’re ready.”

“One last thing, though?” says Casey.

“Yeah? What?” says Tony, now with a slight eye tic.

“Who says it’s a misdemeanor?”

Tony takes a breath, speaks as if reciting a prayer.

“Consensual sodomy is a class B misdemeanor. Read the code, lady. No court in this town will bother with it.”

“How old are you?”

“What? I’m … twenty-nine.”

Casey noticed that Tony had knocked a couple of years off his age. It made her smile. He’s in the back of a police car, he’s going down for a felony kidnap charge, he’s going to be in Attica or Ossining until Jesus gets a decent haircut, and he still has the idea that knocking a
year or two off his age is a good public relations move. Ladies and gentlemen, please observe one Tony LoGascio. Your complete criminal moron.

“So that’s not a class B misdemeanor, then,” says Levon. “It would be okay if you were, like, eleven years old.”

“But you’re not, are you?” says Casey. “At least not physically.”

Tony’s face muscles convulse. He looks pained. Thinking hurts.

“I don’t get it. What are you saying?”

“Two-Pack,” says Casey, the soul of patience, “is sixteen years old. Sixteen. Under Section 130.40 of the penal code, having consensual sodomy with a person less than seventeen years of age is in fact a class E felony, unless the perp is also underage, which you’re not, and so it could get you a year in jail. And you’ve been popped under 130 a couple of times already, as well as—What is it, Officer Jamal? You got the sheet.”

Levon makes a ceremony out of reading the LoGascio menu.

“Let’s see … Section 220.46, criminal injection of a narcotic, 221.35, criminal sale of marijuana,
and
a big hit under 120.11, aggravated assault of a police officer—”

“That was dropped!”

“That was plea-bargained, as they usually are, Tony. So they still count as felony beefs. Anyway, add to all that this beef for Section 130 and you start to look like a Section 400 of the CPL. Persistent violent felony offender.”

“I got suspended sentences on some of that shit.”

Casey smiled sweetly at Tony.

“Section 70.06, Paragraph B3 of the code, even suspended sentences apply. You’re still a predicate felony offender. So either way you’re going away for a long—
Hey, are you okay there? You look all of a sudden kind of all pale and clammy. You want we should get you some water or something?”

“I’m okay. Jesus! No … hey. I’m fine. I’m … God
damn!
That little son of a bitch!”

“Yeah,” said Levon, shaking his head. “Who knew?”

Tony LoGascio now began to look on the world as a very different place than he had imagined it to be, a place filled with duplicity and double dealing and faithless friends. Casey saw this inner change being manifested mainly as a slight greening under LoGascio’s milk-white skin, concentrated chiefly under his jaw and around his eyes. Although work in the Sex Crimes Unit was nasty and brutal, every now and then it handed you a moment like this, and she was enjoying it very much.

Jack Vermillion and Earl Pike met again that same evening in a tourist park on the east side of the Hudson. The sun was much lower now and shadows were crossing the water. When Jack pulled in, Pike’s big blue Mercedes 600 was already there. He noticed it had a broken left front headlamp and there was a scrape on the fender. Other than that, it was a mint vehicle, shining like a sapphire. Pike was standing at the river’s edge, looking out at the opposite shore.

He turned and waited as Jack parked his black Cobra.

“Mr. Vermillion. That’s a very fine vehicle. A real Shelby?”

“Yes. It’s a nice ride. Look, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Can you take off your suit jacket?”

Pike frowned, and then his face cleared.

“You think I’m wired?”

“It occurred to me.”

Pike took off his jacket. Under the pale-blue shirt, heavy muscles slithered and rippled. The man was built like an armored car. He patted his chest and thumped his flat belly twice, gave Jack a twisted smile.

“You want the shirt off, too?”

“Never mind. How about you tell me what you have in mind?”

Pike nodded and sketched out the details. The collection was already inside a sealed container, sitting in a freight yard in Oswego. One of Jack’s truckers could pick it up as soon as Pike made the call. Jack would then ship the container by one of his river barges down the Hudson to the Red Hook Container Terminals in Brooklyn, to his freight storage yard there. From the Red Hook Terminal it would be transferred—still under a customs bond supplied by Jack’s brokers—onto a freighter at the Jersey docks and take a seaboard route to Merida, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Upon the safe transfer of the container to the freighter, and as soon as the freighter reached international waters, Jack would receive $250,000 in negotiable instruments, delivered by Federal Express to a destination of his choosing. Jack listened, his face getting harder by the second.

“So we’re clear on one thing, anyway. You’re definitely offering me a bribe to ship this … collection?”

Pike gave him a stony look.

“This is an administrative fee. Standard practice. Maybe I should ask
you
to take off your jacket.”

“I’m not wired. I’m confused.”

“Don’t be confused.”

“I called Dave Fontenot.”

“And?”

“He knows you. Says you’re in the security business.”

Pike reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a card, handed it to Jack.

“What does this mean?”

“What it says. CCS is an association of retired military professionals. We handle negative operational developments for a range of corporations across the United States, South America, Europe.”