Corsican Death (6 page)

Claude was a tough Corsican taught by Remy, taught everything from women to guns to cutting heroin to driving a sports car. Claude would never inform. Never. But …

Doubt wormed its way into Remy’s mind. Could Claude have been beaten by the American police and forced to talk? He did break both legs and some ribs, according to the papers, which said it happened in a fall from a hotel window. But that didn’t mean a fucking thing. He could have been beaten by federal narcotics agents or pushed down the stairs by them.

Anything
could have happened. Remy kept frowning, lost in his own thoughts, trapped by his doubts, his eyes staring down at the floor and seeing nothing.

Count Lonzu let a small smile touch his lips and fade quickly. He’d planted doubt in the small man’s head; now let it grow into confusion, and let the confusion weaken him.

The two men sat alone and silent in a huge room, surrounded by expensive oil paintings, medieval weapons and armor, statues and busts of classical figures, each man thinking of a brother and of a small, dirty French freighter scheduled to dock at Le Havre five days from now.

Washington, D.C.

John Bolt said, “You can try it that way, but you ain’t gonna get anywhere.”

Craven, who ran D-3 and who always wore black suits, white shirts, black tie, used a pencil to tap the green blotter on his huge desk. Bolt was giving him problems, as usual, and Craven wanted to know why.

“O.K., John, we’re listening. You tell me why we won’t catch Alain Lonzu when we know he’s on the
La Rochelle
and it docks at Le Havre in five days and we plan to have him picked up the moment the ship touches land. You tell me. Rather, you tell us.”

Bolt, two regional supervisors, and the four remaining agents who had gone to the hospital after Alain Lonzu were all in Craven’s office. Craven and Bolt, who didn’t like each other, were the whole show. Everyone else watched and listened, glad they weren’t either man.

“Because the Corsicans have France locked up tight,” said Bolt, his green eyes on Craven’s lean, hawklike face. He didn’t like Craven, but he respected him for putting agents and D-3 above everything else in his life. Actually, there wasn’t anything else in Craven’s life
but
the Department of Dangerous Drugs. No family, no women or little boys. Just work and an occasional visit to the racetrack.

Bolt continued. “You know and I know that the Corsicans have clout up the ass, all kinds of pull in France. Cops, politicians, newspapermen, cabinet members—you name it, they own it. I’m betting that there’s no way we can get clearance in time to send agents over there and wait on the dock for him. No goddamn way. The paperwork will be ‘delayed.’ Tell you something else, too. Bet you when the ship lands, Alain Lonzu ‘walks.’ Free and clear. And when we ask the French cops what went down, they’re gonna tell us he just slipped through their fingers. Remember, the Count’s strong and Alain
is
his brother.”

No one spoke. They all knew what went on in France, although politics and smooth diplomatic relations between nations called for not saying it out loud. When Charles de Gaulle took over France he ran into a lot of problems, one of the biggest being a paramilitary organization composed of right-wing French Army officers determined that Algeria remain a part of France forever. To get their point across, the secret army turned terrorists, even plotting De Gaulle’s assassination.

De Gaulle and his supporters struck back. They emptied jails, giving criminals a chance for freedom and money, provided they work for De Gaulle’s people. More important, his people also turned to Corsican mobs, who with other criminals became terrorists on the side of De Gaulle. From that point on, the Corsicans had important friends in French government, friends who didn’t forget the killing done on their behalf and in the name of De Gaulle.

The Corsicans’ tight organization and ruthless methods, plus their political and law-enforcement contacts, made stopping the heroin trade almost an impossibility. Then and now, the Corsicans had it made.

And the heroin traffic grew. There were some arrests, but damn few. And rarely anyone important. Investigations that threatened major drug dealers were suddenly stopped, and reporters who got too curious were told to stop or else. Coming from a Corsican, “or else” was both a threat and a promise.

De Gaulle’s political ambitions and the ruthless determination of his supporters had given the Corsicans a lot of political influence, and the American people were paying for this with blood and money every day of their lives.

“You are the cynical one, John,” said Craven, leaning back in his black leather chair and placing both hands behind his head. Bolt was a top agent, perhaps D-3’s best, but he needed someone to ride hard on him. Craven wouldn’t admit it, but Bolt might be right, though why tell him and make the bastard more self-righteous than he already was?

“Been through it before,” said Bolt, standing up and yawning. He’d had some bad experiences dealing with French police on narcotics cases. Not all French cops were soft, though. Some were good, smart, tough, shrewd as a hungry fox, and damn nice guys to work with. They didn’t like dope pushers or their important friends, and these guys fought a lonely battle every day of their lives.

Guys like Bolt’s friends Jean-Paul Lamazère, a likable son-of-a-bitch, pleasant as a sunshiny day, the kind of man who’d smile as he shot your dick off; and his buddy Roger Dinard, small, quiet, with a round head and a thick black moustache he was always getting into his food.

Good guys. Straight guys. Not many like them working in France.

“All right,” said Craven, taking charge before Bolt ran away with the meeting. “Let’s say we made a small oversight about Alain Lonzu and his friends. I can also assume his brother, the Count, will be on the dock to greet him, too. They
are
a close-knit family.”

Oversight my ass, thought Bolt. You came close to fucking up. Aloud he said, “Yeah, by now I’m sure the Count knows the boat’s sailed. Those men we killed, sailors from the
La Rochelle,
they came on strong. Grenades, guns. Yeah, you can bet they have the word from the Count, maybe Remy Patek, too. Bring our boys back from overseas or else.”

Craven nodded. It both annoyed and fascinated him to see Bolt’s mind work. Bolt was usually out in front of everyone, even Craven on occasion, and that was annoying. When it came to expecting the worst of people and being right about it every time, no one was better at that than Bolt. It was Bolt who was fond of saying that everybody in the drug world lies, including the good guys.

Craven didn’t like to admit that was true.

“You’ve got something in mind,” said Craven. “Let’s hear it.” He was prepared to dislike it, but instinctively he knew it would make sense, because Bolt was good at screwing people he didn’t like, and at the moment he didn’t like Alain Lonzu. An agent had been killed, blown apart by a grenade, and Craven, along with Bolt and everyone in the department, didn’t like that at all.

So you put out your own particular contract on the person who did it, which is to say you went looking and kept looking until you found him.

“I’d like to fly over to Paris and go undercover,” said Bolt, his eyes sweeping the room as if daring any of the men to stand in his way. “I speak French and I’ve got a hunch about this thing.”

He paused, letting the silence draw them all in, making sure his audience was on their toes. The seven men all looked at him and waited.

Showtime, thought Bolt. “My hunch is that Remy Patek isn’t gonna like his brother, Claude, getting choked to death, so he’s gonna be out looking for Alain. Remy’s also got an interest in that four million, which could be anywhere—on the ship, or hidden—because the last time I saw Alain, he didn’t have a pot to piss in. The Count, bless him, will want to keep Alain alive, at least until he hears his side of the story.”

“And hears about the money,” added Craven.

Bolt nodded. “Yeah, I go along with that. Alain’s the key. Now, I also think that Alain, who was supposed to meet Chester Dumas in New York, but didn’t, had a good reason for meeting him here in Washington. I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems to me that Alain had other business here, like maybe Mr. X at the Justice Department. Remember that little rumor we’ve been hearing but haven’t been able to prove?”

The men in the room reacted in different ways, nodding their heads in recognition of a possible truth or taking a deep breath while deciding whether to go along with Bolt or sit back and see Craven’s reaction.

“Go on,” said Craven. A couple of men in the room translated that as: “You have enough rope to hang yourself.”

“I think Alain’s important enough to go for, but without telling the French about it—”

Craven interrupted. “Now, you wait a minute, Bolt, we can’t—”

“We
can!
” shouted Bolt, “because Vanders is dead. That’s why we can. Now, hear me out, please. O.K.? Cool. Now, Alain’s worth grabbing, for Vanders’ death, and you know as well as I do that we got to come back hard for the four million, for this Mr. X, for information about their heroin-smuggling routes, for information about the two hundred keys they’re bringing in for Dumas soon. That’s the last thing they think we’ll do: sneak in and grab the bastard and squeeze him until he talks. I—”

“Stupid,” said Craven, tossing his pencil on the desk and frowning. Sneaking into a country and grabbing a major heroin trafficker. Stupid. And yet, there was something beautifully sneaky about it, something that appealed to the bastard in Craven, who never liked losing and who wanted to win at all costs. The Corsicans had just shoved D-3’s face in a toilet bowl. That was embarrassing.

“Craven, we’ve talked about it before. We’ve had funny things happen with a couple of cases here involving Corsicans. Witnesses suddenly losing their memories, and the opposition’s lawyers coming into court too prepared and walking out with smiles on their fat faces. I think Lonzu was here to talk with somebody big, and we have got to put that somebody out of business in a hurry.”

Leaning over Craven’s desk, Bolt pounded it, his face red with anger, knowing that he had to come on strong and quick before Craven had time to think about whether or not this was the “correct” thing to do. Fuck the “correct” thing. Bolt wanted Alain in a hurry, before big brother had a chance to stash him away, before Remy Patek got to him and started slicing off his cubes with a dull knife for killing his brother.

Craven’s smile was cold, and even before he spoke, Bolt knew the bastard was going to give him only part of what he wanted. “All right, Bolt. You seem determined to take a vacation, so here’s how you’ll go about it: you’ve got five days, no more. Five days is how long it’ll take the
La Rochelle
to reach France. You’ll fly over immediately and get started. I assume you plan to use your French police friends, am I correct?” He stopped talking, pressing his palms together as though in prayer, placing his folded hands under his chin. Ready to pounce, thought Bolt.

“Yeah. I’ll work with Lamazère and Dinard. But five days! The boat won’t—”

“That’s
all
the time you’ll have. Find out where you
think
he’ll be!” Craven’s voice was sharp, snapping through the room like steel breaking in half. Now he was playing boss, moving confidently over ground he knew well. Instinctively Craven knew when to back off and when to move in. Now he was moving in, taking charge, and letting Bolt know it.

“Five days. Find out the hole you think he’ll be crawling into. After five days, you break cover, introduce yourself to the proper authorities, and work through channels.” He paused, letting seconds of silence hang in the air, then added, “You break cover in five days. Out in the open, understand?” Craven was sure of himself, his voice reeked of it.

There’s a line you don’t cross, thought Bolt, no matter had bad you like to have your way. When you work for somebody else, sooner or later they give you a knee in the balls just to remind you who’s the chief and who’s the Indian. O.K., O.K., you black-suited, black-hearted bastard. Five days.

He smiled. “Five days.” He didn’t mean the smile, and he and Craven both knew it.

“Fine. We understand each other. What’s your cover, anything you’ve used before?”

“Yeah. Buyer for a black mob. Not many blacks speak French, do they, Weaver?” Bolt looked at the big, paunchy black agent, who gave him a smile so small it was almost invisible, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “Who the fuck knows or cares?”

“That’s how I’m working it. Buyer for a black mob, advance man, because I speak French and my employers don’t. I’m in France looking for stuff in a hurry. I know about Alain Lonzu through my black contacts here, and the blacks speak highly of him, so that’s why I’m in France, to meet him or some of his people and make a buy.”

Craven, eyes on the desk, hands still folded and under his chin, nodded in approval. “How are you getting in?”

“Lamazère and Dinard. They can get me started. There are people, cafés, places where the Corsicans meet. They’re big on cafés and nightclubs, and Lamazère and Dinard know who the couriers, drivers, front men, girlfriends are. I figure to move in quick, grab Alain or find out his hiding place, and be gone before they know I’m there.”

“You’ll need money. If you carry big money over there, you don’t get asked many questions.”

Bolt nodded. Good point. “Fifty.” Meaning fifty thousand dollars. “I don’t want to carry it with me, in case customs gives me a good toss and spreads the word. Have the American embassy deposit it in a French bank for me. I’ll withdraw it when I get there. Be best if somebody just walks into the bank unofficial like, with some kind of phony story or other, and just dumps it there. Use the name Joe Belli, under the company name, uh, Liberty Incorporated. Nobody will know the difference.”

Craven nodded. So far he had no objections.

Bolt thought, Maybe I can get out of this meeting with
almost
everything I want. Almost. Jesus, only five days. That might not be enough time to get in, follow a trail, and grab Alain. Frankly, all I want to do is get little brother to talk. I don’t care if he ends up dead.