Mr. Microphone is right, Richie thought.
But Joey held up his hands as if in surrender. “I’m not taping anything, Rich.”
Richie just looked at him.
Joey answered the unspoken question: “Because we’re friends, Richie, that’s how you know I ain’t bullshitting you. We’re friends and I’m telling you. Nobody’s listening but you and me and God, if He’s got nothing the hell better to do. This is a real, legit offer.”
“Legit isn’t the word I’d use. Who’s this from, your uncle? Or some wise guy insulation?” Richie shook his head, sick to his stomach and it wasn’t the awful popcorn smell. “How can you do this, Joey? Why would you risk our friendship?”
Joey’s gaze was steady. “Because I care what happens to you. I’m hearing things I don’t like about what could happen to you.”
Richie let out a single, harsh laugh. “What, a threat now?”
Joey raised a peaceful palm. “No. That’s a friend telling a friend to watch his back. Officially, I’m just conveying an offer. Which I think you should seriously consider.”
Richie shook his head. “You shouldn’t’ve done it.”
“I had to, Rich.”
“You had to.”
“No choice.” Something desperate came into Joey’s eyes. “Neither do you, Richie. Not a threat, not from me, not between us. But just between us? You have got to leave Frank Lucas alone.”
Richie blinked. “Frank Lucas?”
“You heard me, Rich.”
“What the fuck, Joey... he’s not important enough for you to make a move on me like this.”
Joey’s eyes locked onto Richie’s. “Yes he is.”
So the elephant in the room, for once, had not been Uncle Dominic! When Joey had said, “You know who I mean,” he meant Frank Fucking Lucas...
Richie pressed the packet of photos into Joey’s hand.
“Tell Marie I’m sorry I had to leave,” he said. “Up to you, whether you tell her why...”
That afternoon, Richie went over to HQ and sat with the sun’s dying light streaming through the amber stained glass and he studied the table of organization they’d been building on the bulletin boards.
He stared for a long time and he considered what Joey had said, and the things that had been between the lines of what Joey said. The Organized Crime chart currently had Italians up top, the uppermost figure Joey’s Uncle Dominic. The black faces, among them Charlie Williams and the Lucas brothers, were way down on the board, in a position reserved for lower-echelon Harlem crooks.
Finally Richie got up, untacked Frank Lucas’s photograph and moved it from its lowly position to a place of rare honor (or perhaps dishonor) as the first African-American to reach the top of the pyramid.
Above the Mafia.
When Toback came in the next morning — at Richie’s request, before the rest of the team — the boss sat, leaned back in a metal chair, staring up at the chart and the new, black face atop it. At first Toback thought Richie was either kidding or insane.
But they talked a long time and, finally, Toback came around to Richie’s thinking.
The squad was trailing in as Richie wrapped up, saying to Toback, “INS, FBI, IRS — I can’t get anything out of them on Lucas. Nothing on his travel, his bank accounts, property holdings — nada.”
Toback chuckled dryly. “That’s because they all think you’re on the take.”
“Fuck them! They’re on the take!”
Toback raised an eyebrow. “How do you know your assumptions about them aren’t as unfounded as theirs are about you?”
Richie leaned forward, putting both palms on the banquet table. “Because these bent bastards don’t want this to stop. This drug traffic, it employs too many people — cops, lawyers, judges, probation officers, prison guards. The day dope stops coming into this country, what? A hundred thousand people are out of work?”
But Toback was shaking his head. “Richie, I thought I was cynical...”
Spearman threaded over through the desks and came up to Richie. “Excuse me — couple of suits want to see you.”
Richie frowned. “Feds?”
“Yeah. J. Edgar flavor.”
Richie went over near the entrance and conferred with two FBI agents as interchangeable as their dark suits and short haircuts and stony expressions. One might have been ten years older than the other, but otherwise they were strictly Frick and Frack.
“We understand that you’re doing a good job, Mr. Roberts,” the older of the two said. “And we want you to know we’ll do everything we can to cooperate with your efforts.”
“Good. Fine. And...?”
The two men exchanged glances.
“We have it from a very reliable source,” the older agent said, “that a contract’s been taken out on your life.”
Richie, not wanting to show the feds anything, said blandly, “Yeah? Who took it out?”
“It emanates from Organized Crime circles.”
“No kidding. Where in OC circles does it ‘emanate’ from, guys?”
The feds again traded looks.
The lead agent said, “We can’t say without compromising our source. You understand about not compromising sources.”
“No,” Richie said, shaking his head, “I don’t. Not when it’s my life, I don’t.”
The younger agent chimed in: “If you like, we can assign someone to protect you.”
“What?” Richie laughed. “The FBI is going to protect me? Guys, I been working on the street for fifteen years. I appreciate your concern, and your offer, but... I’ll take a pass.”
Richie would say this much for the feds: they took no apparent offense. The lead agent gave Richie his card, and they went out.
“Hilarious,” Richie said, walking back over to Toback.
But his boss’s expression was grave. “None of this is funny, Richie,” he said, sitting up in the metal chair. “And you know it...”
Spearman, Abruzzo and Jones had taken all of this in — with or without electronic aid, they were born eavesdroppers — and even they had no wise-ass remarks to offer.
So maybe it was natural that Richie did start to feel a little spooked.
That night he was walking down a dark side street, on his way back to his apartment with a bag of groceries in his arms, when he started thinking a guy was following him.
This character was medium build and wearing nondescript working-class clothes, a zippered jacket and slacks and a cap; but there was no doubt the guy was edging closer, and closer...
Richie slowed and let the guy get closer still... then dropped the groceries, gently as possible under the conditions, and whirled on the guy and smacked him in the jaw, sending him down to the sidewalk in a pile of arms and legs.
And as the fallen follower was trying to get his wits back about him, Richie’s revolver moved in to stare him down, inches from his face.
“Don’t shoot!” the guy blurted. “For God’s sake, don’t shoot me!”
Richie pressed the nose of the revolver to the man’s forehead, dimpling the flesh. “Talk.”
The guy blinked a bunch of times and managed, “Are... are you Richard Roberts? You are Richard Roberts. I got a subpoena for you, is all.”
Richie helped the guy up, allowed himself to be served and felt a little bad for the poor son of a bitch, who had pissed himself in the process.
But not that bad.
This time, Richie and his lawyer sat next to Laurie and hers on the same side of the courtroom. Richie was in a suit and tie, and his ex-wife was conservatively dressed as well, but looking pretty enough to remind him why and how he first fell in love with her.