“There’s no Short Term Lot Three at Newark, Jimmy,” Abruzzo was saying. “They’re lettered A, B, C, D — like the alphabet?”
“I don’t care about the fuckin’ alphabet,” Jimmy insisted firmly. “I’m just tellin’ you what I heard—”
“Then maybe you heard...” And Abruzzo leaned in and got in Jimmy’s face. “...wrong!”
Jimmy’s head bobbed back, as if Abruzzo’s breath was bad, which may well have been the case, but Jimmy’s flinch was more to avoid a possible blow.
Spearman, tired of asking Jimmy questions, tried Jones instead: “Maybe he means the time? Three o’clock maybe?”
Jones shrugged, and zeroed in on Jimmy again. “Look, Jim, this isn’t a Jersey plate. Or a New York one, either... not with just two letters. It’s three and three, not two and three, get it?”
Jimmy, not getting it, shook his head. “I’m just tellin’ you what Huey said. You guys say keep you ears open, so I keep my ears open, and I tell you what I hear, and then you fuckin’ ride me...”
“If it’s not a plate,” Jones said, ignoring this outburst, “then what the fuck is it?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Jimmy blurted. “I ain’t the detective!”
Abruzzo was shaking his head, looking like he wanted to hit somebody. Looking like he wanted to hit Jimmy, who Richie had to agree was as frustrating a snitch as he’d ever come across.
“If you’re fuckin’ lying,” Abruzzo said menacingly. “If you’re fuckin’ yanking our chain...”
“It’s what Huey said. On the phone. To Frank. I’m sure.”
“KA 760,” Spearman said skeptically.
“Yes! Yes! Fucking yes!”
Jimmy gazed up helplessly at the cops surrounding him. The cops gazed helplessly at each other.
All except Richie, who slid off the desk and onto his feet, smiling. “None of you assholes ever been in the service?” he asked.
The three cops and the one snitch gaped at Richie.
“It’s an Air Force tail number.”
By early afternoon Richie and his entire staff of detectives — fifteen strong plus their big boss Toback standing next to the task force leader — were grouped along the edge of the tarmac at Newark Airport, watching a military plane with the tail number ka 760 taxi toward them.
Soon the big silver bird had rolled to its stop, and the cabin door slid up, passengers emerging, including military officers, embassy personnel and families, all looking as haggard as they did relieved to be trading Vietnam for their homeland. Richie, Toback and the squad watched with some concern as official passengers, met by a host of assistants, filed past — to Richie, everybody on that plane was a suspect, and seeing VIPs get special treatment did not thrill him.
Finally a seasoned-looking captain approached the assembly of law enforcement officers, and Richie stepped forward to meet him.
“Captain, I’m Richard Roberts, director of the Essex County Narcotics Bureau. We have reason to believe this aircraft has been used to smuggle contraband.”
“Contraband.”
“Heroin, sir.”
“ ‘Reason to believe’ doesn’t cut it, Director Roberts.”
“No, sir...” Richie held up the folded papers. “... but this warrant does.”
Minutes later, the squad was turning an airport hangar into a kind of big-scale chop shop, taking the military plane apart inside and out. Within the cabin, seats were removed and inspected, carpeting yanked up, panels unscrewed, even the lavatories dismantled. Outside, engines and landing gear were disassembled, tires knifed open and searched; luggage was throughly gone through; and a nuzzle was plunged into a toilet to pump out the contents into barrels where Richie’s detectives did a dirty job that somebody had to do, fishing through human waste with rubber-gloved hands.
Richie, off to one side, watched with a growing sense of panic, even despair, as his detectives and mechanics and customs agents began to peel the metal skin off the plane. In the meantime, coffins bearing fighting men who were getting out of Vietnam the hard way were being off-loaded.
By the time the search was finished, the carcass of the plane barely resembled the flying machine it had been a few hours ago — no panel had not been removed, no cavity had gone unprobed.
Toback ambled up beside him. “Rich, we’ve checked everything.”
“Not quite,” he said.
Richie was gazing at the military caskets getting loaded onto a trunk with armed soldiers standing respectful guard. The captain was watching the process gravely.
Toback’s jaw dropped; then he said, “You can’t be serious?”
Richie eyed his boss. “Why, dope smugglers are going to stand on ceremony? They’re gonna have a sense of right and wrong?”
“Well, keep me out of it.”
Slowly Richie approached the coffins and walked up to the one next in line for lifting up onto the truck.
To the captain, Richie said, “Need to have a look inside, sir.”
The captain frowned.
“Open it,” Richie said.
Richie had been stared at before, by criminals including rapists and murderers and mob bosses, and by cops as honest as Toback and as crooked as Trupo, but never had colder, more contemptuous eyes settled on him than the captain’s.
Richie didn’t give a shit. He said, “You saw the warrant. You know it permits me to search the plane and its cargo.”
“These men. They’re cargo?”
“I mean no disrespect. But I do have permission.”
Still the captain just stood and stared at Richie.
“Okay,” Richie said, and he knelt to open the coffin himself...
... and every soldier’s rifle came immediately into firing position.
Richie the target.
The captain’s smile wasn’t really a smile. “You don’t have my permission.”
Richie looked up and all sorts of cold eyes stared at him, some belonging to the soldiers, the others to the rifles pointed at him, those black circular eyes that could be the last ever to regard a man.
Safeties clicked off.
Fingers poised to fire.
All these soldiers needed was their captain’s order to blow away this disrespectful civilian son of a bitch.
Richie glanced at the captain. “Thing is,” he said, “I don’t need your permission.”
Having all these rifles pointed at him was no fun; but Richie did not believe this captain would kill a law enforcement officer in his line of duty, and end his own career in a court-martial.
When Richie undid them, the coffin latches popped like gun shots, and yet he managed not to jump. He lifted the lid on the long black body bag within. Sickened by what he needed to do, Richie pulled at the zipper, and the body bag parted to reveal the sad remains of a young soldier.
“That’s enough!”
Richie glanced behind him and saw a very annoyed middle-aged man in a suit and tie striding toward him. The guy looked decidedly official.
Then Toback was kneeling beside Richie, whispering, “First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Richie. Do as he says.”
At the Lucas family home in Teaneck, Eva was a guest. She and Frank rarely stayed at the house but — in the aftermath of the shooting, and while Frank was overseas on business — she had been installed here with Momma Lucas and several of the brothers and cousins and their families. This afternoon, however, no one was home but Eva and Momma.
Eva found Momma’s presence comforting, and the house itself was lovely; today was typical of life in the upscale housing development, an idyllic world of suburban domesticity, from chirping birds and laughing kiddies to the hum of lawnmowers and the music of wind chimes.