She took his right hand into both of hers. Her tone was not scolding, not lecturing, rather it was matter of fact. “You do know, don’t you, Frankie, that if you’d have been a preacher, your brothers would be preachers. If you’d been a soldier, why, they’d be soldiers. You do know that?”
He shrugged, just a little.
“They all came up north because of you,” she said, and there was pride in her voice and yet a certain tinge of shame, too. “You called and they came running. They look up to you. They expect you to always know what’s best.”
“I hear you, Momma.”
“Do you? You know they’re not as smart as you. Not as accomplished. You’re not just the older brother, but the father, the only father they remember. And yet even with all their foolishness, they know a person doesn’t shoot a policeman.”
Frank stared at the floor.
“Even I know that, and I bet you didn’t think your momma knew anything that was happening in your world. But mothers know. So do wives. Eva knows you don’t go around shooting policemen, no matter how much they may richly deserve such treatment. You seem to be the only one who doesn’t.”
“What makes you think that’s where I’m off to?” Frank asked her defensively, meeting her eyes. “I might just be looking after my business interests, like any other day.”
She shook her head and her eyes were slits. “I have never asked you, son, where all of this came from. Do you know why? It’s not that I don’t want to know, or couldn’t handle it. You know where you grew up and what we all lived through. What couldn’t I handle?”
“Not much,” he admitted.
Her voice had no pleading in it — she was just telling him. “I’ll tell you what I couldn’t handle: you lying to me. Don’t lie to me, Frank. Do what else you have to, but don’t you ever lie to me about it.”
He looked away. He couldn’t abide her gaze. His hand in hers was a tribulation.
She said, ever so gently, “Do you really want to make things so bad for your family here up north, so bad that they’ll leave you? Because they will. They’ll have to. And son, so will she...” Momma nodded toward the bedroom. “She loves you with all her heart, but she will leave you. And I know I will.”
She released his hand.
He couldn’t quite look at her.
Finally he rose, and walked over to the front door; he was halfway out when he stepped back in and shut it again, then walked slowly toward the bedroom, and Eva.
His mother had done the impossible. She had won a reprieve — at least for now — for Detective Trupo.
That night, in the basement of the U.S. Army hospital in Newark, body bags were lifted from wooden coffins and set down upon tables. The bags were unzipped, the bodies removed. A rack of clean uniforms was wheeled in by somber, matter-of-fact privates, after which morticians in white smocks began their grim ritual, dressing the deceased and applying cosmetics to ghostly gray skin.
The functional wooden coffins were replaced by a small army of white military caskets that the soldiers trundled in. Lids were removed, lifted off by gold handles, and bodies — in their fresh uniforms and make-up — were deposited on silk linings. Finally the coffin lids came down and cellophane bags containing folded flags were taped on top.
Soldiers removed the white caskets to the nearby loading dock, and set them individually, careful but efficient, into a waiting military truck. Papers were signed, copies exchanged and the truck rumbled off.
Deep in the night, two black privates on janitorial duty came into the chamber where the original plain wooden coffins had been discarded like candy wrappers. Methodically the pair removed the lids, and pried up the false bottoms, revealing four-inch cavities in each coffin — home to tightly packed bricks of Double UO Globe heroin.
Early the next morning, Sunday, a laundry truck idled in the loading dock area of the hospital. Stevie Lucas — who had traded his chance to play with the Yankees to be part of his uncle Frank’s team (though he still wore a Yankee cap) — hopped down from the truck and gave the two GIs a hand, as they tossed a number of laundry bags into the back of the truck.
At the same time, in the cavernous Baptist church in Harlem where not so long ago Frank and Eva had been wed, a dignified, friendly pastor was greeting the members of his congregation as they climbed the church steps for early service. Frank, Eva, and his mother were among the flock. Soon they would be swaying in the pews in a sea of ladies’ hats as the church’s gospel choir praised God and Jesus, Lord Almighty.
Because no matter what was going on in Frank Lucas’s complicated life, he always had time to spend Sunday morning in church with his mother and his wife. God had been good to the Lucas clan. Considering.
At the hospital, an innocent-looking laundry truck — driven by Stevie Lucas — rolled past the guard gate without inspection, leaving the base, driving past a stand of trees, which is where Richie Roberts sat waiting in an unmarked car.
Richie noticed the baseball-cap-wearing Lucas kid — Stevie wore that same Yankees lid in the surveillance photo tacked on the bulletin board in the bullpen — and took up pursuit, albeit at a discreet distance.
This was wise, because before long a beat-up van driven by a red haired black woman pulled in behind the truck, and then so did a nondescript Chevy driven by Huey Lucas. Riding with Huey was another Country Boy, likely a well-armed lad, providing security.
By the time the laundry truck approached a ramp onto the George Washington Bridge, Richie was still a couple of car lengths behind. And two more Narcotics Bureau unmarked cars had fallen in behind Richie. There was a brief moment where things could have gone wrong, as the truck kept on going, past the ramp.
Some time later, the red-haired woman’s van made a right turn. Abruzzo, a car-length behind, took the same turn, but promptly slowed up as the infamous Stephen Crane Projects rose before him like a monument to poverty. The detective could see Huey’s Chevy approaching the projects, too, from another direction, with Spearman tailing him. Spearman, the projects looming in his windshield as well, also slowed, and finally pulled over.
When the laundry truck’s destination proved to be the same dismal towers, Richie, too, slowed to a stop outside the foreboding structures where, not so long ago, he had dealt with a corpse created by his late partner, Javy Rivera.
If the people who lived in those crumbling mammoth tombstones knew that millions of dollars of heroin had just rolled in, Richie thought, what a riot there would be...
And in Harlem, in the Baptist church, the gospel choir having finished their lively anthem, the minister began his sermon while Frank Lucas, nestled in his pew between the two women he loved, pretended to listen.
25. Tragic Magic
On this Sunday morning, Lou Toback — relaxing on the couch in a robe and pajama bottoms, reading the Times — should not have expected to hear from Richie Roberts. After all, he had disbanded Richie’s team yesterday. And this was the Lord’s Day of Rest...
But he was not surprised. He carried his glass of milk with him to the phone and when Richie said, “We’ve got it. The full shipment.”
“By ‘got’ it, you mean... in hand? Arrests have been made?”
“Well, no. We saw it delivered.”
“Where to?”
There was a pause; this was apparently a reluctant admission on Richie’s part. “Stephen Crane.”