16
They’d gotten off duty together at four in the afternoon. Joe had his Plymouth today, and they drove across town, through the park at 86th Street, and over into Yorkville where they stopped at a corner with a pay phone. Tom called the number Vigano had given him, and asked for Arthur, and said his name was Mr. Kopp. A gravelly voice said Arthur wasn’t in, but was expected, and could he call Mr. Kopp back? Tom read off the number of the pay phone, and the gravelly voice hung up.
Then twenty minutes went by. It had been a hot day, and it was gradually becoming a hot evening. They both wanted to go home and take their clothes off and stand in the shower for a while. Tom leaned against the side of the phone booth and Joe sat on the fender of the Plymouth, and they waited, and twenty minutes went by with the speed of grass growing.
Finally Tom looked at his watch for the fifteenth time and said, “It’s been twenty minutes.”
Reluctantly Joe said, “Maybe we should—”
“No,” Tom said. “He told me if he didn’t call back in fifteen minutes, we should try again later. We’ve waited twenty minutes, and that’s enough.” Joe was still reluctant, because he didn’t want to have to nerve Tom up to this all over again, but he gave in without any more argument, saying, “Okay, you’re right. Let’s go.”
Even though they now had a plan, Tom hadn’t been all that eager to talk to Vigano again. “Fine,” he said, and started toward the passenger side of the Plymouth, and the phone rang.
They looked at each other. They both tensed up right away, which Tom had expected but which surprised Joe. He’d had the idea he was under better control than that. “Go on,” he said.
Tom had just been standing there. “Right,” he said, and turned back, and went into the phone booth. The phone was just starting to ring for the second time when he lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?”
“Is that Mr. Kopp?” Tom recognized Vigano’s voice.
“Sure. Is that Mister—”
Overriding him, Vigano said, “This is Arthur.”
“Right,” Tom said. “Arthur, right.”
“I expected to hear from you a couple weeks ago.”
Tom could feel Joe’s eyes on him through the glass walls of the booth. With a sheepish grin, he said, “Well, we had to get things set up.”
Vigano said, “You want me to tell you where to bring the stuff?”
“Not a chance,” Tom said. “We’ll tell you where.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Vigano said. “Give me your setup.”
Tom took a deep breath. This was another of those moments of no return. He said, “Macy’s has a wicker picnic basket. It costs around eighteen bucks, with the tax. It’s the only one they’ve got at that price.”
“Okay.”
“Next Tuesday afternoon,” Tom said, “at three o’clock, no more than four people, two of them female, can carry one of those baskets into Central Park from the west at the Eighty-fifth Street entrance to the park roadway. They should turn right, go down near the traffic light, and sit down on the grass there. No later than four o’clock, either I or my partner will show up to make the exchange. We’ll be in uniform.”
Vigano said, “With another basket?”
“Right.”
“Isn’t that kind of public?”
Tom grinned at the phone. “That’s what we want,” he said.
“It’s up to you,” Vigano said.
“The stuff in your basket,” Tom said, “should not have traceable numbers and should not be homemade.”
Vigano laughed. “You think we’d palm off counterfeit on you?”
“No, but you might try.”
Serious again, almost sounding as though he’d been insulted, Vigano said, “We’ll examine each other’s property before we make the switch.”
“Fine,” Tom said.
“You’re a pleasure to do business with,” Vigano said.
Tom nodded at the phone. “I hope you are, too,” he said, but Vigano had already hung up.
Vigano
Vigano slept for most of the trip. He was lucky that way, he could sleep on planes, and for that reason he tried to do as much of his traveling as possible late at night. Otherwise, too much time was wasted going from place to place.
He was riding in a Lear jet, a private company plane owned and operated by a corporation called K-L Inc. K-L’s function was to own and care for and run the fleet of six planes that were available around the country to Vigano and some of his associates. The company also leased hangar space in Miami and Las Vegas and two other places, and in addition owned some real estate in the Caribbean. It had been financed by a private stock offering a few years ago, most of which had been bought by various union pension funds. Its assets were the planes and the island real estate, but its expenses were very high and it had never shown a profit, and so had never paid taxes or dividends.
The interior of the plane was comfortable, but not lush, in a kind of motel-lobby style. There was seating for eight, large soft chairs similar to first-class accommodations on a scheduled airliner, except that the front pairs of seats faced backwards and there was an unusual amount of leg room. Aft of the seats was a partition, followed by a dining area; a long oval table that would also seat eight, around three sides, leaving one of the long sides open for passage. A lavatory and galley came next, and farthest back was a bedroom containing two single beds. That was where Vigano traveled, sleeping on one of the beds while his two bodyguards sat up front, joking with the hostess, a girl who used to be a dancer until she’d had to have an operation on her hip. She was a beautiful girl, and her former bosses had done right by her.
The hostess came back finally and knocked on the bedroom door, calling, “Mr. Vigano?”
He woke up right away. His eyes opened, but he didn’t move. He was lying on his right side, and he looked around, shifting only his eyes, until he’d oriented himself. He’d left one small light on, over the door, and it showed him the other bed, the curving plastic wall of the plane, the two oval windows looking out on nothing but blackness.
On the plane. Going to see Bandell about the stock market robbery. Right.
Vigano sat up. “All right,” he called.
“We’ll be landing in five minutes.” She said that through the door, not opening it.
Of course they’d be landing in five minutes, otherwise she wouldn’t be waking him. “Thank you,” he said, and reached for his trousers on the other bed.
He’d stripped to his underwear for the flight, and now he quickly dressed, then opened his attaché case and out of the small separate compartment in it took his toothbrush and toothpaste. Carrying them in one hand and his tie in the other, he left the bedroom for the lavatory.
The hostess was in the galley, doing this and that. She smiled at him and said, “Coffee, Mr. Vigano?”
“Definitely.”
He didn’t take long in the lavatory, and then he carried his attaché case up front to the regular seats to have his coffee and watch the landing. His bodyguards were sitting facing one another on the right, so he took the forward-facing window seat on the left. The bodyguards were named Andy and Mike, and Vigano never called them bodyguards. He didn’t even think the word; they were just the young guys he traveled with. They both carried their own attaché cases, and they were presentable in a tough kind of way, and he simply traveled with them because that’s what he did.
Vigano sipped at his coffee and looked out the window at the lights of the city. You could always tell a resort town, it ran much heavier to neon. A place like Cleveland, now, you could hardly see any neon from the air at all.
Andy, grinning, said, “Mr. Vigano, it’s a waste of time to come here in the summer. We ought to come for the winter.”