Vigano smiled back. “Maybe I’ll work something out,” he said. He liked these two boys.
It was a smooth landing. They taxied away from the normal passenger terminals and over to the private area. When they rolled to a stop a black limousine drove out to meet them. Vigano and the two young men he traveled with picked up their attaché cases, thanked the hostess, congratulated the pilot on his landing, and stepped out into incredible heat. “Christ,” Andy said. “What’s it like in the daytime?”
“Worse,” Vigano said. The heat lay on his skin like a wool blanket. It made New Jersey seem cool.
They crossed quickly to the limousine, and slid inside, where the air was a cool, dry seventy degrees. The chauffeur shut the door after them, slid behind the wheel, and drove them smoothly to the hotel. It was nearly four in the morning, and the streets were deserted; even a resort city goes to sleep sooner or later.
They had another blast of heat between the car and side entrance of the hotel. They were also put on film, though it didn’t matter, by a team of federal agents concealed in a bakery truck parked on a side road just off the hotel property. It was infra-red film and the faces were blurred, but they already knew who it was they were filming, so there wasn’t any problem about identification. This strip of film would eventually join the strip that had been taken earlier tonight outside Vigano’s home in New Jersey, and the two strips would establish the fact that on this date Anthony Vigano had gone to a meeting with Joseph Bandell. The fact would never mean anything to anybody, but it would have been established and placed on film and filed away, at a cost to the government of forty-two thousand dollars.
Vigano and his bodyguards rode up in the elevator to the twelfth floor, and walked down the corridor to Bandell’s suite, at the end. They went in and Bandell was there with his advisers. “Hello, Tony,” he said.
“Hello, Joe.”
They spent a few minutes in civilities, taking drink orders and asking after one another’s wives and making the couple of introductions necessary; one of Bandell’s assistants was a new man freshly in from Los Angeles, named Stello. There were handshakes and general chitchat.
Bandell was stocky and short and gray-haired, a man in his sixties, wearing a dark suit and a conservative tie. The three men with him were in their thirties or forties, tanned, all dressed casually in the style of a resort town. Everybody deferred to Bandell, who sat alone on a sofa with his back to a picture window. Vigano was the only one present who called him Joe instead of Mr. Bandell, but he too deferred to the older man, in smaller ways.
After three or four minutes, Bandell said, “Well, it’s nice to see you again. I’m glad you phoned. I’m glad you could take the time to come visit.”
He meant the chitchat was done, and he wanted to know the purpose of the trip. Vigano hadn’t attempted to explain anything on the phone, had only suggested he make the trip. (The phone conversation was also in a government file now, at a cost of twenty-three hundred dollars.) Now, in guaranteed privacy, Vigano set aside the drink he’d been given and explained the story of the two possible cops and the twelve-million-dollar stock-market heist.
Bandell interrupted once, saying, “It’s usable paper?”
“They took exactly what I said, Joe. Bearer bonds, in amounts between twenty and a hundred grand.”
Bandell nodded. “All right.”
Vigano went on, explaining the payoff terms he’d agreed to. When he was finished, Bandell pursed his lips and looked across the room and said, “I don’t know. Two million dollars is heavy cash.”
Vigano said, “It’ll be back in the bank within two hours.” Because that was the point of this meeting; he couldn’t draw two million cash on his own say-so, he needed Bandell’s approval.
Bandell said, “Why take it out at all? Use a bag full of newspapers.”
“They aren’t that dumb,” Vigano told him. “The caper they pulled shows how cute they are.”
“Then use a dressed roll,” Bandell said. “Take out a hundred thousand or so.”
Vigano shook his head. “It won’t work, Joe. They’re very cute and very cautious. They’ll have to see the two million before they relax. They’ll reach in and see what’s in the bottom of the basket.”
Bandell said, “How about wallpaper?”
“They already talked about that,” Vigano said. “They’re ready for it.”
Stello, the new man, said, “If they’re that good, how do you know they won’t figure out a way to keep the money?”
“We’ve got the manpower,” Vigano said. “We can smother them.”
Another of Bandell’s assistants said, “Why not leave them alive? If they did this first job so good they can do more.”
“We don’t have anything on them,” Vigano pointed out. “We don’t know who they are, we don’t have any handle on them, and they don’t want to do any more. They were only interested in the one job. They’re amateurs, they said so from the beginning and they acted like it.”
“Smart amateurs,” suggested Stello.
“Granted,” Vigano said. “But still amateurs. Which means they could still make a mistake and get picked up by the law, and that leads right directly from them to me.”
Bandell said, “Are they cops or aren’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Vigano said. “We tried to find them in the force, we asked around with our tame cops, nobody knows anything. I myself personally looked at mug shots on twenty-six thousand New York City cops, and I didn’t come up with them, but that doesn’t mean anything because the guy came to me in a wig and moustache and eyeglasses, and who knows what he looks like with his normal face?”
Bandell’s other assistant said, “Why didn’t you take the disguise off him when you had him?”
“That was before he pulled the job,” Vigano pointed out. “If I broke his security ahead of time, he never would have gone through with it.”
Bandell said, “What do you think, Tony? You yourself, personally. Are they cops or not cops?”
“I just don’t know,” Vigano told him. “The guy who came to me said he was on the force. They pulled the job in uniform and used a police car for their getaway. But I’ll tell you, I don’t know for sure what the hell they are.”
Stello said, “If they’re cops, maybe it’s not such a good idea to have them hit.”
“If they’re cops especially I want them hit,” Vigano said. “One of them visited me in my own home, remember.”
Bandell said, “If you do it, you do it quietly.”
“Quietly,” Vigano agreed. “But to relax them so I can do it, I need to be able to show them cash.”
Bandell considered, pursing his lips again and staring at a spot in midair. Then he said, “What’s your setup for the changeover?”
Vigano clicked his fingers at Andy, who immediately got to his feet, opened his attaché case, and brought out a map of Manhattan. He opened the map and stood there being a human easel, holding the map so everybody could see it, while Vigano pointed at it to explain the situation.
“I told you they’re cute,” Vigano said, and went over to stand next to the map. “Their idea is,” he said, “that we’ll switch picnic baskets in Central Park next Tuesday at three o’clock in the afternoon. Do you know where the snapper is in that?”
Bandell didn’t want to guess; he was strictly business. “Tell us,” he said.
Vigano said, “Every Tuesday afternoon, Central Park in New York is closed to automobiles.” Gesturing at the map, he said, “There’s nothing allowed in there but bicycles.”
Bandell nodded. “How do you counter?”
“We can’t use cars, but neither can they.” Vigano started touching the map with his finger, explaining it all. “We’ll put a car at every exit from the park. All the way around, here and here and here. Inside, we’ll have our own men on bicycles, all over the place. They’ll be in touch with one another by walkie-talkie, back and forth.” He turned away from the map, held his hand out in front of himself, palm up, and slowly closed his fingers into a fist. “We’ll have the whole park bottled up,” he said.