"So how are things at the airport?" Wohl asked with a smile.
The question had been intended to put Martinez at ease. It had, Wohl saw, almost the opposite reaction. Martinez was almost visibly uncomfortable.
"I'm not pushing you, Hay-zus," Wohl said. "You've only been out there a couple of weeks. I don't think anybody expected you to learn very much in that short a time."
"Yes, sir," Jesus said, then blurted: "I think I figured out how I would get drugs, or for that matter anything else, out of there."
"How?"
"For little packages, anyway. Coke. Heroin. Are they still trying to smuggle diamonds, jewels, into this country?"
I really don't know, Wohl thought. That's the first time jewelry has come up.
"All the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs mentioned was drugs," Wohl said. "You think someone is smuggling diamonds, gemstones, through the airport?"
"The way it works, on international flights, is that the plane lands and comes up to the terminal. The baggage handlers come out, they open doors in the bottom of the airplane. On the big airplanes, one guy, maybe two guys, actually get in the baggage compartment. Nobody can see them from the ground. If they knew which suitcase had the stuff, they could open it, take out a small package, packages, conceal it on their person, and then send the luggage onto the conveyor belt over to the customs area."
"Hay-zus," Wohl said. "I want to show you something."
He got up and walked to his desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a vinyl-covered loose-leaf notebook. On it was stamped:
BUREAU OF NARCOTICS
Investigator's Manual
Martinez looked at the cover, then opened the manual and flipped through it, and then looked at Wohl for an explanation.
"They sent that over, they thought it would be helpful."
Martinez nodded.
"I took a look at it," Wohl said. "They refer to what you just described as a common means of smuggling."
"I guess it is," Martinez said. "I didn't exactly feel like Sherlock Holmes."
"Maybe not Sherlock Holmes," Wohl said. "But maybe Dick Tracy. It didn't take you long to figure that out."
That was intended, too, to put Martinez at ease. This time, Wohl saw in Martinez's face, it worked.
"When you leave, take this with you. I don't think I have to tell you not to let anybody see it."
"Yeah," Martinez said. "Thank you."
"Okay. So tell me what you've figured out about how someone, a baggage handler, or anyone else, would get a small package out of the airport."
"Well, there's all sorts of people keeping an eye on the baggage handlers. The airline has their security people. Customs is there, and the drug guys, and, of course, our guys. When the baggage handlers come to work, they change into uniforms, coveralls, or whatever, in their locker room. They change back into their regular clothes when they leave work. They have spot checks, they actually search them. What they're looking for is stuff they might have stolen, tools, stuff like that, but if the airlines security people should find a small package, they would damned sure know what it was."
"Unless they were part of the system," Wohl said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, but they're subject to the same sort of spot checks whenthey leave, and also, I think, when they're working. I thought about that. What theycould do, once one of the baggage handlers had this stuff, is take it from them, and then move into the terminal and pass it to somebody, a passenger, for example. Once they got it into the terminal, that wouldn't be hard."
"You think that's the way it's being done?"
Martinez did not reply directly.
"Another way it could be done, which would not involve the airlines security people, I mean, them being in on it, would be to put the package in another piece of luggage, one being either unloaded off, or being put on, a domestic flight. They don't search domestic luggage."
"But they do have drug-sniffing dogs working domestic luggage."
"Not every place," Martinez argued. "Like for example, AllentownBethlehem-Easton. Or Harrisburg."
"Yeah," Wohl agreed.
"The risk the baggage handlers would run would be getting caught with this stuff before they could get rid of it. Which means they would have to know when the plane with the drugs was arriving, and when the plane for, say, Allentown was leaving. And then they would have to arrange it so they worked that plane too."
"How do you think it's being done? Or do you think it's being done?"
"It's being done, all right," Martinez said. "And I think we have a dirty cop involved in it."
"How?" Wohl asked.
"Nobody searches the cops. And nobody, except maybe the sergeant, or one of the lieutenants, asks a cop what he's doing. He's got keys to get onto the ramp, and keys to open the doors leading off the ramp onto the conveyors and into the terminal. I went onto the ramp and watched them unload arriving international airplanes, and nobody said beans to me. I could have been handed, say, three, four, even five kilo bags of coke or heroin, and just walked away with it."
"Five kilos is ten, eleven pounds," Wohl said thoughtfully.
"Worth twenty, twenty-five thousand a K," Martinez said.
"How would you have gotten it out of the airport?"
"Passed it to somebody in the terminal. Put it in a locker, and passed the key to somebody. Or just put it in my car."
"Let me throw this at you," Wohl said. "Add this to the equation. I had a long talk with a BNDD agent. I got him to tell me something his boss didn't happen to mention. There have been two incidents of unclaimed luggage. Both about five weeks ago. Each piece had four Ks of heroin. That's why they're so sure it's coming into Philadelphia."
"The luggage is marked in some way, a name tag, probably with a phony name. If the baggage handler gets to take the stuff out of the bag, he also removes the tag. When the mule gets to the carousel, and sees his baggage, and the tag is still on it, he just doesn't pick it up."
He didn't think about that before replying, Wohl thought. He'd already figured that out as a possibility. He's as smart as a whip.
"That means giving up four Ks, a hundred thousand dollars worth of drugs."
"The cost of doing business," Martinez replied.
"I don't suppose you have any idea which cop is dirty?" Wohl asked.
"No," Martinez said.
That was too quick, Wohl thought.
"I'm not asking for an accusation," Wohl said. "Just a suspicion, a gut feeling. And nothing leaves this room."
"Nothing yet," Martinez said.
That was not the truth. The moment Jesus Martinez had laid eyes on Corporal Vito Lanza, he had had the feeling that something was not right about him. But you don't accuse a brother officer, or even admit you have suspicions about him, unless you have more to go on than the fact that he gambles big money in Las Vegas, and dresses and behaves like a Guinea gangster.
Wohl suspected that Martinez was concealing something from him, but realized he could not press him any more than he had.
One of the telephones in his bedroom rang. Wohl could tell by the sound of the ring that it was his personal, rather than his official, telephone.
That makes it fairly certain, he thought as he turned toward the bedroom, that I am not to be informed that one of my stalwart Highway Patrolmen has just run though a red light into a station wagon full of nuns.
He had used that for instance as the criteria for telephoning him at his home on weekends. Any catastrophe of less monumental proportions, he had ordered, should be referred to either Captain Michael Sabara, his deputy, or to Captain David Pekach, commanding officer of the Highway Patrol, for appropriate action.
"Excuse me," Wohl said, and went into his bedroom.