American Gangster (2 page)

Bumpy indicated the yawning chasm of a store with its endless aisles and towering stacks of merchandise.
A few customers wandered within, as if lost in an overseas airport, with no sales clerks to guide them.

“Where's the pride of ownership, a warehouse like this?” Bumpy demanded. “Where's people waiting on people? Does anybody
work
here?”

Frank did not know the term “rhetorical question,” but he knew one when he heard one, and didn't reply. They were walking again, slowly, and now Bumpy was indicating a display window filled with Japanese stereo components.

“What right do they have, cutting out the suppliers, pushing all the middlemen out, buying direct from the manufacturer? Sony this, Toshiba that, all them slanteyed sons of bitches putting Americans out of work! We fought a war for
that
?”

Bumpy stopped again, TVs replaced by cameras. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared.

“What's an honest businessman like me supposed to do with a goddamn place like
this
, Frank?”

Now Frank wasn't sure—maybe he
was
supposed to answer. . . .

Bumpy shook his head in sheer frustration. “Who the hell am I supposed to ask for—the assistant manager? How do you collect from a goddamn octopus that won't show you his fuckin' head?”

Frank nodded. The protection racket was definitely going out of style, though he had never expressed this opinion out loud.

Bumpy stared back at the window of cameras. Again he pointed.

“
That's
the problem, Frank. Eyes looking at you, but
no faces. That's the way it is, now: you can't even find a heart to stick the knife in.”

Bumpy was still returning the cameras' stare when his jaw went slack and his expression turned fearful.

Which shocked Frank, who did not shock easily. Thing was, in all these years, Frank Lucas had never seen Bumpy Johnson look afraid.

Now, astonishingly, the big man dropped to his knees, as if praying to this church of consumerism. Both Frank and the German shepherd stared down at their master in disbelief.

Then Frank was on his knees, too, asking, “What is it, Mr. Johnson?
Bumpy!
”

Hand splayed on the breast of the cashmere topcoat, Bumpy looked at Frank but remained slack-jawed, no words coming out, though the eyes pleaded.

Frank heard a voice yelling, “
Somebody call an ambulance!
”

It was his own voice.

He scrambled to the entrance of the cavernous discount store and yelled those words again, but the place seemed empty, the echo of his cry for help having a hollow ring, blending in with Muzak and cash registers ringing up sales that Bumpy would never see his piece of.

Frank threw a desperate glance at Bumpy, whose tear-filled eyes were on him.

And finally Bumpy managed to speak: “Forget it, Frank. Nobody's in charge.”

As usual, Bumpy was right, even with his last words.

On the day of
Bumpy's funeral, the media was waiting outside the Lenox Terrace apartment house, recording the parade of limousines and the mourners who emerged from them, family and friends, of course, but also celebrities and politicians. This enormous crowd, mostly Harlemites, called for cops on horseback to maintain order; for a protection racketeer, Bumpy was beloved.

And in certain unmarked cars, FBI agents snapped pictures with their long-lensed cameras, their focus on the Italian gangsters coming to pay their respects, capo Dominic Cattano in particular. The black criminals were beneath their interest, though when Nicky Barnes in his tinted Gucci glasses stepped from his white Bentley, to pose happily for anybody with a camera, the feds felt obligated to snap a few of this attentioncraving drug dealer.

The live coverage played on a television in the Johnson apartment, though no one was really watching.

“
The passing of Ellsworth ‘Bumpy' Johnson has brought together a who's who of mourners on this chilly afternoon. The Governor has come down. The Mayor of New York and the Chief of Police and Commissioner join sports and entertainment luminaries . . .
”

In a corner of Bumpy Johnson's well-appointed garden apartment, Frank Lucas was sitting on a couch, half-listening to this March of Time obituary. Nearby but not right next to where Frank sat, Bumpy's loyal
German shepherd perched, watching all these intruders as suspiciously as Frank.

“
According to the eulogies
,” a male reporter down among the crowd below was saying, “
Bumpy Johnson was a great man, a giving man, a man of the people. But no one chose to include in their remembrances the word most often associated with Johnson: gangster
.”

Frank rose, went to the TV, switched it off and returned to his couch. This had been his boss's private sanctuary, with its carved-ivory chess table and bookcase of leather-bound Shakespeare and a stereo console with a record collection running from classical music to Henry Mancini, no jazz or R & B at all. Frank was among the few to regularly hang out here with the boss.

Now the sanctuary had been invaded, on the pretense of respect. Among the vultures were the self-styled Superfly Nicky Barnes with his ever-present crew of ass-kissers, and that thug Tango Black, a big bald-headed bastard known to be quick for a man his size. Right now Tango was quick to scavenge food and booze at this catered wake.

Vulgar men in vulgar clothes, Frank thought. Ironic that the two Cosa Nostra types at the wet bar—elegant, hawkishly handsome Cattano, who Bumpy did business with, and his accountant-like minion, Rossi—were among the most truly respectful mourners here. While Tango and Nicky Barnes sloshed down the booze, Cattano sipped white wine. Class.

Taking the liberty of plopping himself down next to
Frank was an anonymously respectable-looking white guy in a dark suit suitable for a mortician or banker. He was in fact the latter, with Chemical Bank in the Bronx.

“How you doing, Frank?”

“All right.”

“Terrible loss.”

Frank nodded.

The banker risked a small smile. “How are you . . . otherwise? Things okay financially?”

The banker was obviously wondering whether Frank had been appointed by Bumpy as his successor. But he didn't reply: this was neither the time nor the place. The banker's lack of tact, however, didn't irritate him as much as seeing that waste of skin Tango Black plonk a watery glass filled with melting ice on the edge of Bumpy's antique inlaid chess table.

The banker was pressing on: “Did Bumpy set anything up for you?”

“Excuse me.”

Frank got up and crossed to the chess table and picked up the glass and set it on a coaster.

Tango, noticing this, grinned at Frank and said, “Hey, while you're at it, Frank, I could use an ashtray.”

Frank reached into his jacket. Tango frowned a little; so did the German shepherd, watching his master's friend ever closely. His revolver in its shoulder holster was revealed, but what Frank was going for was his handkerchief, which he used to dry the condensation Tango's spent drink glass had left.

Then, from a drawer of the chess table, Frank took an ashtray and held it out toward Tango.

The big man looked at Frank, at the ashtray and back at Frank; finally, unsure of whether this was a genuine response to his sarcastic comment or some kind of challenge, Tango wandered off to scavenge more free eats.

When Frank returned to the couch, the banker was gone, but Charlie Williams had taken his place. Charlie, an older player in the dope game, was an affable guy, stand-up all the way, and Bumpy had thought well of him.

Charlie had an almond-shaped face emphasized by a receding hairline and a mustache a shade lighter than his dark hair. “You going to be all right, Frank?”

“Yeah.”

“You don't like havin' all these people walkin' around in here, do you? Sniffin' around is more like it.”

“No I don't.”

Charlie patted Frank's shoulder. “Listen, knowing Bumpy, he prob'ly never told you, but he made me promise . . . anything ever happened to him? I'd make sure you didn't go without.”

Frank gave Charlie a smile, his first one today. “I'll be fine, Charlie.” Then he turned away and stared into the mourners, making them a blur in his vision. “Half the people here owed Bumpy money. If they think I'm gonna forget to collect, they're dead wrong.”

Charlie chuckled. Patted Frank's shoulder. “That's the spirit. Go get 'em, son.”

Getting up with a nod and a smile, Charlie ambled off. Cattano's man Rossi, a mustached blocky character with shark's eyes, trundled over like a tank. His
eyes asked Frank if it was okay to sit down. Frank's eyes said yes.

Rossi said, “Unseemly to do business here, Frank.”

“Right.”

“But life goes on.”

“It does.”

“Thought you'd wanna know you can pick up the stuff at the club tomorrow.”

“Morning okay?”

Rossi nodded. “Ten?”

“Ten.”

Richard “Richie” Roberts knew
what fear was.

This afternoon, for example, he and his partner Javy Rivera were about to serve a subpoena on a low-level wise guy, Vinnie Campizi, and wise guys, of any level, were potentially dangerous. At this very moment, Richie was lugging a sledgehammer as he and Javy headed across a street busy enough to take some doing, but also the kind of thoroughfare where no driver paid any heed to a couple fullback-size jaywalkers in leather jackets and jeans, one of whom was hefting a sledgehammer.

The seedy hourly rate motel they were heading toward was close enough to the waterfront that you could see the jagged teeth of the Harlem skyline on the other side, just beyond the George Washington Bridge. This was the kind of fleabag where you got rolled and not just in the hay, where catching a dose of the clap
was getting off easy. Bad things happened behind those closed doors, but none of it, after all these years on the force, added up to fear for Richie Roberts.

Fear for Richie Roberts was walking to the gallows that was a blackboard at the front of his night-school law class, a fluorescent-lit dungeon where he existed in cold-sweat dread of hearing his name called. “Fuck you, pig!” from a PCP-addled perp held nothing like the threat of hearing his professor say, “Mr. Roberts—give us
U.S. vs. Meade
. . . subject, issues, what the determination was, and what it means to us today.”

Fear for Richie was turning to face classmates, all of whom were at least a decade younger than him, every one of them knowing more than he did, and exposing the inadequacies of his thinking and self-expression.

Sledgehammer gripped in one hand, Richie—dark blond, boyish—was explaining to Javy: “They took surveys. It's scientific.”

Javy, a pair of sunglasses surrounded by long hair, muttonchop sideburns and a thick mustache, said, “Yeah, right, it's in the
Enquirer
, it's gotta be true.”

“No, it is,” Richie insisted. “Number one fear of most people? Isn't dying, dying's easy—it's public speaking. They get sick, physically ill—puke their guts out.”

Javy's eyebrows rose over the sunglasses. “So, naturally, this is what you want to do for a living. Get up in front of people.”

“Naw, it's the law I'm interested in. We're at the bottom of the food chain, Javy—there's more control up top.”

“More control than swinging a sledge?”

They were headed toward the motel office; seemed there was a
VACANCY
. There'd soon be another.

“Anyway,” Richie said, “I don't like being that way—afraid to stand up in front of people. It's stupid. I wanna beat it.”

They went into the office.

A portable TV on a shelf was playing another news report about that dead black gangster, Bumpy Johnson.
Christ
, Richie thought,
the old bastard was getting more play in New York than Martin Luther King.

The clerk was in his thirties and needed a shave; his sleepy expression woke up a little at the sight of the sledgehammer. “Hey! What the fuck you guys think—”

Javy flashed his New Jersey detective's shield; he dug the subpoena out of his pocket and flashed it, too, though the clerk was already convinced.

About to go back out, Richie caught the clerk's eyes. He gestured with the sledgehammer. “No wake-up calls, now.”

“No! Do what you gotta do, guys. No skin off my dick.”

The two plainclothes Prosecutor's Office cops kept on the sidewalk under the overhang, close to the doors of the motel rooms. They walked with the deliberation and lack of concern of mailmen.

Javy waved the subpoena. “So who's gonna do this?”

Richie snatched it. “Campizi knows me; he'll take it from me. I've known him since high school.”

“How the fuck many wise guys you know, anyway?”

“How many wise guys went to high school in New Jersey?”