American Gangster (22 page)

Laurie was indicating a stricken Sheila.

“I can tell just by looking,” Laurie said with utter contempt, “
she's
one of them, too.”

Sheila looked like she wanted to crawl under her pew, with so many eyes and ears in the courtroom taking this in.

But Richie, good Jewish boy that he was, accepted this punishment, knowing he deserved it.

And Laurie was winding up now: “You think you're going to heaven, 'cause you're ‘honest,' do you? Well, you're not. You're a liar and a cheat and a selfish prick, and you'll be going to the same level of hell as the crooked cops you can't stand.”

“
All rise,
” the bailiff said, putting a blessed end to Laurie's diatribe.

Soon they were before the same judge who'd willingly received petty paper-clipped bribes the last time Richie and his lawyer had come into this courtroom.

Sheila, on her feet next to the seated Richie, did her best, saying, “Your Honor, a lot has been said here today about how unsavory an environment Mr. Roberts offers a child. How dangerous that environment is. Well, I'm sorry, Your Honor, but the
world
is dangerous. Still, it's where we live, and yet we tell Richie and men with guns and badges like him, ‘Protect us.' We give the Richie Robertses of our world that dangerous responsibility and then we say, ‘Oh, but you can't bring a
child
into that—we can't trust a man like you to raise a child, we don't think you're fit for—”

“
I'm not
,” Richie said, in a clear loud firm voice.

The chamber was draped in silence. The judge started reaching for his gavel, but froze instead. “Do you have something to say, Mr. Roberts?”

“I do, Your Honor,” he said, getting to his feet. “But not to you, sir.” He looked at Laurie, whose astonished eyes were on him. “You're right, babe. It's no place for Michael, being around me. Take him. Take him, and the farther away the better. Better for him, I mean. Just please don't remove him completely from my life, because I do love him, and would like him to grow up knowing that. . . . That's all, Your Honor.”

And Richie sat back down.

And Laurie Roberts was suddenly remembering how and why she had first fallen in love with her ex-husband.

The snow was still
white and fresh, New York not getting its chance to apply grime just yet, and the Christmas feeling in Manhattan was like everybody was living inside that old movie,
A Miracle on 34th Street
. The towering tree at Rockefeller Center had been turned on earlier that evening, its blinking red and blue and green lights casting a Yuletide glow on tourists and New Yorkers alike, who applauded as if electricity in the 20th century was still a miracle. Certainly Christmas was.

Frank Lucas did not delegate Christmas—he was still, at heart, a country boy, and the holiday meant something to him, not so much in a religious way as a time for family and friends. He had shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue for Eva, and at Macy's for his momma, his brothers and the help. By the time Doc rolled up outside Frank's penthouse, the car was piled with
wrapped presents in the front and back, and though he wore not red and white but a tan cashmere topcoat, he felt just like fucking Santa Claus.

Too bad a Grinch had parked itself at the curb outside Frank's building: Detective Trupo, in the replacement Mustang the detective had bought, no doubt, with some of the proceeds from that heroin he'd helped himself to.

“Frank . . . ,” Doc began.

“Yeah, I see them. Not a problem. Pull in behind.”

Doc did as he was told. There was a big Christmas tree tied to the roof of the Town Car and the doorman came over to help Doc free the pine. In the meantime, Frank selected from among the presents two bottles of Crystal with festive bows choking their necks, and got out and went over to Trupo's car.

The Zapata-mustached detective was behind the wheel, and in the rider's seat was one of his partners. Frank had not bothered to learn any of the names of Trupo's team—they were insects to him.

Still, he handed in both bottles and gave the pair his friendliest smile, his breath pluming in the chill. “Here you go, boys. Merry Christmas. One of my guys will drop by your restaurant with a little green for the season, next week.”

Trupo handed his bottle over to his rider for safekeeping, then returned Frank's smile, wished Frank and his family a happy holiday, and the new Mustang rolled off into the gently snow-flecked night.

In honor of the season, Frank did not mutter anything under his breath about the evil pricks.

Half an hour later,
with Christmas music playing softly on his stereo, Frank was in his vast, high-ceilinged living room on a ladder stringing lights. His old friend Charlie Williams, in sweater and slacks, was seated on a nearby sofa sipping a beer—nothing fancy for Charlie. No wonder Bumpy had loved the man so.

“It's part of the game,” Charlie said philosophically, “greasing these palms. Price of doing business, Bumpy always said. Imagine how bad it would be for us if the cops
weren't
crooked assholes?”

Frank reached up to loop the string of lights around a branch; he loved the strong pine scent—that, too, brought back memories of the backwoods.

“Paying cops is one thing,” Frank said. “I understand that. Hell, I been payin' 'em since I was ten—put more of their fuckin' kids through college than the National Merit Award.”

“You got that right,” Charlie chuckled.

“But this is different, these Special Investigation Unit dicks.” He cast his eyes over his shoulder, gazing right at Charlie. “These fuckers think they
are
special.”

“A badge has given a lot of small men big ideas, over history.”

“That's the SIU fuzz to a tee.”

Charlie shrugged rather grandly; it was his third beer. “They're just fuckin' crooks, like any other fuckin' crooks. Not cops who do their jobs and keep the streets looked after and make up for their shitty paychecks
with a little gravy. No, these guys got no code of honor. These guys got the ethics of a goddamn sewer rat.”

Frank was down the ladder now. He knelt and plugged in the electrical cord and the tree glowed vividly in the otherwise under-illuminated room. Rockefeller Center had nothing on the Lucas tree.

Getting to his feet, Frank said, casually, “Somebody's been following me.”

“Besides cops?”

“Besides cops.” He came over and sat next to his old friend, and the two men's eyes met. “I see cars where they shouldn't be. Driven by guys I don't know.”

Charlie sighed. He put his beer down on a coaster on the glass-top coffee table.

“Me, too,” Charlie said.

“Silent Night” by a children's choir was singing in the background as the two men chatted about the possibilities, none of which were what either wanted for Christmas, or any other day.

Frank sat and watched
Eva, lovely in a dark sweater and skirt, hanging tinsel on the tree. She'd already been up on the ladder and now was doing the lower branches; when she bent over to apply the silver glittery stuff, the sight of her nicely rounded bottom made him glad to be alive.

She was everything he needed—let the other guys have their mistresses and whores. He had his personal beauty queen, right under his own roof.

Also, he had Bumpy, the German shepherd, who
Eva graciously allowed to invade the penthouse a few days a week; Bumpy was perfectly housebroken and a real gentleman, well deserving of the dog toy Frank had bought him at Macy's.

Since Frank figured the dog didn't know Christmas from Easter, he gave the animal its present early, tossing the rubber thingie to the dog, who proceeded to have the time of his life tossing it around like a dead squirrel.

Enjoying the dog's enjoyment, Frank wandered over to Eva; he was sipping a glass of eggnog with a little rum in it. “I love it here. With you.”

“Me, too.” She flashed a smile at him but something sad lurked within. “But it
is
nice to go out, sometimes.”

“Bumpy almost never went out, after a certain point. He liked to stay in, and read, and watch TV and listen to music. Play chess. He didn't go out much.”

“That sounds like prison.”

“Not hardly!” He gestured around at the lavish living room. “You think
this
is prison?”

She said nothing, just applied another strand of tinsel to another branch.

Frank came over and touched her shoulder. “Bumpy
couldn't
go out without . . . something happening.”

“He was more of a public figure than you, Frank.”

“True.”

“We can
still
go out. Even tonight.”

Frank sighed, moved off a few steps, gesturing. “Where? With who? Everybody I know is under surveillance. I'm being watched these days and I don't
even know who by. I can't even be with my family at Christmas.”

“Why not?”

“Too obvious a target—for cops
and
business rivals.”

He leaned down and played with the dog some more, tossing the damp toy, getting it back, tossing it again. Then he wandered over to a window, drew back the drape just enough to peek out at the decorative wooden Christmas angels stretched out across the street. People were out walking in the lightly falling snow; he watched them, envying them, and then took in the parked cars across the way. Idly he wondered which of them held undercover cops.

Eva's hand touched his shoulder so unexpectedly, he flinched a little.

Her head was cocked, her eyes yearning. “Why don't you just pay who you have to pay? Then maybe we'd have a little more freedom.”

“Baby, I
do
pay them—I pay them all. Cops, accountants, lawyers, who
don't
I pay?
Everybody's
on my payroll—and I shell out a fortune, but it don't matter. Doesn't satisfy 'em. More you pay, the more they expect.”

“That doesn't make sense, Frank. . . .”

“Of course not. Because it's like dope. You pay them off once and they can't stop coming back for more. They always want more.”

The worry coloring her lovely features made him heartsick—this was his life, and his problems, that had put them in their penthouse prison.

He smiled gently at her, took her by both shoulders. “Go put on something nice.”

“What?”

“We're going out.”

Frank had Doc pick
them up the back way, which meant going down the service elevator and exiting through a long dark hallway into an alley between garbage cans. Not an auspicious start for a nice night out—Eva had on a mink coat over her beautiful evening dress, and Frank was snappy in gray sharkskin under the cashmere topcoat, and they were a stunning-looking couple, who at the moment were acting like a couple of deadbeat tenants running out on their landlord.

When they got to Small's Paradise, things weren't any better: Nicky Barnes was in the process of climbing out of his sky-blue Bentley, in typical Superfly threads topped off by a Santa Claus cap.

“Aw shit,” Frank said. “Keep going.”

Doc looked at Frank in the rearview mirror. “Around back?”

“Fuck that. Sneaking out of my apartment building was bad enough. I'm not playin' backdoor man at my own damn club. . . . Just drive.”

They tried several other nightspots, but some were closed Christmas Eve, and assorted reasons made the others impractical as well, so they wound up at a Chinese restaurant where nobody knew Frank from Adam
and it would be an hour for a table. So they ordered takeout.

The place was a joint, no place to sit while you waited under harsh, buzzing fluorescent lighting, and steam everywhere. Eva was getting pretty steamed herself.

“Listen,” she said, “I'll sit in the car.”

Doc said, “Go ahead, Frank. I'll wait for the stuff.”

Frank asked, “Can you carry it all? We ordered a ton.”

“Sure, no problem. Go on.” Doc's expression was that of a man who understood the difficulties of keeping a woman happy.

Frank slipped the big man a couple twenties, then turned to take Eva's arm, but she'd already stepped outside.

“Don't forget the hot mustard,” Frank said.

“What's that, that yellow sauce?”

“Yeah, the yellow sauce.”

When Frank got out the door, he saw Eva half a block down, trying to get in the car, which was locked. Snow was falling good and hard now, and he slipped a little on the sidewalk when he trotted down to her, but kept his balance.

“Damn,” Frank said, not even having to search his pockets, just knowing, “Doc's got the keys. We better go back.”

She shook her head, squinted; snow was dusting her mink. “I can't, Frank. Those lights give me a headache—you go.”

“What, and leave you standing on the street?”