American Gangster (8 page)

The paramedics were goggling at him, as if maybe they should be skipping the corpse's gurney and instead going down to get a straitjacket out of their ambulance for the detective.

Richie pointed to the stiff. “He needs to be less dead. Way less dead.”

Pretty soon, Richie came out of the building fast—holding up his badge in its ID wallet Olympic torch-style—motioning and yelling at the crowd to get back, like it was a matter of life and death.

Which it was. Even more than his damn Bar exams. . . .

“We need a path here!” he called. “Step back—injured man coming through! Let these fellas do their job and he'll be all right. . . . Ma'am, excuse me. Step back. Sir! Please. . . .”

The paramedics were right behind Richie bearing a gurney whose rider had tubes in his nostrils, an IV in his arm and eyes open wide. If anybody had gotten a closer, longer look, the corpse would still have seemed
a corpse; but nobody got much of any kind of look, and, wham, bam, the gurney was hauled up into the ambulance with one paramedic alongside, the rear doors shutting behind.

“Nothing to see here!” Richie called, motioning for Javy to come out of the building and join him. He was guiding his partner away in one direction, as the crowd began spreading out in the other, to trail after the siren-wailing ambulance as it pulled away from the ominous towers.

Richie and Javy walked.

Quickly. Not so quickly as to draw attention, but quickly enough, and in a nearby commercial area, Richie ducked into an alley, taking his partner with him, and they cut through almost to the next street. Near its mouth, they found a place between a bin and some garbage cans to stand and catch their breath and talk.

“Jesus, Rich,” Javy said, shaking his head, sighing in relief, even grinning a little. “Thank you, man.”

Richie shoved Javy against the brick wall. “You dumb bastard—you ripped him off, didn't you?”

“
What?
” Javy's eyes popped. “Are you
high
, Rich?”

“Look who's asking.”

Javy held both palms up in “back off” fashion. “I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about, Rich.”

Upper lip curled over his teeth, Richie leaned forward and stuck his hands into the deep pockets of Javy's leather jacket; he found the thickness of cash in both.

With a violent downward tug, he simultaneously ripped open both pockets—“
Rich! What the fuck!
”—and
money spilled out, twenties, fifties, hundreds, onto the filthy alley floor.

“
This
,” Richie said, indicating the fallen cash. “I'm talking about this, Jav. Where'd the bread come from, man?”

Javy's eyes were wild. “You
fucker!
” He got down on his hands and knees and recovered the money, stuffing it in his pants pockets and in his waistband, saying, “This is
my
money. Hard-earned! I never took dirty money in my life, you know that.”

“What I know is,” Richie said, watching his partner scramble after the literally dirty money, “you're a lying piece of shit.”

Javy was on his feet again. “Jesus, Rich! Take the stick out of your ass. Every cop takes the
occasional
. . . you know, gratuity. You gonna tell me that's wrong?”

“It's wrong. Yeah.”

“Hell it is!” Javy leaned in, not quite in Richie's face, and said, “It's part of our pay, guys like us. Above and beyond the salary, for little things, like getting the fuck
shot
at! You risk your fuckin' life to serve and protect, and in return? Certain courtesies are shown. In gratitude, like.”

Disgusted, Richie grabbed his partner by the lapels of the leather jacket and tried to decide whether to shake him till he rattled or knock his damn head onto those bricks till it splashed or . . . shit.

He let loose.

Embarrassed, near tears, Javy said, “You'd begrudge me a little goddamn shitting consideration—a
discount on a TV, a Doughboy pool in the backyard . . . a new dress for my girl, maybe once a fuckin' year.”

“Wrong is wrong.”

Javy's eyes flared. “Jesus fucking. . . . All I'm talking about is guys like you and me not living under the fucking
poverty
level! You wanna call it wrong, go ahead! Call it wrong.”

“It's wrong.”

Javy threw his hands in the air. “Fine! Then, goddamnit, let the sons of bitches pay me fifty K a year, like the manager of a goddamn supermarket. Pay me
something
for putting my ass on the line, for getting shot at. . . . You got a short fucking memory, man.”

“Do I?”

His eyes were welling, his lips quivering. “Next time . . . next time four guys come into your place, with sawed-off shotguns? You take care of your
own
ass.”

Richie sighed. Held up a “stop” palm to indicate a shift in conversation. “Okay. So you robbed him, and then you shot him. And now I helped get you out of there.”

Javy said nothing.

Richie went on: “How many other pathetic low-end dealers have you ripped off and shot over the years, Jav? Two? Twenty?”

Suddenly Javy grew some spine, shoving Richie, who stumbled back a step.

“Hey, you know what, Rich? Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on. Guy accuses his partner
of something like that, accusing his own kind. You should be ashamed.”

And Javy got his car keys out, and bumped by Richie, only Richie grabbed him, yanked his coat half-off to get at Javy's left sleeve, which he pushed up. The time had come to confirm a suspicion Richie had denied for too long.

There they were:
the puncture scabs and scars, the needle tracks of the junkie.

Richie pushed his partner away. “You're the one should be ashamed. You're a fucking disgrace.”

Now Javy did get in Richie's face. “I'll tell you what I am—I'm a fucking
leper
! And why? Because I listened to you, because I went along with Saint Richie of Roberts and turned in a million
fucking
dollars! God! Damn!”

Javy backed off and staggered around in a little half circle, saying, “And you know who wants to work with me after that? Same people wanna work with you, Rich—
no body!
”

Richie went to his partner, ex-partner, and grabbed the man's hand holding the car keys and squeezed and squeezed and finally the jagged teeth of the keys did their work and blood dripped from Javy's forced fist.

“Here's what I'll do for you,” Richie said to the trembling Javy, “for that time at my place, when you saved my ass? I will write this up the way you say it happened. I will back you all the way.”

“Richie. . . .”

“But that is it. That is it for us, Javy. Far as I'm concerned, that was you dead on the floor today.”

Then Richie backed off, held his hands high as if in surrender and headed out of the dark alley into sunshine, not watching Javy slump against the brick and clutch his bleeding hand.

At a certain army
base in New Jersey, in the cool blue dusk, a beat-up Chevy headed off a road, rumbled over the earth and stopped alongside a perimeter fence. The vehicle's driver, Frank Lucas, got out and waited, watching a military jeep with its lights off come gliding over the smooth ground of a firing range.

The jeep slowed.

Stopped.

Close enough, now, for Frank to make out the silhouettes of the driver and two passengers, and their M-16s at the ready. Frank took a few steps toward them and the silhouettes became three black servicemen, one of whom—the driver—was a captain.

Frank noted the peculiarity of a captain driving a couple of privates around, but said nothing.

The captain, accustomed to giving orders, gave one to Frank: “Open your trunk.”

Frank nodded curtly and went around and opened his trunk, then stood to one side as the two privates—this is why the captain was driving, Frank decided—did the hauling, dragging four large taped-up duffel bags from in back of the jeep, tossing them in the junker Chevy's trunk, slamming it shut.

Then the privates rejoined the captain in the jeep and, without so much as a salute, took their leave, vehicle growling as it made a U-turn and headed back over the firing range.

Fitting,
Frank thought.
We'll all be targets now. . . .

In the relative safety
and security of his apartment, Frank sat at his kitchen table with the four duffel bags—still taped and cinched up—slung there like big fat sausages, breakfast for a giant. Frank, nursing a glass of bourbon, kept staring at the bags, as if expecting them to speak.

He sat there a long time—going on an hour—putting off a moment of discovery that would mean one of two things: he would be a Harlem-based businessman (the word “gangster” did not cross his mind) at a level Bumpy Johnson had never dreamed of; or he had just squandered his life savings on four bags of nothing at all.

The German shepherd—which Frank had taken to calling “Bumpy” (in honor of a master who'd never bothered to name the animal)—was sitting nearby. The animal had finished his dishes of water and kibble and was staring at Frank with soulful eyes that meant he needed a walk.

Then the dog got interested in what Frank was doing—maybe thinking more food was in those duffel bags, the dog was always up for more food—as his new master tore the tape from one of the duffels, and loosened its cinching.

Frank let out a big breath that he hadn't realized he was holding in when he saw the multitude of brick-like packages within.

The other three duffels were similarly stuffed, brimming with oversized decks of No. 4 heroin wrapped in paper bearing Chinese characters and stamped with a label that was better than the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval: two lions, up on their hind legs, paws pushing a globe.

And in English were the words
DOUBLE UOGLOBE BRAND 100%
.

By dawn Frank had found a better home for the enormous supply of dope than his own goddamn apartment, though that was where he was again sitting, and at the same table. The only evidence of any drugs on the premises was a small powder pile on a small slip of paper.

Sitting at the table with Frank was a slender, studious-looking young man with the wire-rimmed glasses and casual attire of a college student, who had just tested the powder and was about to tell Frank the good or bad (or in-between) news.

The young chemist said, “Typically what I see, before anybody on this end has stepped on it? Is twenty-five to forty-five percent pure.”

Good news, then.

The kid's voice was businesslike but his eyes were glittering, like a woman studying a huge diamond some chump had given her. “No alkaloids, no adulterants, no dilutants. It's one hundred percent—holy grail of shit, Frank.”

Frank nodded, flicked a smile, stood. “Thanks for coming around so early, such short notice.”

The chemist flipped open a leather travel syringe kit, which the kid had set on the table along with his testing gear. The glittery eyes gazed up at him. “You mind, Frank?”

“Take it with you,” Frank said. “Better cut it, some. Or your roomies'll be calling the coroner.”

Nodding, the chemist quickly gathered his things, then on the way out offered one last piece of advice: “Store it in a cool, dark place, Frank.”

“Sounds like you're talking about Harlem,” he said, with another brief smile, and let the kid out.

Then Frank drew all the blinds and set himself down in his Eames chair, put his feet up and did his mulling, meditative thing. He needed a whole new way of doing things and probably a whole new crew and he had to think it through. . . .

At the morgue, an
assistant medical examiner pulled open a cadaver drawer for Richie Roberts to confirm an ID. The detective who'd called him down was an old friend of both Richie and his ex-partner Javy, who was the corpse in question.

Even knowing Javy had been using didn't prepare Richie for the wealth of scabs and tracks on not just his arms but the stomach, legs and toes of the longtime addict his ex-partner had become.

The detective, Jacobs, asked, “You know his girlfriend, Rich? Good-looker. Started out as one of his informants, and then he moved in with her.”

Richie said, “Beth. Her name was Beth. Don't remember her last name.”

The heavy-set figure in white that was the assistant medical examiner slid open another cadaver drawer, as matter of fact as an office worker at a file cabinet.

“That's her,” Richie said, staring down at the skinny, once-attractive body with its own array of needle marks.

“Should've seen their pad,” Detective Jacobs said. “Like a buncha animals lived there.”

“I've seen it,” Richie said. “Wasn't so bad, once.”

“Well, trust me, you don't wanna drop by now.” Then the detective said to the assistant ME, “Picked a good night for it, huh? Grand Central in here.”

“It's been like this every night, lately,” the ME said with a fatalistic shrug. “I'm lucky if I get home before midnight. Lot of careless people in the world.”

“Less now,” Jacobs pointed out.

Richie took a look at the small pile of personal effects on the chest of his ex-partner's cold corpse: a few crumpled dollars, car keys and a half-empty package of what appeared to be heroin in blue cellophane.

“This needs to go into evidence,” Richie said, and took the bag.

The assistant ME filed Javy away, and on his way out with the detective, Richie held up the bag and asked, “This tell you anything? Blue cellophane?”

“That's the junkie's current brand of choice, my friend—Blue Magic. Stronger stuff than usual. May be why we're having such a carnival of ODs, lately.”

Richie offered the bag to the detective. “You should take this. It's your evidence.”