American Gangster (9 page)

“Evidence of what? Javy Rivera being a first-class idiot?”

“He was a good cop, once upon a time.”

The detective grunted. “That fairy tale is over.”

In the lounge of
the small police gym where Richie liked to work out, a television was going, though nobody was watching it right now. He found himself trying to listen, as he lifted weights in sweats and tennies, though the report wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know.

“
Since 1965,
” a typically authoritative baritone intoned, “
law enforcement has watched the steady increase of heroin addiction, no longer exclusive to big city neighborhoods, and along with it a rise in violent crime. Now unaccountably, it has exploded, reaching into cities as a whole—our suburbs and towns—our schools.”

Only a few other cops were working out, many of them overweight types who'd been sent here “or else,” but whether fit or fat, the cops had one thing in common: none of them wanted a damn thing to do with Richie. Sometimes they'd even walk in, see him and walk out.

“
Someone is finally saying enough is enough,
” the narrator was saying. “
Federal authorities have announced their intention to establish special narcotics bureaus in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Newark and other major metropolitan areas. . . .
”

Richie was jumping rope, now, and could see the sensational images on the fuzzy screen: quick shots of inner cities, junkies in shooting galleries, homicide victims in alleys and gutters, and, most shocking of all oddly enough, white suburbia.

And, of course, those who would fix all this: lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Richie heard somebody come in and saw it was his boss with the Prosecutor's Office, Lou Toback. Toback, his tie loose, stood with his hands on hips and listened to the last of the heroin story on the news.

Richie stopped jumping, said, “Dog and pony show.”

Toback looked over his shoulder at Richie and half-smiled. “You think?”

In the locker room, Richie changed into his street clothes while tall, slender Toback paced and talked. Seemed Richie's boss had been selected to head up the Newark bureau in this federal drug inquiry.

“You heard the TV,” Richie said, tying his shoes. “Like I said, dog and pony show.”

“Not how I'm hearing it,” Toback said, sitting on the bench nearby. “Not how it's being advertised, anyway.”

“Well, where do I come in, in a federal deal? Who the hell would I answer to? FBI? I don't like the FBI.”

“You answer to me,” Toback said, “and the U.S. attorney. Nobody else. No FBI. Hoover knows better than to mix his boys up with dope—too much temptation for the feeble-minded.”

Richie was dressed now. He sat on the bench and looked at his boss, who had always been straight with him, and said, “I know I'm not in any position to refuse this assignment, really. But I'm not convinced it's a good idea.”

“Why, you'd rather stay where you are?”

“Well . . .”

Toback had a way of smiling that was at once mocking and friendly. “Rich, a detective who doesn't have the cooperation of his fellow detectives is by definition ineffective.”

“What's that, French for ‘fucked'? Anyway, you know why I don't have the ‘cooperation' of my peers.”

“
Why
you don't,” Toback said flatly, “doesn't mean a damn.”

“Doesn't it? Doesn't it mean anything that they're all on the take, and I'm not?” He shook his head. “Instead of giving you a medal or some shit, for turning in dirty money, they bury your damn ass.”

“News flash,” Toback said, “the world isn't fair. You're right, Richie. But what does being right get you?”

He frowned. “What does this assignment get me?”

Toback shrugged. “Maybe it's an opportunity to get away from all that. To go somewhere where you're not some kind of goddamn pariah.”

The two men sat there and stared at each other.

“I'll do it,” Richie said.

Toback grinned. “Good.”

“
But
. . .” Richie held up a traffic-cop palm. “. . . only like this: I don't set foot in a police station again, not on either side of the river. I work out of a place of my own. And I pick my own guys. Guys I know wouldn't take an apple off a cart, a nickel off the sidewalk.”

Toback thought about that. “Worked for Eliot Ness.”

“My favorite show, as a kid,
Untouchables
.”

His boss grunted a laugh. “That explains a lot.”

“Well?”

Toback's eyes narrowed. “Done.”

The two men shook hands.

Almost twenty-four hours to
the minute from the time those GIs had stuffed four duffel bags of high-grade powder into Frank's trunk, a phone began to ring in a detached shed next to a decrepit clapboard house in North Carolina.

The house looked like Dorothy's tornado had picked it up and set it down hard; but this wasn't Kansas and it surely wasn't Oz. This was Greensboro, where crickets and bullfrogs were announcing the coming night, and a couple of black teens were playing catch.

Playing catch was understating it: one kid had a catcher's mitt, sixty yards away, and the other had a piston for an arm. The dark yew trees weren't impressed, throwing longer and longer shadows, making it hard for the kids to see; and the yard was an unlikely practice field, littered as it was with car parts and the scavenged, discarded vehicles that had given them up.

Within the shed, Melvin Lucas, in overalls and his early twenties, was reading
Players
magazine and paying no attention to the greasy, ringing phone on the workbench where he sat.

His brother Huey, working under a car nearby, yelled, “Will you please
answer
the bastard?”

Melvin took his eyes off Pam Grier's bosom and got the phone, saying into the receiver, “Yeah,” unenthusiastically.

“Let me talk to Huey,” a voice said.

Melvin didn't argue, merely said, “For you.”

“Who is it?”

“I dunno.” Melvin set the phone down on the workbench and his ass on his stool and went back to Pam Grier.

In overalls he'd just gotten dirty today (as opposed to Melvin's, which had a month's buildup), Huey Lucas—bright-eyed, good-looking, a young thirty—came over, wiping his hands with a rag.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone.

“Huey?”

He frowned. “Who's this?”

“Frank.”

He gave Melvin a “what the fuck” look. “Frank who?”

“Frank your brother.”

“. . . Been a while since you called. Mom could use a damn phone call, time to—”

“You want to bust my ass over that, or come up north and get rich?”

Huey's smile was so big and pretty, it drew Melvin's attention away from the skin mag.

“Frank,” Huey said, butter wouldn't melt. “What a damn treat hearing from you.”

The brand-new two-story house
in the housing development cost Frank fifty thousand dollars. Any misgivings the Realtor might have had, selling to a man of Frank's complexion, were overcome by the sight of an open briefcase containing cash payment in full.

On a sunny spring afternoon, Frank was setting up Bumpy the German shepherd in the backyard with a doghouse and a fenced-in run when he heard the unruly caravan of cars arriving like the opening of
The Beverly Hillbillies
. All of his neighbors were white, and Frank had to grin to himself, thinking of the dozens of conversations his ragtag family's arrival would inspire around here this evening.

But his brothers and cousins would all learn to fit in. This wasn't Dogpatch, USA, it was Teaneck, New Jersey, and they would adapt. They would have to.

Still, their very lack of sophistication recommended these country boys to Frank. With what he had to accomplish, how could he turn to the usual sleazy Harlem suspects? But a country boy wasn't used to flashy cars and flashier women and diamond jewelry and expensive threads.

A city boy would take your last dime, then swear on his mother's grave he never touched it. A country boy wouldn't steal from you if his wife and kiddies were starving. City boys were selfish sons of bitches, but country boys were loyal as that German shepherd in Frank's backyard.

Assorted cars and pickup trucks soon lined the curb and jammed the driveway. Frank's five brothers, three cousins, their wives and kids and of course their gray-haired mother in cardigan and string-of-pearls climbed from the vehicles looking almost as excited as they did exhausted.

Just as Frank was coming out the front door with the
big dog trailing, Huey was arguing with Melvin about whether this was the right address or not: Huey thought it was. The new Lincoln Town Car parked just outside the garage may have given some of them doubts—how could that be their brother Frank's ride? One of the younger Lucas boys said he didn't want to get shot for trespassing or nothing.

And Frank's mother had said, “Shot for trespassing or
anything
, Cleon.”

That was when Huey noticed Frank, and there were hollers and hoots as Frank went straight to Momma and took her in his arms and held her for the longest time.

Then he gave each of his brothers a quick hug, which may have surprised them, since he was normally not demonstrative. But he was happy as hell to see them, and could hardly contain himself.

Frank had spent two days picking out the furniture himself and the last of it had been delivered just this afternoon, so the place had not only a showroom look but smell. Momma had never seen a kitchen this big, even in the restaurants where she'd worked from time to time, and—Frank having anticipated her needs with his own trip to the supermarket—the new house was soon filled with the old smells of downhome cooking.

Within two hours of their arrival, the extended Lucas clan was sitting around a vast dining room table passing platters around. Even Nate's joint in Bangkok couldn't hold a candle to this soul food. And of course Frank, loving having everybody here, sat at the head of the table.

At the moment, brother Turner was bragging on his eighteen-year-old son, Stevie.

“Boy's got an arm on him, Frank,” Turner was saying as he navigated a chunk of corn bread, “major league arm, I'm tellin' ya. Ain't that right?”

Nobody at the table argued, though Stevie himself just smiled shyly and shrugged.

Frank, spooning some black-eyed peas onto his plate, gave the kid a smile and asked gently, “Show me after supper?”

Stevie grinned and nodded.

But his proud papa wasn't finished: “You can't catch him, Frank. Why, he'll take your head clean off. Talkin' 95-mile-a-
hour
. Any idea how fast that is? Here's how fast: you see the ball leave his hand, and that's the last you see of it, 'fore it knocks you flat.”

That made Frank laugh. “Is that right,” he said.

At that moment, if pressed, Frank Lucas might well have admitted never feeling happier.

But before Frank went back outside, to try to catch a fastball in the dying light of day, he abducted his mother from the kitchen—the other girls could take care of clean-up patrol—and gave her the grand tour.

The downstairs remained alive with the noises of a big family, but was muffled and distant up here. Up here, it was just Frank and Momma.

Of his preparations over the last week, from buying this house to furnishing it and even doing the grocery shopping, Momma's room was Frank's proudest hour. He ushered her into a space larger than the shack he'd grown up in, and her eyes opened wide and her jaw
dropped as she took in an array of Early American furnishings that would have staggered Betsy Ross.

“This,” he said simply, “is your room.”

Momma was clearly awestruck by the splendor of it. But of all the furnishings, an old vanity table, dotted with French perfume bottles, was what drew her eyes and herself.

She stood touching the table, as if testing its reality, asking her son, “How did you . . . ?”

“It's not magic,” he said and found himself grinning like a fool. “It's something I put in motion months ago, to send you for your birthday. But now that you're up here with me? Well.”

“I don't understand, Frank.”

“I had it made. From memory.”

She was shaking her head. “But you were
five
when they took it away. How could you remember it?”

“I remember.”

“It's perfect,” she said. She gazed around the bedroom,
her
bedroom. “It's all perfect.”

He said nothing, but was glowing inside.

His gray-haired momma, eyes exaggerated behind the thick glasses, said, “I'm so proud of you, son.”

He took her in his arms, and he kissed her forehead, and he swelled with the pride she'd bestowed upon him.