Cops and Robbers Page 18

  In a lot better shape than the Buick. The near miss with the cab had loused him up for good. He shot into that next block angled wrong, coming in from the right because of having gone around the cab, and didn’t get straightened out in time. He sideswiped a truck on his left, scraping along the body, and then careened off that and headed down the block at an angle to the right, and damn if he didn’t hit another truck over on that side. He was like a drunk running down a hallway, bouncing from one wall to the other.

  All the sideswiping, and all the struggling to get his car under control, were slowing him down. He did it a third time, over on the left again, and this time his front bumper or fender or something must have got hooked for a second on a truck cab, because all at once the Buick swerved around and jolted to a stop crossways in the street, the front bumper inches from the side of one truck and rear bumper inches from a truck across the way. The driver’s side was toward us, and I could see his white face in there in my headlights.

  I stood on the brakes myself the second I saw what the Buick was doing, and the squad car dug its nose in and screamed, me fighting a skid to the left every inch of the way.

  The passenger door of the Buick, the one on the far side, had popped open the second the Buick came to a stop, and somebody jumped out and laid what looked like a black stick across the roof of the car, pointing at us. That is, it looked like a black stick until the end of it blew up in red and yellow, and the windshield got peppered with a dozen sudden new holes.

  Lou yelled, “What the fuck is that?”

  “Shotgun!” I was still fighting that leftward skid, the squad car was still in motion, I was still praying for it to quit so I could get my head down out of the way of that shotgun. And finally we did shudder to a stop, no more than twenty feet from the Buick.

  I hit the switch that turned off the siren, and shoved my door open. The driver’s face was no longer showing in the window of the Buick, and the black stick was no longer pointing at us over the top of the car. I leaned my head out to the side, and heard them running into the darkness in the opposite direction.

  As I was getting out of the car, I saw Lou jumping out on his side and making a dash for the Buick. “Hey!” I yelled. “Where the hell are you going?”

  He looked back and saw me standing behind the open door, which would give me some protection if they opened up with that goddam shotgun again. He stopped running forward and crouched there, pistol pointing straight ahead but head still turned around facing me. Looking baffled, he said, “After them. Don’t we—?”

  I said, “In that darkness? With a shotgun? They’ll blow your ass off.”

  He straightened out of his crouch, all momentum gone, but he still didn’t come back. “But we’ll lose them,” he said.

  “We lost them,” I told him. I would never have had to explain that to Paul. “Get back here,” I said, “and call in.”

  The footsteps had faded away. Those two were gone for good, and just as well. I came out from behind the door and walked around to look at the front of the car. Very little of the shotgun blast had reached the windshield, so where had the rest of it gone?

  Into the radiator, as I’d thought. Red cooling fluid was oozing out of a thousand holes. The headlights had also been smashed. A little higher, I thought, and my face would look like that.

  It was in that instant that I knew Tom had to stop fucking around on this Vigano deal. He had to call him, we had to make the arrangements and get the money, and we had to do it and get it over with. I was still willing to hang around the six months before I’d pack up my family and go off to Saskatchewan, but God damn it, I wanted to see what I’d accomplished. I wanted that money in my hand, where I could touch it.

  Lou was walking by me, heading for his side of the car. I told him, “They shot the shit out of our radiator. When you call in, tell them we need wheels.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  I stood there looking at the radiator, thinking about what I was going to say to Tom.

  And another thing. After this, they’d have to give us a new car.

  15

  It was a hot day. It would be really muggy and bad in the city, but fortunately they both had the day off and they could sit around on lawn chairs in Tom’s backyard, near the barbecue, and drink beer and work on their tans and watch the ballgame on the Sony portable Mary had given Tom for last Christmas.

  Tom hadn’t been thinking about anything, except how hot it was and how glad he was he wasn’t working and how maybe he’d cut out the beer and start losing weight when the hot weather broke, but Joe had been thinking for the last few days, ever since the shotgun incident, how to approach Tom on this Vigano question, and he was beginning to think the only way to do it was straight out, no beating around the bush, dead ahead.

  It was a very dull game. Cincinnati had got six runs in the first inning, and nobody had done a damn thing since. In the bottom of the fourth, with a deliberate walk coming up, Joe said, “Tom, listen.”

  Tom gave him a half-awake look. “What?”

  “When do we call your Mafia man?”

  Tom looked back at the deliberate walk. “Pretty soon,” he said.

  “It’s been two weeks,” Joe told him. “We’ve already passed pretty soon, we’re catching up on later, and I see never dead ahead.”

  Tom frowned, staring at the television set, and didn’t say anything.

  Joe said, “What’s the story, Tom?”

  Tom made a face, shook his head, frowned, shrugged, gestured with his beer can; did everything but talk, or meet Joe’s eye.

  Joe said, “Come on. We’re in this together, remember? What’s the problem, what’s the delay?”

  Tom turned his head and frowned at the barbecue grill. He looked as though he had a toothache. He said in a low voice Joe could barely hear, “Day before yesterday I went into a phone booth.”

  “Fantastic,” Joe said. “Three days from now you drop the dime?”

  Tom grinned, despite himself. He looked at Joe, and he surprised himself by being relieved that he was getting this off his chest. He said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Joe said, “So what’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know, it’s like—” Tom clenched his teeth, trying to find the way to put it into words. He said, “It’s like we already got away with it, you know? Like we shouldn’t push our luck.”

  “Got away with what? So far all we got is air.”

  Tom shook his head violently back and forth. He was angry at himself, and he let it show. “The goddam truth is,” he said, “I’m afraid of that son of a bitch Vigano.”

  Joe said, “Tom, I was afraid of the robbery. I was scared shitless when we went in there to do that thing, but we did it. It worked, just like we thought it would.”

  “Vigano’s tougher.”

  Joe lifted an eyebrow. “Than us?”

  “Than a stock brokerage. Joe, we’re talking about beating them out of two million dollars. You think it’s going to be easy with those people?”

  “No, I don’t,” Joe said. “But the other part wasn’t easy either. I say we can do it.”

  “I don’t have a way,” Tom said. “It’s as simple as that. It’s easy to say we’ll work out a system where they have to bring the money and show it to us and all that stuff, but when it comes right down to it, where the hell’s the system?”

  “There is one,” Joe said. “There has to be. Look; did we steal ten million dollars? We aren’t stupid. If we can figure that we can figure this.”

  “How?”

  Joe frowned, trying to think. He looked at the television set and the inning was over, and some actor made up to look like a cowboy was peddling razor blades. Joe shrugged and said, “Disguised as cops.”

  “We already did that.”

  Joe grinned at him. “We can’t do it again? Treat it the same way, use the equipment and everything just like last time.”

  “Like how? Doing what?”

  Joe nodded, feelin
g very pleased with himself. “We’ll think of it,” he said. “I know we will. If we just keep talking about it, we’ll work it out.”

  And a little later that afternoon, they did.

  16

  They’d gotten off duty together at four in the afternoon. Joe had his Plymouth today, and they drove across town, through the park at 86th Street, and over into Yorkville where they stopped at a corner with a pay phone. Tom called the number Vigano had given him, and asked for Arthur, and said his name was Mr. Kopp. A gravelly voice said Arthur wasn’t in, but was expected, and could he call Mr. Kopp back? Tom read off the number of the pay phone, and the gravelly voice hung up.

  Then twenty minutes went by. It had been a hot day, and it was gradually becoming a hot evening. They both wanted to go home and take their clothes off and stand in the shower for a while. Tom leaned against the side of the phone booth and Joe sat on the fender of the Plymouth, and they waited, and twenty minutes went by with the speed of grass growing.

  Finally Tom looked at his watch for the fifteenth time and said, “It’s been twenty minutes.”

  Reluctantly Joe said, “Maybe we should—”

  “No,” Tom said. “He told me if he didn’t call back in fifteen minutes, we should try again later. We’ve waited twenty minutes, and that’s enough.” Joe was still reluctant, because he didn’t want to have to nerve Tom up to this all over again, but he gave in without any more argument, saying, “Okay, you’re right. Let’s go.”

  Even though they now had a plan, Tom hadn’t been all that eager to talk to Vigano again. “Fine,” he said, and started toward the passenger side of the Plymouth, and the phone rang.

  They looked at each other. They both tensed up right away, which Tom had expected but which surprised Joe. He’d had the idea he was under better control than that. “Go on,” he said.

  Tom had just been standing there. “Right,” he said, and turned back, and went into the phone booth. The phone was just starting to ring for the second time when he lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?”

  “Is that Mr. Kopp?” Tom recognized Vigano’s voice.

  “Sure. Is that Mister—”

  Overriding him, Vigano said, “This is Arthur.”

  “Right,” Tom said. “Arthur, right.”

  “I expected to hear from you a couple weeks ago.”

  Tom could feel Joe’s eyes on him through the glass walls of the booth. With a sheepish grin, he said, “Well, we had to get things set up.”

  Vigano said, “You want me to tell you where to bring the stuff?”

  “Not a chance,” Tom said. “We’ll tell you where.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” Vigano said. “Give me your setup.”

  Tom took a deep breath. This was another of those moments of no return. He said, “Macy’s has a wicker picnic basket. It costs around eighteen bucks, with the tax. It’s the only one they’ve got at that price.”

  “Okay.”

  “Next Tuesday afternoon,” Tom said, “at three o’clock, no more than four people, two of them female, can carry one of those baskets into Central Park from the west at the Eighty-fifth Street entrance to the park roadway. They should turn right, go down near the traffic light, and sit down on the grass there. No later than four o’clock, either I or my partner will show up to make the exchange. We’ll be in uniform.”

  Vigano said, “With another basket?”

  “Right.”

  “Isn’t that kind of public?”

  Tom grinned at the phone. “That’s what we want,” he said.

  “It’s up to you,” Vigano said.

  “The stuff in your basket,” Tom said, “should not have traceable numbers and should not be homemade.”

  Vigano laughed. “You think we’d palm off counterfeit on you?”

  “No, but you might try.”

  Serious again, almost sounding as though he’d been insulted, Vigano said, “We’ll examine each other’s property before we make the switch.”

  “Fine,” Tom said.

  “You’re a pleasure to do business with,” Vigano said.

  Tom nodded at the phone. “I hope you are, too,” he said, but Vigano had already hung up.

  Vigano

  Vigano slept for most of the trip. He was lucky that way, he could sleep on planes, and for that reason he tried to do as much of his traveling as possible late at night. Otherwise, too much time was wasted going from place to place.

  He was riding in a Lear jet, a private company plane owned and operated by a corporation called K-L Inc. K-L’s function was to own and care for and run the fleet of six planes that were available around the country to Vigano and some of his associates. The company also leased hangar space in Miami and Las Vegas and two other places, and in addition owned some real estate in the Caribbean. It had been financed by a private stock offering a few years ago, most of which had been bought by various union pension funds. Its assets were the planes and the island real estate, but its expenses were very high and it had never shown a profit, and so had never paid taxes or dividends.

  The interior of the plane was comfortable, but not lush, in a kind of motel-lobby style. There was seating for eight, large soft chairs similar to first-class accommodations on a scheduled airliner, except that the front pairs of seats faced backwards and there was an unusual amount of leg room. Aft of the seats was a partition, followed by a dining area; a long oval table that would also seat eight, around three sides, leaving one of the long sides open for passage. A lavatory and galley came next, and farthest back was a bedroom containing two single beds. That was where Vigano traveled, sleeping on one of the beds while his two bodyguards sat up front, joking with the hostess, a girl who used to be a dancer until she’d had to have an operation on her hip. She was a beautiful girl, and her former bosses had done right by her.

  The hostess came back finally and knocked on the bedroom door, calling, “Mr. Vigano?”

  He woke up right away. His eyes opened, but he didn’t move. He was lying on his right side, and he looked around, shifting only his eyes, until he’d oriented himself. He’d left one small light on, over the door, and it showed him the other bed, the curving plastic wall of the plane, the two oval windows looking out on nothing but blackness.

  On the plane. Going to see Bandell about the stock market robbery. Right.

  Vigano sat up. “All right,” he called.

  “We’ll be landing in five minutes.” She said that through the door, not opening it.

  Of course they’d be landing in five minutes, otherwise she wouldn’t be waking him. “Thank you,” he said, and reached for his trousers on the other bed.

  He’d stripped to his underwear for the flight, and now he quickly dressed, then opened his attaché case and out of the small separate compartment in it took his toothbrush and toothpaste. Carrying them in one hand and his tie in the other, he left the bedroom for the lavatory.

  The hostess was in the galley, doing this and that. She smiled at him and said, “Coffee, Mr. Vigano?”

  “Definitely.”

  He didn’t take long in the lavatory, and then he carried his attaché case up front to the regular seats to have his coffee and watch the landing. His bodyguards were sitting facing one another on the right, so he took the forward-facing window seat on the left. The bodyguards were named Andy and Mike, and Vigano never called them bodyguards. He didn’t even think the word; they were just the young guys he traveled with. They both carried their own attaché cases, and they were presentable in a tough kind of way, and he simply traveled with them because that’s what he did.

  Vigano sipped at his coffee and looked out the window at the lights of the city. You could always tell a resort town, it ran much heavier to neon. A place like Cleveland, now, you could hardly see any neon from the air at all.

  Andy, grinning, said, “Mr. Vigano, it’s a waste of time to come here in the summer. We ought to come for the winter.”

  Vigano smiled back. “Maybe I’ll work
something out,” he said. He liked these two boys.

  It was a smooth landing. They taxied away from the normal passenger terminals and over to the private area. When they rolled to a stop a black limousine drove out to meet them. Vigano and the two young men he traveled with picked up their attaché cases, thanked the hostess, congratulated the pilot on his landing, and stepped out into incredible heat. “Christ,” Andy said. “What’s it like in the daytime?”

  “Worse,” Vigano said. The heat lay on his skin like a wool blanket. It made New Jersey seem cool.

  They crossed quickly to the limousine, and slid inside, where the air was a cool, dry seventy degrees. The chauffeur shut the door after them, slid behind the wheel, and drove them smoothly to the hotel. It was nearly four in the morning, and the streets were deserted; even a resort city goes to sleep sooner or later.

  They had another blast of heat between the car and side entrance of the hotel. They were also put on film, though it didn’t matter, by a team of federal agents concealed in a bakery truck parked on a side road just off the hotel property. It was infra-red film and the faces were blurred, but they already knew who it was they were filming, so there wasn’t any problem about identification. This strip of film would eventually join the strip that had been taken earlier tonight outside Vigano’s home in New Jersey, and the two strips would establish the fact that on this date Anthony Vigano had gone to a meeting with Joseph Bandell. The fact would never mean anything to anybody, but it would have been established and placed on film and filed away, at a cost to the government of forty-two thousand dollars.

  Vigano and his bodyguards rode up in the elevator to the twelfth floor, and walked down the corridor to Bandell’s suite, at the end. They went in and Bandell was there with his advisers. “Hello, Tony,” he said.

  “Hello, Joe.”

  They spent a few minutes in civilities, taking drink orders and asking after one another’s wives and making the couple of introductions necessary; one of Bandell’s assistants was a new man freshly in from Los Angeles, named Stello. There were handshakes and general chitchat.