American Gangster
- Автор: Коллинз Макс Аллан
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Tom Doherty Associates
- ISBN: 978-0-7653-5901-8
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «American Gangster». Краткое содержание книги:
When he’d sold his last packet, the dealer got in his own wheels and drove half a dozen blocks to a gas station/car wash, where he ducked into the service garage and was glimpsed by the detectives as he spoke with a burly black automobile mechanic. They got a blurry pic of what seemed to be money handed over to the mechanic; and then the dealer walked off.
At that moment, Richie’s interest in the dealer died, and they watched the garage for what seemed like hours and was minutes. A mechanic stepped out for a breath of fresh air, rubbing his hands with a rag — yes, this was the same brawny guy the dealer had handed money off to, meaning Richie now had his camera lens trained on a supplier.
He snapped a picture; it too came out a little blurry, but would suffice to go up on the new, almost bare bulletin board where a new table of organization was being built, each surveillance photo another brick in the wall.
The next day, Spearman — looking every bit the telephone lineman in his hard hat — was up top of a telephone pole outside that gas station. He was working hard, all right, but not improving the quality of phone service in the neighborhood...
And the day after that, an empty apartment above a storefront across from the gas station made the perfect place for Richie, Jones and Spearman to enjoy their take-out Chinese as a reel-to-reel tape recorder picked up various interesting conversations.
These seemed innocent enough, but sometimes the codes these mental giants used was just plain pitifuclass="underline" “Those, uh, snow tires you give me last time come in yet? I’m gonna want some more of them... gimme one and a half more of them.”
Spearman almost choked on his Chinese, laughing.
“Wish I wasn’t just some poor dumb honest cop,” Jones said, grinning. “Then maybe I could afford one-and-a-half snow tires...”
A week later, Richie was getting a mini-tape recorder, no bigger than a pack of ciggies, taped to his bare chest, which he’d shaved for the occasion. Spearman wondered aloud if Rich had shaved his legs, too, but Richie was too preoccupied to toss a smart remark back at him.
On the table next to the bulletin boards rested a gym bag, nothing much to look at, but inside you wouldn’t find a jock strap, swim suit and socks: twenty grand in neat banded packets was stacked in there.
At the prosecutor’s office earlier today, Toback had sat in shirtsleeves and loosened tie, looking like a low-end disgruntled accountant, counting out the $20,000 in cash onto his desk.
“This is more than a year’s salary, Richie,” his boss said grimly. “If it disappears, I won’t be able to get you this kind of cash for a case again.”
“It’ll never be out of my sight,” Richie said.
“And here’s two bills out of petty cash,” Toback said, getting a much smaller packet from a small metal box in his desk drawer. “So you can look the part.”
The cashmere sweater and sharp slacks that gave Richie the correct mid-level wise guy appearance had taken the full two C’s and a little more out of his own pocket. But it was worth it: the mechanic at the gas station/car wash accepted Richie at face value, though maybe it was the gym bag of money that dazzled the guy, not Richie’s clothes sense.
The mechanic wiped his hands off on a rag and then again on his greasy jumpsuit before starting to count the ten thousand Richie had handed over. The bills were on a cleaned-off area of a workbench; the other half of the twenty grand was still in the gym bag, in Richie’s grasp.
“It’s got to be Blue Magic,” Richie said.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s the ‘Blue,’ all right. You can pick it up here, tomorrow.” The grease jockey completed counting the money, which he’d done by thumbing through, keeping the bands on the packets. “Where’s the rest? This is only ten K.”
“Ten K is half. You’ll get the other half tomorrow, on delivery.”
“No, no, no,” he said, lifting a hand that didn’t really have all the grease off after all. “We don’t play that, we ain’t fuckin’ Sears Roebuck.”
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” Richie said gently, “half down, half on delivery.”
“Well, go fuck yourself, then. That reasonable enough for you?”
Richie sighed and lifted the gym bag onto the workbench and gave the bastard the rest of Toback’s money.
Soon Richie was back in their unmarked car, with Spearman behind the wheel as they headed toward the George Washington Bridge, changing lanes to keep up with a pickup truck driven by the mechanic. They had seen the guy get in the truck with a grocery bag filled with their money (or at least it had better be filled with their money).
Richie, wrestling his way out of the cashmere sweater, was in the process of exchanging it for a T-shirt.
“I guess you see where he’s heading,” Spearman said dryly.
“I see.”
“New York. Is that where we’re going?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Not exactly our turf.”
“What are they gonna do, arrest us?”
Behind five-buck Aviator sunglasses, Spearman arched an eyebrow. “We’re talking New York cops, Richie. They can do worse.”
Richie shook his head. “We’re not losing that fuckin’ money. We’re out of business, we lose that fuckin’ money. Go.”
Spearman went.
Followed the truck over the George Washington Bridge, with Manhattan right in their faces, looming in the windshield like the world’s biggest cemetery.
Before long they were in East Harlem; neither Spearman nor Richie was thrilled about that, but neither were they surprised. The pickup pulled up to a curb outside a Pleasant Avenue grocery store — Italians did dope business in this part of Harlem.
As the mechanic — no longer in his coveralls, but anonymous street clothes — entered the grocery, Spearman stopped just for a second, for Richie to get out, and went on. Richie crossed the street, just another honky getting honked at, and from the sidewalk did his best to glance inconspicuously through the grocery window, to see who the mechanic was contacting.
Only all the guy was doing was buying a cup of to-go coffee.
In the meantime, Spearman had taken the corner, going around the block. Richie was wishing he’d caught his partner, before that trip began, and almost missed the mechanic and his coffee exiting the grocery — in fact, almost got bumped into, and had to double back quickly so as not to be made.
As the mechanic got in the pickup, Richie looked around desperately for Spearman. This was the kind of street where trucks routinely double-parked for unloading crates and fuck you, if we’re blocking you. Horns were honking, and one of them could be Spearman, caught on a side street.
The mechanic started the pickup, and began to pull out.
Richie could not afford to lose that guy — and he sure as hell could not afford to lose that twenty grand. He hurried over to a taxi stopped at the light, and flashed his badge.
“Get out,” Richie said.
The taxi driver, a black kid alarmed by seeing this wild-eyed cop, just sat there; he managed to blurt, “What?” But that was all he did.
“Get the fuck out of the car!” Richie yelled, leaning in the cab like a demented car hop. “I’m commandeering your vehicle!”
The taxi driver had no idea what “commandeering” meant, but he knew this guy, cop or not, was a lunatic, and began hurriedly rolling up his window.
Richie reached in, got his arm stuck as the window came up, but managed to send his fingers down to pull up on the lock; then he yanked the door open and dragged the driver out, hurling him to the pavement, hard enough to make the guy yowl in pain.
Richie hadn’t meant to hurt the guy, but first aid was not his top priority right now; he jumped behind the wheel, swung the cab into opposing lanes to maneuver traffic, and then the vehicle was screeching around the corner.