“He would do it if you asked him. We could cover him all the time—”
“He’s not going to do it, so forget it.”
It was hard to believe that twenty minutes before, she had been so warm and morning-rosy over him, her hair a gentle pendulum that brushed his face and chest.
“I know you don’t like to use him, but Goddamn it—”
“I don’t like me using him, I don’t like you using me. I’m using you, too, in a different way that I haven’t figured out yet. It’s okay, our using each other. We have something besides that and it’s good. But no more Eddie.”
She was really splendid, Kabakov thought, with the flush creeping out of the lace and up her neck.
“I can’t do it. I won’t do it,” she said. “Would you like some orange juice?”
“Please.”
Reluctantly, Kabakov went to Corley. He gave him the information on Jerry Sapp. He did not give the source.
Corley worked on the bait for two days with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He spent an hour on the telephone to Mexico City. Then he met with Kabakov in the FBI’s Manhattan office.
“Anything on the Greek?”
“Not yet,” Kabakov said. “Moshevsky is still working the bars. Go on with Sapp.”
“The Bureau has no record on a Jerry Sapp,” Corley said. “Whoever he is, he’s clean under that name. Coast Guard registration does not have him. Their files are not cross-indexed on boat type down to the detail we need. The paint we have will do for positive comparison, but tracing origin is another matter. It’s not marine paint. It’s a commercial brand of semi-gloss over a heavy sealer, available anywhere.”
“Tell me about the dope.”
“I’m getting to that. Here’s the package. Did you follow the Krapf-Mendoza case in Chihuahua by any chance? Well, I didn’t know the details either. From 1970 through 1973 they got 115 pounds of heroin into this country. It went to Boston. Clever method. For each shipment they used a pretext to hire an American citizen to go down to Mexico. Sometimes it was a man, sometimes a woman, but always a loner who had no close relatives. The stooge flew down on a tourist visa and after a few days unfortunately died. The body was shipped home with a belly full of heroin. They had a funeral home on this end. Your hair is growing out nicely by the way.”
“Go on, go on.”
“Two things we got out of it. The money man in Boston still has a good name with the mob. He helps us out because he’s trying to stave off forty years mandatory in the joint. The Mexican authorities left a guy in Cozumel on the street. Better not to ask what he’s trying to stave off.”
“So if our man sends word down the pipeline that he is looking for a good man with a boat to run the stuff out of Cozumel into Texas, it would look reasonable because the old method was stopped,” Kabakov said. “And if Sapp calls our man, he can give references in Mexico and in Boston.”
“Yeah. This Sapp would check it out before he showed himself. Even getting the word to him will probably involve a couple of cutouts. This is what bothers me, if we find him we’ve got almost nothing on him. We might get him on some bullshit conspiracy charge involving the use of his boat, but that would take time to develop. We’ve got nothing to threaten him with.”
Oh, yes, we do, Kabakov thought to himself.
By midafternoon Corley had asked the U.S. District Court in Newark for permission to tap the two telephones in Sweeney’s Bar & Grill in Asbury Park. By four p.m. the request had been denied. Corley had no evidence whatsover of any wrongdoing at Sweeney‘s, and he was acting on anonymous allegations of little substance, the magistrate explained. The magistrate said that he was sorry.
At ten a.m. on the following day a blue van pulled into the supermarket parking lot adjacent to Sweeney’s. An elderly lady was at the wheel. The lot was full and she drove along slowly, apparently looking for a parking place. In a car parked beside the telephone pole thirty feet from the rear of Sweeney’s Bar a man was dozing.
“He’s asleep, for Christ’s sake,” the elderly lady said, apparently speaking to her bosom.
The dozing man in the car awoke as the radio beside him crackled angrily. With a sheepish expression, he pulled out of the parking space. The van backed into the place. A few shoppers rolled carts down the traffic aisle. The man who vacated the parking space got out of his car.
“Lady, I think you got a flat.”
“Oh, yeah?”
The man walked to the rear wheel of the van, close beside the pole. Two thin wires, brown against the brown pole, led from the telephone line to the ground and terminated in a double jack. The man plugged the jack into a socket in the fender well of the van.
“No, the tire’s just low. You can drive on it all right.” He drove away.
In the rear of the van, Kabakov leaned back with his hands behind his head. He was wearing earphones and smoking a cigar.
“You don’t have to wear them all the time,” said the balding young man at the miniature switchboard. “I say you don’t have to wear them all the time. When it rings or when it’s picked up on this end, you’ll see this light and hear the buzzer. You want some coffee? Here.” He leaned close to the partition behind the cab. “Hey, Mom. You want coffee?”
“No” came the voice from the front. “And you leave the bialys in the bag. You know they give you gas.” Bernie Biner’s mother had switched from the driver’s seat to the passenger side. She was knitting an afghan. As the mother of one of the best freelance wire men in the business, it was her job to drive, look innocent, and watch for the police.
“Eleven dollars and forty cents an hour she charges me and she’s supervising my diet,” Biner told Kabakov.
The buzzer sounded. Bernie’s quick fingers started the tape recorder. He and Kabakov put on the earphones. They could hear the telephone ringing in the bar.
“Hello. Sweeney’s.”
“Freddy?” A woman’s voice. “Listen, honey, I can’t come in today.”
“Shit, Frances, what is this, twice in two weeks?”
“Freddy, I’m sorry. I got the cramps like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Every week you get the cramps? You better go to the muff doctor, kid. What about Arlene?”
“I called her house already—she’s not home.”
“Well, you get somebody over here. I’m not waiting tables and working the bar too.”
“I’ll try, Freddy.”
They heard the bartender hang up and a woman’s laughter before the phone was replaced on the other end. Kabakov blew a smoke ring and told himself to be patient. Corley’s stooge had planted an urgent message for Sapp when Sweeney’s opened a half-hour ago. The stooge had given the bartender fifty dollars to hurry it up. It was a simple message saying business was available and asking Sapp to call a number in Manhattan to talk business or to get references. The number was to be given to Sapp alone. If Sapp called, Corley would try to fool him into a meeting. Kabakov was not satisfied. That was why he had hired Biner, who already received a weekly retainer to check the Israeli mission phones for bugs. Kabakov had not consulted Corley about the matter.
A light on Biner’s switchboard indicated the second telephone in the bar had been picked up. Through the earphones, they heard ten digits dialed. Then a telephone ringing. It was not answered.
Bernie Biner ran back his tape recording of the dialing, then played it at a slower speed, counting the clicks. “Three oh-five area code. That’s Florida. Here’s the number. Eight-four-four-six-oh-six-nine. Just a second.” He consulted a thick table of prefixes. “It’s somewhere in the West Palm Beach area.
Half an hour passed before the switchboard in the van signaled that another call was being placed from the bar. Ten digits again.