American Gangster (19 page)

Spearman, Abruzzo and Jones were on the periphery, outside the pool of light, shapes that lurked and watched. Jimmy was obviously unsettled, even scared, and that was fine with Richie.

Frank Lucas's cousin was in a bad place, and this church basement wasn't it: Jimmy was coming down off a high that hadn't been high enough to make him forget he'd recently attempted his girlfriend's murder.

“Things aren't as bad as they seem, Jimmy,” Richie assured him.

“They ain't?”

“Attempted homicide, that's Grand Jury. Now a Grand Jury, a bunch of average citizens like yourself, Jimmy? They might come in very favorably.”

“They might?”

“They might. Attempted manslaughter, maybe. Self-defense even.”

Jimmy was looking all around. “What the fuck
is
this place? Why'd they take me out of lockup?”

“Darlynn had a knife,” Richie said, still pacing the small patch of concrete in the pool of light. “You were
trying to protect yourself. Fact she was shot in the ass, well, that's mitigated by circumstances.”

“It is?”

“The knife. You know, this could turn out okay for you, Jimmy.”

“It could?”

“Depends on how I decide to deal with you. . . . You see where this is going, Jimmy? Get the picture yet?”

Jimmy didn't—he was too busy trying to make out the shapes that were Spearman and his guys. “You guys Homicide or what?”

Richie stood in front of the seated suspect. “So let's say you
do
beat it, somehow. What do you think your cousin Frank'll think of that? He knows you had to sit down and have somebody like me tell you something like this.”

Jimmy blinked repeatedly. “. . . What?”

“You beat attempted murder, and
walk
?” Richie laughed, once. “Is Frank stupid? He'll think you talked. He'll
know
you talked.”

Jimmy thought that through. “You mean you'd . . . help me to
hurt
me? To make me look bad?”

Richie shrugged. “Maybe I'd just be really trying to help. Is it my fault if your cousin Frank thinks you rolled over?”

Jimmy slumped in the chair. He began to shake his head as he stared past Richie into the darkness and the shadowy figures.

“You fucked up, Jimmy,” Richie said. “Still, you got one thing going for you—nobody knows.”

Jimmy looked up at Richie. “What?”

“Nobody knows—I got the arrest report folded up in my back pocket. So even Frank doesn't know—
yet
. Of course, if I send you and this arrest report back over to the Newark PD, Frank could read about your bust in the papers tomorrow, and the whole chain of events I outlined would begin.”

Jimmy's eyes narrowed. “Or?”

Richie gestured with open palms. “Or you just walk out of here—no bail, no trial. Just walk out now. Insufficient evidence—your girl already says she doesn't know who shot her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Richie began to pace the little area again. “Of course, I could always find a witness that saw you shoot her, if I tried. And any time I change my mind about letting you walk, I know who I'll pull in for questioning first; I even know what he'll look like—just like you, Jimmy. Just like you.”

“That's cold.”

“And it won't be discreet, like your visit here tonight. Be real public, Jimmy.” Richie smiled and leaned in, putting a hand on the suspect's shoulder. “And Jimmy? If I decide I don't like the quality of your work? This case'll get reopened.”

“Quality of
what
work?” Jimmy asked.

Richie smiled. “Like some coffee, Jimmy? Let's go upstairs and talk in more comfortable surroundings. . . .”

Jimmy hadn't left the old church till dawn, slipping out the back way into the chilly morning air. That cop, Roberts, when he raised his voice, it had echoed down
in that basement; and his threats, his promises, went on echoing in Jimmy's mind.

Over the coming days, Jimmy did something he never dreamed he'd do: he wore a wire.

He wore a wire, and he'd learned to live with twenty-four-hour fear. Driving for Huey, Jimmy would spend half his time looking in the rearview mirror at what seemed to him to be the evident cop tail, wondering how fuckin' obvious those pigs could be.

But Huey never spotted the tail, and even Frank, when he was in the backseat with his brother, didn't notice.

On this day in
late November, in the meat-packing district, Jimmy was unaware that Richie Roberts, following him, was checking his own rearview mirror, keeping tabs on a small procession of cars behind him—the full narcotics squad. Talk on Jimmy's wire about “picking up the big delivery” had sent them into action, for what could be their first major drug bust.

Soon the detectives' cars were parked behind a warehouse near another warehouse whose loading dock was where Jimmy had parked Huey's car. Through binoculars, Richie could see Frank and Huey getting out, chatting casually; then some black guys in bloody white smocks exited the warehouse and approached Frank—words and gestures, but Richie couldn't make anything of it.

Richie snapped pictures as Frank Lucas returned to his brother's car, opened the trunk and removed a
briefcase. Using the telephoto, Richie saw—and recorded—the moment when Frank clicked open the briefcase and revealed stacks of cash. Frank took out a number of banded packets of green and carried them over to the men in bloody smocks.

Then Frank strolled to a nearby semi-truck, and—
damn!
—seemed to have spotted Richie, or anyway was looking right in his direction, and, hell,
waving!

But then Richie realized Lucas was merely waving to the semi driver to pull out.

And in half an hour, on a Harlem street corner, Richie Roberts was watching—not bothering to snap any pictures—as Frank Lucas stood in the back of the semi and handed out hundreds of freshly butchered turkeys—continuing Bumpy Johnson's tradition.

The next day, Thanksgiving, Richie spent alone in his tiny apartment, eating a cold sliced turkey sandwich at his kitchen table and half-watching the Macy's parade playing on the little portable TV.

But Richie wasn't taking in the big balloons or the happy crowd or Santa Claus on his fucking float. Richie was picturing, in his mind but as clear as if he were there, the Norman Rockwell painting come to life that would be Frank Lucas's Thanksgiving dinner at his fifty-thousand-dollar suburban home, his family around him, lovely wife, brothers, cousins, other womenfolk, including his momma. The man of the house probably wearing a nice white apron for carving the turkey.

And what had made the feast possible? Richie could picture that, too: addicts spending their holiday shooting up and nodding out in alleys and dingy hovels.
Thanksgiving with all the trimmings, all the fixings: needles, spoons, veins, filth. . . .

In another suburb, Detective
Trupo of the Special Investigations Unit, with his wife and kids, had enjoyed a Thanksgiving as idyllic as the Lucas family's. And just like the homeless in Harlem, Trupo received a free turkey from Frank Lucas, though it arrived late, well after the cop and his loved ones had partaken of their holiday feast.

The pumpkin pie with whipped cream was already a memory, and a football game was in full sway on the tube, when the bell summoned Trupo to the front door. There, on his welcome mat, he found a live turkey, squawking its ass off, flapping its wings.

The detective was still trying to process that when his precious Shelby Mustang, parked out front, seemed to speak to him: he glanced up at where the
whoosh
had emanated, and saw flames engulfing the interior of the car; soon the windows had blown apart and flames were licking.

He stood and stared, bathing in the seasonal reflection of orange-and-blue flames. Then the vehicle, as if this were July Fourth and not Thanksgiving, exploded like a big fat firecracker.

Even the turkey seemed impressed.

Jimmy Zee had seen,
firsthand, the lavish Lucas family Thanksgiving. Right now he was in the bathroom,
his shirt off, changing batteries on the little tape recorder stuck to his chest.

Most of the brothers and cousins, Frank included, were out in the backyard sitting on patio chairs, watching nephew Stevie, the baseball whiz, knock pop flies for the younger kids to catch.

Jimmy took a chair not too far from Frank. The afternoon was just starting to turn into dusk, and the crispness of the day had become almost cold. The big German shepherd, in the run by its fancy doghouse, was lounging after too much leftover turkey, sleepily watching the ball as it went back and forth between older boy and younger ones.

Frank called out to Stevie: “Come over here!”

Stevie, in a short-sleeve shirt and Sunday slacks, came over, tossing the ball up and down in his palm.

“Stevie, heard you didn't show up the other day.”

Funny,
Jimmy thought,
how much disapproval Frank could put into his voice without half-trying.

The lithe, athletic kid said, “Yeah. I missed it. Sorry.”

Frank's eyes flashed. “You're too busy to meet with Billy Martin himself? After I set it up?”

Stevie was shifting foot to foot, not exactly afraid of Frank but in any case not wanting to make him mad.

Finally the teenager said, “I don't wanna play pro ball, I decided.”

Frank leaned forward in the metal chair. “What are you talkin' about? It's your dream since you was
their
age. . . .” He gestured to the younger kids. “. . . Look. Maybe I can set it up again. . . .”

Stevie sighed. Shifted foot to foot.

“What?” Frank asked, impatient.

“It's not what I want, Uncle Frank. I wanna do what
you
do—I wanna
be
you some day.”

Jimmy was surprised by Frank's stricken expression, on hearing that; didn't remember ever seeing his cousin look more unhappy.

Huey came from inside the house and ambled over to Frank. Jimmy sat forward: he could tell from Huey's gait, his manner, that they'd be going somewhere soon, and Jimmy
was
the driver. . . .

“Bro,” Huey, leaning in, said to Frank. “We got a problem.”

Jimmy could only hope that problem wasn't him.

In the back of
his brother Huey's Cadillac, Frank—in a tan cashmere topcoat as anonymous as the chinchilla had been flamboyant, yet almost as expensive—sat and listened, trying not to be irritated that business was taking him away from his family on this day of thanks.

Huey was saying, “I keep hearing our shit is weak. Man, our shit is
strong
, you
know
our shit is strong. . . .”

“Nicky's been stepping on it?”

“Stepping on it! He's been jumping the fuck up and down on it! Been cuttin' it so much, it's down to two, three percent pure.”

Frank frowned. “And you tested it? You're
sure
?”

Huey said, “Does the pope shit in the woods? Is a bear Catholic?”

Frank noticed driver Jimmy's eyes on them, in the
rearview mirror, and scowled at his stupid cousin, saying, “The fuck
you
lookin' at?”

And Jimmy's eyes went back to the road.

Frank breathed out and, half under his breath, said to his brother, “Shoulda never let you talk me into hanging onto that chump.”

Dusk had fallen when the Cadillac drew up in front of a nondescript building in the clothing district. Frank instructed Jimmy to stay with the car, and he and Huey went on inside.

The interior was chrome and mirrors and Naugahyde and looked like a nightclub out of
Cotton Comes to Harlem.
This was Nicky Barnes's “members only” club, and today had been open only to family and staff—turkey carcasses and empty pie tins on the bar indicated those partying here today had, to some degree, enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving.

But things got less traditional quickly, as a bodyguard led Frank and Huey into an area resembling the VIP section of a strip club, right down to the naked girls who were cavorting with Nicky and a couple of his pals.

“Frank!” Nicky said, a long-legged wench on his lap. Nicky was in purple velour and lots of gold chain work. He gestured around the naked woman, a magnanimous host. “Welcome. Make yourself to home.”

Frank just stood there. “We need to talk.”

“Great!” Nicky moved the naked girl off his lap, like a guy moving a potted plant to one side. “Girls, get the fuck out.”

The girls, giggling, a little high, gathered their scanty things and disappeared into the adjacent bar. At
Nicky's nod, his two bodyguards exited, too, so Frank gave Huey a look, to wait in the other room.

Across from Nicky, with a little black table between them, was a modernistic black-leather chair, the seat of which Frank cleaned off with a handkerchief, which he then discarded.

Nicky leaned forward and laid out several lines of coke, then offered his guest first sniff, handing a rolled-up C-note as a straw toward Frank.

“No thanks,” Frank said.

“You must've been talking to Charlie,” Nicky said good-naturedly.

Frank hadn't been, but said nothing.

“You must wanna hear about this big idea of mine, this Black Coalition. It's great you're here. I'll explain it to you. . . .”

That is, Nicky would explain as soon as he'd bent over to suck up a line of that coke.

Frank sat back, folded his arms. Despite the numerous bodyguards in the next room, Frank felt safe enough; he had a nine millimeter in his waistband and, anyway, he was the golden goose of dope suppliers. Even Nicky Barnes wasn't dumb enough to kill the golden goose.

“This Black Coalition,” Nicky was saying, as high on this idea as on the coke, “it'll change
everything
—”