Condemned (53 page)

“Adding to your intelligence? That'd be some fuckin' feat.”

“Don't be such a braveheart, Tony. It's all over. You know that. Life has changed.”

“What life is that, Mr. Becker?”

“Pickings aren't so easy any more. We know you know that, Tony. For example, we've made some observations. We know that you've been doing some things with funny stuff.”

Tony Balls' eyes widened for no more than an instant as he looked at Becker, then said: “You're fuckin' crazy.”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about, Tony. That's where Sally Cantalupo comes in, Billy Legs' son. You've been doing some naughty things with him.”

“I ain't never heard of them neither.”

“Even though trafficking in drugs is very serious, we're willing to let some things slide, if you're willing to tell us things that we want to know. We realize you're only trying to make ends meet because times are a little hard.”

“Your story is breakin' my heart. You need a couple of bucks, Mr. Becker?” Tony Balls reached into his pocket.

“I'm not here to be toyed with, Tony,” Becker said sternly.

“Don't get bent out of shape, Mr. Becker,” Tony Balls smiled. “You take all this cops and robbers stuff too serious.”

“I am in a position to help you, Tony, make things easier for you,” continued Becker.

“Don't start the routine with me, okay, Mr. Becker? Even if you think I done something, which I didn't. I ain't done nothin' in seven years. The statute of limitations has run on any work I could have done. I'm clean, and I don't need no help. I just need to be left alone.”

“You're on parole and we know you're violating your parole as well as the narcotics statutes,” said Becker.

“Bullshit. If I done something, arrest me. Otherwise, go fuck yourself.”

“We could help make life easier for you, Tony. If you were to be cooperative, certain accommodations could be made. Let me tell you something, Tony—”

“Yeah, Mr. Becker, tell me.”

“I don't want you to squeal on anybody, Tony—”

“Squeal? Oh, that's cute. I ain't heard that word in a long time, Mr. Becker. Squeal?” Tony looked at the Agents, laughing. “You must be reading those Godfather books, Mr. Becker. I hate to tell you, but that Mario Puzo is full of shit. Made up all that Godfather stuff. He said so himself.”

“You don't have to put Sandro Luca in trouble, Tony,” Becker continued. “We just want some information about him and his friend, Galiber. About his clients from Colombia. You're in a position to see things, hear things. We only need you to keep us informed.”

“Informed? You want me to be an informer?”

“Maybe that's a bad choice of words, Tony.”

“I'll say! An informer? Me? I'd rather fuckin' die in the street like a cock-a-roach before I informed on somebody, anybody, Mr. Becker; a nigger, a spic, anybody. An' when you mention my lawyer, the greatest guy I know who's straight, then you're messing around with my explosion button. So save yourself the breath and the trouble, okay?”

“I didn't mean inform—”

“You said it. That was your word, right? ‘Inform, keep us informed', you said.”

“I meant, that if you were able to keep us abreast—”

“Now you're getting dirty, Mr. Becker. We don't know each other that well,” Tony Balls said snidely.

Becker kept control of any exasperation. The routine was to get
them
mad. “We're just interested in getting to know Mr. Luca a little better. In return, we could help you, keep the Brooklyn prosecutors off your back, keep your Parole Officer off your back. Who is your Parole Officer?”

“As if you didn't know. It's written right there, somewhere, in my file,” Tony Balls said, pointing to Becker's desk. “But, now that I think about it, Mr. Becker, what you say may make some sense. Things are really not what they used to be. Things have changed.”

“Nothing you bring to our attention would ever snap back at you, Tony.”

“All I have to do is tell you things?”

“That's it.”

“And you could help me, maybe get my Parole Officer to ease off me?”

Becker nodded.

“How do I do it? Write to you? Just come here? Tell these guys? What?”

“Any way that's comfortable for you, Tony” said Becker. The Agents were alert now, listening with interest.

“Let's see. I think it was two Thursdays ago—”

“You mind if I write?” said Becker.

Tony Balls shook his head. “Anything that's comfortable for you. Like I was saying. I went over to your sister's house okay? Your mother was there too, visiting I guess.”

Becker looked at Tony Balls, his face streaked with confusion.

“I banged your sister. She threw some hump! Your mother was having her monthlies. Otherwise—”

Becker jumped to his feet, his face burning red, right up through his scalp. “Get him out of here. Out! Out!” Becker was shaking, his arm pumping, pointing to the door. “Get that fucking monster out of here. Now!”

“Come on, Tony,” said Castoro.

“The ‘F' word. Mr. Becker, I'm shocked. Don't you want me to tell you more things, Mr. Becker?” Tony Balls said, calm, on top of the game now.

“Out! Out! Out! Disgusting, filthy, despicable creature. I ought to punch you right in the mouth.”

“Yeah, like as if you had the balls. I thought he wanted me to tell him things,” Tony Balls said innocently as he walked with the Agents toward Becker's door. The Agents were grim. Tony Balls was having the time of his life. “Oh, another thing, Mr. Becker,” Tony Balls, said, turning.

“Out. Get him out!”

“Okay, okay. Don't get your balls in such an uproar. I just want to say, not for nothin', that you're not supposed to talk to me unless you get in touch with my lawyer first, right? Right?” he fired into Becker's face. “And obviously you know that Sandro Luca is my lawyer, right?”

Becker's mouth was a slit of anger.

Tony Balls shrugged. “And I wouldn't tell you nothin' about Sandro Luca, or any of them other people, if you took that rod out of your ass and put it up mine, red hot. He's twice the man as you'll ever be.”

“Out, you scum. You have just dug yourself a grave.”

“
F u c k y o u
,” Tony Balls said with a flourish.

Scotrun, PA : August 11, 1996 : 7:45 P.M.

Sandro drove slowly along Halcyon Street in a small development called Freedom Village just outside the center of Scotrun, Pennsylvania.

“It should be one of these houses,” Sandro murmured, searching for numbers on mailboxes or on the facades of neat frame houses as he drove. Tatiana, too, from the passenger seat, was searching for the number.

Freedom Village was a fairly new community. The entrance drive up from the highway wound leisurely through a thick woods, until, at the top of a hill, an entire plateau had been completely shorn of trees. There, in the midst of this baldness, were the circling streets of Freedom Village. The builder, after the houses were erected, made an attempt to replace what had been bulldozed away, with spindly stripling trees held up by guy wires connected to support posts on either side. In another ten or fifteen years, when most of the people who originally bought the houses were looking for a retirement condo, the spindly implants would be trees.

“Eleven fifty-seven, eleven fifty-nine …” Sandro counted softly as he searched. Red Hardie had called Sandro collect several hours earlier, desperate and panting, saying he was on the side of the road, somewhere in Pennsylvania, that he had just been ambushed, by some foreign-speaking people with rifles, that he was sure the D.E.A. had something to do with the ambush. Red told Sandro that he was trying to make his way toward his ex-wife Leslie's house in Scotrun. He wanted Sandro to meet him there and surrender him to the F.B.I.

“This must be it,” Sandro said, stopping in front of a neat, yellow, two-story house which displayed neither number or name. A small, white wheelbarrow holding magenta geraniums was placed slightly off-center on a small patch of lawn in front of the house. A driveway on the right side of the house led to a two-car garage at the rear.

“Are you sure this is the place?” said Tatiana as Sandro pulled into the driveway.

“One way to find out.” Sandro stopped in front of one of the garage bays.

A dog began barking behind the house. Sandro glanced toward the sound. In the yard there was a barbeque pit and summer furniture, including a table with a green and white striped umbrella, surrounded by chairs with matching cushions. In the corner opposite the barbeque was a doghouse with a large, rust colored Airedale tethered to the dog house, barking toward the car. Beyond the back of the house, separated by about twenty yards of open grass that sloped downward, there were thick woods.

“How do you know this is it?” said Tatiana.

“We'll know in a second. A woman just looked out that window to our left.”

Tatiana looked. There was no one in the window. “You saw someone?”

Sandro was about to nod his head when a door at the rear of the house, just off the driveway, opened. A light-skinned black woman, perhaps forty-five, fifty, slim figure, pretty face, wearing slacks and a manstyled white shirt, stood in the doorway. “Sandro Luca?” she said.

“This is the place,” said Sandro. He and Tatiana walked toward the doorway.

“Hello, I'm Leslie,” the woman said, glancing about. “Come in, won't you?” she said, stepping aside so they could enter. “Red's inside,” she whispered as she closed the door. She walked ahead of them through a neat kitchen, past an open archway, to a living room with beige wall-to-wall carpeting and flowery upholstered furniture. A black man with glasses, wearing a suit and tie, was seated in an armchair. Red Hardie was sitting on the couch, his right arm across his chest, holding his left arm.

“Red! Are you all right?” Sandro said, moving quickly toward the couch.

Red shrugged. “Tips and all—” his voice trailed off into a wince as he tried to stand.

“Stay, stay,” said Sandro. “What happened to your arm?”

“It's okay.”

“I think he broke his shoulder,” said Leslie.

“I fell while I was running, hit a tree pretty hard with my shoulder,” said Red, shrugging again. “I had handcuffs on. Couldn't balance too well.”

“How'd you get them off?”

“Bob had some tools in the garage,” Red said nodding toward the man in the suit.

“Sandro Luca, this is my husband, Bob Reaves,” said Leslie.

They shook hands. “This is Tatiana Marcovich,” said Sandro. “Mr. Reaves, Leslie, Red.”

“Good to know you, Tatiana,” said Red. “I'm glad you got here, Sandro. I'm sorry I made you come all this way.”

“I hope nobody followed you,” said Reaves.

“No one followed me.”

“They wouldn't have to follow anyone to find this place,” Red said to Reeves. “The Government won't take very long to figure out that my ex-wife lives in Pennsylvania. And if they don't, Awgust Nichols will have no trouble telling them.”

“I can't believe you think United States Agents were somehow trying to kill you,” said Reeves.

“It's hard to believe Awgust would be involved,” said Leslie.

“There's no doubt in my mind about either,” said Red. “Those foreigners have to be working hand in hand with the D.E.A.,
have to be
, and, I'm sorry to say, so does Awgust.”

“Why do you include Awgust in this?” said Leslie.

“Leslie, I'm telling you, your nephew, Awgust, is involved somehow. Money was talking to old Matthew—you remember old Matthew, at the Flash Inn?”

“Is he still there?”

Red nodded. “We've known for a long time that there was a snitch amongst us. Somebody in our camp was giving information to The Man. They got to know things as fast as we thought them up. Now a couple, maybe three days ago, Matthew tells Money, and Money tells me, that Awgust was meeting with some foreigners at the Flash. Awgust tried to pass them off as Italians. Matthew, still sharp, said he knew they weren't Italians. He knows Spanish and Italian.”

“His daughter-in-law was Spanish, wasn't she?” said Leslie, dredging up a recollection.

“I think you're right. I forgot about that,” said Red. “Matthew said the strangers were speaking some language he had never heard before. And today, the Agent in charge of watching me purposely sends the other Agents away—completely against regulations—stops exactly in the middle of the woods where the assassins, speaking a foreign language, just happened to be waiting with rifles. There's no way in hell that could have been a coincidence. The way this played out, two and two starts to make four.”

“The part about stopping in the woods, the rifleman in the woods, yes,” said Sandro. “The foreign language part, maybe.”

“It ties together, doesn't it?” said Red. “People staked out in the woods, speaking some unusual foreign language, the people that Awgust was talking with at the Flash, speaking an unusual foreign language—could be the same unusual language—Awgust Nichols lying about it to cover it up, the foreigners looking to shoot my brains out.”

“You're just speculating,” said Reaves.

“You're right,” said Sandro, “but at the moment, we can't work on a best-case scenario. We have to assume the worst case scenario in order to figure out what we might have to do next.”

“If what you say is true, we should call the police,” said Reaves, “that's what should be done next.”

“Assuming that what Red said is correct, an all-points bulletin has already been sent out, looking for the escaped prisoner.”

“Or not,” said Red. “They might want to find me themselves and finish the job.”