Midnight Club (16 page)

53

A MOMENT LATER,
Sarah came up behind Stefanovitch. She lifted the earphones off his head.

“Are you the one who got me the personal invite down here to see this? If you are, I just wanted to thank you.”

Stefanovitch slowly swiveled around. He was smiling, for a change.

“The scribe has arrived. I guess we can start now. Pull up a card table chair. You can sit here and watch the Midnight Club in action. This is the way it really is on a stakeout.”

Sarah picked up one of the nearby chairs. She brought it over next to Stefanovitch.

“This is the real thing, huh?”

“Well, they’re all here. This must be the Club. Tino Deluna from Miami. Ten Hsu-shire from Hong Kong. Daniel Steinberg from London and Paris. All the biggies in the mob. What comes next, I do not know.”

Sarah quickly discovered that “surveillance” was just another word for Chinese water torture. For the first time, she understood what a police stakeout was about. After three and a half hours of sitting, occasionally listening in on the most banal and disgusting conversations at Trump’s, she couldn’t take any more.

She wandered around the Tropicana suite. Sarah went and talked to David Wilkes again. She came back to Stef and discussed everything from real-life godfathers to the night he’d seen the diving horse on the old Steel Pier, one of the unforgettable moments of his youth. “Family entertainment, back when there used to be families,” Stefanovitch said.

Sarah got better at surveillance—at listening, at concentrating—but a little past three, she decided to put her head down on one of the cots in the adjoining suite. Stefanovitch had taken another two-hour turn. He seemed to be getting nourishment out of what he was hearing over at Trump’s. He was an insomniac, anyway, at least he had been since the night of the shootings at Long Beach.

As he sat behind the reflective picture windows in the Tropicana, Stefanovitch pointed the directional mike this way and that. The bosses didn’t seem to be talking about anything worth recording. His attention went wandering again. Something was still bothering him about the meeting.

Around four in the morning, Sarah reappeared. She touched Stefanovitch’s shoulder, and he turned.

She was wrapped in a brown hotel blanket, looking lazy and comfortable. Images from her beach house filtered back.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked. Her eyes were still glassy and damp from her nap.

Stefanovitch shook his head. “Not tonight.”

“I don’t know. Everything looks so quiet over there now.”

“Most of the gentlemen who run organized crime around the world are there. How quiet can it be?”

Over in the penthouse, a session was developing among four or five of the bosses. They had traveled from different time zones, and apparently needed to stay awake to avoid jet lag.

Stefanovitch shuffled through a deck of photographs. Each picture was marked on the back with a name and brief profile.

One of the soldiers at Trump’s crossed in front of a window. The man stopped walking suddenly. He had an oversized walrus mustache, a little like the TV host Gene Shalit’s, only the soldier’s deeply pocked face wasn’t particularly friendly.

Walrusman seemed to be staring directly across at the Tropicana. He was looking right about where Stefanovitch and Sarah sat.

“He can’t see us,” Stefanovitch whispered. Still, the soldier did seem to be staring at them.

“He sees
something
. I wonder what’s going on inside all their heads? They’re the ones being shot at.”

“I can’t work up too much sympathy.”

Stefanovitch yawned, and he shook his head. Now he was getting tired. Right at the start of his watch.

“Why don’t you go lie down?” Sarah said. “I’ll sit out here for you. Go ahead. I’m up now.”

“Looks like they’re pulling all-nighters, too. They ordered more food,” Stefanovitch said and yawned again. “My grandfather used to call men like that crumb-bums. Now they rule the world. The crumb-bums.”

Over inside the penthouse, a couple of hotel waiters in white half jackets appeared. They carried the usual silver trays, which helped keep room-service food so consistently soggy.

The waiters were followed by the same soldier who had been standing at the picture window. The return of Walrus-man.

“It’s funny the way you begin to feel a kind of identification with people you watch on surveillance,” Stefanovitch grinned.

“Yeah, I could really identify with some breakfast right now. I missed dinner. Ham and eggs! Mmm-mmm good. What is that other stuff there? Lox? That looks so-o-o good.”

The hotel waiters were efficiently setting out the contents from their trays. Room-service guys loved to do that. Tray tops off. Little red rose in a vase.

Stefanovitch remembered that he hadn’t eaten himself. Crime did pay. A scene from
The French Connection
flashed through his mind—Gene Hackman, standing outside in the cold, watching some fancy French restaurant in Manhattan, while Frog One and his pal sat inside, eating everything in sight.

One of the waiters walked over to the row of picture windows. The waiter did seem to be looking across at the Tropicana. Was there something about the predawn light that made it possible for him to see inside the Tropicana’s windows?

“Do you think they found out something?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t think—”

Stefanovitch was suddenly sitting up in his chair. “No. Hey! Don’t do that, shit-for-brains. Hey.
Hey!
”

The waiter inside Trump Plaza was pulling the curtains.

“Damn it,” Stefanovitch muttered.

He switched his earphones up.

“Get away from those drapes, you creep.” Sarah had moved close to the picture window. Her nose was against the glass. “What are they saying now? How good their nova and omelets look?”

Stefanovitch listened on his earphones. They
were
talking about the food.

Suddenly, someone screamed inside the penthouse. A horrible sound came over the earphones.

“What the—” Stefanovitch blurted.

Somebody in the penthouse yelled,
“Oh God, no! No!”

54

THE UNMISTAKABLE ROAR
of gunfire followed. Loud screams echoed over the headphones.

Stefanovitch pulled the earphones away. “Somebody’s attacking the penthouse. They just hit Trump’s!” he yelled.

Sarah ran to get David Wilkes.

Stefanovitch hadn’t moved so quickly in the last couple of years. His heart pounded. Spasms of incomprehension flickered.

He made it inside the first elevator. FBI men with shocked expressions were strapping on their revolvers. David Wilkes was there, his eyes still glazed. His button-down shirt was un-buttoned.

The elevator touched down and the FBI men ran across the Tropicana lobby. Stefanovitch was left on his own. His wheel-chair nearly lifted off the floor as he burst forward.

Once he was outside the hotel, a cool ocean breeze slapped his face. He was soaking wet: his neck, hair, the back of his shirt. As he reached the far side of Texas Avenue, he remembered the walkie-talkie.

“This is Stefanovitch. What the hell’s happening?”

No answer came back.

Stefanovitch reached the glass side doors into Trump’s. Two security guards were body-blocking the way.

“You can’t come in here!” one of them shouted.

“
Police!
” Stefanovitch flashed his shield.

Even more confused, they let him inside.

A blur of terrified faces, bodies in bathrobes and pajamas, swarmed across the lobby. Bizarre language punctuated the scene: “There was a shooting upstairs!” “No, it’s a fire.” “I tell you, it’s a fire in the goddamn kitchen!”

Stefanovitch located the express elevator to the penthouse. Inside the elevator, he tried the walkie-talkie again. “David?
David?
”

No answer came from Wilkes. What had he found in the penthouse? Why wasn’t he answering? What had happened up there?

The padded elevator doors opened. Stefanovitch recognized the acrid odor of gunfire. He proceeded through the open door of the suite. Bodies were sprawled everywhere in the living room. A horrifying scene met his eyes.

The Midnight Club.

55

Isiah Parker; Trump Plaza

THE TELEPHONE ON
Isiah Parker’s bed stand started to ring. His eyes slid open and he reached for the jangling phone.

“Isiah! Somebody hit the penthouse at Trump’s,” he heard, recognizing the voice of Jimmy Burke.

“Say again?”

“They went in with submachine guns. FBI agents and cops are all over the hotel,” Burke continued.

“Who went where with machine guns? What are you saying?”

“We have to get out of Atlantic City. We ought to leave separately, like we came in. I’ll take care of Aurelio.”

“All right. I hear you,” Parker said. He thought Burke was making sense, though he wasn’t sure.

Parker finally jumped out of bed. He lunged into the hotel bathroom, where he stuck his head under the tap, letting the cold water revive him.

All his worst fears and suspicions rose to the surface again. Why hadn’t Charles Mackey called him? What about Burke and Aurelio Rodriquez? How could someone else have hit Trump’s? Who?

Ten minutes later, Parker was one of several hundred spectators in a crowd outside Trump Plaza. Many of the people were still in their nightclothes. Some wore shoes or slippers, some were in bare feet. All the faces seemed in shock.

Police cars and EMS ambulances were crowded four and five deep across Mississippi and Arkansas avenues. Police cruisers were parked up and down all the other narrow side streets.

Parker stared at the blockaded lobby entrance to Trump’s. He gazed toward the top floor, where entire picture windows had been blown out by the shooting.

He desperately tried to sort out what had happened. It struck him that he had never been told his target in Atlantic City. Deputy Commissioner Mackey hadn’t called after eleven, as he’d promised to several times.

Undertones of terror and black humor circulated through the boardwalk crowd. The comedy was part high-roller irony, part
Saturday Night Live
tastelessness.

“Who the hell got shot?” a fat man in a garish bathrobe asked. “Wayne fucking Newton?”

“Wayne Newton? He deserved to be shot, show he did last night at Caesar’s.”

Parker finally began to inch away from the restless, milling crowd. As he did, he saw Lieutenant John Stefanovitch. Stefanovitch was leaving Trump’s, pushing his wheelchair forward with grim determination. He looked numb and drained.

What was happening?

Parker finally walked down the steep stone steps dropping away from the boardwalk. He had to think in straight lines. Nothing but straight lines of logic.

Parker heard a soft cry…low, obviously uttered in fear and confusion. It took him a few seconds to realize that the sound had been his own voice.

He touched the .22 revolver concealed under his sports jacket. Then Parker continued down the eerie, darkened street, which was filled with obscure, almost solid black shapes. He could sort out street-sign poles, hydrants, garbage cans, the hulks of parked cars, the serrated outlines of trees.

He found that he couldn’t get past the wall of his own shock. Not right now, anyway.

He had been undercover. He’d been waiting for special orders from New York, directly from Police Plaza. Somebody had hit Trump’s. Who? The shock was still reverberating through his nervous system, building up force, adrenaline surging. He played back Detective Jimmy Burke’s phone call, over and over, in his head.

Somebody hit the penthouse at Trump’s!…

A hollow pain was knotting his stomach. Parker felt wasted, almost out of control. After he walked another block down Indiana Avenue, Parker stepped into one of the dark alleyways between tenement buildings. The alley smelled of urine and spoiled garbage. He took out his pocket recorder. He needed to get some of this down.

His voice was shaky, more than a little uncertain, as he finally spoke. He was feeling so paranoid. But was it paranoia? Why hadn’t Mackey called?

“This is a surveillance log. The time is oh-four-hundred-thirty hours. This is Detective Isiah Parker… Someone just attacked Trump Plaza. It happened about thirty minutes ago.

“New York policemen and FBI agents entered Trump Plaza at about four in the morning. How the hell did they get there so fast? Why were they down here in Atlantic City?

“Officers Burke, Rodriquez, and myself are leaving Atlantic City.”

Parker stood quietly at the edge of the alleyway. He gazed up and down Indiana Avenue. The scene was strangely placid, especially when he considered the commotion just four blocks away.

Then something moved.

56

SOMETHING FARTHER UP
the street caused Parker to pause at the mouth of the alleyway.

Somebody was moving on the sidewalk, almost directly across from where his car was parked. He wasn’t sure what it was yet; his eyes strained to see in the dark. His throat was painfully dry.

Could be just neighborhood types, Parker thought. Maybe it was a street junkie or a wino? The odor in the alley was a fresh scent.

He quietly made his way back into the shadows of the alleyway. Then he walked in a hurry another forty or fifty yards to Illinois, the street running parallel to Indiana. He wanted to come back onto Indiana, but behind the man loitering near his Audi.

Parker peered down another vacant alleyway. His chest felt uncomfortably tight.

He saw something move again. Shadows parted. Then the red ember of a cigarette traveled in a familiar arc.

The left side up ahead…

A distinct outline was poised at the end of the alleyway. A man was waiting near Parker’s car. The man was only twenty to thirty yards away.

A run-down bar a block or so away provided dim lighting. The neon glow from the All-Star Lounge was enough for him to decipher a full silhouette.

Parker began to inch forward again. The waiting man was only ten yards away. He slid out his .22. Who the hell was standing there in the alleyway?

“Freeze! Don’t move,” he finally called out.

The man dropped into a professional shooting crouch.

“It’s Parker,” Isiah shouted, identifying himself.

The man paid no heed. He fired, and the round whistled past Parker.

Instinctively, Parker fired back. He fired a second time. Both hurried shots missed.

“Don’t shoot, Isiah. Don’t shoot, for Chrissakes!”

Parker recognized the voice, and he couldn’t get his breath. Dread clutched him.

The man was Jimmy Burke. His own partner had purposely shot at him.

Burke suddenly darted from the alley. Parker could have fired. He didn’t. There were too many questions. Maybe he couldn’t have fired at Burke anyway.

Isiah Parker ran down the alleyway after Jimmy Burke. Spots appeared in front of his eyes, obscuring the scene.

All at once he stopped. A body was there; a dark shape was curled up beside a collection of rubbish.

There was enough light to make out features of the fallen man. A mop of curly black hair; a long beaked nose; two black holes in the forehead. Aurelio Rodriquez had been murdered.

Police sirens were screaming through the night again. Parker’s brain was screaming. Finally, Parker began to run. He stumbled as he ran away from the police, from whoever was chasing him.

He disappeared into the darkness of Atlantic City….He passed New York Avenue… Then Baltic Avenue…The fear, the feeling of helplessness from just a few minutes before, was already being replaced by rage.