Saints Of New York (11 page)

'Go
ahead.'

'Well,
all the industry on the eastern seaboard relies on JFK to ship their goods out
and bring their materials in, right? It involves the shippers themselves, the
airlines of course, the freight- forwarding companies who direct business to
the airlines from the customers, and then there's the unions. The unions are
basically two Teamster Locals, 295 and 851. The 295 has two thousand members -
truck drivers, switchers, platform men, hydraulic lift operators, mechanics,
garage people and fuelers. Local 851 represents the clerical guys. Here you
have the office people and the dispatchers. Make sense?'

'Sure.'

'So,
say you have a company. For example, you make shoes. You're gonna send your
shoes to wherever in the world. You have however many thousands of pairs and
you call up an agent who gets you in with a freight forwarder. The freight
forwarder takes on the job, and he can arrange for packing, re-packing,
marking, weighing, everything. You have three hundred forwarding companies
down there, the majority of which use their own trucks and drivers to go fetch
the goods from wherever you make the things and bring it to the airport. The
freight forwarders make their money by charging you one rate, and then they pay
less than that because they're shipping bulk through the airlines, right?'

'Like
any business really. The forwarders are the middlemen.'

'Yeah,
the middlemen. So you see how important the freight forwarders are to the
airlines. Freight forwarders can make or break an airline by directing traffic
their way or not. The guy in the freight forwarding company who has the say-so
is the lead agent. He's the big boss of the hot sauce. He's the guy the
airlines want to be in with. They got to keep him happy, got to make it worth
his while to send the business their way. Well, Local 851 was owned by the
Luccheses, and most of the lead agents were represented by 851. Lead agents
knew what goods were in which trucks. They knew when it was three hundred tons
of butter or six hundred cases of caviar. They knew everything inside out and
back-to-front. These were the guys who would arrange the give- ups—'

'The what?'

'The give-ups.
It's another kind of hijack. The driver is paid off to leave his keys in the
ignition and go get a cup of coffee in a diner somewhere just outside of the
airport. A hijacking is a straight thing, no prearrangement with the driver. A
crew hijacks a truck they're gonna knock the driver down, steal his keys,
whatever they have to do. They go in there with guns, right? With a give-up you
have the co-operation of the driver and there's no noise or violence. The
Luccheses had an entire network of cargo handlers, packers, drivers and airport
security staff working on this thing. Millions and millions and millions of
dollars' worth of goods went walking out of that airport into the hands of the
Luccheses. The most famous hijacker ever was Jimmy Burke, and he had lines into
the airport that told him about potential witnesses and government informants.
His success was based solely on the fact that no-one actually ever made it to
court to testify against him—'

'Why not?'

'Because he
killed them, or at least arranged to have them killed.'

'And your father
knew him, I suppose?'

'Sure he did.
All the Saints knew Jimmy Burke.'

'So you were
going to tell me about them. The Saints.'

'There were
twelve in all, and one-for-one they were part of the Organized Crime Control
Bureau or the NYPD Internal Affairs Division. They had all bases covered, you
see? If a question was raised about the integrity or honesty of one of the OCCB
officers, then IAD would investigate and come back with a clean bill of health.
They called such things their annual medicals, and they came away like Snow
White. A few times they talked about it in the house, treated it like it was
some kind of a joke.'

'You met some of
them?'

'Some, sure.
Hell, I don't remember them all, and I never really spoke to them. A few of
them are still around even now. Retired, but alive. Probably own sea-view
properties in Pompano Beach, Florida or some such. I remember Don Hunter and
George Buranski, and an Italian guy . . . Mario something-or-other . . . Gamba,
Mario Gamba. And there was Art Billick and Shaun Beck, and a guy called Randall
Kubis. They were the good old boys, you know? They used to come round the
house, watch football games, have barbecues. I was a kid, all of six or seven
back in the early Seventies, and I was in my teens when my father transferred
to the Brooklyn Task Force. I was twenty when I joined the police. That was
August of '84, and my father and I didn't see anywhere near as much of one
another after that. I made detective in '96, and by that time he'd already been
dead for four years.'

'Murdered, I
understand.'

'Yes. As were
three or four of the original twelve as far as I can work out.'

'How did you
feel about that?'

'Feel? Jesus, I
don't know. What the hell are you supposed to feel when your father is
murdered?'

'Were you angry
with him?'

'For what?'

'For being
corrupt?'

'Angry? No. I
don't think anger would have been the appropriate emotion, and I certainly
didn't feel that at the time. I think I was just disappointed, you know? All
those chances he had to be a decent guy, he just turned out to be an asshole.'

'And your mother
died shortly afterwards. What happened?'

'Nothing
happened.
She just died . . . four months later.
Went to sleep one night and didn't wake up. Autopsy said it was congenital
heart failure, but she was one of those women who lived for her husband and
when he was gone there was just no point carrying on.'

'Were you
upset?'

'Sure I was. Far
more about her than I had been about him.' 'And did she know what her husband
was involved in? Did she know that he was corrupt?'

'Of
course she did. God, they had more money than he ever could have earned as a
cop. They had stashes of cash all over the place. Nothing was ever banked, and
there were no records, no receipts, nothing like that. Just shoeboxes and paper
bags full of money stuffed down the back of cupboards, and wedged beneath
floorboards and under the insulation in the attic. And he kept moving it. Like
he figured someone was out there keeping track of where he put it. Sometimes he
would just go crazy, digging holes in the back yard and burying it, only to dig
it all up again three days later and put it somewhere else.'

'Did
you take any of it?'

'God
no! I wouldn't have dared. He knew exactly how much was where at any given
time.'

'And
some of this money came from the Lufthansa robbery?'

'It
must have done, yes.'

'How
much?'

'I
can only guess.'

'So
guess.'

'About
two hundred thousand dollars, I'd say.'

'And
the other men?'

'There
were half a dozen of them involved, as far as I could work out. They each got
about the same. Two hundred grand, six guys . . . ? That's one point two
million. They took the best part of six million, and only a hundred grand was
ever recovered.'

'How
come they got so much?'

'Because
it was a big score. It took a lot of balls to pull that off. This happened in
'78, and the case was immediately assigned to the OCCB. They investigated it,
of course, and any time they found anyone who knew something, any time they got
hold of someone who even
looked
like they might talk, they killed them. All of those guys who were involved,
they protected their own interests, they protected Jimmy Burke. It was, as we
say, a mutually beneficial arrangement.'

'Your
father killed witnesses?'

'Witnesses,
informants, all sorts of people. You think that a robbery of that magnitude
isn't going to leave things wide open everywhere you look? There were people
all over the place, through every level of the Lucchese family, who knew about
Jimmy Burke and the Lufthansa heist. They couldn't afford to have anyone
talking. Not only would they have lost their jobs, but they would have gone to
jail and they would've had to give back the money. Back in '78 a couple of
hundred grand was a huge amount of money.'

'So
tell me what happened at JFK.'

'JFK?
JFK was like a bottomless purse for these guys. They kept putting their hands
in it, and back they came all full of money again.'

'I'd
like to know more about your father. The people he worked with.'

'Well,
you and I are going to have to talk about that tomorrow. I have to go trawl the
hair salons and beauty parlors with Radick and show the girl's picture.'

'You
know, Frank, you're supposed to be here for an hour every day, and mostly you
stay for half of that. And you waste time going out to get coffee.'

'So
what? You're gonna tell on me?'

'No,
Frank, I'm not going to tell on you.'

'Well,
you got me talking. Take a win on that, eh? Take a win on the fact that you got
Frank Parrish talking about his old man. Keep this up and you'll have me crying
like a baby on the couch and wanting to tell my mom how bad I've been.'

'I'll
see you tomorrow, Frank ... a little later. Say ten-thirty?'

'You
work Saturdays?'

'Yes.
And good luck with the girl.'

'Appreciated.'

It
made sense to start in Brooklyn, so they did. Three blocks each
way from Danny Lange's apartment.
They stayed together, walking the streets and visiting beauty salons,
boutiques, manicurists, pedicurists, hairstylists, even massage parlors, in
the hope that there might be some small unit in back that filed and painted
nails.

Once
they had exhausted all possibilities, they drove north-east to Williamsburg and
started all over again. Three blocks each way from Helen Jarvis's house,
knocking on doors only to have those doors closed abruptly on them; asking
questions; producing IDs, showing the picture -
What do you say her name was? Rebecca what? -
and then winding up back at the car no wiser than when they'd started. No-one
had recognized Rebecca, seemed like no- one
wanted
to recognize her.

As
far as Radick could see they had covered all bases. The school principal,
Trevitt at the Williamsburg 91st Precinct, Helen Jarvis; they'd even submitted
a request for a complete schedule of all calls received by Rebecca's school at
the time in question. How many calls there would be Radick had no idea, or
whether they'd have a prayer of isolating the one that came in from the girl's
fictitious father ... It was a futile activity, he knew that, but it was an
avenue that had to be pursued.

'Her
friends,' Parrish said. 'I'm going to go over to the school and talk to her
friends. And I want to go alone.'

Radick
questioned his decision.

'One
is less intimidating, less official. These are kids we're talking to.'

Radick
said he'd drive Parrish over there. They agreed that if anything came up in
conversation with one of the kids then

Parrish
would have to
get Radick back over there to witness
any
statement.
If Parrish
took it alone it would not be valid.

Parrish
called David Carlisle, the principal, who was wary, but didn't refuse the
request. He did say, however, he would have to have the school counsellor
present for all interviews.

The
partners drove to the school after lunch. They arranged that Parrish would call
Radick to pick him up when he was done - if he didn't need Radick sooner.

Carlisle
was good to his word, and had set aside an office for Parrish and the
counsellor.

'Ruth
Doyle,' she said, introducing herself with a firm and businesslike handshake.
I am here on the same terms,
that handshake
said.
I can cut it with the best of you.
She had on a skirt suit - the kind of not-too-casual-not-too-smart outfit that
said she was here to do a job, but she could still relate to the kids. Parrish
had seen a hundred thousand such people - in Social Services, Child Services,
Welfare - and they all said the same things and thought the same thoughts. They
were servants of the bureaucratic machine and, however hard they tried to make
a difference, they were still rigidly bound by a system that dictated they
possess no initiative.