The Vaults (31 page)

“I’ve got my press pass in my wallet if that means anything.”

Samuelson snorted. “To hell with it. Come in.” He nodded toward the open door. Frings was careful not to make contact with Samuelson as he eased by.

The interior was a marked contrast to the outside. Warm-colored rugs hung on the walls and over the windows. What had seemed forbidding on the outside seemed somehow pleasant now that Frings was inside. He figured the rugs had as much to do with insulation as decoration. The sparse furniture was simple and clean and well-ordered. Samuelson might have made some of it himself. Samuelson nodded Frings to a chair and then, to Frings’s relief, leaned his shotgun against the protruding stone fireplace.

“Coffee?”

Frings nodded. Samuelson stuck an iron pot into the fire and sat down opposite Frings.

“So you know about the Navajo Project.”

“That’s right.”

“Who peached?”

“Bernal.” There was no harm in saying it. Bernal was dead.

Samuelson’s face was blank, but he was rubbing his calloused hands up and down the tops of his thighs. “That’s right, you said that.” He pondered this for a moment. “What do you want to know?”

“The details. How does it work?”

“Jesus, I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to find one of us. Yeah, I can tell you that. Where do I start?”

“After the trial. You were convicted.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I was guilty. So what they do, they lead me out of the courtroom, but they don’t take me down to the holding cells. They take me to this meeting room. There’s a bunch of suits there, mayor’s guys. Not Henry, this is just before his time. Shit, hold on.”

The coffeepot was blowing steam and Samuelson fished it out with fireplace tongs. Frings stared at the fire while Samuelson retreated to the kitchen to make the coffee in silence. He returned with two large mugs, the strong, acidic aroma spreading through the room.

“There were guys from the mayor’s office,” Frings prompted.

“That’s right. They tell me I’m not going to the big house, and I’m half-happy and half-trying to make what the fuck’s going on. They say that there’s been so much killing with the gangs and all that, and there’s all these widows and kids without fathers, and that between paying for the killers to be in jail and keeping these widows and kids from starving to death that it’s eating away at the City’s money. So they say I’m not going to prison, they’re going to send me out to the fucking sticks, and I am going to have a farm and the cash I make is going to go back to the family of that gink I killed.”

“Cy Leto.”

“That’s him. So they sent me out here, which is where I’ve been ever since. Farming, bo, I’m a goddamn farmer.”

“That’s it?”

“For a couple of years. You know how when Henry became mayor he worked the White Gang over pretty good, and as far as I know, they stopped sending people out to be farmers. Whatever. One day, this guy comes out to talk to me. Cake eater, but tough. You could tell. Name of Smith. So he comes out and tells me that the money we’re sending back isn’t enough, that
we have to be making more. I say how the fuck am I supposed to make more money. But he’s got a plan for me to make a lot more.”

“What’s that?”

“I think you’re going to need to see it for yourself.”

Excerpt from Van Vossen,
A History of Recent Crime in the City
(draft):

A word or two is appropriate on the Anti-Subversion Unit, or the A-S-U as it is more commonly known. After the election of Mayor Henry and the subsequent massacre at Lentini’s restaurant that we have earlier visited, the ASU became, with the regular police force, the most consequential force for order in the City. But the story of the ASU begins not with Mayor Henry, but more than a decade earlier, during the Great War.

The United States of America’s entry into the War led to an accompanying concern for the security of certain valuable resources. Many port cities and industrial plants were given protection by the Army or Federal Government. The City received no such allocation, but was nonetheless an important supplier of steel, tungsten, and other strategic materials. The threat posed to the strategic materials by Anarchists, Communists, and Criminal Gangs was met with the creation, by one-term mayor Clement Lassiter, of the ASU. The ASU was drawn from the ranks of the police force and served mainly as guards at the plants, railroad, and river ports in the City. Other ASU “squadrons” were more aggressive in their pursuit of Subversive Elements, using both undercover schemes and surprise raids to aid in suppression of Subversive Elements.

The terminus of the War ended the need for the ASU and it was dissolved, though the law authorizing the unit was left on the City’s books. It was this law to which Mayor Henry turned after the so-called Birthday Party Massacre.

The ASU was reestablished and was made answerable directly to the mayor. It comprised, as had the original incarnation of the ASU, the most aggressive and successful officers from the regular force, but now also untrained street
thugs whom Mayor Henry had counted on as allies during his days running the neighborhood known as Blue Hill.

The ASU, distinguished by their light gray uniforms, began a particularly brutal assault upon the White Gang at all levels from the block bosses to Tommy McFadden himself.

Though purportedly charged with the eradication of the gangs, rumor, whether founded or not, struck fear in the common citizenry. Even the reckless kept out of the way when the Grey Uniforms arrived.

Poole ran.

The officers gave chase but were losing ground. Poole thought frantically as he ran. Could he get to his car? Was his car even a safe destination if the ASU were searching for him? Were other cops in the area? Headlights cut through the rain, a couple of hundred yards down the street. Desperately, Poole veered left, heading for the warehouse that he had just visited.

He made the door twenty yards ahead of his pursuers, closing it hard behind him. His eyes needed time to adjust to the light. All he could make out were the glows of isolated fires. Unable to wait, he sprinted toward the back of the building, where he had seen a staircase during his earlier visit.

As he ran, he yelled, “Cops coming. Cops coming.”

The murmuring that he’d noticed on his first visit had stopped. A figure appeared in front of him, too close to avoid, and Poole ran him down, the man hitting the floor hard. Poole kept going. He reached the staircase and turned back to face the front of the building, holding on to the banister and struggling for breath. The front door was still closed. Poole guessed that the officers were waiting for reinforcements before entering the warehouse. He would have.

Seconds passed and the muted conversations began again. Poole climbed three stairs, continuing to watch the door. It opened, nearly a dozen ASU officers spilling in, staying in tight formation.

“Police! Police!” Poole yelled, then took the stairs three at a time.

At the top of the stairs he paused. The second floor was much like the first—groups huddled around scattered fires in oil drums. Gray light filtered through tall, narrow windows. There was silence downstairs, Poole picturing the officers moving slowly forward, scanning the indigent crowd for him. He had hoped that the antipathy toward the police voiced by the men he had talked to would translate into action once the police entered. This didn’t seem to be happening, and Poole wondered if it hadn’t been bluster after all.

Then a clanging noise came from below and a yell and all hell broke loose. Up from the ground floor came the sound of yelling and large things crashing against the floor and walls. The building shook.

Poole hurried to a group gathered around an oil-drum fire near one of the windows. He pushed two men out of the way, grabbed the lip of the drum in his left hand, and felt the hot metal sear his flesh. He flung the drum one-handed through a window. Shattering glass and the subsequent impact of the drum on the ground added to the cacophony from downstairs and, Poole hoped, would draw the attention of the officers that were surely posted outside.

Two indigent men angrily grabbed at Poole’s soaking jacket, shouting at him incoherently. Poole threw them both to the ground with little effort and raced across to the far wall. The commotion from below was working the second floor into a frenzy, and the volume rose as people began to bang on the walls with sticks or cans or their fists. People yelled unintelligibly, and projectiles of all sizes flew through the air.

Poole’s hand throbbed with pain. He moved with his head down in an effort to avoid flying objects. The sheer volume of the noise made it difficult to think. He found a scrap of two-by-four and used it to break a window and clear the glass shards from the sill. He looked down, the rain slapping him in the face, to find that no one was below. Hopefully, they had run to the other side.

He could hear people ascending the stairs now, so he sat down on the windowsill and swung his legs outside. The drop was twenty-five feet, and Poole took two deep breaths before pushing off. The ground came up fast, and he rolled with the impact, careful to keep his hand from hitting the ground. He stood and sprinted past the rear of the warehouse, then left down an intersecting street. Halfway down that block, he heard the pop of a pistol. He turned and saw a half dozen officers running at him, a hundred yards behind.

He covered the rest of the block at full speed, then turned onto a block of abandoned row houses, each fronted by a cracked concrete stoop under which was an entrance to a basement apartment. Poole ran to the fifth stoop and ducked behind it, chest heaving. A group of rats, picking at some spoiled meat, scattered at his arrival.

The police knew he was somewhere on this block, but it was to his advantage for them not to know exactly where. It was also to his advantage that they did not know that he was unarmed. They would be hesitant
to enter the street if they thought he would be able pick them off one by one.

He heard the officers assemble at the corner, but couldn’t make out their conversation over the sound of the rain. Time was crucial. Once adequate reinforcements arrived, they could seal the entire area and take their time ferreting out Poole. Poole had to be quick, but not rash. It was better to take a brief pause to think than to make an irrevocably wrong decision and get caught. Poole leaned back on the concrete and considered his options.

Frings followed Samuelson into the forest, the rain coming down in heavy sheets through the trees. Frings wore a borrowed poncho, and the water ran in streams off both men. Frings would not have been able to find the path himself, but following Samuelson, it seemed quite clear. They walked a half mile in silence until Frings caught sight of a clearing up ahead and picked up a familiar scent, even through the rain. Not the smell of the pines or the wet leaves, but a sweet, moist odor.

The trail came to an end between two ancient hemlocks, their foliage so thick that the ground beneath them was nearly dry in the downpour. Samuelson stopped and gestured for Frings to step into the clearing. When he did, the amount of money accounted for in the ledger suddenly made sense.

“Jesus,” Frings whispered. Before him, like a meadow, were acres of marijuana plants.
Acres
. And around the field, deep forest.

“Welcome,” Samuelson said, holding his arms out to the field, his mouth contorted into a rueful smirk, “to my humble farm.”

“This was Red Henry’s idea?”

“I didn’t say that. Got the word from the cake eater. But, yeah, if it was that guy who came out, then the mayor’s behind it.”

“You’re farming reefer.”

“That’s right. It’s not really farming, though. More like just harvesting. It’s a fucking weed. Throw the seeds into the ground and let them do their own growing. Certain dates, you know they’re coming to make a pickup and you harvest so it’s ready to go.”

“Who comes?” Frings was still stunned by the sheer volume of plants. He imagined being alone here, if only for a moment, and stuffing his pockets full.

“Started off, it was different guys, some white, some colored. Come out on the scheduled day, bring a girl with them, too. You could spend some of your cut on the girl, if that’s your way. Things changed when Vampire took a runner. Waited for a day when they made a pickup, took the cash, and
left in his truck. Next day Smith shows up and can’t fucking find him. Comes around to all the rest of us, says where the fuck’s Vampire? Nobody knows, we just guess he screwed, and everyone in their own mind starts thinking that’s maybe not such a bad idea, you know?

“Well, they shipped out some private guards to keep the rest of us in line for a couple of weeks until they found him. You see, what they decided to do was promote a few of the guys, make them responsible for the rest of us. This was when Henry was all close with the Bristols and he made of few of those ginks his men.

“So, of course, Whiskers ended up as leader. Don’t know if they planned it or he just took it over or what. They sent him out after ol’ Vampire, and he got him all right. Cut him up, from what we heard. Used to come around with Vampire’s balls in a mason jar right on the passenger seat of that truck they gave him. Showed them to all of us. No one thought too much about running away after that.