High Crimes Page 5

  Just as Mitchell was beginning to feel deserted by Edwards, the superintendent turned away from the window, and began speaking in a quiet voice.

  “Mister Minister, Harold Mitchell got axed in that courtroom, without fair reason, by a judge whose appointment you once personally okayed.”

  “You cops stick together, don’t you?” Lessard said. “Well, okay, Milt, you’ve prepared a little lecture for me. You’re my liaison officer, so liaise. Tell me about police morale, Milt. Tell me about how the government is going to have to back up its cops or we’re going to have mass resignations. Tell me how the dope traffickers are going to take over the country. Tell me, Milt, why it should cost two million dollars to put this monster Kerrivan away.”

  Edwards paced to the center of the room.

  “Mister Minister, one of the few things in this country we shouldn’t be ashamed of is the RCMP. Name one other country in the world where tourists go just to look at the policemen. I am proud of the RCMP, goddamnit, even though I know that such things as pride in uniformed men are a little corny and old hat these days. Sure there are bad apples — human mistakes walking around in uniform. And maybe some guys try too hard, and maybe that’s Harold’s problem. He tries. But you know this, Mister Minister, there has been no police force in the history of the entire world which has had to work so hard to maintain the reputation that has been claimed for it.”

  Edwards pressed the palms of his hands on the minister’s desk and leaned towards him as if daring him to throw the first punch. “We have had our good name dragged, battered and bleeding, up and down this country by royal commissions that are so busy prying into our affairs that we don’t dare turn our back. Add to that the yahoos on hot-line shows. Left-wing ding-a-lings writing magazine columns. Nutty lawyers screaming police brutality every time some snot-nose punk gets a boot in the pants. How do you run a police force when it’s worrying all the time about where the next knife is going to be stuck?” His voice had risen, and he was shaking.

  “Easy, Milt,” Lessard said. “On this issue, I am the converted.”

  “What I am saying is I think we’re entitled to the respect of your government, and its support.”

  “Then earn it.”

  “Give us the tools.”

  “Two million dollars buys a lot of tools.”

  “Two million dollars doesn’t buy squat. You can’t even make a decent high-level buy with a quarter of that. We’re talking about narcotics. Maybe close to thirty million dollars’ worth, and I’m not talking street prices. That’s what Kerrivan’s group is getting together right now.” He paused. “We have information.”

  “Information?” Lessard had relaxed a little. “A little bird tell you?”

  “A little bug.” Edwards folded his arms. “Take my word for it.”

  The minister looked from man to man in the room.

  Edwards continued. “We can smash that operation if you give Inspector Mitchell the green light. We’ll get Kerrivan, even if it’s on the rebound from the last case, and when we do we’ll have earned the respect we are talking about. Then people might forget about this crap.” He picked up the newspaper and tossed it roughly back onto Lessard’s desk.

  Lessard smiled. “You should be in politics, Milt.”

  “A thirty-million-dollar dope bust will give the royal commissions something to chew on,” Edwards said. “Something, for a change, other than our ass.”

  Lessard picked up the budget and frowned at the figures. “Maybe it would be cheaper just to legalize pot completely. Half the damn civil service smokes the stuff.”

  “Is that the kind of country we want to live in, sir?” It was Mitchell, and his question was followed by an awkward silence.

  Edwards glared at Mitchell, then, leaning towards Lessard, he spoke slowly and emphatically: “We want this one, Mister Minister. I think you owe this one to us.”

  The only sound for several seconds was that made by Lessard, who seemed to be trying to clear his throat.

  “I see,” he said finally, again glancing over the budget. “Are any of these figures flexible? Your undercover costs, can they go that high — hundreds of thousands of dollars?” Then he held up his hands as if to discourage response. “Maybe I shouldn’t hear any more about it.” He pointed to one of the three marble monkeys on his paperweight, the one holding its hands over its ears. “I’m this guy,” he said.

  Then he turned to Mitchell. “Inspector, if this doesn’t come off, I will personally stick you up your red, rosy, A-dash-dash H-dash-dash-dash.”

  ***

  Outside the office, Mitchell drew Edwards aside. “He owes us one? What was that all about?”

  “You’d be surprised what the morality boys get on some of the local wiretap.”

  Chapter Six

  Mitchell was in a cocktail lounge at Montreal’s Dorval Airport, waiting for a change of planes to Miami, when he heard a familiar voice, loud and defiant. Mitchell groaned. There, at the door to the lounge, were Peter Kerrivan and Johnny Nighthawk, and Kerrivan was berating one of Mitchell’s undercover men.

  “For the sake of the Lord, b’y, would you be so kind as to stop walking on my heels? Why is it an innocent man can’t go about in a free country without being followed everywhere? You’re dressed like a working man, but I know you’re not a working man at all because you’re soft and pudgy.” He put on a heavy Newfoundland accent. “The truth of it be y’er a policeman, and a pore crayture of one, t’be sure.” Then he dropped the accent. “Look, fella, get your nose out of my ass, or I’m going to sue. I know my rights.”

  The undercover constable strode angrily into the bar, almost bumping into Mitchell’s table. He blushed when he saw Mitchell. “I followed them from St. John’s,” he mumbled. “They narked me. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Get out of here,” Mitchell hissed. “Phone someone else to pick them up.”

  “Well, if it isn’t himself,” said Kerrivan, coming up to Mitchell’s table. “What’s the matter, Inspector, you look like you just swallowed a chili pepper.” He swung his head in the direction of the retreating constable. “I get it — he follows us to Montreal, and you take over from here.”

  “Good morning, Inspector,” Nighthawk said with a sour smile. Native Indians whom Mitchell had known usually had flat voices, but Nighthawk’s was soft and expressive. Mitchell assumed he was there as Kerrivan’s bodyguard. He was a huge man with a large gut and broad shoulders. An ex-con. His hair was in two braids at the back.

  “What are you doing here?” Mitchell asked.

  “Why, we thought we’d stop over in Montreal, check out the old city, and celebrate the victory,” Kerrivan said. “Do you want to know our hotel, Inspector, or can your boys find it out for themselves?”

  Kerrivan was carrying a small leather bag. “What’s in that, Peter?” Mitchell asked. “Anything I should know about?”

  “I’m doing a heroin delivery for the Chinese Chow Chew, Inspector. I’ve gone into the hard stuff.”

  Mitchell laughed politely.

  ***

  It was slim pickings at the agent shop in Miami. Mitchell knew the Drug Enforcement Administration kept a Caribbean file of private operators who did the kind of work that doesn’t have to be recorded in triplicate.

  He explained that he wanted someone who would not be bothered by technicalities. Someone efficient and fast. The best man he could get in the business.

  “The best man I can get,” was, unfortunately, the phrase he had used after introducing himself to Special Agent Jessica Flaherty, acting head of DEA’s Caribbean desk.

  “The best man, huh?” she said. “Any other requirements? White? Anglo-Saxon? Blue eyes? Royal bloodlines?”

  “It may be dangerous. I would feel better with a man, that’s all.”

  Flaherty unlocked a sliding metal file and drew out about six cards. S
he held them away from his eyes as if guarding a poker hand. “George Singleton,” she said. “Ex-DEA. Now heads up security for a hotel chain. But he won’t do drug ops anymore. I don’t know what his problem is. I should move him to the dead file.”

  She laid the card face down so he could not read it, and picked up another one. “Keffler. Very classy, very knowledgeable. Unfortunately he’s already out on a big job for us. Can’t free him up for another three months.” Another card. “Susan Marques. A really hot number. Wrong sex, though.”

  Mitchell wasn’t liking this. For one thing, he hated to come begging to the Americans. For another, he didn’t like snideness.

  “Martinez,” she continued. “On the bottle. McAuley. Don’t think his Spanish is good enough for what you want.” She shrugged. “Billings. Too much of a wimp. No Wild Bill Hickoks in here, Inspector. The rest of our regulars are all in use.” She gave him a mock sad look. “Want me to go down to B-grade?”

  “I need number-one material, Miss Flaherty.” He wondered if she had really gone through all the names. He had understood there were at least twenty. He was about to get his hat.

  “Hang on,” Flaherty said brightly. “You say you want a corner cutter?”

  “I said I want someone quick and smart. If it means being a little elastic when it comes to getting the job done, I won’t worry about it.”

  “How much bread can you lay out?”

  “A lot.”

  “What’s a lot?”

  “Maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred. For the right . . . man.”

  “Two hundred? As in thousands? Jesus, you guys are loaded for this one. What’s Kerrivan planning to do this time, blow up Parliament?”

  Mitchell remained silent.

  “I gather this is separate from Project Seawall. Otherwise we’d be working on it with you. What do you call it again — Operation Potshot?”

  “Potship.”

  “That’s very original and Canadian. Why don’t you call it Operation Shitpot? Just joking.” Mitchell supposed that the DEA secretly enjoyed much humor at the expense of their naïve northern cousins.

  Flaherty went to another file. “Okay, for two hundred thousand dollars — what’s two hundred thousand, anyway? A baseball player gets that — for two hundred Gs, maybe you are up in Rudy Meyers’s range.”

  She pulled out two red cards, stapled together. There was typing on each side of both cards.

  “We call this the flashing-red file. You stop and look around before you enter. We don’t go into here very often. For various reasons. And Meyers, we don’t use at all anymore. For various reasons. You’ll have to make a strong pitch if you want him. He is the very cream, Inspector.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why don’t you use him?”

  Flaherty ran her hands through her closely cropped hair and shook it out. She was attractive, Mitchell decided, but it got lost in her hard, free-wheeling style.

  “I don’t know why we don’t use him,” she said. “Some desk jockey’s decision, who’s never been in the field. The CIA let him go several years ago. He went into private business, contracting with us. Then we grounded him, stopped giving him contracts.” She spread her arms in an expansive gesture. “Well, I’ll tell you. You hear things. Maybe he was too effective. He has a very . . . loose way of working. Also, he’s kind of political.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She had a sly grin. “Got himself involved in something dicey during a presidential campaign. He has pretty conservative views. Mind you, they’re in vogue these days.” She lit a cigarette. Mitchell noticed she held it between the balls of her fingers like a joint, an undercover cop’s habit.

  Flaherty looked to the side, as if to see if anyone were listening from the open doorway of her office, then leaned towards Mitchell. “He’s a fucking Nazi, if you want my opinion. Right now his main scam is training a bunch of Cuban so-called refugees — and he’s welding them, he thinks, into a mighty fighting force. Arms training, commando karate, explosives, maybe even an assassination. Meyers worked with Howard Hunt. He remembers the Bay of Pigs like some people remember the Alamo. The April Seventeen Movement, his group is called. In 1961, on that date, Castro put the boots to that bunch of losers Hunt and the CIA helped to organize.”

  She wrinkled her nose when she mentioned the CIA, as if there were an uncomfortable smell in the room.

  “Anyway, so what?” she continued. “We got right-wing crazies like him working all over the place. But Meyers is too hot for Ronnie Reagan even, if you can believe it. So the CIA tells us not to touch Meyers. He’s a potential embarrassment. Or maybe they want him to concentrate on his army, not waste time busting druggies. Who knows with these guys? Anyway, we laid off him. We buy information from him, but that’s all. In a way, it’s too bad we can’t use him — he’s got first-class Colombian connections.”

  Mitchell shrugged. “Politics doesn’t interest me. My job is drugs. What are these connections?”

  “Meyers has infiltrated some of the biggest Colombian families, Inspector. He’s got them eating out of his hands like he’s some kind of consigliaro. He sets up smugglers for us, or used to. We got them when they showed up stateside. But the bodies he sold us were pricey. He costs a bundle.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “Like I say, he is very rich cream. A brilliant tracker dog, in case you lose the target’s scent. Knows the routes of all the big drug movers. Speaks six or seven languages — not that you’re likely to need Afrikaans or Somali. Also, he can handle himself pretty well, maybe too well. Black belt in karate, fourth dan.”

  She flipped a glowing cigarette butt end over end into an empty wastebasket.

  “Which means, I guess, he could be pretty effective at killing. If that’s part of the occasion.”

  Mitchell blanched. “As I said, Miss Flaherty, my job is drugs.” There was ice in his voice.

  “Yeah, well, two hundred thousand dollars — that’s a lot of money. Operation Pisspot, that’s what you should call it. Or Operation Jackpot. Isn’t that what they call Kerrivan — Captain Jackpot? No, that wouldn’t work. People would start calling it Operation Crackpot.”

  ***

  After the mixed review, Meyers turned out to be surprisingly urbane, not the wild-eyed redneck that Mitchell had expected. Meyers’s Miami headquarters was in a modern air-conditioned building. The sign on the door said, “Rudy W. Meyers. Private Investigations. Licensed. Offices in Miami, Bogotá, and Mexico City.” The motif was Oriental, the furnishings fragile, tasteful. Mitchell saw into the back offices where professional-looking men were working on files. Meyers was not fly-by-night.

  He offered Mitchell a choice of coffee, tea, scotch, or bourbon. Mitchell took coffee. Meyers poured himself some kind of pungent herbal tea.

  When Mitchell mentioned Kerrivan’s name, Meyers nodded.

  “Yes, 1975,” he said. “West Indian Club on Grand Cayman. Kerrivan wouldn’t remember me. I had worked my way inside the Ugarte family, a Bogotá family. They were to receive a considerable amount of cash from him. A considerable figure, yes. I could have sold Kerrivan to you back then. Perhaps I should have called you.”

  “Ugarte family. Who are they?”

  “Yes, it was a Mafia family. The Colombian Mafia, not the real thing, of course. I have excellent lines into some of these people. I suspect that is where I can become invaluable to you, Inspector Mitchell. May I call you Harold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frankly, I am surprised that Jessica Flaherty gave you my name. I suspect she is unfriendly to me. A liberal snob, that woman. She comes from Brooklyn — perhaps that explains it. At any rate, Harold, to the task at hand. You are seeking my services because I will do a job that cannot be done by the heavy hand of the public bureaucracy.”
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br />   Mitchell was fascinated by the man’s mouth. There was little movement as he talked. Words seemed to seep from between his lips, which formed a thin smile that was enduring, fixed. Above the upper lip there was a trimmed military bristle moustache. Mitchell wondered how this man could work effectively undercover in the world of narcotics.

  “Let me tell you something about myself,” Meyers said. “I am a mercenary. That is true. I have even stooped so low as to hire myself out to a government of a once-great nation which is busily selling off the world to the Kremlin, one little country at a time. You will find me a strange mercenary. My needs are simple, my life is Spartan. I walk while others ride limousines. I read books while others surround themselves with stereophonic noisemakers, junkfood restaurants, and pornography. I seek the pleasures of the mind as others do the flesh.”

  Throughout this monologue, Meyers’s eyes were pinned coldly on Mitchell’s. They were set close together in the middle of a large, round head.

  “I will charge you a fancy fee, Harold, if you wish to retain me. It will go to a good cause. Not a weak cause, a strong one.” He stopped short. “Forgive me my little sermon. I tend to preach, although I am not religious. I pay homage first to my ideal of man, then to my ideal of God.” Then, abruptly: “I guarantee my work. If I fail, I charge nothing, not even expenses. At those rates, I dare not fail.” The lips opened to shape the sound of laughter, but none came.

  “And what exactly will you guarantee?” Mitchell asked.

  “Do you understand the concept of a controlled delivery, Harold?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “That is what I guarantee. If you retain me to deliver goods, I will deliver the goods. The goods consist of Mr. Peter Kerrivan, his crew, his ship, his cargo. I will deliver all these to you.”

  “Where?”

  “In Canada, of course.” Again the smile widened fractionally. “You would not achieve much satisfaction if Kerrivan were somehow to decide to land his cargo in the United States. I understand that. When I have completed my work, you will be able to tie a pink ribbon around this package and present it to any judge or jury. I guarantee a case that will convict — with the cooperation, of course, of your police force, and that of our own beloved Drug Enforcement Administration. You do have their assistance, of course? And that of the U.S. Coast Guard?”