Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [95]
"There you go, Harvey. That's the guy I know and love."
"Alright, a few more days. After that no more."
"Okay. You got my word on it. Now get out there and knock 'em dead. You're a star."
Harvey hung up and headed out onto the main floor to find Victor.
"CAN WE FUCKIN' GO NOW?" said Victor. "I been waitin' so long I thought you fell in in there."
Harvey looked around the convention floor, looking to see if he could pick out his backup.
"I wanted to see the grills," he said.
"There they are," said Victor. "Good. Now you seen 'em. Now can we go? I got an appointment."
"Alright," said Harvey. He followed Victor to the front door, his head turning left and right at the shiny new equipment all around him. They passed through the glass doors and stood by the curb while Harvey felt around in his pocket for his car keys. Victor signaled to somebody in a tan Chevy who was idling by an entrance ramp around fifty yards away. He took Harvey by the arm firmly as the car approached at a slow roll and stopped directly in front of them. Skinny sat behind the wheel. Victor stepped forward and opened the rear door.
"Get inna car," he said to Harvey.
"I got my car here," protested Harvey. "It's parked right over there. You don't want me to drive you—"
"Get inna fuckin' car, Harvey," said Victor. His grip on Harvey's arm tightened as he bundled him into the back seat.
DETECTIVE CZERNY helped himself to an eggroll and thanked the girl.
"This looks good, you gonna try one?"
"He didn't come outta the bathroom yet. You think I should go in and check?" said Detective Alvarez.
Detective Czerny looked down onto the main floor. "I don't see the other guy either. Where'd he go?"
"Oh, shit. Don't tell me this . . ."
Thirty-Seven
U.S. ATTORNEY SULLIVAN leaned back in his chair and gazed up at a shelf of football trophies on the wall of his office. Above the trophies was a photo of a grinning Sullivan at the helm of his sailboat, a bottle of Red Stripe in one hand. Next to it was another photo, this one of two sunburned young boys, blond and wearing little white sailor caps, bailing water out of a rubber dinghy with plastic pails. Sullivan let out a long sigh and tossed a copy of the morning paper across the table at Al.
"You read this yet?" Sullivan asked.
"Yeah," said Al. "I read it."
On the front page was a photograph of two dead men, lying in a Brooklyn street. The headline said, BROOKLYN KILLINGS TIED TO SECRET GRAND JURY PROBE.
"Apparently the Brooklyn DA is not happy with the level of cooperation he's getting from this office," said Sullivan, rubbing his temples and speaking to the ceiling. "You'll notice where it says 'an informed source in the Brooklyn DA's office complained of a lack of cooperation between the Federal prosecutor and other arms of law enforcement'?"
"I don't get it. That's who leaked it?"
"Remember I said I'd give the Brooklyn DA a lay-up awhile back on that Brooklyn stuff we were getting? I let him know in a roundabout way that we had come across certain information about Calabrese people coming over here, making loans. I mentioned it over lunch . . ."
"He settled for that?"
"He did then. But when these guys show up dead in his backyard, it's a different story. Now he wants to know who our snitch is, what else he's telling us. He makes a formal request for any 'documentary or recorded materials'—blah blah blah—that will have a bearing on his homicide investigation."
"And you told him to go piss up a rope."
"In the nicest possible way, yes," said Sullivan. "So what happens is his office is getting cluster-fucked by the press and the TV people and somebody out there got the idea to throw them a bone, let it be known how we've been less than helpful. . . that it's our fault they don't have anything, that we're hamstringing their investigation in our quest for personal glory. So, some