of the agreement, so to speak.'
'Look, Augie, I ain't a ref. You should talk to Mo-Mo. He's got good ties with Castanga.'
'Fuckin' Giancana. I think Mo is behind this whole thing.'
'Okay, okay. Lemme look into it, but if I get this straightened out, you cut me in for a couple a' points.' 'You was already in, Meyer. You know I wouldn't l eave you in the cold. You're my rabbi in this deal.' 'Shit,' the old mobster said for no apparent reason. 'Anyway, I'll call back in a day or so. . okay?' 'Yeah, sure. . a day.' And the line went dead, wit h n o good-bye.
Most of the calls were like that. They were just wise guys in dispute with other wise guys or deals that were being set up where Meyer was some kind of traffic cop, sorting out differences. Each tape took about an hour to play, and by the time they were through the second one, they were beginning to lose hope. It was easy to see how these tapes had helped the Israeli Supreme Court deny Meyer's 'right of return,' but so far, they contained nothing that would tie Meyer, C. Wallace Litman, and Joseph Alo together.
They shut off the machine as a Reuters staff assistant brought in some sandwiches and cold beer that Naomi had ordered.
Cole was beginning to think they had come all this way and had lost Kaz's life for nothing. He still had three cans of sixteen-millimeter film in front of him.
'Why don't you let me have engineering transfer the film to videotape,' Naomi said, picking up his black mood. He had been so sure the tapes would confirm their theory. Now they seemed valueless. They still had an hour or more of tape to listen to, so he shoved the film cans across to her and she gave them to the staffer.
'Take these down to Engineering and get them transferred to VHS immediately. And don't let them out of your sight.' As soon as the assistant was gone, they started the tape again.
They were listening to conversations from the early seventies. The tape started with a conversation picked up in a private dining room above a strip club in Miami called the Boom-Boom Bazoom Room. The club belonged to the Costa family.
Apparently, there was some dispute over Colombian cocaine distribution in Miami. Miami had always been an open city, but as the drug trade grew, tempers frayed, and when the lead started flying, it got dicey. Meyer was trying to hammer out a truce between the Costas and the Delaricos. The only thing the two families could seem to agree on was that they hated the Colombians more than each other.
'We got a deal all set up with Mendoza,' Frankie Costa said in a high, nasal voice. 'We supply everything, from the farm to the arm, and these guys in Dade are trying to cut in on our distribution. We got the whole drugstore. Got everything from Early Girl to Mother's Helper. And now, at the last minute, Delarico is trying to make a side deal with my Spanish guys to supply their fucking Peruvian Marching Powder at a premium and it's gonna flood the market. We'll have White Lady comin' out our asses.'
Cole widened his eyes. 'What's this ravioli talking about?'
'Early Girl is marijuana. Mother's Helper is Valium. Some guys take it along with uppers to level out. Peruvian Marching Powder is Peruvian coke,' Ryan explained.
Cole nodded. His body was suddenly very tired as he looked at the tape running through the old Wollensak. Hope diminished as each spent reel leaked magnetic tape onto the floor. Cole began to accept that it was probably all going nowhere.
Then it happened, in a conversation between Meyer Lansky and somebody he called Wally. The monitoring agent was named Lee Stein and the verbal slate said Meyer was at a pay phone across the street from his apartment. The date was January 15, 1971. Stein said the fells had cut into the line from a phone pole a block away. Meyer made his calls from this pay phone, thinking it was absolutely safe and he spoke freely, secure in the belief pay phones couldn't be tapped.
'Did you get the package, Wally?' Meyer's voice came on the line, pinched and flat.
'Sure did, Meyer, just like you said. But we're gonna hold it in the paint company offshore till I need it.'
Cole knew that Mary Carver Paints was a shell company and money laundry in the Bahamas that Meyer had set up for the Alo family. Then he recognized C. Wallace Lit-man's voice on the tape. Cole sat up straight. 'That's Litman,' he whispered. 'We could do a voice print, but that's him. This could be it. We could have it.'
'Okay, good,' Meyer continued. 'I think you should level off on the newspapers and radio. We got four chains but I'm much more interested in television.'
'I agree, Meyer. I got my eye on United Broadcasting. They're a group of independent stations, but I think they can be bought for the right price. We could expand and create a TV network. We can leverage the buy and I'd r ecommend that, because we're going to need a lot more cash downriver to acquire additional stations and fund programming.'
'How much?'
'I'm not sure. Figure media properties right now are trading at multiples of seven, maybe eight. And it's only going to go up. I'd like to dump the radio stuff to help fund the UBC buy. Maybe Paul Arquette could help us in Washington. He could help push the license transfers through the FCC.'
'You wanna talk to him, okay. I don't talk to him 'cause Joe Alo wants us to stay away. Don't want no stink on his candidate.'
'I'll talk to him. I'm in Washington next week. How's Teddy?' Wallace said, turning the conversation to Meyer's wife, for whom he had a genuine affection.
'She's fine, Wally. And Mrs. Litman?'
Cole's heart was pounding.
'She's fine. You two are gonna have to meet sometime.'
'We can't meet. Joseph wants you in the clear. If he puts his man in the White House, you're the one gonna do it. You and your TV network.' There was a long moment of silence, then Meyer added, 'Once we own the Man, we're gonna put all these fucks in the Justice Department out of business.'
'You take care of yourself, Meyer. I hope you're feeling better.'
'I feel like shit, but I'm going home to Israel. I applied for citizenship. I'm gonna go home and die in the Promised Land.'
Cole reached out and turned off the tape. He looked at the others in the room. They were all holding their breath.
'Son of a bitch,' Naomi finally said. 'You were right.' And then she leaned across the table and kissed him.
Chapter 63
The ride to Ben Gurion airport was a paranoid trip through the shadows of their imaginations. Every car, every taxi, seemed to hold vicious assassins. They were led onto the field and boarded the private jet. Their hearts were pounding.
Even though Kaz wasn't with them, his spirit permeated the small ten-seat Hawker jet. His bag of possessions occupied an empty seat in the passenger cabin.
The jet belonged to Reuters, and it had taken Naomi four phone calls to get permission to use it. She had pleaded and flirted and lied, and finally, the Middle Eastern bureau chief had signed off on it.
As soon as the sixteen-millimeter film was transferred, they had grabbed the two VHS cassettes and left for the airport in a Reuters sedan without stopping to play them.
They were soon out over the Mediterranean, headed for a refueling stop at the Azores before crossing the North Atlantic. Cole shoved the tape into the VCR in the plush cabin. They watched the silent film of Meyer meeting men in dark suits on Miami street corners in the sixties. Each shot was identified by location and date by a film slate, written on an eight-by-ten-inch handheld blackboard. Th e t elephoto lens zoomed in to catch the conversations. Sometimes, it was possible to see lips moving.
'We gotta get a lip reader to translate this stuff,' Cole said. Naomi nodded.
The film didn't seem ominous unless you knew who the players were. Cole recognized a few notorious
