probably went and had a talk with their boss.”
“No doubt he sent them back and told them to find it or else,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “If it was two kilos of heroin it was worth a lot of money.”
“Yeah. I figure the African must have been here when they returned, or else he came in while they were searching. We’ll never know.”
“You think they tried to make him talk?”
“Who knows? Anyway, that’s when we ran into them and set off the big chase. If I’d listened to Digger’s advice and just laid dead, maybe we’d have never tumbled to the dope angle.”
“Not necessarily,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “We knew a shipment of H had left France, but we didn’t know how or when. The French lost it somewhere between Marseille and Le Havre.”
“But we’ve been on to it for the past week,” the T-man said. “Working with the local squad — secretly. We’ve had the waterfront covered from end to end.”
“Yeah, but you’ll find out later you didn’t cover it far enough,” Coffin Ed said. “When the hoods returned to the flat in the Village, Benny Mason went with them. The woman became hysterical when they took off the gag. She said Benny sat beside her and comforted her. He sent out for a doctor who came and treated her and put her under sedation-”
“What doctor?”
“She didn’t say and I didn’t ask her. Benny sent the doctor away and promised her she wouldn’t be hurt again if she was cooperative. Anyway, he won her confidence. In the meantime he sent the hoods out of the room and pulled up a chair, straddled it and sat facing her. And he leveled with her-”
“Then he intended to have her killed,” the narcotics lieutenant said.
“Yeah, but she was too square to dig it. Anyway, he told her that he was the boss of the narcotics racket, that he had the shit smuggled into the country and he had used Gus to pick it up sometimes; and that was how Gus got the money to buy this farm in Ghana. That shocked her; she had believed Gus’s hype about his wife leaving him a farm down South. He must have figured it would have that effect because he wanted her to start thinking and remember something she hadn’t thought was important before. He went on to tell her that he had had Gus thoroughly investigated and he was certain Gus was a square, just greedy for some money. She agreed to that but she didn’t know what he was leading to. He told her that Gus had picked up a shipment of heroin at midnight, worth more than a million dollars, and he was supposed to pass it on in the trunk that was picked up at six o’clock.”
“Picked up from who?” the narcotics lieutenant asked.
“He said the heroin was smuggled into the country on a French liner.”
“We know the French liner that docked this week,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “We’ve had it under a tight surveillance.”
“Yeah, but you missed the connection. It was dropped overboard to a small motorboat that passed under the bow without stopping at about eleven o’clock night before last.”
“My men were watching that boat through night glasses and there was nothing dropped overboard,” the T- man said.
“Maybe it was already in the water. I’m just repeating what she said Benny told her. Benny had sent a map to Gus by Jake, the pusher — the one Digger and me got suspended for slugging.”
The city detectives looked embarrassed but the T-men missed the connotation.
“The map showed Gus the exact spot where the shipment would be dropped — only a short walk from here. The boat came up the river and delivered the shipment without ever stopping. Benny said he knew that Gus collected it because the connection told him that Gus was waiting when the boat arrived; and furthermore, when the boat returned to the yacht basin in Hoboken the T-men were waiting for it and searched it and they found it clean.”
“By God, I got a report on that boat!” the T-man said. “It’s owned by a taxicab driver named Skelley. He does night fishing.” He turned to one of his men in the background. “Have Skelley and everyone connected with him picked up.”
The agent went toward the telephone.
“Benny said when his men picked up the trunk the shipment wasn’t in it,” Coffin Ed continued. “She thought maybe Gus had run off with it since it was worth so much. He had gone out before midnight and she hadn’t seen or heard of him since, and that wasn’t like Gus; he didn’t have any friends he could put up with and he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Benny said no, he had probably been robbed. They had found Gus and he was hurt and wasn’t able to talk and he figured someone had hijacked the shipment-”
“But he left the bundle with Gus for six hours before he sent to pick it up. You think he was that stupid?”
“It was as safe with Gus as anywhere — in fact safer. They had him covered. And since he was actually supposed to sail that day, they figured the trunk dodge would attract less attention than any other. Besides, Benny wasn’t taking any chances; he had a lookout posted outside all night. The lookout saw Gus come into the apartment after he had kept the rendezvous and he didn’t see anyone leave after then who was carrying anything in which the shipment could have been concealed. The lookout saw Digger and me come and go after the false fire alarm; he saw the African go out with the dog and return without it; he saw Sister Heavenly when she came and left. No, Benny was certain that the shipment hadn’t left this house.”
The detectives exchanged glances.
“Then it’s still here,” the homicide lieutenant said.
“That’s impossible, the way this place has been searched, unless one of the tenants is in on the deal, and we’ve checked them going and coming and I’d bet my job they’re innocent,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “I personally was with the searching crew when they went through every trunk, every box, every piece of furniture in the storage room; they turned the toolroom inside out, took apart the oil burner, dismantled the washing machines, raked out the incinerator, looked into the sewers, even took two stored automobile tires off the rims; and you saw how the janitor’s flat has been searched. We’d have found a signet ring if we’d been looking for it.”
“That’s the way Benny figured it. It was too big a bundle to hide, and the only way Gus could have got rid of it was to give it to somebody in this house to hold for him.”
“How big a bundle was it, or did he say?” the T-man asked.
“He told her there were five kilos of eighty-two percent pure heroin in it.”
A cacophony of whistling sounded spontaneously.
“That’s one hell of a load,” the homicide lieutenant said.
Calculating rapidly, the T-man said, “He pays about fifteen thousand dollars per kilo for the junk. Say around seventy-five thousand for the shipment. And after he cuts it down with lactose to about two percent pure, he can retail it for around a half a million dollars a kilo. Say, give or take a little, it’s worth two and a half million dollars on the retail market.”
“Now we’ve got the motive for this massacre,” the homicide lietuenant said.
“But where did the junk disappear to?” the narcotics lieutenant echoed.
“That’s the question Benny asked. But she couldn’t help him. She said Gus wasn’t on good terms with any of the tenants; in fact his relations were on the bad side.”
“No wonder,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “He didn’t need this job.”
“Then Benny asked her about Pinky. She told him all she knew but he wasn’t interested in Pinky’s life. He wanted to know if Pinky could have got the stuff from Gus and hidden it somewhere in the house. She said he’d have to wait until Gus could talk and ask him, she hadn’t seen either him or Pinky since before midnight. Then he confessed that when they didn’t find the shipment in the trunk they had killed Gus and thrown his body in the river.”
“That sounds to me like he was lying,” the T-man said, and turned to the narcotics lieutenant. “Do you believe that?”
“Hell no! They wouldn’t kill Gus, even by accident, as long as the five-kilo bundle of H was missing.”
“That’s the way I see it.”
“But where is Gus?”
“Who knows?”
“Maybe he’s still somewhere in the house,” the homicide lieutenant ventured.
“No, he’s not,” the narcotics lieutenant stated flatly.
“Then maybe Benny was leveling with her.”
