IN HIS SEVENTH-FLOOR office, Lew Canada broke the seal on a gray cardboard envelope bearing the return address of the FBI’s Detroit bureau, pulled out a green-bar computer sheet twenty-two inches long and folded in the middle, and whistled.
The office was an extension of the man, scoured and free of clutter. The papers on the desk were sorted in neat stacks and the walls were naked but for a bulletin board with mug shots and newspaper clippings tacked to it and a twelve-by-twenty horizontal glass frame containing a coppertone photograph of sixteen young men in jumpsuits posed casually with their weapons in front of a C-47 transport plane.
Sergeant Esther, who had delivered the envelope to Canada’s desk, said, “Something?”
“Printout on that DiJesus name Wasylyk got from Patsy Orr yesterday. Take a hinge.” Canada held it out. The sergeant took it.
Harold DiJesus, a/k/a Harry DiJesus, Harry Jesus, Jesus H., and D. J. Harold, was born in Brooklyn, New York, 5/11/35, arrested in Manhattan 10/6/47 for aggravated assault, convicted, and sent to the New York State Reformatory at Elmira for six years. Since then he had been arrested fourteen times on charges ranging from simple assault to homicide. His last conviction in 1958, for assault with intent to commit great bodily harm, had gotten him twenty-four months in Sing-Sing. Since his release he had been picked up three times by the Clark County Sheriff’s Department in Las Vegas, Nevada, for assault with a deadly weapon and once for homicide in the commission of a felony. Charges were dropped in all four cases. A mug shot and description were on their way under separate cover.
“Nice Italian boy.” Esther laid the sheet on the desk.
“Says there he was questioned in the Anastasia homicide,” Canada said. “When the mob sends you to Vegas it means someone likes your work. What did we do to attract such an important visitor to our fair city. Anything yet on Gallante?”
“I just got off the phone with the feds. They got several Gallantes on file, all bad news. They’re sending ’em over.”
“I got a hunch our Gallante isn’t any of them. What’d Patsy say on the tape, Gallantes the anvil? Wish we had the other side of that conversation.”
“We’re kind of getting away from Albert Brock.”
“Patsy mentioned him.” The inspector sorted through the papers on his desk and pulled the transcript of the tape Wasylyk had made. “‘Brock’s my department.’”
“Hell, that’s good enough for me. Let’s run down and pick him up.”
“Don’t be a smartass. Sounds like Frankie’s got something on with Brock and Patsy was giving him lip about it. I’m waiting on a call I made to the authorities in Messina, Sicily. Trying to find out what Frankie’s been up to lately, who he’s been seeing.” He gnawed his lip over the transcript. “‘I got a lot of capital tied up in this policy move. DiJesus and his outfit don’t work cheap.’ What policy move?”
“The nigger. Whatsizname, Springfield. That wasn’t any amateur knockover at his pig.”
“Put someone on him, a colored officer. Borrow one from General Service. Not one of those United Negro College Fund types; someone who looks like he belongs on Twelfth Street. And call the Clark County Sheriff’s Department in Vegas. Get the details on that DiJesus bust for felony homicide.”
“Yessir.”
When Esther left, Canada leaned back to rest his head on the swivel. He looked at the group photograph on the wall. The blat of the twin engines, the flap and pop of the chute and the wind whistling through the lines. A heavy machine gun pounding on the other side of a hill. Mortar shells shrilling among the palms. Morning drill outside the stockade, the orders barked in guttural Japanese. The way you knew an officer was approaching your hut by the sound of his monkey-stick swishing against his jodhpurs. The shit-hole in the dirt floor.
After a while, when you had been there long enough that any information you might have would be of no use to them, the beatings became routine, a way of breaking up the day during the long spell of inaction that plagued troops everywhere. You understood them then, the orange sons of bitches, and that was the worst torture of all, because the last thing you wanted to do was understand them. …
The telephone rang.
What was a telephone doing in a stockade?
When at last Canada answered it, he was reaching across twenty years and half a world, so that when his fingers closed on the solid surface of the black receiver the contact was like an arc to the present.
“Hello?”
“This is the overseas operator. Your call to Messina, Sicily is waiting.”
After the call he went out into the squad room, threw a handful of change into the tray by the electric percolator, and poured a slug of black coffee into his personal cup. It was the night of July first and a window fan was sucking in air from the street that had the temperature and consistency of saliva. The pot had barely been touched. Like the British Army in India, Canada believed that drinking hot beverages kept one cool in the hottest climate. Right or not, he was the only man in the room who hadn’t sweated through his shirt. The fluttering black-and-white TV was playing a CBS Special on Vietnam. He stared for a moment at footage of a firefight in the jungle, then switched channels. Johnny Carson was interviewing Bing Crosby.
Sergeant Esther hung up his telephone with a report like a pistol shot and beamed at the inspector. He looked like a fat freckled boy.
“I’ll guess,” Canada said. “Same M.O. in Vegas.”
“Ski masks and shotguns. DiJesus and two guys hit a licensed whorehouse at the end of the Strip and blew down a customer when he tried to play Batman. Two hookers hit by the spray. One of them lost an arm, guess she’s giving her hand-jobs lefty now. Place wasn’t mobbed up, sheriff’s boys say.”
“Bet it is now.”
“They picked up DiJesus on an anonymous tip. None of the witnesses ID’d and he walked.”
“Greedy little Patsy. The fat slice off the black game’s not enough for him. He wants the whole loaf and he’s importing out-of-town talent to get it. He must have a hard-on to impress the old man.”
“Clark County suspects DiJesus in six hits in Vegas alone. The scroat had his own little Murder, Incorporated out there, didn’t hardly take a hand himself except in special cases. Want me to put out an APB?”
“No, we’ll let him rattle around for a while.”
“He’ll hit Springfield’s operation again.”
“Springfield didn’t want to help us when we asked for it. Putting him in the can for twenty-four hours didn’t change his mind. Maybe a little banging between Patsy’s hammer and anvil is just what he needs.”
“DiJesus won’t fuck around next time,” Esther said. “He’s not the type to stay satisfied with blowing down bouncers and johns.”
“So next time Homicide can tag him twice. Don’t forget, it’s Brock we want. You get in touch with General Service yet?”
“Next item on the list.” The sergeant lifted his receiver and started dialing.
Crosby was singing “The Second Time Around.” On still days on Rabaul, the radio in the commandant’s office could be heard in the stockade. Every third song was a Crosby recording. Canada turned off the set.
“I just heard back from Sicily, by the way.”
Esther was waiting for someone to pick up the telephone on the other end. “Frankie been out playing boccie with the boys like a good little deported guinea?”
“Took me twenty minutes to pry a straight answer out of what they call law over there; they’ve got that language barrier thing down cold. It seems that nobody in Messina has seen anything of Don Francisco in more than a month. Story’s the same in Palermo and Catania.”
Esther cradled the receiver. “Think he’s back home?”
“I don’t think even the sacred law of omerta could keep the lid on a secret like that. But I think he’s close.”
“Cuba?”
“It worked for Luciano, but that was before Castro. If Frankie’s there it means he’s getting on better with that cigar-rolling son of a bitch than anyone else except Brezhnev. Do we know the number of that booth Patsy’s been using?”
“I’ll send a car.”
“No, use someone in plainclothes. I don’t want Patsy looking out his window and seeing a blue-and-white parked by his outside line.”
“I’ll go myself.”
“While you’re there, call the phone company. Get a record of all the incoming long-distance calls placed to that number over the past two weeks. There can’t be that many. Not many people call a booth.”
Esther made a note on his telephone pad. “What do you want first, that or the shadow from General Service?”
“General Service,” Canada said. “Ask for the best colored undercover they’ve got. Steal him if they won’t give him to you. Maybe we’ll get lucky and DiJesus will ice Springfield right in front of him.”