Page 50 of Safe Enough

“Give him a hundred bucks.”

“The bad guys give him five.”

“Are you proposing to do any work at all?”

We said, “First day, boss. We’re looking for leadership.”

Afterward Celia said Shorty figured we were missing something. He didn’t know what. He was on his back with his leg up in traction. Not medically necessary, but the union thought it would make for a better photograph in the newspaper. Shorty was fretting about us, Celia said. He was missing us.

“Shorty who?” we said.

We came in Wednesday morning and as expected found the business with the fancy briefcase already going a little lukewarm. Expectations were being retrospectively downgraded. It was a solid piece of data, another brick in the wall, as intended, nothing more.

Then, even before the coffee was made, it went right back to the top of the agenda. New evidence came in, from a different direction, and it pointed to the same office building. To a specific tenant. They knew for sure the specific guy was sending money out. Now they wanted to square the circle. They wanted to see the same money going in. They wanted eyeballs inside the specific guy’s suite. They wanted eyewitness testimony, about the older gentleman maybe placing the briefcase on a table, and the other guy maybe spinning it around and clicking the latches with his thumbs. If we could get close enough to seize the actual cash, well, that would be the icing on the cake.

Afterward Celia said, “Shorty says obviously that’s all impossible.”

We said, “We don’t need the voice of doom drifting down a hospital corridor to tell us that. Of course it’s all impossible.”

“So what should we do?”

“Nothing. Maybe they’ll move us to Vice. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

But the mention of Shorty recalled the previous mention, at the end of Tuesday, which no detective liked to hear, that we were missing something. No one said anything out loud, but I know we all surreptitiously and individually checked everything we could, from the beginning to the end, in the original files, from the handwritten notes.

The guy drove from Jersey, just him alone at the wheel, no driver, in a nice but unspectacular car, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and south, to a parking garage in the West Twenties, which was the nearest to the old-style office building. A small man in a black vest and a bow tie parked his car, while he walked out with the briefcase and set out carrying it on his long march down the sidewalk. His journey invariably ended after a block and a half in the office building lobby, where he was nodded past the desk after respectful but not casual inspection. On every occasion he spent ten or so minutes inside, and on every occasion he came back out empty-handed. Those were the facts. That was what we knew.

Celia pretended to have given the matter no thought at all, but later she said, “Shorty is sure there’s something wrong.”

Which was not what we wanted to hear right then, because the stakes had just been raised even higher. A couple more puzzle pieces had fallen into place. Suddenly the folks upstairs realized they could take out the whole chain at once. It would be the bust of the year. Medals for sure. Votes for the mayor. The whole nine yards. But they needed it immaculate. Every link in the chain had to be rock-solid on the witness stand. Evidence was key.

We argued we couldn’t get it. We said instead we should bust the guy on the sidewalk, before he got to the office building, with the money still in the briefcase. Because it was legally justified to assume he was heading for the specific guy in the unknown suite. Where else would he be going? It was as good as eyeballing a transfer. Really the same thing, at an earlier stage. A different snapshot. A previous frame from the same movie.

Nothing was ever more persuasive than having no alternative, so they agreed. We waited in a ready room, for a call from Jersey. The local PD over there was watching the guy’s residence. Any occasion he drove out in the direction of the tunnel, they would let us know right away. Traffic was usually bad. We would get plenty of warning. No rush at all.

But the call didn’t come. Not on Wednesday. Not on Thursday. It came on Friday. Some apple-cheeked trooper out in the burbs told us the guy was on the move in his nice but unspectacular car, and seemed to be heading for Manhattan. Celia was not in the room with us at that point. She came in a minute later and we told her about the call.

She said, “Shorty says we’re thinking all wrong.”

Which was not what we wanted to hear right then, because we were trying to get all pumped up, ahead of taking a guy down on the sidewalk. But she insisted. She said Shorty had been lying there, with plenty of time to think. We should listen. We were torn. On the one hand, Celia was in the squad. She might be a nobody, but she was ours. Shorty too. On the other hand, the bust of the year was at stake. Medals and votes. Not a thing to screw up by taking the initiative. No one wanted to be the guy who blew it.

Celia said, “Do we really believe it’s legally persuasive, if we take him down on the street with a bag of cash?”

“Kind of,” we said. “Somewhat. Maybe. Good enough, probably.”

“Would his lawyer be worried?”

“A little bit. Maybe not slitting his wrists.”

“But whatever, it’s a huge hassle, right?” she said. “It’s a million bucks in cash. The IRS would get involved. Maybe the Treasury Department. Why take the risk? Why carry that briefcase so openly?”

We said, “We know the cash is moving from A to B. We know the guy inside is receiving it. How else would he be getting it, except from our guy? No one else goes in and out. And people carry all kinds of things in this city. They carry briefcases full of diamonds, worth much more than this guy.”

“Shorty thinks it’s a decoy. He thinks the case is always empty. They’re teasing us. They want us to take the guy down. They’re begging us. That’s their plan. They want us to open the case and find nothing inside. Shorty says we’ll look like fools. He says we’ll never get another warrant again. Judges will just laugh at us. We’ll have to leave those guys alone for years. That way they win.”

We said, “One guy is paying the other guy money. We know that. That’s a real fact. Because it’s a chain. A lot of people are depending on us to do our part right. We need the evidence.”

“We can get it,” she said. “But not on the street. That’s not where it is. Shorty says you’re right, one guy is paying the other guy money. But not the way we think.”

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