Max Collins - American Gangster

Richie started in giving him a goddamn good left-handed thrashing, and was just getting into it when Javy yanked him away from the cowering T-shirted fetus.

Javy grinned at Richie and said, “So this is easier than night school?”

The rage left Richie, and he laughed. But the throbbing pain hung on.

Richie’s discomfort eased, however, when the paramedic who tended to his bloodied hand on their ambulance ride turned out to be female and brunette and friendly.

A male paramedic was tending to Campizi, whose bloody face was pinched with contrition. “Swear to God, Richie, I didn’t know it was you! Would I slam a door on your hand? Knowingly?”

Richie was off the little fold-down seat, startling the brunette paramedic as he lunged for Campizi and smacked him, yelling, “Would you bite my fingers knowingly, you prick? Shit! ”

The latter expletive reflected the burst of pain Richie felt, having instinctively used his right hand, the injured one, to batter Campizi.

Both paramedics pulled Richie away.

Campizi, who hadn’t been hurt by the blow as much as Richie himself, gestured with two hands, placatingly. “Richie, Richie... for old times’ sake, we gotta work this out.”

Richie glowered. “Now I need a fuckin’ rabies shot.”

“What can we do, Richie? You don’t wanna do this, beat on your old pal. What can I give you?”

Richie’s eyes tightened in interest.

“Who do you want?” Campizi asked. “Who can I give you, make this right? How about... Big Sal’s bookie? No? Not big enough? Maybe you want News-boy’s accountant? Yeah? I’ll give him to you. No problem.”

Richie studied his old classmate, and his irritation receded. A policy ring accountant wouldn’t be a bad bust at that.

His hand was almost fully bandaged now. He smiled in thanks to the brunette.

“Is it still throbbing?” she asked.

“Is what still throbbing?” he asked.

She smiled back at him.

At least he was getting something out of having his hand squashed — a policy ring accountant and a woman in uniform.

Not a bad night’s work.

The next afternoon, in Newark, Richie sat with Javy and Campizi in an unmarked car, their for-shit Plymouth, across from a closed social club.

Not entirely closed: a nondescript guy in a rumpled suit came out of the front carrying a grocery bag. The sight of this unprepossessing character was enough to send Campizi, in the backseat, diving for the floor.

“That’s him,” Campizi said.

“Him” was J. J. Levinson, accountant for policy king “Newsboy” Moriarty. Right now the accountant was putting his grocery bag in the trunk of a dark blue Buick Century. Clearly unaware he was being watched, the accountant climbed in behind the wheel and rolled off into light traffic.

This was only the accountant’s first stop. He picked up another grocery bag to stow in his trunk at a scrap metal yard. Around dusk he came out of a bar with another bag.

Richie craned from behind the wheel to speak to the ducked-down Campizi. “All right. We’re even. Get lost.”

Campizi’s smile couldn’t have been sicker. “You’re the best, Richie.”

“Let’s not say good-bye, Vinnie. Let’s just say get the fuck out.”

Campizi opened the door onto the sidewalk and all but crawled away.

Then Richie and Javy were following the accountant’s Buick as dusk flirted with night. Apparently the bar had been the accountant’s last pickup, because the guy swung into a parking lot — an attendant on duty, but self-park — and left his car locked up to take another one in a nearby stall.

As the accountant got behind the wheel, Javy asked, “We gonna stay with him, or the car?”

Not much time to think about these two options...

Richie said, “Let’s see who comes for the car.”

By seven that night, a lot of people had come for a lot of cars; in fact, only the abandoned Buick remained, the detectives’ Plymouth parked across the way.

“Let’s get a warrant,” Richie said.

“Okay. Want me to call it in?”

“Sure.”

Five minutes later, Javy got in on the rider’s side and took a can of Coke from a small bag, from which he then extracted his own Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“Think we got made?” Javy asked.

Richie, tapping the wheel impatiently with his bandaged hand, asked, “You didn’t forget to call for the warrant, did you?”

“Yeah. I got all confused buying coffee and Coke.” Javy shook his head.

Richie craned to look behind him. “Well, where are they?”

“Christ, Rich, I just called about a minute ago. Will you relax?”

They watched an attendant lock up. They listened to the electric buzz of street lamps whose yellowish glow painted the car and its occupants like jaundice victims. Richie checked his watch.

“Fuck waiting,” he said. “Hell, we saw him with the slips.”

Javy blinked at his partner. “You saw policy slips? You saw grocery bags is what you saw. And you don’t know what the hell is in ’em.”

Richie scowled. “Yes I do, and so do you. Don’t give me that bullshit—”

“What’s your rush? Half an hour tops, warrant’ll be here.”

Now Richie leveled with his partner. “Look. Javy — I got school.”

“Then this is your lucky night.”

“What is?”

“This is. You won’t have to get up in front of your fellow students and shit your pants — ’cause you’re cutting class.”

Richie said nothing, tapping the wheel gently with the bandaged hand.

Javy sipped his coffee. “You know what you were saying before? About puking in front of people, you’re so scared? Money’s gonna take that bad feeling away.”

“Money.”

“The money you’ll make as a rich lawyer, jerk. Take that sick feeling clean away.”

“Not when it’s less money.”

Javy frowned. “Less money than what, man?”

“Less than I make now.”

Javy grinned and waved this ridiculous assertion away. “Come on, Rich — no lawyer on earth makes less than a cop.”

“They do if they’re in the Prosecutor’s Office. Three thousand less per annum than us lowly dicks.”

Javy had a pole-axed expression. “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

“I wish I were.” Richie checked his watch. Class started in half an hour. “Fuck this shit.”

“Richie...”

Richie got out of the Plymouth, unlocked the trunk and reached in for a Slimjim and bolt cutters. In seconds he was across the street, snapping through the gate chain, and going on in, striding toward the accountant’s car. Javy uneasily followed, looking both ways when he crossed the street like a good little kid.

Richie tripped the passenger door lock, popped the trunk release and came back around to search it, telling his partner, “Check inside the vehicle.”

“Might as well,” Javy said, meaning any damage to the case was already done. He crawled inside and started looking under the seats; he was checking the glove compartment when Richie called out to him.

Javy came around and found Richie staring into the trunk like he’d found a body inside.

But it wasn’t a body, it was the grocery bags, spilling their contents, which were not policy slips, rather stacks of green cash, rubber-banded together, more money than either man had ever seen.

“That’s a lot of groceries,” Javy said.

Richie didn’t disagree.

He closed the trunk, and wandered back to their Plymouth, Javy following. They sat in the car under the buzzing street lamp in the sickly yellow light and said nothing for what seemed forever and was maybe a minute.

“This isn’t a couple of bucks we’re talking about,” Richie said.

“Sure it is.”