Thomas Harris - Black Sunday

Oh, yes, we do, Kabakov thought to himself.

By midafternoon Corley had asked the U.S. District Court in Newark for permission to tap the two telephones in Sweeney’s Bar & Grill in Asbury Park. By four p.m. the request had been denied. Corley had no evidence whatsover of any wrongdoing at Sweeney‘s, and he was acting on anonymous allegations of little substance, the magistrate explained. The magistrate said that he was sorry.

At ten a.m. on the following day a blue van pulled into the supermarket parking lot adjacent to Sweeney’s. An elderly lady was at the wheel. The lot was full and she drove along slowly, apparently looking for a parking place. In a car parked beside the telephone pole thirty feet from the rear of Sweeney’s Bar a man was dozing.

“He’s asleep, for Christ’s sake,” the elderly lady said, apparently speaking to her bosom.

The dozing man in the car awoke as the radio beside him crackled angrily. With a sheepish expression, he pulled out of the parking space. The van backed into the place. A few shoppers rolled carts down the traffic aisle. The man who vacated the parking space got out of his car.

“Lady, I think you got a flat.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The man walked to the rear wheel of the van, close beside the pole. Two thin wires, brown against the brown pole, led from the telephone line to the ground and terminated in a double jack. The man plugged the jack into a socket in the fender well of the van.

“No, the tire’s just low. You can drive on it all right.” He drove away.

In the rear of the van, Kabakov leaned back with his hands behind his head. He was wearing earphones and smoking a cigar.

“You don’t have to wear them all the time,” said the balding young man at the miniature switchboard. “I say you don’t have to wear them all the time. When it rings or when it’s picked up on this end, you’ll see this light and hear the buzzer. You want some coffee? Here.” He leaned close to the partition behind the cab. “Hey, Mom. You want coffee?”

“No” came the voice from the front. “And you leave the bialys in the bag. You know they give you gas.” Bernie Biner’s mother had switched from the driver’s seat to the passenger side. She was knitting an afghan. As the mother of one of the best freelance wire men in the business, it was her job to drive, look innocent, and watch for the police.

“Eleven dollars and forty cents an hour she charges me and she’s supervising my diet,” Biner told Kabakov.

The buzzer sounded. Bernie’s quick fingers started the tape recorder. He and Kabakov put on the earphones. They could hear the telephone ringing in the bar.

“Hello. Sweeney’s.”

“Freddy?” A woman’s voice. “Listen, honey, I can’t come in today.”

“Shit, Frances, what is this, twice in two weeks?”

“Freddy, I’m sorry. I got the cramps like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Every week you get the cramps? You better go to the muff doctor, kid. What about Arlene?”

“I called her house already—she’s not home.”

“Well, you get somebody over here. I’m not waiting tables and working the bar too.”

“I’ll try, Freddy.”

They heard the bartender hang up and a woman’s laughter before the phone was replaced on the other end. Kabakov blew a smoke ring and told himself to be patient. Corley’s stooge had planted an urgent message for Sapp when Sweeney’s opened a half-hour ago. The stooge had given the bartender fifty dollars to hurry it up. It was a simple message saying business was available and asking Sapp to call a number in Manhattan to talk business or to get references. The number was to be given to Sapp alone. If Sapp called, Corley would try to fool him into a meeting. Kabakov was not satisfied. That was why he had hired Biner, who already received a weekly retainer to check the Israeli mission phones for bugs. Kabakov had not consulted Corley about the matter.

A light on Biner’s switchboard indicated the second telephone in the bar had been picked up. Through the earphones, they heard ten digits dialed. Then a telephone ringing. It was not answered.

Bernie Biner ran back his tape recording of the dialing, then played it at a slower speed, counting the clicks. “Three oh-five area code. That’s Florida. Here’s the number. Eight-four-four-six-oh-six-nine. Just a second.” He consulted a thick table of prefixes. “It’s somewhere in the West Palm Beach area.

Half an hour passed before the switchboard in the van signaled that another call was being placed from the bar. Ten digits again.

“Glamareef Lounge.”

“Yeah, I’m calling for Mr. Sapp. He said I could leave him a message at this number if I needed to.”

“Who is this?”

“Freddy Hodges at Sweeney’s. Mr. Sapp will know.”

“All right. What is it?”

“I want him to call me.”

“I don’t know if I can get him on the phone. You say Freddy Hodges?”

“Yeah. He knows the number. It’s important, tell him. It’s business.”

“Uh, look, he may come in around five or six. Sometimes he comes in. I see him, I’ll tell him.”

“Tell him it’s important. That Freddy Hodges called.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell him.” A click.

Bernie Biner called West Palm Beach information and confirmed that the number was that of the Glamareef Lounge.

The fire on Kabakov’s cigar was two inches long. He was elated. He had expected Sapp to use a telephone cutout, a person who did not know his identity, but whom he called under a code name to receive messages. Instead it was a simple message drop in a bar. Now it would not be necessary to go through the intricate process of setting up a meeting with Sapp. He could find him at the bar.

“Bernie, I want a tap until Sapp calls Sweeney’s here. When that happens, let me know the second you’re sure it’s him.”

“Where will you be?”

“In Florida. I’ll give you a number when I get there.” Kabakov glanced at his watch. He intended to be in the Glamareef at five p.m. He had six hours.

The Glamareef in West Palm Beach is a cinder-block building on a sandy lot. Like many Southern drinking places constructed after air-conditioning became popular, it has no windows. Originally it was a jukebox-and-pool-table beer joint called Shangala, with a loud air conditioner and a block of ice in the urinal. Now it went after a faster crowd. Its Nau gahyde booths and dim bar drew people from two worlds—the paycheck playboys and the big-money yachting people who liked to slum. The Glamareef, nee Shangala, was a good place to look for young women with marital problems. It was a good place for an older, affluent woman to find a body-and-fender man who had never had it on a silk sheet.

Kabakov sat at the end of the bar drinking beer. He and Moshevsky had rented a car at the airport and their hurried drive past the four nearby marinas had been discouraging. There was a small city of boats in West Palm Beach, many of them sportfishermen. They would have to find the man first, then the boat.

He had been waiting an hour when a husky man in his middle thirties came into the bar. Kabakov ordered another beer and asked for change. He studied the new arrival in the mirrored front of the cigarette machine. He was of medium height and he had a deep suntan and heavy muscles under his polo shirt. The bartender put a drink in front of him and, with it, a note.

The husky man finished his drink in a few long swallows and went to a phone booth in the comer. Kabakov doodled on his napkin. He could see the man’s mouth moving in the telephone booth.

The bar telephone rang twice before the bartender picked it up. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Is there a Shirley Tatum here?” he said loudly, looking around. “No. I’m sorry.” He hung up.