Lawrence Sanders - McNally's caper

Jack went in and found more evidence of picnics, barbecues, and bottle parties. The place was littered with moldy garbage, burned and sodden mattresses, empty beer cans, and bird droppings. He saw birds flying in and out of the upper windows and heard them up there. He figured they were nesting. In the rain, the whole place smelled of corruption and death.

He went outside again and picked his way down to the bay, where more offal floated in the water. There was a rotting dock, the piles covered with slime and a thick crust of barnacles. There was no beach worth the name; just garbage-choked water lapping at garbage-clotted land.

‘I’ll bet Garcia and his laughing boys are using it for a drug drop,’ Donohue said. ‘A mother ship comes up the coast from Central or South America. It’s International Waters, so the Coast Guard can’t touch it. Small boats go out at night and the cargo is off-loaded. Or maybe they just dump it overboard in waterproof bales. The small boats pick it up and run it in. The cruddy dock would be a perfect place to unload the small boats and transfer the grass and coke to vans and trucks.’

‘Well … what do you think?’ I asked him. ‘How safe is it?’

He shrugged. ‘Not perfect — but what is? The thing I like about it is that there’s only one narrow road coming up to that front gate. There’s no way to get to the place except by that road. What I figure we’ll do is get there an hour or two before the meet. We’ll go through every room to make sure no one’s been planted to wait for us and then jump out and shout “Surprise!” Then, if it really is empty, we’ll pull out and watch the place from a distance through my binocs. If one car pulls up, and only two guys get out, then we’ll go in. But while we’re in there, one of us will be watching that road all the time. Another car comes anywhere near and we take off.’

‘Then what?’

‘We play it by ear,’ he said. ‘We’re going in there with enough guns to take Fort Knox.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘suppose this Garcia is there with the passport forger, just like he promised. We hand over the necklace and he gives us the papers. When do we get on the plane?’

‘He said he’d tell us when we hand over the rocks.’

I groaned. ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘there’s a dozen ways he could cross us.’

‘A dozen? I can think of a hundred! The papers can be so lousy they wouldn’t fool a desk clerk. Garcia and his paperman can pull iron on us. They can let us go and mousetrap us on the road out. Maybe the plane will be rigged to blow up over the water. Maybe the pilot will bail out after takeoff and just wave goodbye. Maybe we’re being set up on the other end. We step off the plane in Costa Rica and the whole goddamned army is waiting for us. Jesus Christ, Jan, if they want to cross us, they can do it. You want to call it off? I haven’t phoned Garcia yet.’

I thought a long time, trying to figure the best thing to do. But there was no ‘best thing,’ no right choice. All our options were dangerous, all possibilities tainted.

‘I told you,’ Donohue said, ‘if yoif want to take half the ice and split, that’s up to you. I won’t try to stop you.’

. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ll stick with you. But if we don’t go for this Costa Rica deal, then what?’

‘You know what,’ he said grimly. ‘We go on the run again, maybe across country to L.A. Never staying more than a few days in one place. Trying to keep a step ahead of Rossi and the Feds. Prying out stones and peddling them when our cash runs out. Is that what you want?’

I had a sudden dread vision of what that life would be like.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t stand that. There’s no chance at all that way. The Feds or the Corporation would catch up with us eventually; I know they would. All right, Jack. Call Garcia and tell him it’s on.’

‘It’ll be okay,’ he said, patting my cheek. ‘You’ll see.’

‘Sure.’

Donohue called the Paco number in Miami. He spoke a short time in guarded phrases. That day was Tuesday. The meet was set for 3:00 P.M. on Thursday. That would give us time to have passport photos made. After we handed over the necklace, and received our new identification papers, Garcia would give us the details of where and when to board the plane for the flight to Costa Rica.

After Jack hung up, we started on a bottle of vodka. Neither of us felt like eating. I suppose we were too keyed up. Read ‘frightened’ for ‘keyed up.’ Anyway, we drank steadily, talking all the time in bright, hysterical voices, laughing sometimes, choking on our own bright ideas.

What we were trying to do was to imagine every possible way Manuel Garcia could betray us and what we could do to prevent it. We devised what we thought were wise precautions and counterploys. We had no intention of crossing Garcia. We would play it straight. All we wanted to do was stay alive.

When we finally fell into bed around midnight, we were too mentally and emotionally exhausted to have any interest in sex. All we could do was hold each other, shivering occasionally.

We listened to the storm outside, heard the lash of rain and the smash of thunder, saw the room light up with a bluish glare when lightning crackled overhead.

That’s the way we fell asleep, hearing the world crack apart.

The next day the thunder and lightning had ceased, but the sky was low and leaden. Vicious rain squalls swept in from the southeast. Even when it wasn’t raining, the air seemed supersaturated. My face felt clammy, fabrics were limp and damp. Water globules clung to the hood of the Cutlass, and all the cars on the road had their headlights on and wipers going.

We got rid of all the last possessions of Hymie Gore and Dick Fleming. We found a place that took passport photos and waited there until they were processed and printed. We bought a few things we thought might be hard to find in Costa Rica: aspirin, vitamin pills, suntan lotion, water purification tablets — things like that. We really had no idea of what the country was like, where we would be living, what modern conveniences might be available. We were emigrants setting out for an unknown land.

In the evening we continued our packing, trying to discard everything not absolutely essential. Winter garments from up north were eliminated: gloves, scarves, knitted hats, wool skirts and shirts. We set aside the necklace we would deliver to Manuel Garcia and selected another we thought of equal value. It was about then we got into a brutal argument. It was about time; our nerves were twanging.

On the following day, Thursday, when we left for our meeting with Garcia at the deserted hotel, Jack Donohue wanted to take all our luggage (including the Brandenberg loot) in the Oldsmobile, checking out of Rip’s.

I said that was foolish. If we were bushwhacked at the hotel, we stood to lose everything. The smart thing to do, I said, was to go armed, taking only the single necklace we had promised. If everything went according to plan, we could then return to Rip’s and load up before we departed to board the plane.

‘Listen,’ Donohue said, ‘we’ve got to allow at least an hour for the trip from here to the hotel. What if we deliver the rocks and Garcia says we’ve got to get on a plane right away? Then where are we? No time to come back here and pick up our stuff.’

‘Then we’ll stall,’ I said. ‘Tell him no deal. Tell him we need at least two hours to get our luggage.’. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said angrily, ‘you think they run these Micky Mouse flights on a regular schedule? We get on the plane they’ve got lined up at the time they say or we don’t go at all.’

‘Then we don’t go at all!’ I said, just as furiously. ‘We’re not walking into that lion’s den carrying everything we own. That’s just plain stupid. We’ll go down there with-’