American Gangster by Max Allan Collins Page B

bedroom,
her
bedroom. “It’s all perfect.”
    He said nothing, but was glowing inside.
    His gray-haired momma, eyes exaggerated behind the thick glasses, said, “I’m so proud of you, son.”
    He took her in his arms, and he kissed her forehead, and he swelled with the pride she’d bestowed upon him.
    He
had
done good, hadn’t he?
    The building Toback found for him was an old deconsecrated Episcopal church, long since abandoned. The city maintenance worker who let Richie in did notenter deep himself, merely stood near the door and watched the fool wading in through the debris-strewn former church.
    Richie immediately liked the idea of this place, standing in the colored light filtering through stained-glass windows. God’s house, where cheating and lying and stealing wouldn’t be allowed. But he’d make it an Old Testament house of God, where judgment wasn’t forgiving.
    Getting the feel of the place, acknowledging to himself that the clean-up work wouldn’t be pretty, he almost stumbled on something among the rubble: a framed photograph, the glass already broken, the wood cracked.
    He bent and picked it up, and a faded photograph of a priest smiled at the Jewish cop in benediction.
    Well, what the hell
, Richie thought.
We’ve already been blessed
.
    â€œThis is the only floor we’ll be using,” Richie told the maintenance man.

9. Can’t Get Enough of That
Funky Stuff
    Across the river, in Newark, at a groovy little neighborhood dive with a black-dominated clientele, Richie Roberts—in a funky brown leather jacket and jeans—sat in a booth with Freddie Spearman, a scrawny-looking mustached guy with stringy brown hair whose pseudo-junkie style made him an ideal undercover cop.
    â€œFreddie,” Richie was saying, talking louder than he’d have liked because of the jukebox blasting “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” “this task force has got to be squeaky clean.”
    â€œThese
are
cops you’re looking for, right?” Spearman asked dryly, and sucked on his cigarette. He was so skinny he seemed to swim in his paisley shirt.
    Richie grinned. “Yes. Cops who value a good bust more than a free season ticket to the Knicks.”
    â€œ ‘Good bust,’ ” Spearman said, “in the strip joint sense?”
    â€œAll right, all right,” Richie said with a laugh, and he sipped his beer. “I don’t wanna come off as some damn Boy Scout. And these guys gotta be hard-asses to begin with. At some point on this gig, more than likely, the guns are comin’ out.”
    Spearman blew a smoke ring. “Does sound like a good time.”
    Richie leaned forward. “But, Freddie, you gotta understand—I’m reluctant to bring anyone in I don’t know, personally.”
    â€œYou know
me
, don’t you?” Spearman flicked cigarette ash onto the floor. “Well, I vouch for both Jones and Abruzzo. Stand-up guys all the way.”
    â€œYeah, yeah, I know but—”
    Spearman held up a “stop” palm. “No ‘buts,’ Richie. We work together, Jones and Abruzzo and me. You want Ringo, you got to take Paul and George, too.”
    Richie shook his head. “What about John?”
    â€œHell,
you’re
John.”
    Richie laughed again. “Gimme a break. . . . So where are they, these two stand-up guys?”
    Spearman pointed over to the smoky joint’s crowded dance floor. “That’s Moses Jones. With the skinny-legs-and-all chickie.”
    On the jukebox, Stevie Wonder had given over to Eric Burden and War doing “Spill the Wine.” A lanky black dude was dancing with a skinny white girl, so wild and uninhibited they might be leaving their best game in the practice gym. The dude had a serious Afro, a Fu Manchu mustache and a dark untuckedshirt with collars pointed enough to put an eye out, and looked about as much like a cop as