“I’ll take care of it. If I have to yank you out and leave the FBI standing there in New York with their dicks in their hands, I’ll do it.”
Weaver said, “Hey, that’s not . . .”
Virgil interrupted: “But I come back to the other question: why are Rae and I standing here with you?”
Lucas said, “We need to know where you’re at. Where your head’s at. The thought of that dive scares the crap out of most of us. You won’t be diving today or tomorrow, but how about the day after tomorrow? Weather is supposed to be better . . .”
Virgil shook his head: “Cattaneo said we wouldn’t be going back out for two or three days. As far as my head is concerned, it’s not hard diving, as long as you’re not scared of the dark.”
“Or sharks,” an agent said.
“Sharks aren’t a problem,” Virgil said. “I’m more worried about losing my dive computer and getting disoriented. But it’s a solid computer, so that’s unlikely. These guys are so greedy that as long as I keep pulling up the junk, they’re happy to keep me working.”
“You’re good with making more dives?” Lucas asked.
“I’m fine with it,” Virgil said. “My bigger worry is that the Coast Guard gets onto us, and they shoot first and ask questions later . . . that wouldn’t be good.”
One of the agents said, “We’re monitoring them. If they look like they might be about to intercept you, we’ll call them off. We’re set to do that.”
“But they’re not in on the action? Not yet?” Rae asked.
“Not yet,” Weaver said. “We’re still holding this close. We’ll have to do some PR work with them when the arrests happen, but . . . that’s the way it is, for now.”
Lucas asked Virgil, “Do you need anything from us?”
Virgil looked at Rae, who shrugged. Virgil said, “Yeah. Stay away from us. We’re solid with these guys. We’re out there embarrassing ourselves . . . did a drug deal last night, bought some cocaine for the benefit of that flannel shirt guy, if he’s actually working with them. We’re over at those shops, Rae’s spending money like water.”
“That guy last night, he’s not much of a threat,” Lucas said. “He does work with them, but he’s casual labor. If you’re sure you’re good, we’ll stay away.”
Rae nodded: “Virgil can’t carry, but I can. If worse comes to worse, I’ve got that Sig on my ankle.”
Lucas rubbed his face, then said to Virgil and Rae, “Okay. We keep going. When we hit Sansone, you bail out. That’s all we’re looking for right now.”
* * *
“Okay. Now, my other big problem,” Virgil said. “I can’t carry my phone. Two phones would be suspicious, especially for a dirtbag like me. If they shake me down and want to look at my incoming and outgoing calls and numbers, I can’t say no. Neither can Rae. So I’m carrying that burner. If you need to make an emergency call on our carry phones, you’ve got to be set up to fake a spam call—car insurance, like that, in case they’re right on top of us.”
Weaver said, “We can do that.”
“Call me on my real phone when you get it figured out. Like tonight,” Virgil said. “And you can’t hit Sansone or Sansone’s people without warning us off. If you hit Sansone when I’m twenty feet down, they’ll shoot me in the head when I come back up. I need to know when you’re going to move. If you can’t reach me, or I can’t talk, you’ve got to be ready to back off. Because I’ll tell you what—when you hit Sansone, every member of their organization will know about it in five minutes and somebody will call down here and Behan will get rid of Rae and me. He’ll get rid of us even if they think we’re okay, like they got rid of that Magnus guy, and the woman that Lucas interviewed, whatever her name was. As a precaution. Cleaning up potential problems.”
One of the agents said, “I don’t know—I still think if we can get that dope close to Sansone . . .”
“Fuck you, man,” Virgil said.
Lucas: “Easy.”
“Big flashy drug bust that everybody in New York knows about in one minute? And the guys down here know one minute later? Can’t do that,” Rae said. “Everybody has to go down at the same time, both here and New York. That can’t happen if me and Virgil are on a boat.”
Virgil asked, “You want us to poke Cattaneo or Regio or Lange, to see if we can find out who shot the Coast Guard guys?”
“Not unless you can do it with some care . . . get them bragging about it or something. Don’t risk anything to do that,” Weaver said.
One of the other agents said, “Listen, you guys: we’ve got Behan, Cattaneo, Regio, Lange, and a half dozen other associates in the bag, for the heroin operation. Those guys are toast, you don’t have to do anything more. An identification of the shooters would be a bonus, but, you know, it’ll be the difference between thirty years in prison, and life without parole. For guys in their forties, like these guys, not too large a difference. We don’t want you guys taking unwarranted risks and getting killed, trying to pay for the difference between thirty years and life.”
“Gotcha,” Virgil said. “That’s good.”
* * *
They talked for a few more minutes, Virgil describing the dive and process of recovering the dope. “When we hit them, we need to recover that wand thing that operates the LED lights,” Virgil said. “With that, we can get most of the rest of the heroin. Without it, it’ll stay on the bottom.”
“Not the worst place for it,” Weaver said.
“Except you’d probably have the Colombians up here looking for it, with new wands and machine guns, even if you take down Sansone,” Virgil said.
“There’s that,” Weaver conceded. “We’ll go after the wand.”
* * *
The meeting was over in half an hour and Virgil and Rae were back out the door and across the street. “That was unnecessary,” Virgil said. “The whole meeting was a waste of time, except for making sure that they pull us out before they hit anyone. Even that, we could have done on the phone.”
“I dunno,” Rae said. “Did you notice that one agent who didn’t say anything? The guy with the striped tie?”
“Yeah?”
“I think he might have been a shrink, the way he was watching you talk. Lucas was telling the truth, when he said they were worried about where your head’s at. They really don’t know anything about diving. They’re thinking about diving in movies, all those sharks and the enemy guys cutting air hoses.”