“We’ve got another shift coming in for them, too. They’ll drive out a way, drop the day shift and load the night shift, and go back. While they’re making the trade, we’ve got a car that’ll park in their space to keep it open.”
“You know what I want to do?” Lucas asked. “I want to see where the garage guys go, when they close down. Could I get a surveillance car around front, somebody to give me a ride?”
Orish said, “Sure. What are you thinking?”
“Unless they’re passing out kilos of heroin on credit, those prime dealers are handing over cash when they pick up the dope. In my experience, credit is unlikely, though I don’t have that much experience with dope.”
“I think you’re right,” said one of the feds. “I used to be a cop in Boston and worked narcotics for a while. Credit was nonexistent on the street and rare higher up. They might not be collecting money from everyone, but I bet they’re collecting from most of them. From the new guys, anyway.”
As they were talking, Zamora left, and Orish called for a surveillance car to pick up Lucas. Lucas asked Devlin to hang at the task force suite, watching incoming cars, then hurried down through the lobby and caught a tan Camry. The driver, whose name was Rob Blake, said, “We’ll wait completely out of sight until they move. There are Cokes in the cooler in back.”
They drove over to the street where the surveillance truck was parked, found a dark space under a tree, well back, and pulled in.
Devlin called a while later: “We got another customer. Black Jeep.”
He called again, one minute later: “He’s not a customer, the Jeep guy. I think he’s a night guard. He left his Jeep outside, by the car wash, and he went in the garage.”
And ten minutes later, “Okay, the inside man is leaving. He’s got a shoulder bag. Driving a black Audi A5. He’s in the car, he’s heading north.”
The Camry was already creeping out of its parking spot, took it easy going down to the corner. They peeked, then turned and followed the Audi. The driver was good, gauging traffic lights, hanging back behind other cars. “The thing about Camry headlights,” he said, “is they’re like everybody’s headlights. You get some of those German cars, they’re distinctive. That Audi will have a line of LEDs, really bright white, you see them in your rearview mirror, you don’t forget them.”
Orish called Blake: “Where are you?”
“Heading south on 440 toward 278. Hang on a minute, we’ll be coming up to the junction . . .”
“He’s getting off,” Lucas said.
Blake went back to the phone: “He’s heading west on 278. We’ve got another junction coming up, hang on . . . no, he’s staying on 278, we could be headed for Jersey.”
“That would be interesting,” Orish said. “I’m hanging on here: call me when you know where he’s going.”
* * *
They stayed with the Audi as it crossed the Goethals Bridge and then went north into the town of Elizabeth, through a few back streets—they almost lost him there, but Blake picked up his taillights after an anxious two minutes—and watched from a distance as he pulled into a parking space outside a small, dimly lit building. From two blocks back, they watched the Audi driver get out of the car, knock on the front door of the small building, and then disappear inside.
“Let’s cruise the building,” Lucas said.
They did that: the sign above the building’s door said goodwin’s lock and safe with a subscript that added, we’ll take care when you can’t.
They continued on, two streets, did a U-turn, parked at the corner. The Audi driver was inside for five minutes, then reappeared, carrying his shoulder bag in one hand. “Follow, or let him go?” Blake asked.
“Let him go.”
Two minutes later, one of the lights in the locksmith shop went out and a man stepped outside, turned to pull the door shut, and locked it. For a moment, the low interior light shone on his face, and Blake, watching with binoculars, said, “Well, I’ll be blowed.”
“What?”
“That’s Sansone,” Blake said. “He’s carrying a brown grocery bag. That gives me a little woody.”
“Not interested in your woody, but I’m interested in that bag . . .”
“You want to grab him?”
“Ah . . .” Sansone walked fifty feet down the street, got into a Mercedes SUV. “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “That’s probably the cash, but if it isn’t . . . damnit.”
He called Orish and told her about it. “I’d let it go,” she said. “There’ll be a lot more where that’s at. I don’t think these guys are picking up ten kilos at a time, but even if they were, there’s still a lot in that garage. I say we watch for exactly the right guy tomorrow, turn him, then hit Sansone for the marked money. If we do both things, he’ll have no way out.”
Lucas thought it over, then said, “Okay. We’re heading back.”
* * *
At the Hilton, the day shift feds had left and the night shift had taken over.
Lucas, Devlin, and Orish lingered, talking, watching the cameras. A half hour passed, and Orish finally said, “I’m going.”
To the senior agent on the night shift, she said, “If anything moves, anything, you get me out of bed. I’ll have my phone on the pillow next to my ear. Anything.”
After she had gone out the door, Devlin and Lucas waited another two minutes, then went down to their own rooms. “This is going to work,” Devlin said. “If we can get the right guy, we’ll have the whole operation pinned, from Lauderdale to New York.”
“Sleep,” Lucas said.
* * *
Lucas spent ten minutes talking on the phone with Weather, climbed into bed, and slept—but not well. He was tense, and even though he was asleep, the stress kept him close to the surface. Though he didn’t sleep well, he slept long enough. He’d expected a call in the night, or early in the morning, but his phone alarm went off at seven o’clock, and he rolled out, undisturbed by the FBI watchers. He called Devlin, who was also up, and they agreed to catch a fast breakfast before heading back up to the task force suite.
Devlin hadn’t slept well, either, and they ate the same way they’d slept: in a hurry. Up in the task force suite, Orish and her second, Dick Kerry, were drinking coffee and cruising the various computers. The day shift was back again, along with fresh boxes of pastry and a couple of gallons of coffee. Short stacks of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal sat next to the donuts. When Lucas and Devlin arrived, Orish nodded and said, “The going’s slow.”