“This is it,” Lucas said to Koch. “As soon as he gets inside, put us right on the other side of his car, then watch and get ready to call the van.”
Koch dropped them and accelerated away while Lucas and Devlin walked up a driveway and waited behind a thin hedge at the corner of the house that was hiding them. A few minutes later, Pruitt, still carrying the paper sack, sauntered down the sidewalk toward the car. He used a key fob to unlock the car, and as he turned to step off the curb to go around the back of his car to the driver’s side, Lucas and Devlin bounded out of the dark and were on him.
Pruitt turned, brought up a hand; Lucas batted it aside and said, “U.S. Marshals. You’re under arrest. Open the car and get in the back.”
“Fuck you . . .”
Lucas hit him in the solar plexus, the blow blunted by Pruitt’s leather jacket, but the smaller man bent over and Lucas slapped him hard on the side of the head.
Pruitt dropped the sack he was carrying and the keys. Lucas looked around for interference, saw none, then led the stunned man to the passenger-side door, did a quick search, found no weapon. As Devlin held the front seatback forward, Lucas pushed Pruitt facedown in the tight backseat.
When he was in, Devlin crawled into the front seat, backward, looking over the seat facing Pruitt, and Lucas picked up the sack and the keys and walked around and got in the driver’s seat. Devlin said to Pruitt, “I’ve got a sap in my hand. If you fight me, I’ll break your skull. Do you understand me?”
Pruitt muttered, “Lawyer.”
Devlin: “We’ll get you one. Don’t fight us, or I’ll crack you like a fuckin’ lightbulb.”
Lucas started the car and eased it down the street. Devlin had Pruitt by the hair with one hand, and with the other, groped through Pruitt’s jacket and came up with a cell phone.
Lucas’s phone rang and Koch said, “Straight ahead three blocks. I’ll give you a left turn signal when I see you coming. Follow me, it’s about two more blocks.”
Pruitt began kicking and Devlin said, “Hey, hey!” And then whack. Pruitt stopped fighting.
“Only hurt him enough,” Lucas said, for Pruitt’s benefit. “We don’t want him paralyzed or anything. If you can help it.”
Devlin: “I hate fuckin’ dope dealers. I’m gonna hit him some more . . .”
Pruitt stayed quiet.
Lucas spotted Koch’s turn signal, flashed the headlights, and Koch led them around a corner and down two blocks, into an alley space between a pizza parlor and a dark commercial building of some kind. A van was waiting and when Lucas pulled up beside it, a side door slid back and two large FBI agents climbed out. Devlin got out of the Mustang, pulled the front seat forward, and he and the two agents yanked Pruitt out of the back of the Mustang and half-carried, half-dragged him to the van, where they cuffed him to a steel ring welded to the floor.
One of the agents said, “Call Orish. We’ll see you—or not—over in Manhattan.”
“Check him for weapons or another cell phone,” Lucas said. “We didn’t have a lot of time back there.”
“Do that.”
A minute later, the van was gone.
* * *
Devlin got back in the Mustang and Lucas pulled deeper into the alley, found the interior lights, looked in the paper bag and found a thick stack of currency, mostly twenties and fifties. “I need to take a look in the trunk before we go,” he said. “Pray for heroin.”
“I want to look, too,” Devlin said. He stepped down toward the street. “What happened to Koch?”
“Kept going,” Lucas said. “Surveillance guys don’t like to be seen.”
They popped the trunk, found a leather satchel, and opened it. Inside were a dozen plastic bags of heroin, ranging from a few ounces to perhaps a pound. They transferred the satchel to the backseat and Lucas called Orish.
“We got him. We got money and we got the heroin. A lot of heroin.”
“I talked to our pickup guys in the van and the surveillance cars. They think you got away clean.”
“Okay. Now it’s up to you guys: break him, and we’ll sweep up the whole organization tomorrow.”
* * *
Lucas talked to Virgil. “How’d the dive go?”
“Routine. Five cans. We’ve really got it down, now. I’m going deeper, though. I’ll be okay tomorrow, maybe one more day, but after that, I’ll be getting uncomfortable. We’ll see.”
“We’d all be happier if you didn’t die,” Lucas said.
“Me, too,” Virgil said.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Pruitt didn’t break.
The agents in the pickup van reported that he said nothing but the word lawyer.
He was held overnight in the isolation section of the Manhattan federal lockup. Since he’d asked for a lawyer, the feds couldn’t press him with questions, but they could talk around him.
“This poor chump thinks some of his Mafia buddies are going to bail his ass out. Not gonna happen. Sansone takes care of one person: Sansone. This genius is going to prison forever to protect him. Forever, and man, that’s a long time. With as much dope as he had on him . . . you think they’ll send him out to ADX Florence? These are the guys who shot those Coast Guardsmen and murdered the marshal . . .”
Didn’t work. Pruitt continued to say “lawyer” for a while, then put his head down and went to sleep. The door to his cell was opened every ten minutes or so during the night, then slammed shut, waking him, but he still refused to say a word.
“He’s asked for a lawyer by name,” Orish told Lucas. “A drug lawyer, well known for his connections. About two minutes after he leaves Pruitt in the lockup, Sansone’s going to get a phone call.”
“You can still hold him for another couple of days,” Devlin said.
“Yes, but that’s the limit. Then we’ll have to call his lawyer. Bottom line is, we’ve got today and tomorrow to turn somebody and arrest Sansone. If you’ve got any ideas . . .”
Lucas said, “I’ve been running through the notes, diving into backgrounds. I’m thinking we go after Paul Curry. He’s been inside four times; another conviction and he’s done. He gets life. One other interesting thing—he apparently has had problems with the Aryan Brotherhood, but the Brotherhood wasn’t strong where he spent his time and he had enough Mafia buddies to protect him.”
“What got the Brotherhood on him?”