The Sweeney 02 Read online

  The Sweeney 2: The Manhattan File

  Jack Regan is sent to New York on the trail of an international plot involving millions in missing American military hardware.

  As usual Jack Regan's talent for extreme action means confrontation with the NYPD, the FBI, the CIA and organised crime, and also a mysterious and willing woman.

  This is the second of three Sweeney novels published at the time of the original series. The others are: ‘The Sweeney: Regan’, and ‘The Sweeney 3: The Deal of the Century’.

  Ian Kennedy Martin is the creator of Thames Television’s enormously popular TV series.

  www.iankennedymartin.com

  © 1976 Ian Kennedy Martin.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner.

  By 2:00 a.m. the Detectives Bureau, Ninth Precinct, knew six facts about the dead man’s movements the previous day. He had bought three shirts at Korvettes at Forty-seventh and Fifth. At Doubleday he had bought Love Variations for the Sexually Aware Adult, the illustrated edition. He’d eaten brunch at a self-service cafeteria on East Fiftieth Street, and was remembered there for tipping a dollar to the girl who cleared the table, maybe thinking she was some kind of waitress. From Gristede’s he had taken out cold cuts, lox, cream cheese, and bagels to feed four for dinner and two for breakfast. He’d taken this back to the service apartment he’d gotten on a one month’s let on East Thirteenth, and then he’d headed downtown to the Staten Island ferry —the ticket stub was still in the top pocket of his jacket. Maybe he’d met somebody on the boat, or the island. Maybe he hadn’t. It wouldn’t be easy to find a witness who’d seen this man on the crowded ferry, even though he was unusual: a black African from Dibouti, North Africa, who did odd things like tipping a table clearer.

  The rest was partly self-evident. Eti Awolwe returned to his apartment at seven-thirty and was murdered at exactly four minutes past eight.

  It was not his death that singled him out for special attention—there are twenty-two murders in New York City every twenty-four hours. Not his death, but the manner of his dying. The killer had a Walther .38 automatic. When Awolwe walked into his apartment the killer waited for him, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and the magazine jammed. While Awolwe was still recovering, the killer dropped the useless gun (it still lay near the dining table), ran to the kitchen, and grabbed a twelve-inch Sabatier carving knife.

  Awolwe was a big man. His murder took from soon after seven-thirty, when he was seen by a doorman, to four minutes past eight, when he finally went down, smashing over the TV set, ripping its cord and the cord of a digital electric clock out of the wall. His right index finger and most of his thumb were cut off in the fight. He had a total of twenty-seven stab wounds, four of which would have proved fatal, and one of which did. At some point the killer must have stabbed and missed, or fallen on the knife. The apartment was blood red with nine pints of Awolwe’s life, and maybe three pints of the killer’s—that’s what the police doctor said. He doubted the killer could survive much longer than his victim.

  The police checked every hospital in New York. There were no admissions that night of a guy with that kind of blood loss.

  The cops checked the apartment next door. Awolwe’s apartment was on the top of the building at the back. The noise of the murder would not have been heard in the apartment below him—that was vacant—but it would have been heard in the next apartment along the corridor. This had been rented to a man named Thomson. The building’s security officer never saw Thomson again after the night of the murder.

  Thomson’s fingerprints were collected from the apartment’s door handles. They belonged to a man called Salvatore Cimini. Cimini had proven West Coast connections to the Mafia.

  So Ninth Precinct had a straight case. The mob had killed an African tourist; find the Mafia man. Unfortunately, it was not that simple. Salvatore Cimini was not a contract artist and had no record of even one second of violence in his thirty-three years of life. The only record he had was a degree and Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Vermont, and a distinguished career at the bar.

  Salvatore Cimini was a lawyer, a brilliant lawyer. Most of his work was for the Syndicate—a Mafia “advocaat.” So with this connection, why did he have to murder Awolwe? People who work that close to the Syndicate get a takeout service in torpedoes. All he’d have to do was to make a telephone call. But he didn’t. He had premeditated and executed a bloody murder, and almost assassinated himself in the process.

  The detectives of Ninth Precinct had the suspicion that if they located Cimini, the case, and the questions, would not be over, they would just be starting.

  The telex from the FBI to New Scotland Yard via the legal attaché at the U.S. embassy in London read: TWA FLIGHT 105 ARRIVING 10:15 YOUR TIME ANGELO GALLIANO AND LAURENCE HOWARD COHEN SURVEILLANCE AND REPORT FOUR HOURLY RED LETTER. A telex cable from the FBI closing “RED LETTER” means that the people named in the wire are to be subjects of a major criminal charge, and warrants for their arrest are in the pipeline. Any member of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard who had come into contact with the FBI at any time would have known that. Detective Inspector Jack Regan of the Flying Squad knew it. The knowledge was no source of comfort to him in his present predicament.

  He sat in the lounge of the Aerial Hotel near London Airport, his attention split between his copy of Sporting Life and a TV set, sound turned low, tuned to pre lunchtime news BBC 1. He looked from them to his paper, pen out marking off a few likely winners. But he was not in a position to go and call his bookie. He was not really in any position at all. All he could do was sit there, trying to work out if there was a single possible move that he could make. And not succeeding.

  Detective Sergeant Carter sat about fifteen feet away covering the east exit from the room. He was reading the Guardian. He was studying it intently. Probably the weekly article on police corruption, written by an Irish graduate of Leeds University who’d had his arm dislocated by a falling copper twenty years before on the Third Aldermaston March. Carter read such articles. Regan didn’t. He saw Carter’s eyes flicker up from the paper to the group, and realized that Carter’s attention was not entirely on the newsprint, but still with the job of work and the crisis that was slowly manifesting itself.

  The third copper, Detective Sergeant Hilliard, sat near the third exit from the room. He’d just been served tea on a tray. Nobody else in the room had tea on or off a tray. Maybe Hilliard had palmed his Criminal Investigation Department ID at the Sardinian waiter and mentioned, in passing, current Home Office thinking on illegal immigration. Hilliard was a new boy, one month in the Flying Squad and just a week in Regan’s section. Regan was interested to see how Hilliard would shape up. Regan already had plans for him.

  He intended to sort the lad out over six months and then set him up as a perfect foil for Carter, who was a little bit too bright and who still had this problem of thinking intelligence a complete substitute for experience.

  And what was going through Carter’s mind at the moment was the thought that here in the lounge of the Aerial Hotel a situation was developing that could land Regan in the biggest dung heap of his career.

  The telex had said Angelo Galliano and Laurence Howard Cohen would be on TWA out of New York. What it didn’t say was that there were three other guys with them. At first Regan thought they were maybe pals or business associates they’d picked up on the plane. The five passed through Immigration and Customs together. The limo was waiting, and the five climbed into the limo and a taxi was hired to carry a dozen Gucci and half a
dozen Vuitton bags. The limo moved off to the Aerial Hotel, with the taxi trailing. And the five American guys got out, went in and registered, and withdrew to their rooms.

  Half an hour later they were sitting in the lounge sipping coffee, showered and shining, changed from travel cottons to formal business suits. Fifteen minutes later another guy arrived, same Gucci shoes and expensive dark suit with a thin pinstripe. Regan heard the man introducing himself in a posh English accent. Regan had also glimpsed the car that he stepped out of. A Rolls Royce, current year’s registration.

  Six guys in the lounge. That was twenty minutes ago. Regan had gotten up quietly, left the room, and asked a porter in the hall for a phone. The porter pointed out a pay phone booth. Regan went in and dialed his immediate superior at the Yard. Detective Chief Inspector George Haskins seemed cheerful. His mother must have died, or he’d seen an old man savaged by German shepherds.

  “Mr. Haskins, I’ve just been to London Airport.”

  “The FBI telex—did the buggers turn up? You sound quiet, Regan. Have you shot them all?”

  Regan let a pause float about for a couple of seconds before he continued. Haskins sounded like he was in a punchy mood and Regan didn’t want to know about that. “Galliano and Cohen arrived.”

  “Yes?”

  “And three other guys. They all had bookings at the Aerial.”

  “Yes?” Haskins’s voice was thoughtful.

  “They’ve been joined by an Englishman. That makes six. I think they’re sitting in the lounge here because they’re waiting for more people—”

  “Stop there,” Haskins said sharply. He paused. Then he said, “Listen, Jack Regan, I know what you’re up to, and it works no way with me, cuts no bloody ice. You know what the alternatives are. You want me to make the decision?”

  Regan groaned inwardly. “I don’t,” he lied.

  “It’s your fucking responsibility.”

  Regan put down the phone and hoped that he’d beaten Haskins to it. He returned to the lounge and resumed Sporting Life.

  Now a couple of them were looking at their watches, and a third was correcting his watch to London time. The Englishman’s voice was pitched higher and carried further. “...should be here,” he said. “I told him twelve-thirty...”

  A Mulliner Park Ward Rolls limo whispered up along the outside of the tinted windows that separated the lounge from the rude air of wintertime London. The chauffeur peeled out and opened the rear door of the Rolls. A fifty-year-old City of London type with puffy white face and pinstripes climbed out. And then one of the gringos in the lounge was signaling for the coffee bill, and Regan noted that Carter was looking from him to Hilliard and back, and obviously both detective sergeants knew that the time was fast approaching when Regan would have to make a decision.

  The telex had called for surveillance on two men. Normally the Yard would assign four men for a competent surveillance—two men per person, just in case the quarry wises up to his shadows and pulls a stunt, like heading into a bar not for a drink but with the idea of exiting out of the back. One sergeant follows the guy into the bar—and keeps in contact with the other sergeant outside in the car on his pocket walkie-talkie.

  Two cops per quarry. In the lounge of the Aerial Hotel now there were seven guys in total: two wanted by the FBI for an unspecified crime, and five possible associates. Some of the seven maybe innocent, others possibly more dangerous than the FBI suspects.

  It has been a running sore in the history of the Metropolitan CID that it has never been able to provide at the snap of fingers the sort of facility that Regan needed now. He desperately needed at this second fourteen plainclothes detectives and seven mobiles who could join himself, Carter, and Hilliard in the routine trailing of this group when they split up—which they were doing at the moment. There was a telephone number at Scotland Yard for the Special Patrol Group, two hundred uniformed constables, armed and in large buses. But not fourteen plainclothesmen in seven mobiles. Regan could try his luck with twenty telephone numbers and maybe in an hour gather all of fourteen men together. By which time five of these guys could have done their business and be on their way back across the Atlantic, or on to Brussels, or Bangladesh. Who would know?

  Then one of the Americans, a smallish man with a badly made toupee, got up and walked out, like he was maybe going to the toilet. Hilliard, who was nearest, queried a look at Regan, but the Inspector signaled him to stay put.

  Then Regan stood up. He’d worked it out. There was no alternative. He took one last look through the window at the two Rolls, symbols of power and prestige. He nodded to Hilliard and Carter, who took the signal and stood up. Then he stepped across the deep carpet to the group, now six strong.

  One of the Americans was trying to interpret the coffee bill.

  Regan stepped among the group and pulled out his police ID.

  “Detective Inspector Regan, Flying Squad, Scotland Yard. I am arresting all of you, on individual and specific charges which will be notified to you on your arrival at the nearest police station. You will accompany me and my sergeants in transport we will provide. And I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

  The silence that followed had the qualities of shock and awe and strange vapid peace.

  One of the two pinstripe-suited Englishmen, the first to have arrived, was the first to speak. “I’m sure I don’t understand what you could possibly mean, Inspector. You’ve been kind enough to introduce yourself. Let me introduce myself. My name is Jerome Bates Carlton—you may know my bank.” He took out a Harrods Mark One business card— hand-copper-etched on handmade paper. It mentioned his name and bank. His bank was one of the most prominent merchant banks in the City of London. “And this,” he said, “is a friend. Mr. George Casey-Moore, of the Bank of England.”

  The Bank of England is the official money box of the British government. Its integrity is beyond question.

  Sergeant Carter and Sergeant Hilliard were looking down, studying carpet patterns. But it was apparent that they did not think Detective Inspector Jack Regan had made the wisest move.

  It was 3:00 p.m. Regan had commandeered an office with two phones at West Drayton police station. They had arrived like a factory outing in a hired minibus with seating for six. The driver, Regan and his two sergeants, and the suspects crammed into it, ten in all.

  The factory outing had become increasingly noisy on the journey from the Aerial Hotel to West Drayton. By the time they were disentangling themselves from the van in the car park, one of the Americans, well built and around forty, had gripped Regan a couple of times by the lapels and made a number of threatening statements. Regan encouraged this, because at least he could now charge the man with insulting behavior.

  The protesting group filed into the station. Regan led them past the charge desk and down the circular flight of steps to the cells.

  “Are you formally arresting us on a specific charge?” the man from the Bank of England demanded.

  “Shortly,” Regan said, bluffing.

  “I see,” the banker said in a darkly loaded voice. “You will kindly allow me and these other gentlemen to phone our lawyers.”

  “You will come with me, Mr. Casey-Moore.” Regan turned to Carter. “Sort out these people, two per cell.” Then to Hilliard. “Go back to the Aerial, find the little guy with the bad toupee who did the exit. Bring him here.”

  Then he indicated for the Bank of England man to follow him, and headed back up the stairs.

  Regan went over to the sergeant behind the desk. “I want an office.”

  “One on this floor sir, down the corridor, second door on the left.”

  Regan nodded and dropped Mr. Casey-Moore’s Harrods card in front of the sergeant. “Phone the Bank of England, talk to Mr. Moore’s secretary, check his appointments for the day. Phone International, get me an urgent preempt call to the FBI, New York office. Get another call to the U.S. embassy legal attaché. Before those calls get m
e the Sweeney, Mr. Haskins.”

  He indicated for Mr. Casey-Moore to follow him, and headed off down the corridor that the sergeant had pointed out.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on speaking to my lawyer,” Moore said heavily.

  “Of course, but first just two dozen words with you, sir.” Regan turned into the office, waited for Moore to cross the threshold, then closed the door. He indicated for him to sit down.

  The phone rang. It was DCI Haskins’s secretary. Mr. Haskins was not available to take a call but requested to know how Regan had resolved the Aerial Hotel situation.

  Bastard, Regan thought—a station’s cells full of VIPs, important enough men perhaps to bring down the government, or, closer to home, lose a copper his livelihood. “Would you tell Mr. Haskins from me that I regret his unavailability, and while he’s in hiding would he find the time to organize a search warrant for rooms in the Aerial Hotel and could he get the warrant out to West Drayton faster than the speed at which he pulls his disappearing tricks?”

  “You want me to quote all that?” said his secretary, retired Sergeant Raynesworth.