American Gangster Read Free

Frank.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œBut life goes on.”
    â€œIt does.”
    â€œThought you’d wanna know you can pick up the stuff at the club tomorrow.”
    â€œMorning okay?”
    Rossi nodded. “Ten?”
    â€œTen.”

2. Could Be Fatal
    Richard “Richie” Roberts knew what fear was.
    This afternoon, for example, he and his partner Javy Rivera were about to serve a subpoena on a low-level wise guy, Vinnie Campizi, and wise guys, of any level, were potentially dangerous. At this very moment, Richie was lugging a sledgehammer as he and Javy headed across a street busy enough to take some doing, but also the kind of thoroughfare where no driver paid any heed to a couple fullback-size jaywalkers in leather jackets and jeans, one of whom was hefting a sledgehammer.
    The seedy hourly rate motel they were heading toward was close enough to the waterfront that you could see the jagged teeth of the Harlem skyline on the other side, just beyond the George Washington Bridge. This was the kind of fleabag where you got rolled and not just in the hay, where catching a dose of the clapwas getting off easy. Bad things happened behind those closed doors, but none of it, after all these years on the force, added up to fear for Richie Roberts.
    Fear for Richie Roberts was walking to the gallows that was a blackboard at the front of his night-school law class, a fluorescent-lit dungeon where he existed in cold-sweat dread of hearing his name called. “Fuck you, pig!” from a PCP-addled perp held nothing like the threat of hearing his professor say, “Mr. Roberts—give us
U.S. vs. Meade
. . . subject, issues, what the determination was, and what it means to us today.”
    Fear for Richie was turning to face classmates, all of whom were at least a decade younger than him, every one of them knowing more than he did, and exposing the inadequacies of his thinking and self-expression.
    Sledgehammer gripped in one hand, Richie—dark blond, boyish—was explaining to Javy: “They took surveys. It’s scientific.”
    Javy, a pair of sunglasses surrounded by long hair, muttonchop sideburns and a thick mustache, said, “Yeah, right, it’s in the
Enquirer
, it’s gotta be true.”
    â€œNo, it is,” Richie insisted. “Number one fear of most people? Isn’t dying, dying’s easy—it’s public speaking. They get sick, physically ill—puke their guts out.”
    Javy’s eyebrows rose over the sunglasses. “So, naturally, this is what you want to do for a living. Get up in front of people.”
    â€œNaw, it’s the law I’m interested in. We’re at the bottom of the food chain, Javy—there’s more control up top.”
    â€œMore control than swinging a sledge?”
    They were headed toward the motel office; seemed there was a VACANCY . There’d soon be another.
    â€œAnyway,” Richie said, “I don’t like being that way—afraid to stand up in front of people. It’s stupid. I wanna beat it.”
    They went into the office.
    A portable TV on a shelf was playing another news report about that dead black gangster, Bumpy Johnson.
Christ
, Richie thought,
the old bastard was getting more play in New York than Martin Luther King.
    The clerk was in his thirties and needed a shave; his sleepy expression woke up a little at the sight of the sledgehammer. “Hey! What the fuck you guys think—”
    Javy flashed his New Jersey detective’s shield; he dug the subpoena out of his pocket and flashed it, too, though the clerk was already convinced.
    About to go back out, Richie caught the clerk’s eyes. He gestured with the sledgehammer. “No wake-up calls, now.”
    â€œNo! Do what you gotta do, guys. No skin off my dick.”
    The two plainclothes Prosecutor’s Office cops kept on the sidewalk under the overhang, close to the doors of the motel rooms. They walked