The Vaults - By Toby Ball Page 0,90
down opposite Frings.
“So you know about the Navajo Project.”
“That’s right.”
“Who peached?”
“Bernal.” There was no harm in saying it. Bernal was dead.
Samuelson’s face was blank, but he was rubbing his calloused hands up and down the tops of his thighs. “That’s right, you said that.” He pondered this for a moment. “What do you want to know?”
“The details. How does it work?”
“Jesus, I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to find one of us. Yeah, I can tell you that. Where do I start?”
“After the trial. You were convicted.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I was guilty. So what they do, they lead me out of the courtroom, but they don’t take me down to the holding cells. They take me to this meeting room. There’s a bunch of suits there, mayor’s guys. Not Henry, this is just before his time. Shit, hold on.”
The coffeepot was blowing steam and Samuelson fished it out with fireplace tongs. Frings stared at the fire while Samuelson retreated to the kitchen to make the coffee in silence. He returned with two large mugs, the strong, acidic aroma spreading through the room.
“There were guys from the mayor’s office,” Frings prompted.
“That’s right. They tell me I’m not going to the big house, and I’m half-happy and half-trying to make what the fuck’s going on. They say that there’s been so much killing with the gangs and all that, and there’s all these widows and kids without fathers, and that between paying for the killers to be in jail and keeping these widows and kids from starving to death that it’s eating away at the City’s money. So they say I’m not going to prison, they’re going to send me out to the fucking sticks, and I am going to have a farm and the cash I make is going to go back to the family of that gink I killed.”
“Cy Leto.”
“That’s him. So they sent me out here, which is where I’ve been ever since. Farming, bo, I’m a goddamn farmer.”
“That’s it?”
“For a couple of years. You know how when Henry became mayor he worked the White Gang over pretty good, and as far as I know, they stopped sending people out to be farmers. Whatever. One day, this guy comes out to talk to me. Cake eater, but tough. You could tell. Name of Smith. So he comes out and tells me that the money we’re sending back isn’t enough, that we have to be making more. I say how the fuck am I supposed to make more money. But he’s got a plan for me to make a lot more.”
“What’s that?”
“I think you’re going to need to see it for yourself.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Excerpt from Van Vossen, A History of Recent Crime in the City (draft):
A word or two is appropriate on the Anti-Subversion Unit, or the A-S-U as it is more commonly known. After the election of Mayor Henry and the subsequent massacre at Lentini’s restaurant that we have earlier visited, the ASU became, with the regular police force, the most consequential force for order in the City. But the story of the ASU begins not with Mayor Henry, but more than a decade earlier, during the Great War.
The United States of America’s entry into the War led to an accompanying concern for the security of certain valuable resources. Many port cities and industrial plants were given protection by the Army or Federal Government. The City received no such allocation, but was nonetheless an important supplier of steel, tungsten, and other strategic materials. The threat posed to the strategic materials by Anarchists, Communists, and Criminal Gangs was met with the creation, by one-term mayor Clement Lassiter, of the ASU. The ASU was drawn from the ranks of the police force and served mainly as guards at the plants, railroad, and river ports in the City. Other ASU “squadrons” were more aggressive in their pursuit of Subversive Elements, using both undercover schemes and surprise raids to aid in suppression of Subversive Elements.
The terminus of the War ended the need for the ASU and it was dissolved, though the law authorizing the unit was left on the City’s books. It was this law to which Mayor Henry turned after the so-called Birthday Party Massacre.
The ASU was reestablished and was made answerable directly to the mayor. It comprised, as had the original incarnation of the ASU, the most aggressive and successful officers from the regular force, but now also untrained street thugs whom Mayor Henry had counted on as allies during