Page 46 of Above ’N’ Beyond

The woman appeared out of nowhere. “Yes, ma’am.”

Paola pointed to the untouched plate. “Take this out of here.”

Bettina took the plate and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Woops. Before they left, Jamie vowed to find a way for Jax to apologize.

“So.” Paola took of sip of limoncello. “Tony tells me you have something planned. Let’s hear it.”

Finally.

Tony gave him an encouraging nod. Jamie had already run a skeleton of the plan by Tony, but for something of this magnitude, Paola had to give it her blessing.

“A couple of years ago,” he began, “Port Authority cops at JFK seized over a hundred thousand of those mini-bottles of liquor they sell on airplanes. They were stolen by a bunch of employees working for Air Chefs, the company that provides food and beverages to all the major airlines. They were gonna sell the bottles in the underground market to local liquor stores and bodegas. Retail value is around a million bucks. I wanna grab the bottles and sell them.”

His buddies, Detectives Palos and Masamoto, worked for the Port Authority’s Office of Inspector General and had fittingly dubbed the case Operation Last Call. Jamie had been part of the takedown raid that had discovered the bottles stashed inside one of the defendant’s garages.

“How do you plan to do that?” Paola asked.

“The cops closed the case,” he continued, “but Air Chefs can’t take the booze back, and it can’t be sold to the airlines. Something about health and safety after it leaves their control. The bottles have to be destroyed. They’re being taken to an incinerator.”

Marco rested his forearms on the edge of the table. “How do you know all this? You only got out of prison a month ago.”

A question Jamie was fully prepared for. This cover story had been tweaked and re-tweaked so many times for holes he’d lost count.

“Right after I got out,” Jamie said, “I bought a used Tahoe off a guy I knew in high school. He’s a manager at Speedy Courier Trucking near JFK. I met him there to buy the Tahoe, then we went out for beers, and he tells me how these two detectives came by to make arrangements for a tractor trailer to take these bottles of booze to an incinerator. One of the cops starts bragging about this big case and how much the booze is worth. Then they started whining about how it’s gonna cost them thousands of dollars just to get rid of it.”

“Stupid cops.” Tony refilled his glass with limoncello. “You’d think they’d be smart enough to keep the booze for themselves. Serves ’em right if we steal it from them. It’s only gonna go to waste. Somebody might as well benefit from it.” Tony downed the glass and grinned.

“Exactly.” Jamie caught the quiet, subtle note of interest in Paola’s eyes. Like any good general, she was content to watch and listen while her troops planned the assault. “They’re driving it to an incinerator this Tuesday. I say we grab the whole truck.”

Marco sneered. “Can you drive a tractor trailer? None of us can.”

Since Jamie had already discussed this with Tony, Tony hooked his thumb to Jamie. “He can.”

“I used to drive for a trucking company in Ohio.” Another part of his undercover facade, courtesy of the Ohio Departments of Motor Vehicles and Transportation. In reality, he’d gone through CDL—commercial driver’s license—training to assist the feds with a smuggling case involving cocaine hidden in full-size shipping containers. “My license is expired, but I can still drive.”

Marco grunted, then leaned back and crossed his arms. “How do you know exactly what time they’re gonna move the booze? And how do you know what truck they’re using?”

Jamie chuckled. What he really wanted to do was feed Marco a knuckle sandwich. “By now in the conversation, you can imagine my interest is piqued. So, I keep buying my friend beers. After the fourth beer and the second shot of Jack, I not only squeeze out of him that they scheduled the truck for this Tuesday, but they’re taking it up to Peekskill. I checked, and there’s a municipal incinerator in Peekskill. They plan to drive the booze up in the morning. All the company trucks say Speedy Courier on the side.”

Paola tapped her finger on her chin. “As Marco said, what about timing? How will you know exactly when the truck will arrive at the incinerator? If there are too many witnesses, this will never work.”

“We can’t time this down to the minute,” he admitted. “But here’s the beautiful thing. My friend said the cops want the truck to be at the incinerator when it opens first thing in the morning, so they don’t have to pay the trucking company extra for the truck and the driver while they’re sitting behind twenty other trucks. The place opens at six a.m.”

Marco snorted. “You got all this out of a guy after four beers?”

“Yeah, and two shots of Jack.” Jamie leaned back, crossing his arms to mimic Marco. “Amazing what you can get out of people when you’re not being an asshole. You should try it sometime.” Poking the bear was risky, but maybe it was needed to get Marco off his back.

The frosty glare Ianetti sent him was cold enough to freeze Jamie’s balls into round ice cubes. “You sonofabitch. You think just because you saved Tony’s ass you get some kind of special privileges around here? That’s not how things work.”

“Enough!” Paola smacked her hand on the table, rattling the dishes and glassware.

Jax lifted his head. Jamie leaned down and rested a soothing hand between his dog’s ears, keeping it there until he felt the tension ebb from Jax’s body.

“Marco.” Paola’s tone held a subtle warning. “I need more soldiers and more income, and you well know it. I’m ordering you to give Jimmy a chance to prove himself. If he does, he can help us.” She looked at Tony and dipped her chin in the subtlest of nods. “With everything.”

Beneath the table, Jamie fisted his hand. Paola was being cagey about divulging anything before he was in with the Mancusos, but “everything” could very well be the “big splash” the FBI wanted intel on.