All the Centurions by Robert Leuci

Author:Robert Leuci
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

WE IMMEDIATELY GOT back onto Major Cobb. There were four of us now; a detective by the name of Jack Bergersen had joined the team.

The SIU was staffed with an extraordinary number of attractive men. Given that such observations are subjective, I’ll ask that you take my word for it. Jack Bergersen was an unusually handsome man, the father of five, and deeply in love with his wife. He was strongly of the opinion that this job was not his life, and he made it perfectly clear that he’d be glad to put in hours, but he needed to spend time with his family.

We broke up in teams of two, Jack and Gene, Frank and me, to cover the wiretap, transcribe the incoming and outgoing calls, and maintain surveillance of the Major.

Major Cobb was constantly on his phone with women, customers, and friends, gabbing at all hours of the day and night. Blitzed on coke, the man never slept, and he was all the time boasting to friends that he was the cocaine connection for the New York Knickerbockers basketball team.

We needed to use all four of our cars to tail the Major. He drove like a madman and seemed to be always on guard. Nevertheless, late at night, when he returned home after a coke-filled mission on the town, he would lift the receiver and shout into the phone, “Sheriff, you there, Sheriff? I know you’re there. I know you’re listening. Peeping Tom motherfuckers! I got something for you, you hear me?”

We’d hear the sound of metal on metal, the smooth swish of a round being jacked into the chamber of an automatic.

“Ya hear that, Sheriff? That’s what’s waiting for you.” Then he’d snort a line, telephone one of his friends or customers, and talk and talk about moving drugs. A lunatic.

Always dressed in a suit and tie, the Major was one spiffy guy, and man could he shop. The Major bought everything in sight. One time, before leaving for a weekend vacation in the Bahamas, the Major telephoned a local carpet store. He told the store manager he wanted his house carpeted.

“Carpet everything,” he said, “the wine red carpet, the shag that I was looking at in the store.”

“Everything?”

“You heard me. When I get back, I want to see my entire house covered with that carpet.”

Five minutes after he left for the airport, a carpet company truck rolled up to his house. We watched as workers brought in roll upon roll of glittering red shag carpeting. The installer used the major’s phone to telephone the carpet store, telling the manager that he was at the Major’s house and ready to work.

“All of it,” the store manager said. “Carpet the whole fucking house.” A few days later, the Major returned from his vacation; as soon as he strolled through the door, he picked up the telephone.

The Major was laughing; it was a low growl, an insane sort of laugh. We could hear his wife hysterical with glee in the background.

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