Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

“Use this brief case,” Gortoff ordered. “If you need me in town, call Coleman at the inn or the bar on Turk Street. I’ll tell you through either one of them where the meet will be. That tin is another test for you, Chris. You’ve got it made if you play it smart. Get careless and you’re dead — or in Leavenworth for so long that you’ll wish you were dead.”

In San Francisco, N Man Padgett skillfully dropped his obvious tail and arrived at the Portola Drive house, temporary headquarters of the N Man team, in a round-about route, using seven different taxis. He made the last part of the trip in a Bureau car which he called from a public telephone in the Sunset residential district. Its driver made doubly sure that he was not tailed by having another, unmarked Bureau car tail him. It, in turn, was tailed by an unmarked FBI car. If Gortoff’s men had followed Padgett after his efforts to lose them, they would have been quickly spotted by the protecting federal shadowers.

“You acquired a tan on your sea voyage,” the Bureau chief of the N Man team laughed.

“And I also acquired a kilo of pure heroin,” Padgett replied as he dumped the brief case on the desk. He ran down, while his chief taped the verbal report, every move he had made, from the time he last left the Portola Drive house — including the disposal of the body from the Stardust. No one smiled or commented. It was a deadly game in which death had been encountered before. Once more, the situation was teletyped to Washington. And once more orders came back from the Bureau.

“You’re a pusher, Chris, for a week. The lab boys will adulterate this heroin down to an acceptable weak mixture with powdered sugar. Put it out in the city to the pedlers you know for a week. We’ll supply you with funds here to convince Gortoff that you’ve moved the normal month’s supply in a week. Tell him the large scale movement was a result of the panic created by Bello’s fiasco. All he’s interested in is his money. See that he gets his first payment in tomorrow morning’s mail. Pick up the currency before you leave here. We’ll make the other daily mailings for you during the week. At the end of the week, make a meet with him. He’ll know that you’re running short because of the daily payments. We’ll stay on top of you. And we’ll stay on top of him. This time, when he makes his connection with his Mexican source, we’ll take him. And Chris, this time, take along your.38 and your I.D. Just in case Gortoff has any more tests for you.”

The San Francisco Narcotics Squad was alerted to the Bureau’s action and Chris Padgett moved again in the half-world of the city’s addicts. He shrugged off his takeover from Bello when former addict acquaintances asked what had happened to him on the night when he and Bello fled from the ransacked Grant Avenue apartment. “I took after him and tailed him to his connection.”

He squared up with Eddie, the addict who drove the car when he and the other addicts had trapped Bello at the Rincon Hill phone booth. “Here’s payment for your car rental, Eddie.” He handed him twelve caps of heroin in its adulterated form. “And there is H in those caps.”

He played the role of a typical pusher. “It’s cash on the line,” he told his pedlers. No cash; no junk. When former friends with whom he had pretended to share fixes came crying to him, in horrible, sick, anxiety, “...I’m sick, Chris. Just trust me with one cap to get going. I’ll have the cash for you in an hour...” he snarled back at them. “No cash; no cap.”

He played his role to such perfection that word got back to Gortoff, “This boy knows what he’s doing.”

And the narcotics squad of the San Francisco Police Department cooperated all the way, right down to making the usual number of arrests among pedlers. It was one of the best undercover operations in the Bureau and SFPD history as a list was compiled of every user and pedler in the city. And, thought Karl Gortoff, it was the best week in the history of his narcotics racket. Each morning at the Stardust Inn he received a manila envelope containing four times the cash he had formerly received from Bello.

On the fifth day Padgett was sitting in the Turk Street bar at a corner table. Two pedlers had already eased over to his table, slipped wads of bills to him, and been told where to pick up their plants. The bartender whispered to him while serving a fresh glass of Canada Dry.

“Call Karl.”

Padgett called him at the inn. “What’s on your mind, boss?” he asked nonchalantly.

“You, Chris. You’re going like a house on fire according to the take. Meet me. I’ll be parked on Fulton Street. Park near the Ignatius church and walk to my car. Around one. OK?”

“I’ll be there.” Padgett hung up — and walked to another bar from which he called the Potrola Drive house. He spoke to his Bureau chief. “Get that conversation from the bar?”