by Marc Rainer
“So, all my kid has to answer for is the thing at this fed’s house?”
“Assuming we can keep a lid on the other thing with John and Margie.”
“What about the guy on your crew that Dom talked to? The one who said he admitted the hits?”
“I can control him. He’s a good man, and happens to be a friend of your son’s, too. He just understands the rules better, and when I told him I needed to know anything he’d heard about John and Margie—you know, trying to get the story for the don—he gave it up.”
“Okay,” Silvestri said hesitantly.
“There is one other thing,” Beretta said, shaking his head sadly.
“More? What’s that?”
“Your kid’s been slinging heroin, too.”
Silvestri slumped against the back of the chair. “What the hell am I gonna do? That’s three strikes instead of one. Any one of ’em will have the don mad enough to bury him, and maybe me with him. Right now, the don only knows about one, but if he hears any of the rest of this—”
“That’s why I called you, Dom. He’s your kid, and you deserve a chance to solve this yourself before it gets to the don. We both know that with his lack of control, your boy is very likely to shoot his mouth off to somebody else about some of this, and then where will you be?”
Silvestri hung his head. He said nothing for a moment. “Yeah, I need to solve it myself. But how do I do that, Paulie? You’re the smart guy, you always have been. You even tried to keep a lid on this already. What do I do?”
“That has to be your call, Dom. You know it has to be something strong enough to show the don that you had no idea that this stuff had gone down, but that—when you found out about it—you took every step possible to correct things.”
“I can’t take him to see Minelli, Paulie. He’s been a punk, but he’s still my kid. I couldn’t see him go through that.”
Beretta nodded sympathetically. He stood and walked to Silvestri’s chair, then patted him on the shoulder.
“It’s a helluva thing, Dom. I wish I could do more, but—”
“No, no. You’ve done enough, Paulie. You stuck your neck way out on this when you didn’t have to. Like you said, it’s my problem. I gotta man up and do the right thing.”
Beretta nodded. “I knew you would, Dom. I had my guy make a call. Your boy’s on the way over now.”
Silvestri nodded. His right hand instinctively fell to the back of his waistband.
Beretta nodded again. It was working.
Little Dom stood in the office doorway fifteen minutes later. Sammy Collavito stood behind him.
Big Dom looked at Beretta.
“My guy,” Beretta acknowledged, nodding. “Just Dom,” he said to the two men in the doorway, pointing to one of the chairs.
Collavito held up both hands and backed out of the doorway.
“Lock the door behind you,” Big Dom told his son.
Little Dom turned and locked the door. When he turned back around, he was staring down the barrel of a gun. His father’s gun.
“Dad? What the hell?!”
The older man backhanded his son with the .45, sending Little Dom sprawling across the room. The boy raised a hand to his cheek, where a deep cut was pouring blood down onto his shirt. Whimpering, he started to speak.
“Don’t say a word, boy,” his father growled. “You lied to me, and you’ve violated every order we’ve ever given you. I know you whacked Big John and Margie, I know you’ve been shooting at that prosecutor’s house, and now I find out you’ve been selling dope on top of it all.”
Little Dom’s eyes immediately darted to Beretta, who was standing behind Big Dom. Beretta shook his head from side to side. Confused, Little Dom looked back at his father. The gun was still pointing at his head.
“Dad, John was a rat! You said so yourself!” the boy protested. His cries drew another pistol-whip. He fell back to the floor and curled up in a fetal ball, trying to cover his bleeding face.
“Shut the hell up, boy,” his father said. “Rat or not, he was a made guy, and it wasn’t your call. Fat Tony wants me to bring you in so he can do you himself. He wants to do it his way. Slow.”
“You can’t do that to me!” Little Dom whimpered. “I’m your son!”
“Don’t remind me,” the elder Silvestri hissed. “It’s not something I’m proud of right now.”
Big Dom leveled the pistol at Little Dom’s face. He shook his head with a final look of contempt on his face, and then he spat on the boy. His hand started to shake, then it steadied as a look of resolve formed on his face. Dominic Silvestri, Sr., pulled the trigger. Dominic Silvestri, Jr., shuddered and fell dead, a pool of blood starting to form under his head.
Beretta stepped in front of Big Dom and gently took the pistol from his hand.
“You had no choice, Dom. You did what you had to do.”
Silvestri looked up, tears finally forming in his eyes.
“I had to kill my boy, Paulie,” Silvestri moaned.
“Yeah, Dom. I know. I know,” Beretta said, nodding sympathetically. Then he put the gun under Silvestri’s chin and fired.
Beretta took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the gun before putting it into Big Dom’s lifeless hand on the floor.
“Boss?” a voice called from outside the doorway.
“Coming.” Beretta walked to the door and opened it. Collavito stood there, his own gun drawn.
“Put that away, Sammy.” Beretta said. “Go call the cops.”
Collavito turned away. Beretta went to a wall safe located behind a calendar hanging on his office wall. He put the thumb drive inside it. He closed the door and walked to a restroom to wash his hands.
Kansas City, Missouri
The events of the evening before had them in an early morning meeting in J.P. Barrett’s office conference room. Trask and Cam sat across one end of the table from the United States Attorney. John Foote and Michael Furay sat next to them. Tommy Land and Billy Graham sat across from them, next to Barrett. It was just after 7:00 a.m.
“First, thank you all for coming in early.” Barrett said. He looked sternly at Furay. “Tell me why we don’t have any exposure on this, Mike.”
Furay turned to Foote. “I think you have the floor.”
Foote took a deep breath.
“Fat Tony Minelli called me yesterday as I was leaving the courthouse after our trial day. He wanted to know why the state health inspectors were shutting down his kitchens at the juice bars. That’s where those joints make about half of their money. Since they can’t serve booze, they hit their customers hard on cover charges and on their food prices. I had made some calls to our friends on the Missouri side, and they had agreed to help put some pressure on the bars since we didn’t want to do a sit-down with Minelli.
“Anyway, Minelli apparently hadn’t heard about Jeff’s house getting shot up. He asked me what Jeff’s last case had been before that happened, and I told him it had been related to the shooting at McElhaney’s. He didn’t mention Little Dom’s name, but I could tell he knew what I meant—and who I meant—and he was beyond pissed.
“I made sure he understood that what we wanted—all we wanted--was the shooter to turn himself in. I even told him that we didn’t want any violent retaliation on the shooter, and that we would follow up on any violence, and would investigate and prosecute it.”
“So, you essentially had the sit-down that we didn’t want, just over the phone,” Trask said. “And now we have two dead. That’s exactly why I objected to that approach.”
Barrett held up a hand. He didn’t want the meeting to turn sour. Foote started to reply to Trask, but saw the hand, and held his tongue.
Barrett turned to Sgt. Land.
“What are you hearing from your homicide guys, Tommy?”
“Micky McPhail’s squad rolled on it, since they had the McElhaney’s thing and Mick had his flag planted on any possibly-related incidents. The shootings happened in Paulie Beretta’s offi
ce at his juice bar, Bottoms.
“Beretta had a guy call the cops. That guy happened to be Sammy Collavito, the same guy who owns the tire shop in Liberty where the Dellums brothers work. Anyway, Beretta was the only one in the office when all this went down. He told McPhail that Big Dom had come down to his place to discuss the health inspectors and the kitchens. While he was there, Big Dom told Beretta that Fat Tony had been jumping his ass about Little Dom shooting up Jeff’s house. Little Dom gets called in by Big Dom, and Little Dom thinks it’s because his dad and Beretta found out that Little Dom shot Big John and Margie Porcello, so he shoots his mouth off and admits doing that, trying to use the ‘John was a rat’ excuse.
“Beretta said that when Big Dom heard that, he just lost it, and he shot his kid. Then, after he realized what he’d done, he put his gun under his own chin and pulled the trigger.”
“No other witnesses to this?” Barrett asked.
“Just Beretta,” Land answered. “I know this sounds pretty convenient, coming from Paulie. He’s automatically in line to be the new don now if anything happens to Minelli. McPhail told me that everything else they saw lined up with Beretta’s story. The gun was in Big Dom’s hand, and that hand had powder residue on it when they swabbed it, so he fired at least one shot. Probably both.”
“The weapon?” Trask asked.
“Stolen from a home burglary about a year ago,” Land said. “I’m sure Big Dom picked it up from a fence. It wasn’t registered to him.”
Trask nodded. “Of course.”
Barrett had his hand up again.
“I don’t see anything that we have to react to in any institutional sense,” he said. “As far as the press or anyone else is concerned, we have a family dispute and a murder-suicide. Do you agree with that, Jeff?”
Trask drew his own deep breath. Barrett was intentionally trying to move Trask’s focus off his anger with Foote. Trask finally nodded.
“Yes, I do agree. Beretta and Minelli certainly aren’t going to go to the press with this, and our local press isn’t the most aggressive I’ve ever seen, anyway. The only thing that the main paper ever ties to our office is whatever happens in the courthouse, and that’s always a back-page priority for them.
“At worst, any leaks will turn into an ‘inside the Kansas City mob’ feature in one of the local free weekly rags. They can get an exclusive on Big Dom whacking Little Dom for whacking Big John and Margie. It’ll be all romantic gushing. The headline will be ‘Mob Boss Kills Son for Violations of the Mafia Code; Local Don Still in Mourning.’ The rag will get a lot more advertising dollars. Nobody will follow up on the issue of who pointed the finger at Little Dom to Minelli. Even the mob hated Little Dom. His own father shot him, for God’s sake.”
“Good,” Barrett said. “Speaking of the courthouse, where are we in the Papi trial?”
“We rested our case yesterday afternoon,” Trask answered. “Hobart is supposed to start his defense this morning. He said he was going to put Papi on the stand.” Trask looked down at his watch. “We’re supposed to be in the courtroom in fifteen minutes.”
“Just one more thing, then,” Barrett said. “How does Little Dom’s death impact the heroin case?”
“It may not,” Furay said. “Our best guess for now is that Little Dom would have handed things off to someone else—probably Collavito—after the shooting at McElhaney’s, just to let things cool down for a while, if nothing else. Jose Velasco’s source has told him that the Dellums crew is expecting another load in soon, anyway. If that’s the case, the guy in Texas could be bringing another load in anytime, and it would just go to Collavito.”
“I agree,” Foote said, glad to be able to contribute something positive. “Velasco is still in Dallas. He’s getting tired of his motel room, but he’s been doing some digging with the help of the locals down there. He’s got some profiles on some likely suppliers in that area, and we have the GPS on Cannon’s truck. When he hooks up with a supply source and heads this way again, we should be ready to work it.”
“You good with that, Jeff?” Barrett asked Trask.
“Of course,” Trask said. He directed his gaze toward Foote. “I realize that I don’t run the investigation phase of any of this; I do, however, expect to be kept in the loop if anything changes in what I understand is going to be the methodology that we’re using. Those changes affect everything from charging decisions to arrest timing, and—in this matter—whether a good deal of heroin hits the street. We—and I mean this office—need to be in that loop on a real-time basis, even if it means delaying taking a call from a mob boss on the courthouse steps. As long as we have that understanding, I’m good with it.”
Barrett nodded. He looked at Furay and Foote. “I completely agree. Does that work for you guys?”
Furay answered quickly for them both. “It does. Sorry about the misstep.”
Barrett nodded again. “Good.” He turned back to Trask. “You and Cam better get to the courtroom.”
Trask, Cam, and Foote were in their seats at their counsel table by 8:30 a.m. Hobart was in his seat at his table as well, but he was alone.
At 8:35, Judge Brooks came into the courtroom. He wasn’t wearing his robe yet.
“Have you heard from your client, Mr. Hobart?” the judge inquired.
“I have not, Judge.”
“Have you reached out to him?”
“Yes, Your Honor. He is not answering his phone.”
“I see,” the judge said. “Maybe he’s on his way. I hope so, for his sake. We’ll give him a while longer before we consider issuing a warrant.”
The judge turned and left the courtroom. Trask walked to the short wall separating the spectator section from the rest of the courtroom. Detective Ronnie Lincoln was in her seat in the front row.
“Ronnie, please see if Bubba’s available, and have him drive over to Papi’s shop in the Argentine on the Kansas side. We need to know if our defendant’s around, or if he has skipped town.”
She nodded and headed for the exit.
Trask returned to his seat at his counsel table. He looked at Hobart, who had obviously been paid in advance for all of his lack of effort in the trial. The defense attorney was working hard on the morning paper’s crossword puzzle instead.
What a sleazebag, Trask thought. He really doesn’t care where Papi is.
Thirty minutes passed. Judge Brooks stuck his head into the courtroom and gave Trask a questioning look. Trask just shook his head, and the judge retreated into the hallway behind his bench.
He’ll be signing the bench warrant about now.
Trask’s thoughts were interrupted by the muted vibrations on the cell phone in his pocket. He looked at the screen, then answered the call.
“What do we have, Bubba?”
“We have a dead defendant, Jeff. There was an ambulance and fire rescue truck on scene when I got here. The KCK guys let me in when I showed ’em my badge. Papi rearranged his skull with a contact shot from a .357. The whole side of his head’s caved in from the blowback gasses. I guess he meant what he said about not going back inside.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Bubba.”
Trask turned off the call and walked up to the clerk who was sitting in her space just below the judge’s bench.
“You’d better tell the judge that we have a record to make,” he said.
Trask turned and saw that Hobart was still sitting at his table. Hobart looked up over his glasses with only a hint of interest.
“Your client’s dead, counsel,” Trask said.
Hobart nodded as if he had expected the news, then returned to his crossword puzzle.
Gladstone, Missouri
“It starts about here,” Paul Beretta said as he cued up the video on his laptop.
Minelli leaned forward as he watched the recording.
“So, the little shit and his spic buddies followed him home from the boat?”
“Yeah, Tony. This was just a few minutes before John and Margie got shot. I
found the thumb drive in Big Dom’s pocket. He was pissed enough at the kid when you told him about the prosecutor’s house getting shot up. I don’t know where he got this thing, but it sounded to me like he’d had the thumb drive a while, and that he’d already asked the kid about it. Little Dom had lied to him at first, but then he started whimpering in my office and finally admitted doing the hits because he thought John was a rat.
“Dom finally had enough. He shot the kid, then he realized what he’d done. I don’t know what sent him over the edge—whether it was killing his own boy, or knowing he’d violated your order to bring Little Dom in—but whatever it was, he just shook his head and put the gun under his own head. He pulled the trigger before I could stop him. I thought about trying to get rid of the bodies, but I figured it was just better to call the cops and let ’em close it all out. I told ’em that Little Dom had admitted killing John and your sister.”
Minelli nodded. “That was probably a good call, Paulie. I appreciate you showing me this. It clears it all up.” He paused, then pointed toward the laptop screen. “What about these other little bastards? The spics?”
“They’re dead, too, Tony. Remember? I don’t know if Little Dom did them to try and protect his ass, or whether his dad did that after he saw this video.”
“Dominic—I mean, Big Dom, of course—turned out to be a loyal friend,” Minelli mused. “How many guys would clean things up like this when it meant taking out their own kid? Even if he was a worthless little shit, he was still Dom’s own kid.”
“Dom sure did the right thing in the end,” Beretta agreed.
“Thanks again, Paulie,” Minelli said. “Our kitchens should be back open tomorrow. I can sleep a little better now.”
“So can I,” Beretta replied.
Kansas City, Missouri
Trask noticed that John Foote had left the courthouse before they had a chance to clear the air.
That’s okay. He got a chew-out in front of his peers and his boss. That’s never easy. We’ll talk after he’s had a chance to cool down.
He filled Barrett in on Papi’s suicide.