Gardened of the Damned

by Blake Banner

  “I won’t.”

  She stood and started making breakfast. I heard the hiss of the bacon in the pan, and smelled the rich aroma on the air.

  “But you’re wrong about one thing, Stone.” She said it as she was cutting bread and putting it in the toaster. “We are not vigilantes, that’s true, but we are not cops, either.” She turned to face me. “We are people, hot-blooded, living, people.”

  Roberts and Levine, the firm Sonia worked for, was on First Avenue, near the corner with East 64th. It occupied the two top floors of an unassuming red brick that was only four stories high. But the inside left you in no doubt about what league they were in. The reception was small and cozy, and all the available wall space was taken with photographs of Roberts and Levine, and their senior partners, drinking champagne with various presidents and film stars, as well as the heads of the main Manhattan ‘Families’.

  The receptionist cocked her head on one side and smiled in a way you just knew she practiced in front of the mirror at home, and said, “She’s in a meeting right now, but said you should go right on up anyway.”

  I frowned. “She’s in a meeting, but she wants me to go up?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  I took the elevator to the third floor. There were just two offices and a girl sitting at a desk. She gave me the same smile as the girl downstairs. Maybe they practiced together. I told her who I was and she pointed at a door, “They’re expecting you. Just go right on in.”

  “They?”

  She smiled. I went in.

  It was a corner office, the size of an average apartment. It was decorated with old world elegance. The walls were lined with books. Some of them even looked as though they were used sometimes. Her desk was large and made of oak. She was sitting behind it and her uncle, Don Alvaro Vincenzo, was sitting on the corner of it. Over to the left, there was a sofa with two chairs and a coffee table. There was a man sitting there on the sofa, who looked as though he could break bricks with his face. All three of them were watching me.

  I smiled sweetly and closed the door. “Good morning, which one of you is Sonia Vincenzo?”

  The guy with the dangerous face glanced over at Sonia and her uncle with a, ‘Well, it’s not me, so it must be one of you guys,’ expression.

  Alvaro said, “I like a man with a sense of humor, Detective Stone, it’s a shame you haven’t got one.” Then he laughed out loud, staring with manic eyes, first at his hard man and then at his niece.

  Sonia said, “Come in, Detective, I hope you don’t mind, I have asked Don Alvaro and Mr. Vitale to join us.”

  She was beautiful. She looked like she’d been made by Armani: today she was exquisite, tomorrow she’d be out of fashion, and by next year, her seams would be coming undone. I shook my head.

  “I don’t mind at all. I am just wondering why.”

  She indicated a chair across from her desk and I sat. Don Alvaro smiled down at me. He was a tall, elegant man with expensive, gray hair and an expensive suit.

  “We don’t often talk to the cops these days, Detective Stone, usually it’s the Feds.” He said it with urbane humor, like he thought he was being sophisticated.

  Sonia said, “It pays to take precautions. With all the micro-technology that you boys use now, it is good to have some reliable witnesses to contextualize the stuff you record. It would not be the first time the NYPD have tried to entrap a member of my family.”

  I grinned. “Yes, I have often wondered why we target the Vincenzo family, such decent, upstanding members of the community.” I turned to Alvaro. “How is Pro, by the way?”

  His smile wasn’t so much thin as anorexic. “What do you want, Stone?”

  I turned back to Sonia. “Actually, I have no interest in your family at all, Ms. Vincenzo. I wanted to ask you about somebody else.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “Sean O’Conor.”

  If I had slapped her in the face with a wet mullet she wouldn’t have looked more surprised. I glanced at Don Alvaro. His face was like granite, but he had two cute pink spots on his cheeks. Sonia shrugged.

  “Sean… Why, I have had no contact with Sean for over ten years.”

  The Don slid his ass off the desk and walked over to stare out the window.

  “What was the nature of your relationship, Ms Vincenzo?”

  “Relationship…? I wouldn’t describe it as a relationship… We were acquaintances…”

  “Acquaintances. How did you meet?”

  “We met at law school. We were both working in Manhattan. We met occasionally for a drink…”

  I studied her face a minute, still smiling. “If you’ll forgive me saying so, you seem…” I spread my hands. “Odd bedfellows, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Him a devout Catholic, champion of the poor and the needy, savior of souls, you, a member of the…” I smiled at Don Alvaro’s back. He was rigid. “… immensely powerful Vincenzo empire.”

  He turned to raise an eyebrow at me. She said, “We were just acquaintances, Detective.”

  “Not bedfellows? Do you happen to know where he is now?”

  “We lost touch.”

  “Did you correspond?”

  “Correspond?”

  “By email, for example. Did you ever exchange emails?”

  She could sense a trap. So could her uncle and he was watching her like a hawk.

  “We may have exchanged a few.”

  I let her see in my eyes that I knew that. What I wasn’t sure about yet was whether her uncle knew that. I took a slightly different tack.

  “What kind of man was he, Ms. Vincenzo?”

  “Well,” she shrugged, “I didn’t know him that well…”

  “Really?” I waited, giving her space. She glanced at her uncle, but didn’t say anything, and so I moved in, “Because I was under the impression that you two were pretty close.”

  “I don’t know what could have…”

  “Didn’t you, for example, write to him threatening to put him in hospital if he broke up with you?”

  I felt rather than heard the tough guy stand up. Alvaro gave him a ‘hang on’ look. Nobody spoke for a moment.

  “I don’t know what the source of your information is, Detective.”

  I put a smile on the right side of my face.

  “Cute, a lawyer’s answer. But you and I both know what the source of my information is. You wrote that email, and clearly, if I have read it, it must still exist.” I looked up at the Don. “Did you know about their relationship, Don Alvaro?”

  He didn’t answer; he just gave me the dead eye.

  “See, the thing is, Sonia, that right after you wrote him that email, he was executed.” I looked back at Don Alvaro. “And I do mean, executed.”

  She looked shaken. “I didn’t even know he was dead.”

  “What, didn’t you ask your uncle not to tell you when it was done?”

  She sighed. “I’m an Italian, Detective Stone, we are hot-blooded and passionate. When we fight, we say things in the heat of the moment, but we don’t mean them. It’s bluster. It doesn’t mean anything. Sean and I were having an affair. I wanted to make it more permanent. He was… He was a very special kind of man. He told me he couldn’t live with me. He believed the stories about my family, and me. So he told me he was breaking it off. I was hurt; my pride was hurt, so I wrote him a very foolish email. That was all there was to it.”

  “And within the week he turns up dead.”

  “That had nothing to do with me.”

  I made a skeptical face and gave my head a little shake. “I just keep wondering, keep turning it over in my mind, how does a guy like Sean, as pure as the driven snow, wind up being killed in a textbook Mob execution?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because, right now, Sonia, your email comes damn close to being a confession.” I looked at her uncle. He had a face that could have sent a zom
bie back to its grave. “I think you had better explain, Don Alvaro, that this is a time to be cooperative, because two things are about to happen. First, I am this close,” I held up my thumb and my index finger to show how close I was, “to pulling you both in on a charge of murder one.”

  Alvaro said, “You’re bluffing,” but he wasn’t sure.

  “And two, Sean’s murder is about to hit the news. He is not only going to become a national hero, an Irish Catholic battling organized crime single-handed, he is also going to become a martyr in the local, Catholic communities that you prey on. He’s going to be the guy who stood up against the Irish Mob and the Mafia to fight for the little guy, the homeless children and the exploited mothers, and was ruthlessly murdered for it, by you. And I am wondering, how is it going to look when Don Alvaro Vincenzo’s niece is implicated, and her email, threatening to have him murdered, is leaked to the press? If I were you, I’d be thinking about avoiding that ever happening. And your best way of doing that right now is to tell me everything you know about Sean O’Conor.”

  I sensed King Kong sit down behind me. The tension eased and Don Alvaro looked at Sonia. “So?”

  She studied my face for a long time. You could almost hear the cogs turning in her head. Finally, she shook her head, “So nothing. There is nothing more to tell, I was young, he was an exceptional man. I guess I thought he could offer me a way out of this.” She looked up at her uncle. “An escape from la cosa nostra. We fucked a few times. For him it was some kind of release, a moment of madness, for me it was hope. It was never going to last.”

  “That’s very touching and insightful. Did he ever share information with you about what he was involved in?”

  She sighed, hesitated. “If I were smart, Stone, this is where I would tell you that he was corrupt, trying to blackmail my family, secretly taking payoffs from the Irish, and that’s why he got hit. But I am not going to do that. Aside from screwing me, he was everything he appeared to be.” She thought a moment. “Was I mad enough to have him killed? Yeah, I was. Did I think about it? Yes, I did. Did I do it? No. No because my dad and my uncle would have been furious with me for getting involved in the first place, and because bottom line was, I still loved him.”

  I repeated, “What was he involved in?”

  “As far as I know, he was going up against the Hagan clan. Something to do with squatters.”

  “Anything else?”

  She frowned. “There was something. He was real vague about it. He said it was going to send shockwaves through the Catholic establishment, but he never told me what it was.”

  I looked up at Don Alvaro. His face was about as expressive as a frozen Swede who’d died of boredom waiting for a bus.

  “How’d you feel about shockwaves in the Catholic establishment, Alvaro?”

  “I don’t give a fuck what the Irish do. Who gives a fuck about the fucking Micks?”

  I turned back to Sonia. “What about other women?”

  “Sean?” She sounded incredulous, giving a little laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  I stood. “You don’t need an Irish saint to come and save you, Sonia. You just need enough backbone to keep you upright while you walk away.” I glanced at Don Alvaro. “Say high to Pro for me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  TWELVE

  I picked Dehan up outside the precinct and we headed for East 161st Street to meet Conor Hagan. His construction company had the top floor on a 1930s red brick office block on the corner of Park Avenue. We arrived punctually at five to twelve. We told the pretty receptionist who we were. She listened with interest, cocked her head on one side and smiled. Maybe they taught them to do that in Receptionist School.

  “He’s not here? He went out to lunch? But he said to tell you where he was if you wanted to join him.”

  I smiled back. “Good. Tell me.”

  “He’s at the Shamrock? Two blocks down, on Melrose Avenue?”

  I frowned. “Are you telling me or asking me?”

  She frowned back.

  Dehan said, “She’s telling you. Come on.”

  In the elevator, I said, “We’ll get in the car now? We’ll drive to the Shamrock? Talk to Conor Hagan?”

  “You’re a real ass, you know that?”

  “You’re, like, hurting my feelings?”

  “Stop it or I will hurt you. And not just your feelings.”

  Conor Hagan was hard to miss. He was six four and looked like Michaelangelo’s less talented cousin had made him out of concrete. He was sitting at a table in the corner with a pint of Guinness and a couple of beef sandwiches. There was a sheaf of papers in front of him and he was absorbed in reading them. He looked up as we approached. He ignored our badges and studied our faces as I told him who we were.

  He indicated the chairs opposite and put his papers away in a briefcase by his side. As we sat, he said, “What do you want?”

  His accent was Bronx, with overtones of Dublin.

  “We’d like to talk to you about Sean O’Conor.”

  “Who?”

  Dehan said, “Sean O’Conor, he…”

  “That’s like saying to an Englishman, I want to talk to you about John Smith, or to an Indian, I want to talk to you about Arjun Patel. I must know at least a hundred Sean O’Conors. Who the fuck is Sean O’Conor?”

  His eyes were pale blue and hard. They were the eyes of a killer, ruthless and dispassionate.

  Dehan sighed. “Out of the hundreds of Sean O’Conors that you know, how many of them have tried to block a building project while protecting the rights of the squatters who were inhabiting the building you wanted to develop?”

  He bit into his sandwich and chewed. “You’re talking about Tiffany Street.” It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer. “2004. Sean O’Conor. He was the piece of shit who organized it, from his shabby little offices on Sheridan Avenue. What about him?”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I never saw him. He talked to my lawyers. My lawyers tried to talk to him.”

  She persisted. “What did your lawyers think? Did he have a case?”

  His eyes were not just hard, they were aggressive, seemingly tearing her apart to see what was going on inside.

  “No.”

  “Why not? He said he had proof your agents had accepted rent.”

  “Some of them had, without my knowledge, and they were dealt with. But before he ever came along with his little crusade, I had already made arrangements with the church to have them re-housed, and those that couldn’t be re-housed, given shelter. The building was unsafe and unfit for human habitation, and there were kids in there that were not being schooled. Some were orphans. There were mothers out of their fucking minds on crack; some of the fucking kids were addicted. I wanted them out and on some kind of program to get them re-housed and the kids into school. The government was less than fucking cooperative so I talked to the church, offered them money, and we made a deal. So Sean fucking O’Conor had no case from the word fucking go.”

  I frowned and scratched my chin. “You got proof of this?”

  He leaned forward and stared hard into my eyes. “I don’t need fucking proof. You got a problem with me, it’s up to you to adduce proof. Isn’t it, copper?”

  “I haven’t got a problem with you, Conor. I’m just trying to understand what went down. Have you got proof?”

  “Of course I’ve got fucking proof. The whole thing was drawn up with lawyers and contracts.”

  “And Sean knew this?”

  “He should have. He was told often enough and I had my lawyers take him the fucking documents to see. But he wouldn’t have it, so fucking stupid. Nothing would do for him but that the work was stopped and there be a fucking inquiry into the conditions in which those people were living.”

  “Did you ever talk to him?”

  He thought about it and nodded. “Yeah, in January, just after Christmas. I phoned him and told him to leave the fucking case alone, he didn’t st
and a chance. I told him if he didn’t drop it I’d fucking bury him and he’d never practice again in New York.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was babbling some shite about how he was going to expose me for the scum I was.” He sat back and his face sank into shadows. “Anyway, I must have got through to him because he dropped the case and nothing more was ever heard of him. Why all the questions?”

  Dehan said, “He was murdered.”

  He leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. “Good, but my beef with him was twelve years ago. If I had been planning on killing him, I would have done it back then. Plus, I would have enjoyed the whole fucking court case farrago because I would have shown the miserable twat up for the fucking gobshite he was.”

  There was a trace of a smile on her face. She gave it a beat, then said, “He was executed twelve years ago, on the fifteenth of January, just after you spoke to him and told him you would bury him. And his body was found in one of your dumpsters, on Lafayette, just by Father O’Neil’s church.”

  He was quiet for a long time, staring at his Guinness. He didn’t look scared or worried, he was just thinking, calculating. Finally, his brow contracted and his eyes narrowed. He looked up at Dehan. “The tramp. That tramp was Sean O’Conor.”

  I raised my own eyebrow. “You’ve got a good memory.”

  “No. I have a superb memory. And I’m not a thick, fucking Mick, so don’t think you can pull one over on me or stick me in the frame.” He pointed a finger like a beef sausage at me. “Come after me, Stone, and I will destroy you both. Make no fucking mistake.”

  I gave him a look of boredom. “Bring it down a level or two, Conor. Nobody is coming after you and you are not going to destroy me. If it wasn’t you who had Sean executed that night, who was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dehan said, “Whoever it was, was operating on your patch.”

  “I know.”

  “So you must have some idea who it was. Was it the Italians?”

  His face was sour. “I told you, I don’t know. Get out. I’m sick of looking at your fucking faces. You spoiled my lunch, just fuck off out of here.”