There was a couch against one wall, with a large flat-screen TV above it. It was switched on, and an Italian programme was showing. Against another wall were two armchairs with green cushions that matched the colour of the display cabinet facing them. Above the armchairs, a large oil painting. Slowly, he moved.
And saw more corpses.
Two sat with their torsos thrown across the table, which was elegantly laid with trays of food in the middle. Two more, including the woman, lay on the marble floor. A bottle of red wine had fallen to the floor and smashed into a thousand pieces. The walls were riddled with holes and spattered with blood, now dry. There was more blood on the furniture. He noticed the many cartridge cases strewn on the ground. They were all small calibre: .22.
He knelt to get a better look at the bodies. The faces were horribly disfigured. They had multiple bullet wounds and appeared to have been shot at point-blank range, judging by the brain matter spattered everywhere. He lingered for a while, studying the positions and the bloodstains.
An act of homicidal madness had transformed this room into a slaughterhouse.
Reynolds had smelled something even sicklier and more unpleasant. He cast his mind back to one of his first cases, right here in Manhattan, almost twenty years earlier. It had been 16 December 1985. Around 6 p.m., in a street filled with people doing their Christmas shopping, Paul Castellano, the most powerful Mafia boss of the time, was shot dead, along with his driver and right-hand man, just as they had been about to enter a steakhouse. It had been a horrific sight: their bodies had been riddled with bullets. What he saw now demonstrated the same ferocity on the part of the killers. But were the killers the same?
The old Mafia, Cosa Nostra, had been dead and buried since the death of the last godfather, John Gotti, and had been supplanted by the Chinese triads, the Japanese yakuza, the Colombians, the Jamaicans, and - most vicious of all - the Russians. Where it existed at all, it had been relegated to a minor role.
Reynolds dismissed these images and proceeded with caution. He still had not seen the sixth corpse. He found it in another room, clearly a kind of den, at the end of the long corridor. Here too, the door was open. The body was lying on the floor behind the desk, the legs slightly splayed. The face, tilted to one side, was almost unrecognisable. The left eye had been blotted out by a bullet that must have gone through the eyeball and the brain.
It was immediately obvious to Reynolds that the victim must have been standing when he had been hit and that his killer would have been facing him. The shots to the head were a clear signature: it had been a Mafia-style execution, right here in a Manhattan apartment.
Two other details caught his attention.
One was that the dead man was wearing, on his left wrist, a gold Rolex encrusted with diamonds. It must have cost a fortune!
The second was the pistol on the floor beside the body. It was a 7.65. Next to it, a cartridge case of the same calibre. It appeared that the victim had managed to fire a single shot before he died.
Reynolds turned to the desk, a valuable antique. On it stood two photographs in silver frames. He looked at them, first one, then the other. It took him a moment or two to realise that they showed the same man at two different times in his life, but in the same setting, with a small mountain church in the background. There was a definite resemblance, he saw, between the man in the photographs and the victim. Then he noticed an oil painting on the wall: a landscape. In the foreground of the painting was a little church, perhaps the same one as in the photographs. Next, his eyes were drawn to a bookcase, the lower part of which had doors, and they were wide open. He crouched to look inside: a safe, with its door ajar. It was empty. He spent a few moments staring into the void, then at the digital combination pad, as if examining it.
In the other rooms, everything seemed clean and tidy. It was possible the killer, or killers, hadn’t even been in them. Reynolds thought over what he had seen: this was a luxury apartment, and the owner must have had a lot of money, there was no doubt about that. He looked for signs of a struggle, but found none. There was no way these had been chance killings. The victims had been specifically targeted. The killer, or more likely, the killers had entered the apartment and apparently taken away the contents of the safe.
‘Mike,’ he said to Bernardi as soon as he was back in the corridor, ‘we need to check out the hospitals as soon as possible. ’
His colleague looked at him questioningly. ‘Why?’
‘There’s a gun next to one of the bodies, a 7.65 calibre, and a cartridge case. The victim must have had time to fire a shot.’
‘I’ll get right on it, Lieutenant.’
‘Now let’s leave the Crime Scene Unit to its work. When that’s over, I want a thorough search, and I want you to deal with that personally, Mike. Oh, and phone the Assistant DA, he’s going to want to know about this.’
‘Sure thing, Lieutenant,’ Bernardi said. ‘This has all the marks of a mob hit.’
Reynolds paused, then said, ‘We need to know all we can about the owner of the apartment.’
‘Yesterday one body, now six more.’
The voice was unmistakable.
Reynolds turned, grim-faced. It was Cabot again. He hadn’t yet finished his shift. He’d often joked about the medical examiner’s deep baritone with Bernardi, but right now he was finding it really irritating. He would have liked to plug his ears, but instead he nodded a curt greeting. He watched as Cabot walked towards the forensics team, who had started combing through the apartment. Some were taking photographs from every angle to record the position of the bodies, some were spreading argentoratum powder to detect prints invisible to the naked eye, others were using vacuum cleaners to pick up fibres and hair, others were taking samples of blood from the floor . . . The usual routine.
The uniformed officer who had been talking to Maria Prestipino approached Reynolds and held out some sheets of paper. ‘The owner of the apartment was a man named Rocco Fedeli,’ he said. ‘This is everything we have on him.’
Reynolds started to read. Rocco Fedeli had recently celebrated his fortieth birthday. He had been born on 20 August 1963, in a small village in Calabria, San Piero d’Aspromonte, and had come to New York in 1986 on business. According to police records, he was an entrepreneur, the owner of a company distributing Italian food products in New York State. He also owned an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, near Central Park, and a three-star hotel, the Jonio, in Little Italy. He had no criminal record, and had never had any problems with the Internal Revenue Service. Someone quite unremarkable, so far as the authorities were concerned; one of the many Italians who had made their fortune in America.
He folded the papers and passed them to Bernardi, who had just rejoined him. ‘This is all we have on the owner of the apartment. He seems clean. I’ve certainly never seen the name before.’
‘Yesterday, a doorman shot dead with a gun equipped with a silencer. Today, six people murdered in an apartment. All in the same building, and the work of professionals. There has to be a connection, Lieutenant.’
‘I’m thinking the same thing, Mike. It can’t be a coincidence.’
‘I made the call. Assistant DA Morrison will be here soon.’
‘Thanks, Mike.’
From the other end of the corridor came the sound of someone sobbing. The two men turned to investigate.
‘It might have been twelve, or twelve thirty at the latest, when I decided to come here.’
Maria Prestipino was answering the lieutenant’s questions. He had sat down on a chair next to hers. She was crying, her arms hugging her chest and a vague look in her eyes. So far she had said nothing new, merely repeating what she had told the uniformed officer. In her right hand, she clutched a paper handkerchief, which she raised to her eyes from time to time.
‘What made you come here?’ Reynolds asked.
‘My parents and I had an appointment with my uncle at one o’clock. We were supposed to meet at his restaurant ne
ar Central Park, and I tried to phone him to tell him that Mom and Dad would be a little late, but there was no reply. I tried his cellphone, too, and couldn’t get through.’
Her voice was low, imbued with a deep sadness, and her face was as white as a sheet. She was silent for a few moments.
‘What did you do then?’ Reynolds prompted, looking her straight in the eyes: they were remarkably dark, though swollen with crying at the moment.
‘I started to get worried. I thought something had happened, but then I told myself I was being silly.’
‘Why?’
‘My uncle doesn’t live alone.’
‘Is he married?’
‘No, he lives with his domestic staff.’
‘Why did you have an appointment near Central Park?’
‘I was going to meet my other uncles. And also to see the marathon, as we do every year.’ There was a catch in her voice as she said this.
‘Your other uncles?’ Reynolds asked.
‘Yes, they arrived from Italy yesterday.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘There was nothing I could do.’
‘I mean, what did you do when you got here?’ Reynolds asked.
‘I rang the bell, but no one opened. I got more worried.’ At this point, she burst out crying again. She wiped her tears slowly, sighed, and said in a thin voice, ‘I saw him there on the floor in the entrance . . .’ She was still sobbing softly.
‘It’s all right . . .’ Reynolds stood up, went closer to her and stroked her back. ‘It’s all right, Miss Prestipino. When you say “him”, who do you mean?’
‘The man who worked for him. He helped in the apartment and was also his driver, and his wife cleaned and cooked. She was a really good cook.’
‘How long had they been working here?’
‘More than ten years, even before they were married.’
‘Were they Italian?’
‘No, Puerto Rican.’
Reynolds thought it best not to continue with his questioning for the moment. Maria Prestipino had turned even paler and now looked as though she might faint. She asked permission and got up to go to the bathroom, accompanied by a woman police officer. While they waited, Detective Bernardi sat updating his notes.
When Maria returned and sat down, Reynolds picked up where he had left off. ‘So you rang the bell and no one came to answer the door. Is that right?’
The young woman nodded, without looking up.
‘So what did you do?’
‘I opened the door. My uncle had given me a set of keys . . . For when he was away from New York . . .’ She was about to break down again.
‘It’s all right. Tell me, did the door look as if it had been forced?’
‘No. As I said, I opened it with my key, the way I always do.’ She fell silent for a few moments. Her eyes were tearing up more than ever and with her left hand she was twisting the fringe which came down over her forehead.
He asked her if she had touched anything, and she said no. She had stopped in the entrance, she said, at the sight of the body and the blood. First she had phoned her parents, then she called 911.
Reynolds asked her if she felt up to coming into the apartment with him and identifying the bodies.
‘No, I can’t. Please. Once was enough. Please don’t make me!’ She lifted her right thumb to her mouth and began to bite the nail, in an obvious state of agitation.
‘All right, there’s no need for you to go in. But can you just tell us if your uncle kept any photographs on his desk?’
‘Why are you asking me that?’ There was a tightness in her throat as she spoke.
‘I’d just like to know.’
‘He has two photographs of himself in front of the shrine of the Madonna of Aspromonte. Like all our family, he’s very religious. One of those photographs was taken when he was only eighteen.’
Reynolds did not press her. She’d more or less told him what he wanted to know: that the body in the den was indeed that of Rocco Fedeli.
There was a long pause.
In response to further questions, Maria Prestipino said that she had seen her uncle for the last time the previous Friday, when they had had lunch together in his restaurant and had arranged to meet today.
‘Thank you, Miss Prestipino. I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the precinct house with your parents as soon as possible to make a statement.’
‘All right, I’ll be there, and so will my parents.’ A little colour had come back into her face.
As he said goodbye to her, Reynolds noticed that her hands were red and moist and that her nails, although well cared for, were unpolished. He was walking away, followed by Bernardi, when he suddenly turned.
‘By the way, Miss Prestipino,’ he asked, ‘do you work with your uncle?’
‘No. I’m a student. I’m in my last year of college.’
‘What are you studying?’
‘Law. I attend Columbia Law School.’
As the two detectives were walking away, she bent and took her cellphone from her shoulder bag. It had been ringing for a few moments; the ring tone was Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. Reynolds and Bernardi heard her reply, ‘Darling, thank God it’s you!’
And her face lit up.
When Reynolds entered the apartment for the second time, Bernardi followed him.
In the den, someone was talking. They saw two members of the CSU bending over the body. The Assistant DA was next to them, saying something.
Ted Morrison was fifty-five years old, a short, bald man with a thin moustache and a paunch that made a bulge in his jacket. He was wearing a light grey suit. As coordinator of the special unit in organised crime, he was an expert in the field. The two detectives approached and greeted him.
‘When I got here,’ Morrison asked, with his usual cordial air, ‘I saw you talking to a young woman in the corridor. I didn’t want to disturb you. Who was she?’
‘The niece of the man who owned the apartment.’ Reynolds gestured towards the body. ‘That guy . . .’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Rocco Fedeli. An Italian, from Calabria.’
‘Can’t say I’ve ever heard the name. Does he belong to one of the families?’
‘Not as far as we know.’ Reynolds told him what he had learned from the files.
‘A complete unknown, then!’ Morrison commented.
The two detectives nodded.
‘And the others?’
‘We still have to identify them, but they all seem to be Italians, apart from the man in the entrance and the woman. They’re both Puerto Ricans who worked for Fedeli.’
‘And the others?’ Morrison asked again.
‘Two of the men might be Rocco Fedeli’s brothers; the other man we really don’t know anything about. At least, not from what Fedeli’s niece told me.’
‘Well, Lieutenant,’ Morrison said, ‘my advice is that you should ask the Organised Crime Control Bureau for help. This could be big.’
‘I think you’re right. In fact, I don’t think we have any choice.’
‘The FBI too,’ Morrison continued. ‘We all need to work as a team on this. NYPD, the Manhattan DA’s office, and the Feds.’
The two detectives exchanged looks and nodded.
‘I’ll contact them as soon as I can, if they haven’t already been informed,’ Reynolds replied. Deep down, he’d have preferred not to contact them at all. He wasn’t crazy about the Feds. He didn’t like the way everything was always so hush-hush with them, and he particularly couldn’t stand the way they swaggered around as if they were God’s gift to law enforcement. He liked to work with his own detective squad, and that was that.
‘Great!’ Morrison said.
In the meantime, Bernardi had switched his attention to two of the CSU people, who were busy doing paraffin tests. He went closer and took a look at the exhibits that had already been photographed and filmed: the gun, the 7.65 cartridge case, and the many
.22 calibre cartridge cases. The latter particularly interested him. He went back to Reynolds and whispered in his ear, ‘They’re .22s, just like the bullets that killed the doorman.’
Reynolds nodded and was about to reply that he had already noticed this when the oldest of the technicians motioned him over. ‘We just found the 7.65 calibre bullet under the bookcase. It had ricocheted off the wall and ended up near the corner. And the licence number of the gun has been filed away.’
Reynolds asked the men to check the safe, in particular for fingerprints.
‘We’ll do that last,’ they replied, looking at Morrison, who wandered over to the safe.
At that moment, a detective put his head in at the door and announced, ‘Lieutenant, the Prestipinos have arrived.’
‘I’m John Reynolds, head of the detective squad,’ the lieutenant said, heading towards them. ‘Mr Prestipino, perhaps you could come with me so we can get on with the identification. ’
‘I’ll go,’ the woman said, stepping forward. ‘I’m Rocco Fedeli’s sister. My name is Angela Prestipino.’
She was a short, sturdy woman in her early forties, her thick black shoulder-length hair slightly tinged with white. Her intense brown eyes gave a certain brightness to her face, which was devoid of make-up. She was wearing a black woollen suit, the jacket of which was single-breasted, and - the one touch of femininity - a pair of gold earrings.
Reynolds looked at her, surprised. ‘All right, follow me!’
They both put on paper overshoes and entered the apartment. Without any hesitation, Angela Prestipino identified the victims.
In the entrance she identified the Puerto Rican man, and in the dining room the bodies of her brothers, Domenico and Salvatore, as well as that of her cousin Nicola, who for years had managed the Hotel Jonio for her brother Rocco.
A Death In Calabria Page 4