by Justin Scott
“You know, sir, heroin trafficking is like child molesting in that one takes the most advantage of those least able to resist. On the other hand, you’re not likely to entice Mr. Cirillo with butterscotch and toffee.”
The first rule of the dope trade was never do business with anyone recommended by the person with whom you were already doing business; your associate has turned informer and his new friend is a cop. Taggart had to get Crazy Mikey Cirillo to break that rule.
“This sounded a lot better in theory.” He had crossed lines by the very nature of his vengeance and expected to cross many more before he had destroyed the Mafia, but dealing junk was less like crossing a line than changing sides. The thing that kept rattling in his head was whether, if by some miracle they were to meet, his father would accept his goal as justification.
Reggie gave him a look, a reminder that heroin was Mafia currency, and Mafia power was wired to supply. Which made the Mafia just as dependent as the addicts on the street, and as ripe for exploitation.
A shiver ripped up the block, the junkies stirring as one, like grass in the wind. Taggart turned to the back window, expecting to see their dealer, but Reggie, alert to his mirrors, said, “We have a police car overtaking us. Two officers driving a brass hat.”
The NYPD blue-and-white sedan shot alongside. The siren blipped and the cop in front gestured to pull over.
Taggart lowered his window. “Hi there, Captain. Hunting pussy?”
“Chris! What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were some damned pimp.” The precinct commander stuck his arm out and they shook hands from car to car. “You trying to get killed riding around in that?”
“This baby’s a lot safer than yours. I look like a local hero. You look like the enemy.”
“What are you shopping for, a place to build a parking lot?”
Taggart winked. “Captain, if you were a very rich man I’d take you for a tour of the Columbus Avenue properties I bought in 1977. Harlem’s getting hot. Now’s the time to buy.”
“Get your checkbook. I’ll sell you my station house.”
The cars moved off.
At last the dealer came, carrying a gun, because the shortage had driven the price of a “dime” bag up to fifteen dollars. His own connection had been an hour late with half the bundles he had promised, and his price had risen to one hundred and twenty dollars for ten bags, up from the normal seventy.
Downtown, Harlem’s biggest black heroin distributor gazed mournfully through the iron bars of Gramercy Park as he discussed the dope situation with a Cirillo family crew leader. “If your people don’t connect with my people soon, I’m going elsewhere for product.” He was lying, in that he was already looking. The Cirillo capo repeated that he would have heroin soon. He nodded at the statue of Edwin Booth for something to say. “What’s the line on this guy?”
“His brother shot Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves.”
Beyond the park, through the far fence, the distributor noticed a beautiful Rolls Royce Silver Spur cruising past the Gramercy Park hotel. He had to get one of those; he had two cars already, a black limo and a red Corniche convertible, but neither booked like that white sucker with bronzed windows.
The capo tracked Crazy Mikey Cirillo to one of the family’s whorehouses, a Flushing brothel that catered to a big afternoon crowd. Mikey, who should have been attending to business, in the crew leader’s opinion, was putting on a show—a boxing match in a small ring in the basement. His hard-edged, handsome face was flushed with excitement, and the capo presumed he had just had a hit from the little gold sawed-off shotgun dangling around his neck. Shouldering through the mob around the ring, he reported the black distributor’s threat. Mikey’s expression turned menacing.
“Later.”
“Mikey, the guy’s not kidding.”
Mikey cut him off. “I’m taking bets. Sherry or Rita?”
Two naked women were warming up on the ropes, a big buxom blonde and a smaller brunette. Reluctantly the capo appraised them. “The blonde.”
“You’ll lose.” Mikey grinned. “Little Rita’s a killer.”
“This trouble can’t wait, Mikey.”
Mikey hit the bell with a ball-peen hammer. Thirty johns in suits and sports jackets cheered, and the girls tripped into the ring.
Because the light gloves hurt, Sherry and Rita had a longstanding agreement to pull punches. The johns didn’t give a damn. They were happy with spread-legged falls and undulating struggles to rise from the canvas. Besides, as Sherry had explained to Rita, if anybody got bored, they could go upstairs and get laid, which was what they had come for in the first place; the nude boxers were only a floor show. But today, Crazy Mikey made one of his unpredictable visits and tumbled to their arrangement.
His face clouded as he watched Rita pretend she had taken a roundhouse to the jaw. She flung her arms high, flopped to the canvas, crawled to the ropes, writhing like a snake, and dragged herself back to her feet with the enthusiastic support of the johns. Mikey rang the bell signaling them into their corners.
The johns crowded around, toweling them down, plunging champagne bottles between their lips, spilling the stuff on their breasts. Mikey leaned close to Sherry and whispered, “A big one for first blood.”
“You’re kidding.”
He crossed the ring to Rita, a tough little Spanish brunette with pointy breasts, and repeated the offer. Her eyes widened. “A thousand dollars?”
“All you got to do is make her bleed.”
He hit the bell again and the girls bounded out of their corners, the webbing of the rattan stools imprinted on their flesh. Sherry, the blonde, still seemed reluctant to really punch, but Rita went for the face. Sherry peekabooed. The smaller Rita flailed at her gloves.
“Go for the body!” Mikey yelled.
Rita stepped back, planted her feet, and sank her glove into Sherry’s belly. Sherry dropped her hands with an astonished gasp.
“Hit her!!”
Rita swung again, slugged Sherry in the face. Sherry sat down hard on the mat, crying. Blood trickled from her lip.
Rita pranced, clasping her hands over head and shouting,
“I get the grand. I get the grand. Pay me, Mikey. Pay me.”
“Hey, Sherry’s not out,” her champions protested.
“Don’t worry,” Mikey assured them. “Fight’s just getting started.”
The johns piled into the ring, heaved Sherry onto her stool, and poured champagne over her head. Mikey inspected her lip. “You all right, sweetheart?”
“I can’t believe she hit me,” Sherry sobbed, wincing as the champagne stung the cut.
“What are you, nuts?” Mikey laughed. “For a thousand bucks she would have blown a monkey.”
“It’s one thing to fuck for money. It’s another thing to hurt your friends.”
“Everybody’s got their price.”
“I don’t.”
“Sure you do. The winner gets five grand.”
“Forget it.”
“The loser spends a month on the third floor.”
Sherry gaped at him. “A month?”
“Every night. All night. Go for it, doll.”
He whispered the same to Rita and the happy grin slid off her face. The third floor serviced rich kinks. A gorilla stood guard to make sure none of the girls went to the hospital, but short of that the customers got to do what they paid for; ordinarily the girls rotated. Neither Rita nor Sherry had to obey Mikey and his manager, but if either left the Cirillo brothel she would find the rest of New York—the bottomless bars, the sex clubs, and the porn flicks—locked tight, which left the option of getting lucky and marrying a doctor or, failing that, working the trucks in Long Island City.
They came out slowly, measuring each other.
“Mikey!” the capo protested. “We need product!”
Mikey turned, cold and deadly, and the capo recoiled, realizing too late that he had made a mistake. Crazy Mikey was no fool just because
he happened to act like a spoiled rich kid. Goading a couple of girls into maiming each other might be merely a distraction while his brain shifted to overdrive to fathom what had gone wrong in the dope trade.
He reached for the gold coke spoon. Though barely an inch and a half long, it broke at the breech like a real shotgun, revealing a tiny cache of white crystals. Mikey snorted, closed the breech, and let it fall against his chest. “I’m doing it,” he said softly. “Now get the fuck out of here.”
As he watched the girls pummel each other’s faces, Crazy Mikey realized he had begun to get over the shock of his brother Nicky’s arrest by the Strikeforce. Three days ago he had been pulping a bookie who had screwed the family when the word came and a bunch of long-faced guys had whisked him away like he was suddenly President of the United States. His father, Don Richard, had commanded him to take over Nicky’s duties. Hé said he had faith in him. Later, the crew leaders told him bluntly how bad the dope shortage really was.
There was something going on that Mikey didn’t understand. Everybody said the shortage stemmed from two years of Strikeforce busts. They had included the Pizza Connection, the Anchovy Connection, the Sicilian Connection, the Pizza Connections Two and Three—even the fucking Nepal Connection. And now the Forty-fifth Street Garage Connection, which had led to the crew leader Vetere’s turning in Nicky. The arrests of wholesalers and importers had begun to squeeze New York’s heroin supply just as the junkie population had increased. That’s what everybody said.
Except that the Cirillos had been major importers and distributors for thirty years, and Mikey knew a lot of smugglers. Many who hadn’t been busted complained of hijackings, unexplained accidents, and mysterious betrayals. Add those stories up and something weird was going on. What, nobody knew. All that was sure was that product was short and getting shorter. He opened the gold sawed-off coke spoon again, raised it to his nose, thought twice, and emptied the coke on the floor. Fucking up his head wasn’t going to make his problems go away.
News of Mikey’s plight flowed relentlessly to his father, despite the fact that the old man was, in theory at least, retired. Within hours, his consigliere reported the threatened defection of the black Harlem distributor. They discussed it over iced tea on the patio of Don Richard’s home on a Staten Island hilltop. His thin red hair had lost some color in the decade since his dispute at Abatelli’s with Christopher Taggart, and he stooped a little, making his shrunken frame seem smaller.
Manhattan lay across an empty harbor. The shining Wall Street towers hid the Metropolitan Correctional Center, but in his mind’s eye Don Richard could see his older son’s prison as if the towers weren’t there. Forget the lawyers’ promises. They were bluffing. His elder son was going away for years; in terms of controlling the vast family—the only terms that counted— Nicky was as good as dead.
Don Richard’s consigliere warned that dozens of Cirillo capos were itching to fill his shoes.
“Mikey can handle it.”
“You know I love Mikey like he was my own,” the consigliere argued, “but he’s not ready.”
Don Richard shook his head. “He’s a fast learner and he wants it. That’s the most important thing. Even if he don’t know it yet, he wants it. Like I wanted it.”
“He’s the baby, your youngest,” the consigliere countered. “We expected less of him and he grew more slowly for it.”
“Bullshit,” said Don Richard. “That’s nut doctor talk.” He denied he had a soft spot for his youngest son—he was simply too hard and ambitious a man himself to admit such a weakness. In fact, his faith was rooted in memories of himself when he was Mikey’s age. Surely he had been as silly and arrogant, and look how far he had come without the advantage of the tall and handsome looks of a natural leader.
Mikey would perform when he had to, despite a soft childhood as the son of a rich and powerful boss. Don Richard was so sure that he decided to stay aloof of the heroin-supply problem. His consigliere repeated that rebuilding their shattered import network was too stern a test for Mikey, that Don Richard must come out of retirement to help. Don Richard ignored that advice, as Christopher Taggart was betting he would.
The old man noticed, through the chain-link fence on the road, a huge white Rolls-Royce. He glared, offended that some cheap Colombian cocaine dealer was house hunting in his neighborhood.
In the car, Taggart said, “Head for the airport. Let’s see what Miss Rizzolo has to say for herself.”
10
CHAPTER
“The shot’s worn off again,” Reggie said. “I ought to give her another before she hurts herself.”
“Wait.”
Fascinated and a little awed, Christopher Taggart studied Helen Rizzolo through a one-way glass. Reggie’s women had strapped her ankles and wrists to an oak chair, which was bolted to the stone floor. They had been careful not to hurt her, but no one had imagined the ferocity with which she would fight the unyielding leather, wrenching and twisting, her slight figure corded with straining tendons, and her face a mask of finely controlled rage. Her eyes met their own reflection in the mirror that camouflaged the view port, but she just kept struggling, as unselfconscious and determined as a leopard in a trap.
“I’m ready,” Taggart said.
Reggie touched his arm. “I beg you to reconsider.”
“We’ve been through this. She controls the Rizzolos. I can control the Rizzolos through her. They are tough, ambitious, and hate the Cirillos. As we hit the Cirillos, her family will pick up the pieces and recruit their soldiers.”
“Ask yourself why you’ve chosen this woman.”
“She had no criminal record. Her family’s attracted the least Strikeforce heat since Tony jailed her father. She’s innovative; she’s against drugs and is perfect to take over gambling. Plus, she needs help.”
All true. Starting with the thin lead Taggart had given his brother, Tony Taglione had made his name at the Southern District by convicting Don Eddie Rizzolo. When the Cirillos tried to move in on their territory, Helen’s brothers fought back in a bloody struggle which still smoldered and was exacerbated by mutual accusations of Strikeforce informing. The latest round had been the Cirillos’ shotgunning of Eddie, Jr., who had, as was his wont, survived.
“She’s also very beautiful. You’ve had your eye on her since her father’s trial.”
Before, thought Taggart, studying her through the glass. Long before. Like a sketch that captured the essence of the painting to come, the woman Helen Rizzolo had become had lived in the face of the girl Taggart had seen ten years ago in Abatelli’s restaurant. She had grown an inch or so taller, perhaps, and womanhood had made her arresting beauty even more exotic, but her qualities already had been there—the power in her deep, still eyes, her fierce pride, and her heart-stopping sensuality. He was unwilling to admit to Reggie that he was as smitten at the sight of her today as he had been when he was only twenty-one. Yet he was confident that in the past ten astonishing years he had grown capable of savoring her at a safe distance.
“I’m not going to blow my whole scam ’cause I like the way she looks.”
“Chris, while I was making our Sicilian arrangements, I had the great privilege of a love affair with a woman there. They never forget, they never forgive. If she ever realizes how you plan to use her family, she will destroy you.”
“I’m Sicilian, too.”
“One-quarter.”
“That quarter’s working overtime.”
He pulled a black ski mask over his face and entered the room. She stopped struggling the instant she saw him and Taggart thought again of an animal, a predator whose every move embodied the dual purposes of attack and defense. She acted like an animal conserving strength while assessing a new threat; patience replaced the rage in her dark violet eyes.
“Helen, no one’s going to hurt you.”
“Take these things off me.”
“Will you listen?”
Her eyes flickered over the stone wall
s, the small shuttered window, the solid plank door he had shut behind him, and his mask. If she was frightened, it didn’t show. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“I’ll listen.”
Taggart unbuckled her ankles and then her wrists, prepared to defend himself if she kicked. She stood up, quietly massaging her wrists. “My clothes are clean and I’ve been bathed. Who touched me?”
“A nurse and a doctor, both female, were with you all the time.”
“I’m thirsty.”
Taggart poured water from a pitcher on a rough table by the door. She drank half and continued to draw small sips from the glass as they talked. “Who are you?”
“A friend.”
“Listen, friend, do you know who I am?”
“Helen Rizzolo. You’re here because I admire how you run your business.”
“Ransom?” Helen laughed. “You grabbed the wrong person. I don’t run anything. My family owns restaurants and a bus line—neither of which are doing well enough to pay ransom. My brothers run them. I handle the books, which is why I know they’re not doing too well.”
“It’s a good story, Miss Rizzolo. The Feds believe it—at least the part about you not running things. More to the point, so do your rivals—the other New York families. They can’t believe a woman could head a tough Mafia family. But the truth is that you, and you alone, control the Rizzolo betting parlors, the numbers, the extortion, and the hijacking. Your brothers just carry out your orders.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You shut down the bookie joints when the Strikeforce hit. You stopped the war with the Cirillos. Yesterday, you ordered that one of your soldiers be, shall we say, ‘terminated,’ when he was discovered with a Strikeforce transmitter.”
“I don’t know what—”
“Your brother Eddie’s crew leaders beat his head in with a baseball bat after Eddie was done questioning him.”
“I don’t—” She reeled suddenly and dropped the water glass. It shattered on the stone. Taggart caught her as she sank to one knee amid the shards. Her body, which appeared delicate, was in fact as firm and resilient as a finely braided wire rope. She wrenched loose and bowed her head. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”