by Justin Scott
He wasn’t sure he wanted to show Tony the glass apartment. Tony derided anything lavish and sneered at the idea that extravagant design paid back tenfold in free publicity. Taggart thought he had had enough condemnation for one night and it was better to play the Helen thing through to the end. He asked, “How tough are the brothers?”
“The worst.”
“It’s not your problem.”
“You’ve already made it my problem. How’d you meet her?”
“At a fundraiser for a new parochial school. She was on the building committee.”
“What were you doing there?”
“The church was hitting me for a low bid. She was hosting the party.”
True and verifiable. It was a jampacked cocktail party in one of her family’s wedding palaces. He had gone for a final look before choosing the Rizzolos for his plan, and had not, of course, actually spoken to her. That came weeks later, after the kidnapping, when he visited her at her club and brought her here to the Spire.
“Didn’t you know who she was?”
He made himself sound contrite. “Yeah, I remembered, you know, from when she was a kid. Remember her that night?”
“I sure do. I also remember her glaring at me when I put her father away.”
“Well, I wanted a closer look. I was intrigued. When I got a closer look I liked what I saw. There’s a person there who’s more than just a Mafia goon’s daughter. She’s tough, sure. She’s strong, she’s intensely independent, she’s lonely as hell. She loves music and she’s beautiful enough to kill for. What else can I say?”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. Around the middle of May.”
“Did you know she was kidnapped about a week later?”
“Kidnapped? What do you mean?”
“Kidnapped. Snatched. She didn’t tell you?”
“I told you, we’re not that close.”
“Not close? The nurses said you were throwing hundred-dollar bills around the emergency room. How’d you hear she was in the hospital?
“Wait a minute. What do you mean, kidnapped? Who kidnapped her?”
Tony shrugged. “It was some kind of family thing.”
“Was she hurt?”
“She was back in a few days and it settled down quickly, so I assume they worked it out among themselves.”
“Does it have anything to do with the bombing?”
Tony shrugged again. Taggart could not guess whether he was denying he knew or was declining to answer.
“How’d you hear she was in the hospital? I’m told you were there twenty minutes after they brought her in.”
“I heard it on the radio. I called the bus barn. The cops told me.” Verifiable again, because it had happened precisely that way. He heard the news in the car, called, and got to the hospital less than half an hour after she had.
Tony said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Nothing’s stopped you so far.”
“Why don’t you marry Chryl or Vicky?”
Chris grinned. “I couldn’t marry just one of them; then you’d be back bitching about bigamy.”
“Marry somebody, for Christ’s sake. Settle down a little.”
“Me? What about you?”
“I’m too busy.”
“What if I married Helen Rizzolo?”
“You can go along when she visits her father in jail. Do you know she’s the go-between for him and her brothers?”
“I don’t know that. And you’re probably just guessing.”
“Does she know you helped me send him up?”
“You gonna tell her?”
“I’d love to because it would end it. But I won’t.”
“Thanks for the break.”
“It’s not a break. You were a confidential source. I promised not to blow your cover.”
“A man of your word.”
“Besides, if I did, her brothers would kill you. And I love you too much for that to happen.”
Tony removed his jacket and necktie, loosened his shirt, and mounted the column, planting his feet against the inside flange and gripping the outside with his hands.
“Where you going?”
Tony climbed straight up to the header, climbed on it, and attacked the next column. Taggart lost him in the dark. He tore off his own bow tie and tuxedo jacket, and started after him. Tony was sitting astride the top header, thirty feet above the plank floor and ninety-six stories over Manhattan.
“You really believe that about Uncle Vinnie’s hookers? That they’re just picking up a little spare bread?”
Relieved for any subject change, Taggart leaped into the argument. “I just can’t get on everybody’s morality case.”
“Chris, Chris, Chris. You know, sometimes I think you really are what you pretend to be.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a businessman. A genius at building skyscrapers and otherwise just a dumb, happy-go-lucky idiot. No offense?”
“Sure. No offense.”
They sat, Tony silently gazing at the city, and Chris wondering. Had Tony found himself lonely, as he himself sometimes did, when the action stopped a moment? Was this one of Tony’s rare lapses, when he tried to patch things up, feeling a little lonely and seeking to repair the tatters of their family? Did he just want to talk? And had used the excuse of Helen Rizzolo?
Tony had no confidants in the U.S. Attorney’s office—not with the iceman reputation he cultivated to mask his youth. He worked too hard to have close friends outside of the office. Women were drawn to him, as they had been as far back as Taggart could remember; the nymphs were lured by his power, the mothers touched when they convinced themselves they saw something vulnerable at his core. He had almost married in college, the year their father was killed, and again in Washington, when he worked for the Attorney General. Since then, Tony had retreated from involvements, like an old-fashioned athlete who feared women would suck away his strength. He bounced from woman to woman, dating professionals who were as career-oriented as himself, much the way—Chris had to admit—he himself would have done, too, if it weren’t for Chryl and Victoria, who in their way stabilized his life. Until now, of course, because connecting with Helen Rizzolo had unhinged everything.
Tony stood up and started across along the header that rimmed the thousand-foot structure.
“Take it easy. It’s dark and you’ve got heels on your shoes.”
Tony walked sure-footedly along the twelve-inch steel girder toward the nearest derrick. Chris followed his brother’s dim shadow, feeling a little crazy, a little daring, and more than a little paranoid.
Somehow, tonight Tony did not seem lonely. In fact he was aloof, in charge, and even more pleased with himself than usual. Chris caught up at the derrick, which leaned so close he could almost touch it, and sat down again, straddling the header. The ironworkers had left the boom in a nearly vertical position, so the V between boom and mast was tight, the two arms almost parallel.
Chris reminded himself that devious, convoluted plots were his way, not Tony’s. Tony constructed his court cases in a straightforward manner, much the same way ironworkers erected a steel frame, raising columns, connecting them with headers and beams, laying a floor, hoisting their derricks, and raising more columns. If Tony had an inkling of what he was doing, Chris knew, he would attack head on.
Without warning, Tony stepped off the header.
“Wha—?”
“You’re playing with fire.” Tony’s voice came out of the dark, several feet away on the derrick. He had jumped to the derrick and Taggart heard him ascending. He jumped to the derrick himself and climbed after him, although he couldn’t see Tony in the pale light cast up from the city and down from the stars. “Where the hell are you?”
“Hang on, I got a penlight.”
The little white light blinked to the side. Chris laughed. They had climbed the opposing arms of the derrick. Tony clung to the slightly slanted boom; Chris was on the mast, six or
eight feet away. They held silently to their respective perches as the wind sighed through the steel. Chris remembered something Tony had dodged earlier. “What did you mean that Brooklyn’s not out of your territory?”
“The Attorney General has amalgamated a new joint Federal Organized Crime Strikeforce. It now covers the whole city, Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey.”
“Who’s the new boss?”
“It comes under the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, so Arthur Finch controls it.”
“But who runs it?”
“He offered it to me.”
Taggart stared across the space that separated them. As neither Reggie nor Jack Warner had told him yet, it must just have happened. So that’s what Tony was sitting on; no tricks—something unthinkably worse. A new agency in the vengeful hands of his brother posed a deadly threat to his Shadow Mafia.
“Aren’t you a little young?”
“I’m connected in Washington from when I worked for the AG. They figure I knew enough of the right people to make the agencies cooperate.”
“Have you accepted?”
“We’re working out the details. I’m negotiating for as much autonomy as Arthur will give up.”
“Would you please come to work with me?”
“What? Are you nuts? I’ve fought for this Strikeforce for ten years.”
“Tony, you want to stay in public service and that’s good. But you’ve got to broaden yourself, get more experience, learn business, find what makes things tick.”
“You’d be surprised how much business you learn prosecuting crooked businessmen.”
“But get some managerial experience.”
“Chris, I have forty people working directly for me and hundreds of federal agents on tap. With this new thing, I’m running an army.”
Which was precisely what worried Taggert. “What about politics?” he asked, still searching for a way to separate his brother from the new Strikeforce.
Which was precisely what worried Taggert.
“What about ’em?”
“A guy like you should go into politics.”
“Maybe someday. But I’ve got other things first.”
“A stint in business would really set you up with the right people. Hell, the mayor of New York calls me a couple of times a week, I talk to the governor—I know you do, too, but more as Pop’s friend. I’m talking about hondling with them. I can put you in the same room with senators and congressmen, the party leaders. You need them to run for office. I really want you to work with me.”
“But the U.S. Attorney has offered me everything I need to destroy the Mafia.”
“It can’t be done that way.”
“You know a better way?”
“Of course not,” Chris said hastily. “But—”
“So it’s the only way.”
Taggart laid his cheek against the cold metal. He looked down and felt a sudden stab of fear. Anyone could fall.
“Is this why you barged in at Uncle Vinnie’s?”
“Sure. I had to tell somebody.”
The emotion soared between the derrick arms. It felt like Tony had flung him a net. “Stay there!”
“Wait!”
But Chris had already locked his eyes on the black edge of the boom, gathered his legs, and launched himself into the dark. Something brushed his shoulder and cold steel banged into his bare hands. Then he was clinging to the boom. He set his feet, sucked his palm where he had cut it, and looked around the dark.
“Tony? Where the hell’d you go?”
“Over here.”
His brother’s voice came from behind him, on the mast Chris had just left. “I told you to wait. I jumped, too.”
Chris sagged against the metal, his heart pounding.
“Get rid of that woman,” Tony called.
“What, you got the hots for her too?”
“I’m not joking.”
“Tony, I’ve got it bad. I’m going to play it out, see what happens. I’m going to do everything I can to turn her on to me.”
“She’s trouble.”
“Not for me. Maybe for you, and if that’s so, I’m sorry.”
“What if I bust her brothers? Can you imagine what the papers will do when they find out the connection?”
“I suppose it would knock ‘Nuns Staff Abortion Clinic’ off the front page of the Post. Are you going to bust her brothers?”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It puts a barrier between us.”
“No more Deep Throat?”
“I can’t talk to you anymore because I’m an Assistant United States Attorney.”
“But I’m your brother.”
“Sharing pillow talk with Don Eddie Rizzolo’s daughter.”
“You want to listen in?”
“Don’t fuck with me. This is serious, Bro. If I could stop it, I would.”
“When we were kids you stopped a lot by dating my girls. Why not Helen?”
“I already have.”
“What?”
“The summer we met her, for crissake, dummy. We went out.”
“Bullshit. You went back to Harvard the next day.”
“I came down from Boston to see her.”
“You prick!”
“Hey, it was ten years ago.”
Taggart was surprised how much it hurt, and he felt like a total ass asking, “Did you hit on her?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“What are you mad at me for? She was there too.”
“She has nothing to do with it. I asked you not to touch her. You ripped me off, Bro.”
“It was ten years ago,” Tony repeated. “Forget it.”
“I wish you believed in what was right as much as you believe in the fucking law.”
To his surprise, Tony apologized. “I’m sorry. That’s the last time I did something like that. I told you a few years ago, I don’t do that anymore.”
“It must have been weird when you prosecuted her father.”
“Very. I cleared it with Arthur first, of course.”
“Of course.”
“The point I’m trying to make now is, Helen Rizzolo is trouble, and until you dump her we can’t talk about anything that concerns my office.”
Taggart smiled in the dark. The most important thing was to protect his connection to the Strikeforce, but he couldn’t resist making Tony squirm for betraying him. “We can’t talk? What if I told you I heard about a heroin deal going down next week?”
“Call nine one one.”
“Five hundred kilos.”
“Five hundred?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“From whom?”
“Not her, and that’s all I’m going to tell you. Good night, Bro.”
“Wait a minute.”
“I thought we can’t talk.”
“Five hundred kilos? Where?”
Taggart smiled again. Reggie’s people had been pumping the rumor through the law-enforcement agencies, and Tony’s staff would surely have heard it by now. “Park Avenue.”
18
CHAPTER
“I’m so glad you could come, Chris.”
Taggart’s host, an elfin man with a gentle handshake and a reputation as the liveliest music scholar of the last two generations, greeted him warmly in the crowded foyer of the East Side apartment he used for an art gallery and a music room. Taggart had read his textbook in college, never imagining that years later he would be one of forty or fifty people invited by him to a musicale. The host introduced him to the composer, who looked equally nervous and happy, and to the soprano in a long green dress who would sing the new work. They raced off and Taggart confessed, “I’ve never been asked to something like this before.”
“Dear boy, brace yourself for an avalanche when the word gets out that Taggart Realty is supporting young performers.” He glanced at the foyer where more guests were pouring out of the eleva
tor and inquired politely, “Do you know anyone here?”
His guests included young men and women Taggart assumed were musicians, elderly wealthy-looking patrons with dour escorts, and some famous faces—a feminist, an architect, a writer, and a City Hall luminary, the deputy mayor for capital construction who was giving him grief on his stadium project.
“Who is that?”
“Isn’t she exotic? I was lecturing at Sarah Lawrence. She came up to me, enchanted by a conspiracy theory that a Cremonese scoundrel named Guadignini might have tricked two centuries of violin makers into believing that Stradivari, Amati, and Guarnari used untreated wood.”
“What’s her name?”
“Helen Rizzolo. She always comes alone. Shall I introduce you?”
“No, that’s okay. You’ve got more people coming.”
“Well, the bar’s in the bedroom. They’ll bring some munch-ies and then I’ll ask you young men to carry chairs in for the performance.”
Taggart found a white wine and made his way back into the living room. Helen was wearing a black cocktail dress—just a touch hookerish, he thought. Her jet hair was shorter than when he had seen her at the hospital and was swept back at the sides in a sleek, stylish manner that Victoria and Chryl would approve. Diamond studs flashed from her ears and when she pivoted toward him, her attention fixed on one of the many paintings, Taggart saw a single large diamond suspended between her breasts.
Working his way closer, he amended his opinion about the dress. Other women were similarly attired, but she was doing more for hers. A slick-looking European used the painting as an opening, and when she gazed up at him, listening attentively, Taggart felt a powerful jolt of jealousy.
He wandered about the room, waiting for the right moment to bump into her to ask if she would sit with him during the performance. The deputy mayor hailed him with a smirk. “Since when are you a patron of the arts, Chris?”
“I’m getting the inside track on the Carnegie Hall demolition.”
The deputy mayor’s wife went rigid in the second it took her husband to laugh, at which she drifted determinedly toward the wine room. Her place was taken immediately by Kenny Adler, a PR man whom Taggart had learned to treat as a member of the mayor’s administration. With one eye on Helen, who hadn’t noticed him yet, he asked, “So what are you guys waiting for on my stadium?”