Rampage

by Justin Scott

  She fled out the door before Taggart could stop her, dodged the cops, and raced toward her house. Plainclothes agents grabbed her at her front walk.

  “Hold it, miss.”

  “That’s my house. Let me go!”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Helen Rizzolo. Let me go! What happened?”

  Tony Taglione climbed out of an unmarked car.

  “What happened?” she cried. “Let me go in.”

  Taglione put his hand on her shoulder and held her with his dark eyes. “They’ve killed your brother Frank.”

  She reeled as if he had hit her in the face.

  She knew it couldn’t be. It was a mistake—one of the bodyguards instead—and the cops had made a mistake. Then she saw Frank’s van in the narrow driveway beside the house. The bulletproof windshield had been starred in a dozen places by armor-piercing shells, the passenger door was open, and dark blood had pooled beside a tire.

  I betrayed him, she thought. I betrayed my brother.“

  Eddie?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  “They shot Eddie, too. He’s in surgery.”

  “How bad?”

  “I don’t know. Your aunts are with your mother.”

  She turned to the house.

  Taglione took her arm. “Helen. Who did it?”

  “What?”

  “Who killed your brother?”

  She went rigid. “You bastard.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Tony shot back. “People you know killed him. Who?”

  She observed him through a haze of tears. It was her fault. She had manipulated Frank and Eddie to trust her; she had won their confidence; she had convinced them to serve her, so she could serve Christopher Taggart. Frank—her quiet and loyal panther—had been killed while she was at the Waldorf, falling in love with the man who had caused his murder.

  “Who, Helen?” Taglione repeated harshly.

  She turned her grief and confusion on him. “You animal! How could you talk to me like that?”

  He lashed back savagely: “Frank’s no innocent victim. Neither is Eddie. Neither are you. Your brothers did something to make the killers actually come to your house. They could have killed your mother, your relatives. Give me a lead, Helen. What’s the war about?”

  Taglione’s coal-dark eyes mirrored the security lights. It was like looking into the face of a robot. Clearly, Tony Taglione shared his brother’s capacity to hate, but not, she realized with aching sadness, Taggart’s capacity to love.

  She glanced down the street at Taggart, who was standing with the cops. He was straining to come to her. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s because Eddie and Frank were expanding, isn’t it? Because they were taking over Brooklyn? What ever gave them the idea the Cirillos would let them get away with it?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Thank you, Helen. Let’s talk again—after more people die.”

  Who’s left? she wondered bleakly as the full horror of what she had done slashed through her mind. I gave them the idea and they trusted me...

  Taggart had tried to follow her, not caring who saw him, but the cops blocked the way. “Wait here, mister. That’s a federal prosecutor talking to her.”

  “I’m Chris Taggart. He’s my brother. I gotta see him.”

  One of the cops made the connection. “Hiya, Chris. Yeah, you probably don’t remember me, but we met at a PAL supper. Okay. Let me just go ask.” He approached Tony and Helen and waited close by for an opening. Taggart watched Tony raise a tentative hand to her shoulder, and for a second Helen drifted against him. Then she moved away, her body sagged, and she seemed to disappear within her coat. She suddenly screamed at him, and Tony yelled back. Then they were silent, like two actors caught in the spotlight with no lines to say. The cop caught Tony’s attention. Tony glanced toward Taggart and nodded without expression. Taggart ran to her side.

  “Helen.”

  Her face, trembling, and tear-streaked, turned to ice. She turned her back on Taggart and climbed unsteadily up the steps. Her mother opened the door and Helen fell into her arms. Crying, holding each other, the women moved inside. The door thudded shut.

  “What did you do to her?”

  “I told her some guys killed her brother.”

  “What?”

  “In case you don’t remember, Chris, your girlfriend’s connected.”

  Taggart stared at Helen’s house. Every window was lighted, as were the windows in the surrounding houses. Security lamps glared down on the vans parked in the driveway, the backyard garage, and the tiny square of front lawn, which had faded to winter straw. The lead van had its windshield shot out.

  “Who did it?”

  Tony shrugged. “They’ve been fucking with the Cirillo family. The Cirillos joined up with the Confortis and some other scum and hit their books and numbers all over Brooklyn. It was bound to happen.”

  Taggart was stunned. The derrick boom had been only part of the attack. The Cirillos had retaliated across the board. Reggie had warned him. He had been too sure of himself. And now Helen blamed him.

  “I better go in and help her.” Belatedly, he realized that Tony was as cold and angry as he had ever seen him.

  “Chris, what in hell are you doing here?”

  “Driving Helen home. She was at my table at the Waldorf.”

  “Alphonse’s grandson’s date?” Tony asked scornfully.

  “You got guys following me?”

  Tony reached into his car and held the bulldog edition of the Daily News to the streetlight. It was open to a photo on Suzy Knickerbocker’s society page that showed Taggart shaking hands with the mayor. To his left were Helen and Alphonse’s wide-eyed grandson.

  “Her family’s in a gang war,” Tony said quietly, almost pleadingly. “If you don’t care about your reputation—or mine— would you please remember that hanging around with her could get you killed?”

  Which meant, Taggart realized with relief, the NYPD had not reported the fallen boom to the Strikeforce; the cops had bought the accident story. Now all he had to worry about was Helen. He said, “I’ll take my chances. And the whole point of the beard was to protect your precious rep.... May I ask what you are doing here?”

  Tony gave him a look and said only, “Doing my job.”

  “You’re not a cop, you’re a lawyer.”

  “Shut up, Chris... Here, get in the car. I’m not having a family fight with you on the street.” They closed the doors and Tony tore into him. “I can’t believe you put that woman at the same table with Uncle Vinnie and Aunt Marie.”

  “She’s a legitimate businesswoman.”

  “And it’s just a coincidence that her bus line, wedding palaces, and nightclubs are cash businesses which just happen to lend themselves to laundering Mafia money?... You’re forgetting Pop and everything decent he ever taught you.”

  “Oh, now Pop’s decent? But not decent enough for you to work for him—you had to work for the fucking government.”

  “I didn’t say Pop was decent. I said he taught us decent things.”

  “He did more than teach.”

  “He taught one thing and did another. Chris, I loved him too, but you gotta face that Pop rigged bids in the concrete business. And he paid off the Mafia.”

  “Shut up! My father was not a crook.”

  “Neither was Nixon.” Tony replied with bitter disgust.

  Taggart balled his fist. An agent rapped on the window. Tony turned his face, revealing the angry white scar on his cheek. The sight stopped Taggart cold. He sagged against the door. He couldn’t do that again, no matter what his brother said. Tony wound down the window, but his gaze burned hotly on Chris’s face, daring him to lash out. “What?”

  “Mr. Taglione, it just came over the radio. They got old man Rizzolo, too, in jail.”

  “Christ!” Tony shouted. “I told them to watch out for him.” He banged the seat with his fist. “We could have pumped him like an oil well
’cause they killed his son.”

  Taggart jumped out of the car.

  “Stop him!”

  He got as far as Helen’s front step. A telephone rang inside just as three marshals tackled him. He fought until Tony caught up. “Let me go in, Bro. Please. She adored him. It’ll kill her.”

  “Go home, Chris.”

  “What are you going to do to her?”

  “I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, with her brother murdered and her father murdered, she’ll be willing to talk about who did it. And why.”

  “But she doesn’t know.”

  “Chris, I’m working. Get the fuck out of here.”

  Inside the house, women began to keen, an awful, cutting noise. The sound of Helen’s rich, lovely voice rising to a shrill moan went through Taggart like a lance. He covered his ears; it was his fault. Her voice pursued him. She sounded as if her heart were clamped in cold iron. He couldn’t abandon her.

  “Tony, she needs me.”

  “Go home.”

  He struggled blindly toward the door. “I gotta help her.”

  “Get him out of here!”

  The agents dragged Taggart to his limousine and ordered his driver away. As the car turned around, Taggart watched Tony mount the steps and bang hard on the door.

  BOOK III

  DEATH OF A

  RACKETEER

  (The Present)

  22

  CHAPTER

  “It looks like a giant broad dropped her stocking,” said one of the ironworkers eyeing the wreckage atop the Taggart Spire. Taggart’s supers were chewing Turns and debating cleanup techniques with the rigger and engineers. The boom was draped over the outside header. The midsection sagged into the shattered living room; the top dangled over Park Avenue.

  Finally Ben, Taggart Construction’s senior project manager, voiced the majority opinion. “Getting it down is easy. Getting it down without dropping it, that’s the hard part.”

  “Get it down,” Taggart ordered savagely. “Now!”

  He had been up most of three nights, running on the ragged edge of sensibility. His face was lined and scruffy, with a yellow stubble. He was wearing jeans and an old Irish sweater, and he reeked of Canadian Club.

  “There’s a bow in that header.”

  “Can you straighten it?”

  “I wouldn’t in my house.”

  “Pull it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Seething, he directed the operation while the riggers and ironworkers cut the boom from the mast, repaired the bent bull-wheel, and rigged the mast to haul a new boom up from the street. His crews eyed him nervously, thinking it was the damage that had caused his rage—but it was actually the wreckage of his plan that fueled it.

  Down in the city, Reggie’s people were searching for Don Richard to settle the score. For by now it was clear that Don Richard had persuaded the remnants of the Conforti, Imperiale, and Bono families to join the Cirillos’ bloody citywide attack against the upstart Rizzolo clan. So clear, in fact, that Tony Taglione had convinced a grand jury to summon Don Richard to shed light on the affair. But Don Richard had disappeared.

  His consigliere had been subpoenaed as well. Sal Ponte had turned in his usual skillful portrayal of an aggrieved Italian-American gentleman lawyer, confounding the best of Taglione’s efforts to paint him as the mobster he was. No, he had not heard from his client for a week. Hardly unusual, he confided to the jury with a folksy smile; the elderly Mr. Cirillo was becoming a bit eccentric.

  Taggart had found the Cirillos no less elusive than his brother had. Yesterday, Taggart had blown up at Reggie, who reminded him of reality. “The last time Don Richard dropped out of sight, no one—but no one—saw his face for five years. He ran Brooklyn from 1965 to 1970 like the invisible man.”

  “Find him.”

  “I’m using every means at our disposal. I’ve got Sicilians searching Sicily, New Yorkers searching New York, black gangs searching East Harlem where he was born, Ghost Shadows tossing Chinatown. Our bookmakers are nosing around Atlantic City, and every retired mobster on my payroll is searching the South. We’re probably closer than the FBI, though not by a lot. There are more of them.”

  “What do you mean, the South? Florida?”

  “Florida, South Carolina, the Caribbean. He’s an old man, they get cold in winter.”

  “Ponte.”

  “Of course. We re watching Sal Ponte.”

  Taggart forced a plan out of his anger. “Contact Ponte. Remind him that Mikey owes us money. Tell him we understand it’s a problem, but we want to be paid. Tell him we’re willing to discuss a reasonable settlement.”

  Reggie sighed. “You haven’t forgotten threatening Crazy Mikey about Helen?”

  Finally, early in the morning of the third day since the Rizzolo massacre, Reggie’s spies had learned that Salvatore Ponte had abruptly canceled all his meetings. Reggie had thrown a team around his Fifth Avenue office, and Taggart was waiting for the results.

  Riley came up and said, “Those decorating broads are on the horn. I’m supposed to make changes in the lobby? They want enough juice to run a subway.”

  “Cancel it. Tell ’em I’ll explain when I get the time.”

  Twenty minutes later, Chryl and Victoria appeared on the roof. They surveyed the damage with experienced eyes and joked with the ironworkers, comparing it to classic accidents they had all lived through on other jobs. Victoria waved. “The winner! Even Trump never had one like this, Chris.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We thought you might be ready for a drink and a nap.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Ben says you’ve been up here three days. Come, on we’re taking a break.” She reached under his sweater. “God, you smell. Make that a bath, a drink, and a nap.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “So are we. We want to move on the club. Come on, the Jacuzzi still works.”

  He turned on them, his mind boiling. “We’re not doing the club.”

  Victoria grinned. “What, did you have a fight already?”

  “Don’t you read the fucking newspaper?”

  “You know damned well we don’t have time for newspapers,” said Chryl. “When we’re old we’ll read books about what happened in the papers.”

  Victoria reached for him again. “Listen, fella, you’re getting tired. Now come on.”

  Taggart whirled on them, the light so violent in his eyes that an ironworker moved to stop him. “Get off my job! Both of you.”

  Victoria backed away, blinking, and fled to the elevator. Chryl stood her ground, white with rage. Taggart said, “I’m sorry, what did I—?”

  “Don’t you ever treat her like that again.” Chryl raced after her. She held Victoria as the elevator descended, stroked her hair, and kissed her tears. “Hey. He’s under a ton of pressure. He didn’t mean it.”

  “He never talked to us like that.”

  “Well... ” Chryl touched her knuckles gently to Victoria’s lips. “He had to find somebody someday. You knew. I knew. We had him on loan.”

  “It’s not that! It’s like he’s getting scary.”

  Reggie returned at nightfall. He and Chris retreated from the mechanics who were stringing lights for the second shift and found a windswept perch on the north wall.

  “What happened?”

  “He got away. He somehow realized our meter maids were bogus and lit out the back door.”

  “Goddammit. Who fucked up?”

  “Rather than allot blame,” Reggie counseled, “I would give Don Richard credit.”

  “I want him dead. Now.”

  “He’s gone to ground again, and I’m afraid that is that.”

  “How’s he going to run things?”

  “Don Richard will instruct Ponte. Ponte will pass it on to Mikey. And Mikey will carry through.”

  “We made Mikey. The bastard was a lousy bone breaker before we made him the biggest dope distributor in New York.”

 
“What we did, just for the record, was reactivate Don Richard.”

  “I’m going to deactivate him permanently.”

  “In terms of your army,” Reggie answered, “the Rizzolos are effectively destroyed. We haven’t the means to attack Don Richard’s whole network.”

  “Then attack the top again. Mobilize every foreign group you’ve got. Fly’em in on the air ambulances. We’ll attack the Staten Island house. Ponte’s place in Alpine. Mikey’s apartment in Whitestone. Fucking level them. Then—”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “It’s pointless. All the top people have gone to ground. They’re not home.”

  “I don’t care. I’m going to destroy—”

  “Kill their wives and children?” Reggie looked at him coolly. “You don’t want that.”

  Taggart fell silent. Of course he didn’t, he told himself; he was just talking. But he had to do something.

  “Get Ponte. Squeeze it out of him.”

  “At this moment Salvatore Ponte is better protected than the President of the United States. Besides, the Strikeforce is all over him because they know he’ll be the go-between.”

  “Fucking wonderful.” He watched the second shift of ironworkers trooping off the elevator and mused gloomily, “How do you suppose Helen would react if I knock off Don Richard?”

  “She would sup on his entrails.”

  “But would she forgive me?”

  “Good evening.”

  “What? Where you going?”

  Reggie produced an Air France Concorde ticket from his Burberry pocket. “You suggested recently I take a vacation.”

  “Not when I need you.”

  “You need a plan, Chris. I can do nothing while you’re besotted with that woman. You’ve lost sight of your revenge. You don’t know what you want.”