by Justin Scott
“My thought exactly.” Reggie fumbled a red key from his pocket, inserted it in a panel under the wheel, and moved a series of switches. Each caused a red alarm to blink.
He looked back again. “We’ll round the pier flat out and throttle back. You go over the side. Swim under the pier. We’ve a motor yacht—Popeye—in the yacht basin. Climb aboard on the stern step.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you as soon as I set the boat on her way.”
“You’ve got one arm, Reg. I’ll set the boat.”
“Don’t argue. I’ll steer. Pull the throttles when I tell you.”
He took the wheel. The black boat tore past the yacht basin and around the pier that formed its downriver boundary. “Now!”
The black boat slowed as if they’d hit a wall. Reggie turned the bow back to the river. “Go! What are you doing?”
“Sorry, old chap. I’ve already lost a father. I’m not going to lose a father figure.” Taggart picked Reggie up, astonished how light he was, and swung him over the gunnel. Reggie fought with his good arm. “This is what you pay me for.”
“This one’s on me.”
He threw Reggie overboard, steered around him, hit the throttles, set the black boat thundering for the river. The pursuit boat rounded the pier and the helicopter flew over it with a spotlight blazing. Taggart rolled off the far gunnel. The black boat ripped past him like a trailer truck. The hull smacked his head and he sank half-conscious into the bitter cold water. He heard a roar, saw the dark shape of the pursuit boat coming straight at him, and tried to dive. It clipped his back and drove him farther under. It sounded like a subway train going overhead. He surfaced, thrashing in the froth of its wake as it tore after the black boat.
The double roaring of the two boats moved swiftly across the river, trailed by the buzzing and thudding of the helicopter. Suddenly the middle of the Hudson was lit by a white flash. Flame and thunder split the night. Seconds later, all was silence, but for the frustrated growl of the Strikeforce craft hunting for survivors to arrest.
Taggart swam under the pier and found Reggie clinging to the teak stern step of Popeye, an enormous luxury trawler which was moored out of the light. Taggart helped him up. “Where’d you get this?”
Reggie stood up uncertainly. He had lost his night goggles and Taggart saw him try to smile. “We never gave second chances, but we always kept a backup. Leave your glasses on; my people shouldn’t see your face.”
A tough-looking charter captain greeted them in the salon. Reggie issued swift commands. “Our doctor, hot baths, dry clothes, and a car to the air ambulance.”
An hour later, Taggart rode out of the marina with him. The car stopped at Park and Twenty-third, and Reggie extended his hand. He looked gray with pain and fatigue, but his eyes were fathomless flat pools. “You’re done. It’s been interesting.”
“Well, let’s—if your arm doesn’t hurt too much—let’s go have dinner or something. Tina’s is right around the corner.”
“I really ought to press on. I’ll drop you here if you don’t mind. I’m just a wee bit knackered.”
Taggart embraced him suddenly, catching Reggie by surprise. He wanted to say something, but all he got out was “Where are you going?”
“Europe.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight. When your brother and his Strikeforce finish interrogating Crazy Mikey, they’ll likely be looking for an Englishman.”
Taggart stood in the street and watched his car drive away. He looked up Park Avenue where the lighted top of his Spire stood like a beacon. Mike Taglione would have loved it, and for a brief second he felt his father’s presence, as if Mike’s heart were beating in his own body. Then he hurried to a pay phone and tried to call Helen to see how he could help with her brother, but all her lines were busy.
Tony Taglione let a United States marshal drive him home, something he rarely did. Rather than be tempted to abuse the service, he took taxis or drove his own car. But tonight—or rather, morning, as a high white disk of sun burned through the fog—he had earned it.
Crazy Mikey Cirillo and Eddie “the Cop” Rizzolo were caught on a doper boat, thanks to Strikeforce agents sticking to Eddie Rizzolo and bugging the right weight machine. Eddie had thrown a briefcase overboard—somebody should have told him that cash floated. Eight million dollars. And under the boat’s floor were fifty kilos of pure heroin.
Each swore he was framed, which had, Taglione recalled with a weary smile, some of the toughest DEA men in New York in giggles. Now the lawyer’s job started. Fifty keys meant no bail. So while some of Taglione’s attorneys prepared the drug case, they had time and opportunity to persuade one of the two to flip—not Eddie, but maybe Crazy Mikey, if he was handled properly. It was as good a day as he had ever had on the Strikeforce.
“Here you go, Mr. Taglione. You want I should wait?”
“I’m going to crash for a few hours. Can somebody pick me up at one?”
He staggered up the front walk, picked up two days of newspapers off the porch, and let himself in. Tired as he was, he knew he was miles from sleep. He poured three fingers of Canadian Club and sipped it straight. His eye fell on the piano, which he used to play, and on the model of his father’s building.
“Hey, Pop. How you doing?”
The little derrick, which Chris had broken the night of Mike’s funeral, still lay on its side on the top deck. Taglione swore, as he did each time he noticed it, that he was going to fix the model as soon as he had time. He looked around the room, glad he had stayed in this house. His mother and father were alive here. He had left the living room unchanged. Vicky and Chryl, in one of their attempts to befriend him, had recommended special East Side cleaners and upholsterers who took care of it.
He had to get out of here, someday. It was almost a sin to waste so much space on one person in such a crowded city. But it fitted his needs. Every now and then, when Arthur insisted he submit to an interview, the interviewer always asked, Was he lonely not being married? He had given up on the truth and said his work was everything. It was everything, but here he was connected. The house, and the mark his parents had put on it, and the neighborhood. Neighbors and aunts kept slipping in the back door to stash casseroles and cheesecakes in the refrigerator. And time went fast. Kids on bicycles grew into earnest teenagers who asked which was the best law school. The paper boy had just graduated from the Police Academy, and the little girl who weeded his mother’s flowers was interning next summer at his office.
He started upstairs, where he had taken over his parents’ bedroom. It was big and comfortable, had its own bath and a king-sized bed, convenient when he brought a date home. He used his father’s desk in one corner and had a comfortable armchair for reading in the other. Heavy drapes blocked the daylight completely.
Either the booze was working or he was blind tired, but he was sitting on the bed, trying to get his shoes off, before he realized he wasn’t alone. He smelled perfume and looked up sharply. A lamp flared, and there, in his armchair, with her feet tucked under her and her dark eyes luminous, was Helen Rizzolo.
27
CHAPTER
“Where’s your geeps, in the closet?”
He was afraid, and that made him angry. Prosecutors talked about this kind of thing happening. The office employed basic defenses—unlisted phone numbers, marshal protection when threatened, even transferring convicts who made threats to harsher prisons to remind them it was not the individual prosecutor but the government that meted out justice.
“I came alone,” she said.
“Then leave alone. What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“My brother was arrested.”
“I know.”
“You charged him with dope.”
“Miss Rizzolo, I want you out of here.”
“He doesn’t deal dope.”
“Out!”
“I don’t let him deal dope.”
“Mis
s, you are talking to an officer of the court. I have to advise you that anything you say can be used against you. Do you wish to continue informing me about what you allow and don’t allow your brother to do?”
“My father is dead. My brother Frank is dead. Eddie is all I have left.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
He got off the bed, but a sea of grief and weariness in her eyes made him extend his hand to help her out of the chair. “You’re beat,” he said. “Go home and sleep. Let your lawyers do their job.”
“My family is dying.”
“What are you saying to me, sweetheart? It’s not me. It’s them. They hurt people. They take, they subvert. And they got caught. We’re going to put them away like the rest of the Cirillos. And like your father.”
She looked up, her eyes liquid, wondering, Would she be afraid if she had nothing to sell? Would Tony Taglione terrify her if she were defenseless? Would she resign herself to her brother’s being lost forever? But such questions dodged the issue. She had not entered the prosecutor’s house empty-handed. She had plenty to trade, if she must; more to sell than Taglione could imagine, if she could bear to do so.
She prayed there was another way. “My father... ” She wet her lips with her tongue. “You never once looked at me during his trial.”
“I was busy. It was the biggest case I ever argued.”
“His lawyers kept saying how good you were.”
“They had to blame somebody.”
“My father didn’t blame his lawyers.”
Taglione smiled coldly. “I forgot. Colombian hoods shoot their lawyers, but Italian hoods understand the power of the court, so they shoot witnesses.”
“Why wouldn’t you look at me?”
“Getting kicked and bitten by mobsters’ female relatives is not my idea of courtroom demeanor.”
“You know better than anybody I wouldn’t do that.”
Taglione shrugged. He had been unfair. “Of course I saw you. You came prim and proper to the courtroom every day. Little Miss Bus Line Executive in those linen suits and the lavender scarf and the Gucci briefcase. And that gold logging chain around your neck so no one on your side would forget exactly how rich and powerful you really are.”
Helen smiled at him, relieved that somewhere behind his priestly gaze he still had feelings. Taglione felt himself drifting into her eyes... floating into the past, ten years back, nearly eleven, in a shimmering memory, a moment, spontaneous, wonderful, and never-ending... a crazy moment of his life that started the night Chris got beaten up at Abatelli’s. It was frightening how well she knew what he was thinking.
“Did you ever tell him?” she whispered.
“Tell who what?” he asked, an involuntary smile making a lie of his question.
“Tell your brother how we met in the phone booth?”
“Just last fall, when you two started hanging out. He was my little brother; he saw you first and flipped. I couldn’t do it to him.”
Helen looked away from the bed; Chris had told her the truth. He had fallen for her at first sight.
“You never told him before that we went out?”
"... I didn’t want to. It was mine.”
“Not just yours.”
“But not his. And not my father’s. The last crazy thing I did in my life.”
“You opened the phone booth door,” she said. “And you smiled. You’d already smiled when you went by my table. I thought, What the hell? They can marry me off, but this is my secret.”
“You came out of the ladies’ room, stoned to the ends of your beautiful hair. God, you were such a beautiful girl.”
“Every time I see an old Lincoln I think of the front seat of your father’s car I never asked you who was on the phone.”
“A criminal investigator with the U.S. Attorney’s office. He put me on hold while he checked out your father for me.”
“I always wondered if you were dating me to investigate my family. Am I right?”
“They didn’t teach that in law school.”
“How come you stopped calling?”
“Somehow, back at Harvard, when I could finally think straight, it didn’t seem like a relationship with a future. Besides, you were engaged.”
“I thought it was because I wouldn’t go to bed with you.”
Tony smiled. “To tell the truth, Helen, making out with you in the front seat of my old man’s car was better than sleeping with most women.”
“Thanks.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
She laughed. “You were a turning point in my life, Tony Taglione. It was the first time I was ever smart about a guy. I owe you one. You helped me settle down. I married. And even though that didn’t work out, I became a real woman, so I was ready when my family needed me. Maybe my whole family owes you.”
Tony stiffened and the humor went out of his eyes.
“Did you think of me when you persecuted my father?”
“The word is prosecute.”
Sorry.
“Of course I did. I think of it often. I’m in your debt for a memory that pops into my head at the oddest times. It’s a moment I still cherish.
“You never mentioned it when you warned me off your brother.”
“It happened years ago. It’s not my life anymore. Nor yours.”
He met her eyes and they stared at each other for a long time in silence.
“I’m in love with him,” she said. “It’s for real, with both of us.”
“That’s what you came here to tell me?”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“I’ll tell you right now I can’t come to the wedding.”
“We’re not quite there—yet.”
“I’m told you haven’t seen him since your father was killed.”
Helen nodded, although he could be lying; agents could have seen Chris come to her club after he killed Don Richard. She said, “It’s been a terrible time.”
“Yeah.”
“So where are we?” she asked.
“Where we’ve always been. Across the street from each other.”
“Tony, can’t we work something out?”
“Because we were going out ten years ago?”
“It makes it easier to talk. I didn’t bring a lawyer.”
“Even your lawyers wouldn’t break into my house.”
“The back door was open.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“My brother.”
“What are you offering? Testimony?”
“I’ll testify against Mikey Cirillo.”
“Pertaining to what?”
“Whatever you need.”
“You mean you’ll lie on the stand?”
“What do you want?”
“You’ll make something up?”
“Tell me what you want.”
“I already have what I want—both those sons of bitches in jail.”
“You still have to convict Mikey. He’s the biggest boss in New York. My brother’s just a dumb guy.”
“Do you really believe I would let you lie on the stand to make a case? Helen, you are farther away than I thought.”
She faltered, realizing she had mishandled him badly. “Give Eddie back to me. Please.”
“Have you talked to your lawyers? Have you seen the charges?”
“He got suckered, Tony. Crazy Mikey set him up.”
“How do you explain that Mikey’s in the next cell?”
“One of Mikey’s enemies double-crossed him.”
“Your brother was arrested on a boat in the middle of the river with fifty kilos of pure heroin.”
“He was tricked.”
“I’ve been speculating about your brother’s enterprises for a long time. Mikey’s, too. But I’m done speculating. I’ve got them both. At least six investigators will swear they saw him heave a briefcase full of money into the water.”
“They’re lying.”
“Here, you want to se
e?” Tony reached down for the briefcase he had dropped beside the bed. He pulled out a glossy black-and-white photograph and thrust it at Helen. The paper was still soft from the chemicals.
She screwed her eyes shut, but not before the image seared itself in her mind: Eddie swinging a briefcase over the side of a boat, his face frantic in the glare of searchlights, like a frightened little boy caught with a girlie magazine by the priest.
“Forget it, Helen. He made a dumb mistake and he got caught. Even your five-hundred-dollar-an-hour junk lawyers had nothing to say when they saw this.”
She opened her eyes. “What can I do?”
“You want my advice?”
“I’ll do anything.”
“If you’re in, get out. We’re rolling up the Mafia. We got the old ones and we’ll get the new ones.”
“I’m not in,” she retorted automatically.
Taglione took back the picture and closed his briefcase. “I’ll give you one thing, Helen. Not for old times, but for my brother. Fair warning. You see, I think you’re Eddie’s consi-gHere. Maybe even more since your father died. Get out of it! Because when I find the evidence that you’re running the Rizzolos, you’re next. I’ll get you like I got the Cirillos and the Bonos and the Confortis—and your father. When I can prove it, you’re going to jail, too.”
She wondered if Taglione would accept her own confession, right now, in trade for Eddie. The question was on her lips, but reality stifled it. Who would protect the family if she went to prison? She couldn’t trust Eddie alone. Without her to watch over him, he would get caught again, and her mother, the old people, the businesses would all be cast into the world.
“Get out,” said Taglione. “Get straight. And go away.”
“Where?” she asked bleakly.
“You could try your uncle in Westport. He’s a decent guy.”
“It’s kind of nice how you keep track of me.”
“I keep track of every hood in this town.”
“You missed one.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Helen Rizzolo returned a cold smile, but she felt her mouth begin to tremble, as if her body knew before her mind that there was no way out, no other way to save her family. “I came here for my brother. I want Eddie home.”