by Fred Galvin
“Official police inquiry. No password needed.”
“Unless yuz got a warrant, yuz need a password.” Could this guy be related to Flo?
“Okay. How about Real? Spectacular? Oprah? Finacci? Whack job? Snap?”
“Fuck off!” The small door slammed shut. I held up my middle finger to the mounted camera pointing down at me from above the door. That set off a switch in my brain. I’d have to check for CCTV coverage in the area and, if it was there, hope the surveillance footage was still available. Mental note recorded. I also wrote it down on my notepad just in case. My mental note acuity and capacity weren’t what they used to be.
I checked out the call records for the cell number Tina had given me. It turned out that the number belonged to one Golda Rosenberg, a sixty-two-year-old Jewish widow who lived in Brooklyn. Needless to say, she had no idea who Frankie Finacci was but she did invite me to drop by for some tea and toasted bagels with schmear and lox. Lox? Seriously? “The bagels are fresh this morning from Heinemann’s Deli.”
I couldn’t resist. “Schmear? Sorry but I’m not familiar with—”
“Oy! You live in New York and don’t know what schmear is? Schmear is delicious cream cheese, also fresh this morning. Spread over a nice warm toasted bagel with lox on top, to die for. Come already, come. My daughter Hadassah is here. She’s single, beautiful, and she’d be happy to—”
“Thank you ma’am, but I have a previous engagement. Maybe some other time. Sorry to bother you.” Click.
I could swear I heard that bullet whiz past my ear.
So, gum-snapping Mistress Tina and her plastic boobs had led me astray. Lesson: Never trust a gum-snapping blonde with fake boobs in a tight halter top.
There was no cell phone on record as belonging to Frank Finacci. No surprise there as most of these Wiseguys either used a false name when registering cell phones or they strictly used burner phones.
My next move was to find and talk to the “Lucci” Tina had mentioned. That much she had right. Our precinct data showed that one Leonardo “Lefty” Lucci was a significant Made Man in the Mariucci Family. Even more interesting was that our organization chart of the Family showed that working for Lucci was an underboss named Paulo “Papa” Papalini, who my CIs associated with our waterlogged corpse of Garbage Cove fame. Our chart didn’t go any lower but I suspected that somewhere on it, and not too far below Papa, was the late Fast Frankie Finacci.
I wondered if the Family also had an organization chart and if there was a big red X over Frankie’s picture and maybe over Papalini’s as well. I’d heard that sometimes if a Made Man had done some deed deemed worthy of being whacked by the Family that his boss (who could also be his mentor who had sponsored him for the Family) was at risk as well. Maybe Papa Papalini was sleeping with the fishes too. I checked with my CIs and none had seen Papalini around.
A comical thought occurred to me that perhaps I should contact Dante Immelman and ask him and his surfing cronies to keep a lookout for another body washing up on the beach ahead of a seventh wave.
I could just hear him. “Yeah, man. I’ll spread the word around. You really think we’ll see another DB? What happened to the other one? Did you ID him? Was he a perp on the lam?”
On second thought, that wasn’t a very good idea.
After two days of digging, the only significant thing I discovered was that Papalini was still alive. He was seen by one of my CIs in Frankie’s old territory with a new man who was said to be taking over Frankie’s bookie business. The word was that Frankie was missing and no one, not even the mobsters, knew where he was or what had happened to him. The theory was that he had screwed the Mariucci Family out of some significant cash and had left town before he could be whacked.
Of course, I knew better but Ronnie and I had earlier agreed to keep the lid on. Keeping Frankie’s fate from public knowledge gave us an advantage in that the killer most likely felt Frankie would never surface again, literally. Wrong! But he needn’t know that and that could make him careless and loose lipped. These goombahs liked to brag and sometimes couldn’t help themselves, especially if they knew there would be no corpse to be used against them. He most likely figured Frankie was no more than a skeleton, having provided fish and sharks with a few meals.
Chapter 29: Tall orders
Ronnie was very conflicted. She knew that DD’s inquiries into a mob connection to Finacci’s death would not result in anything significant beyond his likely determination that there was no concrete evidence that the Mariucci Family was involved. She felt guilty about wasting his time and efforts chasing down some dead-end street trying to pin Frankie’s death on the mob when it simply had been her and her brother.
Granted, what had happened on the Sea Nymph was clearly self-defense but she and Roje were the only witnesses and she certainly didn’t have to worry about her brother. Besides, he would be sailing back home soon to resume his charter business. She tried to convince him to leave immediately but he had insisted on staying near her in case she needed to talk with him about what had happened. They were close and she had been grateful for his company.
How could she possibly rationalize getting Frankie out on Roje’s boat in the first place? Hanging over her head were the facts that because of her gambling addiction she had placed bets with Fast Frankie through Louie Calzone and she had owed Frankie a significant sum with Louie stuck in the middle. It would be easy to piece those puzzle parts together and come up with a motive for her wanting Frankie to sink beneath the waves. Finding means and opportunity weren’t far behind.
Her overwhelming guilt was that Louie’s death was primarily on her. Yes, it had been Frankie who had done the deed but Louie was an innocent accomplice, if there was such a thing in the mob. He had never ratted her out to Finacci. He paid the ultimate price for her inability to cope with her addiction and avoid getting in way over her head with a mob-backed bookie. The fact that some semblance of retribution had been meted out on Frankie was of little comfort. Nothing had gone right.
Now she was hiding vital case information from her partner whom she trusted and felt as close to as any other person, even Roje. Essentially she was obstructing justice. She and DD had been partners for many years. She had comforted him when he had lost the love of his life way too soon. He had been totally professional since coming back as a consultant, never once insisting on resuming his role as lead on their team. She had great respect for him.
Yet, she could not pull the trigger on coming clean with him, spilling the whole story. Some twisted sense of self-preservation had its grip, its demon sitting on her shoulder and whispering in her ear that she could get past all this and still keep her professional integrity as long as she played it smart.
But in the other ear, the white-clad Conscience Fairy was whispering that she had to do the right thing, that she would never be able to live with herself and look Dan in the eye again if she didn’t. It said that eventually she would break down and tell him the whole story and as a result lose everything, maybe even her freedom, along with Roje’s.
Then a tiny, very tiny, shaft of light shone down onto the bottom of the pit of despair in which Ronnie was living. DD told her that he had discovered Paulo “Papa” Papalini was training a new Wiseguy to take over Frankie’s bookie business. Papalini was alive! After what she had seen that morning outside the Delancey Social Club, she had thought for sure that Papalini was a goner. So either the mobsters somehow knew Frankie was dead or they felt he was gonzo and never would be coming back if he knew what was good for him.
The only way she could use that to her advantage would be to somehow frame Papalini for Frankie’s death. Her CIs (and her gut instinct) told her that Frankie’s relationship with Papalini was that of protégé and patron. So if Frankie had committed some egregious offense that was intolerable to the Family, Papalini would likely be held to a certain level of responsibility as Frankie’s original sponsor, mentor, and possible accomplice. Thus, either Papalini himself had
to do the dirty work on Frankie or the Family would see to it that they both would have to go. The latter would most likely be done by Lefty Lucci, or at least at his direction. That was the protocol.
To put it succinctly, the conversation would probably have gone something like this.
Lucci: Look, Papa. He’s your boy. He fucked up big time. The word from the top is he’s gotta go.
Papalini: Please, Lefty, you know me. You know Frankie. You know I can bring him around, have him make up for his mistake and then some. Can’t you help me out here?
Lucci: (coldly and rather irritatedly) No can do. Yuz birthed him into the Family now yuz gotta sever the Family ties. If yuz can’t do it, we will and yuz’ll go with him. Get me?
Papalini: (backing away and taking a couple of deep breaths) Okay, Lefty. I understand. I’ll see to it.
Lucci: (patting Papalini on the cheek) Good, good. And no traces left behind. Get me?
Papalini: Yeah, Lefty. I get you. No traces. Consider it done.
What Ronnie had to do was figure out a scenario that put a bat in Papalini’s hands and have them swinging the bat hard into Finacci’s head in a very un-moblike move. She then had to somehow create a scenario to have Papalini dump the body into the ocean in such a way that it didn’t sink but instead broke loose and be washed up on a Long Island beach. Again, very un-moblike. And she had to time it so that any alibi Papalini could come up with wouldn’t hold up. All that without DD having any idea what she was up to.
A tall order. It terrified her.
First she had to retrace every minute and all of her steps on that horrible, fateful day.
She shuddered as she realized that DD could, and probably would, discover where she was on the personal day off she had taken. Was there CCTV coverage in that area? She chastised herself for not looking for cameras that day. She could check discreetly at the precinct. If she discovered the area was covered, were the surveillance recordings still intact and available for viewing? If so, she would have to come up with a solid explanation for her presence there and her subsequent actions resulting in Finacci getting into her car, unless she could somehow access and possibly erase them.
A very tall order indeed.
Chapter 30: The Bad Demon vs. The Good Fairy
So, I knew that the Mariucci Family suspected Frankie Finacci had left town with a significant amount of “Family funds.” In the mob world, that was an offense punishable by death. They had gone so far as to have replaced Frankie with a new bookie.
I also knew that Paulo “Papa” Papalini was still alive.
What I also knew, and what the mob didn’t know, was that Frankie was dead and that someone had beaten them to it, literally. Also, I was fairly certain it wasn’t an inside job. All indicators pointed to Frankie running afoul of someone with a deep grudge against him, and there were certainly many who did. This someone had taken a blunt instrument to his head and dumped him far enough at sea so that he washed up at my feet on Long Island’s south shore thanks to a series of seventh waves.
I had to decide on the next series of steps on my side of the investigation but not before Ronnie and I met to compare notes thus far. Reluctantly, I had to admit my motivation for solving this case was not as high as usual. Finacci was a mobster, a thug, and a murderer. The city and the world were better places without him.
But (and there’s always a “but”) he was a homicide victim and I was a homicide cop, or at least a homicide consultant, and my job was to find his killer and bring that individual to justice, however distasteful that may be to do.
So Ronnie and I agreed to review our current progress over breakfast at the EATS 24-7. On the way we stuck to our usual routine of no in-depth discussions until we were seated in a booth.
Going over the WB toward Brooklyn we small talked about baseball as usual. Put a Yankees fan and a Red Sox fan in close proximity to one another and the discussion will surely get lively, to say the least. The Sox were due in town over the weekend for a three-game series.
“Well, since you’re the ‘senior detective’ on this case, I suppose it would be proper protocol for you to treat your consultant to a game at the big ballpark in the Bronx to watch the Yankees kick some Red Sox ass this weekend, eh?”
She didn’t immediately reply, obviously weighing her many comeback options. The longer she was silent, the more I regretted poking this particular bear in detective’s clothing. Then the bear snarled, “Tell me, ‘Consultant’ Deckler. Why the air quotes around senior detective and none around consultant?”
“Because I truly am a consultant and you’re senior detective only because … ” I left the rest of the explanation dangling, implying the obvious, that she was the only detective, a dangerous move with her behind the wheel and the East River several hundred feet below. But, hey, I’m a risk taker, a trait all good consultants have.
“Ah, so I am a lead detective by default, is that what you are implying?” Pause, fingers drumming the steering wheel. “Tell me, do you want to practice your diving-into-the-river-from-a-moving-car technique this morning? Be sure to keep your legs straight and point your toes for maximum style points and you should look to your right on the way down. The view will be spectacular but quite short lived.” I heard the door locks click to the unlocked position, a subtle confirmation of her not-so-veiled threat to open my door and shove me out toward the river below.
I grinned at her and locked my door. “Point well-taken. Now, about those tickets?”
“We’re on the rail in the second deck halfway down the left field line Friday night. But now I’m seriously considering taking Billy Smart instead.”
“What? You can’t do that! He’s a Mets fan!”
“Right, he is, so I guess he’ll be rooting for the Red Sox.” Her voice had a mean lilt to it.
“Okay. Friday night it is. But if the Yankees win, you have to wear my Yankees cap for one full day and you cannot wear it turned around backward. The NY has to be facing forward.”
“Agreed, but you must wear my Boston cap if the Red Sox win, same conditions. Deal?”
“Deal.”
We shook on it as we pulled into a spot outside the diner.
“Yuz two again? Twice in one week! Be still my heart. Counter or booth?” Something was different with her. Then it hit me. Her mouth … something was missing. It was the first time in my memory that I had seen Flo without a cigarette dangling from her lip.
“Flo, did you quit smoking?”
“Yeah, and it’s killin’ me.”
“I can imagine. How long has it been?”
“About twenty minutes.”
Ronnie stifled a laugh as I pushed her along. “We’ll take that booth and two Number Three breakfasts, mine scrambled and Ronnie’s over easy. And hold the bacon on mine today. Thanks Flo.”
Flo grunted and yelled our order through the window to Oscar in the kitchen. She returned with black coffee for me and tea for Ronnie—and a cigarette dangling. All was once again right with the world. The earth was back on its axis.
After we finished eating, Ronnie leaned back. “Okay, Consultant Deckler. Report.”
“I do believe Captain Smart named me lead on this case. Have you forgotten that?” I drained my coffee with my middle finger subtly extended around the cup.
“We both know that the captain was just throwing you a bone, and I saw that finger. Don’t think I won’t put you on report for insubordination.”
“No worries. I have more where that came from,” and pulled another middle finger out of my shirt pocket with my free hand.
Ronnie just shook her head rather sadly and sighed as a teacher would with a ne’er-do-well pupil.
Mutual childish abuse over, we got down to business. I reviewed my findings so far, concluding with how I really didn’t think Finacci’s demise was the work of the Mariucci Family, not that they didn’t want to. “I just think they didn’t get the chance. The prevailing thoughts on the street are that Frankie screwed the pooch
somehow and it was bad enough that he had to leave town in a hurry for self-preservation. And the fact that Papalini has been seen with a new bookie in Frankie’s territory says that they believe his disappearance is permanent. Frankly (no pun intended) I’m surprised that Papalini is still in the picture. It’s my understanding that he was Finacci’s mentor and sponsor into the Made Man club and it’s not unusual that when the protégé goes sideways, the mentor is held responsible and also pays the price. The mob world is a nasty place.
“I think I’m getting close to pinning down the time frame for Frankie’s disappearance based on the forensic estimations as to how long he was in the water and observations from my CIs, which support what I found out during a nice little chat I had with his mistress. It looks like he was with her and got a call one morning and she hasn’t seen him since. I may be able to get real close to tracing his activities that day and get a lead.”