by Landon Beach
18
Put-in-Bay, South Bass Island, Ohio
Present Day
In a way that only a male who has been passed over or left by a beautiful woman for another male can know, Brad could see that old Art had been a victim, perhaps many times over, to Christian’s youth and vitality. There had been silence in the room for almost thirty seconds when Brad, who didn’t owe Art anything, decided to give him an empathetic nod.
Allison broke in. “Listen, can you tell us anything more, or should we just go study the video?”
Art was still fuming, but Christian was able to take his eyes off of his boss and meet Allison’s. “Look, I never got her name. They sat at the bar for around a half-an-hour. When her boyfriend went to use the bathroom, I made my move. She wasn’t interested. Then her boyfriend came back, and I overheard her telling him what had happened while I was serving another customer. He waved me over and threw the piece of paper I had given her with my number on it at my face. He threatened me, and then they got up and left.”
Art’s rage had turned to jubilation. “He threw the paper at your face? Now, I’ve gotta see that video. You never told me that part.”
Christian ignored him and continued. “They got about five feet away from the bar and were met by someone I know.”
“Who?” Allison asked.
“Nick. Guy’s a regular here.”
She took out her notepad and pen. “Nick who?”
Christian donned his embarrassed look once more, but this time it also had the flair of him trying to flirt with Allison at the same time. “Nick’s all I’ve ever known him by. Hung out a few times after work.”
“Does he have a boat?” Allison asked, beating Brad once more to the question.
Meanwhile, seeing that his attempts to jump in with questions were always late, Art refilled his beer cup once more and studied everyone as if he were evaluating the entire situation and would give out grades when the conversation was over.
“Hell yeah, he does,” Christian said. “A beautiful fifty-foot Hunter—center cockpit, the works. I’ve been on her too, glides through Lake Erie like a hot knife through warm butter.” He paused, almost as if to congratulate himself on the overused simile.
Brad could not resist. “I’ll bet it’s a chick magnet.”
Allison’s eyes narrowed at him.
“Shit yeah, it is. We got bizzzeee onboard one night with a few ladi—” He tried to stop himself, but realized he had gone too far.
“Go ahead,” Allison said. “You’re not getting bizzzeee with me,” she said, mocking him and seeming to enjoy it.
This proclamation also broke Art’s serious veneer. “You are such an idiot,” he said to Christian.
“Boat got a name, Christian?” Allison said.
His face’s color was close to matching his shirt’s cherry red shade. He began rubbing his hands together.
She tried again. “The boat, Christian. Does. It. Have. A. Name?”
He dropped his hands. “Yeah, it’s called Apollonia’s Ashes. Don’t know what it means. Asked him about it once, and he said that if I didn’t know what it meant then I really was a stupid millennial. I didn’t appreciate that. Guess I never took the time to look it up on my phone, now that I think of it.”
The name immediately registered with Brad. Apollonia. She was Michael Corleone’s first wife in The Godfather. Yeah, Christian didn’t seem like someone who would know anything about Coppola’s masterpiece or about film for that matter.
Art looked away, apparently hoping not to make eye contact and possibly reveal that he too didn’t know shit about The Godfather.
Allison stayed on point and showed Christian the photographs of the sailboat. “This his love machine?” she said, smirking.
“That’s it. And there’s that fox and her asshole boyfriend.”
Should I take this pretty boy outside and waste on him a bit? No, too easy, and, he had to admit it, Conrad could be annoying. However, the fact that he might be in real trouble kept Brad’s heart rate up. He had unknowingly made his right hand into a fist.
Allison patted his fist as if to say, ‘Down boy.’ Then, she put the pictures away and asked Christian, “He keep the boat in one of Put-in-Bay’s marinas?”
“Yeah, he’s got a slip at Park Place, but sometimes he uses the mooring ball offshore of his house.”
“Where?” Brad said. His intensity was rising.
“It’s on the other side of the island, north of Lighthouse Point, right on the water. Sweet pad. By road, you take Laura Drive to get there.” Christian paused. “You got a boat?”
“We do,” Allison said. “Docked at Miller’s.”
Christian snapped his fingers. “Easy, you just head out of the marina, hang a left, and then travel down the coast until you see the boat. Can’t miss it.”
Hang a left? Okay, Christian was not a boater. Nick probably told him that it was a Hunter Fifty Center Cockpit, and Christian was just repeating it, trying to impress them. Christian the parrot. “No other sailboats moored along the coast?”
Christian grinned. “Oh, there are, but no other Hunter Fifties.”
Don’t know what we’d do without you, Christian.
“Anything else you can tell us about this Nick?” Allison asked, scribbling more notes on her pad.
“Doesn’t come around too often. I know I said he was a regular, but it’s more like once every couple weeks. He’s always alone. Told me he was retired and just wanted a nice quiet place to live out the rest of his years. Can’t blame the player; he’s got it made.”
“How old is he?” Brad asked.
“Hovering around fifty I’d say.”
“Early retiree.”
“Beats me. Guy can still party, though.”
“Weed or something stronger?” Allison said.
Christian eyed Art and then looked at the floor.
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud, answer her,” Art said.
“I’ve seen some cocaine at his place, but that’s it.”
They stayed for ten more minutes and learned that Nick had never given Christian a phone number, and Christian had never seen Nick use a phone. Furthermore, Christian had never seen anyone else at Nick’s besides the girls they brought there. He admitted that he had helped to set up a few of the trysts with women he had bedded that still frequented The Round House. Nick also never let any of them stay over at his house after the romps; Christian had to drive a golf cart with the girls piled in next to him back to a bed and breakfast in the middle of the night—all while he was high or inebriated.
Before leaving the bar, they thanked Art, who had continued to down cups of beer and almost missed their hands when they went to shake, and lied by promising to drop by later. Allison reluctantly gave her cell phone number to Christian with instructions to call if he thought of anything else.
As they walked down Delaware, Allison asked, “Golf cart or boat?”
“Boat,” Brad said.
Then, Allison’s phone rang. It was Mike. He had tracked down the phone numbers.
19
Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan
3 Days Ago . . .
Don Fabian De Luca entered his oak-paneled library wearing a five-thousand-dollar Ermenegildo Zegna charcoal-colored tailored suit. As Don Ilario had aged, so had his taste in good clothing. ‘You act how you dress’ Fabian believed the old adage went, or something close to it. And as the late Don Ilario’s dress shoes had turned to slippers, so had his leadership gone soft and comfy. In the twilight years of his reign, he had rarely dressed in anything other than silk pajamas and a silk robe with his initials monogrammed on the breast pocket. The family consigliere, Silvio Verratti, had tried to compensate for the Don’s appearance by wearing expensive suits, shoes, and jewelry that should have been worn by the Don. As underboss, Fabian had too. But even together, they could not overcome another one of America’s favorite election-time philosophies: You still vote for the top of the ticket. However, th
e most appropriate description of Don Russo’s final years at the helm were best summed up in a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson that he had read to Leo when he was young, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Fabian would bring back a sense of class, respect, and legitimacy to the position. Gravitas. He would apply the lessons of his favorite Shakespearean play, I Henry IV—specifically, the wisdom that King Henry imparts to his son Hal about being seen less:
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wondered at,
That men would tell their children, “This is he!”
...
Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne’er seen but wondered at; and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast
And won by rareness such solemnity.
And the diminishing that occurs when you are seen too much:
That, being daily swallowed by men’s eyes,
They surfeited with honey and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.
So, when he had occasion to be seen,
He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes
As, sick and blunted with community,
Afford no extraordinary gaze,
Such as is bent on sun-like majesty
When it shines seldom in admiring eyes,
But rather drowsed and hung their eyelids down,
Slept in his face, and rendered such aspect
As cloudy men use to their adversaries,
Being with his presence glutted, gorged, and full.
GiGi Rizzo ushered in Don De Luca and then closed the heavy doors to the library. Inside the room were all the made men in The Association, for it was not only time for the new Don to give his directives but also to induct a new member of the family. He embraced his son, Leo, and could see the pride in his face. Fabian was curious to see how he would perform as the Family’s street boss. As a capo, Leo had been average—ran his crew too tightly. Perhaps, Fabian thought, it was because he felt his father’s shadow and did not want to disappoint him. He needed to loosen up and become his own man. Promoting him to street boss was one way to publicly show his confidence in his son’s ability and also a way to give him some room to operate as Leo would now be dealing more directly with the Underboss than with the Don. The setup was in Leo’s favor because the former street boss, Salvatore “Street Sal” Gallo, was the Family’s new underboss and could mentor Leo. They broke their embrace, and Leo stepped over to chat with one of his capos while Don Fabian continued into the room.
The meeting would proceed according to tradition but also swiftly. That was another critique he had of Don Russo’s gatherings: They took forever to get started and to finish. Additionally, his long-time gumar, Academy Award Nominee Solange Tomei, was waiting upstairs with champagne, caviar, and crackers to celebrate. His wife, Caterina, was on a secret trip to stay for a month in their chateau in the French Basque mountains—a precaution in case anything went wrong with the assassination. He had sent her best friend, Carmela, with her along with two Soldati to guard them. He was not worried about either Soldati making moves on his wife; if they did, they were dead. Now, Carmela? He admitted that their marriage bed had been cold—lukewarm at best over the years—and that his fascination with Solange and all the high-class Hollywood pizazz she brought to their affair had disinterested him in his wife’s needs, both emotionally and behind closed doors in the bedroom. It was rumored that Carmela had been more than just a friend of Caterina’s for some time. He’d never bothered to investigate, thinking that if Carmela kept his wife happy and her daggers away from him when he traveled to Vegas or L.A. to meet up with Solange, then that was fine.
Papa Pete, his new consigliere, who because of extraordinary and tragic circumstances had come out of retirement to help steady The Association during this time, rose and embraced him first with a hug and then a kiss on each cheek. His uncle had vowed to find out who was responsible for the murder of Don Ciro but had also warned The Association during the past twenty-four hours that blood, in the end analysis, was bad for business. A war of any kind, especially a war where the two sides were not clearly defined, would threaten The Association’s earning power—from the Don all the way down to the button man. Again, numbers. He preached patience, situational awareness, and a reaffirmation to numbers, which over time, always told the whole story by filling in a puzzle one piece at a time. Last night, he had made a house call to Angela Russo and wept with her for Ciro. To ensure her safety, he had left the two remaining men who had been outside of the Red Robin Lounge to guard her. The third man had died before the ambulance arrived downtown yesterday afternoon.
Fabian’s newly-appointed underboss, Salvatore “Street Sal” Gallo, welcomed him next, and soon every member of The Association had paid his respects and was seated in chairs facing the Don’s enormous hand-made desk made out of oak and stained dark mahogany. Fabian delayed beginning his speech as he enjoyed observing Street Sal watch the seated men with the cold, disinterested pragmatism of a snowstorm that came on and would not go away. In The Association, he had mastered the loan-shark wing of the family business and had gotten his nickname because there was no one better at putting money on the street. Fabian predicted that he would make an effective underboss who could one day earn the appellation of Don. For one, his last name was not Russo or De Luca; there would be no nepotism, even though much of the Cosa Nostra structure relied on a certain amount of it to maintain stability or at least a sense of who is who. The position of Don was not inherited, and to be called Don was because one was a person of absolute honor—the respect led to the title, not the other way around. Ciro hadn’t earned it. Street Sal probably would—even if this meant that Fabian’s own son’s rise to the position was delayed.
The Don spoke, “As I announced yesterday, until our beloved consigliere, Silvio Verratti, is located, my uncle Pietro ‘Papa Pete’ De Luca will serve as my consigliere. We are honored by his gesture to come out of retirement and help see us through this transition. There is not a better man in this room.”
The room was briefly filled with polite applause and then silence.
“I want it made clear that I do not think Consigliere Verratti had anything to do with Don Ciro’s death. He is older and should be enjoying the things that life should be giving back to him. He had no zest for power beyond his position, and him hiring the assassins that Papa Pete’s men took care of seems out of the realm of possibility. I just pray that he is okay.”
“We will find him,” declared Father Tony, standing by the closed drapes on the far wall but inching closer and closer to the bar.
Fabian paused, hoping he would not say another word.
Father Tony bowed his head and grasped his rosary.
Fabian continued. “We will continue to search for him, and I want to know the moment that any contact is made.” He paused longer this time, giving the statement room to breathe and widen the minds of those present. “But, for now, let us take a moment of silence to honor him.”
Heads bowed, eyes closed, heavy breaths were held and then exhaled, and a few of the older Capos teared up. Papa Pete put his face in his hands, and GiGi gave him a soft pat on the shoulder. Father Tony had made it to the bar and snuck a quick sip of wine. The old priest would be on his way to Children’s Hospital of Michigan after the ceremony to arrange a different ceremony—one at the hospital later in the week when Mr. Fabian De Luca, respectable Detroit businessman, would be donating one hundred thousand dollars to the hospital that had saved his infant son Leonardo many years ago. The plaque was already being made and would hang in the hospital lobby. The gesture was genuine; he cared for children and had witnessed a wife and husband run down the hallway screaming after they had been informed that their toddler son had just died. A fou
r-year-old Leonardo had been fighting for his life two doors down. Fabian had set aside money every year to anonymously give to the hospital for research. Now, he would be able to give a greater amount and make it public. Let the police, Feds, and District Attorney try and take that money away. However, so as not to forget his Shakespeare, he would retreat to the shadows after the appearance. Less is more. Less is more.
The Association men continued their silence, lost in their memories of Silvio Verratti. Fabian waited. He never considered himself the master politician that Don Ilario was or a master charmer like Papa Pete, but if there was one thing he was a master of, it was lies. His skill set of secrecy and deception was more than enough to get him through this transition period. Confusion played into his hands because none of the men seated and standing in front of him were absolutely sure about what had happened over the past forty-eight hours. Now they needed leadership, certainty, and tradition to lean on.
As far as the authorities, he would maintain his relationship with agent Nolan, but he would also have the upper hand with the Detroit Police Department. Two high-ranking cops were on The Association’s payroll—ten grand a month each. For that sum, Fabian received a steady flow of department secrets; one of the men had access to files where surveillance information was stored. They had even carried out hits for him in the past, and Fabian had given each man a giant bonus for the work. Everything would continue to be run professionally.
He spoke again, “And now, perhaps the best way to honor Consigliere Verratti is to proceed with one of his favorite traditions.”
Street Sal motioned to GiGi, who opened the doors, admitting a short man named Paulie Gervasi. The longtime soldato, who was dressed in his best suit, was becoming a made man today. He had made his bones long ago, but his latest murder was done with the promise of the ceremony today. He had been the one to kill the man who had contacted the three guns-for-hire who had killed Ciro and Big Joey. His loyalty was unquestioned, and he would now enter a select group. After today, he would join the two-thousand-member fraternity of “connected” men. It wasn’t the fifteen thousand Sicilian Mafia members, who made up one percent of Sicily’s population, but it was still an imposing force across the land of the free and home of the brave.