Columbo: The Hoffa Connection
Page 22
“But it’s not wise for a guy like him to stay too long in one place. He wears out his welcome. Things get more expensive. So in 1986 he moved to Marino di Bardineto. And that’s where he met Regina.”
“So how do you get into the story?” Columbo asked. “Regina… Jimmy was in his seventies by then, and she was a gift of the gods. The guy fell for her. What she wanted more than anything else was to come to the States. It wasn’t wise for Jimmy to come back here, but she talked him into it. I think she could have talked him into anything. He contacted friends in the States and told them what he wanted to do.”
“Was he already thinking about making her a star, or just about coming to the States?” asked Columbo.
“She was the only reason he was coming. She firmly believed there was nothing Madonna did that she couldn’t do better, and Jimmy believed her. He was no better judge of talent than she was.”
“She didn’t need talent,” mumbled Mickey Newcastle. “We built a great show for her.”
“Let’s get back to the question of how you got into the act, Mr. Visconti,” said Columbo.
“I was Jimmy’s bodyguard,” said Johnny. “More than that, I was supposed to keep track of everything he did and report it to the right people. Wherever he went, somebody was watching him and watching out for him. I was the inside man.”
“Why you?”
“They didn’t want anybody from Detroit. That raised a possibility—not a big possibility but a possibility— that somebody might make the connection, make the identification. I’m from Cleveland, of the Samenza Family. Don Antonio Samenza assigned me to Jimmy. Jimmy paid me. After Regina and I got close, she gave me money, too.”
“So you went to Italy and met him.”
“I took him his new passport. He entered the States as Angelo Capelli. Capelli ‘disappeared,’ and Jimmy became Vittorio Savona.”
“You went to Brazil with him,” Columbo said. “What was that for?”
“If you know we went, you have to know why. A big meet. Jimmy was still an important man.”
“You say Carlo Lucchese killed him,” said Columbo. “Why?”
“In every town where he went, I had to get in touch with a contact man, and he kept in touch with the dons. When we came to L.A., the new contact man was Carlo. Carlo was a stone killer, and he strangled Jimmy. It was because he’d done something so stupid in having Regina killed that the dons didn’t trust him anymore. They must have been afraid of what he’d do next. Besides, he wasn’t useful anymore. He was out of touch. He’d got to be a… What’s the word?”
“An anachronism,” said Martha.
“What could he have done next that would have been so bad?” Columbo asked.
“Got himself identified,” said Johnny. “He’d been a big asset to some families and not to others. Some important guys went behind bars because of information Jimmy supplied—information that some way got in the hands of district attorneys. In fact, there’s a rumor Jimmy had his revenge on Tony Pro by handing tips to the Gambinos. If the wrong people got the word that Jimmy had been alive all those years, talking up a storm, it might have broken the peace.”
“So,” said Columbo. “You got four life sentences cornin’.”
“The rest of my life, for damned sure,” said Johnny. He lowered his head and tugged his hands up to his face. “And I’m not yet thirty,” he whispered. “But— Hey! You guys gotta protect me inside! They’ll get me! They’ll kill me. Not an easy way, either. You gotta take care of me.
“Sure. We’ll do our best,” sneered Chief Trevor.
4
Adrienne Boswell caught him as he was unlocking the Peugeot—a cumbersome process involving working the key in and out to just the right depth in the lock, then jiggling it back and forth until it caught the tumblers and made them move.
“Hey, Columbo! How ’bout a game or three of nine-ball before you go home? You gotta let a girl get even.”
She was wearing tight stonewashed blue jeans, and her red hair fell over a white golf shirt.
As they shot pool at Burt’s, the local evening news appeared on the television set high on the wall. The sound was turned off, but the picture was on, and the first picture was of Mickey Newhouse and Johnny Visconti in chains.
“Okay, Columbo,” said Adrienne. “Who was the old man?”
He told her. A confirming picture appeared on the screen.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“About an hour.”
Adrienne stared at him for a protracted moment, frowning, shaking her head. “There was no you could have given me a scoop on that, was there?”
“No. Sorry. No way.”
She sighed. “You s— Okay. Five bucks says I can sink the nine-ball on this shot.”
“Five says you can’t.”
She flipped back her hair so it would not interfere with her aim. The next ball in the rotation was the two-ball, and four balls sat between it and the nine-ball. She shot the two-ball hard against the right rail about a third of the way between the end pocket and the middle pocket, it bounced to the bottom rail and off it to the left rail, which it struck just below the middle pocket, then rolled toward the upper right comer pocket, where it knocked the nine-ball in and won the game for her.
‘•Brr-inging in the sheaves,” she sang as she collected Columbo’s five one-dollar bills.
"Adrienne, I think you’ve played this game before,” Columbo said ruefully.
She threw her arms around him and kissed him firmly on the mouth.
“A-humm,” said Burt.
Columbo grinned. “When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done,” he chanted. “A policeman’s lot can be a happy one.”