Powder

by Leopold Borstinski

  The probability was Mendoza, although why hit someone’s family if they’d only made a small gouge into your business? This was not a proportionate response by the man. It also meant she needed to be very careful when dealing with him. He didn’t follow the usual rules of the game, which meant he was dangerous and hard to handle.

  The other thing was it gave her no better idea where to find Alice and FJ. Even if Mary Lou could get hold of Mendoza, chances were the kids wouldn’t be with him. Some hideout, surrounded by a bunch of goons who didn’t care if her babies lived or died. At this point, she had to stop thinking for a minute as the ideas rattling around her head were too dark for her to cope with. Terrible images of their tortured limbs permeated the back of her eyelids.

  Then the final possibility was plain random: some guys saw the expensive house, the housekeeper and decided Mary Lou was good for a buck or two and tried a kidnap. But again, surely they’d have left a ransom note. Some clue what they wanted and by when it needed to be delivered.

  No. Mendoza was the man.

  IF MARY LOU WAS GOING to do anything then she needed to deal with Mendoza. She wondered around outside on the patio, trying to remember quite where she left her bag. Truth was she’d kept it near her all this time - a subconscious act. Mary Lou walked a full circuit around the pool. When she arrived back at the corner steps, she noticed the bag in her hand all along. Like an old maid searching for her glasses on her forehead.

  Back into the summerhouse and Mary Lou fumbled for the keys to open the hidden door. She put the pile of greens in a locked box and returned it under the floorboard she’d previously jimmied open.

  She perched on the arm of one of the summerhouse chairs, getting her head together so she could think straight and figure out the best next step to save her children. With or without Milton, she needed to contact Fabio and get some local help. If Pasquale wanted a real partnership between them then he should be there for her in her time of need.

  Mary Lou returned to the house and stood in the kitchen to dial his number.

  “Can I leave a message for Fabio?”

  She couldn’t decide whether to read too much into his absence. Was he avoiding her or just not in for a million possible legitimate reasons? There was no way to know - not with the information she had right now. The doorbell rang and she automatically headed to the hallway, stopped herself and checked her gun was loaded.

  With the pistol hidden from view, Mary Lou opened the door with her left hand to reveal a man dressed in a three-piece striped suit topped with a Fedora.

  “Mary Lou Lagotti?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Arnold Roach. You owe me money and I’m here to collect. Please take your hand from behind your back. Would be a tremendous shame to kill you after the time I’ve spent to track you down.”

  21

  Mary Lou let her right hand slip to her side so Roach could see her piece.

  “You’d better come in.”

  As she closed the door behind him, Mary Lou noticed a three inch smear of red on the doorjamb. She missed that sign when she first came back from lunch. Was it Cindy’s or the children’s? Didn’t bear thinking about. Besides, there was a mob hitman in her hallway she’d hired two years ago to whack Uncle Frankie.

  “As you haven’t taken out your gun and shot me between the eyes, I’m guessing killing me is not on your agenda.”

  “Mary Lou, that all depends on you. Like I said, we had a contract and you only paid me half my fee even though I carried out one hundred per cent of the service.”

  She craned her head back in the hope the position of her skull would somehow alter her ability to remember whether she’d paid the second installment. Nada. Ran away from California? Check. New life in Canada? Check. Heard the Shylock was six feet under? Nope.

  “I appreciate you will not believe this...”

  “... try me. You’d be surprised the stories people have spun over the years.”

  “The hit was aimed at a guy who was financing a robbery I was involved in.”

  “Mary Lou, I know all about the First Bank of Baltimore heist. You made the news in New York.”

  “Okay. Well, when the job headed south, ten tons of shit descended and I ended up having to skip the country. I never heard about anything that was happening in Baltimore from the day I turned my back on the place to today.”

  “U-huh.”

  “So I never heard you’d carried out the hit.”

  “I see.”

  Beat.

  They were standing in the living room by now although neither seemed interested in squishing down into the comfortable couches only feet away.

  “Let me ask you a simple question. All I want is some honesty. Can you deliver that for me?”

  “Of course, Arnold.”

  Mary Lou didn’t feel right using his first name - a man she hardly knew - but he was pointing a gun at her chest and she had placed hers down on a coffee table as soon as they walked into the room.

  He smiled. If she was going to disarm him with familiarity, he could do the same with a look.

  “Is the cash available to pay my second installment?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Then if you would be so kind as to give me the money, I’ll be on my way.”

  Beat.

  Mary Lou swallowed hard. She had the cash in the summerhouse and it was not a huge amount - certainly not for what it bought her. But she had a nagging doubt at the back of her mind.

  “Thing is, Arnold, there's a problem, which I need to tell you about and you will understand why I am nervous about paying what I owe.”

  “Oh?”

  “Will you be honest with me?”

  “I only ever kept my word to you. I intend to continue to do so.”

  “If I hand over the greens, what’s stopping you killing me, anyway?”

  Roach laughed and sat down. Mary Lou echoed the action.

  “Good question. Usually I don’t meet my clients, just their victims, so this isn’t a situation I’ve had to deal with before.”

  Mary Lou allowed him the time to think as her life was on the line.

  “I want to say there’s nothing to stop me, but that won’t encourage you to hand over the paper. The truth is that I won’t kill you because no-one has paid me to. I am a businessman and offer a very particular service.”

  “And if there isn’t a fee in it then you don’t whack people?”

  “Pretty much, yes. I mean, if we were playing poker and you cheated, I’d say there was a justification. On the flip side, if you don’t pay up then I will most definitely kill you this afternoon. In my business, I can’t afford someone to welch on a deal with me and survive. That is very bad for future earnings.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “So you must trust me or you will die. You asked me to kill Lagotti and I did. No question why. Your wish was my command. I played fair and, you must admit, I have been exceedingly patient to wait this long for the second amount.”

  “I was in Canada...”

  “... but you’ve been back for quite some time, I’d say. Yes?”

  “True. A lot has happened since we last spoke.”

  “I am sure. Time passes quickly when you live our kind of existence: inside a criminal world.”

  Mary Lou nodded. Even though the man had tracked her down from across the other side of the country - more than the East Coast mob, the cops or the Feds had done - he didn’t appear angry.

  “I’ll get your money.”

  “I am sure you will, but given you haven’t kept your word to me so far, I shall accompany you in case you seek some alternative ending to this conversation.

  Roach followed her through the conservatory and out onto the patio. He glanced down at the red water, but said nothing as they entered the summerhouse. Mary Lou unlocked her hidden room.

  “I’ll need some privacy in there. Look around first if you like, but you can’t stand over me while I get y
our cash.”

  “So be it. Your personal affairs do not interest me. Only my money. If you come back out of that room without your hands in plain sight, you know what’ll happen.”

  One minute later, Mary Lou walked out with both hands in front so they were visible to Roach before any other part of her body. Open palmed, she gave him the second half of the fee and sat down. This offered Roach an opportunity to count his cash and satisfy himself that all was well.

  “Some trouble earlier on?”

  Roach pitched his head toward the pool where Cindy’s body remained face down. Floating.

  “You know anything about it?”

  Roach shrugged, lit a cigarette and sat down in a cushioned chair.

  “Wanna tell me a story?”

  “YEAH, I GOT ISSUES but before I tell you anything about it, I need you to tell me how you found me, because...”

  “... I’m not the only one looking for you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I took out Lagotti two weeks after you hit the bank, as agreed.”

  “We were hoping to launder the money by then but everything went crazy before we even left the vault.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Beat.

  “Then I waited a week for the money to appear and when it failed to do so, I made enquiries. Took me about twenty minutes before I discovered the extent of my problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “You see, I have a primary client.”

  “Your fame goes before you.”

  “Very kind. I don’t seek fame, only money. They’ll never erect a statue.”

  “Sure, but in our circles, your name is legend.”

  “Shame Arnold Roach isn’t my real name then.”

  He smirked, almost appearing to regret the line of work he excelled so well at.

  “Let’s say that shortly after you fled Baltimore, word was out there was a price on your head.”

  “Who had issued the order?”

  “Does it matter now? Will it make any difference to you?”

  “Not really. I’m interested, is all.”

  “Suffice to say, word came from New York and that meant only one man: Charlie Pentangelo.”

  “Is his the voice of God?”

  “Not quite, but he’s only one removed from St Peter for sure.”

  Mary Lou whistled to show her respect. She never imagined their escapade had been noticed by anyone of importance in the mob. She’d assumed Uncle Frankie had pleaded for help and he’d just leveraged his connections.

  “Why were we even on his radar?”

  “The size of the haul?”

  “Don’t believe everything on the radio. They made up that number.”

  “Quite possibly, but Charlie explained they used that bank as a laundering facility and were not pleased that the person who was supposed to be overseeing the business had skimmed half a million off the top right under their noses.”

  “Jeez Louise.”

  “At first, they thought you guys were behind it but a small amount of investigation proved that assumption wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “I terminated the guy that July on a trip to Florida. Anyway, they knew you had lifted the money once the moneylender told them the size of the actual take. To be honest, if you hadn’t paid me to plug him, Pentangelo would have done so.”

  “And you’d got paid either way.”

  “It is how I make a living. No mess, no fuss, no trace.”

  Roach’s eyes veered toward the pool as if to assure Mary Lou he had nothing to do with the slaughter which took place here earlier. Mary Lou ignored his gaze - for the moment.

  As much as she had to deal, she also needed to be sure she could trust him. Also, she had no idea if anyone had followed him from the east coast and had taken advantage of the man’s tenacity to get a bill paid. It might all tie together with whoever stole her children from her.

  “We had a lot of heat coming down on us - from all sides.”

  She felt almost confessional with Roach - partly because of what he knew about her time in Baltimore and partly because of the simple, calm way about him. He might be about to kill her - who knew - but he was respectful to her and for what she had gone through at that fucking bank.

  “But that was a long time ago. When did you pick up my trail?”

  “In-between jobs, I came over to LA and asked some people a bunch of questions. Didn’t take long to figure out you went north. Then three more trips and I tracked you to Clark Park.”

  “It was you that night?”

  “Huh?”

  “One night a little over a year after I got to Vancouver. There was a new guy in the neighborhood who sounded like he might be from the mob. So I packed up and left there and then.”

  “Yes, it was me. I thought I’d found you, but you slipped away. Vancouver is a beautiful city, but Clark Park was a hole. Why d'you stay there? Didn’t come across as a good place to bring up young children.”

  “I thought I’d stick out too much as a foreigner if I splashed out on a fancy pad somewhere real nice.”

  “Where are the kids, by the way?”

  “Not here at the moment.”

  Mary Lou didn’t want to reveal her hand yet, although her voice faltered half-way through the sentence. If she wasn’t mistaken, a small bead of liquid rolled out her right eye. Roach didn’t appear to notice as he was engrossed by the spectacle of Cindy’s corpse bobbing on the pink water.

  “We can come back to that later, perhaps.”

  “That was two years ago - or more. You been tracking me down ever since?”

  “Oh no. Nothing personal but I had better things to do with my time. I’ve been busy, shall we say?”

  He took out another cigarette from his pack and lit it with the butt he hadn’t quite finished.

  “Two months ago, I happened to be in the state and thought I’d see what I could find out. The West Coast fellas had hired my services and I picked up some ideas from them. I thought you’d changed your name again. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting you to call yourself a Lagotti.”

  “Yeah, if I had been on my own, I’d have bought more fake ID and carried on. But I wanted my children to know who they were. And for them to live in America.”

  “Where did you say the kids were again?”

  22

  Charlie Pentangelo kept his black leather armchair despite all the other changes that had taken place in the family apartment over the years. He found comfort in the creases which contoured to his body shape. Years before, the smell of the leather had merged with his own natural oils to produce an aroma he could only describe as comforting. The familiarity of the scent enabled him to relax as soon as he sat down - irrespective of the decisions he had to make or tales of woe that confronted him on an almost daily basis.

  In the two years since he’d ordered the hit on Frank Lagotti Senior’s killer, Pentangelo had acquired more gray hair - or at least the hair he had was grayer than before, although the overall quantity of his hair had reduced. His patience had diminished in almost direct proportion to his scalp follicles. This was a function of age rather than of his baldness.

  Problems he had plenty. Failing to find Lagotti’s killer was of little concern anymore. At the time, he’d wanted to make a clear statement that people shouldn’t go around murdering his men but Lagotti was an unpleasant man at best. Also, what few assets the guy possessed were picked up within a matter of days and the cash flow continued to roll.

  The Baninno Family had bigger problems to resolve that went beyond Lagotti and his now-demised KitKatt Club. Heroin littered the Eastern Seaboard. The tentative approaches by his Sicilian brothers to import opiates proved so profitable that the business line dwarfed the numbers, prostitution and gambling combined. He never thought that day would ever come. The large quantity of low-to-no income individuals addicted to the stuff, and wanting to escape their appalling living conditions, was the cause - public housing had a lot to
answer for.

  The shift into drug transportation and distribution left some members of the Five Families slow to respond and that created an opportunity which the Baninno clan was happy to seize. With both hands.

  As any businessman knows, if your market gets saturated in one place then you need to create an opportunity somewhere else. Baninno saw the way the wind blew - and followed the breeze westwards. At the same time, the upset felt in New York was nothing compared to the fractious relationship between the competing Families in California, who fell apart in the late ’60s and no-one had recovered their ground since.

  With money - and its associated power - from the east coast heroin trade, Baninno made inroads into the West Coast mob. The family funded several ventures and, through indirect means to hide their true intention, supplied heroin in Los Angeles and the surrounding area - as well as San Francisco.

  These thoughts played on Pentangelo’s mind because he reported directly to one of Baninno’s capos and that meant he stood two rungs below the man himself. In the last eighteen months, Pentangelo manipulated, murdered and massaged the truth enough to become a right-hand man in the Baninno Family. And they had entrusted him with breaking ground out west - a task at which he proved to be highly successful.

  Pentangelo recently finished his lunch - a small piece of veal, potatoes and peas with a decent glass of Chianti - when a call came through informing him that a key Latino business partner lay in the morgue. These things happen; not everyone makes it to the end of the day.

  One thing jarred: early reports indicated a woman might be at the helm of the attack. Charlie was an old-fashioned Italian American and believed a woman’s place was either standing by the kitchen sink or languishing in his bed.

  As far as he was concerned, it didn’t have to be the same woman. But there was only one woman who had crossed his path in business and he assumed she was dead: if she was not, surely someone would have found her and blown her brains out by now. The skirt who robbed the bank with Lagotti’s step nephew.