“This is a special detail.”
“The Collucci surveillance is special? Or is something bigger going on?”
“Can’t say. Operational details. I do want to thank you for coming in.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“I usually like journalists.”
“That’s nice to hear—particularly as we have a free press here in the good old United States. Gets prominent mention in the constitution you’re supposed to support and defend.”
“I said usually. You see I can’t have you constantly interfering with our work.”
“As I see it, you don’t have any more work. Collucci’s dead. Any idea who might have done it … you know, because you overheard?”
Gilly smiled like they both were having the best time. “What did Mr. Collucci tell you?”
“You mean what did he say that you didn’t hear?” Taylor looked at Gilly, waiting. The agent finally gave a slight tilt of his head. “Only that he had to run because I found out about your operation. He acted like he was under some threat. From who, I don’t know yet. I will find out. Did Collucci know about the surveillance? Was he part of your operation? Why did he have to run?”
“I honestly don’t know why he fled. I thought your spectacular reporting would help me.”
“You didn’t answer the first two questions.”
“And I won’t. Nor should you construe I’m confirming or denying anything.”
“What did you have on him?”
“Same answer.”
“I did tell Carl the bad news that the NYPD, the Dobbs Ferry cops, and probably the local Rotary all knew you had wires in the house.”
“This is funny to you? I’ll have the U.S. Attorney shut you down. Your whole organization. Barred from running any stories on this case.”
“So much for a free press.”
“You’re right. I should be more polite. That’s not the only way to handle this.” A most insincere look of concern. “Your stories could cause dangerous elements to seek to harm you. Perhaps I should put you in protective custody for as long as it takes to ensure your safety.”
Taylor didn’t have a quick answer. Gilly could drop him in a hole and keep him there. It would take Novak a long time to figure out where he was. Would the ACLU or some similar group be willing to help get him out? Would they think the case mattered? The City News Bureau sure as shit didn’t have the money for the lawyers.
“That look on your face is classic.” Gilly giggled in non-G-man fashion. “I love it! Because you know I can. I have an even better idea. I don’t think you can do us any more damage now. Collucci can’t say anything. Surveillance operations are shut down. You’ve told me what he said. How about I let you go and we see who comes chasing after you? It’ll be like you’re working for us. I hope we’re there when they find you.”
Everybody laughed at the threat. Everybody except Taylor, who now understood how dangerous Gilly was—particularly because his surveillance had been so badly blown.
Back in the sedan, a tan Plymouth Fury, Taylor told the agents his address in Brooklyn Heights. They drove about two miles, cutting left and right, presumably trying to get him to lose track of the location of their Batcave. At a Queens curbside, they stopped and ordered him out of the car.
Took Taylor almost an hour to hail a cab for the ride home to Brooklyn.
The Checker cruised under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The expanse of water was greenish blue. The ships were gone. Bridget Collucci was too, gone even before the ships got here.
Was that prick Gilly really using him as bait? Would the FBI be on his ass the whole time?
He’d need to watch his back as he raced forward to find the killer. A story was pretty hard to report on with his head turned around half the time.
Only choice he had.
Chapter 21
Mason leapt off the bed and ran into the living room to greet Taylor with his tail swinging. Taylor scratched the dog behind the ears and promised a trip to the promenade in a little while.
Collucci’s body on the sidewalk slipped before his mind’s eye—came and went—like a slideshow with only one slide. Appeared, left the screen white, reappeared. Collucci had known what was going on. How else could Taylor find out?
He poured a cup of coffee from the percolator on the stove, loaded it up with sugar and cream and drank it lukewarm while he waited for Samantha to come home from running Saturday morning errands. Mason stood in front of the couch, until he finally got the idea they weren’t going anywhere right away and lay down at Taylor’s feet.
As soon as she got back, Samantha readily agreed to a midday walk. Taylor put the leash on Mason and they strolled the route to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The 75-pound dog pulled on the leash to get a sniff of every available inch of pavement and all the trees, hydrants, and walls along the way.
Once on the broad walkway of the promenade, Taylor slowed the pace. Wall Street’s towers glinted in the light of the noontime sun. To their right, the Brooklyn Bridge’s massive stone towers offered a days-of-yore contrast to the glass and steel of the World Trade Center and the other skyscrapers. Here was the most spectacular panorama of Manhattan, with river, harbor, bridge, and buildings all in the scene. Manhattanites would never admit it, but the most amazing views of their glorious borough were to be had from Brooklyn and Queens. When you lived in Manhattan, you usually saw nothing more than the building next door. If you were lucky.
Mason yanked and pulled and peed.
“Carl Collucci’s dead, murdered,” Taylor said, and went through the whole story.
“Jesus. It’s getting crazier and crazier.”
“Phillips is clueless. What the FBI knows, Gilly ain’t telling. McWilliams, the detective at the Fifth, isn’t interested in hearing about a drug war.”
“You don’t need to go near the tong again. McWilliams was right about the body. The tong wouldn’t dump it there. And no more of this crap about your notebook protecting you.”
Taylor had to laugh. Laughing was good. One notebook burned. One chucked out a car window. No, a notebook didn’t intimidate any of them. “I know. There’s no tong connection to the killings. Something’s going on with the heroin, though. Someone’s going to get that story eventually.” He put his arm around Samantha’s shoulders. That was better. “I’ve you to protect me, detective.”
“Private detective. Shoplifters and cheating spouses.”
“Top five percent in marksmanship at the police academy, right?”
“Good aim is no good when there are too many guns. What are you going to do next?”
“Write a feature on Bridget. Tell the world who she was. Describe her life. Maybe it’ll keep the story alive. This afternoon, I’m going to see the O’Malleys. I hope they’ll be a little more talkative now Carl’s dead. Looks a lot less likely he was responsible for their daughter’s killing. Want to get something for my feature. And anything important they weren’t saying about Carl when we last talked.”
“I take comfort in the fact that they seem the least murderous of the gangsters involved in this.”
“Long as it turns out they’re not the ones who killed Collucci.” He reeled in Mason. “It’s a long shot, but also something I need to consider. I’ll see what the O’Malleys say. What did Bridget tell her parents? I’m going to call all my police sources again. A busy Saturday.”
“When aren’t they? You need a break.”
He didn’t answer, for fear of making a promise he couldn’t keep.
They kept walking. Mason would have gone all the way to Coney Island, but Taylor decided one lap of the promenade would do.
He wasn’t seeing something. He was missing a connection. He had the rest of today and all of Sunday before he must account for himself to Novak Monday on an investigation that had garnered one story for the clients of the City News Bureau. The old worry snuck in by some back door. He’d never get anywhere as long as he worked at a place where his stories
disappeared before they could have an impact. Reporting stories had been a straightforward job during his 18 years at the Messenger-Telegram. Keep going until you have all the facts. Write them up in the right order. Move on to the next story. He hadn’t realized how important it was to write for the MT—until it was too late. He could work himself to death for City News—dodge all the threats—and this story might still be sucked into the void, barely heard between pop songs and buried on the back pages of suburban papers. Could he accomplish the work he wanted to do—the work, he had to admit, he loved—at the City News Bureau?
He stayed quiet. Samantha had heard all this too many times already. They were settled in and happy together. He didn’t want to mess things up with his job anxieties. She’d lost hers too and the dream of an NYPD career. She’d wanted to be a cop her whole life and now never could. She was doing well with Lew Raymond. He had to remember all of that when he was tempted to complain about City News.
Taylor was escorted into the O’Malley house with a sawed-off shotgun at his back. Liam O’Malley had closed the front door before bringing up the gun, which meant Samantha, who was standing at the corner staking out the meeting, hadn’t seen the weapon.
Taylor wasn’t worried. Yet. Just tightly focused on walking slow and easy. O’Malley was, after all, bound to be cautious after the killing of his daughter and son-in-law. That was, assuming he had nothing to do with the latter.
He indicated Taylor should go back through the kitchen to a tiny screened-in porch with three chairs. The son, Tommy, was sitting in one of them.
Liam took another. “My wife is out for the Saturday shopping. She likes none of this.” He set the gun in the corner of the porch. “Can’t imagine we need to be too concerned about a newspaper reporter. That’s the case, we ought to pack up, move into the hills upstate and be done with it.”
Taylor lowered himself into the remaining chair. “I’m sorry about Carl’s death. Assuming his murder is something to be sorry about around here.”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“You did accuse him and his family of having something to do with Bridget’s death.”
“I thought what I thought. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Why?”
“Nothing I can say for certain. Carl was murdered. Someone wanted both of them dead. I sit here wondering who and why.”
“You have an alibi for last night?”
“You think I’m lying.” His eyes went to the black shotgun.
“I’m trying to figure out why a family was wiped out. Right now, I’m looking for someone, anyone who’s telling the truth.”
Tommy leaned forward in the wicker chair, causing it to creak. “We were at Mulligan’s. Twenty people will vouch for us.” He glared at his father. “Remember what we agreed. The cops are getting nothing done.”
“So maybe you do want to figure out what truly happened.” The old man waved a hand. “Whatever you might think of me, my operation’s small. Can’t go and declare war on big firms. We wanted Bridget nowhere near any of it. So she goes and marries a guy who’s connected. That was the last thing we wanted. Carl promised he wasn’t a part of it. They both promised. Now look where we are.”
“I’m writing a profile of your daughter. Give people a view into what her life was like. They know how she died. They should know how she lived.”
“She was smart and kind.” He smiled as his face relaxed. “Sounds like a father, I know. But she was. From the time she was little. That’s why we wanted to get her away from all this.” He waved a hand at the shotgun like it represented everything in his criminal world. “First in my whole family to get to college. Great grades.”
“She wanted to be a teacher?”
“Had a job in a school on the Upper West Side. Lost it when the city budget crisis hit. Landed some work substituting in Westchester, but nothing fulltime came along. That didn’t stop her. Not Bridget.” He wiped one eye. “She’d been talking about setting up some kind of nursery school in her house. Some of the local women are so busy with their tennis and charities they need someone to watch their kids. She thought she could have a few over. Do that until something in teaching opened up. You should have seen her with the kids. She made them laugh. And then they’d come over and tell you something new they’d learned.”
“Did she settle in in Dobbs Ferry?”
“The two of them were the picture of city kids who’d escaped to the country. They loved the town. The yard. No crowds. The little downtown, which if you ask me is a bit Twinkie time. She’d come back here and we’d visit one of her favorite spots. Chock full o’Nuts or Nathan’s. Those kinda places. She’d say she missed the place but not living here. Some days I sit here and think we deluded ourselves into believing they got the life we wanted for them. Should have put my foot down when I met Collucci’s father.”
Taylor collected a few more anecdotes. The big deal Bridget made when her parents came up to the house for their first dinner, and how her father remembered eating the most perfect piece of burnt pot roast he’d ever had. A childhood trip to the Freedomland U.S.A. amusement park in the Bronx. The neighborhood kids she’d played with and the games they’d played. The ups and downs of a normal life—except when you’re murdered, your story stops being normal. People needed to be told what was taken away.
Taylor stood up. “Thank you.” He put the notebook away. “You remember Lucco from the other night?”
“Big dumb guinea muscle. I figured the family sent him over after Bridget.”
“Who would have ordered that?”
“Not Carl’s father. Died of a heart attack two years ago. Sitting on the beach at his Jersey Shore place. Maybe Jimmy Zee. Called ‘The Last Letter.’ He was the father’s capo.”
“What I don’t understand is why, if Carl was out of the game, he would let the Fronti family put Lucco and the others in the house.”
“Maybe he got scared. Can happen to anyone.”
“I’ll show you out,” Tommy said, rising. Once through the living room, he stopped in the entryway and lowered his voice. “Lucco was at the house at least two weeks before Bridget died.”
“How do you know?”
“I visited Bridget all the time. I don’t want Dad to get wound back up. This is too big for him, and he’s finally convinced. We’ve enough to bury.”
“Why was Lucco there?”
“She wouldn’t say. She was nervous, shaking. Really skittish. Something bad was going on but she wouldn’t talk.” Or couldn’t. The FBI. “I visited again a few days later, a week before she was killed. She asked to borrow some of my eight-tracks. She said that tub Lucco would only allow Sinatra on the living room stereo. She didn’t care what. Anything I had in my car. That was strange. Bridget was picky. Only liked easy listening and sugary stuff like the Carpenters. We never ever agreed on what to play in the car.”
“What did you give her?”
“ABBA, Frampton Comes Alive! Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles and Gratitude.”
“The Earth Wind and Fire album?” Tommy nodded. “Your sister said nothing else?”
Tommy O’Malley, apparently all out of words, shook his head as he opened the door.
Samantha was at the corner where Taylor had left her.
“Anything happening out here?”
“One unmarked sedan rolled by. Twice. I’d say patrolling for trouble. Is Mr. O’Malley looking for trouble?”
“Knows he’s too small. I guess more important, doesn’t know why Bridget and Carl were murdered so wouldn’t know who to go after. That’s the good news. The body count is high enough. He gave me some decent quotes for the feature. The brother gave me something perfectly odd.”
“And you like odd.”
“Odd can take you places.”
He told her about Lucco’s presence in the Collucci house for two weeks before the murder, Bridget’s fear, and the tapes.
“Sounds like she was losing her grip.”
“I’
m not sure what it sounds like. I’m intrigued by the fact Lucco was there. Wonder what the FBI heard during those two weeks. That’s something else Gilly won’t tell me. Need to find a way to change his mind.”
Taylor convinced Samantha to let him go into the office to make calls even though it was a Saturday. They boarded the 7 train for Times Square. The varied landscape of Queens changed from residential to a mix of neighborhoods and cemeteries to the industrial buildings of Long Island City. The train dipped underground. Seemingly seconds later, Samantha squeezed his arm. He blinked twice to wake from his train nap. In this dream, three AMC Pacers chased Collucci along the Bowery while Gilly sat in a white Plymouth and watched.
At the top of the stairs to Times Square station, a three-card monte game appeared to have drawn a good crowd. Of the half dozen around the collapsible table, Taylor guessed one, or maybe two, of the players were the marks—adventurous tourists who had come to see the lawless world Times Square had become. They were about to get ripped off, since everyone else was in on the con.
Gambling—fixed or otherwise—was a small-time business compared with sex here at the Crossroads of the World. West along 42nd Street, movie marquee after movie marquee offered one triple bill of porn after another. One of the longest blocks of theaters in the world, and it had all turned porn.
“Best one,” Taylor said.
This was their movie-title game.
“Let me see. Maraschino Cherry across the street at the Forty Second Street XXX Movie Center.”
“Pussy In Boots.”
“The one below it. Also at the Rialto. Wanda Whips Wall Street.”
“Look there. Debbie Does Las Vegas relegated to third on the bill.”
“Debbie’s losing it. Vegas ain’t Dallas. The Filthy Five at the Victory is my winner for the day.”
They turned onto Seventh Avenue. At the corner, a black man in a slouch hat leaned against a light pole. Taylor was pretty certain he was the lookout for the three-card monte scam.
Samantha shouldn’t have worried about coming into the office, except maybe for the waste of time the subway ride turned out to be. Taylor tried Jersey Stein. No answer. He tried Phillips and Feeney at the Seven-Two. They weren’t in and a detective working the Saturday shift had no interest in talking. He called sources. He called people who usually hung up on him. They did. They both read the papers as he waited the obligatory hour for someone to call him back. No one did.
A Black Sail Page 17