Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Of course not! Us? Besides, the district attorney is a personal friend of mine.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  The 622nd murder actually took place that night, in the section of lower Manhattan known as Little Italy, in a restaurant. The victim was Vincent Ferro, known around town as Vinnie Red because of the unusual color of his hair. Vinnie Red was a gangster, and his murder was appropriately “gangland style” as the tabloids always put it.

  The same papers also called him a “Mafia figure,” which was untrue, since Vinnie was not a member of one of the five New York crime families. Instead he was an independent, and had recently expanded from loan sharking and numbers into narcotics, using a distribution network based on a cadre of black men he had met while serving eight years in Attica. Vinnie got along well with black criminals, an unusual talent for an Italian gangster, and he was now capitalizing on it.

  On the last evening of his life he was taking his two sisters to dinner at Alberto’s, a seafood place on the corner of Grand and White Street. He had been doing this once a month for years and did not see any reason for stopping simply because a contract on his life had been taken out by at least two major criminal organizations. Vinnie had a reputation for rubbing the Mob’s face in it, and the choice of Alberto’s, which is to Mob society what the Stage Delicatessen is to stand-up comics, was typical bravado. Besides the two women, his party included his driver-bodyguard Salvatore Meccano. Sally Mitch was a pretty good driver, but not much of a bodyguard, which everybody knew and which thus added to the luster of Vinnie’s rep. And of course tonight, as usual, and burnishing the luster even more, Vinnie was unarmed.

  Vinnie and his party swept into Alberto’s at about ten, Vinnie dressed to kill in a gray sharkskin suit, white silk shirt, red tie with diamond stickpin, with a fawn leather trenchcoat flung over his shoulders, and his ladies appropriately dolled up. They headed straight for the banquette table in the front room where they always sat. There was nobody sitting there at the moment, but if there had been, Vinnie would have stood in front of the table frowning silently until the people vacated, which they would have done instantly if they recognized him, or if not, then somewhat later, when the waiter had nervously explained the mores of the locale.

  Vinnie Red got good service in Alberto’s, just as the Czar probably didn’t have to wave a lot to flag a waiter at the Winter Palace. As they started on their clams oreganata, which were served about forty seconds after the order hit the kitchen, a man of about thirty got up from his zuppa di pesci and walked rapidly to the door. Although he did not even glance at the Ferro table on his way out, Sally Mitch spotted him and remarked to his boss,

  “Vinnie, that was, you know, that Frank Impellatti—Little Noodles.”

  Ferro shrugged and poured another dollop of Alberto’s famous incandescent hot sauce on his clams. “So, it was Little Noodles. So what?”

  “So he left pretty fast just now. He’s with the Bollanos. I think he drives for Joey Bottles, him or that other hitter they got, Charlie Tonnatti….”

  Vinnie didn’t like to talk business in front of female members of his family. A faint scowl dropped his perfect curly pompadour a quarter of an inch down his forehead. He said, “Eat your clams, Sally. They could get cold, there, eh?”

  Sally Mitch shrugged too. If Vinnie was not concerned that Frank “Little Noodles” Impellatti, who drove for the Bollano crime family’s principal assassins, had left his dinner in a hurry shortly after their arrival, he was not going to worry.

  Forty minutes later they were having coffee and cannoli. Vinnie had just stuck the end of a cannoli into his mouth when he saw it coming. The man who came through the door was about fifty. He had a face from a Toltec monument: broad nose, thick lips, slit eyes, pocked skin, a head unnaturally round, an unforgettable face that nobody ever remembered. This was Giuseppe Botteglia, Joey Bottles.

  Joey Bottles pulled an Army Colt .45 pistol out of the pocket of his gray topcoat and walked calmly toward the Ferro table. The maitre d’ did not ask him if he had a reservation. He saw Vinnie see him and paused for a moment, confident that Vinnie would do the right thing.

  Which Vinnie did. He flung his table over on its side, grabbed his sisters, each by the nape of her neck and threw them behind this barrier. Sally Mitch availed himself of the same courtesy, without being asked. Then Vinnie Red leaped over the table and made for the door.

  Joey Bottles turned and walked after him, calmly firing shot after shot into the fleeing man’s back. At each shot Vinnie jerked like a galvanized frog, yet he kept somehow on his feet through the short lobby and out into the rainy street. There he collapsed at last, face down on the pavement. Overcoming his natural desire to clear out as soon as possible after a job, Joey Bottles bent and turned Vinnie over to make sure he was dead. This was more than a matter of professional pride. Machiavelli said, “When you strike at a prince, you should be sure to kill him.” Joey had never read Machiavelli, but like most of his colleagues he was a spiritual inhabitant of the sixteenth century, and the wisdom of vendetta had been bred into his bones.

  After assuring himself that Vinnie was indeed dead, Joey looked around. The window and the doorway of Alberto’s were crammed with white staring faces. From within he could hear the keening of the sisters. They were being held back by Sally Mitch. He heard one of them yell, “Blood will run in the streets for this!” Joey shrugged, doubt on his face. Ferro’s operation would fall apart without him. In any case, it was not his concern. He turned to the restaurant and snarled, “Nobody saw nothing.” It was his theme song and always well-received by the crowd. The faces withdrew.

  A squeal of tires on the wet pavement announced the arrival of his transportation. Joey got in and the car roared away. He lit a cigarette. Frank Impellatti, at the wheel, glanced over at his companion.

  “So?”

  “So, nothing. It went OK. We going to Nyack, right?”

  “Yeah. So. Vinnie Red. He’s been looking for it years, y’know?”

  “Yeah, years. Since he whacked out Tony Abrutte.”

  “He did Abrutte? I never knew that.”

  “Fuck, yeah. Nineteen, he fuckin’ takes out a guy is practically a capo regime. Don’t clear it with nobody, just pops him. Harry Pick got no fuckin’ use for Abrutte, but he can’t sit for no little sardine hitting no fish the size of Abrutte, you understand?”

  “Yeah, it’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Yeah. So from that day he’s a dead man.”

  “Right. Still you gotta admit the guy had a pair of stones on him. I mean it took, what, twelve years to get him?”

  Joey shot him a hard stare through the smoke. Joey Bottles packed a world class hard stare and Frank looked quickly back to the road. Joey said, “Stones got nothing to do with it. He spent ten in the slams, out of that. Then he starts this bullshit with the jigs uptown. He was way out of line.”

  “Right. Hey, you want to stop for something? Coffee or something to eat? I didn’t get to finish my dinner.”

  “Nah, we’ll eat by Nyack. Or we could send out. I wanna get off the road.” Joey smiled, then grinned, then chuckled far back in his throat.

  This was so startling that Frank swerved out of lane.

  “Hey, Joey, what’s so funny?”

  “What you said, it reminded me. Vinnie didn’t finish his dinner neither. When he went out, he still had a cannoli stuck in his mouth.”

  “No shit? A cannoli?”

  “Yeah. A fuckin’ cannoli, right in his mouth, like a cigar.”

  “Yeah, well they do a good cannoli at Alberto’s,” said Little Noodles.

  The morning after the Ferro killing shone through the windows of a condo in Nyack, New York, and sent a beam of sunlight into Frank Impellatti’s eyes. He cursed the light and rolled over in bed. Then he sat up and looked at the clock-radio on the side table, which read seven forty-five. He remembered that his boss was coming over this morning, at eight-thirty. This was something of
a ritual in the Bollano family. When somebody whacked somebody out, or did something equally calculated to arouse the interest of the authorities, he and his accomplices would stay in this condo in Nyack, or in one of a number of similar accommodations, until the heat died down, or until other arrangements could be made for their futures.

  Into such a safe house on the morning after the event would come the consiglere of the Bollanos, Umberto Piaccere, and a small entourage. If Piaccere was pleased with the event, he would bring with him a small white box of pastries. There would be civilized discussion. If he was not pleased, there would be no pastries. There would be no civilized discussion. In either case, Piaccere expected an alert crew and strong coffee on these visits. Little Noodles rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

  As he shaved, he considered the events of the previous evening. The Bollanos had nothing to complain about: It was a clean hit, easy, no big thing. He expected pastries.

  Little Noodles got dressed. He wore beltless tailored black slacks, with suspenders, a pale green silk dress shirt, with french cuffs, open at the neck, and white Gucci loafers. The sliding doors to the closet in his room were full-length mirrors. He checked himself out, turning from side to side. He put on a beige linen-silk weave sport jacket, adjusted his collar, and checked himself out again.

  Despite the care he took, Impellatti was not by nature a vain man; he understood that he was not much to look at. He was short and slight, swarthy and dark-jowled, with thinning black hair. He had a little round bulb at the end of his nose, a small cleft chin, and a wide thin mouth with not much lip. His teeth were capped. Nevertheless, in his world, where there were no examinations or résumés or quarterly reports, impressions counted a great deal more than they did in the civil service. They paid you enough, you weren’t supposed to look like some kind of bum.

  Walking down the hallway from his bedroom, Impellatti could hear the heavy snores of his colleague, Joey Bottles, coming from behind the shut door of the apartment’s other bedroom. Standing well to the side of the doorway, he knocked twice.

  Instantly the snores shut down, like the sound shuts off when you mash the button on a TV. Impellatti knew that if he walked through the door right now, he would be looking into the barrel of Joey’s Colt pistol. He had no intention of doing this. Instead he said clearly and slowly, “Joey. It’s eight o’clock. The boss’ll be here in half an hour.” He heard the answering grunt from behind the door and then went to make the coffee.

  As it brewed, Frank looked out the kitchen window. The condo building was built high on a hill facing the river, with woods at the back. The river was a far silvery line beyond the powder green of the spring trees. Closer, the window gave a good view of the building’s winding driveway and its parking lot. You could see if you had visitors, which was one of the main selling points of the building to Little Noodles’s employers. A sliding glass door led from the kitchen to a narrow covered balcony, from which fire stairs led down to the ground. That made two ways out—another selling point.

  The coffee started to brew in the electric pot, and Frank pulled six cups and saucers out of the cabinet above the sink. These domestic arrangements were part of his job. He also cleaned cars, picked up laundry, and ran various errands. Occasionally he drove. He did not mind the menial tasks; he had no great ambition beyond being a soldier for the Bollanos. For this he made about seventy-five thousand dollars annually, all of it in untaxable cash. Once he had to go to jail for eleven years. It was still a good deal.

  Five minutes after the coffee maker dripped its final drop, the front door of the apartment was opened without knock or ring by a broad shouldered, thin-faced man with small eyes. This was Tommy Vecchio, the consiglere’s driver and bodyguard. He nodded to Impellatti and looked around the apartment’s living room and dining nook.

  A few seconds later a man in his mid-forties, wearing a snap brim loden hat with a feather in it, walked into the apartment. He was a medium sized, compact man, with a round head and deeply pouched dark eyes, after the manner of the late Eddie Cantor. “Charlie,” said Little Noodles. Carlo Tonnatti, also called Charlie Tuna by his many acquaintances, said, “Noodles, how you been?” He was Piaccere’s personal leg breaker and shooter.

  Charlie Tuna turned on the television set, loud, and flopped down on the long white couch that occupied the center of the living room. Tonnatti was not interested in the programs available at eight-thirty in the morning. Although the condo was routinely examined for listening devices, Piaccere liked loud TV in the background when he discussed business.

  Then two men came in together. One was in his mid-fifties, beautifully dressed in a double-breasted navy chalkstripe, Sulka tie, and mirror-bright wingtips. The other was younger, in his twenties. He wore slacks and gold-mounted loafers and a dark silk shirt open at the neck, displaying gold chains.

  The older man’s face was broad, heavy-lidded, thick-lipped. His nose was large, with prominent pores, and he bore a deep comma-shaped scar to the right of it. The younger man was less distinguished in appearance, a forgettable face with large ears and a scant chin. Each of these dissimilar faces had two things in common: a good tan and the expression of brutal self-confidence often worn by people who can have anybody who annoys them beaten up or killed. The younger man was Salvatore Bollano, known as Little Sallie. He was nephew to the don, learning the family business. The older man, his tutor, was Umberto Piaccere. Or Harry Pick.

  Piaccere looked around the living room. His eyes fell on Frank Impellatti. For a long instant it seemed as if he was trying to remember who Frank was. Then he nodded, the slightest downward motion of the big head. Frank noted with some relief that Piaccere was carrying a white bakery box wrapped with string.

  Joey Bottles now entered the living room, casually dressed and with his thin hair still damp from the shower. Piaccere greeted him warmly and held up the bakery box. Frank moved in unobtrusively and took the box. He went into the kitchen, where he had already set up the coffee things on a tray. He opened the box and put the pastries on a plate. There were two zabaione, two zeppole, a millefoglie and a cannoli.

  The five men arranged themselves around the large glass coffee table in the living room. Captain Kangaroo was blaring from the TV. Frank served the coffee and pastries. The men selected the pastries in order of their precedence in the family, first Piaccere and Sallie, then the others, with Impellatti last.

  Piaccere said, “Looks like Little Noodles got the cannoli.”

  Sallie said, “Yeah, right, looks like cannoli ain’t too popular today.”

  Charlie Tuna said, “You eat cannoli, it could be bad for your health.” Everybody had a big laugh. Even Frank laughed, although he didn’t think it was very funny. Harry Pick laughed loudest of all, and as he did his eyes met Frank’s and he winked, and raised his hand and pointed his finger at Frank and let his thumb fall on the base of his index finger, in the bang-bang gesture familiar to children the world over.

  Frank felt a shock of cold fear stab through his middle and the chill of sweat on his forehead. He looked at the cannoli on his saucer. Of course, he would be the one to get the single cannoli—they had set it up.

  The men began talking business. Frank couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. He was trying to recall something he had done or failed to do that would warrant being killed. He couldn’t think of anything, but he realized this hardly mattered. It could be that somewhere in the high politics of the Honorable Society a deal had been struck, some codicil of which required that Frank Impellatti take the fall. He was under no illusions about his value to the organization.

  And he had taken the fall once before. Frank, at nineteen, had driven the car for the two guys (one of them Charlie Tonnatti) who had whacked out Alfredo Baggia in the barber shop of the Park Terrace Hotel. The cops had picked him up, slammed him around, pumped him for the names of the shooters. He had kept his mouth shut. Then a man had come to see him in jail, and gave him the deal: You keep quiet, say you
pulled the trigger, we’ll take care of you. So he did, and they did. Eleven years in the joint and nobody ever looked at him funny. He got out, he was a made man. But this was different. Dead was dead.

  Piaccere said, “Noodles, make some more coffee.” Frank got up and took the pot. As he walked away his back tingled and it was all he could do to keep from cutting and racing out the door with the pot in his hands.

  He went to the kitchen and washed out the pot, filled it with fresh water, measured out the coffee and plugged it in. After a while, the smell of fresh coffee filled the apartment. Piaccere called out, “Hey, Noodles, you gonna bring that coffee in here?” There was no answer. Then they looked for him, but Little Noodles was gone.

  The Ferro killing made the front pages of all the tabloids, which meant that Karp had to look at the photograph of Vinnie in the gutter at every newsstand he passed on the way to work, and his spirits sunk lower at each one.

  He knew what to expect when he got to the office and he got it. A message from Bloom was waiting, and on the phone the district attorney made it clear that Karp’s job was to leave no stone unturned (his actual phrase) in the prosecution of the killers.

  “Look, um,” Karp said, “I just got in here and I haven’t had time to find out what happened, except a hood got killed last night. After I meet with some people, I’ll know more.”

  “Vinnie Ferro was not just a hood, Butch,” Bloom replied, a hint of condescension oozing into his voice. “He was big time. The media are suggesting this could be the start of another major gang war.”

  And wouldn’t you love that, thought Karp. Nothing like a Mafia-organized crime-Cosa Nostra-gang war to put the D.A.’s office in the news. What he said was, “I don’t know about big time. They’re all mutts when you get right down to it. Mr. Garrahy used to say, whenever there was one of these hits, that if they wanted to shoot each other he’d be glad to make Yankee Stadium available at public expense, and pay for the bullets.”

  This reference to Garrahy had its usual effect. Bloom’s tone stiffened and he broke the connection after a few meaningless rumblings.