Patty stood up and kissed his cheek. “Welcome back,” she said.
“Are you an angel?” Eddie asked, and smiled wanly.
“My husband says I am,” she said, easing onto the bed and snuggling next to him. She put her head on his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“How do I look?”
“Awful.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“You’re lucky,” said Mickey, walking across the room and standing by the bed. “The doctor said the bullet barely scraped your tensor muscle.”
“Which means—?” Eddie asked.
“You won’t be running up and down stairs like you used to,” O’Toole said.
“What happened to the shooter?” Eddie asked.
“He’s in custody in intensive care,” Mickey said. “You almost killed him.”
“I tried,” Eddie said. “Who is he?”
“Otis Perry,” O’Toole said. “He’s wanted. How’d you spot him?”
“He looked out of place,” Eddie said. “The Helter Skelter tattoo reminded me of Charles Manson’s race war and when he pulled the gun he really got my attention.”
“Why was he going to shoot her?” Patty asked.
“Manson believed a race war would annihilate blacks and whites and that his kind would rule the world. Helter Skelter was his racial war cry. Otis was going to kill that girl to start the war.”
“I thought Manson got a death sentence,” Patty said.
“He did, but California banned the death penalty and commuted his sentence to life with the possibility of parole,” Eddie said. “Can you believe it? His followers believe Charlie will be resurrected.”
“That freak still has followers?” Mickey asked.
“Plenty,” Eddie said. “Otis isn’t alone. Squeaky Fromme, a real Manson nut job, preaches Charlie’s bullshit everywhere. There’s a lot more.”
“There are a lot of crazy people out there,” Patty said.
“There’s a little crazy in all of us,” Eddie said. “Mine comes from my grandfather.”
“I know all about your grandfather,” Mickey said, trying to avoid hearing the story again. “Didn’t he kill a thousand-pound Russian black bear armed only with ball point pen?”
“It was a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound, half-starved brown bear, you big dope,” Eddie corrected his partner. “And he did it with a Cossack dagger … and that’s not even the crazy part. The crazy part is he wasn’t afraid when he attacked the bear and didn’t care about the consequences. All he was thinking was the bear was a threat and had to be killed. My grandfather never considered his own mortality.”
“That is exactly like you,” Mickey said. Patty nodded.
Chapter 8
The Second Day of Busing
Friday, September 13, 1974
8:00 A.M.
Arianna Comperchio sat at her kitchen table reading the front-page story in the newspaper about the shooting in Southie yesterday. The article reported that Detective Eddie Perlmutter had been shot in the leg while stopping a white man named Otis Perry from shooting a black girl named Belle Stackhouse as she got off the bus. The article went on to say the girl was unharmed, Perry was in intensive care, and Perlmutter was resting comfortably after the bullet passed through his thigh. He had been cited for bravery but was reprimanded for using excessive force.
Arianna had known Eddie since ’68, when he was a rookie cop on the North End beat. She liked him. He was polite and respectful to her even though he was trying to put her husband in jail. Everyone said he was fearless and tough. He had a reputation for being incorruptible and fair. Even her husband, Joey, who despised cops, respected Eddie.
“Perlmutter is a straight shooter,” he’d told her. “I tried to bribe him once and he told me to shove my money up my ass. You gotta respect a guy like him. He won’t roust a wise guy or plant evidence like some of those other bastards. If it was him or me in a shoot-out I’d have to take him down, but I wouldn’t be happy about it.”
Arianna remembered reading how Eddie had received an Outstanding Service Award a few years ago for rescuing a baby locked in a car on a hundred-degree day. Not wanting to risk shattering a window and unable to open the childproof door locks, Eddie removed the front windshield, using tools he carried in his car for emergencies. The article had a picture of Eddie holding the baby with a crying, grateful mother leaning on his shoulder. Arianna remembered getting teary-eyed when she read the story.
She was teary-eyed again reading yesterday’s news. Eddie had saved another child and gotten injured in the process, but he would recover. “Way to go, Eddie,” she said, putting the paper on the table and wiping her eyes.
She sipped her coffee and looked out the kitchen window. The leaves on the trees in her backyard were showing a touch of color. The Comperchios lived in a big brick house in Brookline a few blocks from Cleveland Circle, where the transit authority parked their subway cars at night. The homes in their neighborhood looked expensive and were built over twenty years ago, when builders could afford to use red brick. They had moved to the neighborhood two years ago, after Joey had received a large payment for doing something she didn’t want to know about. Arianna had never wanted the gangster life, but it was the only life she knew.
Her father, Alphonse Terrasini, had been a Mafia leader in Palermo, Sicily, in the twenties. In the forties when the Mafia went to war against Italy’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazis, he led the resistance. To keep his pregnant wife Selvagia and their unborn child safe, Alphonse sent them to live in America with his sister, Mary Cavagio. Mary, a Mafia widow with no children of her own, welcomed her brother’s wife gladly. A few months after their arrival in Boston, Arianna was born, but Selvagia did not survive the difficult delivery. When Alphonse received the news of his wife’s death, he insisted that Mary become mother to Arianna until the war ended. She agreed. Three years later, however, Alphonse was killed by the Nazis and Aunt Mary became both mother and father to the little girl. Word came from Sicily that Alphonse had died a hero while saving the life of his don, and that the entire Mafia family owed a debt of gratitude to the Terrasini family. It was agreed that the debt should be paid in cash every month to support Alphonse’s only child.
Through the forties and fifties money was delivered by thugs, killers, and thieves to Mary’s small apartment in the North End, and Arianna grew up in the protective womb of the mob. Soon, however, things would change. Mary died in 1960, and the money stopped in 1963 when Arianna became a Mafia wife, marrying young hit man Joey Comperchio. It was the only life they both knew.
The Mafia of the sixties was a shadow of its former self. Honor among thieves was a thing of the past, and omertà, the vow of silence, was forgotten. The government was using electronic surveillance to convict Mafia leaders with their own words, and known killers were being protected by the FBI in exchange for information. The joke was that there were more canaries in the Boston Mafia then in the Franklin Park Zoo’s Aviary.
Arianna was both impressed and repulsed by the people in her life. She waved to homicidal sociopath Joe Barboza Baron on the streets, and he always winked back. She recognized the alcoholic murderers named McLaughlin and McLean from Somerville, and tried to avoid them. She knew dimwitted Jimmy “The Bear” Flemmi and his murderous brother Stevie “The Rifleman,” and they knew her. Local mob boss Nunzio Nardelli greeted her with, “Ciao bella,” and hit man Johnny Matarano always gave her a smile. She was surrounded by dangerous men, impossible to avoid or ignore. The only good guy that she believed could stand up to these wise guys was Eddie Perlmutter. He was respected and feared by men who were respected and feared. Maybe she would send him a card in the hospital.
Arianna got up from the table and went outside for the mail. She walked down her sloped driveway and breathed in the fresh, crisp air of early fall. Soon the leaves on the trees would turn colors and fall to the ground. It was her favorite time of year.
“Mrs. Comperchio,” pre-med student
Anthony Polcari called from across the street. “How are you today?”
Arianna smiled. “Are you asking professionally, Doctor Polcari?”
They both laughed.
Arianna pulled down the lid of the mailbox. The force of the blast blew her halfway across the street.
Chapter 9
A Familiar Picture
Friday, September 13, 1974
11:00 A.M.
Mickey visited Eddie at the hospital and told him about Arianna.
“That’s horrible,” Eddie said. “She was a nice person.”
“She was also married to a Mafia soldier,” Mickey O’Toole said.
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t a nice person, or deserved to die.”
“No, it means she had bad taste in men.”
“She led a sheltered life.”
“Carmelite nuns lead sheltered lives.”
“I mean she didn’t know anything but the Mafia,” Eddie said. “Her father was a Mafia legend. The aunt who raised her was a Mafia widow. For more than twenty years the mob was her life.”
“And her death,” Mickey said. “The bomb must have been meant for Johnny.”
“Probably,” Eddie said. “What kind of bomb was it?”
“I don’t know,” Mickey told him. “I heard the news on the police band while I was driving over here. It’s not our district, but I can probably make a call and find out.”
“Call,” Eddie said. “I want to know more. Maybe we can help.”
Mickey shrugged and reached for the phone on Eddie’s nightstand. “I have a friend on the Brookline police force,” he said, and dialed.
When his friend answered, Mickey asked about the bomb in the mailbox. He was put on hold for a few minutes before his friend came back on the line. Mickey listened intently. “No kidding,” he said, raising his eyebrows and looking at Eddie. “Are you sure about this? Is it in the official report? Okay Sarge, I owe you one.” Mickey hung up the phone and rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers.
“What just gave you a headache?” Eddie asked.
“Arianna Comperchio was killed by a Derringer shotgun blast to the heart,” Mickey said. “It was rigged in her mailbox. They also found the remnants of a remote control device.”
“Meaning the killer was in the area and deliberately targeted Arianna,” Eddie said.
“Why would anyone want to kill her?”
“Why would anyone want to kill Jimmy Gorgeous?”
“One more thing,” Mickey said. “Police found an old black-and-white photo fifty yards down the street.”
“Let me guess,” Eddie interrupted. “It was the same photo we picked up in the North End, names and all.”
Mickey nodded. “A copy of a copy,” he said.
Eddie checked himself out of the hospital, insisting he was okay. His doctor told him not to go, warned him about infection, and gave him pain pills. He called Patty and told her about Arianna.
“That’s terrible,” Patty said. “She was very nice.”
“I’m leaving the hospital,” he told her. “Mickey’s taking me to the crime scene.”
“Brookline is out of your district,” she said. “And what about your wound?”
“I’m fine, and I think this shooting is connected to Jimmy Gorgeous,” Eddie said. “That makes it part of my investigation.”
“What’s the connection?” Patty asked.
“Custom-made shotguns, photographs, and unlikely victims,” Eddie said.
Chapter 10
White Flight
Friday, September 13, 1974
1:00 P.M.
Mickey drove the few miles west to Brookline, an affluent town made popular in the forties and fifties by white flight: the blacks moved in; the whites moved out.
Arianna and Joey Comperchio’s house was a brick colonial on Stalker Circle built on a hill at the end of a cul-de-sac. Eddie struggled out of Mickey’s unmarked police car. His wound was only a day old, but he wouldn’t give in to the pain.
“You should still be in the hospital,” Mickey said.
“I’m fine, mother,” Eddie said. “Where was the picture found?”
“Near home plate,” Mickey said, pointing at a sewer cover fifty yards away. A baseball diamond had been drawn on the street with chalk.
There was a Brookline cop in front of the Comperchio house. Eddie approached him and identified himself.
“I’m Ed Davidson,” the cop told him. “You guys are a bit out of your territory.”
“This homicide may be connected to a case of ours,” Eddie replied.
“Lopresti?”
“Right,” Eddie confirmed.
“My orders are not to let anyone in this taped-off area,” Davidson said.
“I’m going into the sewer,” Eddie told him.
“It’s been done,” Davidson said. “You started a trend with your North End discovery.”
“Find anything?” Eddie asked.
“They don’t tell me much, but I know it leads to the MTA yard,” Davidson said.
“Thanks for saving me the trip,” Eddie said. He walked back to the sewer cover and studied the two holes in the top.
“What are you thinking?” Mickey asked.
“I figure our man entered the manhole in the MTA yard and exited on Stalker early this morning, like three. He rigged the mailbox, went back in the hole, killed some time somewhere, and then returned in time to shoot the gun off when she came out for the mail.”
“From the sewer?”
“I’m thinking he was on the ladder in the sewer looking through one of these holes in the cover with a periscope device.”
“Where did he get a periscope?”
“Probably made it himself,” Eddie said. “It’s only a pipe with a couple of mirrors. This guy is good. She opens the box, he throws a switch. Boom. Down the ladder and gone. This is one clever, organized, motivated murderer who is definitely sending a message to someone.”
Eddie walked back to thank Officer Ed Davidson when he heard a loud voice coming from the house.
“Eddie Perlmutter, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Joey,” Eddie called back.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I liked your wife,” Eddie said. “I wanted to see if I could help.”
“Thanks,” Comperchio said. “You wanna come in?”
Eddie looked at Davidson. “Is that allowed?”
“I’m just guarding the crime scene,” Davidson said.
“I got O’Toole with me,” Eddie told Joey.
“He’s okay. C’mon up. I’ll open the door.”
Joey stood in the doorway wearing black slacks and a white dress shirt. He was tall and handsome like Elvis. He was also a killer, like his father, Frank. Joey motioned for them to sit on the sofa and he sat across from them. “Kinda weird you two being in my house,” he said. His eyes were red.
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Mickey said.
Eddie looked at a photo of Arianna propped on an end table. “She was beautiful,” he said.
“I really loved her,” Joey said, and tears came to his eyes. “My father loved her more than anyone. He said she never disappointed him like I did. She was the daughter he never had, and now she’s dead and he blames me.”
“He figures you were the intended target,” Eddie said.
“I’m sure I was,” he said. “Arianna didn’t have enemies.”
“What would you say if told you she was the target?” Eddie asked.
“I’d say you’re crazy,” Joey said. “Why would anyone want to kill Arianna?”
“I don’t know yet,” Eddie said. “But I will.”
“You got the case?” Joey asked.
“I asked for it,” Eddie said.
“Thanks,” Joey said. “I appreciate that.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Eddie said. “I’d just as soon shoot you in the balls.”
Driving home, Eddie thought out lou
d, “If this is about old business, how do feuds like this get started?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Mickey said.
“C’mon, my guesses are much better than yours,” Eddie said.
They both laughed, but there was a grim edge to their laughter.
Chapter 11
How a Vendetta Begins
Monday, April 11, 1910
4:00 A.M.
Luca Dipietro stood at the intersection of Oak Street and Milton Street in Little Italy’s Little Hell section. It was four in the morning and unseasonably cold for April. Luca had grown accustomed to Chicago’s weather since immigrating from Lecara Friddi, Sicily, with his wife and two young sons in 1907. He opened a small grocery store and in three years it was a success. The new world was an open door—until the old world came knocking with a Black Hand.
The Black Hand had been extorting money from Italians for hundreds of years. They delivered threats by letters that ended with a drawing of a smoking gun, a hangman’s noose, or a hand imprinted in black ink. The message was always the same: Give us money or die.
“Bastardos, vaffanculo,” Luca cursed when he read the letter. They were demanding five hundred dollars, an amount they knew he could afford. But Luca Dipietro considered any amount of extortion money too much. He would not pay. Instead, he would make them pay.
Sammy Petrosanti, the fruit peddler, and Vincenzo, “Vinnie The Barber” Carrado, joined Luca under the gas street lamp. The three short, powerfully built, middle-aged men had known each other in the old country. They exchanged greetings and Black Hand letters. Each had been asked for five hundred dollars.
“Fuck these pezzonovantes,” Carrado said, and spit. “They are growing weaker every day fighting the Mafia. We should ignore them.”
“We can’t ignore them,” Luca said. “We need to arm ourselves and resist.”
Eddie the Kid Page 3