The Window Washer

by Eric Rill

  “They just called,” the man said before Craven could open his mouth. “He’ll be over in a few minutes. Want a drink?”

  “I’ll just sit over there and wait,” Craven said, pointing to a chair by the cigarette machine.

  A few regulars rambled through the front door. They never bothered to use the back entrance anymore because they knew they had been photographed a million times already. But they rarely discussed confidential matters inside, unless the music was blaring at the same time, so that the cops couldn’t eavesdrop on their conversations.

  Moments later, several young men with expansive frames marched through the front entrance, surrounding Bruno Pascale and Salvatore Massimo. Security was always tight at the social club when Pascale put in an appearance—something that happened only a few times a month, given his failing health. And it was even tighter now since the attempt on his life outside Jacobs Field the previous summer by a now-deceased capo.

  “Jonathan, thanks for coming up on such short notice,” Salvatore Massimo said. Massimo, six-foot-one and barely 150 pounds, had the same innocent look about him he’d had back in college—a trait that disarmed his adversaries, and one he put to good use.

  “Johnny,” Bruno Pascale said as he shuffled in. “Good to see you.” Pascale had been the godfather since 2009, when Fabrizzio Della Corte had been gunned down in one of his own restaurants. Word on the street was that Sammy “The Crusher” Corredo, who made no secret about his interest in succeeding Della Corte, was responsible for the massacre. Paulo “The Fat Cat” Santorini wanted the job, too. He controlled the drug trade from Cleveland to the Canadian border and was the biggest contributor to the coffers of the New York Fabrizzio family—the most powerful and wealthiest in America. But the guys in New York didn’t trust Santorini or Corredo. Instead they installed Pascale, almost eighty years old, with emphysema and a history of heart problems, as a compromise until they could get a better handle on the situation in Cleveland.

  “Good to see you too, sir,” Craven replied, offering a slight bow.

  “Salvatore tells me you did good on the Castellano thing. Tell me something, Johnny. How can a man—a made man, who took the blood oath—how could he get so greedy that he would do such a thing?”

  Craven could feel his skin heating up and prayed that it wasn’t turning scarlet. “I told Sal that he and that Ferraro woman must have been concocting their scheme for a long time.”

  “But you personally opened her account at the bank, right?” Pascale wheezed as he lowered his frail body into a chair with the help of one of his lieutenants.

  “No…well, yes, but…”

  “Johnny, which is it? Yes or no?” Pascale persisted as he moved his body around in his chair to relieve the sciatica in his right leg.

  Craven looked down at the top of Pascale’s wrinkled head and took a deep breath. “I opened it, sir, but only because Castellano ordered me to.”

  “Ordered or asked?” Pascale continued.

  “Uncle Bruno,” Salvatore began, rubbing his fingers along the deep crevices in his forehead—the only physical attribute that gave away his age. “Jonathan did tell me about it a while back. I didn’t think it was any big deal.”

  “Salvatore, the fact that she had a bank account isn’t a big deal. Having almost fifty grand in it is!” Pascale said.

  “Sir, with all respect,” Craven said, a slight tremble in his voice. “Once I realized that the girl might be involved—”

  “And how exactly did you find out?” Pascale asked, interrupting him.

  “Sir, it was only after Castellano had me send some big money down to his offshore account that I got suspicious. That’s when I checked the girl’s account and called Salvatore.”

  “Uncle Bruno, it was Jonathan who tipped us off about Castellano and the girl stealing from us.”

  “Johnny, you know that Castellano came up here and told us that you and the girl were in cahoots with the cop,” Pascale said, grimacing from the pain in his leg.

  Craven’s eyes widened as he looked back over at Massimo. “You never told me anything about that, Sal.”

  “We didn’t believe him,” Massimo assured his friend. “But we told him to get rid of the girl. According to Castellano, she was getting a bit too nosy anyway. The fat shit couldn’t even get that right. Can you imagine that skinny-assed bitch getting the best of that pig?”

  “We figured since we were going to whack Castellano anyway, might as well let him do her first,” Pascale said. “Save us the trouble.”

  “So, you had Castellano taken out?” Craven asked.

  “No choice when he’s skimming from us, right Johnny?” Pascale said.

  “And the cop?” Craven asked, wondering where Rosa fit into their puzzle.

  “That’s kind of complicated,” Massimo said, looking over at his uncle.

  “Okay, Johnny, I’m sure you got lots of important stuff to do back in Columbus,” Pascale said.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Craven replied as he grabbed his briefcase off a laminate table and disappeared into the dark corridor.

  “Sal, we got a lotta shit we need to clean up down there,” Pascale said.

  “I’ll make sure it gets done,” Massimo said, his eyes fixed on the now-empty hallway.

  22

  Angela Ferraro was taken directly from the county jail, where Rosa had slated her into state custody, to the women’s workhouse south of the city, where she would remain until her initial court appearance. After six years as an undercover narcotics cop, she finally had the opportunity to spend a night in one of the cramped cubicles where she had dispatched more than a dozen women she had busted for trafficking in drugs. Her cell was an eight-by-ten room with a bare lightbulb fixed into the plaster ceiling, a cot with a sagging mattress, and a stainless-steel toilet bowl attached to the painted cinder-block wall. The stench and the constant chatter of the other inmates kept her up until just before three in the morning—as did the real possibility that one of the prisoners might recognize her.

  A female guard roused her at five-thirty. After a quick breakfast of dry toast and weak coffee, she was handcuffed and hustled down the corridor to a side door, where she was shackled to four other women in the same bright orange prison uniforms and directed into an unmarked Econoline van. She watched through the mesh-wired window as the rusted gate yawned open.

  They passed endless flat fields as they made their way to Interstate 270. Just before the entrance ramp, they came to a stop behind a yellow school bus at a T-junction in the road. A group of children, bulging schoolbags hanging over their backs, chatted in animated voices as they rushed across the road toward the bus.

  Angela remembered waiting for the school bus that would take her to North Cincinnati Elementary, four miles from their farm. The other kids would walk down the hill alone or in groups, but her mother insisted on taking her down and stayed with her until she was safely on the bus. And after school, even in the dead of winter, she would be waiting by the stop sign, chain-smoking and pacing back and forth, never allowing Angela to walk up from the highway alone until she went to junior high school over in Sharonville.

  Her father had moved down to Kentucky with a younger woman when she was five, leaving Angela and her mother with the farm, some furniture, and a big mortgage. Her mother sold off sixty acres, keeping the house and a small tract of land around it, paid her debts, and put the rest of the money away for Angela’s college education. The interest from the money and a small catering business that she ran out of the one-story farmhouse supported their simple lifestyle.

  Her mother was a devout Catholic, and the two of them trundled off to church every Sunday in her mother’s old pickup—until Angela’s sixteenth birthday, when she told her mother that she wouldn’t be going that Sunday or any Sunday in the future. That was the only time Angela’s mother ever raised her voice—or her hand.

  In high school Angela had found any reason to stay away from the farm, often saying she was involv
ed in extracurricular activities, while sneaking off with her friends to a downtown bar on Crescent Street that served them hard liquor, even though they were barely fifteen. That was where she had met Bobby Taft, an eighteen-year-old dropout with a fast mouth and more than one tattoo. He bought her a few drinks and then took her to a dark storage room in the back of his father’s hardware store down the street. To this day the whole episode was a blur—she wasn’t even sure if Bobby had really raped her.

  Her mother’s affection was drowning her, so Angela took a job at Kate’s, a cop hangout on the north side of Cincinnati, where she met Brian Wolfe, a twenty-eight-year-old married vice cop. Their affair lasted almost three years—until his wife found out and gave him an ultimatum. The sex was good, but he wasn’t going to let his wife take the kids up to her mother’s place in Akron.

  While they were still together, Wolfe had convinced Angela that she should forget college and apply for a job with the state police. After he left, she took the entrance exams and ended up in Narcotics. Within two years she had her first undercover assignment.

  The van pulled into the county jail’s garage under the courthouse. The corrections officer, who had been sitting in the front seat, got out and opened the sliding door. “Watch your heads, ladies,” she said, helping the five women step down from the van and leading them through the glass door into the reception area.

  “Got five for initial appearance,” she said to the sergeant behind the desk.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the sergeant said, motioning to a couple of cops sitting in the corner by a scratched metal file cabinet. “One of you clowns get these ladies up to Conference Room Three-B.”

  The five women trudged across the tiled floor toward the elevator, manacled at the waist and ankles. When they got off on the third floor, one of the cops nodded toward a small door beside the municipal courtroom. He opened it and waited as they moved in unison like a slow steam train to a long bench under a barred window. Angela was stuck between a hooker, her cheap perfume still reeking from the night before, and a young girl whose eyes revealed that she was obviously here on some drug charge. An hour later a bailiff opened the door and nodded at the cop. “Okay ladies, let’s head on inside,” the curly-headed officer said, leading them into the high-ceilinged courtroom next door.

  Angela watched impatiently, her eyes scanning the room for Clancy Howell. The judge dealt with the first three women in less than five minutes. Then it was her turn. The judge looked down at Angela and said, “Case number 2007TRD1605. State of Ohio versus Angela Ferraro. Is that you?”

  Angela nodded.

  “You’ll have to answer yes, or no, young lady,” he admonished.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  A well-dressed man appeared from the back of the room. “Clancy Howell on behalf of Angela Ferraro, Your Honor,” he said, giving Angela a reassuring smile.

  “I’m going to go through the charges in detail, seeing as how serious they are,” the judge said, looking down at the file in front of him. “Miss Ferraro, you are being charged with aggravated murder—2903.01A. Do you understand the charge against you?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Howell interjected. “And we plead not guilty.”

  The judge looked over his reading glasses, shrugged, and closed the folder. “I will set bond at five hundred thousand dollars and schedule a preliminary hearing for two weeks from today.” All felonies that arise out of an arrest before a grand jury is impaneled, and an indictment issued, start in municipal court. Then at a preliminary hearing, the state is required to present evidence so that the judge remands the case to common pleas court. In reality, the state, not wanting to share their evidence at such an early stage, gets an indictment before the preliminary hearing date. The prosecutor dismisses the municipal case, and a new number is assigned in common pleas.

  When Angela appeared before Judge Clampton, an irascible seventy-two-year-old common pleas judge, for Case 2007CR-01-372, she had already spent nine nights back at the women’s workhouse, waiting for Clancy Howell to raise bail. Today she was shackled to only one other woman, who had been accused of armed robbery. The arraignment procedure was routine—Howell acknowledged service of indictment, waived a reading of the indictment, and offered a plea of not guilty—until the matter of bail came up.

  Howell didn’t have much to work with in trying to get the judge to lower bail. Angela wasn’t a longtime Columbus resident with ties to the community. In fact she had a prison record for fraud, provided for her courtesy of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, a routine procedure to give undercover cops a background and alias. The Bureau often used the same first name for the fake identity to avoid slip-ups by the undercover cops. And equally important in this case, they were able to get references from a well-placed informant inside the mob to vouch for Angela.

  Howell had called in a favor from a bail bondsman without telling him that Angela was a cop. But the most he could get out of him was $350,000—until Howell pulled out pictures that they had taken of him with an underage girl. In the end the judge reduced the bond to $300,000 anyway. Howell pleaded for more time than usual to prepare his case. The prosecutor didn’t argue, and a trial date was set for June.

  By the time Angela got back to the workhouse, the paperwork to continue bond had been completed. An hour later, she retrieved her clothes and belongings, pushed open a metal door, and stepped out into a raging snowstorm. Howell was parked by the guardhouse, his car blanketed with snow.

  “I was authorized to get an apartment down the hall to protect you. I rented it in one of the phony names in our databank,” he explained as Angela got into the car. “There will be two men there around the clock. We’ve already wired your apartment.”

  Howell put the car into reverse and then made a sharp turn onto the two-lane road. Neither one of them noticed the car parked by the gas station with its motor running.

  23

  Clancy Howell pulled up under the canopy of the Langham. “I’ll call you after I file my report in the morning. Stay put until then,” he warned.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere,” Angela replied. “Except to bed.” She got out of the car, clutching at the collar of her coat to fend off the stinging cold. As she reached the lobby door, she noticed a thin man with deep crevices in his forehead staring at her from behind a newspaper. She turned back toward Howell’s car, her eyes now half-closed from the blinding snow. Howell hadn’t moved, waiting for her to enter the building. She looked back behind her at the man, who quickly shifted his gaze back to his newspaper.

  Howell reached over and slid the passenger window down a notch. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  Angela hesitated for a moment, gave him a weak smile, and then opened the lobby door, marching past the man and heading toward the elevator without so much as a glance.

  She pulled out her keys and quickly made her way down the corridor to her apartment and unlocked the door. She reached for the phone and dialed the superintendent’s number, only to reach his voice mail. Angela hung up and grabbed her gym bag, filling it with a change of clothes and some cosmetics. Then, remembering that Howell had told her the apartment was wired and that two cops were down the hall listening, she turned on the television and took the back stairs down to the superintendent’s office.

  The door was locked, but she knew it wouldn’t take her more than a few seconds to open it with one of the thin tools she always carried with her. The door creaked open and Angela closed it behind her before turning on the overhead fluorescent lights. She rifled through an old Rolodex sitting on the chipped credenza behind the superintendent’s desk. A card with Nick Grant’s name, address, and phone number was the only entry under the letter G. She ripped out the card and turned off the lights before opening the door and heading to the service entrance. It was already pitch-black outside. She buttoned up her coat and left the building.

  Angela knew the Bottoms well enough to
find 790 Rich Street since she had lived three blocks away before moving up to the Langham. That wasn’t the problem. But what was she going to tell Grant? That she was this ex-con? Or a cop? Or nothing? She had about twenty blocks to walk in the worst snowstorm she could remember to think about it.

  She crossed Rich Street, trudged through the snow that had accumulated on Grant’s walk, and rang the bell.

  Grant’s eyes widened when he realized it was Angela at the door. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?” he asked.

  “Can I come in first?” Angela asked, wiping the damp snow off her sleeves and shaking her hair out.

  “I’m sorry,” Grant said, as he grabbed her gym bag from her and motioned her inside. “Let me take your coat.”

  Angela gave the living room the once-over. A white couch, worn but clean, sat against a recently painted white wall. In front of it was a coffee table, a vase of fresh flowers in the center. A small flat-screen TV, a stereo system, and several books shared space on black-painted shelves. A warped stairway with a narrow runner reached up to the next floor. “Nicer on the inside,” she observed under her breath.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Grant asked, noticing her shivering.

  “I could use some high octane…and maybe something to eat,” she said. “I haven’t had a thing since breakfast.”

  “Coffee and a ham sandwich coming up,” he said as he headed down a dark hallway. Angela followed and found herself in a small but somewhat modern kitchen. “Not bad,” she said, looking at the new appliances.

  “I’ve been fixing the place up the last couple of months,” Grant said as he plugged the coffeepot into a socket beside the sink. “Do you want mustard on your sandwich?”