Fade to Black

by David Rosenfelt

  Nate seems to think about this for a few moments, and finally nods his agreement. “Okay, we sit on it, but not for long.”

  “Thank you. Now, we need to proceed like before, like we’re investigating Shawn’s murder, and Carlisle as well. But we do it looking through the prism of what we know, of what Galvis told me.”

  “Makes sense,” Nate says.

  “We go slow,” I say. “We need to take it one step at a time.”

  Jessie says, “Wow.”

  “Do you believe this guy?” Nate asks her.

  She just shakes her head, and I ask, “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

  “You wanting to take it one step at a time, to go slow,” Jessie says. “That will take some getting used to.”

  Nate adds, “In the old days, you would be strapping on your gun belt to go in shooting.”

  I’m not sure why, but I’m finding this really annoying. “So I’ve changed, okay? There’s the old me, and now there’s the new me, and all of us, especially me, have to deal with it. So can we stop going back down memory lane to the old days? Because for me there aren’t a hell of a lot of them, and I don’t need to be reminded of it.”

  Jessie and Nate exchange looks; it seems like they feel bad for upsetting me. Nate is the one who speaks. “Okay, Doug. And if it makes you feel better, I do want you to know that the old you and the new you have one thing in common: You’re both a pain in the ass.”

  I can’t help it; I start to laugh. “Well, all right then. Glad we cleared that up.”

  Tony Silva and Philly DeSimone would have occasional conversations about someone they considered dangerous.

  That dangerous person was the one above them on the organization personnel chart, Tony’s brother, Joey. Joey could be erratic and make impulsive decisions; it was certainly understating the case to say that he was not a master strategist. And when he flew off the handle, the net result was that it could be dangerous for all of them.

  Tony and Philly knew that, and had long ago come to openly share that view with each other. So they would meet to discuss how they could guide Joey in a more productive direction on various issues that came up.

  They were not being disloyal in the process and were not trying to undercut Joey at all. Rather they were just working to come up with approaches that could benefit Joey and the organization, and then figuring out how to persuade Joey that their approach was best. They actually viewed such conversations as both an act of loyalty and self-preservation.

  Inevitably, it fell to Tony to bring their ideas to Joey. He was the number two man in the organization, and while Joey did not doubt either man’s loyalty, Tony had a special position as Joey’s brother. Joey had a tendency to anger when his views and decisions were challenged, but Tony could get away with much more than anyone else, including Philly. It was a tactic he had developed and perfected over time.

  Discussions like this between Tony and Philly were not a frequent occurrence. Despite the breadth of the Silva family’s organization and business interests, it ran smoothly and usually without crises. Employees from Tony on down knew their jobs and executed them well, helped along by the fact that they rarely had to face new and unexpected challenges.

  But just such an issue had arisen, at least as far as Tony and Philly were concerned. They were not particularly happy with the meeting at the zoo between Joey and Dominic Romano. They found it pretty much impossible to believe Dominic’s statement that he and his boss, Tartaro, had no idea why Shawn was on the East Coast.

  They didn’t know what Shawn was doing there, who killed him, or why it was done, but they didn’t buy Tartaro’s supposed ignorance of it. It seemed to them that he was trying to pin it on Joey, while knowing better. Even worse, it also seemed like he might be setting Joey up for something down the road.

  They felt Joey should have taken a more aggressive attitude, a rarity since they usually were trying to temper Joey’s aggression. But Tartaro was Joey’s partner, and they didn’t think he was behaving the way a partner should.

  The way the conversation with Dominic was left, in their view, was that Joey was unconvincing in his denial of involvement in Shawn’s death, even though he in fact had nothing to do with it. This could prompt an excuse for revenge by Tartaro, something they needed to be prepared for.

  Perhaps even more troublesome was the fact that, since the Silvas actually had no responsibility for hitting Shawn, it meant someone else was out there, cutting off the heads of made guys. It was possible but very unlikely that Tartaro had sent Shawn and then ordered him hit. The only possible reason for doing that would be to enable him to blame Silva, though that made little sense. Among other things, it could imperil their ongoing and increasingly profitable business partnership.

  So at the very least this was an issue that needed to be discussed. The plan was for Philly to come over to Tony’s house in North Haledon on this night, so that they could talk through the best way to broach this with Joey. Like all such meetings, Joey was not aware it was taking place, and so as to preserve that secret, Tony sent away the two men who served as guards on the property. If word ever got back to Joey, he might ask uncomfortable questions.

  Tony welcomed Philly as he always did, with a bottle of red wine and a plate of cheeses. The two of them had grown comfortable with each other over time; they had literally been through wars together.

  The meeting was held at Tony’s instigation, so he started it. “I think Dominic was full of shit. He knows we didn’t hit Shawn, but he was trying to pin it on us.”

  “I don’t know how Joey didn’t see it,” Philly said.

  “But here’s what I don’t get,” said Tony. “Why would Tartaro send Shawn here, and then press the button on him? What the hell was he doing here in the first place?”

  “What does Joey think?”

  “Joey has no idea. But I don’t think Tartaro would send his own guy here and then kill him. And we didn’t give the order. So if we didn’t, who did?”

  Tony got up to get some more wine, turning away from Philly in the process.

  “I did,” Philly said.

  It took a moment to register, but then Tony realized what he’d said and responded, “What does that mean?”

  As he turned, he learned exactly what that meant, as Philly was holding a gun on him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I brought Shawn here, and then I killed him. I’m the answer to all your questions. It’s too bad you’re not going to be around to see how it all works out, because you’d be impressed,” Philly said. “Maybe I’ll give you a look at the future on the way.”

  Tony looked to his right and realized that two other men had just entered the room. He didn’t recognize them; he had never seen them before. One was pointing a gun at Tony, the other held some kind of satchel.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way, Philly. We can work out whatever the problem is. We’re family.”

  “It’s all going to work out fine, Brother Tony,” Philly said. “Just fine. Now let’s go.”

  The call is routed to Nate and me, which by itself is surprising.

  I question it, and am told that Captain Bradley himself gave us the assignment. That is even stranger, since he wants us laser focused on Shawn and Carlisle.

  Once we’re on the way and we get more details, the mystery is cleared up. We’re heading to a small shopping mall in Elmwood Park, a town just east of Paterson that actually used to be named East Paterson. A body has been discovered in the back sitting on top of a closed Dumpster.

  Well, not actually a body.

  A severed head.

  If you’re figuring the odds, the chance of two unrelated severed heads being found so close to each other in both time and distance is pretty small. Bradley’s assuming it’s related to our case, and his decision to send us therefore makes sense.

  We arrive on the scene in the middle of a driving rainstorm, and one look at the head shows that we don’t need an odds maker to tell
us that Bradley made the right call. The head used to sit on the body of none other than Tony Silva. The pelting rain makes it look like Tony’s head just got out of the shower.

  “Holy shit,” Nate says, a reaction that makes perfect sense.

  This time the discovery was not made by a jogger, but by a short order cook arriving for work at a coffee shop in the mall. Despite that, there is another similarity too obvious not to notice.

  This head was also meant to be found. Not only was it left in a place where it would easily be discovered, but the killers made sure to put it on top of the closed Dumpster.

  They could have put it in a Dumpster, this one or another one, or they could have left it on the ground. But the former would have meant it might not be found, and the latter could have resulted in an animal carrying it off. They also could obviously have buried it in the woods, or under the end zone at Giants Stadium.

  Sitting on the Dumpster as it was, it was put on display, and might as well have had neon lights shining on it.

  “There’s going to be a goddamn war,” Nate says.

  “Tartaro and Silva?”

  He nods. “Tartaro’s guy gets hit, and then Tony Silva gets it in the same way? You got another idea?”

  “There could be a third party involved.”

  He shakes his head. “Who is nuts enough to piss off both Tartaro and Silva?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s got to be between them; maybe some business deal gone bad. But this is personal, and Joey is going to go batshit. I’ll bet you they’re going to the mattresses now.”

  “Going to the mattresses?” I ask. “Who are you, Clemenza? Actually, you’re built like him.”

  Nate and I hang around until the forensics people have had a chance to do most of their work, and the head is taken off to the coroner’s. There’s little to be found here, and certainly nothing that will lead us to the perpetrators.

  We have officers canvass the local neighborhood, but by the time we leave, nobody has seen anything or added to what we know. No houses have a view of this alley, and if we assume the head was left during the night under cover of darkness, then the businesses would have been closed as well.

  We finally head back to the precinct, where Captain Bradley is waiting for us. “I’ve already heard from the Feds,” he says. “They’re opening a full-fledged investigation.”

  “It’s our case,” I say.

  “That’s not exactly how they look at it. They’re assuming this is Tartaro versus Silva, which is Nevada versus New Jersey, which means they’re crossing state lines. In fact, if you remember what a map looks like, many state lines.”

  “They won’t give a shit about Carlisle,” I say. “We need to make that right.”

  Bradley nods and proceeds to surprise me. “I agree. I said they were moving in; I didn’t say we were backing off.”

  “Good,” Nate says.

  “We now have two murders to investigate, and that’s what we’re going to do. Doesn’t matter if they’re gangsters or Boy Scout troop leaders; we can’t have people getting killed like this in our backyard. But I’m not interested in refereeing a cross-country gang war. If that’s where this leads us, then fine, and we work with the Feds. But it’s not our priority.”

  I nod. “Understood. But we’re going to find out it’s all related. And the answer is still Carlisle.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because Shawn’s sole purpose in being here, at least that we know of, was to draw us into reopening Carlisle. Somebody didn’t like that, so they killed him. The hit on Tony Silva was probably retaliation; but it all started with Shawn and Carlisle.”

  “You think that was retaliation?” Nate asks. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Joey Silva is going to go nuts.”

  I nod. “Yeah, but I don’t give a damn about Shawn or Tony Silva. I care about Rita Carlisle; she somehow got herself in too deep with these assholes, and I don’t think there’s any doubt that she paid for it with her life. She’s buried someplace where nobody is going to find her. And when I find out who put her there, then I’m the one who’s going to go nuts.”

  It was left to Philly DeSimone to tell Joey his brother was dead.

  Pretty much everyone in the organization already knew it, because the media had the story. But Joey, not a consumer of media, was still in the dark, and there was not exactly a throng of people racing to enlighten him.

  It was probably fitting that Philly should have been the one to reveal Tony’s murder, since Philly had been the murderer. But, of course, Joey did not know that, which is why Philly continued to live.

  Philly expected Joey to explode with anger at the news, since Joey could explode with anger when informed that it was going to rain. Anger was his default reaction to pretty much everything with any negative connotations at all. And in Joey’s line of work it could be an effective governing technique, at least when tempered by Tony’s clear, calm thinking.

  But if Joey’s reaction to Philly’s news was to be irate, he was hiding it well. He was quiet for a while after hearing the news, maybe three minutes, but to Philly it seemed like three decades. Then, seemingly under control, he asked Philly to detail what he knew about it.

  “Joey, you don’t want to hear this,” Philly said.

  “Tell me or I will cut your heart out.” He said it calmly and in control.

  So Philly told him the details. Not the ones he knew, of course, since he knew them all. Rather he told him the facts that had been made public, including the graphic description of Tony’s severed head sitting on top of the alley Dumpster.

  “Come back in fifteen minutes,” Joey said.

  So Philly left, and Joey used the fifteen minutes not to plot his revenge, but to do something no one who knew him would have considered him capable of.

  He mourned.

  His brother had been killed. Tony was two years younger than he was, and he literally could not remember a day without Tony being present. He loved and trusted Tony in a way he loved and trusted no one else in the world. And he relied on him as well. On some level they both knew that Tony was smarter, and that Joey could get away with being erratic and impulsive because Tony was there to rein him in.

  And now Tony was gone, and Joey was alone.

  So he allowed himself those fifteen minutes to mourn before he called Philly back in. “Do whatever you have to do to find out who did this,” Joey said.

  “Come on, Joey, you know who did it.”

  “You think this was Tartaro?” Joey asked.

  “You’re damn right I do. Who else could it have been? Shawn gets hit, he blames us, and he takes out Tony. Who else could it have been?”

  “Who killed Shawn?”

  “I don’t know,” said Philly. “But it don’t matter. Tartaro thinks that we did, so he took his revenge. That’s all that matters.”

  “Do we know for sure that none of our people hit Shawn?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And Tartaro didn’t hit him; Shawn was his own man.”

  “Maybe Shawn was disloyal.”

  Joey shook his head in frustration. Philly didn’t understand what he was saying. Tony would have understood. It was distressing for Joey; he didn’t want to assume the position as the logical thinker in the organization, since he knew it was not a job he was well suited for.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Joey said. “If Tartaro put the hit out on Shawn, then he wouldn’t have hit Tony for revenge. He would know we didn’t do it.”

  “So what are you saying?” Philly asked. He was surprised and annoyed; he never expected clear thinking out of Joey, and certainly not after being told that his brother was dead.

  “I’m saying that maybe there’s somebody else out there doing the killing.” Then, “Find out who it is, and bring him to me.”

  Talking to the family and friends of murder victims is the worst part of my job.

  I don’t know how many times I’ve done it over the years,
because, obviously, I don’t remember some of those years. But I recall enough times to know I hate it.

  Usually the conversations happen when the wound is fresh, when the murder was recent and we’re trying to find the killer. We’re looking for an instant reconstruction of the victim’s recent life, to find out who would possibly have wanted them dead. So often the person I’m talking to is not thinking clearly, since they’re consumed by grief. I always feel like an intruder, but I have a job to do, and down deep the people I’m talking to want me to succeed.

  So because of the fact that years have elapsed since the crime, this is a fairly unique situation. I’ve come to see Doris Carlisle, Rita’s mother. She works at an insurance agency in Hackensack, and I could hear the tension catch in her throat when I called her and told her I wanted to talk to her. She asked if we could meet at a nearby diner during her lunch hour, so I’m here waiting for her.

  A woman maybe sixty years old walks in and scans the room. I don’t recognize her, which is not exactly a news event, but her eyes fixate on me and she comes over to my table. She sits down, not even bothering to take off her coat, and says, “Is there a chance that Rita is alive?”

  I’m not going to lie to her. “I don’t have any knowledge of that one way or the other, but I don’t believe that she is.”

  She nods; down deep she has known the truth all along. “Then please tell me what this is about.”

  “Some new information has come up about the case involving your daughter that requires follow-up. So I need to ask you some questions. I’m sorry about this, but it can’t be helped.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “I can’t say at this point, but it could be important.”

  She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. “No, I cannot go through this again. You have no idea what it’s like.”

  Her reaction once again reminds me that this investigation is first and foremost about getting justice for Rita Carlisle. “You’re right, I don’t. It’s unimaginable to me,” I say. “But one thing I know for sure; you want to be positive that the right person is in jail for what was done. Because if he isn’t, then the actual guilty party is out there free.”