The Striver

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, sir, but you can’t enter a crime scene.’

  ‘That’s my yard and my son.’ Johnny’s shout loosed tiny drops of spittle that sprayed the cop’s face. The vision so delighted him that he decided to try it again before he shoved the man aside. But then he saw Boots Littlewood, flanked by two cops, one an absolute giant, coming up from his left.

  For reasons he’d never bothered to examine, John Pianetta craved respect, from his peers in the crime business and from the community at large. That’s why he cultivated his successful businessman image. Forget about Amoroso’s paper profits being as phony as a politician on the stump. Forget about the bribes he paid to city project managers. Forget about the bribes he paid to city inspectors. John Pianetta was a pillar of the community, a position the community had chosen to acknowledge.

  But not Boots Littlewood.

  Pianetta was six years older than Boots and they’d barely known each other as kids. They’d have gone their own way as adults, too, if they didn’t attend the same church, John every Sunday and Boots when he wasn’t working. Inevitably, their paths crossed from time to time, arriving or leaving. Inevitably, Boots passed by without so much as a glance, his contempt obvious.

  Wiseguys like Pianetta had little to fear from precinct detectives. Even if caught in the commission of a crime by some local cop, mobster prosecutions were routinely transferred to the Organized Crime Control Bureau or the FBI. And local cops weren’t allowed to investigate the mob, or any of the major gangs, because the NYPD believed street cops to be easily corrupted. And not without reason.

  Bottom line, Boots wasn’t a threat and he could stuff his tight-ass attitude. The schmuck was just another working-class moron. Most likely, he’d spend his last years nursing a can of warm beer in a Florida trailer park.

  Pianetta barely had time to put these ideas together before Boots stepped between the gangster and Captain Karkanian.

  ‘Move the fucking car, John,’ he said. ‘You’re blockin’ traffic.’

  ‘That’s my kid,’ Pianetta said. ‘I got a right to see him.’

  ‘Fine, we’ll let you identify him in the morgue. And while you’re there, you could help with the investigation by givin’ us an interview. But you’re not goin’ a step further this morning. If you don’t move the car, I’ll have it towed.’

  ‘Goddamn it …’

  ‘Stop yourself right there. What you said? It’s blasphemy, and I’d appreciate you watchin’ your tongue.’

  Pianetta stared into the detective’s blue eyes for a moment before he realized that Boots was amused. The scumbag was playing John Pianetta, a man who’d put more people in the ground than he could remember, and he was doing it in front of Pianetta’s crew and his workers.

  What Boots deserved was a serious lesson in manners, a lesson that Pianetta, unfortunately, was not, just now, prepared to administer. Johnny Piano had grown soft over the years, his gut expanding even as his muscle mass shrank and his net worth grew. Indulgence was his middle name, in food and women both. The net effect hadn’t troubled him because he routinely kept at least two layers of insulation between himself and the use of violence. But there were no layers between himself and Boots Littlewood at that moment, only a few inches of air, and they both knew it. As they both knew that Boots was large and fit and not prepared to move. There’d be a brawl if Johnny Pianetta didn’t back off, one Boots Littlewood was doing everything in his power to provoke.

  From a piece-of-shit precinct cop, this was the ultimate humiliation, especially given the number of witnesses. This was the kind of humiliation you had to do something about. Like your oldest son being murdered.

  The driver of an enormous eighteen-wheeler chose that moment to lean on his air horn, scattering a dozen pigeons feeding on doughnut crumbs. Pianetta opened his mouth, but didn’t speak. In part because he wasn’t prepared to shout. In part because there really wasn’t anything to say. The negotiations were over. In fact, they’d never gotten started.

  Pianetta jerked his head at a kid named Stefano Boco, Stevie Bold. ‘Move the car,’ he growled, the words seeming unnecessarily loud when the air horn suddenly cut off. For just a second, he watched Boco hustle away, then turned back to face Boots.

  ‘Now you’re makin’ sense,’ the cop said, his stare no less amused. ‘I mean, you want us to get to the bottom of this crime, right? You want to see the perpetrator brought to justice, right?’

  But Johnny Piano wasn’t playing Detective Littlewood’s game. His entire life had been about juice, who had it and who didn’t. One animal’s predator was another animal’s prey, and right now he was the rabbit, Boots the wolf. Or wolves, really. The giant standing to Littlewood’s right was holding a nightstick, tapping it against the side of his leg. A vein on the side of his neck pulsed with every beat of his heart and his little black eyes glittered with desire. You’d have to kill him to stop him.

  ‘Yeah, justice, Boots. That’s what I want. But I’m not gonna get it from you, am I? Last I heard, you weren’t good enough to investigate murders. You do purse snatchings on Bedford Avenue.’

  Boots didn’t dispute the jibe. The overall point of this exercise was to prevent Johnny from seeing Carlo with his pants around his ankles. No clues for the bad guys. Nevertheless, he got in one final jibe of his own.

  ‘Carlo’s Lexus,’ he said as John Pianetta turned away, ‘it’s goin’ to the crime lab. You’ll get it back when the techs are through with it.’

  Pianetta didn’t react. ‘You men,’ he said to his workers as he hauled himself into the back seat of the Escalade. ‘Forget the equipment. Get your asses out to the job on Bushwick Avenue. I don’t care if you gotta dig out the potholes with your fucking hands. You don’t work, you don’t get paid.’

  SIX

  Captain Karkanian was on Boots Littlewood before Johnny Piano’s Escalade cleared the block. Boots had inserted himself into the confrontation, pushing Karkanian aside. That was his first mistake. Knowing the gangster personally was his second. Did Pianetta back off because Boots intimidated him? Or because Boots had passed a subtle message about wrong time and wrong place?

  Karkanian had taken three civil service exams in order to reach his current rank. If there’d been a fourth, he’d have already passed it. But from here on, promotions were by appointment only. One mistake, say if you let a relationship between a gangster and a street detective go unremarked, and you’d remain a captain until the day you retired.

  ‘Detective, a word.’ Karkanian led Boots away from the uniformed cops. ‘The rest of you go back to work. Nobody on the scene, nobody on the side streets.’

  ‘So, what’s up, boss?’

  Karkanian took his time, hoping to intimidate the detective whose name he couldn’t remember. No such luck. The Organized Crime Control Bureau and the Detective Bureau operated independently, each controlled by one of the city’s eight Chiefs. Technically, Karkanian had no authority to command any detective not directly assigned to Organized Crime, rank be damned. That the man John Pianetta called Boots understood this was obvious at a glance.

  ‘You want to explain what happened a few minutes ago?’

  ‘Well, basically, I’ve been lookin’ for an opportunity to beat the crap out of John Pianetta for the last ten years.’

  ‘And you thought you’d get it by pushing me out of the way?’

  ‘Actually, Johnny’s a realist. I knew he’d back off and I just wanted to make sure he didn’t get a look at the crime scene.’

  ‘I see. And you and Pianetta are … are what? Cousins?’

  ‘No, it’s just that his family and mine attend the same church and we can’t help but run into each other.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time you found another church.’

  ‘My family’s been going to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel since before I was born. I was baptized at Mt. Carmel. It’s where my mother’s funeral took place. I have as much right to it as some piece-of-shit gangster.’

 
; Karkanian repressed a smile. Somehow, he’d pushed the right button. The cop was really pissed. ‘Tell me your name again.’

  ‘Detective Littlewood. And I’m through answering personal questions. You wanna conduct an interrogation, talk to my lawyer at the DBA. As for John Pianetta, sure I wanted to humiliate him, and it did my soul good, but I was also sending him a message. See, Johnny’s gonna look to get revenge. On the right guy if possible, on the wrong guy if necessary. The way he makes a living, he’s got no choice. I was tellin’ him that if the blood flowed on my turf, I’d take it personally.’

  Two vehicles pulled onto the scene, interrupting the conversation. Both were familiar to Boots. The first was a van that bore the seal of the Medical Examiner’s Office on the side. The man driving was a death investigator. He’d do exactly what O’Malley, Boots and Captain Karkanian had already done. He’d examine the body and the circumstances under which it was found. Only then would he take the next step, calling in a wagon to transport the body to the morgue where it would receive the mandated autopsy.

  The second vehicle was a midnight-green Chrysler 300. The cop driving it, a detective, was named Jill Kelly, called Crazy Jill by her admiring peers. They’d had an affair in the not very distant past, Boots and Jill, a torrid, if inevitably doomed, affair. Jill Kelly could not be contained, much less possessed, and Boots had known that from the beginning. He might as well try to grab the tail of a comet.

  Boots watched Jill pull to the curb, watched the front door open and her legs slide out. Then she was coming toward him, her confident stride as familiar as the auburn hair and the indigo eyes.

  ‘Hey, Boots, the eye, it looks good.’

  A year before, Boots had taken a beating that left him with a drooping eyelid. A plastic surgeon had repaired the damage only two months ago. The work had taken all of twenty minutes. The scar on his forehead was another matter. All the cures involved numerous visits with no guaranteed results.

  ‘I should’ve done it earlier,’ Boots said. ‘The surgery was a piece of cake.’

  Jill nodded before moving on to Captain Karkanian. ‘And my condolences, too,’ she called over her shoulder.

  ‘Condolences?’

  ‘About the way the Yankees’ season ended.’

  Boots laughed all the way to Sgt. O’Malley’s cruiser where a second box of doughnuts had magically appeared. The Bulgarian hovered over the box, his attitude protective, but he gave ground when Boots arrived.

  ‘I can’t believe the asshole punked out,’ he said, referring to Johnny Piano. ‘Ruined my whole morning.’ When Boots didn’t reply, he added, ‘That boss give you a hard time?’

  Boots picked up a doughnut, then put it back. His weight was on the rise, his gut beginning to bulge despite the hundreds of sit-ups he did every week. Jill’s comment, followed by that mischievous smile, didn’t help either. Riddled with injuries, the Yankees had stumbled through the season, finishing well out of playoff contention. Nor were their prospects for next season in any way encouraging. The Yankee greats, men like Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter, sure to make the Hall of Fame, were rapidly aging. They wouldn’t be any younger by opening day, if they were around at all.

  ‘Boots, you there?’

  ‘What?’ Boots glared at the Bulgarian for a moment before he remembered that Boris was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, a weightlifter who regularly juiced and was subject to extreme manifestations of ’roid rage.

  ‘If you remember, Boots, I asked if that jerk gave you a hard time.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was my own fault. I would’ve driven away, only I couldn’t resist bustin’ Pianetta’s chops. That’s what luck’s about, right? No matter how hard you try to avoid trouble – and you can trust me on this because I’ve been trying hard from my first day on the job – you can’t control luck. If Sorrowful had called my house five minutes earlier, I would’ve been in the shower and never heard the phone.’

  ‘Damn, but I wanted a piece of that gangster’s ass,’ the Bulgarian replied. ‘I wanted to smash his fucking face.’

  SEVEN

  Teddy Winuk strode up to the Tuscano Food Market as if he owned it, which, in a way, he did. He found Recep Babacan and Shuresh Banerjee, his main men, waiting for him on the sidewalk. Born in the United States, Recep’s parents had immigrated from Turkey in the 1980s. Shurie was brought to the U.S. as an infant from India by his illegal mother. He wasn’t eligible for citizenship, but that hadn’t stopped him from embracing the American dream. Shurie was all about accumulating money. As soon as possible and by any means necessary.

  Shurie needed guidance and control, which Recep cheerfully provided. Never mind Shurie’s family being Hindu and Recep’s Muslim. This was America, the new America where immigrants came from all over the world, Teddy Winuk being a good example. You got along to get ahead if you had a brain, if you were ambitious, if you wanted your place in the sun. The old-school mobs, especially the Italian mob, were on the way out because they were easy targets. Any time an Italian committed a crime, the whole country just assumed he was mobbed up.

  And speaking of guineas, Teddy spotted Ben Loriano through the window. Ben was standing behind the counter, smiling at a lady buying a handful of tomatoes.

  Little Ben also wanted his place in the sun and Tuscano Foods was the path he’d taken. The market specialized in high-end cheese, produce and groceries, much of it imported from Italy. Lots of thirty-dollar bottles of olive oil, fifty-dollar bottles of balsamic vinegar, pecorino-romano cheese at twenty-four dollars a pound.

  Ben had located Tuscano on Bell Boulevard in the upscale neighborhood of Bayside. The rent was bearable this far from Manhattan, and while his customers weren’t rich by New York standards, they were prosperous enough to indulge a need to be sophisticated, not to mention discriminating.

  ‘We’re all on the same page, right?’ Teddy asked. ‘You don’t say a word. You don’t raise your hands unless I tell you to. We’re just gettin’ acquainted.’

  Teddy kept his eye on Shurie while he spoke. Shurie tended to become upset when denied the fruit of his ill-gotten gains. No matter how many times it was explained to him, he couldn’t grasp the simple notion that excessive violence was an indulgence as likely as not to put him behind bars. Meanwhile, he still lived with this mother.

  ‘I’m good,’ Shurie said.

  The door opened and Ben’s lone customer walked out.

  ‘Time to rock and roll, boys.’

  Tuscano had three employees on duty, one busy stocking shelves with groceries, the other two pulling boxes of strawberries from a crate. Teddy ignored them, walking directly up to an unsuspecting Ben Loriano.

  ‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Ben Loriano’s thick eyebrows curled into little umbrellas that echoed the layers of deep wrinkles on his forehead. ‘What?’ he repeated.

  ‘The good news is that you don’t owe Rafi Lieberman a single penny. The bad news is that you owe me instead. Forty thousand dollars.’

  Ben Loriano began to sweat, then and there, as if the drops were only waiting for a chance to make their escape. His brown eyes kept shifting to Recep, whose expression was now as empty as a drawn window shade. By contrast, Shurie bounced on the balls of his feet as he tried to contain himself. To Teddy Winuk, he looked more insane than threatening. But insane was good, too.

  ‘I want my money,’ Teddy said.

  Loriano’s mouth finally tightened as he folded his arms across his chest. A show of defiance was called for, but when he spoke, he couldn’t manage to bypass the constriction in his throat. ‘I haven’t heard nothin’ from Rafi,’ he finally said, his voice a near whisper.

  ‘Rafi’s in Sloane-Kettering. He’s got third-stage bowel cancer. What the docs figure, between the surgery, the radiation and the chemo, he might last another two years. That’s why he decided to liquidate his assets and retire.’

  Every word true. Luck had reared its head again, real bad luck in Raf
i’s case. The way Teddy figured, there’s a bullet in the air and you’re walking toward it. How close? How soon? Rafi was forty-nine years old when he got his diagnosis. That said, one man’s trouble can be another man’s opportunity. Winuk had acquired the Loriano debt for the bargain basement price of fifty cents on a dollar. Now all he had to do was collect.

  ‘I need to check this out,’ Ben said. ‘With Lieberman.’

  ‘I understand, Ben. My name’s Ted, by the way. Now, what I’m gonna do is come back one day next week and you’re gonna have forty cases of Frantoia Olive Oil – just like those bottles on your shelf, the ones that sell for thirty-five bucks – stacked up and waitin’ for me. That’ll cover the vig for the past month and give you plenty of time to check with Rafi.’

  ‘It’s too much,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll go out of business.’

  ‘Well, you can always pay the vig with cash. Let’s see, ten percent interest times the four weeks you’re overdue … equals sixteen large. You have it?’

  Loriano turned his head down as he tried to absorb the extent of his troubles. Winuk didn’t press the man. A month had passed since his last payment and Ben hadn’t gotten so much as a phone call. If he’d come to believe that he was off the hook? Well, you couldn’t blame him.

  ‘I ain’t got it,’ Ben admitted. ‘I mean the cash.’

  ‘No big deal. I got a wholesaler in Staten Island ready to take the oil.’

  ‘I can’t get the oil, either. I got no credit.’

  ‘Ben, I wanna be clear about this. You don’t wanna bullshit me when I’m tryin’ to be nice. Look around.’

  Teddy let his gaze drift across the shop, which, to his untrained eye, reeked of prosperity. The freshly painted walls above the shelves were decorated with dancing vegetables, eggplants and tomatoes with legs. The new faux-marble floor didn’t have a single scratch or a scuff mark. High-end produce topped every table and display. The chrome and the glass on the cheese counter gleamed. Plus, Rafi had examined Tuscano’s books prior to issuing the loan, the one that allowed Ben Loriano to satisfy a pair of especially aggressive bookmakers. Tuscano Foods had produced a substantial profit in each of the past five years, despite the recession.