She did nothing to hide her bitterness. She shrugged slightly, more angry at herself than at him.
When she finished showering, he wrapped her in a large, thick towel. “Laura—”
“What?”
Not wanting to say it, but saying it anyway, Dennis Chen asked her, “Is this … all of this … just for the boy? Or—”
Laura stiffened. She smacked his hand away and glared at him. Her voice was deadly. “Do you think for one single moment of thought that I would come here as some kind of whore, as part of some agreement, that I would barter my body for …”
He put his hands on either side of her face, smoothed the short clean strands back so her face was naked in its anger.
“Forgive me.”
He should have known better. Laura did only what she wanted to do. Nothing could force her into the kind of giving, the kind of sharing, they had between them.
Not even the boy. He was sure of that.
He was practically sure of that.
CHAPTER 31
NICK WAS IMPRESSED BY the extent of his grandfather’s industrial holdings. Other families went into the controlling of nearly every vital activity the city needs to run efficiently, services the average citizen took for granted—private garbage pickup, laundry services—hotels and restaurants and hospitals could not function without the services of the union members. The families controlled the fish industry, the meat industry. Won million-dollar contracts for building city-owned projects—even if their bid wasn’t necessarily the lowest. There are always unanticipated cost overruns, after all.
Nicholas Ventura, of course, extracted a certain percentage of all such enterprises as his family’s rightful share. But personally, with his own assets—and through the assets of his organization—he also owned a network of large storage buildings; small factories; car repair shops; hard use places; yards where scrap iron was stored, automobiles were crushed. Ventura Enterprises held leases on a tremendous number of neighborhood mom-and-pop stores; family restaurants, Italian and Chinese, Japanese and Thai. In some areas of Queens and Brooklyn, every Korean fruit and vegetable store was rented through Ventura, the owner. Every butcher shop, fish market, soft ice cream and yogurt stand; every bowling alley. No space, of any kind, was rented without certain upfront understandings: where the produce would be purchased, how delivered, where and how sold. There was a checklist of more than a hundred rented stores, some large ones situated in malls, some small stores in residential neighborhoods that used various Ventura storehouses for their merchandise, whether imported or not. Strewn about the five boroughs of New York City, as well as towns and villages in Nassau and Suffolk County, Long Island, were a large number of Ventura Enterprises, not necessarily identifiable by the specific name. Wherever there was money to be made, Papa Ventura held a lease. And a cut.
Locations for the dispersal of the China White, the purest heroin ever imported into the country, were ready. The Far Eastern network of suppliers and dealers was firmly in place in the West Coast: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego; into Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago. South to Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans. Atlantic City and now the New York area. The Chinese Triads that controlled the stuff could now view the Red China takeover of Hong Kong as little more than a nuisance. Taiwan served as a major player in the drug trade: as had the Generalissimo in the good old days of cooperation between the Triads and all their criminal activities and the ousted leader and his defeated army. The Triads were powerful enough to have worked successfully with the Japanese invaders during the war. To everyone’s advantage. They would eventually make their deals with the Reds.
The changing ethnic population in areas of Queens gave rise to many shops selling imported Asian furnishings, carpets, pillows, artifacts, herbs, vegetables, concoctions for every need. These stores had come into being within the last three or four years, as Italians, Greeks, and Irish moved out and Pakistanis, Chinese, Koreans, and others too exotic to be easily identified moved in. Whatever their background, from wherever they came, these merchandisers understood the protocol and accepted it as the price of doing business.
Nick and his grandfather dined together in a popular Italian restaurant in Nassau County, known for its fresh fish and northern-style cooking. The maître d’ was a smooth-smiling guy about Nick’s age, introduced to him as Charlie Napolitano’s son, Little Charlie. He brought Nick to meet the cook, a cousin, who had worked his way from his own small Canarsie restaurant to run the large, spotless, modern kitchen that he delighted in showing to Nick.
“Cookie” Nostriana told Nick, “You be sure you come back here before you leave, I give you a little something to take home with you.”
The little something was enough food for a four-course dinner for six. Nick regretted he had no one to share the meal with. For the first time in a long while, the bright, snub-nosed face of redheaded Eddie Manganaro flashed in his brain. That was one guy with a hollow leg for good Italian food. But he couldn’t reach back. Not to Eddie; not to anyone. He hadn’t spoken to his uncle Frank in weeks. He was sticking to the rules laid out for him.
Papa Ventura told him only what he wanted Nick to know, and what seemed important to Papa was that Nick understand that the Ventura family would not deal directly with drugs. Others would handle the delivery, dispersal, and monies involved in the multi-billion-dollar business. Within the boundaries of his influence, the Venturas would collect vast sums of money, though not from the actual handling of the Chinese heroin. They would merely make available, for a price, locations: storehouses, retail stores, business locations, apartments, houses, junkyards—whatever they were asked. What the customer did or did not do was their own concern—as long as they paid Papa Ventura’s people a sum of money for the privately run businesses in which they dealt. The fact that many Chinese businesses rented large executive office space in the forty-story buildings along Queens Boulevard, for what to all intents and purposes was legitimate activity, was all to the good. Many apparently stand-up businesses were financed by drug money, laundered and scrubbed, so sanitized and profitable that no one could possibly compete.
Factories that paid desperately small amounts of money to desperately poor illegal immigrants, whose Chinese families were in debt for years, turned over tremendous profits on cleansed drug money. Items could be made for pennies and sold for dollars. Profit was everywhere; only a small number of people involved in all of these organizations really knew the financial facts. And of this small number, only a very carefully selected few knew the whole story. If any of them was found to be untrustworthy, he disappeared without a chance to say good-bye.
How the other families handled the Chinese heroin business was their own concern. Nicholas Ventura never even saw a bag of white powder; nor did any of his employees. At least, not to his knowledge.
Just when his grandfather had begun expressing impatience at the lack of any useful information Nick was passing along to him, Caruso offered Nick a big one.
“This is really out of the lines, Nick,” the professor had told him. “Someone’s gonna be very unhappy about this. But, hey, what the hell. You have to give Papa some really hard stuff every now and then.”
It was very hard stuff. Two of Papa Ventura’s top men, one in the steelworkers’ union, another supposedly involved in illegal bidding in the city’s construction business, were about to be indicted by the grand jury for collusion, bribery, and falsification of official government documents. The government was building a RICO case against both men—and by extension against his grandfather. Facing really hard time, it was hoped that one of the two, or both, would be willing to deal away years for names.
Nick got a call from Caruso the day the sealed indictments were handed down. Both men were to be arrested within the next twenty-four hours. He went straight to his grandfather.
Nicholas Ventura looked over the top of his eyeglasses, holding the notes his grandson had given him. “Tomorrow morning? You are sure?”
“Yes. I’
m sure.”
His grandfather went to the phone; made several calls. He spoke quickly, authoritatively, with great certainty.
He then considered Nick thoughtfully. “This could be a step toward building their fucking RICO case against us. How does that work, Nicholas?”
Nick had a feeling his grandfather knew more about RICO than he let on. “Well, Papa, they pull someone in under RICO, it doesn’t matter what they have against you, personally, or your company. If you’re dealing with other organizations, in any way, that are involved in a number of crimes—extortion, murder, arms dealing, importing and exporting of drugs, stolen cars, shipping girls for prostitution, illegal immigration, stolen credit cars, price fixing—any number of things, they get you in their sweep.”
Nicholas Ventura shook his head. “All these things—what have I got to do with arms dealing, young girls?”
“If you deal with anyone involved in any of the activities covered, you don’t have to be involved in everything they do. Just one aspect and you’re vulnerable. When they got the Cosa Nostra, they had miles of bugged conversations on tape; it was all over.”
Ventura was furious. “And this is supposed to be a free country? A man can’t have a conversation in his own home? Hey, how stupid were those guys, they got bugs in their own homes?”
“They did it all legally, Papa. They even got Gotti on the street in his walk-and-talk meetings with his people. It was his main guy who gave him up.”
The old man’s face was hard, his eyes narrowed and blazing. “Scum. Not like in the old days. The vows mean nothing now. Nothing at all. This never would have happened in the old days—we had honor then.”
Nick had studied his grandfather’s weary face. “That’s probably why they figured on picking up those two guys I told you about. Play them along. Probably got enough on them to convince them to make a deal. They’re planning to grab a lot of people in your different organizations and tie them together. Leading to you.”
“Well, they’ll have to find them first, right? Hell, that’s what private planes are for. And small islands in the ocean. You pay enough to some of these pompous niggers who run these little countries, they think you’re the great white god.”
He stared at the paper for a moment. “Tell me this, Nicholas. Where did you get this information?”
“Papa, c’mon. You get your information, I get my information. We’re like reporters. We don’t reveal our sources.”
Nick realized what was going on in the old man’s mind. Someone else should have told him this, too; should have had access; should have warned him.
He had come to a decision. “You go home now, grandson. This is a very good thing you’ve done. Very good. I have some business to take care of now.”
He embraced Nick, kissed his cheek, and regarded him carefully. Then nodded, as though his trust had been well placed. He would bring Nick in closer. No matter who objected.
Nick continued to relay information, prepared by his grandfather, to Coleman. Information he gathered himself, to Caruso. From Coleman’s office he picked up information, mostly useless, but enough to show his grandfather that Nick was doing his job. Caruso intervened just this once, a gesture valuable in and of itself, but also in helping to secure Nick’s standing.
Yet Nick would awaken in the middle of the night in a cold sweat in his cold bedroom. Christ, did he give Coleman information meant for Caruso? Then his grandfather’s mole in the DEA would know what Nick was doing. He felt like a traveler without a compass: handing off messages, some phony, some real; some important, some not. One mistake could trip him up. There were times when he longed to sit down with someone, outside of all this, and try to keep his balance. But there was no one. He knew things were moving rapidly. He longed for the whole thing to be over. He longed to stop being three different people. At times he really didn’t know who the hell he was anymore.
He was getting ready for bed when the soft buzz of the house phone jarred him.
“Yeah?”
It was Fred, the retired-cop building security guard with a tight New York voice. “Young guy here, Mr. O’Hara. Don’t much like the looks of him. Says he gotta see ya. Name’s Vinny Tucci.” Then, loud enough to be heard throughout the main lobby, he added, “Looks like bad news to me.”
Vinny Tucci was the twenty-five-year-old nephew of Salvy Grosso, who had watched out for the kid since his punk father Tooehy Tucci got clipped in a dumb street thing. His sister kept nagging him: give the kid a job. Vinny Tucci helped around the Queens real estate office. Ran errands, made deliveries, picked up and sent out mail. Listened to everything that was going on. Sometimes he went down to Manhattan to run some errands for Nick’s cousin, Richie. The kid was a wannabe with never-be written all over him. A street punk.
“Put him on the phone,” Nick said.
The kid sounded smug. He’d just shown the security guy something or other.
“Hey, Nick. It’s me. Vinny.”
“What, Vinny? What?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, your cousin Richie said … listen, could I come up and see ya a minute, okay? Tell Dick Tracy here it’s okay.”
Vinny Tucci was slender and badly dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized baseball jacket. He had a nice face that was spoiled by a nervous tic. Every few minutes his thin lips would pull out into a stretched, meaningless smile. The tic had gotten him into some serious trouble, from the time he was a schoolboy. When he attended a wake, he remembered to keep a hand over his mouth.
Nick led him into the kitchen and blocked his view of the rest of the apartment.
Vinny looked around, his small eyes darting as he waited to be offered something. A drink. Coffee. Something.
“What, Vinny?”
Nick apparently had no class. Vinny delivered his message, his hand cupped around his mouth. “Richie says to meet him at this place. Out here in Queens. In Forest Hills Gardens.” He dug into two or three pockets, then found a smudged piece of paper with an address written by Richie in the clear, legible handwriting of his early Catholic school days. It was about all of his education he had retained.
Nick held on to the paper. “Okay, what else did he tell you?”
“Oh. Yeah. He said, uh—uh”—Vinny bit his lip, closed his eyes, then snapped them open—“Yeah, and he says do you know anything about bugs? Ya know. Not the creepy-crawlies. The listening things, ya know? Like a place being bugged. Ya know. Like you guys use. In the cops. See, he wants you to meet him there and check out the place. Want I should take you there? I got a car right downstairs.”
Nick took Vinny by the arm, somewhat surprised by the good muscle development. He remembered the kid worked out, wanted to be a lightweight contender. Right. Sure. He led Vinny to the door, opened it, and not too gently pushed him out into the hallway.
“Thanks, Vinny. You do nice work. I have my own wheels, but thanks anyway.”
As he closed the door, he heard the raspy voice offering to take him there, anywhere. Hey, any time. He could help Nick any time at all, all you hadda do was ask, okay?
Nick heard the elevator arrive, the door slide open. He watched as Vinny, grinning, stared longingly back at Nick’s door, then left via the elevator.
CHAPTER 32
FOREST HILLS GARDENS WAS a private community, a thirty-minute subway ride from mid-Manhattan. Continental Avenue stretched from busy, commercial, high-rise Queens Boulevard past a collection of shops, restaurants, newspaper stands, a movie, fast-food places, a big old five and dime, under the old-fashioned ridge of the Forest Hills Long Island Railroad Station. Once through that arch, there was a vast red cobble-stoned expanse: a town square setting. An “old English” inn, with an internal bridge, led across the road from one side of the elegant building to the other. There was a perceptible quieting once on the streets of the Gardens, which had been built in the twenties and thirties as an alternative for very successful professional and business people who did not want to live in Westchester or anywhere on Long Is
land. Appearances aside, Forest Hills Gardens was actually in Queens, New York.
The only thing not perfect was the limited amount of land around each home. Some of the Tudor houses would have fit in on acres of bright green, well-tended lawns overlooking the mists of an English landscape. Plantings, shrubbery, flower beds, and trees concealed or revealed however much each owner desired. There were street lamps in lavish wrought-iron shapes: lanterns, glowing mild yellow, that seemed to have been lit by an ancient lampman. There were park squares, with mellowed wooden benches for nannies to rest while their infant charges slept in this oasis of isolation.
The only incongruous intrusions were the many signs placed along the curbs, outside and within the private parks, warning everyone that these streets were private. Presumably, all illegal cars would be towed away at their owners’ expense. When they reclaimed their vehicles, paid a stiff fine, they would still have to deal with a large windshield-sized sticker pasted with stubborn glue: that’d show ’em.
Not very long ago, many homes still welcomed guests with shiny-faced black jockey boys, their glowing lanterns lighting their lawns. Most of the statues had disappeared, though one or two of the grinning figures were resettled inside the private backyard gardens.
Nick pulled up just as a large moving van drove away from the stone and brick mansion. Lights were burning from every window. The neighbors might wonder why anyone would be moving furniture in until eleven at night, but no neighbors, curious or otherwise, could be spotted.
Richie opened the door at Nick’s lightest tap, put an arm around him; without taking a full breath, he yelled at one of his men.
“Hey, ya fuckin’ moron, I tole ya no smoking in this house. What, I gotta be like a schoolteacher? I gotta appoint monitors? Take the butt outside, then come back in. No smoking. We all got that, huh? Fuckin’ dunsky bastards!”
The culprit, shamefaced, muttering apologies, left the house quietly trying to brush smoke outside with him.
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