Takeover attempts came and went. Aggressive moves were countered and business eventually returned to its natural rhythm. Now it was time to deal with other matters. Marco called Ernie, Ernie called Ian Carlo, and the three met for dinner at Benjamin’s Trattoria.
Marco started the conversation, not without certain doubts as to who should get the ball rolling. “The families are happy as things stand. Ernie’s heard from all the locals and a few of the West Coast guys. Chicago hasn’t said anything but they seem to be rolling with this,” Marco opened. Then he hesitated, looking squarely at Ian Carlo. “Now I have to deal with some other things, business and personal issues of Uncle Sal’s. Even though I will be working the banks and all the pertinent matters, I will be out of town for a couple of weeks.”
Marco looked expectantly at Ernie and Ian Carlo, asking more with his expression than with words what he was to expect when he came back.
Ian Carlo smiled. “Take it easy, you’ll find everything in order when you’re back.”
Marco assented with a sharp nod, but wondered what order meant to Ian Carlo.
Ernie looked at the table. “Okay, I’ll address the elephant in the room. One of you two has to come out as the undisputed head of this family. There will never be loyalty from the crews or respect from the families until that happens. The problem is that both of you are capable and balanced individuals that can head the family if, and only if, you can count on the total cooperation and loyalty of the other. This said, I’m leaving you two to talk about this.” He walked out of the Trattoria, leaving Marco and Ian Carlo in an uncomfortable silence.
These two men had worked together, or rather in parallel, managing the Carducci enterprises with great success; yet they had very little to do one with the other, probably by design. Sal had been a crafty old man and kept his eggs in different baskets. No, they had to come to terms. No alternative.
“I’ve only one question,” Marco said with gut-wrenching anxiety to Ian Carlo, looking him straight in the eye. “Do I have to watch my back?”
“Not from me,” shrugged Ian Carlo with total calm and obvious sincerity. “This is something you and I can bash out on top of the table. We got a good deal going here and I need you as much as you need me. There is no bullshit here. We’ll always share power but we have to put a face to this; you or me, I don’t care. Whichever is better for business.”
“But that is precisely the question,” pressed Marco. “Which of us is better for business? The way I look at it, and believe me, from a very selfish point of view, I know you should be the visible head of the family. You command a different kind of respect. One needed at a very primal level which is, after all, the one that keeps us going.”
“So…are you saying that I should be the man? Just like that?” Ian Carlo was caught off guard by such directness, but deep down he knew Marco was right.
Marco had decided. It was a good business decision and he knew it.
“I will defer to you in public, and in all matters regarding our relations with the other families,” stated Marco. “I expect you to respect my wishes when it comes to the management of our legitimate enterprise…and the way we control our money.”
The two men held each other’s gaze without defiance but expecting the other to continue, and it was Marco who finally spoke, taking the matter for settled.
“I will distance myself from the obvious; I’ll fade into the background, which puts you in a powerful but dangerous position as I said before. I want you to think about this. We don’t have a lot of time before the crews and the other families get restless, so we have to act rather promptly.”
“If you can live with this, so can I,” said Ian Carlo without pause and with a sincerity coming to the surface in a man who rarely allowed anyone to perceive such emotion. “You should know that I always have and always will respect you as an equal. You know business better than I ever will; but do you realize how strange it is that we are becoming the two faces of a single entity? I will be in the light and you in the dark, yet it will be me who manages the darker side of who we are and you the presentable head of our legitimate operations.”
If the old lawyer had anything to add, this was the time. Ernie was called back and quietly listened to the two cousins. He made no comment on their decision. He just said that he would make sure the families and the crews knew that Ian Carlo was now the head of the family. He shook hands with both men and, changing his mind about being aloof, added, “I think you chose wisely.”
CHAPTER TWO
For the next few days Ian Carlo received delegation after delegation of mobsters, cops, politicians, and a bishop or two; all without exception presented themselves with puckered ass-kissing lips and extended greedy hands. There were petitioners, people with “great ideas,” and more than one veiled threat. It was business as usual.
Marco stayed in the background, quietly dealing with the banks and shortening the leash on business managers of all the legit enterprises. This was no time to lower the guard. He needed to change the manager of the industrial laundry because old Mr. Burns was getting forgetful, no other reason. He received a great retirement package and handed the reins over to a woman who had grown up through the ranks. Natalia Lopez had started as a loader when Uncle Sal had bought the business more than fifteen years ago. She was now in her mid-thirties, smart, tough, and clean as a whistle. She was the first woman manager within all of the Carducci organization. Winds of change were blowing. Two or three more adjustments and a thorough audit done by Li Yu Wang & Associates brought every detail of every business up-to-date.
Two weeks into all of this Marco got a call from Uncle Sal’s widow. Patricia wanted to know when he was coming to Florida. She wanted to meet him in a more personal way, she simply said. Marco promised to fly down as soon as possible but two more weeks went by before he was aboard his jet heading for Sarasota. The old Lear 35 was Marco’s personal transport. He loved it with a passion and spent a fortune on its maintenance. He flew copilot as always. The left seat was occupied by Joe Strasso, a distant cousin who flew jets for the US Air Force before retiring after a bicycle accident disqualified him from high G-force flying. He found a home with the Lear and had a close friendship with Marco, whom he had taught to fly and who now held all the certification needed to fly the Lear as a private pilot.
At 48,000 feet tracking true south, the Lear was flying 10,000 feet higher than commercial airliners. The sky was bluer, darker, and more expansive. Joe was talking to air traffic Atlanta and was being passed on to Tallahassee control squawking 2250 on the transponder. Flight level and direction of the Lear was being monitored by at least three commercial air traffic facilities and a few military ones as well.
Fifteen minutes later Joe indicated that Marco had the control and they began their descent at 3,000 fpm to flight level 280, at which point they would be under positive control by Tallahassee until they were transferred to Sarasota tower for final approach and landing. One half hour later the jet taxied to an FBO that offered a covered hangar. The door opened into welcome warmth and a bright sunny day, Florida at its best.
Two people were waiting for Marco: Uncle Sal’s local driver/bodyguard and his personal valet/bodyguard. Both men were well known to Marco. Pete Morelli had been driving Sal for eight years and Luigi Di Tomaso had been taking care of the old man for nearly as long. Both men were in their mid-thirties, very fit, and very tan. Both wore Hawaiian shirts and were certainly well strapped. The signature Escalade was a few steps away and luggage was transferred rapidly. The only things missing were the ubiquitous golf bags.
That was what the FBI agent watching would report to his boss, who was sitting in his corner office a couple of hundred feet up in one of several federal buildings in New York City. He was head of a joint force delegated to investigate, pursue, and eventually prosecute organized crime. His name was Joseph Delany Jr., Princeton and Harvard, MBA and Juris Doctor, both summa cum laude. Thirty-four years old and anxious to make his mar
k so that he could enter a political career that he felt was his birthright more than a calling. Son and grandson of senators, he could almost smell the rarefied air of the Senate Chamber. The death of Salvatore Carducci would be his chance at the brass ring…and he thought that he was ready. He believed that whoever inherited the family business would have to contend with one or more interested parties, and where there is conflict, there is opportunity.
A little short of an hour later the SUV, with Marco on board, drove up the circular drive of a very contemporary, very large home. It had two different waterfronts – one to the Gulf of Mexico where deep blue water calmly shimmered only the width of a white sand beach away, and the other to the rear where a private marina for Uncle Sal’s boats opened onto a wide canal that ran two hundred feet to the ocean.
A 183-foot Benetti luxury yacht with all the bells and whistles was shining white against the darker background of sea grape and red mangroves. A 28-foot Mako runabout rigged for blue-water fishing was moored beside an 18-foot Hell’s Bay flats boat with double platform. This little skiff was powered by a 115 HP four-stroke and had a powerful electric trolling motor hinged to an automatic retrieve. Just enough to make any flats angler cry with envy. Both of the smaller boats could be hoisted aboard the Benetti into custom designed cradles for the ultimate in mother ship travel. The skiff, now washed clean, had witnessed Sal’s last moments on this earth.
The front facade of the house was austere, almost forbidding. There were no windows above or to the sides of the large iron doors that opened from a semicircular porch. The heavy countenance was slightly softened by a few architectural details and the light yellow color of the walls. In sharp contrast, the fronts that looked onto the water were open and inviting. Ample terraces, balconies, huge windows, a semi-Olympic size infinity pool edged in black marble sparkled like a diamond on onyx. The pool’s wet bar adjoined a large Tiki bar that highlighted the entertainment area. Wickerwork chairs and lounge chairs completed the feeling intended. The breeze brought the smell of brine and mangrove mixed with floral aromas and tanning oil from the not too distant beach.
Two sets of glass doors led to an industrial size kitchen and an indoor lounge, dining room and family rooms. Invisible was the entertainment lounge with its sixty-inch TV and two billiard tables, one French, the other pool. On the other side was an ample office and library equipped with all the latest electronic amenities of the day.
Upstairs was a single bedroom with two bathrooms, two “stroll-through” closets, and a private entertainment area with bar, TV and an audio system by California Sound Machine. At each end of the room there was a small office, Sal’s dotted with fishing watercolors and two maps – one of greater New York, the other a world map. Each had flags with coded notes on them. Patricia’s was much the same but starker. Curiously, it also had a world map with pin flags and codes.
Serious luxury without extravagance was the keynote. Every painting, vase, sculpture, tapestry, and rug spelled class and good taste. No thanks to Sal, the house was the palette of Patricia, well-raised, highly educated lady from Lima, Peru, who, for reasons unknown, had loved, married, and cared for a tough thug from Brooklyn.
Marco strolled through the estate in awe; he had never been there before. This had been Sal’s private crib for the last ten years – ever since he had married Patricia Lujan – and no one in the family was ever invited there. Now, as he looked with amazement at every detail of this house, he actually wondered who Sal really was. Not the tough operator he knew, not the steel-eyed executioner, not the steady negotiator nor the clearheaded businessman who created a legal fortune many times that of the illegal gains that gave it birth. It wasn’t the uncle that he had shared a life with.
Who was this man he could now picture with an arm around his wife looking from his balcony at the setting sun, waiting for that elusive flash of green that would sing requiem to the day. Who?
The rooms flowed into each other with grace, details making a unity, features differentiating the ambiance of one from the other. The bedroom was ample; two walls were fronted by floor-to-ceiling windows giving the impression of unlimited space, the large private terrace was landscaped with flower boxes, and a sunken spa pool tipped a cascade of water to the main pool underneath. Two wicker divans with a small cocktail table between them told a story of quiet mature love, hard to believe but evident. Noticeably, there was no trace of Patricia’s personal things. No clothes of hers were in the closet, no personal items in the bathroom, no photos in frames of her and Sal, or of Patricia by herself or with others. A vacuum of personal items yet there was a lingering presence of her life with Sal that permeated the entire house. Patricia had moved to an apartment closer to town that she and Sal had bought in case anything happened to him. She had always known the house would go to Marco and Sal wanted her to have her own place.
Eventually, guided by Pete, Marco went back to the main floor and walked down a few steps to a garden-level semi-basement that occupied more than half of the house’s floor plan. If he was confused before, now he was bewildered. Everything in this room was about fishing, specifically fly fishing. Dozens of fly rods were displayed along a wall in a beautiful wooden rack, a few of them with loaded reels, lines at ready, flies on tippets…taunt with anticipation. An antique railroad desk, handmade of fine mahogany, rolltop open, displayed a Renzetti vise rising from an explosion of feathers, fur, and synthetic dressings. The vise still held a half-tied fly, a bobbin of red thread dangling beneath – waiting for someone to finish the job. The desk had multiple drawers; some of them partially open, showing odds and ends of materials that they held. Marco carefully opened a few more and found expensive capes of different-colored hackle, all types of exotic furs, chenille, and Mylar flash, hooks of every type and size, threads of cotton and silk, beads of copper, gold and silver. In a house of understated order and modern efficiency, Sal’s desk was a glaring yet homey exception. Even the floor beneath it was graffiti of peacock hurl, hare dubbing, epoxy drops, and bits of thread and flashaboo.
The walls of the den were covered with fishing paintings, watercolors of mangrove flats, idyllic trout streams and salmon rivers, anglers casting, fish jumping…shadowboxes full of flies, many tied by famous anglers, Chico Fernandez, Joan Wulff, Lefty Kreh and many more. A coffee table held a few early copies of Wild on the Fly magazine, one of them open to an article on fishing Russia’s Kola Peninsula, which included a picture of Sal on the Ponoi River holding a nice Atlantic salmon by tail and belly. Big fish, big smile, big adventure, big bucks.
Marco took one more look around and headed back to meet up with Pete and Luigi. He had decided to stay in the guest cottage that was attached to the staff apartments. For some reason he felt that he would intrude on his uncle’s privacy if he stayed in the main house. The guest cottage was well appointed and very comfortable. Luigi or Pete had unpacked and put away his clothes but his briefcase and computer bag were left unopened and set besides the bed on the side table.
What was more astonishing to him was that this house was now his with all its contents and accolades. Ernie had called Marco and Ian Carlo into his office and read them one simple testament. Everything they owned belonged to both of them in equal terms. The only exceptions were that Ian Carlo got the house on Third Avenue and Marco got the house in Sarasota. An annotation explained that Patricia had all she needed for now. Intriguing and even a little disturbing, but nobody commented on it.
Marco took a long shower, shaved, and dressed in tropical attire of blue chinos, a guayavera of fine linen he had bought in Cartagena, and blue suede Topsiders. He found himself without much to do, so he opened his laptop and logged into his highly protected administrative site from where he could manage every aspect of the business. He made several transfers, cancelled out one account in Luxembourg and opened one in Tortola – routine stuff. By six thirty he was ready for a drink and went next door to look for Pete and Luigi so they could drive into Sarasota for refreshments and a meal. In
stead he found Joe Strasso sitting in the living room watching a rerun of “How I Met Your Mother.” Joe stood up and put the TV on pause.
“Pete and Luigi are at the marina, they asked me to call them when you were ready for dinner. They’re getting some fresh fish from a local fisherman and Matilde, your cook, is making a salad and some tostones, maybe rice too.”
“I didn’t know we had a cook,” Marco commented. “I was thinking we might all go to town for a steak and a couple of drinks…”
“Trust me, this cook knows what she is doing. Remember, I was here with the boss last May. The food is incredible and the bar is very well stocked…I imagine you’ve seen the wine cellar?”
“Wine cellar…what wine cellar?” asked Marco, suddenly on point.
“The one behind the bar, didn’t you see the big metal door?”
“If I saw it I didn’t give it a thought, too many things to get used to here.”
“Come, I’ll show you,” Joe replied with a smile.
They walked to the main house and went first to the kitchen where Joe introduced Marco to Matilde, a plump fiftyish woman from Panama who warmed the place with a big bright smile that contrasted like a half moon against her dark skin. She greeted Marco effusively and immediately burst into tears and a staccato of Spanish about the Patron and Doña Patricia and God knows what. Instantly back to a smile she grabbed Marco by the shoulders and planted a kiss on each cheek and in a single motion headed back to her cooking.
“What was that all about?” Marco asked Joe, somewhat startled.
“She was welcoming you as the new patron,” Joe replied. “She said how she lamented the boss’ passing and how she adored Ms. Patricia, and then she said that you were going to love the grilled pompano.”
The Carducci Convergence Page 2