“Banaszak lived near St. Stan’s?”
“Sure. It was their parish. But not any more. Whitey’s dad died, then his mother. I don’t think he had any kin left on Staten Island. Made it easy for him to move away. Like I said, we lost touch. I went to college, then med school. Married, kids, you know the drill. By the time I had time for old friends, no one knew where the hell he was. I’ve tried to Google him and check some veterans’ websites, but drew a blank. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“How do you spell his name?”
Gadomski did, and then looked at Scarne.
“You don’t think Whitey…?
“I bet his father made a mean pączek.”
CHAPTER 20 – NAMES, PLEASE
Salvatore ‘Sallie Mae’ Lacuna made much of his early money in a college loan scam that provided false documents to illegals who then bilked millions in government-guaranteed education loans. The scheme earned him both his mob nickname and a stretch in Federal prison. After his release, he concentrated on more traditional bookmaking and loan sharking, eventually taking over control of his small “family.”
As a sideline, mostly to keep up appearances and to warn the ever-encroaching Russians that the mafia still had some teeth, he arranged muscle when there was any heavy lifting to be done. He cultivated the fiction that his crew was the “Blackwater” of the borough; ruthless and talented mercenaries for hire. In truth, the dregs that were left in his gang, while certainly ruthless, were good for little more than beating up slow payers or knocking over the occasional convenience store. Which is why he brought in Lucas Gallo and Whitey Banaszak from outside to handle the Pearsall job for Nathan Bimm. There was simply too much at stake to leave it to the clumsy oafs in his local crew. Plus he suspected that his men would balk at such an assignment. The girl’s rape and murder had certainly been an ugly business but Lacuna’s initial objections were overcome by promises of payoffs and jobs for his family down the line. He knew that most people thought Bimm was his front man. The truth was more the opposite; he needed Bimm – and his often lucrative assignments – more than the fat bastard needed him.
The Pearsall hit had something to do with some big real estate deal Bimm was working on. Lacuma didn’t know what it was. Bimm had mentioned NASCAR, which seemed unlikely to Lacuna, but whatever it was, it was worth murdering a girl. That meant big money. In his gut, he knew there was someone else pulling the strings. Bimm was an amoral sleazebag, but had never gotten his hands this dirty. Yeah, a lot of money was involved. And Lacuna didn’t want the Russians to see any of it.
A contact in Atlantic City gave him some names. He picked Banaszak because he knew his way around Staten Island, but no longer had any ties there. Gallo had never worked anywhere in the New York area. Who would have thought he’d be the weak link, raping the girl and outraging the community. But Banaszak had certainly come through. Killing Gallo and spreading him around in five states was quick thinking. The trail was cold. Even Bimm didn’t know their names.
***
Although Lacuna derived most of his income on Staten Island, he lived in a huge colonial on a one-acre parcel on a quiet street in Holmdel, New Jersey. The mobster didn’t want to raise his children in a borough being turned into a sewer by the developers like Bimm and their pocket politicians.
Sallie Mae was a respected and well-liked member of his community. His two boys, now away at college, had gone to the local high school and were often in the local papers for their athletic prowess. His wife, Theresa, was part of regular golf and bridge foursomes at the Bamm Hollow Country Club. It was an open secret that Lacuna was “connected,” but in that part of New Jersey, where many residents worked on Wall Street, not much thought was given to how a man made a living. Indeed, Lacuna had served less time as a guest of the Government than some of his white-collar neighbors.
Golf and tireless charity work helped Theresa Lacuna keep her figure. She was a handsome woman of 55, and Sallie Mae truly loved her. But as befit a man of his position, he had a ‘goomah’ on Staten Island. Her name was Caitlin Connolly, and, in addition to being 20 years younger than Theresa, she possessed the soft white Irish skin, luxuriant red pubic hair, full breasts and rosy nipples that the capo had lusted after since his first sexually related erection, which occurred when, as a young boy, he watched an old Maureen O’Hara movie on television.
Mob politics had dictated Sallie Mae’s fortunately happy marriage, but a still-robust libido and macho tradition put him in Caitlin’s bed once a week.
***
Renzo Bucatelli, Lacuna’s bodyguard and driver, was parked two doors down from the small brick cape where Caitlin Connolly lived on Davis Avenue in Staten Island’s Sunset Hill section. The woman would have been happy living in an apartment, but Sallie Mae knew a good real estate investment when he saw it. The cape had come on the market in an estate and a family lawyer, anxious to curry favor with Lucana, who held $20,000 of his gambling I.O.U.’s, made sure Sallie Mae had the inside track. The house was in her name, and would provide security for Connolly when her days as a Radio City Music Hall Rockette ended. In the long run, Lucana told his driver, it was less hassle than constantly buying jewelry and clothes, and always getting it wrong.
Bucatelli liked Caitlin, as unpretentious a goomah as he’d come across, and was glad it had worked out for her. Caitlin was a little long in the tooth for Bucatelli’s taste, but he certainly understood why his boss didn’t mind driving all across the Island to see her. Her dancer’s legs, which seemed to go up to her armpits, were worth the price of the house alone.
The bodyguard shifted the down pillow under his buttocks and simultaneously pressed the electronic control that adjusted the lumbar support of the driver’s side seat in the Cadillac. The nagging ache in his right hip and leg subsided. He knew it would return, and he’d just have to resettle himself again. A couple of drinks would help, but he was on duty. He wouldn’t take anything more than some Advil, since Aleve made him drowsy. Bucatelli knew that in his line of business he could get any drug he wanted, but he had seen too many addicts in his life. He could live with the pain, at least until the inevitable arthritis complicated the damage the bullets had inflicted.
Sometimes walking helped, and he often strolled up and down the street during the early part of his watch, always careful to keep the car and Caitlin Connolly’s house in plain view. Sallie Mae never stayed less than four hours with his mistress and the walks also helped to keep Bucatelli awake and alert. But there was a steady rain this afternoon and Sallie Mae took the umbrella when he went into to the house. There was a thermos of strong black coffee, but Bucatelli merely sipped it. He had no desire to stand in the rain on a residential street and take a leak. He wasn’t particularly worried about dozing off. In his previous occupation he had learned how to stay awake at all hours. In a crunch, he’d hold off on the Advils and let the ache do its thing.
Renzo Bucatelli was the cream of Sallie Mae Lucana’s crew. Lucana trusted him explicitly, and not because he was the nephew of his sister’s husband. The job of bodyguard was too important to be left to some idiot relative. But Renzo Bucatelli was sharp and knew the streets, from both sides. He was a former cop who left the force after being accidentally shot by fellow officers in a fusillade that also put 64 holes in a frightened Haitian immigrant. The poor bastard had inadvisably reached for his cell phone in a dark alley. The fact that Bucatelli’s gun hadn’t cleared its holster before all hell broke loose went over well with the pension review board.
In Italian families of a certain generation, there was a thin line that separated the career paths of cops and robbers. Bucatelli easily crossed back over the line and was soon earning a nice supplement to his disability pension. In addition to his aches and pains, the police bullets left Bucatelli with a permanent limp. But he was still a powerful man, made more imposing by the 30 extra pounds he now carried as a result of the sedentary nature of his job. The fact that the former police officer was licensed t
o carry a gun and knew how to use it – something that couldn’t be taken for granted with the new breed of so-called ‘button men’ – was a nice bonus for Salvatore Lacuna.
Neither the new heft nor the limp slowed him down much, and Bucatelli was earning a well-deserved reputation for selective violence. He hadn’t been in his new job long enough to earn a mob moniker, but he did rate an index card near his boss on the bulletin board at the Joint Organized Crime Task Force in Manhattan. Some of his former friends in the Police Department assigned to the Task Force referred to him as Renzo ‘No Nickname’ Bucatelli and thought that there was a chance that might stick. Others liked Renzo ‘Bulls Eye’ Bucatelli, in honor of the friendly fire incident. There was even some talk in the Task Force about suggesting one of the names to his mob compatriots, but that was squelched by humorless higher ups.
Bucatelli’s iPhone chimed. It was Sallie Mae. That was unusual. He’d only been inside the house for 30 minutes.
“Yeah, boss.”
“Renzo!”
It was Caitlin’s voice, panicked. The line went dead.
Bucatelli slid out of the car and ran to the house. He took the stairs to the front door two at a time, oblivious to the pains in his leg and hip. Jesus Christ. I hope we don’t have a Nelson Rockefeller thing going on here. How would I explain that to Theresa. Not that she didn’t know about the Irish goomah. They always did. Still.
The door was open and Bucatelli was halfway through the Florida room when he spotted Caitlin lying on the couch in the living room, seemingly asleep. What the fuck? He heard the door close behind him and then everything went black.
***
Lacuna was the first to come around. Once his head cleared and his eyes focused, he knew he was a dead man. No one trusses a family capo naked to a chair and then hopes to make a deal. The last thing he remembered was walking to the kitchen calling out Caitlin’s name, hoping she’d put the champagne on ice. Now he was freezing his ass off in the finished basement. He started limning the possibilities. Relations with the families in the other boroughs and New Jersey were the best they’d been in years. Everyone was so shell-shocked by the Feds’ successful anti-mafia crusade that they didn’t have the time or energy for internecine feuds. It must be the fucking Russians, although he couldn’t fathom even them being that crazy. And why? We hated each other, but there had been no disputes worth starting a war over. And if they just decided to take over, it would have been a bomb or some other traditional assassination. Maybe it was just some nut job. There were certainly enough of them running around. How ironic it would be to be killed by some Hannibal Lecter type.
Lucana heard a screeching sound and watched in horror as a tall man dressed in a black suit effortlessly dragged a metal chair containing Renzo Bucatelli from the adjoining laundry room and set it opposite him, tying it fast to a ceiling support pole with cable wire. More cable wire went around the driver’s throat, so that his head could only move forward slightly. The unconscious Renzo was, like his boss, also naked and bound hand and foot by heavy tape. How could he have been taken so easily? Suddenly he thought of Caitlin. Brutal a man as he was, Salvatore Lacuna felt a pang of remorse. She certainly didn’t deserve anything like this. He strained against his binding and tried to shout through the tape covering his mouth. His exertions should have tipped him over. Then he realized he was also tethered to another support pole, with cable wire around his throat as well. The tall man sat down in a chair between the two helpless men.
“Will you scream or shout?”
Lacuna shook his head and the man gently peeled the tape from his lips.
“Where’s the woman?”
“She’s upstairs,” Hagen Sobok replied, impressed. “A bit uncomfortable, but in good health. I do not like to hurt women.”
That part was true, he thought. He hadn’t even liked knocking her out but that was unavoidable. Now she was bound and gagged in an upstairs closet. Hopefully she wouldn’t hear anything. Sobok wasn’t worried about her identifying him. He’s be long gone into the Manhattan melting pot by the time she was found. Sobok had thought of using the woman as leverage in the upcoming interrogation, but the mere threat to harm her might not have been enough. I probably would have had to torture her in front of her lover. Why put myself through that unpleasantness, when the bodyguard would serve the purpose equally as well, if it came to that.
“Who are you? What do you want? Do you know who I am?”
“Of course I know who you are? That is why I am here. You are the man who contracted out the murder of Elizabeth Pearsall. I need the names of the two men who fulfilled the assignment. I understand that you are the only person that knows them.” Sobok smiled benignly. “Their current locations would also be helpful.” He actually took out a reporter’s notebook and pen from his suit jacket. First he wrote a note to call someone later to have the woman freed. Then, pen poised, he looked expectantly at Lacuna.
“I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about,” Lacuna said. His mind raced. Was someone seeking revenge for the dead girl? But if they knew he was involved, why not just go to the cops? That’s what her father would do, not hire someone like this, an obvious professional. It couldn’t be Bimm. If the fat bastard knew how to get such a man, he wouldn’t have needed Lacuna in the first place. “If you are smart you will walk out of this house and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
“Please, Mr. Lacuna. Not that I am judging you, but you must have known that nothing good would come out of killing a child. I myself would not accept such a commission. As a practical matter, they are risky. They attract attention and, I must say, justifiable outrage. The death of a criminal or crooked politician may be investigated, of course, but the murder of an innocent can generate unforeseen consequences, as appears to be the case in this instance.”
“I don’t get it. The girl is dead. The old man disappeared. We did our job.”
“The child was raped.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. It was a mistake. The guy who fucked up was taken care of. Shit happens. The cops still have nowhere to go. It’s over. What do you care?”
“Other than disgust at the morality of your assignment, not much. But somebody now knows the reason the girl was killed. Inquiries are being made. That means somebody else has talked. My client wants to know who that somebody is.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“We are inclined to believe you. Dr. Bimm has vouched for your discretion, although as a reference, and probably as a man of healing, he leaves a lot to be desired. I myself find it hard to believe someone of your stature would be the source of the leak. So it must be one of the men you hired. I want their names and I want to know where to find them.”
“I told you one of them is dead. The other man killed him after he raped the girl. And you don’t have to worry about that guy. Why would he say anything? It makes no sense."
Sobok leaned into his prisoner, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. Sherlock Holmes. I want the names of the two men, and everything you know about them.”
Lacuna was shivering, and not only because it was cold in the basement and he was naked. He was well past philosophical discussions about plausibility. Sherlock Fucking Holmes? All he heard was the word “eliminate.” Loud and clear.
“You’ll never get away with this. My family will hunt you down like a dog.”
Sobok yawned. Lacuna tried another tack.
“Listen, you’re just doing a job. I can respect that. I’ll double what you’re getting.”
“This is getting us nowhere, Mr. Lacuna. Let me cut to the chase, as you Americans say. I cannot be threatened, or bought. I do not have a dog in this fight – another of your delightful sayings – and your pitiful organization no longer has the resources to find someone like me, if they ever did. You will notice that I am not wearing gloves. I am not worried about fingerprints or DNA. And, as
by now you have undoubtedly surmised, this is not about vengeance. It is about information. My employer wants me to clean up the mess you have created. I’m afraid that means that your prospects aren’t favorable. You realize that, of course. But I can spare you indescribable pain. And I promise to leave without touching the woman.”
Renzo Bucatelli had regained consciousness and began rattling in his chair and shaking his head violently.
“Go fuck yourself,” Sallie Mae croaked. He would have spit in Sobok’s face, but his mouth felt like the Mojave Desert.
“I don’t think that will be necessary. I met a very nice lady on the plane. The situation has promise.” Sobok sighed. “Unlike yours.”
He walked from view briefly and returned holding a paper bag, which made a metallic clunking sound when he put it on the floor. He reached in the bag and took out a small jar of Vick’s Vapo Rub. With practiced speed he opened the jar, smeared a dab of the pungent salve on his finger, and rubbed it under his nose. Two sets of frightened eyes followed his every mood.
“The names, please.
“Listen, whoever you are,” Lucana said in an unsteady voice, “we can work something out.”
“The names, please.”
“You’re going to kill us anyway.”
Lacuna felt like his heart would burst out of his chest. He felt an incredible urge to urinate. He remembered how he had ridiculed some of his own victims for doing that. He clenched. Not me. Not me. Not me.
“I know it’s a cliché, but some things are worse than death, Mr. Lacuna.”
Sallie Mae Lacuna braced for what was to come. He took several deep breaths and his pounding heart slowed. His tolerance for pain was legendary among friends and enemies alike. And he was fiercely proud of his reputation as a “stand up guy” who, unlike the weak sisters now common in the watered-down mafia, never ratted anyone.
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