by J. L. Abramo
He was fishing, but they weren’t biting. Ruzzo would have to press the issue if he wanted any information before Sgt. Badeaux got to them.
“Have either of you seen Mr. Geratti today?”
Was it his imagination or did they share a brief glance? If so, it was over before Ruzzo could follow up on it. Mr. Toma turned to address him.
“You check the bocce ball courts?”
“I actually just came from there.”
Mr. Fava’s cane was suddenly bouncing at a faster clip. He brought a hand up to move his rook, but knocked the bishop over in his haste. Now both men turned to look at Ruzzo. He studied their rheumy, yellow eyes, looking for something to go on. They seemed to be waiting for him to leave.
“Did either of you know Mr. Geratti back in New York?”
Mr. Toma addressed his silent friend instead of Ruzzo.
“You believe this? He thinks we all lived in Little Italy together or something.”
“Take it easy. I was just wondering if we might know some of the same people.”
“You want to know more about us? Go ask your mother. She knew us intimately.”
Mr. Toma banged his cane on the ground, his laughter somewhere between a cough and a gasp. It was like listening to a circus seal begging for fish.
“Hey! That’s uncalled for. I was just making small talk.”
“Take it somewhere else before we complain to the board and get your tin badge taken away.”
Checkmate. Ruzzo stood his ground for a few more seconds, but there was really nothing left to say.
“Fine. I’ll let you two get back to your game. Enjoy the afternoon.”
Both men nodded, shooting daggers as Ruzzo walked away. Light drops of rain started to fall as he reached the golf cart. The sky opened up in torrents when he pulled away a few seconds later. Thunder rumbled overhead and the lightning cracked and hissed.
Mr. Adamoli was sitting under the awning outside of the security hut doing a crossword puzzle when Ruzzo pulled up.
“I just heard the bad news about Mr. Geratti. We were supposed to play bocce ball this afternoon. And now this.”
Of the three septuagenarians, Mr. Adamoli looked and acted the youngest. He still had a full head of hair, for starters, and it was always carefully groomed into a sweeping silver pompadour. At the moment he was wearing pressed linen pants and a colorful button down shirt featuring several large macaws against a backdrop of palm fronds.
Ruzzo unlocked the door and invited Mr. Adamoli in. It was a tight squeeze to get around the desk that filled most of the room. Ruzzo had to move the only guest chair aside in order to close the door. The swamp cooler mounted in the window kicked in as soon as the two men took their seats.
The smell of cigar smoke that emanated from Mr. Adamoli was overwhelming in the confined space. This job had taught Ruzzo that sight and hearing weren’t the only senses that dulled with age.
“How can I help you?”
“I was hoping you had more information about Jimmy.”
Jimmy? All the employees referred to the residents by last name only, but Jimmy Geratti rang a bell—even if Ruzzo couldn’t put a finger on it.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m not officially responsible for the murder investigation.”
Ruzzo looked out the window and noticed that the rain had gone just as quickly as it arrived. Sharp rays of sunlight were poking out from behind a sky of billowy clouds. Mr. Adamoli slipped a plastic comb from his shirt pocket and carefully dragged it through his hair, patting as he went.
“Do you have anything to drink in this office?”
Ruzzo thought about the bottle of bourbon in his drawer. He decided it was best to wait until he was alone.
“Vending machine’s just outside. I probably have some quarters in my desk.”
“Come now. We’re both adults here.”
Ruzzo slid the drawer open and set the bottle down on the desk. He poured three fingers each into two red plastic cups and pushed one to his guest. Ruzzo knocked his back in a single swallow. The old man gave a toast and nod before taking a small sip.
“I bet you and I know some of the same people back in New York, Mr. Ruzzo. Quite a few of my acquaintances had relationships with men in your precinct. Mostly before your time, of course.”
“No kidding.”
Ruzzo leaned back in his chair and enjoyed the familiar warmth in his chest. Mr. Adamoli swirled the bourbon in the cup and gave it a sniff, as if he was at a wine tasting.
“I envy you. A young man in the prime of his life. You have a good job and you live along one of the nicest beaches in the world.”
Ruzzo thought it didn’t sound half bad the way he put it.
“Well, we’re both here now.”
The old man pulled an embroidered handkerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed at his own forehead.
“You wouldn’t believe the things I did so that I could afford to retire here.”
“Oh yeah? Feel like sharing?”
“It’s nothing you didn’t see in your previous line of work. Especially given the circumstances of your departure.”
Ruzzo poured himself another shot and drank it down.
“You seem to know a lot about my time on the force, Mr. Adamoli.”
“I stay in touch with friends. They tell me things. Keep me up on the latest news from the old neighborhood.”
The cup sounded cheap and hollow when Ruzzo slammed it down on the desk.
“Out of curiosity, which side of the law are these ‘friends’ of yours on?”
“You already know the answer to that question. Let me ask you one instead: Do you miss it?”
“New York?”
“Police work.”
“Like you said, I’ve got it pretty good down here.”
“I couldn’t agree more. It would be a shame to see you lose it all over a botched murder investigation on your own turf. I can’t imagine you’ll get many more second chances.”
Mr. Adamoli brought his cup up and took another drink, keeping his eyes on Ruzzo over the rim. The humming and sputtering of the swamp cooler was the only noise as the old man stood up and carefully pushed the chair aside to open the door. Ruzzo followed him out.
“What is it exactly that you want from me?”
“Do your job, Mr. Ruzzo. Everything else will become clear in time.”
The door swung shut with a soft click. Ruzzo noticed that Mr. Adamoli had left the crossword puzzle sitting on the desk. He spun the folded newspaper around. The answer to one across was filled in and circled: NEPHEW.
Ruzzo was replaying the conversation in his head when the office phone rang. He checked the number and saw that it was coming from the Precious Acres corporate offices in Tampa.
If those old bastards filed a complaint, so help me God I’ll...
“Ruzzo here.”
“What the hell is going on up there?”
It was Maggie Walker, Vice President of Residential Affairs and Public Relations. Ruzzo always thought her nasally voice sounded like the high-pitched whining you hear after a day at the shooting range. They had never met in person, but he imagined she was four feet tall and weighed three hundred and fifty pounds.
“Hello, Maggie. What are you going on about?”
“Oh, I don’t know, the murder maybe.”
“Technically, it’s still an open case.”
“Did you become a legal expert before or after you got run out of the NYPD?”
“Take it easy. What do you want to know?”
“How on earth can something like this happen at one of our premiere retirement communities.”
Ruzzo knew that “premiere” was a stretch. Precious Acres looked good in brochures, but it felt like a white-collar prison once you lived there. Of course, he couldn’t say any of that to her unless he wanted another history lesson about the company.
“We have very high expectations when it comes to the safety of our residents. I shouldn’t have to re
mind you that Precious Acres is a family owned and operated business.”
“So you’ve told me.”
Maggie practically lectured him on the legend behind Precious Acres every time they spoke. He already knew that it came into the world as the Kostbar Bros. Circus in the 1920s. That they were a regional outfit specializing in daredevil trapeze and high wire acts. Ruzzo assumed it was just a public relations spiel carefully crafted to fill beds.
Sometime in in the 1960s, when the three founding brothers reached retirement age, their adult children took over the family business. The first thing they did was to buy a small trailer park that could house their aging parents year around. The Precious Acres in Seatown was the sight of that trailer park, a fact that Maggie never let Ruzzo forget.
From circus and trailer park to slow motion funeral home. Big deal.
Maggie always got excited when she told the part about how the trailer park grew into the first Precious Acres in the late 1970s. That was right around the time when retirees from the Northeast began flocking to this part of Florida. The circus was on its last legs by then, mostly thanks to poor management. The second generation of Kostbar siblings sold the tents and animals to build their first condo community.
These days there were seven luxury retirement communities spread throughout the Sunshine State. Through it all, Precious Acres remained a family operation with a marketing slogan that said it all: “We’ll treat your parents like they’re our parents.”
Ruzzo didn’t know much about the Kostbar’s parents, but he’d heard plenty about the current generation of owners. Rolf and Heidi Kostbar were infamous middle-aged twins renowned for their decadent lifestyle and public sexual conquests. He liked women of every shape and size, but they got younger as the night went on. She liked professional athletes, preferably from the Dominican Republic. Neither of them ever married or had children, a fact that begged questions about the future of the organization.
Ruzzo had never been to the corporate offices, but rumors of the extravagant penthouse suite staffed with private chefs and round-the-clock masseuses were the stuff of legend. He secretly hoped to take advantage of those company perks himself one day. But getting Maggie Walker off the phone was a bigger priority at the moment.
“That’s the thing with crime, it’s unpredictable.”
“Well it shouldn’t be. Not when we pay you good money to keep our residents safe from axe-wielding psychos.”
“Nobody said anything about an axe. Is that the kind of thing you corporate types make up with all of your free time?”
“Be careful, Ruzzo. There’s plenty you don’t know about this company.”
“You’d be surprised at how much information we get out here in the sticks.”
His response was met with such complete silence that he had to make sure the call was still connected.
“Maggie?”
“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. So, if you’re through with your little tantrum, I’d like to hear more about the murder.”
“It was a longtime resident named Jimmy, er, Mr. Geratti. Cavanaugh discovered him this morning.”
She immediately brightened up.
“How is old Jesse Lee?”
“Good, I guess.”
“You tell him I said ‘hey.’ He went to high school with my daddy.”
Seems like everybody in Florida went to the same school.
“Should I go on?”
“Yes, and start from the beginning. I need to take really good notes. The Kostbars are expecting a full report by C.O.B. today.”
The condos at Precious Acres were small and cramped, but they were like mansions compared to Ruzzo’s living quarters. The addition of a small bathroom and kitchenette had transformed the former storage space into a “studio apartment.” The thin walls had been an issue for the other residents when Shayna was still around, but things were much quieter these days. Too quiet for Ruzzo’s New York ears.
His first couple of Internet searches for “Jimmy Geratti” didn’t yield much useful information. It wasn’t until he tried “Geratti mob” that he found a thread of news stories from 2003. It was before his time on the force, but he was familiar with the case.
DEAD MOBSTER ALIVE IN QUEENS?
Police have re-opened the search for suspected mafia hit man, Giancarlo “Jimmy” Geratti. A notorious member of a notorious crime family, Geratti has been presumed dead since disappearing in 1997. He is wanted in connection with six murders that occurred in Queens dating back to the 1980s.
The thread had been updated a few times in the following months, but Geratti was never found. Ruzzo’s subsequent image searches only turned up a couple of blurry, declassified surveillance photos from a failed federal sting operation. But he had his answer either way—Jimmy Geratti was still at large, and probably had plenty of powerful enemies.
Ruzzo didn’t know what he had stumbled into, but it was getting bigger by the second. His mind was reeling as he pushed his chair back and went over to the lone kitchen cupboard. The middle shelf was stocked with a few bottles of bourbon and little else. He filled a pint glass with ice and gave himself a generous pour. The part of his brain that thought like a cop was a little out of practice. Booze helped.
This case might be my ticket back to New York, but it’s only going to get more dangerous.
It was only a few steps from the kitchen to his bed. He set the glass down on the nightstand and dropped to the carpet. The safe was against the wall under the headboard. He fished it out and spun the wheels on the lock. The familiar weight of the Smith & Wesson revolver felt good in his hand. He had his finger on the trigger and almost squeezed off a shot in response to the unexpected pounding on the door.
Ruzzo placed the gun back in the safe, hastily pushing it under his bed. He took another gulp of bourbon and went to look through the peephole. A young Seatown police officer was staring back at him.
He opened the door a crack. His guest helped him open it the rest of the way. Ruzzo was impressed that one of Sgt. Badeaux’s flunkies could make his own decisions.
“We’re questioning all employees in connection with the murder.”
Typical small town police procedure. Start with the easy answers and hope to get lucky before you really have to roll up your sleeves. All of Ruzzo’s experience was screaming that this was not an inside job.
“Do you have some new information that makes us all suspects?”
“You can discuss that with Sgt. Badeaux.”
Ruzzo knew he wouldn’t get anything but questions down at the station.
“What about the nephew?”
It was a long shot, but he could see from the look on the dimwitted officer’s face that he’d struck a nerve.
“Just shut up and come with me.”
Back to TOC
Here’s a sample from Trey R. Barker’s No Harder Prison.
1
“Where the hell is my money?” Pacing, Noverto Griego clutched a cigar.
“That money’s—” The man sitting behind the screen, his face lit by a deep blue, cleared his throat. “That money’s pretty much gone.”
“I know that.” Sweat broke on Griego’s forehead as he continued to worry the cigar. “Who are you?” Griego’s voice was quiet, barely a whisper in the office.
From a shelf, Griego took a small box. Inside that box was a never-fired Beretta 92. He’d only taken it out of the factory-direct packaging and cleaned it a few days ago. He hefted the pistol but stared at the numbers on the screen. “I got fifteen shots here, whoever you are.”
“Dana had fourteen, didn’t he?” the man asked.
“Ten of those to the guy’s face. Wasn’t much face left.”
“He gets out tomorrow, right?”
“Tomorrow.”
“This his doing?”
The cigar began to split open. Griego nodded. “Yeah.” He touched the gun barrel to the computer screen. “Call Stefan, tell him I gotta job for him.”
�
�Dana getting his own ten shots?”
The cigar broke. Tobacco spilled to the desktop, then to the carpet. “Right now, all I want is my money back.”
2
When doors close, they close forever.
First day, first words, from the first guard he saw.
Twelve years ago and it had been Captain Woburn. He’d said it as the men had gotten off the bus, giving them each the same smug grin. We know the real score, that grin said, And you ain’t even worth the shit on our shoes.
Somewhere down the mainline, a door slammed. Somewhere else, hard to tell exactly where in a concrete-lined hallway, someone laughed at someone else’s yelp.
Usually, Dana Oldham could ignore the cries. Having heard the hurt ten thousand times, every day and night for twelve years, the anguish had become part of his brain. When he’d first arrived, convicted of murdering a gas station attendant, he had crossed himself and said a prayer for those who cried out. After six months, he’d just crossed himself. Six months after that, there was nothing but the brutalized inmate as background music.
But tonight he heard the cries again.
Because tonight was it. Last night in. Tomorrow at sunrise and a free man walking out.
Nearby, another cell door closed.
The beaten and the wounded he had learned to ignore, but that sound—that metallic bang, like a sheet of iron smashing down over someone’s head—he had never been able to shut out. The bang, then the whir of the electric lock, and then nothing at all except all the time in the world to replay the bang in your head.
“No more.” His words stumbled into the walkway. “Enough is enough. No more.” Dana rattled his cup against the bars. “Now. Now.”
“Hey, nigger, shut up.” Anonymous voices from everywhere on the line, the first one or two for Dana. Beyond those two, the voices yelled just to yell. “Shut up, Reggie, I’ll whittle your ass right out.” “Yeah? Get your nigger ass over here.” “Oh, the wetback boy shouldn’t’a said that. It’ll come a beating.”