by Sasscer Hill
“Not now, Calixto. Something’s going on over here. Pizutti just showed up with some old guy and Stevie looks terrified.”
“What does this older man look like?” he asked, his voice all business.
I peeked from Wabbit’s stall, drank in the man’s appearance, and withdrew. “Seventy-something. Still has thick hair. Salt-and-pepper, brushed straight back.” The guy used a lot of pomade, too. “Uh, nice clothes, black glasses…”
“You just described a third of the male racing fans up here.”
“So sneak over here and look for yourself.”
Calixto could be so irritating. It wasn’t like the old man had a pointed head or a forked tongue. Using my camera phone, I zoomed in on the guy and shot some pictures. Even with the magnification, it was hard to see his eyes behind the thick glasses. But he did have a large nose, and a disapproving, down-turned mouth. The frown looked carved in place. Fun guy.
“I’ll check it out,” Calixto said as Wiggly Wabbit swung her long gray neck over my head and sniffed at my hair.
Gently, I pushed her head away, then I peered down the shedrow. Mars was leaning into Stevie, jabbing his index finger at the kid. He had the same ugly scowl on his face I’d seen earlier. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his low tone sounded angry and urgent. The older man remained silent as he stood behind Mars, but his fixed expression of disapproval grew tighter.
Calixto appeared around the corner of the barn, and as he walked past the three men, the older guy jerked his thumb in my direction and said something. The three of them moved close to where I hid, apparently not wanting to be overheard by Calixto, who continued on as if he had someplace to go.
I was sure the three men hadn’t seen me, and was glad Calixto had flushed my quarry to me. They stopped outside Wabbit’s stall, where I crouched in the dim front corner, partially hidden by the wall.
Wiggly Wabbit swung her head toward me, knocking my arm. I dropped the phone and watched in dismay as the filly moved forward and crushed the phone under her metal-shod hoof. Damn it. I pushed on her leg until she moved off the phone. Snatching it up, I found it was dead, the camera and recording options obliterated, with no sound and no signal.
“Listen, Stevie,” Mars said, his voice soft, as if trying to reassure. “It’s kinda like you do for me, and I’ll do for you. You know? ’Course I want you to ride your races and all. But I’ve given you a big chance here, and you let me down today. You understand?”
“I’m not pulling races for you, Mars.” Stevie’s voice, angry and defiant.
“Shut up, you little shit!” The older man’s voice. It was gruff and carried an Italian accent. “You need to understand what happens when you don’t do as you’re told. Your boss here’s nicer than me.”
“Jesus, Rico,” Pizutti whined. “Don’t go breaking the kid’s knees. He won’t be able to ride, for Christ’s sake.”
So this was Rico. And I couldn’t even record this conversation. Damn it.
“Nobody’s breaking anybody’s knees,” Rico said. “But, kid. I got sumthin’ to show you.”
Wiggly Wabbit had retreated to the back of her stall, and thankfully was ignoring me. On my hands and knees, my face almost at ground level, I stole a glance at Rico. He was pulling what looked like a four-by-six photo from his jacket. I eased back, listening.
“No!” The word almost a whisper. Stevie grew louder. “How did you find her? Leave her alone. She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“She does now,” Rico said.
Mars stared at the photo. “Wait a minute. You didn’t say nothin’ ’bout Lila.”
Rico’s words came out harsh. “Marzio, your father would be so disappointed in you. You talk like a fucking sissy. You listen to me, Stevie, it’s your choice what happens to her. You want one of the boys to work on her?”
“No!” Stevie wailed. “Don’t. Just tell me what you want me to do next. I’ll do it, I promise.”
I could hear the sob in Stevie’s voice, and it made me sick. I wanted to come out with guns blazing, but sucked in the emotion and swallowed it. I could help him best by knowing what was going on, not intervening right now.
“Come here,” Rico said.
I heard their footsteps receding and risked another look.
Rico walked to the trash barrel, near Ziggy Stardust’s stall. I wished the colt would snake his head over the gate and bite the son of a bitch.
Rico held the photograph over the trash can. His grin was sick as he watched Stevie’s face. Slowly, he ripped the picture into little pieces. “You want this to happen to her?” He laughed as the scraps of paper fluttered into the trash.
Stevie reeled away from Rico and vomited in the sand of the shedrow.
6
It seemed I hid in the stall on my hands and knees for an eternity, waiting for Pizutti and Rico to leave. The intensity of Stevie’s fear, emotion so strong it had made him sick, stayed with me as I remembered how Rico had laughed, and told Pizutti to make the kid clean it up.
Finally, I heard the two men drive away, but waited until the sound of the Mercedes’s engine faded before ducking under the stall gate. Stevie had disappeared, which didn’t surprise me. What did was the ashen face of Becky Joe, staring at me from where she stood near Ziggy Stardust’s stall.
I walked toward her. “Did you hear that? What are they doing to Stevie?”
Her eyes were almost hidden beneath the brim of her Western hat, and she refused to look up at me. “I didn’t hear anything. I gotta go.” She turned away quickly, and scurried out of sight past the corner of the barn.
Damn the woman. I needed to call Calixto, but my phone was broken. I was relieved when I saw him emerge from a door in the barn across the way. Waving him to hurry over, I sped to the litter barrel and dumped its contents. Track maintenance had picked up the trash earlier, so it was easy to spot the fragments of the photo among the small amount of debris. I started to grab the pieces, then stopped, thinking I should use gloves.
“Go ahead,” Calixto said as he drew close. “You can touch them. We do not need his fingerprints. I know who he is—Rico Pizutti, Marzio Pizutti’s uncle.”
He knelt beside me, and we grabbed as many pieces of the photo as we could find, quickly arranging them like a puzzle, until a face appeared.
“Oh,” I said. “She’s so young.” Why couldn’t Rico’s target be someone older, someone less vulnerable? “God, she looks like Stevie.”
“Poor bambina. Could be his little sister.”
“That bastard,” I said. “Using this girl to make Stevie fix races.”
“The guy is a thug. He was convicted of extortion in New York. I had not realized he was up here.”
“He’s with the mob?”
“Was. My contacts at the FBI will know more about his status. I will make some calls. You are aware of our connection with the FBI, yes?”
“I know the TRPB has a past association and you’ve worked with them before. And I read our first director, Spencer Drayton, was J. Edgar Hoover’s assistant. Drayton modeled the TRPB after the bureau, right?”
“Yes, five gold stars for my pequeña leona.”
I ignored the comment. At least he didn’t pat my head and hand me a toy mouse.
“Rico’s connection to the mob may be more serious than you think,” I said. “He told Stevie that maybe ‘one of the boys’ would hurt the girl. Sounds like he’s still mobbed up. Maybe he never left the business.”
“It is possible. I will let you know what I find out.”
“But what can we do for Stevie now?” I asked, righting the barrel and replacing the few food wrappers and coffee cups that had been mixed in with the photo scraps.
“We cannot do anything. We need our cover, but another agent can step in and talk to Stevie. Offer to protect the girl if Stevie will inform on Rico and Pizutti.”
I stared at Calixto. “But that’s so dangerous for him. He’s just a kid.”
“Come on, Fia, you a
re not new to this game. You know how it works. And put those big, pleading blue eyes away. They are not working.” But he put a hand on my arm and his expression softened. “Gunny told you there is something else brewing here besides Pizutti and Rico, yes?”
I nodded. “Ziggy Stardust’s owner is starting up some sort of hedge fund, using Ziggy as the bait.” My fingers were sticky from the wet coffee cups, and I wiped them on my jeans before glancing at Ziggy’s stall.
The big colt had thrust his head over the stall gate and was staring at us. In the dimming light, his white blaze and bright spots made a fairly convincing star-spangled banner. People often invest with their hearts, not their brains. Ziggy would be an easy sell.
* * *
An hour later, I’d bought a new phone, and was in my room in the Victorian on Union Avenue staring inside the tiny freezer compartment of my refrigerator. Frozen lasagna and a box of chicken potpie stared back. Neither of them lit my fire.
My laptop sat next to me on the tiny kitchen table. I’d searched the internet but found very little on Rico other than his prior convictions. But there had to be more, because I could still hear the sob in Stevie’s voice. I wanted to tear this Rico jerk into little pieces.
I glanced back into the freezer. Why had this stuff looked good in the grocery store? My phone chirped and I grabbed it off my bed, hoping it would be Calixto with information he’d obtained from the FBI field office in Albany. It was.
“Your friend, Rico, owns a restaurant here in town,” he said as soon as I answered.
I leaned forward and shut the doors on the freezer and refrigerator. “I told you he was a mobster. He probably sits in there eating Italian food and ordering hits on people.”
“I can tell when you’re stressed, Fia. You make jokes.”
“Yeah, what else is new?”
“Gunny is bringing in an agent from Maryland to talk to Stevie Davis.”
My fingers curled tightly around the phone. “Tell me Pizutti and Rico won’t know about this.”
“Of course not. I know this agent. He is good.”
I sighed. “Okay.”
“Have you had dinner?”
I perked right up. “No. What are you thinking?”
“I want to take you to Zutti’s Café, a very nice Italian restaurant.”
“Not Rico’s place?”
“Why not? Rico has never seen either of us. Besides, the place is expensive, everyone knows I have plenty of money, and what better way to impress the woman I am pursuing?”
“Um, even so, I’ll go disguised as a normal person.” I’d find something to use in my bag of tricks.
“Does this mean you will not wear skull earrings?”
“I don’t think mobsters are into Goth.”
“I am relieved to hear this. Perhaps you could dress like our friend Kate?” he asked.
I thought I’d heard a hopeful note in his voice. So, he’d liked my Kate persona from several months earlier in Florida. As Kate, I’d worn short skirts, low-cut blouses, and high heels. Probably just the right look for a mobbed-up New York restaurant.
“You might get lucky,” I said.
* * *
One blond wig, tasteful makeup, and short skirt later, I walked with Calixto under a green awning and into Zutti’s Café. The aroma of tomato sauce, garlic, and grilled shrimp laced the air as a dark-haired man in black tie greeted us in the foyer. He led us by a refrigerated case. I almost didn’t make it past the display of pies, fruit tarts, cakes, cheesecakes, and an assortment of chocolate and whipped cream delights.
A cappuccino machine busily frothed milk into a cup on a marble-topped bar covering one wall. Behind the polished-stone counter, mirrors, and shelves of single malt scotch, vodka, gin, bourbon, brandy, ports, and sherries glowed in the warm light from hanging lamps.
Glossy wood floors, white tablecloths, and fresh-cut flowers added to the ambiance. The maître d’ led us to a table fronting a long banquette upholstered in gold-and-green-striped fabric. He pulled the table away from the wall, and as I sat on the banquette, my short skirt slid farther up my thighs. I fluffed up the long blond hair of my wig, removed my blazer, and smiled at Calixto. He ignored the chair on the opposite side of the table and slipped in next to me, causing the maître d’ to grin.
“This is cozy,” I said.
Calixto’s eyes glittered as they swept over the low V in my blouse. After a rapid discussion with the maître d’ about wine, he ordered a bottle. From our host’s pleased expression, I suspected the money for the wine would keep me in chicken potpies for a year.
Glancing toward the back of the restaurant, I started slightly. A latticed screen partially hid two tables, and Rico sat at one with an old guy in a striped suit. Behind them a set of swinging doors led into the kitchen.
The two men puffed away on big cigars and had glasses of what looked like brandy. Rico’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows bristled over tired, dark eyes. Beneath them, heavy bags sagged onto his jowly face. He had a round belly, probably from too much fried squid and cannelloni. The other guy had a lined, seamed face and a nose slightly pushed to one side. Someone had done a job on him in the past.
“There’s your man, Rico,” I said, tearing off a piece of warm, crusty bread and dipping it into a bowl of olive oil.
Calixto glanced toward the kitchen. “So it is, and the gentleman he’s sitting with is Alberto Rizelli.”
“And he would be…”
“Another retired mobster from New York. His mother was from the Gambino family.”
“What makes you think he’s retired?” I asked.
“He is still on parole after twenty years in federal prison. If he is caught doing anything, he’ll be back in for life.”
“Yeah, unless he has a good lawyer.” Fia McKee, cynic.
Calixto shrugged. Our waiter arrived with a bottle of red wine, opened it, and allowed Calixto a sample taste. When it was poured, an earthy, rich scent drifted to my nose. The ruby liquid gurgled and splashed into my glass. I drank some. Don’t know anything about wine, but this stuff tasted wonderful. I drank more.
“So what was Rizelli in for?” I asked, as Calixto’s gold double-C cuff links gleamed at me from the starched white cotton that covered his wrists. The man had strong hands, and long, tapered fingers. And they were so close to my hand. Two sips of wine and I was already imagining those fingers—
“Rizelli ran prostitutes and loan-sharking back in the seventies and eighties,” Calixto said. “My guy at the FBI mentioned him today. He said Rizelli was tied in with Rico, and committed—they suspected but could never prove—multiple murders.”
“But they got him for prostitution and loan-sharking?”
“Yes, for that.”
“Nice guy,” I said, before swallowing another sip of wine.
The waiter returned, and we ordered mussels and shrimp with linguine. I was glad, that like me, Calixto was not bound by the white wine with seafood rule. I had more wine, a bite of bread, more wine, and a forkful of crisp green salad when it arrived. Then I had more wine.
By now, Calixto was looking pretty good. His mouth was so … I pushed my wineglass away. Maybe I should wait for my dinner.
“But,” Calixto said, “my guy at the FBI was only half joking when he referred to the ‘Saratoga mob.’”
“Saratoga mob?” I started to reach for my wine, but stopped.
“Yes, querida, and you should keep your claws sheathed around these men.”
“I will, if they leave Stevie alone. But who else is in this gang?”
“Apparently there are five or six of these old mobsters up here. After being indicted—”
Our waiter arrived with steaming plates of shellfish, the rich scent of garlic butter almost as intoxicating as the wine. I pried a mussel from its shell and popped it into my mouth. Nirvana.
Calixto dug into his meal for a while before continuing. “So, after being indicted and serving their time, these viejo mafiosos could not obtain lic
enses for any of their previous businesses—concrete, waste management. They were finished in the Big Apple and New Jersey.”
I forked up a bite of linguine dripping with garlic butter. Calixto leaned forward and wiped a drip of butter from my lower lip before licking it off his finger. My physical reaction was quick and intense. Damn him.
“But,” he continued, after a long sip of wine, “though many mobsters retire to Florida, these individuals dislike the Miami scene. They are hard-core New Yorkers, true racing fans, and have decided to settle in Saratoga.”
Calixto was into his wine now, his eyes bright with amusement. “They pulled Rico in for questioning last year, and he told them, ‘I’m retired from all that now. I got my little restaurant to keep me well fed in my old age.’”
I leaned forward. “Yeah, right. But he can’t help himself, can he? Now he’s got to play the ponies illegally. How convenient for him that his nephew trains at Saratoga.”
Calixto emptied his wineglass, then refilled both of ours. He took a long pull. “You think the nephew is convenient? Listen to this. Rizelli owned a horse farm in New Jersey with a racetrack on the property. There’s an Irish vet that used to work for him who swears Rizelli had a backhoe on the property and—”
“Buried bodies in the infield! He did, didn’t he?” I burst out laughing and reached for my wine, then stopped, realizing I shouldn’t be laughing. “But this isn’t funny, is it? These are horrible people.”
“Would you rather cry, pequeña leona?” He took my hand and rubbed his thumb lightly against my palm. “I don’t want to see you cry.”
I drew back. “We should think about getting our check. We have to get up early.”
“Of course,” he said. “This is good. They will think we rushed out because we cannot keep our hands off each other.”
“Yes,” I said. “They will think that and that you have more than one woman.” My phone vibrated in my purse, and I dug it out to make sure it wasn’t Brian. Maybe Pizutti had left a trail of transactions showing us he’d been betting on races that he’d fixed. Only I didn’t recognize the number, and let it go to voice mail.