There wasn’t much more. Ellen James, or whatever her name was, always called Laurene directly and paid her in cash. No one else was involved. I got up to leave.
“Wait,” she said. “Who killed him? And do you really think they’ll come after me.”
I hesitated. An hour earlier I felt like wringing Laurene’s pretty little neck. Were the people who hired her, who presumably murdered Capriati, likely to silence her? I didn’t think so. Even if she knew of his death, which they wouldn’t think possible, there was no way she would go to the police. And she had no way to track down her “mother.” But there was no way to be absolutely sure. The whole case was irrational. I didn’t know enough to be giving any advice.
“These are dangerous people, Savannah.” She laughed nervously at my mistake. I had to smile. “But they got what they wanted and worked hard to keep you out of the loop. I don’t think you’re a threat to them. But keep your mouth shut and stick to your regular clients for a while. Or, better yet, take a vacation. And put an alarm system in your apartment. Security in that building is a joke. The dirty dishes in your sink are mine.”
Laurene opened her mouth to say something but thought better of it. I took a card out of my wallet.
“Don’t be afraid to call the cops if you notice anything suspicious. You don’t have to tell them about Capriati. In fact, I’d advise against it. And don’t hesitate to call me if you have to.”
She took the card and smiled.
“I already have one of your cards, remember? Did you ever get your name spelled right on the door?”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled back. I went to the door.
“Mr. Rhode?”
I turned back.
“You’re not going to the cops either, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Sorry I roughed you up, kid.”
“Don’t be. I deserved it.” She flashed her robe open and closed. “And the offer still stands.”
I took in a deep breath and went down to the lobby. I made do with another cookie.
CHAPTER 31 – AN HOUR TO KILL
I had thought that by finding Laurene I might get to “Ellen James” and whoever was behind her. Instead I quickly found out that the trail began and ended with Laurene. I was beginning to hope that someone would make a run at me. As the days passed, and no one did, I became resigned to the fact that I might never get to the truth.
The Carlucci family hadn’t wanted me to find Capriati. That meant they suspected he could be found, which also meant that they knew where he was. Mobsters knowing where someone in witness protection is doesn’t compute. Unless he contacted them. Nando and Billy had been wrestling buddies. Old pals keeping in contact? Maybe there was a college reunion coming up. I could see Capriati at a homecoming football game at Wagner, quashing beers with former classmates.
Hey, Bill. What have you been up to?
Not much, Harry. I’m in witness protection. Just came up for the reunion, hoping not to be garroted. What about you?
Witness protection! That’s a good one! I’m in insurance. You need any. I think we have a witness protection policy. Har, har. So, what have you really been doing?
No, if Nando and Billy were in touch it was something criminal. I decided to pay Nando Carlucci a visit the next day. That promised to be a stressful meeting. I can’t say I was looking forward to it. I called Alice Watts.
“It’s been a couple of weeks,” I said. “Are you free for dinner.”
“I’m not on Staten Island. I’m at my apartment in Manhattan.”
“I would travel to the ends of the earth to have dinner with you. Maybe even to the Bronx.”
There was a long pause.
“I have some papers to grade. But if you don’t mind eating a little later, there is a nice little French bistro in the Village I’ve been wanting to try. I can meet you there around 8. Is that all right?”
I said it was and she told me where the restaurant was. I had become less cautious with each passing day but still checked the parking lot before walking to my car. There were no ambushers lying in wait, and no one tailed me when I left. Even factoring the vagaries of traffic, I had at least an hour to kill before heading into the city. Enough time to go home, shower and change clothes.
When I got home I noticed a white “Richmond Security” van parked in front of the house next door. I recognized the corporate logo – a sturdy, stern-looking man in green uniform standing guard on the lawn in front of a house – from the company’s recent cable advertising blitz. I made a mental note to ask my neighbor what an alarm system cost. I walked into my house and turned the light on in my living room. I couldn’t see my grandmother’s Bennington Pine rocker that sat in front of the fireplace. That was because Nando Carlucci, all 350 pounds of him, was sprawled in it. Before I could react I felt a gun pressed in my back and a hand came around my waist and expertly removed my automatic. Then a hand shoved me forward.
“Sit,” Nando said.
I sat in a wing chair facing him.
“You know who I am?”
“Shamu?”
Carlucci sighed and leaned forward. The venerable rocker creaked.
“Go easy,” I said. “That a family heirloom you’re about to turn into kindling.”
“You’re about to be a fucking heirloom, you don’t stop wisin’ off.”
“You know,” I said. “I was just thinking about installing an alarm system.”
“What company?”
“Richmond Security.”
“Wouldn’t have done you any good. I own it.”
“ That’s one of your vans out front.”
“Yeah.”
“And by the time the cops respond to one of your alarms the burglars are long gone.”
Carlucci smiled.
“It’s all a matter of timing.”
“Nice business.”
“You bet. But enough chit chat. How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Don’t act dumb. I know you’re not. How did you find Capriati.”
“What difference does it make now. He’s dead.”
“Yeah. And you killed him. I’m kind of disappointed. I heard you were a stand-up guy. I never figured you’d do contract work for the Rahms.”
“The Rahms?”
I was trying to process that information when he shook his massive head and said, “Jesus, do we have to do this the hard way?” Then he began struggling out of the rocker.
“You ought to go easy on the Ben & Jerry, fatso. Speaking of which, I’m sorry about your boys. I bet they got teased a lot about their names.”
Nando hit me in the mouth. It was a good shot and I almost came off the seat. I could feel blood trickling warmly down my chin. A fat lip was assured.
“Show some goddamn respect. I know you’re a fucking war hero, and I also know you didn’t kill them. If I’d known the Rahms had your back I wouldn’t have sent them out to be slaughtered like that.” He nodded at the man behind me. “Bruce. Basement.”
Bruce hit me on the head.
***
“Bruce, I need more ice,” Nando said.
“The cooler’s full boss. It’s overflowing.”
“Not for the fucking cooler, asshole. I want another drink. You want me to use the ice in the cooler, where his feet are? Whatsa matter with you?”
Bruce took the small ice bucket and headed up the stairs. I started to laugh. It was just short of a hysterical laugh, but I couldn’t help it. I had recently regained consciousness and was strapped to a chair in my basement. I was stripped to my waist and my legs were tied to the chair in such a way I couldn’t lift my feet from the cooler. They were freezing. My ankles ached. Things didn’t look promising.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“I’m going to be tortured by a guy named Bruce? Your organization is really going to the dogs, Nando. First Ben and Jerry, and now Bruce? Let me go now and I won’t tell anyone.”
I was slurri
ng my words. My bottom lip had swollen from Nando’s punch.
“You ain’t gonna tell anyone shit. Except me, and I’m gonna do the torturing. Bruce ain’t got the cojones for it. I got plenty of ice and plenty of cigarettes, wise ass.”
“Cigs are bad for your health.”
He smiled.
“Not as bad as they are for yours.”
He lit a cigarette, took a drag and leaned forward. He pressed it into my chest, briefly. It didn’t hurt that much, and I merely said, “Ouch.” Then he pushed an ice cube into the burn. That hurt a bit more, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted to husband my strength. I knew we’d soon be way past the “ouch” stage.
Nando took a sip out of a glass next to his chair. There was a bottle of my Maker’s Mark bourbon on the floor. At the top of the stairs I heard Bruce working the ice machine on my refrigerator. There is something profoundly humiliating about being tortured with your own ice in your own basement by someone drinking your own bourbon. The Igloo cooler looked familiar, too.
“I didn’t kill Capriati. I found him dead. You didn’t do a great job of protecting him. If you had, you’d know I’m telling the truth.”
“We weren’t protecting him. He wouldn’t tell me where he was. I didn’t even know he was dead until I got his fucking finger UPS.”
That explained the mutilation I’d seen.
“I’m curious. How did you know it was his finger?”
“His Wagner College ring was on it. The Russians are fucking animals.”
This from a man who was sticking cigarettes in my chest while my feet were encased in ice cubes. I let it pass.
“I don’t do fingers,” I said. “I was hired to find him, period.”
“Don’t matter, much. You led them right to him.”
Bruce returned with more cubes and Nando made another drink.
“This is good bourbon,” he said.
“You’re making a big mistake, Nando. I don’t know what your play was with Capriati, but cut your losses. You don’t gain anything by working me over. I was set up.”
“Yeah, by who?”
It wasn’t the right time to correct his grammar. I decided to tell him everything, except about Mrs. Capriati. I was trying to buy time. Maybe Publishers Clearing House or the Jehovah’s Witnesses would stop by. Maybe he’d let me take my feet out of the ice. By the time I finished, my shins were numb. He just stared at me.
“Arman must have had you pegged pretty good, to use a broad and a sick kid. He couldn’t be sure you’d succeed, but what did he have to lose? He didn’t have the manpower to look for Cap on his own. I was always worried about Arman. He’s a lot brighter than his brother ever was. Ivy League prick.”
“Did you whack Stefan?”
“Yeah. But he had a lot of enemies. Arman and his old man couldn’t be sure who did it. I was afraid if I killed both of them it would lead back to us and Marat would sic that crazy Kalugin on me. Couldn’t get to Marat. He’s holed up in that castle of his on Todt Hill. Besides, we had Capriati. He was our ace in the hole against Marat until you came along. Who was the woman?”
“Believe me, if I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here watching you drink my good bourbon. Whoever she is, she deserves an Oscar.”
Nando lit another cigarette. He blew a couple of smoke rings into my face.
“I believe you. The Rahms would hire the best.”
“What did Capriati have that you needed?”
“He saw Marat kill someone. Back when he did his own enforcing.”
“Who?”
“A jerk-off real estate lawyer who cheated him and my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yeah. Marat and my old man. Turned out that the Rahms thought they owned the same buildings we did. Fucking lawyer sold them twice. Must have had a death wish. It was Billy who figured the scam out. He had a way with numbers. Came to work for us after we graduated from Wagner.” I had begun shivering but I didn’t want Nando to wrap it up. Since then I’d probably be wrapped up. But Nando apparently liked reminiscing. “Marat lost more money in the deals so he insisted on killing the lawyer. But my father wanted me to be there, kind of an initiation. I brought Billy. Marat garroted the fucker.”
“I never knew you and the Rahms were allies once.” My teeth were chattering. “What happened?”
“The real estate thing was just business. After that, they started moving into our territory. They took advantage when Capriati sold me out and I got three years on a tax evasion rap.”
“That’s why he was in witness protection.”
“Yeah, we had a sweet thing going at Wagner, selling some dope to students and teachers. Mostly uppers, downers, that kind of shit. A little smack. My old man didn’t know about it and I didn’t report the income. But then Billy got greedy and tried to make a big score with heroin. Got nabbed with 20 pounds in his car trunk. He was facing 15 years but saw a way out. They couldn’t get me for the dope, but I couldn’t explain the income. But Billy knew where it was. I swore I’d kill him if I found him.”
“Instead, he found you.”
Nando made another drink and then poured the remaining ice from the bucket into the cooler. I couldn’t even feel my feet and the numbness had spread above my knees.
“He called me out of the blue. Said he read about Stefan Rahm and figured we were behind it. Said he had a deal I couldn’t refuse. Actually said that, can you imagine? Turned out it was.”
“He offered to testify against Marat Rahm in the lawyer killing,” I said. “Your word alone wouldn’t do. You needed a corroborating witness.”
“Yeah. No statute of limitations for murder. The D.A. was hot for the deal.”
“And you’d let bygones be bygones.”
“Yeah. Billy was tired of banging grandmothers in Naples. He said he might have preferred prison.”
“When Ben and Jerry braced me the first time, did you know what the Rahms were planning?”
“Nah. You were just a new face. It was a stupid move on their part. Put you on your guard. Made it harder to tail you when I finally found out you were looking for Billy.”
“Who told you?”
Nando laughed.
“You’re gonna love it. One of the professors me and Billy used to supply is still on my string. Fruitcake named Lancaster. Back when Billy disappeared I went to him hoping he might have some info I could use to find him. When you started asking around he came to me. He hates your fuckin’ guts, by the way. What did you do to him?”
“Told him he was a phony gasbag.”
“Ain’t they all.”
Lancaster. I suddenly remembered I was standing up Alice Watts for dinner. Pierce would probably use that against me. Nando was saying something.
“I said, I promised the D.A. old man Rahm’s head on a silver platter in return for immunity. Opened up a can of worms. Now I got the cops and Rahm to worry about.” He got up and leaned into my face. The bourbon was good but not good enough to mask his bad breath, or the odor of sweat. “I’m gonna kill you, but it’s gonna take some time you miserable bastard.”
I had assumed that since he’d spoken so freely, my chances of surviving the evening weren’t good.
“Something happens to me will only make your problems worse, Nando. There are people who know what I’ve been doing. They’ll come after you.”
“Yeah, that fat Jew cop you hang around can be a real pain in the ass. But I don’t give a rat’s ass. You are gonna disappear. What’s left of you is going on one of those barges that ships our garbage out of state now. You’re gonna rot in a landfill in Pennsylvania. What do say to that, wiseass?”
“I’m still glad the city closed the Fresh Kills dump. And you got balls calling anyone else fat.”
He punched me so hard this time that I fell over backwards in my chair. That at least got my feet out of the ice chest. But one should be careful for what one wishes for. Nando and Bruce spent the next 20 minutes alternately punching and kicking me as I
lay on the floor. I thought I felt a couple of ribs crack before I passed out. When I came to again, my situation had not improved. I was back upright, feet in the cooler. They were about the only parts of me that didn’t hurt. Nando was back in his seat, looking sweaty and disheveled. Stomping someone is hard work.
“You should work out, Nando,” I managed to croak out through split lips. “You could have a heart attack.”
“Bruce, gag him. I’m sick of his shit, and I don’t want the neighbors to hear.”
Bruce grabbed a dirty rag off my work bench.
“Basement is a disgrace,” he said. “We could leave his body here, Nando, and nobody would notice.”
He gagged me before I could explain that I planned to clean it after I finished moving all my stuff into my new office. Nando took a drink of bourbon, lit a cigarette, took a few drags and pushed it into my chest.
Bruce said, “Boss, I think I’ll back the van into his driveway.”
After he went up the stairs, Nando shook his head and said, “I told you he didn’t have the stomach for this.”
Nando smiled at me. He went back to work. A few minutes later I heard Bruce coming down the stairs. Nando looked over my shoulder. The smile slowly turned into something else as his jaw dropped. Soon his mouth looked like the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. I heard a pfffft and actually felt the bullet pass my ear. I assumed it went into the tunnel because the back of Nando’s head blew off and he jerked forward out of his seat and sprawled over the ice chest with his face in the water. Head wounds bleed like a bastard and it soon looked like my feet were in a tub of Kool Aid. I was looking at what was left of the back of Nando’s head when a pair of boots came into view. I knew the boots. I looked up. Maks Kalugin had a silenced Tokarev pistol pointed at my face.
“I am getting tired of saving your life,” he said. Then he shouted something in Russian and I heard other people clomping down the steps and Arman Rahm came into view just before I passed out for the third time.
CHAPTER 32 – THE PORTRAIT
I came to in a four-poster bed, in a massive, gaudily decorated room. The mattress, the pillows, the comforter were plush and as long as I didn’t move, I was quite comfortable. I drifted back to sleep. I had vague recollections of being tended to. Brow mopped, bandages changed, salve applied. An eye pried open and a bright, searing light. A frightening feeling I couldn’t move. Paralyzed? No, my legs worked, if feebly. Jabs in the arms. A face drifted in front of me. Ellen James. Alice Watts. The dog I had as a kid. Voices. Some gentle, some gruff. Foreign accents. More sleep.
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