by David Nees
“That’s what you’re doing now by slow-walking this investigation. Let’s be honest, you need a couple of more incidents before Vincent or his wife will crack. Carmine and Silvio have to think Vincent’s lost control and is cozying up to you for protection. Then you have to whisk him away before they get to him. I won’t be involved. I’m not going to compromise you. Events will unfold without my interference. You just need to be ready to collect Vincent at the end.”
“And then let Dan go free. How do I know I can trust you?”
“I’m the one that has to trust you. I need you to do your part of the deal after you get what you want.”
“That’s true.” A slight smile appeared on Mike’s face.
Jane noticed it. “Then we have a deal?”
“Yeah. If I can nab Vincent, we got a deal.”
“Great. And just so I know you’ll complete your part, I’ll hold on to this ledger of your expense vouchers.” She handed him a spreadsheet from his home computer that Gilbert had hacked into after Jane had first arrived in New York.
“What the fuck? Where did you get this?”
“Relax, Mike. It’s just insurance between partners in an agreement. When the investigation goes away, this disappears, no record kept on my end. Frankly I’m not interested. It’s not that bad. You seem to be a good agent, but this would be embarrassing and probably stall your career. But I’d be careful going forward. You’re doing good work and you don’t want any padding of your expense account to undermine it.” She smiled and held out her hand to him.
Mike looked at her and slowly reached out to shake. “Who are you with, CIA, NSA?”
“Like I said, it’s not important, and I’m not really interested in other things you’re doing with the mob. You fight the battles on your front and I fight them on my front. We’re both battling our country’s enemies. I just need Dan to help me. You putting him behind bars would be a waste of a good resource in that fight. When you get Vincent turned, we’ll be in touch. You can contact Tommy if you need to get in touch with me.” With that she turned and walked off to join Gilbert, leaving Mike to ponder the strange web of events he found himself in.
Chapter 43
Gino came into Vincent’s office in the back of the restaurant. “Boss, you got to get Joey out of my apartment. It’s been a week and a half and he’s driving me crazy. He don’t clean up after himself and he just complains…about everything, the food, the bed, being cooped up. I told him if he don’t stop complaining I’m going to whack him. He won’t have to worry about Dan doing it.”
Vincent was working on one of his cigars. “I told you guys to stay away from the street. You tell him to shut up and stay there.” All of this mess wouldn’t have happened if Joey had done things the right way. And now he was complaining while being protected.
“Boss, with all due respect, Joey don’t listen. He’s driving me nuts. You got to stash him somewhere else.”
“I don’t have to do nothing. You want back out on the street?”
“Yeah. Better than being cooped up with Joey. Besides, no one’s targeting me.”
Vincent thought about what Carmine had told him. Now was the time to get Joey out of town and get Dan to follow him. “Tell Joey to come down to the restaurant right away. I’ll work something out.” He then called Frank and told him his plan.
Later when Joey showed up, Vincent told him he was sending him out of town. “You go up to the lodge in the Berkshires. I want you to hole up there until I tell you to come back.”
“That’s a long way out of town,” Joey said. He looked doubtful, even nervous about the order.
“Yeah. I want you outta here. This crap’s got to stop. You’re a target, so you need to leave town. I’m sending Frank with you. He’ll make sure nothing happens to you out there.”
“Are you sure? I don’t have any clothes packed from my apartment—”
“Don’t question me. Go buy some fucking clothes. You and Frank are leaving tonight.” He stood and walked up to Joey, whose eyes grew larger as Vincent got up in his face. “Call me when you get in. Get some groceries in town and stay at the lodge. Don’t go around town making a scene. You’re supposed to be out of sight. Got it?” Vincent put his finger in Joey’s chest and blew cigar smoke at his face.
“I got it.” Joey backed up to go.
“Tonight. I want you on the road and out of town,” Vincent yelled as Joey beat a hasty retreat from the room.
After Joey left, Vincent talked to Frank. It was time to act on Carmine’s instructions. “I’m putting the word out on the street where Joey is hiding out. I want Dan to get the word.”
Frank looked at Vincent. “You want Dan to find us?”
“I want to get Dan out of town, Joey’s the bait. If Dan shows up at the lodge, you take him out.”
Frank nodded. “You get Dan out of your hair, and I can take him out while he’s focused on Joey.”
“That’s it.” Vincent paused for a moment. “And I want you to make sure no one comes back from the lodge but you. Understand me? Only you.”
Frank looked at Vincent. “I’ll take care of it.” His dark eyes remained unreadable. Vincent knew Frank would do his job. He was a professional. He nodded as he stared back at Vincent for a moment, calm and cool.
That night Dan lay in the same ditch from where he had shot up Sheila’s SUV. He waited until the downstairs light went out and the bedroom lights came on. A police squad car sat at the driveway entrance. Dan had hidden the muzzle of his rifle with brush, since the muzzle flash could give him away at night. He wasn’t worried about the sound. He was using sub-sonic rounds again coupled with his suppressor. At five hundred yards the cops in their cruiser would not hear the shots. With his spotting scope, he could make out the two patrolmen in the car. One seemed to be asleep; the other was smoking a cigarette. No one was paying attention.
He knew that after his first shot, the cops would be looking around frantically for the source. He only had a time for a couple of rounds if he hoped to remain concealed. Then he would have to make a rapid retreat as he had done before. The dark would help him in exiting the area. He only had to drive a couple of blocks in the van before he could blend into local traffic and within a mile he would be on the Long Island Expressway and completely anonymous.
A light came on upstairs. Dan saw someone walk past the window. The figure was too large to be one of the girls. The master bedroom. In the family room he could see the blue light from the TV. Whoever was watching was hidden from his angle of view. Then he saw a second figure in the bedroom. Vincent and Sheila. They’ve gone upstairs. One or both of the girls must be still in the family room. It was time to act.
Dan aimed at the master bedroom window and sent a round through it. The glass shattering startled the cop who was awake. He shook his partner as they both tried to figure out what just had happened. Someone, probably Sheila, started screaming upstairs. Then the family room window shattered. Two figures ran past the now broken window and disappeared upstairs. The bedroom light went out. The cops jumped out of their car with guns drawn, looking around with no idea of where the shots came from.
Dan slid back from his shooting position into the ditch, grabbed the two spent casings and began his fast crawl to the culvert. He needed to be gone before the cops figured out the general direction of the shots and headed towards him. They would have to go a couple of blocks out of their way to get to his position, but it wouldn’t take them long. He needed at least to be on the local road, out of the neighborhood, before they arrived.
Emerging from the culvert, he sprinted the two blocks to his van. He jumped in and headed away from Vincent’s house to the feeder road for the expressway. As he drove down the road he could see the flashing lights of a vehicle from around a curve, coming towards him. He killed his lights, pulled to the curb, and shut off his engine. He slumped down in the seat as the cruiser came flying past all lit up. After it turned another corner, Dan started the van and drove out of the area.
Later that night, Dan pulled up to a side street parking space two blocks from the Sicilian Gardens. He was dressed in a hoodie with black jeans and running shoes. He had his .22 pistol with its suppressor in his sweatshirt. Even with a disguise, he kept to the shadows, aware of all the security cameras that could capture a picture of him. Turning the corner to the restaurant, he hung in the shadows on the other side of the street, listening. At three in the morning no one was out on the sidewalks and few cars on the streets. After a lone car drove past, he pulled his pistol and shot out the security camera on the corner that could record anyone going in, out, or past the restaurant.
Then he strode across the street and took a brick from his pocket. The brick was wrapped in a note which read, “You’re next.” He heaved it through the back room window and turned to walk back to his van as the alarm went off. An hour later he had the van parked in New Jersey and was on his way back to his apartment.
The harassment was becoming a task to perform. Dangerous, and one for which he was losing his passion. Maybe the offer of a future, however strange, was causing him to move on in his mind.
Better keep your focus, or there won’t be any future. You’ve still got something to complete. Don’t get careless. The idea of getting this close and getting caught or killed caused his stomach to tighten. Don’t think like that, just get this done. He knew this was good advice, but his mind kept teasing him back to thinking about his future. That woman, Jane, didn’t offer much detail, but what she said teased his imagination. She probably meant it that way. Get me to imagine something more attractive than what the reality might be. Still, he’d never get to find out if he wasn’t careful up to the end. Have I decided already? He was beginning to think he knew the answer to that question.
Chapter 44
After the shots, Vincent turned out the bedroom light. The girls ran upstairs screaming. He met them in the hall and told them to go to one of their bedrooms and lie down on the floor. Sheila was in the hall, hysterical. Try as he could, he was not able to get her to calm down. Outside the cop car lit up and raced out of the neighborhood, probably hoping to intercept a vehicle leaving the area.
“I can’t take this anymore,” Sheila cried. “I can’t live like this, never knowing when someone is going to shoot up our house. I can’t go near a window now. The police outside don’t help, your men outside don’t help. What are we going to do?” She looked at her husband in despair.
“No one is gonna kill us. This is just intimidation.” Vincent knew that was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
“What do you mean, ‘no one is going to kill us’? I could have been killed by that bullet, and they shot through the family room. Vincent, the girls were in the room! How can you say, ‘no one’s going to kill us’?”
“Calm down, let me call Tony and have some of the boys come over.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do. Last time they were here they got themselves shot up.” She paced back and forth as the girls came out of the bedroom to stand in the hallway. “What are the neighbors thinking about us right now? We get our house shot up repeatedly, in the middle of the night?”
Amber chimed in, “Yeah, the kids don’t want to talk to us at school, like we got a disease or something.” She began to cry.
“Everyone just shut up,” Vincent shouted. He turned to call Tony.
“Boss,” Tony said after answering the phone, “we got a break in down at the restaurant. The alarm went off. I’m on my way there now.”
“Send someone else over there and get your ass up here to my place. I just got my windows shot out.”
Vincent disconnected. Sheila and the girls were all looking at him with panic in their eyes. “Tony’s on his way and the cops will be here soon. I don’t want any of you talking to them. I just want to get those guys out of the house as quickly as I can.
Sheila looked at him with a piercing gaze. “Vincent, come downstairs, I want to talk to you privately.” Her voice was suddenly serious and firm. She headed for the kitchen, grabbed the coffee pot and poured two cups and put them in the microwave. “Sit down, we have to talk,” she said as the coffee heated. When it was done, she brought the cups to the table along with the cream.
“This has gone on long enough. Last week Gina was asking me what is going on. She’s worried about us. She says Carmine is very worried about what’s happening. He apparently doesn’t want the FBI hanging around. The attention is getting him…and Silvio uncomfortable. Now, you know I don’t pry into what goes on day to day, but even I know this isn’t good.”
Vincent sighed. “No it’s not good. I’m trying to stop it but nothing’s worked so far. Having that FBI agent prying around isn’t helping things at all.”
“But what will happen to us if Carmine or Silvio get too upset? Are we in danger from them? It seemed like Gina was trying to get information out of me…to give to Carmine.”
“What’d you tell her? Of course she’ll take anything you say back to Carmine, she’s his wife for God’s sake. I told you that before.”
“I didn’t tell her anything. I told her you were going to get to the bottom of it all. She gave me a look like she didn’t believe what I said. Then she said, ‘I hope so’.” She looked down at her coffee cup for a moment then continued. “I talked to Mike Warner two days ago—”
Vincent jerked his head up, “You what?”
“I just wanted to know more about what he was offering, you know, in case things go bad with Carmine or Silvio.”
“Oh Jesus!” Vincent exclaimed. “That’s just what he wants.” His face was red. He stood up, leaned over and pounded his fist on the table, emphasizing each word. “He wants Carmine or Silvio to think I’m up to something. Then they’ll come after me. How could you be so stupid? You talked to the Feds? What did you say to him?”
Sheila shrank back. “I didn’t tell him anything, I asked him what he could do for us. Vincent, I’m scared. This hasn’t stopped and now Gina is asking me questions. I don’t know what to do.” She started to sob.
“You don’t talk to the Feds, that’s the first thing you do.”
“Well, he said he could protect us from anyone coming after us. He can give us whole new identities. We could start over without all this shooting, without all this stress. It’s killing me and the girls are terrorized. They’re afraid to go to school.”
“You know what that means, a whole new identity?” He leaned further over the table and stuck his face up close to Sheila’s. “I’ll tell you. It means we relocate to some new city, somewhere out in the boonies. And I have to get a regular job. You like the way we live?” He swept his arm around to encompass the whole house. “You like spending the money I give you, driving your new Escalade? Well, you can kiss all that good-bye if we go into the witness protection program. We’ll have just enough to live on. Say good-bye to all that easy spending money. You want to live like that?” He was almost shouting again.
Sheila shrank back from Vincent’s tirade but she wasn’t quitting. “What good is all of this if you get killed? What will happen to me, the girls? We need you, Vincent. I hope we mean something to you as well.”
He sighed. “You do mean something to me. I know I spend a lot of time at work—”
“And I never ask about what is going on. I know you have to do some things that aren’t always legal, and I know we don’t talk to cops, but this has got me panicked. I don’t see a way out.”
“I told you I’d handle it.”
“Yeah, but it hasn’t been handled. And now Carmine’s getting his wife to grill me. I can’t take that pressure. How do you make it stop?”
That last question stumped Vincent. He hoped getting Joey out of town and using him as bait would take the pressure off him. But if Sheila cracked, things could go bad in a hurry.
“Give me a little more time. Don’t say anything else to Warner. Don’t meet with him. I’m working a plan. One that Carmine suggested, so he hasn�
�t given up on me yet.” He tried to smile but couldn’t pull it off. Sheila just looked at him.
When he turned the girls were standing in the doorway. “So, you been listening to our conversation?”
Tiffany replied, “It’s our problem too. We’re like freaks at school. No one wants to talk to us. Some say you’re a gangster and we all ought to be in jail. Others are afraid to be near us in case someone tries to shoot us. How do you fix that?”
“You just shut your mouth. I give you whatever you want. To hell with your friends if they turn on you. Who needs them?” His voice rose again.
“Vincent! Don’t yell at her like that. She hasn’t done anything wrong. How many teenagers get their house shot up, their mother’s car burned in the driveway? This is what I’m telling you. We can’t go on like this.” Sheila was angry now.
“Just go back upstairs.” Vincent tried to regain his calm. “Your mother and I are working this out.”
“I hope you do,” Tiffany said as the two girls headed for the stairs.
“Vincent,” Sheila said in a calm voice when they were gone, “just agree to talk with Mike Warner…just once…to keep our options open. I won’t ask you again.”
He looked at his wife. She was a pain sometimes, he thought. Well, most of the time, but when he was being honest, he wasn’t the easiest person to live with. Not with the violence he needed to apply at times, the secrecy, and the mistresses which came and went. He wondered how much she knew about all of that. Yet here she was, hysterical for sure, but looking for a way out of the dilemma they were in.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to him, but only to get you off my back. I’m going to put a stop to all of this and I don’t need the cops to help.”
The doorbell rang and Tony popped his head in.
Vincent got up to meet him. “Look, the cops are going to be here soon, what’s going on at the club?”
Sheila stayed in the kitchen to make more coffee. It was four-thirty in the morning, but she thought no one was going back to sleep.