Sons and Princes

by James Lepore

  “Great.”

  “Joseph said to tell you to make sure you take your drugs. He got a kick out of that.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “There’s food inside, and wine, and a bottle of scotch.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Chris.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t go out tomorrow until Joseph comes. Junior Boy could be thinking about this place. He knows we go back.”

  “I’ll leave tomorrow, Lou.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t insult me. You can stay as long as you want. I’m saying this is very serious. Your brother’s been on the street all his life. Listen to what he has to say. Get some sleep. You look half dead.”

  2.

  After Chris Massi left, Ed Dolan went to his office and turned on his computer. As it booted up, he unlocked a metal cabinet directly behind him and pulled out some fifty sequentially numbered CDs in plastic cases and two thick black loose-leaf binders. He had been investigating Junior Boy DiGiglio and his family for the past six months with zero results. Just yesterday, the court order authorizing the wire taps on the three DiGiglio brothers’ phone lines had expired. The CDs contained the actual sound recordings of the taps, burned each night directly from the audiotape in the surveillance vans and delivered the following morning to Dolan. The first binder contained the Call Log, a brief description of each call along with its date, time, the caller’s address and telephone number and the corresponding CD number. In the second were over two hundred eight-by-ten color photographs taken by the surveillance team of people arriving at and/or leaving the DiGiglio brothers’ homes and hangouts, cross-indexed by date and name if the subject was known.

  In the top drawer of Dolan’s desk was a phony affidavit in which was described links between the DiGiglio crime organization and Mideast terrorist cells operating in the United States. This document, personally drafted, printed and signed by Dolan this morning, would no doubt induce the court to extend its order. Now he might not have to file it.

  When he was first told by Magnussen of the link between the murdered Nick Scarpa and one Guy Labrutto, no bells had rung. But the more he thought about it, the more he was certain he remembered a series of calls to Aldo DiGiglio’s house from a “cousin Guy” at a North Jersey address. The Call Log index easily led the prosecutor to the fifteen calls from Labrutto to Aldo and one that jumped off the page from Labrutto to Anthony in Montclair dated May 13. The calls to Aldo contained the usual nonsense about “meeting at the diner” or the making of mundane plans for lunch or weekends at Aldo’s house at the shore. Dolan saved the call to Junior Boy for last, hoping – praying might be a better word – that it was Junior Boy who Labrutto spoke to and not someone else in the family. His prayer was answered:

  “Mildred?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, this is cousin Guy Labrutto.”

  “Cousin Guy?”

  “Yes. Can I speak to Junior Boy, please?”

  Pause.

  “June, it’s Marie’s nephew, Guy.”

  Pause.

  “I’ll take it in my study.”

  Pause.

  “Hello.”

  “Junior Boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Guy Labrutto. I just wanted to thank you for inviting me to your home on Sunday. I was very honored.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Pause.

  “Did you enjoy the wine I brought over?”

  “I have to run, Guy.”

  “Sure.”

  Click.

  Dolan then opened the Photo Log and located ten pictures taken on Sunday, May 11. Among the eleven people depicted, there were only two unknowns, a ghostly pale, skinny platinum blond man in his twenties standing next to a black BMW and a short, portly man in his late thirties dressed in black and wearing a severely cut goatee. This man was looking over his shoulder toward the FBI van when the picture was snapped, his dark eyes narrowed to slits in the bright sunlight. Magnussen had interviewed Labrutto late today and described him to Dolan. This was no doubt him, generously offering a full-faced picture of himself to the United States government.

  Dolan had been hoping merely to establish that Anthony DiGiglio and Labrutto knew each other, no matter how slightly. The recorded conversation and the photograph put Labrutto in the don’s home one week before the double murder, which Junior Boy might have ordered and might not have, might have known about and might not have. It didn’t matter. Labrutto was a cousin to Anthony and to Aldo, with whom he spoke frequently and often met. The DiGiglios were now connected to a double homicide. And so was Chris Massi, who not only had been with Nick Scarpa on the day he was killed but had also been snooping around the apartment of the second victim, one Allison McRae, the day before. Thank God for the thoroughness of Rick Magnussen, who had promptly visited McRae’s last known address and spoken to her neighbors, including a scrofulous heroin addict who actually had Massi’s card.

  Ed Dolan lived alone on the Upper East Side. He could have had an NYPD cop especially assigned for the purpose, drive him back and forth to work, and sometimes, he did. He often took the subway, though, not as a display of his regular-guy cred, but because these walks above ground and rides underground were the only times he was with people other than at work. They were his social life. As he made his way north on Broadway after locking up his office, he marveled at his luck.

  In the spring of 2001, one of his assistants indicted Paulie Raimo, a Mafia parasite, on pump-and-dump conspiracy charges. Paulie, who hired Chris Massi to defend him, was stunned when Dolan arranged a clandestine meeting, at which he offered to dismiss Raimo’s case if he would wear a wire to his meetings with Massi. Dolan’s only condition was that the wire had to be Raimo’s idea, conceived and executed on his own as a means of winning favor with his prosecutors in the hope of avoiding a long prison sentence. As it turned out, the only taped conversation that came close to incriminating Massi was the one that involved Raimo’s co-defendants at dinner. It never bothered Ed that what he did was illegal, only that Massi was ultimately acquitted.

  A few months later, the country was stunned by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But, while everyone else was riveted by the war on terror that ensued, Ed Dolan was riveted on getting Chris Massi disbarred, taking advantage of the Justice Department’s huge shift in priorities that left him virtually on his own in pursuit of his personal agenda. The false affidavits he submitted to the Bar Association linking Chris to organized crime were not even noticed by his superiors in New York and Washington. To him, the devastation of September 11 was a stroke of luck.

  After Paulie’s case was dismissed, his co-conspirators, who had been convicted and smelled a rat, arranged for his death from their jail cells. Dolan had never been worried about Raimo turning on him. Who would take the word of a scumbag like Raimo against that of a respected federal prosecutor? Still, it was nice to know that Paulie was dead, his secret buried with him, and that, thanks to a newcomer named Guy Labrutto, Dolan’s luck was still running good.

  Labrutto had denied knowing either Scarpa or the girl, but his address in Scarpa’s wallet, and the proximity of what Dolan was convinced was a botched “accident” scene, to that address, pointed directly to the chubby porn producer, and, through him, to Junior Boy. Scarpa and Massi must have been at Labrutto’s house that morning; that would eventually be easy to prove, thereby making Massi, Labrutto and DiGiglio legitimate persons of interest in a double murder investigation. This was, Dolan knew, the chance he had been waiting a lifetime for. His mind jumped at the possibilities, including the heart-stopping idea of giving Labrutto immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony against Massi and DiGiglio.

  To make things even sweeter, Massi had spent part of Sunday – yesterday – going through Allison McRae’s apartment on Suffolk Street, having sweet-talked her hooker neighbor into letting him in. This Rick Magnuson had learned when he went to check o
ut Allison’s last known address. Was McRae used to set Scarpa up and then herself killed? Was she an innocent victim? These questions would be answered in due course, along with the question of motive, but they weren’t important. The important thing was that Massi was in the thick of it all, and, whether he was guilty of anything or not, would soon be having the worst nightmare of his life: suspected, investigated and charged with a Mafia-induced contract murder, punishable by death, a sentence he, Ed Dolan, would spend a lifetime, if necessary, making sure was carried out.

  On the expansive mezzanine of the Union Square subway station, a blind woman stood against a railing – a wicker basket at her feet – singing a bluesy version of At Last. Dolan had heard the first long drawn out notes of the classic tune as he was entering the station from the southeast corner of Union Square Park. A cult of one, he believed in signs, and here, certainly, was one. Yes, at last, he thought, placing a five dollar bill in the basket and smiling, staring directly into the singer’s oversized sunglasses. He was taken aback for a second when she took the glasses off and seemed to stare back at him through her opague and lifeless eyes, her head tilted as if she could actually see him, but only for a second. She was blind, like justice, a double sign. He moved on, humming, oblivious to any other interpretation of what he had just encountered.

  3.

  If human existence is a dream that God is having, then the hip hotel bars that materialized across Manhattan in the last decade of the last century are the imaginings of His subconscious’ “A” design team, brought to us so we can enter an illusion inside an illusion, feel like celebrities while we drink fifteen dollar martinis, and watch kindred souls watching us in the mirrors and polished surfaces that invariably abound. If you were willing to pay the prices, and assume the appropriate attitudes, who would know if, at The Mercer or The Tribeca Grand, you were a hot new model or fashion designer, or a Connecticut college student home for the weekend?

  When he could afford them, Joseph Massi – better looking than most movie stars, his smile an invitation to a chic and very exclusive party – loved these bars. In their subdued light, he was not the junkie who never held a job and lied his way through life. He was anything he wanted to be, or, even easier, anything a beautiful and wealthy woman wanted him to be. On Monday night at around one o’clock, while his brother was in a dead sleep on a cot in the storeroom at La Luna, Joseph was with one such woman in the lobby lounge at the Royalton on Forty-fourth Street. Her name was Jodi Flippen. Thirty years old, tall and gracefully beautiful, Jodi was the owner of an extremely successful escort service that she operated out of her apartment on Sutton Place.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Joseph said, lighting Jodi’s cigarette. “I appreciate it.”

  “I was just about to curl up with a good book.”

  “You want some wine?”

  “Sure.”

  Joseph poured out cold Meursault for Jodi from the bottle on ice next to the table, then freshened his own glass.

  “I need your help,” he said after they had both taken sips and put their glasses down on the plush white table cloth that covered their small cocktail table.

  “You sound serious.”

  “I am,” Joseph replied. “I was talking to Patrice. She said Woody Smith was here earlier. Two of your girls joined him for a drink, then they left.”

  Patrice was the bartender, a stunning, cafe au laitcolored young woman, whom Joseph had gotten to know over the past year or so.

  “What is it you need, Joe?” Jodi asked.

  “Did you speak to Woody?”

  “He came over and paid me in person.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand. Do you want a cut?”

  Joseph and Jodi had never been lovers. They were, in their separate ways, equally hardened entrepreneurs, and neither could see any advantage to be gained by a bedding. Joseph had been sending Jodi clients – one or two a month – for the past five years or so, his ten percent commission one of his few sources of steady income.

  “I didn’t send him,” he answered.

  “Repeat business.”

  “That’s not our deal,” Joseph said, smiling, “but maybe it should be.”

  “Then what?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Where are they? Are you crazy?”

  “I need to talk to Woody before he gets too fucked up.”

  “What’s going on Joseph?”

  Woody Smith, also cafe au lait colored, with a pencil mustache and pretensions to sophistication, was a sly, forty-year-old hustler, who started his street life in the eighties running a shooting gallery on Houston Street in the days before hypodermic needles were available for three dollars a ten-pack at your local drug store. It was from Woody that Joseph, then seventeen, learned how to freebase cocaine and cook heroin.

  “Woody told Patrice he made a big score today,” Joseph answered. “He flashed a wad of hundreds. He mentioned something about a job in Jersey.”

  “So? Good for him,” Jodi said. “And me.”

  “I need to talk to him for ten minutes, Jodi, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “For your own good, I can’t tell you.”

  “Always with the dramatic bullshit.”

  “It’s not cops you’d have to worry about.”

  “What did he do, the little cocksucker?”

  Joseph didn’t answer. Earlier, when he was getting ready to go out, Lou Falco had called, and told him about Nick Scarpa and Allison McRae. The FBI suspected Chris, which was absurd, but he had been in Jersey with Nick, at around the time that Nick’s car, with Allison in it, went over the Palisades. Labrutto had stayed behind, Chris had said, so maybe his assistant, the albino, had had an assistant of his own. Could that have been Woody Smith, who, whenever he made a sizable score, liked nothing better than to spend it on an eight ball and two high-priced whores? He had never known murder to be Woody’s game, but then again he had never known a petty thief like Woody who didn’t sooner or later overplay the crappy cards he had drawn at birth.

  “Can you reach the girls?” he said, finally.

  “Of course.”

  “Call them. Tell them I’m coming by. They’d freak out if I just showed up. Tell them not to tell Woody. I’ll only be with him for a few minutes.”

  “I’ve never seen you like this, Joseph. So serious. You’re interesting this way.”

  “Will you help me or not?”

  As an answer, Jodi took her cell phone from her small purse, flipped it open, pushed two buttons, then, after a moment of silence, and an exchange of hellos, told the person at the other end to expect Joseph Massi to be stopping by shortly, but not to tell the client.

  “They’re in a suite at that new ‘W ’ in Times Square,” she said after clicking off, “Room 1707.”

  “Thank you.”

  “De rien.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m taking French at the New School.”

  “Why?”

  “I have an idea of moving to Paris. Change my life. I can’t do this forever. You want to come with me?”

  Joseph smiled at this, and Jodi smiled back. Their table was in shadows in the far corner on the lower level of the long, three-tiered room. The candle between them cast a steady, golden glow on their beautiful faces. Jodi had been taking French and moving to Paris for the past ten years, since the night Joseph first met her at a club downtown called The Mist. A few years later, Joe Black Massi, at Joseph’s request, had persuaded her pimp that it would be a good thing – for his health – if he let Jodi go, and even better if he didn’t try to interfere with the new business she was thinking of starting.

  “I’ll come over for a visit,” he said.

  “You can stay clean there.”

  This was new ground. The only people who had ever broached the subject of Joseph’s drug addiction had been his mother and his brother. Joe Black had lost it a couple of times in the beginning, once throwing Joseph ov
er the kitchen table and into the refrigerator, but after Rose entered the fray, he pretty much gave up. His one rule: don’t do your drugs in this house. Other junkies, the people he got high with, brought it up all the time. Their common issues – scoring drugs, getting the money to score drugs, the fear of AIDS, hepatitis and bone crushers, treatment programs and facilities, the law, getting clean, mixing drugs – were endless topics of conversation, but they didn’t count.

  He was about to say something nasty, then suddenly changed his mind. What the fuck? He was a junkie. The image of Woody Smith, laying up with two beautiful hookers, fucking and getting high all night, had been on his mind. Maybe Jodi was clairvoyant, sensed his need to get off; maybe she actually cared about him – arisky proposition for her, or any normal human being, for that matter. He certainly would like to get stoned. But first, he would talk to Woody Smith. If Woody pushed Nick and Allison to their deaths, it would almost certainly mean that neither the DiGiglio nor the Barsonetti family was involved. They would never use an unconnected punk like Woody to help them in a hit, and if they did, he would never live to tell about it. If Labrutto was acting alone, maybe Chris could live through the shitstorm that was about to hit him.

  “What would I do, Jodi?” he finally said. “With my life, I mean, if I stayed clean.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Six months.”

  “Something’s different this time. What is it?”

  I can’t do it. I can’t stay clean. In the past, I fooled everybody: my parents, my brother, myself. If I failed, there would always be another day. That day has come and gone. I’ll always be a junkie. I’ll die a junkie.

  “Nothing,” he said, smiling. “Everything’s the same.”

  “Come over after you see Woody,” Jodi said. “We haven’t had a heart-to-heart talk in a long time.”

  “We’ve never had a heart-to-heart talk.”

  “We’ll start tonight.”

  “I can’t. I have to make a few stops. Thanks for the offer, though.”