by Scott Pratt
Fifty-five million dollars!
Charlie suddenly stopped bouncing as the enormity of the situation hit her. Who could she tell? Who could she trust? Who could help her? How would she get the gold out of the cave? There was so much of it. It was so heavy. The cave was deep and huge and in a rugged, remote location.
She couldn’t allow anyone to find out. If the news got out, every thief and beggar and con man within five hundred miles would descend upon her. How would she turn it into money once she got it out? Was it really hers? Legally hers?
She got off the bed and walked into her bathroom. Closed the door. Stepped in front of the mirror and looked at herself.
“Okay, you’ve found it,” she said. “Now all you have to do is figure out a way to keep it.”
Chapter 21
JOHNNY Russo walked into the row house on South Bancroft that had been home to his parents for thirty years. The first floor had a unique feel – unlived-in Italian was how he would describe it every day but Sunday. His mother was a clean freak; the whole house was spotless. The marble tile in the foyer shined, absent of footprints or dust. The glass teardrops hanging from the small chandelier above sparkled like diamonds in a jewelry store display case. The furniture in the den was covered with plastic.
The smell on Sunday, however, was incredible: the aroma of garlic, onions, oregano and basil sautéing in olive oil floated through the air along with the smells of freshly baked bread and oven-roasted chicken. As he moved through the den, Johnny thought back, as he always did, of when he was a kid. The family gathering early in the afternoon after Mass. Silverware clinking against china, Pops at the head of the table, Ma to his right, Johnny next to her, his twin sisters, Isabella and Donata, five years older, sitting across the table. The girls’ voices light and silly. Pops drinking red wine.
Johnny’s father, Nico Russo, was a made man, just as his father and his father and his father and his father had been. Johnny worshipped him. Nico’s great-great-grandfather, the legendary Carmine Russo, was the boss of Philly in the twenties and thirties. The wiseguys called the Prohibition era the golden years. Nico told his son that during Carmine Russo’s heyday, he took in millions each year from his various “business” ventures. He also paid out tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to politicians, judges, police officers and railroad workers to insure that his booze made it to Philadelphia unmolested and on time from suppliers in the south. Carmine had the mansion in Bella Vista, the fancy cars, the tailored suits. When Carmine was sent to prison, his sons were too young to take over the business, and a bloody war ensued for control of the rackets. Carmine died in prison within a year, and the Russo family was pushed aside. They’d been fighting unsuccessfully to get back to the top ever since, and Johnny’s father was full of resentment. He made a decent living loan-sharking, brokering truckloads of stolen property, and extorting business owners out of protection money, but he drank too much and often ranted about how he would run things if he were boss.
“Money is the key,” he often said to his son. “You’ll hear them talk about respect and omerta and our way, but when it all gets boiled down, what’s left is the meat, and the meat is money. In this country, in every country, money is what matters. Money is what takes care of you, takes care of your family.”
Johnny pushed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. His mother, a short, proud, black-eyed woman named Tessa, was straining pasta over the sink. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. Johnny leaned over and kissed her on the cheek from behind.
“You look so tired,” she said.
“I was up late. How’s Pops?”
“The same. Go on up and say hello. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Johnny climbed the steps to the second floor. As he neared the landing, he could hear the steady rhythm of the heart monitor. His father lay in a hospital bed, just as he had for the past eleven years. He was pale and emaciated, the skin on his face drawn so tight that his face looked like a skull with eyes. The eyes were closed right now, but they opened occasionally. When they did, they saw nothing. Pops’ hair had turned gray.
“Hey Pops,” Johnny said as he sat down in the chair by the bed. “How’s it going?”
Eleven years earlier, Johnny Russo was one of the best twelve-year-old baseball players in the city. He’d been recruited by a man named Mark Giamatti to play on a South Philly all-star team called the Heat that traveled all over southeastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. Johnny was the shortstop, the team’s best pitcher, and he led the Heat in every offensive category. Giamatti called him a “five-tooler” and the “real deal.” He had speed, a great arm, he could hit for power and average, and had incredible hands. Johnny’s best friend, the powerful Carlo Lanzetti, was the first baseman.
On a Saturday in August of that year, a team from Collingswood, New Jersey, came across the river to play the Heat at one of the fields at FDR Park. Coach Giamatti said the boys from Jersey were good, they’d have their hands full, and he was right. The first game of the double header started at noon, and it was close. Johnny pitched well, got two hits, and the Heat won, 3-2. In the middle of the second game, beneath a scorching August sun, Johnny heard his father’s distinctive voice coming from the other side of a chain-link fence along the third base line. Johnny was surprised. Nico didn’t often come out to watch him play. Nico was a nocturnal creature; he usually got home about the same time Johnny was getting out of bed. He slept until three or four in the afternoon, ate, and went out to work. He was constantly tired, and Johnny had noticed that he was drinking even more than usual. From the tone and volume of his voice that day, Johnny knew he’d been in the bottle.
In the bottom of the final inning, Johnny came up to bat with the bases loaded, two out, and his team trailing 5-4. There were thirty or forty people watching and yelling, most of them players’ families. The Collingswood pitcher was a stocky left-hander with a good curve ball who had come in after the fourth inning and kept the Heat hitters off balance. Johnny took the first pitch, a fastball that he thought was a little inside, but the ump called it a strike. He heard his father curse. The next three pitches were curve balls, all of them out of the zone. The count was 3-1, a hitter’s count. The next pitch was another fastball, this one belt high on the inner half, and Johnny roped it down the left field line. He thought it would go into the corner for a game-winning double, but it hooked at the last second and landed about a foot foul. Johnny got back into the box, expecting another fastball. Instead, the kid threw him a back-door curve. It looked high and outside. It was high and outside, and Johnny took it.
The ump rang him up. Strike three. Game over.
The next few minutes were like a dream. Johnny remembered turning to look at the ump, but he’d already spun around and was walking away. There were cries of joy from the Collingsworth fans, protests from the South Philly fans. Johnny was disappointed, but he’d made outs before, lost games before. It wasn’t the end of the world. He was walking back to the bench when he saw his pops come around the fence. Nico grabbed Johnny’s aluminum bat out of his hand and sprinted straight toward the umpire, who was heading toward the parking lot. Johnny yelled at Nico when he realized what was happening, but it didn’t matter. Nico was drunk and angry, bellowing about his kid being screwed. He beat the umpire savagely with the bat right there in the park, in front of everybody. When he was finished swinging – sweaty, panting and muttering – he dropped the bat on the ground, walked slowly to the parking lot, got in his car and drove away.
The cops picked Nico up that night at a bar on Tenth Street. He’d broken both of the umpire’s legs and one of his arms. Since he didn’t hit the ump in the head, the cops charged him with aggravated assault instead of attempted murder. Nico made bail before sunrise, but the next morning his picture was on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, along with a story about the violent nature of mob life and the need for accountability. It named Nico as a soldier in the Pistone family and even menti
oned the boss, Salvatore Pistone. Two nights later, Nico was found on the same ball field where he’d beaten the ump with two bullets in his head. The doctors removed the bullets and managed to keep him alive, but so much damage had been done to his brain that he went into what the doctors called a “persistent vegetative state.” His heart beat, his lungs worked, but he was completely unaware of his surroundings. He was a dead man living, maintained entirely by Johnny’s mother, who fed him through a tube, changed his diapers, shaved him, bathed him and turned him to prevent bedsores. Johnny and his sisters had pleaded with their mother to remove the feeding tube, but she steadfastly refused. When God wanted him, she said, He’d take him.
The shooting of his father ignited a fuse in Johnny that had been smoldering for more than a decade. He knew Salvatore Pistone had put out a contract because of the unwanted publicity and scrutiny caused by Nico’s drunken behavior. The fact that Nico had been earning money for Sal and doing dirt for Sal for almost twenty years didn’t matter. Sal was embarrassed, so he accused Nico, tried him, convicted him, and sentenced him to death, all in a matter of forty-eight hours. When he realized that his father would never be a man again, that he was a vegetable, Johnny swore to himself that he would one day get even with Salvatore Pistone. His plans were on hold for now because Pistone was in jail, but he’d be out in a few months. Johnny intended to kill him.
Neither Johnny nor Carlo ever set foot on a baseball field again. Instead, they began selling pot to their classmates in the seventh grade. They got their product from a friend of Nico’s, a wiseguy named Tommy Maldonado. Carlo quickly learned to either beat up or shake down any competition, and within a year, the boys were splitting two thousand a week. They branched out into ecstasy in the eighth grade. Both of them quit school in the tenth grade and moved into an apartment on Passyunk Avenue. Johnny knew his mother was frustrated and angry with him, but his sisters had both already moved out, leaving just him and his mother and the constant beep, beep, beep from the heart monitor in the bedroom. Night after night after night. It unnerved Johnny. He couldn’t stand it, so he left.
Two weeks after they moved into the apartment, Tommy Maldonado, their drug supplier, showed up unannounced.
“Two things,” he said. “You’re growing too fast, stepping on people’s toes. Slow down. And if you’re gonna keep doing business in this neighborhood, you gotta start paying tribute. They’ve let you operate this long because of what happened to your father, but now you gotta pay.”
So much for the mob’s rule against drug dealing. They paid three hundred a week to Maldonado, who passed most of it up to his capo, who took his cut and passed it on to Pistone. It stayed that way for two years, until Pistone went to prison for racketeering. The mobsters upped the tribute to five hundred a week. Then last year, they bumped it again to eight hundred a week. By that time, Johnny and Carlo were veterans of the street. Carlo was so good at extorting other drug dealers that he didn’t have to find them to collect. They came to him. Johnny and Carlo had runners who were fixtures at raves and bars in South Philly. Carlo was such an intimidating figure that nobody stole from them. They were splitting more than three hundred grand a year after the tributes and after expenses, big enough to keep them and the bosses happy but small enough to stay under the feds’ radar.
Johnny was telling his father about the meeting he and Carlo had with Big Legs Mucci when he heard his mother call from the bottom of the stairs.
“Okay, Pops, I gotta go now.” He bent down and kissed his father on the forehead. “I’ll see you next week.”
He went back downstairs to the kitchen and sat at the table. The food was delicious, as always. He listened half-heartedly as his mother prattled on about church and the neighbors and a scheduled visit from his sisters, Isabella and Donata. Isabella was married and living in Atlanta, which she said she hated. Donata was also married, working as an executive chef in a high-end restaurant in Baltimore. They were planning to visit at the same time, in three weeks.
When he was finished eating, Johnny helped his mother clear the table.
“Go,” she said, just as she did every Sunday. “I’ll take care of the dishes.”
Johnny stopped by the front door. On a small, round table was a shiny, navy blue porcelain vase in which his mother kept fresh flowers. He’d been setting cash next to it every Sunday since he moved out. He reached into his pocket, laid down a stack of hundred-dollar bills, and walked out into the gloomy afternoon.
Chapter 22
LIGHT rain popped against windshield, the wipers shoving the water aside again and again as Charlie drove down the mountain toward Jonesborough. The afternoon light was dull, the cloud cover thick. The brilliant greens and golds of early summer were muted to browns and grays.
Charlie had decided that Joe Dillard was the most logical person to approach. She already regarded him as a friend. He was mentoring her. He’d helped her start making money, and he’d done it without asking for a dime.
This, however, was different. Fifty-five million dollars. The lure of that much money, the thought of it, had had such an impact on her that she was certain it would do the same to Mr. Dillard. Would he want to take charge of it? Would he want a percentage? How much would he want?
She let her mind wander again as she wound through curves and over hills. She must learn about investing, first thing. Stocks, bonds, commodities, utilities, real estate, all of it. She would immerse herself in the world of money, read books, subscribe to magazines, attend seminars. She didn’t know a prospectus from a balance sheet or a put from a call, but she would learn. If she could learn to make the money earn just ten percent a year, she could make millions and never touch the principal. Millions. She couldn’t really fathom the idea of that much wealth; money had always been tight and she’d been raised to be frugal, but the thought of being fabulously rich gave her goose bumps.
She’d called Joe Dillard’s cell to see if he could meet her and talk. He said he’d been planning to go to Pigeon Forge with his family, but the thunderstorms had forced him to cancel the trip. Could they meet at the office? He had agreed. She found him behind his desk, doing some work on his computer. He greeted her warmly and she sat down. She’d decided to gauge Mr. Dillard’s responses to her questions and then decide how much she would reveal.
“I may need to hire you, Mr. Dillard,” she said.
Mr. Dillard raised his eyebrows. “Have you committed a crime?”
Charlie smiled. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re joking, of course. And please, Charlie, call me Joe. You make me feel so old calling me Mr. Dillard all the time.”
“Okay, Joe. Can I ask you a hypothetical question?”
“I love hypothetical questions,” he said. “They allow me to give hypothetical answers.”
“Let’s say you found something that was extremely valuable, something that’s been hidden for a long time. Legally speaking, would it belong to you as soon as you found it or are there hoops you’d have to jump through?”
“Funny you should ask. I got a call from a newspaper reporter a couple of days ago and met with him this morning. The meeting made me curious about some legal issues and I was just doing some research on that very subject. I suppose the answer to your question would depend on what I found and where I found it.”
Charlie took a deep breath. She didn’t want to give her secret away, but she desperately wanted an opinion from someone she trusted.
“Let’s say you found a bunch of silver in a cave.”
“A cave? And to whom does this cave belong?”
“Let’s say that’s up for grabs.”
“Up for grabs is a bit ambiguous, Charlie. Are you saying there might be some dispute over the ownership of the land – the cave – where I found this silver?”
“Exactly.”
Joe leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk.
“What have you gotten yourself into, young lady?” he said.
“Nothing. I�
��m just curious.”
“You lie poorly, Charlie. This is the first time I’ve seen you attempt it, and I have to say you’re not good at it.”
“Humor me. Please.”
“What you’re describing is called treasure trove. Treasure trove means treasure found. Most courts define treasure as money, jewels, or precious metals. The common law says that found treasure belongs to the finder. But Tennessee law is different. Hold on one second.”
Joe turned to his computer and started clicking away. A few seconds later, he said, “Here it is. Morgan versus Wiser, nineteen eighty-five. Some men with a metal detector found a bunch of silver coins on another man’s property. When the landowner found out about it, he sued. The appellate court ruled that since the men who found the silver were on the land without permission, they were trespassers. The court said if they allowed the finders to keep the silver they’d be encouraging trespassing, so they gave the coins to the landowner. It’s the last reported case on treasure trove in Tennessee, so it’s the law that controls. It’s the precedent. So if you… excuse me, if I was trespassing when I found this silver, I wouldn’t be allowed to keep it.”
“But if you weren’t trespassing…?”
“Finders keepers. May I ask how much silver I found?”
“Let’s say you found a lot.”
“Would this sudden curiosity of yours have anything to do with Roscoe Barnes and his will?”
“Probably not.”
“Don’t ever try to sell used cars. You’ll starve.”
Charlie was struggling to contain her excitement. She wanted to blurt it out, to tell him about the gold, to beg him to help her. She could certainly afford to pay him. She had a gold bar worth half-a-million dollars in a trunk in the barn. She wanted to unburden herself, but instead, she asked another hypothetical.