Double Espresso (A Loretta Kovacs thriller)

by Anthony Bruno

  A lightning bolt of panic suddenly shot through Loretta’s stomach. She couldn’t afford to lose this job. She was already at the end of the line here at the Jump Squad. If she got bounced from this one, her next stop would be behind the drive-in counter at a McDonald’s, wearing a paper hat and a wireless headset, shoveling burgers and fries out a window, telling people to have a nice day over and over again all day long. She’d snitch French fries every two minutes, and in no time she’d be as big as a house. And worst of all Marvelli would never come to her window. She’d never see him again. Ever.

  Of course, there was always Chicago, she thought.

  “Loretta. Loretta!” Julius repeated. He blew a high piercing note to get her attention.

  “What?” she said, blinking her eyes as she snapped out of it.

  “You were looking a little paler than usual,” Julius said. “You still with us?”

  “I’m here,” she said, but inside she was still dealing with the prospects of doom and gloom. She glanced at Marvelli and felt embarrassed for feeling the way she did about him. In every other apsect of her life, she was direct to the point of being a blunt object. But with Marvelli it was different.

  “I called a guy I know at the federal courthouse,” Marvelli said. “Taffy Demaggio is scheduled to go on trial at the end of the year. And guess who’s gonna be the prime witness against him?”

  “Gus Rispoli-oli-olio,” Julius sang, capping off his tune with a doleful note on the flute. “This is not good, children. Not good at all. Steps must be taken. Preemptive damage control.”

  “Why don’t we just go out and start looking for Sammy?” Loretta suggested.

  A prolonged search, she thought naughtily. Out-of-state overnights. Just the two them.

  But Julius was already shaking his head, cutting an arc in the air with his pointy beard. “Where-oh-where do you start looking, Lorett-o? The feds won’t tell us where My Blue Heaven is, so we can’t scope the target. For now all we can do is let everybody and his sister know what we know, so that when the poop hits the fan, they can’t say we didn’t tell them it was coming. Got it?”

  “Right.” Loretta nodded, trying to hide her disappointment.

  Marvelli looked doubtful. “I don’t know about this, Julius. I think we should do a full-court press. I think Loretta’s right. We should be out there actively looking for Sammy.”

  “We” as in you and me? Loretta thought hopefully.

  But Julius just shook his head. “Start with the Marshals Office, Marvelli,” he said. “Let them know what’s going on and see if they’ll give you any help, but don’t get your hopes up. Remember: A fed is a fed is a fed. I’ll talk to the almighty ones upstairs, see what they have to say about it.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?” Loretta asked.

  Julius just stared at her. “Go to work.” He waved his flute like a magic wand at all the piles of case files stacked up around the room. “Take your pick. There’s plenty to go round.”

  Loretta sighed as she got off the couch. “I’ve got my own pile, thank you.”

  “Let me know what the marshals say, marvelous one. We’ll talk later.” Julius picked up his phone and pressed a button for an open line.

  Loretta followed Marvelli out of Julius’s office and back to the bull pen. “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “What?” Marvelli sat down at his desk.

  “What’ve you got against this Taffy Demaggio guy? I’ve never seen you like this before. He ever do anything to you? Personally, I mean.”

  Marvelli’s eyes grew large and watery. “Not to me. To Rene.”

  Loretta furrowed her brows and leaned against her desk. “What did he do to her?”

  “It wasn’t just Rene,” Marvelli said. “It was a lot of people. See, on top of all the usual Mafia scumbag things Taffy has done, he also controlled a medical supply company that sold second-rate equipment to hospitals at inflated prices. Stuff like syringes, catheters, gauze, bandages, IV lines—that kind of stuff. Most of it was crap. He was putting people’s lives in danger with that stuff, people who were already sick. There was one case of an old man who got blood poisoning from some chemical used to make cheap plastic IV lines. He ended up dying.”

  “Did anything like that ever happen to Rene?”

  Marvelli shrugged. “Hard to tell, she was so sick. But I know Taffy was selling to the hospital that was taking care of her, so they must’ve used some of Taffy’s junk on her. I mean, how do I know it wasn’t a bad blood tube or a faulty syringe that killed Rene? A little piece of plastic that broke off from the syringe and got into her bloodstream, maybe nicked an artery or something. There must be thousands of people who had this cut-rate junk stuck in their bodies. How many of those people died because of this stuff? We’ll never know for sure, and Taffy’s probably gonna get away with it. If it were up to me, though, he’d get the friggin’ death penalty for that scam. And when they gave him the lethal injection, I’d make sure they did it with one of his own crappy syringes.”

  Marvelli’s voice was dripping with revenge. It made Loretta’s heart sink. He was never going to get over his wife.

  So why am I putting myself through this? she wondered. I don’t stand a chocolate chip’s chance in hell with this guy.

  As Marvelli reached for his phone, he looked at his watch. “What’re you doing for lunch?” he asked.

  “Me?”

  “You want to have lunch?” He was flipping through his Rolodex, looking for a phone number.

  “Yeah … sure.” She was wary, though. She didn’t want to read anything into this. Sometimes lunch is just lunch.

  “I gotta make a few calls,” he said as he punched out a number, the receiver cradled between his ear and shoulder. “We’ll go about twelve-thirty. Is that okay?”

  He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her response, but his expression turned serious as soon as someone answered his call.

  She glanced at him sideways as she picked up a file at random from her desk, trying to look busy. Her heart was thumping, wanting to be hopeful, but her head was cautious. He didn’t really mean anything by this, she told herself. It wasn’t like a date or anything. It was just two co-workers going to lunch. That’s all.

  But when she looked up, he was looking at her, eyebrows up, still waiting for an answer, and instantly her head switched sides. Maybe it wasn’t just lunch, she thought. Maybe it could lead to something else.

  She nodded and flashed the okay sign. “Twelve-thirty,” she mouthed, confirming the time.

  She sat down at her desk and started going through case files, intending to catch up on her paperwork, but she had a hard time paying attention to anything that wasn’t Marvelli.

  4

  The mud-spattered white Chevy pulled into an empty space in front of the Five Roses Dinner, a chrome-sided shoe box of a building that would have been stylishly retro if it weren’t absolutely authentic. The diner had opened for business in 1961, and the five loud, leggy, gum-chewing, teased-hair-out-to-there sisters who had started this place back then were still waiting tables. None of them was actually named Rose, but they all answered to that name and any variation on it: Rose, Rosie, Rosa, Rosemary, Roseanne, Rosalie.… They were in their sixties now, and they didn’t show as much leg as they used to, but they were just as loud, and their meat-loaf special was to die for.

  Marvelli always came here for the meat loaf, and now that his appetite seemed to be coming back, Loretta had high hopes for a complete meat-loaf cure. He needed a shot of something to get him back on track, and an extra-thick slab of chopped meat, a generous scoop of mashed potatoes, and the veg of the day, all swimming in brown onion gravy with a Parker House roll on the side and a hot cup of coffee just might do the trick.

  But when Loretta went to open her car door, she realized that Marvelli wasn’t opening his. He was just sitting there, staring into space, rapping his knuckles on the dashboard.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, nervou
s that he was slipping back into his funk.

  “Goddamn feds,” he grumbled.

  “What about them?” Loretta asked.

  “I called the marshals before we went to lunch and tried to let them know what was going on with Sammy, but they didn’t even want to hear me out. The guy I talked to wouldn’t even admit that My Blue Heaven exists. But then in the next breath he told me that if such a place did exist, no one would ever be able to find it. I tried to tell him that Sammy is an unusual case, he might pull it off, but the guy wouldn’t even listen to me. After that conversation, I tracked down this woman at the FBI, some witch named Springer. She’s the one who handles Rispoli whenever they bring him east to testify. What a pain in the ass she was. She practically told me to go drop dead.”

  “What can I tell you, Marvelli? They’re feds,” Loretta said. “Come on, let’s eat.”

  Marvelli muttered something she didn’t hear as he opened the door and got out of the car. They headed up the brick steps to the front door, and Marvelli’s cell phone suddenly started to ring.

  “Hang on a minute,” he said to her as he pulled it out of his pocket, pressed the answer button, and held it to his face. “Hello?”

  “Hello. Officer Marvelli? This is Special Agent Veronica Springer.” The FBI agent was sitting behind the wheel of a dark blue Oldsmobile Cutlass parked across the street from the Five Roses Diner. She was holding a cell phone to her ear, staring at the two figures standing in front of the diner. The man with the cell phone was obviously Marvelli, but she wondered who the fat woman was.

  “What can I do for you, Agent Springer?” Marvelli said. She detected a touch of frost in his voice.

  “I apologize if I gave you short shrift earlier today,” she said, “but I didn’t know who you were then. I’ve made a few calls in the meantime, and yes, I would like to talk to you.”

  “You checked up on me?”

  “No, no,” she lied. “On Sammy Teitelbaum. I think we should get together to discuss this situation.”

  “When?” Marvelli said.

  “How about right now? Where are you?”

  “I’m just about to have lunch,” he said. “You know a place called the Five Roses Dinner on—?”

  “I know it,” she interrupted. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Fine. How will I know you when I get there?” she asked.

  “How will I know you?” he countered.

  Agent Springer narrowed her eyes. Belligerent, she thought. Typical Italian, but cute. She was staring at his butt.

  “I’m five foot three,” she said. “I’ve got short, straight, light blond hair. I’m wearing a navy blazer, a cream-colored blouse with a banded collar, and gray slacks. Is that enough for you?”

  “I’ll spot you. See you in fifteen.” He hung up. Rather abruptly, she thought.

  She blipped her phone off and put it back in her pocket as she watched Marvelli and the fat woman go into the diner. He could do better than her, she thought. A lot better.

  Springer started the engine, pulled out into the street, and drove down to the end of the block to a gas station on the corner. She drove past the pumps and pulled up to a pay phone. It was set low enough on the pole so that she didn’t have to get out of the car to use it. She lowered her window and reached for the receiver, then reached out again to dial.

  After two rings a recorded voice came on the line. “Please deposit fifty-five cents for the next three minutes.”

  Springer had the change ready. She dropped two quarters and a nickel into the slot. It started to ring again.

  “Hello?” a man answered.

  “Let me speak to Taffy, please,” Springer said.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Tell him it’s the First Lady.”

  “What is this, some kind of joke?”

  “Just tell him,” she said. “He’ll know who it is.”

  The man dropped the phone. She could hear the man yelling. “Hey, Taf, some broad wants to talk to you. She says she’s the First Lady.”

  It was thirty seconds before someone came back on. “Sweetheart,” a new voice said, “how the hell are you?” She recognized the voice right away. Smooth as silk. Taffy Demaggio.

  “I have to ask you something,” she said.

  “Is this something of a social nature?” he asked with a snicker.

  “No.”

  “You’re on a pay phone, I hope.” “Of course.”

  “So what can I do for you, Veronica, my love?”

  “Save the Casanova routine for your bimbos. I need you to give me a straight answer about something.”

  “With you I am nothing but straight, my dear. You can ask me anything.”

  “Did you hire a guy named Sammy Teitelbaum to kill Gus Rispoli?” Her voice was cool, but she was sitting on her temper, digging her fingernails into the Oldsmobile’s crushed velveteen upholstery.

  “Sweetheart, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That’s not an answer, Taffy.” “Is that anger I hear in your voice, Veronica?” “Cut the crap, Taffy. Putting a contract out on Rispoli isn’t going to help your case any.” “Oh, no? Why not?” “Because.”

  Taffy lowered his voice. “Look, Veronica, I told you before. I want some guarantees. I don’t want to have to go back to court on any other charges, not even a parking ticket. Otherwise just forget about it.”

  Springer’s stomach was churning, but she was determined to stay calm. She wasn’t going to blow this. “Don’t you have any faith in me, Taffy? Didn’t I bury that murder investigation for you?” “Yeah, but—”

  “Yeah, but nothing, Taffy. That would have been a second-degree murder charge at the very least. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to derail the entire investigation. For you.”

  “That whole thing was an accident, pure and simple. Believe me, I would never have been charged with anything.”

  Springer kept her mouth shut, but she begged to differ. Cathy Dunne was the victim’s name. Twenty-eight years old. Official cause of death: asphyxiation. Real reason: rough sex with Taffy. He was into that. She was strangled with her own bra. He’d wrapped it around her neck and used it as a bridle as he mounted her from behind. The ligature marks combined with the bruises and contusions on her face and limbs would have put Taffy away for thirty years minimum. It wasn’t easy convincing the local police that a nice Irish girl from Palisades Park was really an IRA terrorist and that for diplomatic reasons, the Bureau should handle the case. Thank God Taffy had taken Ms. Dunne to a summer house on a lake in some one-horse town in Upstate New York. If he had done it anywhere else, Springer would never have been able to bury it.

  “So what about our deal, Veronica?” Taffy said. “You gonna come through for me or what?”

  “I cannot get those other charges dropped, Taffy. I told you that.”

  “Not even the hospital thing?”

  “Rispoli had intimate knowledge of that scam. He’s set to testify. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m sorry.”

  “But hypothetically speaking, if there were no Rispoli, there’d be no case against me.”

  “Hypothetically, yes.”

  She clawed the upholstery. He did put out a hit on Rispoli, she thought. Stupid bastard.

  “Well, sweetheart, you know where I stand on this thing. Either you get me off completely or we don’t have a deal. I do not want to be tried ever again, and if you can’t get the medical-supply thing dropped in exchange for my cooperation, then … Well, I’m just going to have to explore other avenues, as they say.”

  Springer chewed on the insides of her cheeks. She didn’t want to lose him, but she didn’t know how to give him what he wanted.

  “Are you still there, sweetness? I don’t hear you breathing.”

  Her head was spinning. She was going to lose him. But Taffy was too big a fish to lose. She couldn’t let him get away, not when she was this close. If she got him to flip and turn state’s evidence, she
could write her own ticket in the Bureau. It would mean a promotion, a raise, status, prestige. She would be the first female agent in the history of the FBI to earn a position of real power. All those good ol’ boys at the Bureau could kiss her sweet little ass. She was sick and tired of banging her head against the glass ceiling. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. It made her nauseous just thinking about how close she was to realizing this. But close wasn’t good enough.

  “Sweetness, are you there?” Taffy said. “Talk to me.”

  “How about if I helped you?” she suddenly blurted out.

  “Helped me what?”

  “Helped you eliminate … your problem.” “What? You want the contract?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. You’ve already got someone to do the deed. What if I were to provide the opportunity? Provide you with information.” Her heart was pounding.

  “In theory that sounds very nice, but you’ve got to put something on the table, darling.”

  “I’ll put something on the table, Taffy. Don’t you worry about that.”

  “But when?”

  “Soon.”

  “Soon? What does that mean?”

  “Let me think this through. I’ll get back to you.”

  “You can call me anytime, beautiful. You know how much I love to talk to you. Maybe we can get together sometime, have dinner.”

  Springer touched her throat, imagining a lacy bra tightening around her neck. “I’ll be in touch,” she said quickly, then hung up the phone and rolled up the window.

  She had stomach cramps as Taffy’s face materialized behind her closed lids. The man was undeservedly handsome and utterly ruthless. A mature hunk with a very nasty bite. But he was the key to her future, the key to a corner office at the Hoover Building in Washington. Without Taffy, she would stay where she was, treading water as an FBI liaison with the Marshals Service. It was a dead-end job; she had to move on. Taffy unfortunately was the only egg in her basket. She needed Taffy.

  But the only way to hang on to him was to make him happy by eliminating Gus Rispoli. She bit her bottom lip and tapped her foot impatiently on the floorboard. It wasn’t right, she thought with a sigh, but what has to be, has to be. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Rispoli were Mother Teresa.