by Dan Kelly
“Deputy Styversant and I had a conversation yesterday about the likelihood of this very thing rearing its head in the near future. I didn’t think it was going to show up on the horizon this soon however.”
“What did you want to see me about?”
“I wanted to brief you on the status of the winery investigation so you’d have some progress to report if the powers that be started to bombard you with questions. I must say, my timing certainly sucks.”
“Where are we?”
Derrick starts to clue him in when Bemis’s has to take another call. Judging from the look on Bemis’s face, it’s more bad news.
When Bill hangs up he asks, “Isn’t the Falconi Family Winery on your list of wineries that have been experiencing some minor but unusual and suspicious interruptions in their operations lately?”
“Yeah it is. Why?”
“Well, they have just experienced a major one and there’s no suspicion as to its cause this time. It’s arson with a capital A. Someone just blew up half their fleet of trucks and a good part of their loading platform. That was Deputy Carlson and he said besides a bunch of trucks being totaled two drivers were seriously injured and one was killed by a piece of flying debris that nearly beheaded him. The fire department is there now trying to keep the fire on the loading platform from spreading to the warehouse. Ambulances, the coroner, forensics and other patrol units are responding as we speak. This is really going to have the jackals screaming for blood now.”
“I’d better get out there. I’ll finish my briefing when I get back.”
Running out of Bemis’s office he yells, “Styversant, drop whatever you’re doing and follow me.”
Grabbing his hat as he flies by his desk, his admin shouts after him. “Call Maury Hoagland, he has a maybe match for Moose and Mario.”
With Derrick behind the wheel they tear out of the parking lot and almost collide with another patrol car coming in. Julie says, “Hey, what lit your rocket?”
Derrick fills her in on what has happened and finishes with, “This investigation has just been catapulted into the stratosphere. It’s a whole new ball game now and the pressure on Bill and us to win the damn thing is going to be enormous. I want to check out the scene before it becomes too contaminated by the curious and folks just doing their jobs. If we don’t start to make some serious headway soon, I’m afraid the wineries are going to surrender and sell out and the bad guys will win the day. I hate it when that happens.”
It took them twenty minutes to get there and when they pulled into the parking area there were people crawling all over the property, so much for an uncontaminated scene.
After three hours of walking all over the crime scene and talking with the shift manager and several supervisors on the day shift, tracking down and interviewing people in similar positions on the night shift and bugging the forensic technicians with their questions, they drove away empty handed. No one saw or heard anything out of the ordinary and all the forensics folks could tell them was explosive devices remotely actuated were used, but nothing was found to distinguish them from the pool of such devices available in a lot of places if you knew where to look.
When they got back to the station, Derrick called Maury Hoagland to see what he had come up with on Moose and Mario.
When Maury answers he says, “This must be your lucky day.”
“I hope it’s the good kind. So far, my luck has been all bad.”
“Well, it’s about to change. I think. One of my guys had dealings with a guy about five years ago who worked for a syndicate based in Upstate New York. He was a jack of all trades, a go-for, a bodyguard, a chauffeur, a smuggler and an enforcer. From what my man tells me he was one tough s.o.b. too. His full name is Elroy Timothy Mueller, but all of his so-called friends call him Moose. He answers the general description you gave me and he has a record so long he would qualify for some comments in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. The last time he was arrested it was back in May of 2009 for transporting liquor illegally across the border into Canada. He was out on bond awaiting trial when he skipped and faded into oblivion until maybe now.”
“Do you have a current address for him?”
“You’re not going to be that lucky.”
“I had to ask. I gather the name Mario means nothing to your guy.”
“You gather incorrectly. Mueller palled around with a guy by the name of Mario DiMaggio and he fell off the radar about the same time Mueller did. He used to run numbers for the same syndicate, but never got caught at it and his record is clean.”
“Thanks, Maury. This could be the door opener I’ve been looking for.”
“Now all you have to do is find the right door.”
“Boy, you sure know how to rain on a guy’s parade.”
“A little water won’t hurt you and it will make you a little more cautious before you try to clear any large puddles, like taking on organized crime all by your lonesome. Are you listening sport?”
“I am and thanks for the advice. Bye.”
Derrick passes on to Julie what he just learned and then sits back in his chair to review everything that has happened since the very beginning of the wineries’ troubles, looking for something he might have missed. Nothing new crosses his mind, so he begins to dwell on what he might do next to make some headway. Other than giving the names Maury gave him to NCIC, he can’t think of a damn thing.
“I’m surprised the tails we have on the Paganelli brothers haven’t turned up anything. If they’re involved in this, they have to be interacting with the people doing the heavy lifting at the wineries somehow. Their phones can’t be tapped because we can’t justify a warrant for that, but they might not know that and they might be skittish about using them when it comes to their involvement in what has been going on, especially now that things appear to be escalating to a higher level, might being the operative word. If they are avoiding any incriminating conversations on the phone, they must be meeting face-to-face with someone involved. Why haven’t the tails picked up on anything?”
After passing the names of Mario DiMaggio and Elroy Timothy (Moose) Mueller on to NCIC, he starts to revisit his gut feelings about Giuseppe Pelegrinno and Maria Conti. The source of the referral that brought Pelegrinno into the loop might lead somewhere, but both of them deny they know it and that’s been bothering him ever since he first heard it.
“It’s hard to believe that Maria Conti doesn’t remember who her referral source was since the potential merger/acquisition attempts represent big bucks. It’s equally hard to believe that Pelegrinno didn’t push her to remember since it was supposedly a mutual client if he didn’t have advanced knowledge of it. Something just doesn’t smell right there. Another thing that’s bugging me is how the wineries were selected for acquisition. Financial data on the wineries had to be obtained somehow, probably by hacking into their computer systems or their CPAs computer systems. Who did the hacking? Damn it! Too many questions and not enough answers.”
After going over everything again and again and getting nowhere, he finally pushes the case aside to attend to other more mundane and routine matters that he’s been ignoring and are now piling up and creating problems for other folks in the administrative pipeline.
Chapter 26
A week goes by with nothing new coming to light and the winery investigation is at a standstill. NCIC had DiMaggio and Mueller in their data base, but nothing recent enough to be of any use. However, things have been heating up on the other side of the tracks with the Paganelli twins fuming and seriously thinking of butting heads with their new partners.
The Paganelli brothers had no idea what had happened over at the Falconi Family Winery until Riccardo’s admin asked them about it the following day when they showed up for work. Upon hearing the news, Duilio and Riccardo went apoplectic and their anger was immediately directed at Nick Petrillo whom they tried to reach repeatedly on the phone without any luck when they first entered Duilio’s office.
Dui
lio says, “That son of a bitch is deliberately avoiding us. He knows we were not ready to escalate things to this level until we had played all of our black mail cards and had given them sufficient time to work. They agreed to wait while we tried things our way. What the hell made them change their minds?”
Riccardo answers with, “The only thing I can think of is someone’s patience ran out. These guys are used to getting their way without any delays. I’m guessing there was enough contention between our new partners over when to make a move that whoever their leader is decided to bring things to a head now rather than wait.”
“Well, I’m beginning to think we screwed up big time when we brought them onboard. I knew there would be bumps in the road, but I never anticipated rock slides like this. I’m thinking we should opt out of our contract, dissolve the partnership under the terms of the agreement and look for another way to grow the business. If I’m going to jail, I’d rather it be because of something I approved of not because of something these numbnuts decided to do on their own.”
“You’re assuming they’ll let us do that. If they didn’t keep their word about the black mail, they could very well get nasty over dissolution of the partnership. It’s obvious we’re not dealing with Boy Scouts here.”
Duilio is fit to be tied and would like nothing better than to get his hands on Nick Petrillo and cause him some pain. Of the twins, he has the shortest temper and if he got the chance he definitely would get physical with Petrillo despite the potential consequences.
Their venting is interrupted by the phone ringing. Duilio answers it and lo and behold it’s the elusive Petrillo.
Before Duilio can say anything Nick says, “Before you go mouthing off at me listen to what I have to say.”
“There’s nothing you can say that will justify what happened at the Falconi Family Winery. We’re convinced that your word means nothing and we want out. We’ll find some other way to grow our business. Putting pressure on our competition to sell is one thing, but crushing them is idiotic. It’s self-defeating. We want to acquire thriving businesses, with plant and equipment intact and trained employees who aren’t scared to death to come to work. Whoever authorized this attack on the winery has to have a single digit IQ. What you people have done is turned up the heat from law enforcement to blast furnace levels and we’re going to have to be damned lucky not to get burned.”
There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line and for a minute Duilio thought Petrillo had hung up, but unfortunately for the Paganelli brothers that was not the case. When Petrillo spoke again it was a different Petrillo. Even his voice was different, much deeper and very threatening.
“You and your brother are so full of yourselves you completely ignore the desires of those you interact with and believe there will be no consequences. It’s your way or the highway. Well let me clue you in on something. The vicissitudes of life don’t play favorites. You’re nothing special and had better accept that fact and adjust or you’re going to find yourselves in serious trouble. It’s become quite obvious to us that your idea of a partnership is quite different from ours, so we’ve decided to enlighten you on some of the facts of life as we see them and are going to insist on some changes.
“We tied up with you hotshots for financial purposes only. Your operation gives us a place to park some of our funds and provides the opportunity to generate an acceptable return on our investment. However, we are not going to wait indefinitely until you get your act together. Therefore, we have decided to intervene and put more pressure on the target companies to motivate them to see things our way. As for dissolving our partnership, I would seriously reconsider that if I were you. For every action there is a reaction and I know you won’t like our reaction.”
Before Duilio can get his profane response out, Petrillo has hung up. Duilio is so angry that for a moment he is tongue tied, but then he bursts forth with a tirade that even startles his twin who has seen his brother lose it many times.
“What the hell did Petrillo say that hit your hot button?”
Duilio finally manages to spit it out and now Riccardo is struggling to keep his cool. “Duilio, let’s take a few minutes to get our tempers under control and then examine our options going forward. I agree with Petrillo, some changes must be made, but not necessarily the same ones they’re promoting.”
It takes them a good half hour to calm down sufficiently to take a realistic look at how they might counter what Petrillo’s bosses have done and might plan to do. Riccardo says, “I see only three options that have any merit for us to pursue. One, sit on our hands and do nothing. If they can shake up the wineries enough to get them to sell, we get what we want and don’t have to get out own hands dirty. Two, anonymously turn the suckers in to the police via Petrillo and deny any accusations they might make about us regarding our involvement in any of the killings or in any of the harassment taking place at the wineries. We can insist that our relationship is purely a business one. There would definitely be repercussions if we were to go this route and we would have to have around the clock security to keep us and the winery alive and well. Three, hire someone to take out our recalcitrant partners and rid ourselves of what threatens to be a very unpleasant partnership. Finding the right people to get this done without any glitches would be the challenge here.”
Duilio is silent for a few minutes as he weighs what his brother has just said. When he finally speaks, he reveals just how unscrupulous he is. “There will be consequences to be dealt with no matter what option we select. I favor option three because I believe the consequences would be minimal if we hired a professional to do the job. There’s a major problem with this option though. We don’t know who our partners are. The only names we have are Investors Anonymous and Nick Petrillo.”
Riccardo immediately responds with his concurrence revealing that he’s just as unscrupulous as his brother. “We’ll have to find someone who can convince Nick to reveal the people he represents and be willing to then eliminate him and them.”
Duilio says, “You know, I think these bastards were planning on taking over our operation from the gitgo.”
“I agree, but now it’s time we did something about that. What concerns me now is how we find the right person to carry out our plan, an individual who is top notch when it comes to stuff like this and won’t turn around and try to blackmail us when the deed is done.”
“It’s obvious we’re not going to find anyone in the yellow pages or on the internet. We’re going to have to do some discrete research by talking with some very unsavory characters that’s for sure. How we find this person is the first hurdle we’ll have to clear. Another thing that’s for sure is this is going to be expensive.”
“Okay, as of this moment that’s at the top of our list of things to do. The sooner we can get these monkeys off our backs the better off we’ll be.”
Chapter 27
Over the years as a detective, Derrick has developed some very peculiar sources of information whose veracity would be questionable in a court to law, but nonetheless are plugged into some very good networks and have been very useful in helping him track down folks he’s wanted to confront. Bookies, fences, bartenders at some of the watering holes known to be frequented by the more nefarious elbow benders in the area are just a few examples of the members of this personal network.
They aren’t your typical rat finks as they’re very selective when it comes to sharing information with anybody and only do so with him because he’s earned their trust and has helped them out of some tight spots when he could get away with stretching some of rules. He doesn’t tap them too often because he doesn’t want to wear out his welcome. He’s decided that this is one of those times where he can really use their help.
He puts the word out that he’s looking for any information that will lead him to the people messing with some of the local wineries. Although he didn’t think they could help him zero in on DiMaggio and Mueller since they probably weren’t from around
the area and might have split back to where they came from, he passed their pictures around anyway with the off chance they might pick up something helpful.
Derrick has become increasingly concerned over their lack of progress in the investigation becoming a motivator for the people behind the assaults on the wineries to become even more aggressive in their attempts to scare the wineries already targeted into selling along with focusing on other wineries in the area for acquisition using similar tactics.