PEDESTAL (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 5)

by Lawrence de Maria

  Desiderio had been surprised. Despite his activities, Cosimo Stupachi was a bit of a prude when it came to sex. But Desiderio dutifully flew to Vegas with the video, which he and Stupachi viewed in his home theater.

  ***

  The video was fairly short. Alva Delgado was splayed out on the bed, apparently unconscious. Her dress was pulled up and she was naked below the waist.

  “Who took off her panties, Tony?”

  “One of my guys. Weatherly and Landon like it quick.” Desiderio laughed. “They aren’t much into foreplay.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny. Disgusting. And she ain’t got any hair on her snatch.”

  “It’s the latest thing, Cosimo. All the girls shave their pussy.”

  “What did you give her, Tony?”

  “Spiked her drink with GHB. The kids call it Fantasy. Colorless and odorless. Undetectable after a couple of hours. But my bartender fucked up. Gave her too low a dose. Watch.”

  Weatherly and Landon came into view. Both were dressed casually. Golf shirts and shorts. They were laughing. The video’s sound quality was excellent. There was a small table next to the bed. Landon walked over and picked up a straw and bent down.

  “What the hell is he doing?”

  “He likes his coke before sex,” Desiderio explained. “I always leave out a couple of lines for him.”

  “They are cocaine addicts, too?”

  “No. Just Landon. Weatherly doesn’t do drugs. Just drinks. Landon loves the stuff.”

  Suddenly, Weatherly dropped his shorts. He stroked himself hard and then raped the unconscious girl. When he was finished he pulled up his shorts and Landon then mounted Delgado.

  “I can’t believe he let the nigger go first,” Stupachi said.

  “Not always,” Desiderio explained. “They flip coins.”

  Stupachi looked at him.

  “Animals!”

  There was a scream and Desiderio and his uncle turned back to the video. The girl was struggling.

  “Not enough GHB,” Desiderio said. “She came to.”

  The ugly scene became even uglier. Alva Delgado was pounding on Ford Landon’s chest, trying to push him away. He was laughing.

  “Oh, shit,” Weatherly said.

  “I’m coming,” Landon cried out and then grunted loudly.

  Suddenly Alva’s hands slid down her body and her attacker let out an unearthly scream.

  “My balls! She squashed my fuckin’ balls!”

  Alva rolled off the bed and tried to crawl away, but Landon grabbed her leg and dragged her back. Then he went berserk and started punching her in the stomach. The thudding blows sounded like a butcher pounding cutlets. He was about to smash her face when Weatherly grabbed him and pulled him away.

  “Man. You’ll kill her! Let her go.”

  Just then, Desiderio and two other men rushed into the room.

  “Help me,” the girl cried.

  Desiderio grabbed the girl’s panties and lifted her off the bed. He looked at the two football players.

  “Stay here,” he ordered, and carried the sobbing girl from the room.

  “This is bullshit,” Landon said. “Come on, Marcus. Let’s get back to the party.”

  Both footballers started to leave but stopped short when the other two men blocked their exit.

  “Get the fuck out of my way,” Landon said.

  “Take a seat,” one of the men said, opening his jacket to show a gun.

  ***

  “What happened next?”

  “She was still pretty much out of it when I got her dressed and took her off the yacht. She hardly remembered what happened. GHB does that. I thought we were in the clear. Then she went and died. Tough break for the poor broad. Landon must have busted her up inside pretty good. Best thing that ever happened was Nicky dumping her on the side of the road for her boyfriend to find her. He took the rap. I had to fire Nicky to make it look good. Sent him to Atlantic City. He didn’t like the heat and humidity much anyway.”

  “What did you tell those two assholes?”

  “I bawled them out. Told them how they had to be careful. You know. First time they ever fucked up. So I gave them a slide.”

  “What about the dead girl?”

  “Hell, they probably think the boyfriend did it, too. Anyway, we dodged a bullet.”

  “Shut it down.”

  “What?”

  “No more videos. It’s over, Anthony.”

  Desiderio was stunned. His blackmail operation had made millions for the family.

  “Jesus, Cosimo. Why? I told you, everything is copacetic. We lucked out.”

  “More than you know. This video is worth more than all the other ones combined.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Are you brain dead, Anthony? You filmed two of the country’s most-famous football players raping and killing a girl. The Touchdown Twins! And an innocent man is rotting in jail for what they did. It’s fucking perfect. We own those kids now. Forever.”

  Desiderio was confused.

  “I didn’t know you followed football. Thought it was stupid.”

  Stupachi stared at his nephew. Maybe he’d made a mistake telling his sons to stay out of the family business. Tony wasn’t the brightest cannoli on the dessert platter, even if he’d scored the blackmail coup of the century.

  “Listen, Anthony,” he said calmly, “I don’t like football. Bunch of retards knocking their heads together. I didn’t let the boys play it and I told them to keep my grandkids away from it. But I know gambling and point spreads. So I know more about football than you think. I control some of the biggest legal sports books in Vegas and the Caribbean, and our bookie operations are still strong. These two mamalukes are gonna take the NFL by storm, right? Do you know how much goddamn money is bet on NFL games every year? My man on the Nevada Gaming Commission tells me that almost $4 billion a year is wagered in sports bets in the state’s casinos, half on football. And he says that maybe $400 billion is bet on football through offshore accounts and illegal betting.”

  Desiderio was always amazed at his uncle’s grasp of finances.

  “We get a small piece of that now making book legally and illegally. Think how much we can get if we can massage the point spreads. Our sports books will be even more profitable, and we can even place bets offshore and clean up. It’s a fucking gold mine.”

  Desiderio finally got it. Who better to shave points, or even lose a game, then a star quarterback and his star receiver? An overthrow here, a dropped pass or a fumble there. A crucial interception.

  “Jesus,” he said. “But they will only play for one team. They are insisting on sticking together, even in the pros. Season is only 16 games, unless they make the playoffs. Is that enough?”

  “If we fix half those games we’ll make a fortune. Every year.”

  “They could switch teams. Split up. Get hurt.”

  “The teams aren’t important. The spread is. As for injury, the league falls over backwards to protect quarterbacks. And Weatherly is a wide receiver, likes to go deep. Those guys don’t get hurt much. Shit, there’s a risk in anything. But we got nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Hell, I hope they split up. Then we get twice as many games to fix.” He laughed. “Except the ones they play against each other. Come to think of it, since we have them by the balls, we could insist they go to separate teams. Although having two guys in our pocket on one team has its advantages. Remember the Black Sox in 1919. Eight guys on the Chicago White Sox fixed the 1919 World Series for Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano.”

  Desiderio knew that his uncle loved history, especially where it concerned criminals.

  “They cleaned up,” Stupachi said, “but it was peanuts, even if you adjust for inflation. This could be the biggest score in gambling history.”

  “What if they won’t do it?”

  Stupachi waved a hand.

  “They’ll do it. This ain’t some stupid coon beating on his wife in a casino. This is
rape and murder, in living color. Girl drugged. Innocent man in jail. The media will go nuts. We’re talking the electric chair here, Anthony.”

  “I think in Florida they can choose the needle.”

  Stupachi sighed.

  “Who the hell cares?”

  “They could fake an injury. To get from under our thumb.”

  “We’ll tell them they’d better be near death to come out of a game. Or the sex-and-murder video goes on YouTube, or whatever they call that bullshit. They still have a year of college, right? At least 12 games. We’ll break them in shaving some points in a couple of those games. Plenty of money is bet on college football. Be good practice for us, too.”

  “Some people think Collier may play for the National Championship. At the very least they’ll get a major Bowl game.”

  Stupachi slapped his nephew on the back.

  “This gets better and better. Do you know how much dough gets bet on those games? Play the film again, Tony. And let’s get some copies made. Lots of copies.”

  Stupachi turned deadly serious.

  “I want you to get this Landon guy off the coke. He’s too valuable. And remember, Anthony. No more pussy films. Got me? Capire! Unnerstand!”

  “Yes.”

  Stupachi leaned forward and kissed his nephew on the lips.

  “But you can keep that fucking boat. My gift to you.”

  CHAPTER 12 - SCORFANO

  It had all gone smoothly. Unlike some of the hedge fund managers and politicians who initially tried to bluff their way out of paying blackmail to keep their indiscretions secret, Ford Landon and Marcus Weatherly saw almost immediately that their position was hopeless.

  Desiderio almost felt sorry for the two boys when the video, shown in the same stateroom where the crime had been committed, ended. They sat in stunned silence as he explained what they would be called upon to do. What they had assumed was a private party arranged by one of the football team’s biggest booster turned into a nightmare, with four armed goons, two imported from the Stupachi family’s Miami operations, providing an ominous backdrop.

  “Why are you doing this to us, Tony?” Weatherly said. “I thought you were our friend.”

  “I am your friend,” Desiderio said calmly. “Maybe the only one you have now. But let’s cut the bullshit. You did this to yourselves. I’m just here to collect. The people I represent won’t hesitate to throw you to the cops. But make them happy and you can still be rich and famous. Cross them, and no more magazine covers, no more guest shots on late-night TV, no multi-year, multi-million-dollar contracts and endorsements, no more easy pussy. You just become the most famous people on death row.”

  “We didn’t mean to hurt her,” Landon whined. “It was an accident.”

  Desiderio laughed harshly.

  “Like the rape? OK. So you only get life. The cons in Raiford will love making you bend over like a center while they cornhole you.”

  “We didn’t drug her, man,” Landon said. “One of your guys did.”

  Desiderio walked up to him and put his face an inch away.

  “Prove it, scumbag.”

  Their resistance, such as it was, crumbled right then and there.

  ***

  Cosimo Stupachi told Desiderio that they couldn’t be greedy during the college season.

  “It’s kind of like a soft-opening for a restaurant, Anthony. Maybe three or four games, just to work the kinks out. We’ll spread the bets all over the country and offshore. If we get a bowl game or a shot at a championship, that will be gravy. It’s the pros we want to control. Then it will be like a buffet.”

  The strategy worked better than expected. Collier University was a pre-season pick to finish in the top 10 nationally. Like many programs that had only recently matured, Collier’s season was front-loaded with weaker opponents, including a couple of Division II teams. In its first five games, Collier was often a two or three touchdown favorite. It wasn’t hard for Weatherly and, especially, Landon to keep the margin of victory below the spread in the two early games Desiderio told them to fix.

  The smaller margins of victory hurt Collier in the early polls, but later, when it faced tougher competition, the team was underrated and sometimes even listed as the underdog. Collier won games it was expected to lose, and when it lost to another powerhouse, the games were closer than the spread. The Stupachi family made a lot of money on two of those games, one an unexpected win, the other an overtime loss.

  Collier went 10-2 and was invited to the Sugar Bowl, where Landon and Weatherly played perhaps their best game ever and destroyed Old Miss 42-10, cementing their iconic status as the “Touchdown Twins”. Their orders from the Stupachi family to crush their opponent, which had been slightly favored, dovetailed with their desire to increase their market value in the upcoming NFL draft.

  If their coach or teammates occasionally wondered at the missed or dropped passes, or fumbles near the end zone, their concern was drowned in the sea of success that Landon and Weatherly engineered. And their infrequent miscues were spread too far apart for the casual observer to notice.

  ***

  But now Mulloy and Scarne threatened to upset the applecart. Desiderio flew to Las Vegas.

  Cosimo Stupachi heard him out during dinner at Bartolotta Ristorante, the famous upscale Italian eatery in the Wynn Hotel. They had just switched tables with a harmless-looking elderly couple on the other side of the room. The couple, a retired craps dealer and an over-the-hill hooker, both former Stupachi family employees, had made a reservation at the same time as Cosimo Stupachi. He really didn’t expect his table to be bugged, or have any nosy Feds eating nearby, but he was a cautious man. His home was regularly swept for listening devices but noisy restaurants were his favorite venues when talking over delicate matters. Table switching was just another level of security.

  When he didn’t mind being overheard, he got a kick out of thinking that the Feds might have to eat at Bartolotta’s, where dinner could easily run almost $200 a person. He wondered how they might explain their expense accounts.

  “They gonna find anything?”

  “I don’t know. I’m worried.”

  Stupachi speared a langoustine with a fork and popped it in his mouth. Each of the crustacean appetizers, done scampi-style, cost $35. He’d ordered four.

  “I thought you had everything buttoned up. Under control.”

  Stupachi’s voice had an ominous undercurrent. Desiderio put down one of the baked clams he was about to eat. They were delicious, but he’d suddenly lost his appetite.

  “It was. But then that reporter cunt, Mulloy, started sniffing around. Asking all sorts of questions.”

  “Who does she work for?”

  “Says she’s freelance.” Desiderio hesitated. “For The New York Times.”

  “The fucking New York Times!”

  “I know. But she’s freelance, a stringer is what they call it. Doesn’t mean they’ll use it, whatever she’s working on.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I don’t know. She asked a lot of questions about who was at the party.”

  “Did she mention our guys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You told her they were there?”

  “She said she knew they were there.”

  “Merda!”

  “It might not be that bad. She was fishing. I told her it was nothing special. They came to a lot of my parties.” He hesitated again. “She did say she knew they were on the yacht.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Maybe. I told her a lot of people were on the yacht that night. I couldn’t keep track of everyone.”

  “What about this private dick?”

  “Scarne. Jake Scarne. He’s from New York.”

  ‘Who hired him?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Just what do you know, Anthony?”

  If I had to guess, I’d say he was hired by the lawyer of the guy, Herrera, who took the fall.”

  “A
wetback has that kind of dough?”

  “Probably not. But the C.C.W. does.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Coalition of Calusakee Workers. They watch out for the spic tomato pickers.”

  Stupachi shook his head.

  “A fucking wetback union. Figures.”

  “This may all blow over, Cosimo. But I knew you wanted to hear about it.”

  Stupachi finished the glass of wine in front of him. A waiter immediately rushed over and filled his glass, and then topped off Desiderio’s. Stupachi nodded his thanks and the waiter scurried away.

  “There’s something else going on here, Anthony. Why hire a New York detective?”

  Desiderio was silent. Then, to his surprise, Stupachi took out the newest iPhone on the market. His uncle saw his face.

  “Freddie gave it to me.” Frederick Stupachi was the old man’s grandson. “He said I had to join the 21st Century. Don’t look so worried. I only use it for non-business calls. And to take notes.” He opened up a recording app. “Give me the names of the reporter and the detective. Spell them, slowly. I’m gonna do some checking.”

  ***

  Desiderio was staying at his uncle’s house, an isolated ranch halfway between Vegas and Red Rock Canyon. The next morning when he went down for breakfast he found Stupachi sitting at a table by the pool talking to another man. When he saw who it was, his heart skipped several beats.

  Scorfano! The Scorpion Fish!

  The man wasn’t Italian. He was Vietnamese. His real name was Loc Moi, and he was the chief killer for Nevada’s Mach Vong crime family, another Stupachi ally, and was often borrowed, at a hefty price, for special occasions. Even the Italians feared him and gave him his nickname after one of his victims, an FBI informant, was found with a particularly large Scorpion Fish shoved down his throat, with its poisonous spines sticking through his neck.

  Loc Moi was tall for a Vietnamese, with a sharp angular face and coal-black eyes. He didn’t drink or smoke, which was unusual for a Vietnamese, and was famous for his workout regimen, which left his body lean and muscular. His sexual prowess and appetites were equally famous, or, rather, infamous. The call girls he used exclusively, already the most expensive in Las Vegas, had to be paid double to service him, and often needed lengthy stays in mob-run clinics after the experience. It was generally assumed, even among his own people, that at some point he would have to be put down like a mad dog.