by Skye, S. D.
“Don’t ask.” She took a sip of the coffee and removed a cinnamon raisin bagel from the bag. “Sunnie called me last night. Nixon’s on the prowl.”
“What’s he up to now?”
“My mother’s case files. He’s trying to get access to them.”
“What is the issue with this case? It’s like the biggest secret in the FBI since Hoover’s love of couture.”
“It’s complicated…at least that’s the bullshit story everyone keeps shoveling. Lana’s case has consumed every ounce of my energy for these past few weeks; I’ve hardly had time to string together two seconds to think about it. Just when I got the courage to ask the director, he had a heart attack. I’m beginning to believe the universe is conspiring to keep me from finding out the truth.”
“Well, then the universe doesn’t have a clue about who it’s messing with,” Tony said. “Otherwise, it would realize trying to stop you is an exercise in futility. The question we should be asking is what do all these people have to lose?”
“We?” she smiled and touched his hand. For the first time, she didn’t feel alone. “You’re reading my mind. What in the hell would Nixon have to lose…unless he was somehow involved.”
Tony started shaking his finger as if he’d had an epiphany. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you tell me Jack met your mother?”
“Yeah,” J.J. said with a nod.
“Well, weren’t Jack and Nixon buddies from the Academy?”
About to take bite of her bagel, J.J. stopped an inch before it reached her lips. “You know, you’re right. They’ve been tight for years, and both have specialized in counterintelligence for their entire careers. They had to be involved in COINTELPRO,” J.J. said, referring to Hoover’s counterintelligence program targeting The Black Panther Party and other black liberation organizations. “If they played a part in the death of an FBI agent, a part requiring a cover-up, then they indeed stood to lose a lot more than their reputations.”
Tony tightened his lips, and his eyebrows arched.
“I’ve got to get inside the file, come hell or high water. I’m hoping the answers I need are inside. The sooner we put this Troika business to bed and ease the hostilities, the faster I can return to Washington and figure out this puzzle. Anyway, enough about my drama. What’s going on with your father’s . . . family?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll find out later. I’m headin’ to Brooklyn to see Santino this morning.”
J.J. turned to him, her expression one of fear and concern. “Is that safe? Do you want me to go with you?”
Tony shook his head. “No, I’m in charge of dealing with family business. You focus on Troika. Submit the wiretap requests so we can go home.”
“Speaking of wiretaps, I hope we got Fitzpatrick’s approval for the emergency request,” she said, referring to the Russian Organized Crime squad supervisor—Devin Fitzpatrick. “Without that, neither the SAC nor Nixon will sign off. And without the court order we’re screwed.”
•••
“What do you mean Fitzpatrick rejected the wiretap request?” J.J. barked at Scott, who seemed to take some personal pleasure in the denial. He gloated because the case remained stalled despite her storied reputation. Manny’s frustration, on the other hand, teetered on the edge of eruption like hers. But J.J. was too stubborn to give Scott the satisfaction of knowing he’d ruffled her feathers. “He couldn’t have conducted a serious review of the new information.”
“Yes, he did…and he killed it, anyway. Just as he’s done to every request we’ve submitted to him in the past year. Said there’s insufficient evidence of criminal activity and intent.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Didn’t take a genius to figure out something else was afoot, given the case’s clear and undisputed connection to Lana Michaels—a known Russian sleeper agent.
“I wish we were kidding,” Manny said. “We’ve been banging our heads against this same brick wall for over a year.”
He’d hamstrung the entire case. She developed two theories about the reasons for Fitzpatrick’s rejection, and neither of them was a legitimate excuse. Either one threatened to land him in a lot of hot water someday. The first was that he didn’t even bother to read the full request—or he was taking orders from on high, engaged in a deliberate campaign to obstruct her investigation. Wouldn’t be the first time. She had no choice but to devise a plan to get the information another way until she worked out that snag. As far as J.J. could determine, she had only one option.
“Oh, yeah? Well, the banging stops today. I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make but in the meantime,”—J.J. turned to Manny— “arrange a meet with the CI.”
If the accountant, The Sparrow, was the key to striking at the heart of the Troika organization, and they couldn’t get a tap into the phones, then they would tap into his associates.
“To which CI are you referring?” Scott asked.
“The one connected to Zory Kozlov—the accountant. I want to talk to whomever it is to find out whether Kozlov’s got any vulnerability we can exploit. If he’s the accountant connected to The Duke, the one linked to Levi Mashkov, then we can use him to track the money and then freeze the accounts.”
Manny nodded in agreement. “Okay, but you gotta understand, this guy’s skittish right now, and he may not agree to meet with you. You gotta figure if Mashkov’s people will hit the son of a Bonanno boss then they won’t think twice about taking him out if they found out he talked to the Feds. And he understands, like us, the Mashkovs won’t stop at him. They’ll slaughter his entire family.”
“I realize this is a longshot, but we’ve got to try,” J.J. said. “The wiretap has fallen through for now. This is our final option.”
“Agreed.” Manny stood up and headed to the door. “The guy’s in Brooklyn and doesn’t like to use phones. Give me a couple of hours. We’ll pitch the idea to him and tell you how it goes.”
“Can I ride along?” J.J. asked.
Scott shook his head. “He doesn’t even trust us. We’ve got to allow him to dip his toe in the shallow end first.”
“All right. Two hours and I’ll see what I can do about this wiretap.”
J.J. watched them walk away, picked up her cell phone, and scanned for Mrs. Whitehouse’s phone number. The director told J.J. to call his secretary if she had any emergencies. She had planned to pull the Director card with caution; Fitzpatrick had now given her just cause to leverage it. The success of the entire Troika investigation rested on their ability to obtain the wiretaps. Even more, their ability to wrap up the entire illegals network depended on taking down the financial hub.
The phone rang twice before she answered. “Hello, Mrs. Whitehouse? It’s J.J. McCall. I have an emergency. Need you to get a message to Director Freeman…”
Chapter 16
Thursday Afternoon — Washington D.C.
Santino Castellano and his captain, Nicolas “Nicky Mumbles” Muzzatto, had been standing outside Swifty’s goomar’s apartment for so long, Kentucky bluegrass grew under their feet. Santino wanted to hurry and get the meet over with. To find out who tried to clip Dante, he needed Nicky to arrange a sit-down with the Russians. Swifty, the conduit between the five families and the Russians, was the man Uncle Sal had told them could get the job done.
Five minutes after they started knocking, Swifty plodded across the floor like a stuffed elephant and opened the door.
“Nicky! Santino! Long time,” Swifty said, greeting them both with affectionate hugs and pecks on the cheek. “Come in. Come in. Take a load off.” He shuffled toward the kitchen, lumbering like a snail on valium. They headed for the living room.
Frank “Swifty” Zanetti, a paranoid loyal-for-the-moment capo in the Genovese family, got his nickname because he moved as slow as an iceberg. He was built like one, too. Whatever the task at hand, the words “rush” or “quick” didn’t exist in his vocabulary. Connected guys found it hilarious that he talked and ate as if on fast forward. Words shot o
ut of his mouth at a hundred miles per hour and food went in just as fast. But the only time he picked up his walking pace was to turn down the fire on the Sunday sauce. This explains why he took five minutes to open the freakin’ door after Nicky and Santino knocked.
“Frankie Z! How’s life?” Nicky asked. As a Bonanno capo, he led the conversation. For the most part, on Sal’s orders, Santino’s job was to listen, observe, and analyze in case Nicky had questions after. Speak when spoken to. “Still eatin’ good, I see.”
“Life’s good. Never seen a plate of macaron’ I didn’t like. Isabella’s got some beer and a nice proscuit’ in the fridge if you want somethin’ to eat,” he offered. They replied with no thank yous, eager to get to business.
Swifty turned toward Santino bearing a somber expression; his mouth curved downward, but he averted his gaze to the door. “Santino, how’s Dante doin’?”
Santino paused, combed his fingers across his scalp. Anguish ripped through his stomach and dampened his mood. “Not so good,” he said. “Doctors are saying he may not make it.”
“Bullshit. Screw those butchers, you hear me?” Swifty remarked, pointing his sausage-sized fingers. “Your cousin’s a fuckin’ bull. Stubborn as one, too. He ain’t goin’ nowhere until he’s good and goddamn ready. Don’t you worry about Dante. He’ll come out stronger than when he went in.”
Santino nodded. “God willing. Appreciate it, Frankie.”
Nicky waited for a comfortable pause and then proceeded. “We want to let you enjoy the rest of your day, so let’s get down to business.”
Swifty pored over the room, the corners, the phone, out the windows. Felt like twenty minutes passed by the time he started speaking.
“The fuck you think you got? X-ray vision? I mean, c’mon,” Nicky said. “If the Feds planted a wire in here, you sure as hell ain’t gonna find it by gawkin’ from your seat.”
“Fuckin’ Feds. They’d wire my balls if they weren’t hanging between my legs. You can never trust ‘em. Let’s step out on the veranda.”
Frankie’s place was on the top floor with nothing overhead except blue horizon. If the Feds ever figured out how to wire the sky, they’d all be in trouble. Swifty was a new capo in his family and refused to be the weakest link. His paranoiac behavior, constant checking, refusal to have conversations in any place his people hadn’t swept for bugs at least twice a week, kept him off the Fed’s radar…or so he thought. “You need a sit-down with the Russians.”
“Yeah,” Nicky Mumbles said. “It’s out of our deepest respect for your business interests that I’m askin’ before we make a move.”
The concern on Swifty’s face was obvious. “Listen, I understand your issue. Under any other circumstances, if those Russkiy cocksuckers hit one of us, someone in our family? Heads would be rolling all over Brighton Beach. But every single family is drawing water from this well, including yours, and the Russians control the supply end,” Swifty said. “You’ve got a legitimate beef, but we need to keep the peace for the time being. Any move would bring a lot of heat from the Feds. We can’t afford any more indictments. We got millions tied up in business with those jerkoffs, and we can’t rock the boat.”
“Rock the boat?” Santino questioned, his simmering anger coming to a quick boil. “With all due respect, Frankie, this is my cousin we’re talkin’ about here. My family…mia famiglia.”
Nicky Mumbles glared at Santino. His look said, Shut your fucking yappin’. You’re talkin’ out of school.
“You know me and your uncle go away back, Santino. But we can’t step over dollars to pick up dimes here,” Swifty said. “If we were talkin’ chump change, I’d take ‘em out myself.”
“If not chump change, then what are we talkin’ here?” Nicky replied.
“Millions,” he said. “A hundred of ‘em.”
Santino glanced at Nicky. The response had taken aback both of them. With so much money on the line, forget about allegiance from the other families. Santino would have to avenge Dante’s shooting and ask for forgiveness later. Forget about permission. Wasn’t happenin’. Not then, not ever.
Santino seethed at Nicky, sitting there like a dead stump of wood, not giving two shits about his own boss’s son. Not until Santino checked his phone did Nicky speak up as if he had some skin in the game. “You grew up in the neighborhood, Frankie. There is no way in hell we can let this shit go. No way. And the pennies we earn from our little piece-of-shit cut, we can earn elsewhere, hai capito? The question is no longer whether we hit; it’s how and when.”
Swifty took a seat in his steel-enforced lawn chair and leaned back. “Nobody involved would have a problem with you roughin’ them up a little bit—injure ‘em, cripple ‘em, but you don’t kill ‘em. It’s not like they’re gonna run to the cops, but we can’t afford a street fight right now. With the Feds handing out indictments like two-cent candy, we gotta keep earning for the lean times, which are coming. I can feel it in my bones. So therein lies the compromise,” Swifty said.
The remark almost brought Santino to laughter. He didn’t know Swifty had bones.
“In the meantime, I'll arrange a sit down with Russians. They’ll cough up the shooter. We don’t want a war, but they don’t know that. We’ll work something out to our mutual benefit. A larger cut maybe.”
Nicky smiled and nodded.
At that moment, Nicky’s motivation became clear. He didn’t give a shit about Dante, but planned to use Dante’s shooting to get a bigger share of the Russians’ narcotics business.
Santino’s anger warmed him to the core; he thought a thousand words he dared not say. Nicky’s performance was pathetic. No loyalty to the boss, even with his nephew sitting next to him. His only concern was lining his pockets. Whatever front Nicky was putting up, Santino understood his true feelings and intentions. Until he got the order from Uncle Sal, he had to proceed with the sham, business as usual.
Before Santino spoke another word, his cell phone rang. His cousin Dree’s number flashed on the screen. He excused himself and stepped inside to the kitchen. “What’s goin’ on?” Santino whispered, his voice panicked. He asked Dree not to call unless Dante was about breathe his last. “I just left there a few hours ago. Is he okay?”
“He took a bad turn, but he pulled out of it,” she said. “That’s not what I’m calling you about, though. We got a visitor today. Blast from the past.”
“Who?”
“Tony,” she snarled. “Fuckin’ rat showed up here. Walkin’ in the room like the Lone fucking Ranger with some black chick. Large and in charge as if he gives a shit about what happens to this family.”
Santino let out a long sigh. Dree could hold a grudge longer and harder than any wise guy he’d ever tangled with.
“Listen,” she continued. “Dante survived the day, but you oughta pay another visit soon. He only made it through by the skin of his teeth. I…I don’t know if he’s gonna pull it off a second time.” Her voice cracked.
“You’ll be okay, Dree. Try to keep it together. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tomorrow.”
“It’s not fair that he’s lying here, fighting for his life, Santino. The cops called earlier. They got no idea who did this.” She sobbed, spilling over with emotion. “Find out who’s responsible, Santino. The son of a bitch has to pay for what he did to my baby brother.”
“Stop crying, Dree,” Santino said. “If you don’t believe anything else in his life, believe this: Whoever did this is gonna pay, if it’s the last thing I do.”
By the time Santino returned, Frankie and Nicky were shooting the breeze about the good ole days. Santino made his excuses and said his goodbyes.
Once inside his Mustang, he promptly dialed Tony’s phone number. He understood why Tony felt obligated to come to New York, but he had to warn him. He couldn’t stay. If Nicky got word that Tony came to town, there’d be little Santino or Uncle Sal could do to keep him safe, unless they took out Nicky Mumbles. And with the state of disarray following crippling d
rug busts and Uncle Sal moving to the halfway house, a hit from inside the family might deal a blow too powerful to recover from.
As the phone rang, he thought about ways to convince the world’s third most stubborn person (after Uncle Sal and himself) to leave the city when the mere suggestion was diametrically the opposite of anything he stood for.
After three rings, an empty space followed by noise in the background filled his ears.
“Hello?” Santino said.
No one spoke at first…and then a voice sounded. “Hey, Santino. I was just gettin’ ready to call you. I’ve got something important to tell you. Hold on and let me step to where it’s quiet.”
Santino waited…now he was on edge. What the hell did Tony have to say?
“Listen, I got some news today…about your, uhh, health.”
Santino jerked his head back and then cocked it to the side. “My health?”
“Yeah, meaning you might want to stay off the streets. Some people are looking for you. From the east.”
Santino cursed to himself. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Don’t worry about where I heard it. Just keep a low profile until I can get over to visit so we can talk. You still at pop’s place?”
“Yeah, but you can’t go there. It ain’t exactly Disney World around here for you, either. If anyone sees you here, it’s gonna cause major problems…for both of us.”
“Nobody even knows I’m in New York except you and pop’s people watching Dante. I’ll get with you tomorrow.”
“But, Ton’…you can’t—”
The rumble of his Mustang’s engine droned in Santino ear. He hung up the phone cursed Svetlana Mikhaylova, the dead leader of the Russian spy ring who’d introduced herself to him as Katherine. “I shouldn’t have trusted that cunt.” Falling into her trap was a mistake for which he very well might pay…with his life.
Chapter 17
Friday Afternoon — New York City
Tony blasted his radio as he cruised down the Bay Ridge Parkway through Bensonhurst, remembering his times in the old neighborhood. It was vastly different from D.C. where distinct lines had been drawn between residential and commercial streets. In New York, mom and pop shops weaved through the blocks like threads holding things together when community broke down. Grocery stores. Dry cleaners. Restaurants. Everything located on your street or around the corner. The thought made him nostalgic for his favorite pizza joint. Decided to stop by Originals for a slice before heading back to the city.