Although Vitteli had to sweat it out for a few days, there was nothing in Leo’s will or any other paperwork naming Carlotta as his heir apparent. So it was brought to the general membership for a vote.
Vitteli had recognized early on that he was unlikely to prevail in a fair fight. He’d get the vote of some of the old-timers who’d been in the trenches with him and still looked fondly on the “old ways of doing things.” But they were outnumbered by younger members, most of whom would throw in with Carlotta. He’d be able to buy a certain number of votes, but in the end it had taken what Barros euphemistically called “voting irregularities” to seal the deal.
Carlotta had looked stunned when the “final vote” was announced and Vitteli declared the winner. But he’d graciously conceded defeat and promised Vitteli he’d support his presidency. “At least until the next election,” he said with a slight smile, reaching out his hand to shake Vitteli’s.
Then fate, and bad engineering, again intervened. Just as the operators predicted, one of the new cranes had fallen while unloading a cargo ship when a sudden gust of wind whipped down the Hudson River at the wrong moment. Two men had been killed and four others seriously injured.
Carlotta had been incensed, though he took some of the blame upon himself because the old man’s death had distracted him from the crane issue. “Now we have two widows and kids without fathers, and four other families without breadwinners because we failed them,” he lamented. He insisted that the union hire an independent engineering firm to look at the cranes.
Vitteli had at first resisted. “Pay the benefits and let’s move on,” he ordered Jackie Corcione. But his rival had threatened to take his demand for an independent inspection to the members, so he gave in. Then he directed Barros to do whatever it took to bribe, blackmail, or, as it turned out, both to persuade the engineer who headed the study to come out with a favorable report. “The accident,” the married engineer, who had a penchant for young prostitutes, had written, “was not due to faulty engineering, but freak weather conditions and operator error.”
There’d been rumbling when the report came out and threats of walking out on the job by the crane operators. But Vitteli—through Barros—came down hard on the balky crane operators, threatening to find replacements for what was one of the highest-paid positions on the dock. They all stayed at their jobs.
When Vitteli announced the engineer’s report, Carlotta looked at him hard, but he kept his mouth shut, at least for a little while.
A week after the report was issued, Vitteli got a call from an informant he had with the U.S. Department of Labor’s office in Washington, D.C., that dealt with union issues. According to the caller, Carlotta and his hotshot lawyer, a young turk named Mahlon Gorman, had traveled to the capital that week to complain about the so-called voting irregularities and wanted advice on how to go about contesting the results.
The informant told Vitteli not to worry just yet. The Labor Department wouldn’t get involved because under the Landrum-Griffin Act such grievances had to be brought before the union first. Only when that remedy was exhausted would the department even consider stepping in. It was akin to telling chickens that they had to complain to the fox about his presence in the henhouse before talking to the farmer, but it was the law.
The day after Vitteli got the telephone call, Carlotta’s lawyer filed a formal grievance at union headquarters, demanding a hearing. Among the grievances, which Vitteli knew to be true, were that ballots had been sent to the far-flung locals without Carlotta’s name printed on them; there were also claims of good old-fashioned ballot stuffing. But Vitteli wasn’t as worried about what an investigation of the election results would reveal as what it might also uncover about what Barros called their retirement fund, a multimillion-dollar slush fund created by siphoning off union monies, as well as recent negotiations with the Malchek gang regarding use of the docks for their “import-export” business. If Carlotta eventually prevailed with the election, he was sure to look into Vitteli’s financial practices and the Malcheks, who’d already “invested” a lot of money in the retirement fund and wouldn’t be too happy about the deal collapsing.
There was only one thing to do. Eliminate the danger.
Barros had thought that Jackie would balk at the plan to kill Carlotta when Vitteli first talked to his henchman about it. “He ain’t got the balls for blood,” he’d scoffed.
However, Vitteli knew that Jackie Corcione feared prison and knew he wouldn’t last a month in that setting. He was right. After Vitteli spelled out what a victory by Carlotta would mean, Jackie decided to go along with the plan.
• • •
Puffing on the stogie, Vitteli looked at the two men around the table. “So when’s it supposed to happen now?” he asked around the edges of the cigar.
Barros shrugged. “Lvov was going to talk to the guy tonight,” he said. “Maybe he should do it away from the house.”
Vitteli blew a cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling, his dark eyes following the forms that swirled and dissipated like gray ghosts, before nodding. “I got an idea. Listen up,” he said as the other men drew closer. “This yahoo Russian hit man knows who he’s looking for, right? I mean, he’s not going to shoot Jackie here by mistake?”
Barros laughed. “We’d have to pay him extra,” he said. “Nah, he’s got that photo of the four of us from the convention in Atlantic City, the one where you circled Vince’s head. And now he’s seen him face-to-face, too. What are you getting at?”
Vitteli smiled. “A dead man and the perfect alibi.”
Two hours and several more beers apiece later, the men swaggered out of Marlon’s laughing loudly, except for Jackie, who looked pensive and hung behind the others. He quickly hailed a taxi and was gone, while Vitteli and Barros, along with Vitteli’s bodyguard, Sal Amaya, continued around the corner to find Vitteli’s black Cadillac.
“Started off nice today but, man, it’s frickin’ cold out now. Always fair and foul, eh?” Barros said, pulling his coat tighter as they approached three forlorn figures huddled around a fire they had going in a fifty-five-gallon drum at the entrance of an alley. “Well, what have we got here?”
As they drew closer, the three men realized that the creatures were women dressed in many layers of tattered clothing and threadbare coats. The women saw them, too, and two of them detached themselves from the fire and walked toward them, holding out their rag-covered hands.
“Good evening, gents, spare a dollar or two so three old women can get a bite to eat?” said one of the women as she brushed strands of frizzy gray hair away from her dirt-encrusted face.
“Beat it, you old hag,” Barros snarled. “You’d just spend it on a bottle of booze.”
“I’d tell you to go to hell,” the woman spat back. She waved at a large black woman, walking behind her. “But my friend says you’ll be there soon enough.”
As Vitteli and the gray-haired woman exchanged glares, the third woman, pale-skinned, said nothing but stood squinting at him. Then she pointed a finger at him.
“Well, what do you know? If it ain’t Charlie Vitteli,” she said and did a little curtsy. “It took a moment for my brain to clear, but all hail the king of the docks!” Her skinny lips pulled back in a grin, but the effect was horrifying, as she had only a few teeth left in her mouth. “Oh, and high executioner, I might add.”
Before Vitteli could respond, the black woman suddenly shouted, “ ’Tis time! ’Tis time!” She threw something on the fire that caused the flames to leap and hiss but then went back to mumbling to the flames and no one else.
The gray-haired woman who’d asked for money cackled and nodded toward her friend at the fire. “She’s from Jamaica and thinks she’s a witch. She’s casting a charm of powerful trouble.”
“Eye of newt, toe of frog . . . that sort of thing,” added the pale-skinned woman who’d addressed him as the king of the docks. “Nothing to worry your pretty head about, Charlie.”
Vitte
li scowled. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“Know me?” the woman asked. “No more than you would know the cockroaches on the sidewalks or the rats in the alley. But you should, you should. My name’s Anne Devulder. That ring a bell, King Vitteli?”
“No, never heard of you,” Vitteli answered. “Now get the hell out of my way. . . .”
“So kind he is, so just,” Devulder replied unflinching and unmoving. “Maybe it’s my first name that threw you. I’m Sean Devulder’s widow.”
Vitteli’s eyes narrowed. Sean Devulder was one of the crane operators who’d died. He nodded. “Good union man, Sean Devulder,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Anne Devulder rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Sean was a good union man through and through, for all the good it did him,” she said. “My old man told me what was going to happen, and then it did. He told you, too, but you ignored him and now he’s dead.”
“You didn’t turn down the life insurance check,” Barros growled.
Devulder ignored him and stepped closer to Vitteli to look up into his eyes. “Me and Sean had two kids,” she said. “I wasn’t in a position to be turning down nothing. Forty thousand dollars you paid—to raise two kids and make some sort of home for them and me.”
“Yeah? And why aren’t you home with your kids now?” Barros sneered.
The woman glanced down at the sidewalk and when she looked back up, tears were streaming down her face. “The state took them away,” she replied softly. “When Sean died, I turned to drink. We had a lot of bills and most of the money went to that. That was two years ago. I couldn’t get a job that paid anything so we lost our home and lived on the streets until the state took my kids from me, too. But they’re better off in a foster home than with me.”
Vitteli reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. He peeled off a twenty and held it out to her. “Get something to eat on me,” he said.
Devulder looked at the bill as if it was a snake. She stepped back and pointed again at his face. “The Devulders are done taking your blood money, Charlie Vitteli,” she said. “Curse you and this two-legged dog who does your dirty work. You’re king of the docks for now. But someday all you’ll be king of is a prison cell.”
Vitteli felt a chill ripple down his spine as Anne Devulder turned away from him to walk back to the fire. He was too stunned to move when the gray-haired woman rushed forward and snatched the bill from his hand.
“I’ll take that,” she said. “Think of it as payment for the fortune-telling.” With that, the woman scurried off to join the other two.
As though in a trance, Vitteli stood looking at the three women and at the dancing shadows on the alley wall behind them, cast there by the red and yellow flames. He didn’t move until Amaya tugged on his coat sleeve.
“Come on, boss, let’s go,” Amaya said. “The bitches are loony tunes.”
Vitteli shook his head as if trying to wake up. Then he laughed. “Jesus H. Christ,” he swore. “She had me going there for a moment. Shit, only in New York, eh?”
“Yeah, boss,” Barros said with a laugh. “Only in New York.”
3
VINCE CARLOTTA LOOKED AT HIMSELF in the mirror that hung on the wall of his study. He didn’t know what he was looking for, perhaps some outward sign of the malaise that had been dogging him for the past week or so. But what he saw were the same striking gray-green eyes set in a handsome, tanned face framed by a full head of wavy brown hair; he felt good physically, too, and worked out regularly to stay fit and trim.
According to the mirror, he was the picture of health—a good thing, as he needed to keep up with his young wife and infant son. Whatever ailed him couldn’t be seen. You’re just tired, he told himself. Between the election fraud, fighting with Vitteli, the old man’s death, and being the middle-aged father of an infant son and husband to an amorous young wife, you’re exhausted. And it’s affecting your mood.
Antonia entered the room and smiled. “The peacock is preening,” she teased. She spoke with a saucy hint of an Italian accent, which went well with her doe-like brown eyes, translucent skin, and Cupid’s bow lips. She had been a runway model from Naples working in New York when she and several friends had gone “slumming” in Hell’s Kitchen. He’d been with a table of male friends, and soon the two groups were commingled and he found himself talking to Antonia, hoping the night would never end.
A shy, confirmed bachelor, he’d never been any good at picking up girls at bars or even asking for their phone numbers, so he was surprised and delighted when this beautiful young woman, twenty years his junior, asked for his. The courtship had been fast and furious. She was a delightful mix of sass, class, sex, and intelligence, and he was as befuddled as all their friends that she seemed so completely enamored with him. It took him months to work up the nerve to ask her to marry him and her a second to think about it before saying yes.
Upon marrying, she immediately gave up her modeling career and started working on getting pregnant. Even then it took them a year, though not from a lack of trying. Finally, Vicente Paulito Carlotta Jr. was born, almost two years after their nuptials.
Vince had never thought much about having kids. His own experiences as an orphan bouncing from one relative’s house to the next, none of whom wanted an extra mouth to feed, had not been happy ones. He’d gone along with getting Antonia pregnant because that was what she wanted. And yet, once Vincent was born he learned a whole new kind of love.
“I wouldn’t want to embarrass you by looking like a slob in public,” Vince now replied to his wife.
Antonia laughed and walked over to stand in front of him. She reached up to straighten his tie. “Little chance of that, my Prince Charming who all the women want,” she said lightly but then frowned. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
Vince reached up and took her hands in his. “I wish I didn’t have to either,” he said. “But it’s important. Charlie called and said he wants to bury the hatchet. . . .”
“He wants to bury it in your back,” she retorted.
“Probably, but I still need to hear what he wants to say,” Vince said. “He knows he’s going to lose if the Labor Department looks at the election results. He might be trying to save face, and maybe prison time, by offering to step down from the presidency.”
“I think he would rather die than lose to you,” Antonia said. “I don’t trust him; he has cuore nero.”
“A black heart,” Vince translated. “I think you’re giving him too much credit; I don’t think he has a heart. But he does have an ego, and if he thinks he’s going to lose, he’ll want to work out some sort of deal. He’s really not the confident guy he likes to project; he gets by on a lot of bravado.”
“But why meet at Marlon’s? And why at night?”
Vince shrugged. “Charlie’s still one of those old-school guys who likes to work things out over beer and cigars.” He let go of her hands, leaned down, and kissed her. “Don’t worry, my love,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen. Marlon’s will have a crowd. Randy will be there and he’s nobody anybody wants to fu—sorry, to mess with. Besides, Vitteli’s too smart to throw his life away over who gets to be union president.”
Antonia stuck out her lower lip. “I still don’t like it. Joey Barros scares me.”
“Joey’s bark is worse than his bite, and that dog doesn’t even bark unless his master tells him to,” Vince replied. “I expect Charlie will have him muzzled.”
Vince walked over to his big wooden desk. As he picked up his car keys and wallet, he noticed a pad of yellow sticky notes next to the telephone. FPB 8196. He thought for a moment, pulled the top sheet from the pad, and put it in his wallet.
“What’s that?” his wife asked.
“Nothing,” Vince replied as he slipped the wallet into his coat pocket.
“Don’t tell me ‘nothing’ when I see you thinking about something,” she replied.
“It’s the license plate number of those jokers who c
ame to the door the other night,” he said.
“Did they ever come to the union office to sign up?”
Vince shook his head. “No. At least not that I know of; but they could have tried to get on down at the docks and I just haven’t seen the paperwork yet.”
Antonia squinted at him suspiciously. “Then why do you need the license number?”
“It’s just a precaution,” he said. “I heard there were a few break-ins in the neighborhood recently. I was going to give it to the police. Don’t worry, the cops have really stepped up patrols, so I’m sure whoever was behind the burglaries is long gone. But maybe the license number will help.”
Antonia studied his face for a minute. “You are a terrible liar, Vicente Paulito Carlotta, and you shouldn’t even try,” she accused him. “But I trust you know what you’re doing. Just be careful, my darling.”
“I will,” he said, kissing her again. “Don’t wait up.”
Antonia pouted again, only playfully this time. “You know I can’t go to sleep until I feel your warm naked body next to mine,” she purred.
Vince looked up and crossed himself. Dear Jesus, please let this meeting be short so that I can find myself in bed next to the naked body of this beautiful young woman, grazie, he prayed.
A minute later, he was out the door, where his driver, Randy McMahon, met him in a Lincoln sedan. Leaving New Rochelle, they headed southwest on the Hutchinson River Parkway, connected to the Henry Hudson Parkway and drove down the West Side into Manhattan. As they traveled, Carlotta thought again about the license plate number in his wallet and the three men who’d come to his house.
That night after he watched the old sedan with its three odd passengers roll away, he frowned and closed the door, locking it and throwing the heavy deadbolt. Only then had he relaxed his grip on the .380 semiautomatic he had in his pants pocket.
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