A hatless vagrant with a toothless grin stood next to him. They both started toward the corner where the sputtering man was already being helped to his feet. The vagrant picked up a small brightly-wrapped parcel and handed it to the tourist. He turned to walk away, water beading on his scruffy beard.
Scarne handed him the Tote.
“Be careful with it,” he said. “It’s got a hair trigger.”
***
It was 4 PM when Scarne got back to his office. Evelyn was paying bills.
“Any calls?”
“Just Dudley. He wanted to know about Sunday dinner.”
Scarne motioned Evelyn into his office and filled her in on the lunch and the incident at the church. She took notes to be transcribed later onto a computer and copied to a flash drive, a routine followed for both legal and billing reasons. But Scarne also wanted to leave a trail, especially for Dudley, should something happen to him. Evelyn wasn’t happy about the church thing.
“Do you think it had something to do with you and Shields?”
“I don’t know. It’s a stretch, unless someone knew I was meeting him, and that would have had to come from him. I’ll check it out. It could also be a hangover from an old case, or something else I’m working on now.”
Evelyn’s mouth turned down slightly.
“I don’t suppose it was an angry husband. He didn’t shoot you, after all.”
“Book me a flight into Miami Tuesday or Wednesday. Then go home. It’s turned nasty out there.”
“It has?” She smiled sweetly. “I didn’t notice.”
After Evelyn left, Scarne dialed Dudley Mack’s cell. Got a message. He called another number. A husky and familiar voice answered.
“Mack-Sambuca Funeral Home. How may I be of assistance?” Very proper.
“I kill ‘em, you chill ‘em,” Scarne replied.
“Jake, how are they hanging! Where you been? I was just talking to Alice about you.” Not very proper. Scarne laughed, as he always did when the “real” Laura Mack came out to play.
“Is your miscreant brother around?”
“Oh, Deadley’s somewhere, being a miscreant, whatever the fuck that means. When are you gonna learn to speak English? Did you try his cell?”
“No answer. Left a message”
“Probably getting a nooner. Want me to track him down. Be my pleasure.”
“Good God, no,” Scarne laughed. “Just tell him I’m on for dinner Sunday.”
“Great. We can catch up on our sex lives.”
“I’m afraid you and Alice will be doing most of the talking.”
“You better believe it. Hey, did you hear me and Bobo are an item?”
“Bobo?”
“Don’t be a snot. I could do worse. And have. See you Sunday, sweetie.”
CHAPTER 6 – MARIA BRUTTI
Garza didn’t like to kill women, let alone this woman. If he’d had more time to plan the operation, perhaps he could have avoided it. But Victor was insistent. Their West Coast clients had to be distracted, and quickly. The big Australian was getting more reckless.
From long experience Garza knew hasty actions often backfired. They were dealing with some very dangerous people. He’d thought about taking his concerns to Alana. Christian had never warmed to her, but Garza had come to respect her judgment. Ballantrae had specifically told him to keep her out of the loop on this one. Something had changed in their relationship. It was obvious that they were no longer having sex. But it went deeper than that. Ballantrae had fallen in love with her. Now spurned, he was listening to her less and less. As ruthless and calculating as Alana had proven to be, she had somehow managed to rein in Victor’s more impulsive propensities. And the simple truth was that it was usually Alana’s coups that were the most profitable and least risky.
Garza sighed and rubbed his shoulder as he followed the woman out to the parking lot. I hope it’s not a rotator cuff. I’ll never make fun of Christian and his Pilates again. One class and I can feel it. That instructor must have trained with the Green Berets. I must be getting old. He put on his gloves.
***
Maria Brutti was tired. Perhaps Pilates three times a week was a bit much, especially after teaching recalcitrant fifth graders all day. But her husband was proud of her. She lifted the rear hatch of her S.U.V. and threw in her gym bag. Carlo thought she was crazy. Which was funny. Because her brother was crazy, though she loved him. He liked the way she looked as is, probably because she reminded him of their mother, who died young and still beautiful. Maria knew she was attractive, but would not consider herself beautiful until she lost the 15 pounds her last (definitely the last) baby had added to her frame. Seven more pounds to go.
“Maria, you dropped your wallet in the locker room!”
She turned toward the voice and saw a man in a black sweat suit running up to her holding something in his hand. She strained to make out his face. It was the good-looking Spanish guy who had worked out next to her. It was his first time and she had given him some help with his form. They had chatted amiably and he said he was going to sign up again. She waved hello and then instinctively looked down and started going through her pocketbook. What was his name? She was always doing that. Exchanging names and then forgetting the other person’s. So lame, especially when they remembered yours.
Her wallet was right where it was supposed to be.
“I have my wallet,” she said. “It must belong to someone else.”
Only then did she wonder why he hadn’t checked the name in the wallet. But it was too late.
“I know,” Garza said. “I’m sorry, but it won’t hurt much.”
He quickly and expertly drove the ice pick through the fabric of her sweat suit under her left breast and into her heart, up to its hilt. He caught her as she sagged and lifted her into the back of the vehicle, grunting at the pain in his shoulder. As she fell back she said, “My babies.”
Garza grimaced as he took her car keys, still clenched in her hand. He gently folded the body into the back around a small child’s car seat.
“You had to say that. As if I didn’t feel bad enough about this already.”
He left the ice pick in her. It was a common tool in the area where she would be found. As the hatch closed Maria Brutti’s last conscious thought was not of her children or husband, but of Carlo, who had protected her from their schoolyard days.
***
Garza drove the dead woman’s S.U.V. from the parking lot. Like most suburban mom vehicles it was filled with the detritus of childrearing: hand wipes, empty juice boxes, animal crackers, Star Wars figures, plush toys, games and enough electronic gadgets to manage a nuclear war.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he said to the dead body in the rear.
Since it was Seattle, of course it had started to rain. The roads were slick and he drove cautiously. An accident wouldn’t do. He’d be hard pressed to convince a cop that Maria Brutti had died in a fender bender. The rain got heavier, which actually worked to his advantage. He doubted there would be anyone out and about in the dock area.
When he pulled up to the warehouse next to the pier 20 minutes later the area was deserted. The only sounds, other than the steady patter of rain, were from straining hawsers and lapping waves. The building itself was dark. He would have been surprised by the apparent lack of security but for the fact he knew who owned the warehouse. Nobody in their right mind would trespass.
There were several large containers lined up along the dock. He hoisted Maria Brutti up over the side of one of them. It smelled of fish. She landed inside with a sickening thud. Then he drove back to the gym parking lot and parked next to his rental.
Garza checked the back of the S.U.V. Not a drop of blood. He wasn’t worried about any other fibers or D.N.A. There wasn’t a forensic scientist on the planet who could find anything incriminating among the stains and crumbs in that S.U.V. The police – and her brother – would assume Maria had been snatched after her class.
&n
bsp; Garza was starving. He got into his own car and let the on-board G.P.S. system guide him to Eliot’s Oyster House. He had programmed the unit before heading to the gym. He was sore and wet. Nothing a dry martini couldn’t fix.
***
Garza assumed Maria Brutti’s body would be discovered almost immediately and given its location her brother would draw the obvious conclusion. The assumption was wrong. Busy dockworkers didn’t notice the corpse and the container in which she lay was filled with a load of iced fish. It was almost a full day later when a worker culling the catch inside the warehouse stuck his hook into one of her legs. The delay, which normally would be of no import, would prove catastrophic to the Ballantrae organization, validating Garza’s misgivings about hastily planned operations.
CHAPTER 7 – THE WILD EAST
“Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime,” Dudley Mack said after Scarne told him about the Ballantrae case. “Balzac.”
It was cool on the deck but it felt like spring was finally gaining a toehold.
“Stop showing off,” Scarne said, warily watching his friend fiddle with the pilot lights on a gas grill the size of the USS Nimitz. “I know who said it. Behind a lot of small fortunes too.”
“Well,” the big Irishman said with a wolfish grin. “I try.” He kicked the gas canister beneath the grill. “Come on, you son of a bitch. I just replaced you.”
Scarne leaned down and turned the tank’s handle and was rewarded with a confirming hiss.
“Thanks, Cochise. I was just about to do that. What do you make of the old man’s story?”
“I don’t know what to think. I like the guy, and he’s obviously hurting. But it all seems so improbable. There’s probably a rational explanation to all his suspicions. What do you think? Other than quoting dead French novelists?”
“My gut tells me Shields is on to something. So does yours. That’s why you took it on.”
“He’s paying me $20,000 and promised me as much as I need.”
“Irrelevant, to you, I’m sorry to say. Most guys wouldn’t take five times that to get on the Randolph Shields shit list. You didn’t get a good look at the guy in the church?”
“Blonde hair, light skin and quicker than a lap dance in one of your Jersey Shore dives.”
Scarne was getting distracted by the continuing gas hiss.
“Turnover, my boy. It’s all about turnover.” Mack started scraping the grill. “Kind of funny coming right after meeting Shields. I’m not crazy about coincidences. What the hell were you doing in St. Christopher’s anyway? Oh, yeah. That’s where you and Kate… A trip down memory lane, huh. Nostalgia is dangerous, Jake. Guys who look back never see who kills them. Course, you getting aced in a church is as likely as my ex-wives dying in a kitchen.”
“He didn’t seem to want to do me any harm.”
“Just the same, I’d be careful. Want to borrow Bobo a couple of days?”
Scarne shook his head and poured himself some bourbon from the Maker’s Mark bottle kept expressly for his visits. Mack’s usual pitcher of martinis sat on the rail near the grill. Scarne had made an early ferry, hoping to catch Patricia Mack in the kitchen so he could snare some fried meatballs before they went into the sauce. For some unknown reason Dudley’s Irish mother excelled at Italian cooking. Dinner would start at 2 P.M. and last into the evening.
“Well, watch your ass. If it’s connected to the Miami thing, that means you’re already in somebody’s sights.”
“You just watch that damn grill,” Scarne said. “It’s filling with gas. We’re going to wind up in low orbit.”
Mack pushed the starter. The grill whooshed to life explosively, sending him staggering backwards across the deck.
“Son of a bitch!”
The kitchen window off the deck opened.
“What in the name of God was that?”
“Nothing, Ma,” Mack said, laughing. “Grill’s ready. Send out the steaks.”
I’ll get them,” Scarne said as the window slammed shut. “Try not to immolate yourself.”
“You try to leave the rest of us some fuckin’ meatballs.”
After returning with a huge platter of steaks, Scarne watched Mack lovingly prepare the rib-eyes with a variety of his “special” sauces and rubs before consigning them to the fire. Dudley Mack was a carnivore of the first order. When home, he usually could be found searing some kind of meat. Year round. One Super Bowl Sunday, wearing a snow parka, he grilled in near-zero temperatures in a blizzard. Even the family dogs, fierce-looking creatures straight out of a Jack London novel, refused to venture out of the house, scraps or no scraps. Scarne now reminded him of the incident.
“No sense owning stupid dogs,” Dudley said.
The hounds of the Super Bowl had long since departed into legend but two fierce creatures that resembled wolves were now watching their master’s every move. He flipped the steaks. When they were done, he cut off some big chunks and put them in a bowl that he set on the railing. The dogs, which had started to stand, eased back down. The rest of the steaks went on a fresh platter.
“Feed the boys their meat after it cools. I have to give these to Mom. She finishes them in the oven. It’s her secret thing.”
Scarne leaned back on the railing and filched a cigarette from Mack’s pack. The dogs followed the big platter, but once the sliding door closed returned to their new best friend.
“You guys are easy,” he said, looking at the Mack residence.
The house was a reflection of its owner. There was more to it than met the eye. It sat on a one-acre parcel on Howard Avenue in Grymes Hill, just down the street from both Wagner College and the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University. From the street, the dwelling was unremarkable, with the appearance of a large brick ranch. In fact, it was three levels deep in the back, as the property sloped down a heavily forested hill to Van Duzer Street 100 feet below. The third, or top, floor contained a living room, dining room, kitchen, library, master bedroom and two baths. A 40-by-80-foot deck supported by 30-foot steel beams jutted out of the hillside. One could jump from the deck to the top of 70-foot trees, if suicidally inclined. One of the highest points on the east coast from Maine to Florida, it was cool in the summer, and on a clear day the view was remarkable, stretching from Coney Island and the Verrazano up the Narrows to the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan. The middle level of the house contained three bedrooms, two more baths and a 3,000-bottle hermetically controlled wine cellar. The bottom level had a game room and small cabana and bath that opened out to an in-ground pool on a rock promontory set away from the house to catch the sun.
***
Jake Scarne and Dudley Mack met as juniors at Providence College, a small liberal arts school run by the Dominican Order. Both their families separately hoped the good friars would have a salutary effect on the wild boys.
They initially despised each other. “Deadly” Mack – as he was known to friends and foes alike – was the chief enforcer on the varsity hockey team that frequented the saloon Scarne managed for one of his relatives after school. It was his job to maintain a semblance of order in the bar. After a few drinks, Mack liked to hit people. One night he punched Scarne, who was trying to evict him. Scarne’s temper, legendary in Montana, finally made its eastern debut. Although outweighed by his beefy opponent, Scarne fought him to a memorable “no decision” that left both battered before Mack’s friends, who didn’t want to be barred from their favorite watering hole, broke it up.
Mack, never one to let sleeping dogs lie, came back a week later for a rematch. It was early Monday night, typically slow, and he figured he’d have Scarne all to himself. When he walked in, he found his nemesis already being pummeled by four sailors. One of them, face bloodied, had Scarne’s arms pinned so the others could use him as a punching bag. None of the winos in the bar was inclined to interfere. Mack did, on general principles. The boys won but wound up on adjoining chairs in the local emergency room.
“Nice fucking
bar you run,” Mack said, “Every time I walk in, I get the shit kicked out of me.” He extended his hand. “Dudley Mack.”
“Jake Scarne.” They shook hands, and both winced in pain and laughed.
“I owe you” Scarne said. “I was about to be turned into hamburger. What were you doing there?”
“I came in specifically to kick your ass. I didn’t know I had to take a ticket. What’s the deal with the Atlantic Fleet?”
“Great minds think alike,” Scarne said, smiling. “I threw them out last week too. Listen, we should soak these hands in ice. I know just the place.”
Dudley Mack now had those hands in most of the illegal activities on Staten Island, which because of its longtime isolation from the other boroughs, had developed a small town culture alien to the rest of “the city.” As college buddies do, Mack and Scarne visited each other’s home turf. Mack spent a summer working construction on the reservation in Montana, where he became a favorite with the local lunatics, one of whom even taught him how to scalp. (That would come in handy on one still unsolved occasion back home.) And Staten Island became Scarne’s home away from home during and after college, especially after his grandparents died. He dubbed it “the Wild East.”
For most of its history, Staten Island had been a bucolic refuge from the grime and crime of the greater metropolis, ignored by the Manhattan elite. It became a haven for city workers, especially police and fire officers, lured by affordable single-family homes that had plenty of room and land for kids to grow. It also attracted mobsters for the same reasons. The Island’s cops and resident robbers were equally intolerant of local crime and violence was a rarity. That began to change in 1964 with the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connecting the borough to Brooklyn and the rest of the world. Political corruption became rampant, fueled by the easy money in a real estate boom that rapidly made much of Staten Island unlivable.
In the decades following the opening of the “guinea gangplank,” as Mack delighted in calling the bridge in Scarne’s presence, the Island’s population quadrupled to almost half a million people. (In fact, many of the hundreds of thousands of post-bridge “immigrants” flooding the borough were Italian-Americans fleeing the crowded and racially charged confines of Brooklyn and Queens.) Unscrupulous developers crammed townhouses on top of townhouses. Huge swaths of the Island fell to the bulldozers of builders whose every project was approved, thanks to bags of cash exchanged in Hero Park on a bench next to a marble tablet listing the names of honored war dead from Staten Island. The money eventually wound up in Caribbean banks or Florida condos. In return for unbridled development, scarring of pristine hillsides, traffic snarls, crumbling roads and the obliteration of centuries-old neighborhoods, Staten Islanders were granted free ferry service. The politicians who orchestrated the carnage named the ferries after themselves.
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