The Pierre Hotel Affair

by Daniel Simone

  But to the burglars’ shock, the homeowner stepped through the bathroom door naked and walked face-to-face into Sacco, her breasts bumping into his chest. Sacco wound his arm loosely around Ms Baker’s slim waist, pulled a sheet off the unmade bed, and draped it over her. But an oddity astounded him and Marino. The walls in this bedroom were painted black; the windows covered with black curtains, and if all lights were turned off the room would’ve been darker than an abyss. Then something unimaginable overcame the two burglars; they saw an open but empty coffin lying abreast the foot of the king-size bed.

  “What the fuck!” Marino blurted, visibly shaken from the ghoulish sight.

  CHAPTER 85

  Nick Sacco and John Marino, affected by the macabre spectacle of the coffin, were winded as if they’d seen the devil before them. The Cat reshuffled the sheet he had thrown over Ms. Baker so her head was uncovered. “I don’t know what you got goin’ in here, but all I want you to do is to open the goddamn safe you’ve got somewhere in this bedroom.” The voluptuous widow didn’t seem fazed by the trespassers, probably because of how gingerly Sacco had handled her.

  She nodded at the nightstand beside the bed. “It’s in there.”

  “Well, open it.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  That baffled Sacco. “If you know what’s good for you, open it.”

  “What if I don’t know what’s good for me?”

  Marino closed in on Ms. Baker, and raised his gun high over his shoulder as though he were about to wallop her on the head. Sacco quickly moved in front of her as a shield. “Hold it, hold it.” He then said to Ms. Baker, “Look I don’t wanna see you hurt, but this kid is like a bull in a china store. See how big he is? Sometimes I can’t control him. So do me a favor and please open the safe.”

  Ms. Baker stared audaciously at Sacco, and he perceived a faint smirk on her lips. “All right, I’ll open the safe.” She looked at Sacco as if she were undecided about something. “On one condition. If you guarantee me that you’ll take what you came here for, and go without touching me.”

  I sure would love to touch you. “I personally guarantee we won’t lay a hand on you.”

  Give or take $840,000 in gems and platinum wares were in the safe, and Sacco emptied it. He then carefully handcuffed Ms. Baker to the bedpost, Marino cut the phone lines, and they fled, the ghastly impression of the casket causing goose bumps on their skin.

  “What the fuck is this weird bitch doin’ with a coffin in her bedroom? And those black walls and curtains,” Marino said warily.

  Sacco shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m gonna talk to the insurance broker. He might know what that’s all about.”

  Sacco, who seldom sold his spoils to fences, consigned Ms. Baker’s Tiffany collection to a jeweler on Canal Street, who later paid him sixty percent of the gem’s $840,000 trading value. It was a hell of a score, and he should’ve been reveling in it. But incompatibilities with his wife, who was afflicted by an acute bipolar condition, had corroded the marriage. She was combative and irrational, and arguments exploded every night, emotionally scarring the children. One night, Sacco came home late, and realized he had forgotten his house key on the kitchen counter earlier that afternoon. “Great! Now I gotta wake her up.” He rang the bell. No answer. He rang it again, this time repeatedly. A minute passed, and he could see a light through the top window of the door. “Phew. She’s up.”

  The safety chain clanged, and Nora opened the door. “Why the fuck did you wake me up? And where have you been ‘til two o’clock in the morning?” The bipolar disorder had worsened since she gave birth to the first baby, a typical side effect, and her once serene countenance had soured to that of a witch. As it is not unusual for a bipolar sufferer to be in denial of his or her mental flaw, Nora was adamant about medical intervention and treatment, which was viable and available. “You have no consideration for anyone. You think everybody has to be at your beck and call,” she ranted on. Without fail, she’d cast blame on anyone she interacted with, one of the symptoms of that illness.

  “I forgot my keys. Sorry.”

  “What whore have you been with? Aha?”

  “I wasn’t with a whore, but maybe I should’ve been.”

  Nora saw red, and at a meager five-foot-five had the gall to slap her husband across the cheek, blood bubbling in his nostrils. But it wasn’t courage; in that moment, she was in the upswing stage of the bipolar cycle, a phase in which an overdose of adrenaline had altered her chemical balance, distorting her perception of invincibility. Sacco tried to squeeze into the doorway, and she clocked him a second, a third, and a fourth time. He shoved Nora aside, but she tugged at the tails of his jacket, tearing one. “You son of a bitch, you’re out with whores all hours of the night, and then you got the balls to wake me up,” she bawled at the loudest capacity of her lungs.

  It took discipline for Sacco to ignore her provocations and not smack her. Furnari’s slogan came to mind: A real man doesn’t beat his wife; he just kills her. But the Cat didn’t have it in him to do either. Not to disturb the neighbors in the attached brownstones, he closed the door and locked it. As usual, Nora’s cantankerous banter wakened the little girls. “See? You ain’t happy ’til one of the kids hears you. If you wanna take out on me whatever goes on in that sick mind of yours, that’s fine. But why do you have to put the children through it?” he went to his daughter’s nursery, looked into her crib, and embraced the toddler, kissing her. “It’s all right. Don’t cry. Mommy doesn’t feel good. It’s okay.”

  And that was exemplary of how Sacco’s household would erupt on any given day. But what could he do? He wouldn’t consider leaving the girls, not in the hands of a woman whose volatility was as ignitable as dynamite. He had one alternative: to play it day by day. Maybe she’ll get medical help.

  But for now, Nora’s emotional instability and the unpredictability of her pendulum mood swings, were a distraction to Sacco, and a detriment to his distraught children.

  NICK SACCO

  I tried everything to make my wife happy and keep her from going off the handle. It got to the point where I couldn’t think straight, and that meant I couldn’t plan a job. When I did a robbery, I had every little detail worked out. That’s why I never got pinched. But if my head wasn’t clear and straight, I was handicapped. So I decided not to do anything until I figured out how I could get Nora to understand she had to go for help. It was a blessing that I could afford to stay on the sidelines.

  But unlike me, John Marino needed a score, and now this bungling rookie was on his own. And God forbid John should get caught, he had no stomach; he was all bark and no bite, and who knew how he’d take it if he were looking at thirty years in a federal joint. One thing Christie Furnari always said, “If you’re gonna pull off a crime, either do it alone, or do it with someone you trust enough to be your codefendant. Because if the shit hits the fan, you don’t wanna get locked up with someone who’ll rat you out to save himself.”

  CHAPTER 86

  John Marino, a five-foot-eight, two-hundred-pounder in his twenties, who had more muscles than brains, broke into a mansion in Sands Point, Long Island. The private police of that upscale village arrested him for burglary and possession of an illegal weapon. Marino, who had the shape of a refrigerator, was booked at Nassau County Police Headquarters in Mineola, and because he was armed during the commission of the burglary, the district attorney upgraded the charges to a Class A felony.

  “Judging by what we got on you, you’re in deep shit, John,” Detective Peter Van Holt said to Marino, who, ruffled and scared, didn’t hold out too long before folding his stoic pretense. Van Holt, blond-headed and beer-bellied, dangled a document in front of the prisoner’s face. “This here, Johnnie Boy, is a criminal complaint and sworn affidavit from the arresting officer who got you red-handed.” He spat his chewing gum into a waste basket underneath his desk. “Yeah, you’re going way for a long time.”

  Submissively, the neophyte burglar
had been staring at his shoes, knowing the charges he was burdened with were indefensible. Scared of the rigors inside a penitentiary, eyes glossy with fear, he looked upward at the tallish, blue-eyed Van Holt. “Can we work somethin’ out?”

  “Like what?”

  “I can tell you some things about this guy, Nick Sacco. He’s a burglar. They call him ‘the Cat.’” Marino was about to inform on someone who had been mentoring him, and a spell of repentance wedged a lump in his throat.

  Van Holt popped another stick of gum in his mouth. “I don’t know of him, but if this Sacco is a two-bit burglar, I don’t want to waste my time.”

  John Marino, handcuffed to a radiator, shook his head as if the detective couldn’t have been more mistaken. “Oh no, he’s not a small-time thief. The Cat is plugged into the Lucchese people,” he said, his voice a bit higher. “And sometimes he works with ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno.”

  This is organized crime, and Sacco might be a big fish. “Let me look into this, Johnnie Boy.” Outward, Van Holt didn’t seem too interested; inward, his adrenaline had spiked as if he had just hit a jackpot. He then said to his partner. “I’ll go to my office to make some calls and see who this Nick Sacco is. Watch our friend here.”

  It was warm in the airless, non-air-conditioned station house, and Van Holt’s partner loosened his tie and vented his face with a folded newspaper. “What’re you know about Sacco?”

  “A lot,” Marino answered in clipped words as though he wasn’t willing to delve into it deeper unless it’d be to his favor.

  Van Holt’s inquiries with the NYPD resulted in a mouth-watering discovery. Nick “the Cat” Sacco was a person of interest whom the NYPD presumed to have ties to Lucchese Consigliere Christie “the Tick” Furnari. The detective, jubilant, rushed back to his office, an ear-to-ear smile on his flabby face. “Johnnie Boy, we may have something here. Mr. Sacco is known to the NYPD. They say he’s an armed robber.” He sat on his desk and faced Marino, who for the past two hours, still cuffed to the radiator, hadn’t been able to stand. Van Holt nodded the way one does when light begins to shine on an elusive solution. “So Johnnie Boy, what can you tell me about your buddy Sacco?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Aha!” Van Holt yapped as if he had the right answer for Marino. “If you can give me enough information to arrest Sacco for a crime he committed here in Nassau County, I’ll recommend to the DA to put a plea deal on the table for you.”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “Well, as things stand you’ll get convicted of armed robbery, and you already have a nice rap sheet. So it’ll be bye-bye Johnnie Boy for a loooong time. But if what you got on Sacco is juicy, I think I can get you a plea to a misdemeanor, and ninety days in the county jail. Now you can handle that. Right?”

  Marino, whose brow was pleated like the head of a bulldog, didn’t seem quite ready to take the plunge.

  “I’m giving you back your life, and I can’t believe you have to think about that,” Van Holt said.

  “Yeah, I’ll take that,” Marino answered.

  Of course, the fledgling burglar gladly jumped at three months in the county jail versus twenty-five years in a Supermax prison. And Van Holt began debriefing Marino. The detective, eagerness in his movements, set up a tape recorder on his desk, and switched it on. “So where do we start, Johnnie Boy?”

  Marino asked for a glass of water and a cigarette. Halfway through a Lucky Strike, the jitters subsided, as did his remorse. “Three months ago, Sacco and me robbed a woman’s house out here on Long Island. She was home when we walked into the house and had to take her at gunpoint.”

  This is an excellent start. “Do you know the victim’s name?” Van Holt asked.

  “Lauren Baker,” Marino answered in a low voice.

  “What’s her address?”

  “I don’t know the address, but I can show you where it is.”

  NICK SACCO

  I read about Marino in the papers. I talked it over with Furnari, and the first thing he said was to whack him. Furnari wasn’t just worried about me; if Marino flipped, the ripples could wash over the Lucchese consigliere as well. I could’ve asked Frankos to kill Marino, and the Greek would’ve done it in a minute. But I didn’t want to take that route. I never hurt or murdered anybody, and I wasn’t about to start now. I had to sit tight and hope Marino would be a man and take his lumps without taking anybody down with him.

  CHAPTER 87

  The Nassau County Robbery Squad inducted John Marino in the “stoolies den of rats,” and he detailed to Detective Van Holt his and Sacco’s violation at Lauren Baker’s home.

  “And where can we find Mr. Sacco, Johnnie Boy?” asked Van Holt.

  “He lives in Brooklyn on 18th Avenue. I don’t know the number of the house, but I’d recognize it if I saw it.”

  Van Holt swore out a warrant. But in compliance to protocol, in order to arrest Sacco he had to obtain permission from the captain of New York’s 70th Precinct, which had jurisdiction in the section of Brooklyn where the Cat resided. It was 1:00 A.M. and raining. Sacco lived on the second floor of a brownstone, and one of Van Holt’s cops rang his bell. The Cat was not asleep and tramped down the stairs to see who could’ve been calling so late at night.

  He opened the door, and based on Marino’s descriptions Van Holt knew who was standing before him. He showed Sacco his gold badge. “Nick Sacco, I’m Detective Van Holt from Nassau County. These other officers are from NYC’s 70th Precinct. I guess you know why we’re here.”

  “Am I supposed to know why you’re here? What is this, a riddle?”

  “Does a Lauren Baker from Hewlett ring a bell?”

  “I haven’t got the foggiest idea what you’re talkin’ about. But what’re you want from me?”

  “I’m arresting you for armed robbery, possession of an illegal weapon, and unlawful captivity.”

  Sacco didn’t speak another word; a hardened felon knows not to make any statements to the authorities if he is the target of an investigation. And smartly, he didn’t resist and complied with Van Holt’s body search. At the 70th Precinct, detectives fingerprinted Sacco and detained him overnight. Within twenty-four hours, the Nassau County district attorney forwarded the necessary paperwork to extradite him to that county.

  Sacco was arraigned in district court in Hempstead, Long Island, and remanded to the Nassau County Jail without bail. His lawyer drafted a motion for reconsideration of bail, and the arraigning judge granted it, setting the hearing two weeks thenceforth. In the interim, Van Holt scheduled a lineup in which Sacco would be placed on display for Ms. Baker.

  Three days into the county jail, and at 6:00 A.M., four deputy sheriffs removed Sacco from his cell, and wrists and ankles shackled, transported him to police central booking where the lineups were conducted. Van Holt sent one of his underlings to call on Ms. Baker and chauffeur her to the station house. The woman’s sweet perfume heralded her as she made her entrance into central booking, tempting the gawks of the wishful cops who would’ve given the world to this stunning hunk of a female, if only they could have her for one night.

  “I’m Detective Peter Van Holt, Ms. Baker.”

  “Under these circumstances, I’m not so pleased to meet you,” Lauren Baker said, extending a hand bent at the wrist for the detective to take, her bracelets jingling.

  Van Holt seemed a bit flustered by the elegantly dressed brunette, whose complacent demeanor suggested financial comfort and culture. “This won’t take long, Madame.”

  The lineup was soon underway, and Ms. Baker’s alluring hazel eyes skipped from one suspect to the other, five in all. She scanned the quintet of figures behind the one-way glass window, noting the height markings in inches on the backdrop wall. The tallest of the subjects, who had the number two tag pinned onto his chest, was the second from the left. He was six-foot-two and solid. And handsome. As Ms. Baker’s gaze swept from left to right scanning the suspects, Van Holt saw her pausing on number two. “Ms. Bak
er, do you see anyone in the lineup who might’ve been the robber?”

  “I . . . I can’t be sure.”

  Van Holt said, “Take all the time you need. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Tea, please.”

  Tea was not on hand at central booking, and Van Holt sent for it. Lauren Baker considered the five men, who were now fiddling restlessly, twitching and scratching. She stole another glance at number two. Van Holt said, “I’ll have these characters turn sideways. That may help you.” Through the intercom system, he directed, “All right you guys, turn to the right.” And to impress Ms. Baker, he joked, “C’mon fellas, show your Alfred Hitchcock profiles.”

  As the five men turned, number two had a unique feature that Ms. Baker immediately distinguished, his aquiline nose. A delivery boy carried into the room her fuming-hot tea on a tray, and she took it with her lotion-softened hand, her pinkie jutting into the air. She slurped it with short sips so as not to burn her naturally cherry-red lips. Unable to remove her eyes off that same person behind the one-way window, Van Holt asked, “You seem to go back to the tall one toward the left. You think he’s the one?”

  She sipped her tea again but didn’t answer. Lauren Baker was now positive that number two, the one who had the longish but cute nose, had been one of her burglars. Number two was Nick Sacco.

  CHAPTER 88

  Lauren Baker had scrutinized Sacco at length in the lineup, and she knew beyond doubt he had been one of the encroachers in her home, though they hadn’t touched a hair on her lithe body, a well-maintained specimen. But appreciating Sacco’s gentility during the holdup, and besotted by his striking and imposing stature, she declined to identify him.