by Thomas Perry
The next morning Schaeffer went to take a look at the building, walked the neighborhood, and became familiar with his surroundings. He looked for ways into Cocella’s offices and studied nearby buildings for vantage points that provided good views of the office windows.
Unless the Scarpi family had changed a great deal since the old days, they would hold the wake, funeral, and burial of Dominic Santangelo and then start working actively on their revenge.
26
Schaeffer stayed in New York to watch the next phase of his plan take place. A quiet older man who dressed well and didn’t talk to the other guests could expect not to be bothered much in a good hotel.
Every day he thought about Meg. He wondered where she was and who she was staying with, and if she was completely safe. Sometimes he wondered whether she was thinking about him at the same moment. But he had no doubt that what he was doing in America was the best action he could take. He had made progress since he’d arrived. He had found killers who had been sent out to ambush him. He had learned they belonged to the Balacontano crime family. Now he was making sure that life got a bit more dangerous for the Balacontano organization.
Summers in the northeast could be hot and humid, but he needed clothes that would hide weapons and ammunition. He found some good lighter-than-summer-weight sport coats made of a synthetic fabric with labels that promised it was both “wicking” and “breathable.” He chose light gray and dark gray, the equivalent of camouflage in the middle of a big city. The human eye always caught motion, and it usually caught color. He intended to mask them both.
He studied the online versions of the New York papers so he wouldn’t miss any small mention of Carlo Balacontano’s parole hearing or other news about the Mafia. He read the reports of the death of Dominic Santangelo to be sure there was no detail that might lead to him.
One of the articles that caught his attention had a section on the famous old hits on Mafia figures. It struck him that most of them had happened in daylight. Albert Anastasia had been killed in his barber’s chair. Paul Castellano had been shot to death as he was getting out of his car in the daytime. The Valentine’s Day massacre had involved the killing of seven men in the morning.
But there had been some night killings too. He had done quite a few himself, and it wasn’t always easy. At night the target could be sleeping in a different room or even a different house. It was hard to approach a sleeping man in complete silence, and bosses often had somebody awake and standing guard. That kind of killing was usually done by a specialist like him, not a typical Mafia guy who made his living fixing games or scaring shopkeepers.
Schaeffer’s best bet was that the Scarpis would go after John Cocella themselves and they’d do it in the daytime. Schaeffer began to spend early mornings at a café with a few outdoor tables on the same large paved area where the Trans-Matic Supply building was located. After he’d eaten breakfast and read the New York Times, he would walk through the neighborhood where Cocella’s office was, looking for signs that today would be the day.
He looked for men with the Scarpi family’s wide shoulders and craggy faces, and for cars that kept driving past the same spot or stayed in one too long. Manhattan was a place where people were busy most of the time. If they weren’t on their way somewhere, they would be indoors doing whatever they got paid for. He didn’t want to be seen as somebody who had too much time on his hands, so he kept moving.
He walked to a second restaurant just before noon each day so he would have an early choice of the tables arranged inside a row of potted trees off the dining room, favoring the tables that gave him a good view of the Trans-Matic building and the street in front of it. On this particular morning he had seen a couple of signs that this might be the day. There had been a pair of men on the street across from his café. Their bodies told him they were impatient, waiting for something and killing time. They didn’t kill time by going into a building or walking around the block. They walked about a block north and then two blocks south together, as though they didn’t dare move to a place where they might not see or hear what was happening or be able to get back in time.
Ten minutes later, three men took seats at the small, black steel tables near Schaeffer’s. Not one of them ordered the kind of food that a man might order if he was hungry enough to go to lunch early—just coffee and a pastry. Two sat on either side of Schaeffer, and one behind him.
Schaeffer didn’t know any of these men, but they looked about right. They were all in their thirties or early forties, wore suits or sport coats that would hide weapons, and sat outside with him, even though the sky was cloudy and it looked as though it might rain.
When the moment came, things happened in several places at once. A vehicle that looked like John Cocella’s black limo separated itself from the river of yellow taxicabs and dark limos. Cocella and his two bodyguards appeared inside the wall of windows in the front foyer of the building, prepared to come out onto the broad apron of concrete, presumably to duck into the car as they usually did. Schaeffer watched, but they just stood there.
Something was off. Schaeffer could feel it. He had a sensation that the flow of humanity on the street had changed. As the black car pulled up to the curb in front of the building, two men came trotting across the busy street at opposite angles. At the same time, a man on the sidewalk near the car did a stutter-step, as though he had been surprised by the two men, and changed something he was intending to do.
Cocella and his two bodyguards stayed inside the building, staring out through the glass front of the lobby at the car. The two men who had run toward the car now both pulled out semiautomatic pistols and began to fire at the black limousine. The car suddenly did a hook-turn and bumped up over the curb.
As it did, the three men who had been sitting at tables near Schaeffer stood and fired at the two who had attacked the limousine. They fired rapidly, hitting one of the men, who fell on the street, and then the second, who turned and limped a few yards, and then collapsed.
The three men beside Schaeffer came under fire from someone Schaeffer couldn’t see at first. Schaeffer kicked over his steel table for cover and crouched behind it. When the two men closest to him were hit, Schaeffer scrambled on his hands and knees to the nearest man. A few shots pounded into the pavement near him, and another rang his steel table like a bell. He looked up and saw a man in a third-floor window with a rifle. Schaeffer tugged the pistol from the dead man’s hand, then patted him to find a spare magazine. He fired four shots at the sniper in the third-floor window, ejected his magazine, and replaced it with the fresh one.
Schaeffer kept his head down beneath the nearest steel table. He heard an engine accelerate, took a glance over the table’s edge, and saw the car. The limo gained speed as it roared across the concrete forecourt of the office building toward the glass front, where Cocella and his men were visible.
Schaeffer appraised the effort. The Scarpi plan to kill Cocella had been inventive, but it was not succeeding. Cocella was too well protected, and the Scarpis had already lost the benefit of surprise. Schaeffer judged that the only way for the plan to work was if he took it over. He shifted to his toes, pushed off, and dashed across the forecourt toward the glass front of the building just as the black limousine driven by one of the Scarpis crashed into the glass.
Glittering glass fragments flew in front of the limousine and to both sides, showering Cocella, his bodyguards, and the two security guards at the front desk. The car kept going for forty feet until it crashed into a large overstuffed couch and the wall behind it. Cocella’s bodyguards produced pistols and started firing at the car, the shots pounding the safety glass and leaving big, round impact spots, like splashes, but not penetrating. Schaeffer stepped in over the empty window frame and across piles of glass, fired two rounds into the chest of one of the bodyguards, snapped his aim to the second, fired, and dropped him to the marble floor. Cocella turned on his heel and star
ted to run, but Schaeffer aimed carefully and fired twice. The first shot hit Cocella in the back of his skull, so the second in his back didn’t matter. He was already dead before his legs gave out and his body fell and slid to a stop on the marble floor.
Schaeffer pocketed the pistol as he pivoted, stepped out over the glass, and became one of the many people running. He dashed the hundred feet past the overturned table on the patio where he had been sitting, through the patio door of the restaurant, and into the dining room. The customers seemed to be gone, and the staff must have been crouching in the kitchen to stay below the line of fire, so he was unimpeded all the way through the restaurant until he emerged at the building’s front door. He walked quickly around the next corner, stuck up his hand to hail a taxi, got in, and said, “Columbia University, please.” The car was already headed north, and the driver accelerated, because it was a long ride to 116th Street.
27
Elizabeth Waring arrived in New York City in a plain black car driven by an FBI agent named Anna Holcomb, accompanied by an agent named Edward O’Connell. The two agents sat in the front like a couple while Elizabeth and her briefcase took up the back. Her overhead dome light was on so she could work.
She studied the reports she had received over the past few hours. She was beginning to reach near certainty that she knew what was going on, because she had seen something like it happen a couple of times before.
Carlo Balacontano’s parole hearing was in just a few days. He would have to establish that he had served his time honorably and been a good prisoner, that he had changed, that he had accepted his guilt and truly repented. He actually had caused no provable trouble, and for the real crime he’d committed—having people murdered by a pro and then deciding it was better to avoid paying a professional killer by trying to ambush and murder him, he was probably truly sorry.
She thought about the lawyer Balacontano had hired, the one whose name had been on the envelope of the poisoned letter: Andrew Wain Herren of Pfoel, Gebell & Herren. She had been surprised, because she knew him by reputation. He was lead attorney at the firm, the big litigator. It didn’t fit. An inmate could have a lawyer attend a parole hearing, but not this inmate or this lawyer from this firm. The lawyers Pfoel, Gebell, and Herren were famous in a special way. Other lawyers knew their names and talked about them because they argued precedent-setting cases and made enormous business deals, but few ordinary people had heard of them. They wouldn’t appear on television any more than they would join a carnival. They were the kind of help that ordinary people couldn’t conceive of, and the cost would have struck most people as impossible. Elizabeth knew something odd was happening. She couldn’t know what the plan was, but she knew there must be one.
And now the situation had become more complicated. The Scarpi family had sent a poisoned letter to Balacontano in prison. Then someone, probably a member of the Balacontano family, had shot and killed Dominic Santangelo, the boss of the Scarpi family. Once the Balacontano family had done that, John Cocella, the Balacontano boss, was the only possible next target, and now he was dead too.
There was one player she hadn’t heard from in a few days. He was the one she was most curious about, but she had no way to reach him, could only wait for his occasional calls. On this trip he had seemed marginally well disposed toward her, but he was so dangerous that he might kill her in a reflex, or out of the long habit of solving complications by cutting them off. But she still couldn’t help wondering, Where had he been, where was he now, and what was he planning to do?
The enmity between the Scarpi and the Balacontano families might have erupted spontaneously. They had reasons to hate each other, and would have more reasons if the real boss, Carlo Balacontano, were to get out of prison. But having this fight now weakened both families. And that made the retired hit man stronger and safer.
The car pulled up the side street to the back of the prison, where a uniformed federal officer was waiting. He saw the car, spoke into a phone, put it away, and then stepped close to the car to look inside. “Ms. Waring?” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Parnell.”
Elizabeth stepped out of the car and pointed to the others. “This is Agent Holcomb and Agent O’Connell. Where would you like us to park?”
He pointed. “Over there, where the sign says ‘Visitors.’ Take any space. There are no visitors at this hour.”
Elizabeth waited with Parnell while the two FBI agents parked and walked back. The group went around to the front of the building and in a main entrance. Elizabeth stopped and said, “I’ll be seeing him alone. Is there a comfortable place where the agents can wait for me?”
“Yes,” said Parnell. He turned to the two agents. “Just show your identification at the desk over there, and they’ll take you to the waiting area.”
She went with Parnell to another corridor, where they were met by guards. She went through the routine of giving the guards her purse to rifle through and holding out her arms while they ran a metal-detector wand up and down her body.
Parnell took her to a small interrogation room to wait. The room was bare except for a table and chairs. She sat across from the ring in the table that was supposed to hold the prisoner’s handcuffs.
She waited a few minutes, and then the door opened to admit Carlo Balacontano and two guards. He was short—about five feet seven—but he seemed even shorter this time because the two guards were so tall. She supposed the old man had been placed on the list of prisoners who needed special protection after the poisoned letter.
The ritual of bringing him in and locking him to the table gave her a chance to study him. Seven years ago when she had gone to visit him at his prison in Illinois, he had seemed like an old man who had been forced to live under healthy conditions on a nutritious diet for so long that he was physically younger than his age. She had interrupted him when he was goofing off in the middle of his morning chores, and he had jumped right up and begun working. Now he seemed stronger, heavier, and more robust.
The guard finished locking him to the table and nodded to Elizabeth. She smiled at the guards and said, “Thank you.” They opened the door and left.
Carlo Balacontano sat still across from her and waited.
She said, “Mr. Balacontano, my name is Elizabeth Waring. I work for the Justice Department.”
“I remember you. Do you think these places have an endless parade of chicks coming through?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Half the inmates in this prison are female, but I don’t imagine you see them.”
“Not a one since I’ve been here,” he said. “What do you want this time?”
“You can consider this a kind of welfare check, like the police do when nobody’s seen some old person for a while. I understand you have a parole hearing coming up.”
“Yeah. Three more days. The federal prosecutors as good as framed me. You know it, and I know it, and my lawyers know it, and pretty soon everybody else will too. And then I’ll be out and free. I’ll take whatever standard buy-off the courts give for being locked up illegally—a million a year or whatever.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“I don’t care about the money. I already had enough money before I got sent to prison, and I don’t have that many years left to spend it.” He smiled. “So if the money is why you’re here, you can tell your bosses to breathe easy.”
“What do you think is going on out there?” she asked, indicating the small, high window with a nod.
“Probably what always went on out there. People take charge and then you find out what they wanted power for. Some people like it and some don’t, so they fight over it.”
“Is that what happened to Dominic Santangelo?”
“I don’t know what happened to him. I heard he got shot while he was watching television.”
She smirked. “It’s got nothing to do with you, right?”
He stared at
her for a couple of seconds. “You haven’t mentioned John Cocella yet. Are you going to?”
“I heard he was murdered too. Know anything about that?”
“Obviously I wasn’t present when he was attacked and murdered. It seems like some people are unhappy that I’m getting out.”
“Really? You’re getting out?”
He smiled. “You know what part of this place I’m in, right? It’s the place where they keep the people they think are in danger. When all the court proceedings are done, they’ll keep me here for a while because the Justice Department will delay things and ask for do-overs and all that. I’m going to get out. People—smart, knowledgeable people—are working on it. See how the guards treat me? They talk to me like a person. They make sure the cuffs aren’t too tight and I don’t trip over my ankle chains. They know that before long I’m going to be outside. Outside means the place where they and their wives and kids live. Someday very soon I’m going to be a free man with a lot of money and a lot of men who like and respect me and want to do me favors.”
“You seem very sure of the outcome of your hearing,” she said.
“I have very good lawyers, and they assure me that I’m not getting my hopes up for nothing.”
“Want to tell me how they know that?” she asked.
“I told you. They’re good lawyers.”
“Then I guess all I can do to help you is to remind you that if you do get out on parole, you’re still subject to the laws that got you in here. You won’t be able to hang around with people convicted of felonies or miss an appointment with your parole officer. People will be watching to be sure you don’t make a mistake.”
“Okay, honey,” he said. “I promise I won’t. Can I go now? There’s something I want to see on television.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll tell the guards.” She got up, opened the door, and beckoned for the two guards, who were waiting down the hall, to come back in before she stepped out.