“Look, this whole thing isn’t about buildings burning down—I mean, the cover-up, and you getting framed, that was. But the murder wasn’t. That was about cheating on ball games. Simmons didn’t want to do it. Wallace did. Simmons found out what Wallace was doing and he was going to talk about it. He must have told Leona, and Leona must have told Wallace, and word must have got back to the gangsters behind the deal through Chaney, the team owner. That’s why those two guys were waiting for Simmons in his girlfriend’s building.”
“Dese de ones in de photo?”
“Yeah, we’re pretty sure.”
“I say I take care fe dem.”
“That’s not the point. I need to talk to Leona. More than that, I need her brother’s diary.”
“ ’Er say ’er don got it.”
“She’s lying about that too. He always had it with him. My husband found out he was carrying it the night he went off with Leona. If she doesn’t have it, she knows who does.”
“You t’ink so? Fe why de men dead ’er breddah, dem no take it?”
“It’s possible. But let’s ask Leona.”
Doone shook his head. “De breddah—is not my business, nuh? I take care fe dem two, for stoppin me property.”
“Sorry, it is your business, John. You’re hiding a material witness. That’s obstruction. It’s a felony. Get her, or let’s go back to jail, and this time you won’t get out so fast. And besides, you want it all over town that a little girl jerked you around like that? Lying. Running her own game. Losing your dope. Her and her boyfriend are making you look like somebody just came off the farm. A quashie.”
Doone sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over with a clatter. Bello tensed and crossed his arms, to get his gun hand closer to his revolver. Marlene didn’t move. Doone said, “Don play wit me, gal. I not fe playin wit, yah.” He stormed out of the room and returned five minutes later. “One hour,” he said, and left again.
Marlene looked at Bello. “Are we supposed to wait here?”
“Beats me,” said Bello. “This is your setup. I would’ve dragged the scumbag down to the station house.”
“Well, right now I’m starving,” she said. “I left without breakfast. I’m going to see if I can rustle us up something.”
She stood up, took several steps, stopped suddenly and then staggered back to her chair. “What’s the matter?” asked Bello.
“I don’t know. Something down there. I just felt funny.”
“Labor pains?”
“It could be. I’ve been getting these twinges in my middle and my back for the last, oh, twenty minutes. They’re not exactly pain.”
“You want to go to the hospital?” Bello asked, concern in his voice.
“Nah, it’s probably just false labor. It happens a lot with the first kid. Besides, I want to see how this goes down.”
Bello nodded and went out of the room, returning after a while carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and a big pile of toast with butter and jam. They waited, chatting companionably, while the life of the house went on around them, as if they did not exist. Marlene discovered she was not that hungry after all.
When John Doone came back, within a few minutes of the promised time, he had Leona Simmons in tow. The young woman had been roughed up: her lip was puffy and the shadow of an incipient shiner loomed under one eye. She had been crying.
Doone tossed a squat, heavy leather diary onto the table. Then he thrust Leona forward and snapped, “Tell dem!”
Leona spoke in a monotone, her voice as lifeless as her eyes. The tale was quickly told, and confirmed Marlene’s conjectures in all respects. Doobie Wallace had pursued Leona. They were in love; it was a secret from Marion; that was part of its charm. Then Marion told her that Chaney had proposed a point-shaving scheme. Marion had turned him down, enraged. Chaney had then approached Wallace, who had accepted. Marion, inevitably, found out about it and confronted Wallace. He said he was going to expose the scam.
Wallace had gone to Leona in a panic. Marion had to be convinced not to talk. Leona told Wallace that Marion would be at the Mackey apartment after the San Antonio game. Marion was about to kiss her off, in fact. Leona had lied about the visit being a spontaneous decision. Marion didn’t do much spontaneously. When he left the car, Leona had opened the trunk and taken the diary out of his bag and put it in her own large purse. That was Doobie’s idea too. She hadn’t expected them to kill her brother, just talk to him.
Marlene asked, “Who supplied you with the lie about the stadium deal?”
“Doobie. He said Chaney was always boasting to him about how smart he was, so he told me, anybody ever asked me, say that Marion was worried about that, not about the games.”
A neat double cross, thought Marlene. Doobie wasn’t in on the stadium deal, and it made a good secondary cover story, after the one about the dope had been exposed.
Leona had begun to cry again, not sobbing but an involuntary flow of tears. Marlene reached into her bag and handed the other woman a package of Kleenex. She said, “Leona, why did Doobie tell you to steal the diary?”
“ ‘Cause he knew that Marion must have written down all about the shaving stuff. He didn’t want it to get out.”
“But if they were just going to ‘talk’ to Marion, as you said, what was the point of that? He’d still be around, and he’d miss the diary and probably get mad. Isn’t that true?”
Leona didn’t say anything. She just snuffled and blew and every three seconds cast an apprehensive sideways glance at Doone’s cast-iron face. Marlene doubted that she would say anything more. She was trembling like a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf, probably from heroin withdrawal as much as fear. She had set her brother up for a hit, and was now running away from that knowledge into some cellar of her mind.
In the silence Marlene mentally assessed the appalling legal situation. Leona was both an accessory to murder and the chief witness. That meant her testimony about the actual crime would be valueless without corroboration, which they did not yet have.
As a testifier to the shaving scheme, she was almost as useless. She was a junkie and heavily involved in the dope trade. This “spontaneous” statement had obviously been beaten out of her. She would have to be arrested, detoxed, and Q. and A.’d formally with the appropriate legalities observed.
On the other hand, they had the diary, the murdered man speaking up from beyond the grave. It could contain the corroboration necessary to support Leona’s testimony. The situation was too complex for her to figure it out on the run, and descending once again into the details of building a case after weeks of life in what now seemed a criminal phantasmagoria made her head swim. Butch would have to handle that end. She writhed as another peculiar pang rushed through her.
Focusing her energy, she waited for it to pass, picked up the diary and rose to her feet.
“Leona,” she said, “you’ll come with us. Mr. Doone, thank you for your public-spirited help. Harry, let’s get out of here.”
A flicker of something crossed Doone’s face. Expectation? Satisfaction? It was too quickly gone and too recondite for Marlene to read accurately. In any case, he said nothing as they walked out, but his impenetrable stare was like a blow to their backs.
“Interesting man, Mr. D.,” said Marlene when they were back in the car. Leona sat hunched in the rear seat like a pile of rags.
“Another mutt,” said Bello, cranking the car and heading toward Fulton Street and Manhattan.
“More than that,” objected Marlene.
“Yeah? He sells dope, he’s a mutt. Look, I’ll tell what’s interesting. You see this shithole of a neighborhood? Bed-Stuy—what a name! It sounds like some kind of running sore. What’s interesting is that maybe eighty percent of the people here get up in the morning and go to work, mostly at the shittiest jobs in town, take care of their kids, send them to school, and all the rest. Despite it all. The rest are dirtbags like your friend there. Why do they do it? How the fuck do they find the strength? It a
mazes me. I worked here twenty years and it still amazes me. I couldn’t hack it myself. I give them all the credit in the world.”
“What, black people?” asked Marlene, startled by the intensity of his expression.
“Fuckin’ A, black people,” said Bello. Then, after a while, more softly, “I got that from Jim.” Marlene was startled even more when she saw tears welling in his eyes.
They drove in silence for half a mile, and then Marlene asked Bello to patch his car radio through to a land line so she could call Karp.
“Marlene! What the hell!” said Karp when she said hello.
“Relax, it’s OK. I’m on my way home. I got the diary and the sister.”
“Jesus, Marlene, I’ve been tearing my hair out here.”
“I said I’m OK, maybe a labor pain or two.”
“What! What!”
“It’s fine, that kind of thing could go on for days. Don’t you want to hear about what I found out?”
“Yeah, sure, OK, shoot,” said Karp, exhibiting a heroic effort at self-control.
Marlene looked back over her shoulder at Leona, who was by now so deep into withdrawal that she would not have paid attention to the Second Coming. She quickly summarized Leona’s miserable story.
“What about the diary? Any help there?” asked Karp.
“I haven’t had a chance to read it. I intend to make some tea and curl up with it as soon as I get back. What are you up to?”
“The Knicks game is tonight. I’m just about ready to go to practice.”
“Do we have enough to pick up Wallace?”
“Read the diary. If it corroborates Leona’s story, he’s dead. But in any case, we have enough to squeeze him. Which I intend to do.” His tone changed. “Listen, you’re sure you’re OK?”
“Yes. Labor lasts for days sometimes with the first kid. They’re still very far apart.”
Karp relented and signed off.
Bello dropped her in front of the loft, behind a huge truck delivering spools of wire to the factory in her building.
“You’re sure you’re OK by yourself?” asked Bello.
Marlene smiled. “Honestly, between you and Butch … I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Take care of the witness.”
“I don’t know,” said the detective doubtfully. “These guys, the shooters. What’d you say their names were?”
“Carmine Fraschetti and Joey Castello. Why?”
“We got APBs out on them, yes?”
“So I hear. Look, Harry, relax! Like you said before, it’s ass-covering time. This is too far gone for threats. Those guys are back in la-la land or beyond—Palermo even.”
“But watch yourself until we know for sure, hey?”
Marlene nodded and kissed his cheek and hauled herself heavily to the curb.
A man watched her enter the building and walked down to a phone booth on Canal Street and made a call. Carmine Fraschetti listened quietly for a moment, grunted acknowledgment, and hung up. His next move was clear, but he was still oppressed by a sense of foreboding.
Don’t rock the boat was Fraschetti’s motto. His whole life had been devoted to insuring that when the boat ever did get rocked, the vibrations were damped as quickly and elegantly as possible. This fixing basketball games was boat rocking in a big way. It was going to rip tens of millions out of bookies and players across the country and from the people those books worked for and from big-time players who were well connected.
Fraschetti had been sent east when Chaney had called Tona in a screaming panic, to make sure the deal went through, and more important, that it was not exposed, and most important, that Jimmy Tona was in no way associated with it. Now things were completely out of hand, in all three ways.
Fraschetti got out of his chair and went to the bathroom. He washed his face and combed his hair with a wet comb. He buttoned his shirt collar and pulled up his tie, slipped into his suit jacket and then a tan poplin-lined raincoat. He cleaned his glasses and went into the bedroom to get Joey.
Jimmy Tona liked the young Castello, for reasons that Carmine had never been able to see, and the kid was connected to some heavy hitters, family people. Jimmy had said, “Take the kid, maybe he’ll settle down, maybe he’ll learn something.” So he took the kid, which was why things were in the mess they were in.
What the plan was, they were supposed to lift the player, take him to a quiet spot and make it look like a robbery. But as soon as they got in the elevator, Joey starts in on him, riding him, not being reasonable at all. The player gave him some lip. Before Fraschetti knew what was happening, Joey had shot the player one through the chest.
So there was one thing at least he could teach him, how to clean up after a hit in the wrong place. A royal pain in the ass. Then all of a sudden it looked like everybody knew their business, on top of which there was Chaney calling every day, screaming at Jimmy that it was all going to shit, and then Jimmy yelling at him, fix it, fix it.
Joey was on the bed, watching Jeopardy on a small black-and-white television. “Let’s go, Joey,” said Carmine. “She’s back and alone.”
Castello groaned and heaved himself up. “This shithole! Can we do one fucking thing? Can we get a fucking decent TV in here?”
“We ain’t gonna be here much longer, Joey. We just gotta clean up and then we’re home.”
Carmine pondered this while Joey got himself together, grumbling and cursing. Cleaning up. The Ciampi woman had to go, that was first, and pick up that goddamn diary. The people who were Fraschetti’s usual clients did not keep diaries, and its existence had amazed him when he had learned of it that day. So, Ciampi, that was one; the sister, two, but she was on ice with the cops. He would have to arrange an inside job for that one. Three, Chaney had to go down. He would do that one himself. Then Wallace, four. Maybe the kid could handle that. Maybe if Wallace was set up in a barrel of cement on the deck of a boat, the kid could shove him in the water. Four, that wasn’t so bad. The D.A., the big guy, they could leave. Once the others were gone, he couldn’t do shit.
Joey was ready at last. Carmine cast a doubtful eye over his ensemble: razor-cut hair, leather car coat, open to show the gold chains, the gold ID bracelet, the gold Oyster, the pointy shoes. He needed a light-up sign that said “MAFIOSO,” was all. But what could you do?
They walked down the musty stairs of the building they had been sheltered in and out onto Mulberry Street. The place had no amenities, but, more to the point, neither did it have any eyes or tongues living in it. When they left, no one would have ever seen them. Carmine paused to light a Macanudo Sovereign.
“Hey, Fish—” said Joey.
“Don’t call me Fish, Joey, I told you a million times. Carmine.”
“OK, Carmine, this bitch—I get a crack at her before we do her, right?”
“Right, Joey. Jimmy says, make it look like niggers did it. But first we make sure we got the goddamn notebook. And don’t take all day.”
“Yo, Fi—Carmine. She gonna suck mah dick, though. That OK with you, Carmine?”
Carmine said nothing, but pulled up the collar of his raincoat, and chewed at his cigar, and wished for the ten-thousandth time that he was back in L.A.
Marlene’s plans to sip tea and read Marion Simmons’s diary were upset by the simple fact that while she had the diary, now sitting open on her desk, she was out of tea. She was by no means a great tea drinker, but when she had to have tea, nothing else would do—not coffee, not wine, not soup, gave the comfort of tea.
Comfort was needed. The pangs in her belly that she had so casually brushed off at Doone’s had increased in intensity and frequency. A cold prickle of fear raced up her arms and across her scalp. Wait to be sure. Another hour at least.
OK, calm, calm, she told herself. She walked over to the lift shaft and shouted down it, “Stu! Larry! Are you home?”
Two voices called up cheerily that they were.
That was what she would do. Walk carefully down the stairs to Larry and Stu’s, where
they would make much of her and feed her tea, and then Larry would tell her what was going on, and then she would borrow a full teapot and come back and read the diary.
Something to bring—she couldn’t keep going down there empty-handed. That was it! Near the door lay a bundle of wire clothes hangers. Stu had sent the word out that he needed wire hangers for a big sculpture he was doing, and everyone he knew had been delivering bundles of them for days.
Marlene picked up the hangers, grabbed her key, and walked out her front door, at which point Joey Castello stepped from around a bend in the hallway, grabbed her, and clapped a hand around her astonished mouth and pulled her back into the loft.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He slammed her up against the wire screen that guarded the lift motor, twice, violently. The bundle of hangers dropped from her hand and scattered at her feet. He had one hand over her mouth and one twined painfully in the thick hair at the back of her neck.
It was the younger one who had her, she could see that plainly through the blur of tears. The older one had locked the door and was moving through the loft, checking it out.
The young one was grinning at her. His eyes were glowing with enjoyment. “You yell, bitch, I’ll break your neck. You ain’t gonna yell, are you? Are you?” Another yank at her hair to emphasize the question. She shook her head. His smile broadened and he took his hand away from her mouth.
The older man came back from his tour. “Save yourself some trouble, lady,” he said. “Just give us the diary.”
“What diary?” she said. The younger one savagely twisted her hair and she cried out involutarily. She felt a hot wetness seep down her thigh. God! she thought, I’m pissing myself.
The older man said, “Get it out of her. It’ll take a fucking year to toss this place. You could hide a phone book here. I’ll do the rest.”
Marlene heard him stomp off and then the sounds of smashing things. Her captor was talking to her. “Where is it? Come on, you’re gonna give it up sooner or later. Make it easy on yourself. Come on. What’s your name, hey? What, the silent treatment? You don’t like me? Hey, everybody likes Joey.”
Material Witness Page 32