It was getting late. “I have an important question to ask you,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Come over here first.”
Carol sat down next to him on the bed. “Well?”
“You’ll have to kiss me,” Doug said, keeping a serious face. “I need strength to come out with it.”
Carol leaned her head toward his and started to kiss his lips softly. But he pushed hard against hers, and in seconds their arms were around each other. They kissed for a long time until she pulled away from him. “You don’t have anything to ask me, do you?”
“Of course I do. I just needed that kiss.”
She had no idea what to expect. It even scared her a little. “Then ask,” she said softly.
“Okay,” he said, but took a deep breath first and let it out loudly through his mouth. “Have you decided which of us you’re going to vote for?”
She smiled slowly, watching his eyes. Then he smiled and they laughed at the same time. For several minutes their laughter was uncontrollable. When it finally came to a stop, they were both ready to get started with what they came for.
67
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON FIORE took his wife apple picking. He felt he owed Grace a good time, and knew he’d need her help even more when the campaign got into high gear. Two or three televised debates with Singer were being arranged, and Doug wanted Grace to be present at all of them to project a warm family image He wondered if Carol would show up with Bruce. Probably not, he decided. Still, he thought, it wouldn’t hurt to find a way to convince her to stay home, just in case. Do whatever it takes to win, he told himself. That was his watchword now, although still in the context of waging a clean campaign. He reasoned that it was in Carol’s best interest for her husband to lose, but he certainly wasn’t going to say or do anything that would put pressure on her to avoid being there.
“How come you’re so relaxed when you know Singer is out there working today?” Grace asked. They were driving along a country road, about twenty miles south of East Greenwich. The oaks and maples were just beginning to show their fall colors.
Doug took his right hand off the wheel of the Camry, Grace’s car, and put it on her knee. “I don’t care what Singer’s doing today,” he answered. “I’m with you and I’m happy, so let’s not talk any politics today.” He ran his hand along her thigh. She put her own hand on top of his briefly, but then pushed his away when she began to get aroused.
Fiore noticed a sign pointing toward a church fair and pulled off the road. They bought and shared a homemade brownie before perusing the merchandise laid out on long tables in the church vestry. Doug checked out some old 78 RPM record albums and wandered around the used clothing tables that were in an adjoining room. He found a white corduroy baseball cap with a University of Southern California football logo on it, and purchased it for a quarter. Grace caught up with him, looked at the cap and said she didn’t think the rust colored stains on the brim would wash off.
They stopped for a light dinner back in East Greenwich. Fiore was beginning to feel the effect of the three Macintosh apples he ate while they filled a 10-pound bag in the Sunny Farm orchard that afternoon. Grace saw a number of people in the restaurant glancing their way during the meal, and several of the diners stopped by their table on the way out to wish him good luck.
“Too bad about Richie Cardella,” one of them remarked.
Doug shook his head in agreement. “Yeah,” was all he replied. That’s probably what Cyril was talking about, he thought to himself. I’ve got to put on my sad face whenever someone mentions poor Richie’s name. Just make believe he was my good friend. Do anything to win the election.
Grace went into the den to watch television just after they got home. A few minutes later she called Doug to join her. He said he’d be there shortly, that he just wanted to rest for a while. He went to the bedroom and got under the covers without taking off his jeans or his shirt.
Fiore remembered later that in his dream he was making a movie with Miss October, whose nude pictures he saw recently in the latest issue of Playboy. They were filming a love scene in bed. The director was standing just a few feet away, next to a cameraman, telling them what to do second by second. The klieg lights were bringing out tiny pebbles of sweat on both of them. He recalled the director whispering to his bedmate to look suggestively toward Doug’s groin and to start moving her body in that direction. “Don’t worry, the camera won’t follow you,” he told her. Just then, Doug’s ejaculation woke him up. Almost an hour had passed. He could feel the wetness in his shorts and on the inside of his thigh.
“Damn it!” He said the words out loud. He knew Grace would be coming to bed soon, and now he wasn’t sure whether he could get hard again. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of those nights when he tried to make love to her but couldn’t. He dreaded going through the same embarrassment again.
Doug washed up and put on his pajamas. He sat down next to Grace in the den and put his arm around her. He let several minutes go by before telling her he wasn’t feeling well, that it must be the apples. “I was tossing and turning the whole time,” he said, “and sweating a little. I took a couple of aspirins and think I’d better try to get a good night’s sleep.” He kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’ll take a rain check and promise to use it tomorrow or Tuesday.”
Grace nodded, without looking away from the TV. “Okay,” was all she said.
He got up and started to leave the room. Turning around for a moment, he told her, “I sure as hell don’t want to look sick for the photographers at Richie’s funeral tomorrow.”
68
PAT HANLEY MET HIM in Room 606 on Monday night. Fiore first took the elevator to the bar at L’Apogee on the top floor of the Biltmore. He sipped a Grand Marnier over ice while talking baseball to the bartender and a stranger who recognized him.
“I just seen you on the news in my room an hour ago,” the man said. “At Cardella’s funeral, I mean. You look better in person than on TV.”
Fiore thanked him, asked where he was from, and said he needed his vote on election day. He finished his drink, left a 10-dollar bill on the bar and took a few more peanuts from the bowl on his way out.
Pat was in great spirits. Her afternoon was spent in town, shopping at the mall and then joining a friend for an early dinner at “Cafe Prov,” in the lobby of the Patriot National Bank Building. Afterwards, she returned to the Biltmore for a leisurely bath. When Doug arrived, she was just pouring herself a second drink.
“Brad flew to Ohio this morning to see some customers,” she said. “He’ll be away overnight.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s still putting in too many evening hours at the plant.”
Fiore remembered what he learned from Sandy Tarantino about Hanley’s regular visits to one of the Family’s clubs. It wasn’t the right time to mention it to Pat.
“I’m so happy that business is much better this year than last,” she said. “Brad used to worry about how it would be almost impossible for him to find a job with another wire or steel company if Ocean State ever shut down. That would be a disaster for us.”
“Why such a disaster?” he asked. “You could sell that big house, move into something a lot smaller in the burbs and Brad would have plenty of time to look around.”
Pat sipped from her drink and pushed the bottle on the coffee table closer to Doug. “It’s not what it all seems, my love. Some guy said that in a book I read. At least I think he did … Actually, I’m not really sure if I read it or heard it.” They both laughed. “The truth is, Doug, we’ve got hardly any equity in that place. There’s a second mortgage with a finance company, and a large part of the deposit we put down was money borrowed from my parents. If we had to sell it right now, we’d have very little left for ourselves. Besides, it’s probably worth only eighty percent of what we paid for it nine years ago. The market was moving toward its peak back then. So buddy, can you spare a dime?”
/> She flashed a smile at him. “But now isn’t the time to worry,” she continued. “Not when the wire machines at Ocean State are running two full shifts a day and the numbers on the bottom line are changing color. Things are looking better every month, thanks to Brad.”
Fiore considered telling her what was really going on, how poorly Ocean State was still doing, but he knew that would kill the evening. He felt quite certain that Pat wouldn’t expect him to be aware of the Company’s monthly profit and loss statements. Besides, if the Platt brothers did decide to give up on the business, he knew she’d be too busy blaming Brad for lying to her to start wondering whether Doug knew enough about it to warn her when they were together. He’d let her know the truth when the time was right.
“Here’s to Brad,” he said, and reached over toward Pat so they could let their glasses touch and clink.
“Well, Mr. Fiore, now that the odds of my sleeping with the next governor of Rhode Island have gone from one in three to one in two, I think it’s time for me to place another bet.”
“Sure thing,” Doug said. He got up and began taking off his tie. Then he smiled at his choice of words. “You’re betting on a sure thing.”
69
ON THE NIGHT OF the second day after Richardson began her own investigation of the murders by talking to Felipe Gonsalez at Chi-Chi’s, she was in bed with Terry Reardon. Their room at the Holiday Inn was rented by the Herald on an annual basis. They were last together a couple of weeks before the primary. Jenna’s energy level was jumping off the chart. She didn’t want to meet Terry at her apartment that night because she intended to do more work in the Herald library on the Chi-Chi killing—as she referred to it—after he left to go home.
The room was dark, unlike Jenna’s own bedroom where one of the shades could not be pulled more than halfway down and let in the light from a street lamp. Lying on her side, she pulled herself close to him, her face just a few inches from his as they talked. “The cops think it’s all cut and dried,” she said. “They figure the Tarantino family didn’t want Niro horning in on any of their business and gave someone the word to put him away.”
“That’s just about the way I see it,” he answered.
“Wait a minute. Don’t interrupt until I’ve told you everything.” She waited until he nodded his head and gave her an okay. “The first thing I found out from Gonsalez is that this is the fourth year in a row Al Niro has come into the place and set up shop in that booth across from the pay phone. He was always there for about six months at a stretch. It started when the NFL exhibition games got under way, sometime late in July, and went to the Super Bowl in February. That was always his last day in the place, Gonsalez said. He never took bets on the Pro Bowl because he knew the players didn’t care who won.
“The second thing is that Niro was just a small time operator. He used to schmooze with the customers sitting at the bar before he went home. Once in a while he bought drinks for whoever was there, Gonsalez said. He told them he never took a bet over a hundred dollars from one person. He had a bunch of people who called him every week, mostly with 20-dollar bets, or even less, on one or two games. That was the kind of situation he felt comfortable handling. Niro didn’t lay off any of the bets he took with other bookies because he never handled the kind of wagers he had to worry about. Both Gonsalez and Niro’s wife told me that. He just wanted to run a small independent business without having to go to someone else for help.”
Jenna had picked up a head of steam. “Mrs. Niro—her name is Camille, by the way, and she’s a beautiful woman—said that it was like a part-time job for him. It let him earn a few extra dollars during the football season. His main business was doing landscape maintenance with the truck he owned. He mowed lawns in the summer, picked up leaves in the fall, plowed snow out of driveways during the winter and went back to lawn work in the spring. There were one or two kids in his neighborhood who used to help him out.
“Another thing his wife told me is that Niro had a few friends in the city who’ve been booking bets the same way he did for years. It’s usually out of a bar, just the way he operated. She didn’t want to come right out with any names, but she mentioned a few places I could go have a drink and look around. They do it the same five nights her husband used to be at Chi-Chi’s. She says none of them have stopped since he was killed.”
“But maybe none of them were ever warned, the way Niro was,” Terry said.
“That’s another thing,” Jenna answered, changing her position to lean on her elbow while she still looked at him. “Camille insisted that he never said a word about receiving any kind of warning, and she’s positive he wouldn’t keep it from her if he did. She told me he was the type who’d say, ‘If anything happens to me while I’m out, tell the cops that so and so threatened me on such and such a date.’ After I spoke to her, I checked it out with Gonsalez. He never heard Niro talk about a threat from anyone either.”
Reardon didn’t think much of Jenna’s last point. “Niro probably never got around to telling her. Maybe he thought it was a joke. I can’t see why the killer would have said it if it never happened.”
“I don’t want to argue with you,” Jenna replied. “Let me just summarize.”
“Okay, okay, but don’t take all night.”
“We have a small-time bookie, handling peanuts every week, and he’s been doing it for four years. He gets shot one night in a downtown bar. This is a place where anything could have suddenly gone wrong for whoever did it. Another car, for example, could have blocked the back alley at the last minute. So there’s a big risk there. The cops don’t have anyone in their books who looks like the guy the artist drew up from the witnesses’ descriptions. The Tarantino family doesn’t have to say a word because the police haven’t come up with any evidence against them and haven’t made any arrests. But they do. They send a letter to the Chief of Police telling him they didn’t know about Niro’s little operation and couldn’t have cared less if they did. According to them, the Family had nothing to do with what happened at Chi-Chi’s.”
“That’s the first I heard about the letter. Was that in the paper?”
“No, but trust me. No one’s supposed to know about it.”
“Do you believe what it says?” Terry asked.
“I have trouble not believing it,” she answered. “I mean if they wanted the guy out of the way for booking football bets, they could have done it at any time. Wouldn’t you figure they’d pick a spot where no one was around? Why take that chance in a bar? What was suddenly the big hurry after four years?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “What you say makes sense. But I’m suddenly in a big hurry myself, after four weeks. If you don’t want to do something right away, you may be taking a chance. Know what I mean?”
“Hold on, big fella,” she said, lying back so that he could move onto her. “No shooting wildly in the dark, not while I’m around.”
70
ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Richardson called Chief Quinn at Police Headquarters in Providence and asked if she could see him. (She told Terry sometime later that the idea of talking to Quinn had come to her just as she had an orgasm at the Holiday Inn the night before.) He checked his calendar and offered her a choice of eleven o’clock that morning or four in the afternoon. Jenna said she was in the middle of some research and took the second option.
Eight hours later, she was in his office. “Hi, Gerry,” she said, when a young police officer ushered her into the big room overlooking Lasalle Square.
“Hiya, Jenna, good to see ya. How do ya like the bullshit circuit they’ve gotcha on? I’ll bet ya bored to tears with all these pols. Always talking outta both sides of their mouths. Oh, excuse me, I want ya to meet Joe Gaudette.”
Quinn continued talking as Richardson and Gaudette approached each other and shook hands. “Joe here is from the State Police. I called over to get some help on this Al Niro case, ya know, figuring the Tarantinos run gambling all over Rhode Island, and we c
ould sure use some help in trying to find the killer. I was just telling Joe about ya before ya came in, how ya’ve got one helluva talent for putting the pieces of a puzzle together. So, is what ya wanna see me about private, or can Joe stick around?”
She explained that she was there about the Niro case herself, and invited Gaudette to stay and listen. Quinn leaned back in his big chair, ready to hear what she had to say. Jenna told him that for openers she wanted to read the letter he received from the Tarantino family. “What letter?” Quinn demanded, sitting straight up immediately.
“Sorry, Gerry, but I heard about it from an old friend who works in the post office. He said he stamped it himself.” She winked at him.
Quinn shook his head in frustration, saying nothing. It upset him to learn that someone already leaked news of the letter.
Jenna waited for him to sit back and relax again before saying that she hoped he could help her speak to one of the Tarantinos herself. This time, Quinn showed no reaction at all.
“Let me tell you why,” she said, and proceeded to lay out everything she told Reardon while they were in bed the night before. When she finished informing them of what she uncovered in her investigation to that point, both men were silent. Jenna glanced from one to the other and continued. “Last night I started some research in the Herald library and just about wrapped it up before walking over here.”
“I hope they’re paying ya overtime,” Quinn cut in.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Jenna said.
The two men smiled at her.
“Think about this, Gerry. You can go back twenty years, almost to the day that Sal Tarantino took over on the Hill, and you won’t find a single homicide that the Family was ever charged with committing, directly or indirectly. That’s not the way it was when Tony Buscatelli ran things. A number of his guys were convicted over the years. Tony himself stood trial twice for allegedly giving the order that got two of his enemies tossed into Narragansett Bay wearing heavy overshoes. He got a hung jury both times and the DA didn’t want to try for a third. The papers said he was lucky. Later on there were stories that one of the jurors in each trial was bribed to hold out for an acquittal.”
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