My Honorable Brother

by Bob Weintraub

  Walking toward his car parked at the end of the block, Arena saw a State Police cruiser pulled up behind it, with someone sitting at the wheel. He ignored it and went to unlock the door of his Oldsmobile. Suddenly, the horn from the cruiser sounded, startling him. Its uniformed occupant was waving his hand, signaling Arena to come over. He walked to the driver’s window.

  “Get in the car for a minute, Tommy. I want to talk to you.”

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. Get in.”

  Joe Gaudette had waited almost an hour for Arena to finish his business. He received a relayed message at home the night before from Sandy Tarantino and learned of the fax sent by Dave DePaolo, the Mafia boss in Cleveland. Tarantino said that he expected his father to be meeting with their “guest” near the airport by ten minutes after ten the next morning if the plane arrived on time. He wanted Gaudette to know that depending on what Sal Tarantino found out, they might need his help right after that. Sandy instructed his friend to wait next to the series of pay phones in the parking area of the Howard Johnson Motel on Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick at that time in the morning. He left word that he had the numbers for all six phones and would call him there as soon as he could.

  Sandy reached Gaudette shortly after 10:30 that morning and brought him up to date on what Sal knew. They worked out certain details and a timetable for specific action to be taken on each end. “We don’t want to fire the guy, Joe. We’d much rather see him resign. You understand?”

  “I understand,” he answered. “I’ll be as persuasive as I can.” Gaudette made a stop at a CVS Pharmacy, drove to the street where Arena’s Wednesday morning collection “office” was located and waited there for him to come out.

  Arena sat down in the front seat and saw the bars on Gaudette’s lapel. “You’re a captain, right?” Before getting an answer, he added, “So what the fuck crime did I commit?” He figured it had something to do with the collections he just made, and expected to be asked about the contents of his briefcase. His mind was racing to come up with a reason for having two envelopes full of money in his possession.

  “Relax, Tommy, I’m just helping out a mutual friend of ours. Sal Tarantino’s having a late lunch at the Marriott today with a few associates, and he wants you to join him. I don’t know whether he wants to speak to you alone or with the other guys. He’s thinking of retiring soon, you know, and he’s starting to put everything in order. You can probably figure out why he wants you there.”

  Arena smiled. “You’re a good friend of his, huh? Sonofabitch. That fucking Sal knows all the angles.”

  Gaudette nodded his head and smiled back at Arena. “So here’s what’s happening,” he said. “Get back in your car and drive on over to the Marriott right now. We’re going to wait for Sal in the Coach Room, one of the three conference rooms in the basement. He’ll let us know where to go, where the meeting is.” Gaudette turned on the car’s ignition. “Get started now. I’ll be right behind you all the way.”

  Arena said he had to call his office to let them know he wouldn’t be in. He also had to tell his wife that he might not be able to drive her to the dentist at 3:30 that afternoon. Gaudette told him he could make the calls from the Marriott as soon as Tarantino let him know how long he’d be there.

  Twenty minutes later they were in the Coach Room together and sat there another half hour, just killing time. Gaudette picked up copies of the Providence Herald and USA Today in the lobby news shop. Arena turned to the local sports page and soon began talking about the Providence Bruins hockey team.

  “They never were any fucking good and they’ll never get any fucking better. It don’t matter who coaches them. That team has a curse on it. Every fucking game they try to invent a new way to lose. I wouldn’t go see them play if the tickets were free. Waste of fucking time.”

  At one o’clock Gaudette said he’d call Tarantino and find out what was going on. “You stay right here,” he told Arena. He returned five minutes later. “Sal wants you to check into a room under some phony name and pay in advance with cash. He said to use his money, that you should have some dough with you that belongs to him. Sal says it won’t be long and that I should wait with you.”

  The two men returned to the lobby. Gaudette stood close enough to the registration desk to hear the clerk tell “Mr. Russo” he’d be in Room 429 as he gave him the key and a receipt. They went to the room and began waiting there, talking about the election. Fifteen minutes later Arena wondered out loud when Tarantino planned to have lunch. “I ain’t had a fucking thing to eat since 6:30 this morning,” he complained, “and I ain’t called my wife or my secretary. I’m gonna do that right now.” Arena got up from his chair.

  “If you get on the phone, Tommy, Sal can’t reach us. Then he may keep us waiting just for the hell of it. Give him a few more minutes. You can keep working up an appetite and it’ll taste better when you dig in. Just relax.”

  At 1:45 Gaudette picked up his chair from next to the window and carried it to the other side of the king-size bed, closer to the door. He leaned back in the chair and balanced it on its rear legs. “Tommy,” he said, “do you know a guy named Johnny Baldacci?”

  “Who?” Arena asked, narrowing his eyes and bringing his left thumb and forefinger up to his chin.

  “Johnny Baldacci. They call him Johnny Balls.”

  “No, I don’t know him. I mighta heard the name once or twice but that’s it.”

  “That’s funny, Tommy, because he says he knows you real well. Says you gave him ten grand a couple of months ago for a few minutes work at Chi-Chi’s.”

  “You’re pulling my fucking chain. I don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m getting sick of waiting around here.” Arena got up from his chair again.

  Gaudette let his right hand drop down and rest on the butt of his revolver. He told him to sit down. Arena hesitated, and then returned to his chair.

  “Let me tell you what I’m talking about because it’s important you understand everything. You listening, Tommy?”

  Arena didn’t want to answer, but had no choice. “Yeah, I’m listening. Probably be a lotta shit.”

  “Your friend Johnny Balls came back to Providence today. He made a special trip so he could confess to killing Al Niro and Richie Cardella. I hear it’s going to go down as first-degree murder, life imprisonment with no parole. That’s his reward for turning himself in. No needle in the arm. Not that he had too much of a choice, you understand. His loose talk got him in trouble. That and throwing around more money than he earned. The Family in Cleveland picked up on it and had a heart-to-heart chat with him. I guess they convinced him it was better to spend the rest of his life in the pen than go through what they’d have to do to him for the trouble he caused the Tarantinos. Johnny didn’t agree with that at first, but it wasn’t hard to get him to see the light. Those hits at Chi-Chi’s gave Sal and his Family a real bad name around here. You read the papers, Tommy, so you know what I’m talking about. Poor Johnny didn’t have any idea how tough things were going to work out for him when he pulled the trigger. But as they say, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

  “Now here’s the part you’d be most interested in. Johnny told Sal Tarantino this morning how you called in the big favor he owed you from five years ago. That’s when you swore to the cops you never saw the guy who robbed the freight warehouse in Cranston and shot the security guard on his way out. Danny Finnegan was the guard’s name, remember, Tommy? He ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Imagine how surprised Johnny Balls was to run right past you, his Teamster business agent, on the way to his car, holding a gun in his hand. And how grateful he was you covered up for him.”

  Arena had a pained expression on his face as Gaudette spoke, and shook his head back and forth as each new fact came out. Gaudette didn’t give him a chance to interrupt.

  “No wonder Johnny stopped driving a truck and took the job he had in Cleveland. He loves the work.
Anything that lets him pack a rod and use it now and then. But unfortunately for you, Tommy, you tried to make it look like the Tarantinos were behind that scene in Chi-Chi’s to get Al Niro out of their hair. That line about ‘We warned you,’ that was cute, but it didn’t work. On account of you, the Family’s had some rotten PR in the past two months, and Sal Tarantino’s awfully unhappy about it.”

  “Like I told you before, that’s a lotta shit and it’s all fucking lies. I ain’t seen Johnny Balls in years and I didn’t ask him to fucking kill no one.”

  Gaudette ignored the answer and looked at his watch. He pointed toward the television and told Arena to turn it on. “Let’s see what’s on the news,” he said. “Put on Channel 10.”

  At 1:58 an announcer from the WJAR news desk came on for a two-minute update. He repeated the story, “as first reported here earlier today,” that a John Baldacci had voluntarily surrendered to the Providence Police and confessed to the murders of the two men, including gubernatorial candidate Richie Cardella, in Chi-Chi’s Bar & Grille on the night of September fifth. He informed his viewers that the killer implicated another man, who allegedly paid him to commit the crime. The police were attempting to locate the suspect, he said.

  As soon as the announcer went on to the next item, Gaudette said, “That’s it,” and pointed to the TV again. Arena shut it off.

  “They’re out there looking for you, Tommy. But Sal doesn’t think you want them to take you in. Sal says he’s got a lot of friends wherever the cops lock you up, and that his friends won’t be nice to you. Not nice at all. He says you’re all finished, Tommy, you’ve got nowhere to go. Your life’s over. But Sal wants you to know he’ll take good care of your wife if you make things easy for everyone. He’ll see that Maria gets all the money you’re carrying in your briefcase right now and that she’ll always have enough to live on.” Gaudette stood up. “You understand what I’m telling you, Tommy?”

  Arena looked like he was feeling sick. He slumped in the chair, and only his head moved as he spoke. “Baldacci’s a fucking liar. Sal probably told him what to say to the cops.” He closed his eyes and let his head fall forward slightly. There was a long pause as Tommy began breathing heavily. “This is too fast,” he whispered. “I didn’t wake up today to fucking die.”

  Gaudette waited a few seconds before answering. “Cardella probably felt the same way if he could still think after your man put a hole in his chest.” He paused again. “What did you have against him, anyway?”

  Arena kept breathing in as much air as he could and then letting it out noisily. His eyes opened and closed several times as he spoke. “He was gonna ruin my fucking life. He knew how close I was to Sal and how me and the Family did things for each other over the years. Richie and I got drunk together one night while we were negotiating a deal, and I let him know some fucking things I shoulda kept to myself. We were telling war stories, you know? When the feds were checking me out this summer, I found out they spent a lotta time with him. I figured he could give them stuff they couldn’t get from no one else. When they put me down for a fucking hearing, I knew he was gonna be their star witness and cost me my job and everything else. I had no fucking choice.”

  “That’s too bad,” Gaudette said. “I hate to see friends turn against each other. But you don’t have a choice today either, Tommy.” He reached in his pocket, slipped on a thin plastic glove and threw a package of razor blades onto the edge of the bed, in front of Arena. “Sal’s letting you go out in class. A nice room. Take a warm bath and make a couple of cuts. If you wait to do it the other way, the cuts will hurt a hell of a lot more and leave you in the same place. Sal guarantees it.”

  Arena stood up. His face was flushed. “Sal don’t know why I did it. Let me go see him or at least get him on the fucking phone for me so I can explain. He’ll understand. Him and me go way back. He ain’t gonna want me to die when he hears what I got to say.”

  “Sit down, Tommy.” Gaudette waited until Arena complied. “Sal’s already made the final decision. He doesn’t care why you did it. He only cares about the trouble you caused him.”

  Arena’s briefcase was on the bureau. Gaudette used his gloved hand to move it to the bed and opened it. He took out the two manila envelopes. “You’ve got Sal’s word on these and what I told you before. Let’s go Tommy. It’s getting late.”

  Arena folded his arms in front of him and then began hitting his right arm with his open left hand. He closed his eyes again and let his chin drop to his chest. When he spoke, it was as if he was saying the words to himself, not to Gaudette. “If I was locked up, at least I’d have the chance to make a confession.”

  “I told you before, you wouldn’t last that long,” Gaudette said. “But just to save the department some trouble, why don’t you write a note and let them know what you did. Tell them you’re sorry, if you want. That’s the only confession you’re going to be able to make.” Gaudette took the notepaper from the night table on his side of the bed and threw it next to the razor blades.

  Arena didn’t move. “Do it right now,” Gaudette told him, “or you don’t do it at all.”

  Tommy laid the pad down on the small round table next to his chair and took the pen from his shirt pocket. He stared down at the paper for half a minute.

  “Write what I tell you,” Gaudette said, unwilling to wait any longer. He dictated the words slowly. “‘I’m sorry for what I did to Richie Cardella. I’m sorry Al Niro had to get hurt. I hope their families forgive me. I pray to God for mercy.’”

  Arena wrote what he was told and put down the pen. Gaudette was about to tell him to sign it, but realized it wasn’t necessary. “Alright, Tommy,” he said, pointing toward the other end of the room, “you’ve got to take a bath and then I’ve got to tidy up.”

  91

  EVEN AS ADDITIONAL DETAILS were released by the police and she continued putting together her story, Richardson remained skeptical about the events that were unfolding so suddenly.

  No one had yet offered any explanation as to why Tommy Arena would have wanted to kill Richie Cardella. Jenna couldn’t believe that any labor dispute in which they represented opposing sides would provoke Arena to seek revenge of that sort on his adversary, even one in which a long and difficult strike occurred to the detriment of the Teamsters. She knew she’d be researching the Herald files on Thursday to find out whether Arena and Cardella ever locked horns in that serious a battle.

  She wondered whether Johnny Baldacci was ordered to say he was hired by Arena to do the killing. Baldacci didn’t hide the fact that he was a member of the DePaolo family in Cleveland. He told the police that Dave DePaolo advised him to turn himself in when he learned that a member of his Family had committed the murders for which the Tarantinos were being blamed. The questions that Baldacci answered made it clear that DePaolo’s advice wasn’t something he was in a position to disregard if he wanted to continue breathing. On that basis, Jenna thought, Baldacci may have incriminated Arena because he was told to do so, even if he was really paid by the Tarantinos to execute Cardella.

  That wasn’t the end of Jenna’s misgivings. There was the concern that maybe Arena was forced to slit his wrists in the bathtub at the Marriott just to avoid a death more horrible than that. She recalled a similar situation in the Godfather movie, something the Tarantinos might get a kick out of imitating. The confession they found was in Arena’s handwriting, but maybe he did it with a gun to his head. It was possible that he was set up and then forced to kill himself before the authorities could find him and ask questions about Baldacci’s allegations.

  Still, Jenna had to admit that all the pieces seemed to fit into place. The story about Baldacci broke first on Channel 10 at 12:28 p.m. and was all over the radio dial a few minutes later. The police assumed that Arena heard it while he was in his car and realized they were probably out looking for him. In that case, the only way he could have any privacy to think things through was to take a hotel room under an assumed name. At first
, Jenna couldn’t figure out why a man who was going to kill himself would lay out ninety-five dollars to use a bathtub at the Marriott instead of his own, but then realized that Arena didn’t have the option of going home.

  She learned that he checked into the hotel under the name of Carl Russo shortly after one o’clock. That made the timing right, as it probably took him ten minutes or so to stop for razor blades along the way. (Richardson already knew that neither the shop in the hotel lobby nor the dispensing machine on the fourth floor carried the brand of single-edged blades that Arena used to slit his wrists.) His car was in the back of the parking lot, its doors locked, and the keys were in his jacket in the room. The fingerprint people were still checking to see whether there were any other prints on the steering wheel or the door handle. Jenna gathered from what she heard that no one expected to find anything there. In fact, as Gerry Quinn told them during a short question and answer session at 7:30 that night, “Everything points to an out-and-out suicide, girls and boys.”

  There were three details about the hotel scene that disturbed her. First, Jenna couldn’t understand why Arena bothered to take his briefcase up to the room if it was empty. Quinn couldn’t answer that one either, except to speculate that it was a matter of habit for him to carry it wherever he went, to look like a businessman.

  Second, it was difficult for her to believe that he wouldn’t call his wife with some message before taking his life, even to say something like “I love you,” or just “Good-bye.” But, as she had to admit to herself, the shame he felt over being found out may have stopped him from doing it once he realized that his wife, a strong Catholic from what Jenna picked up, knew he caused two people to die.

  Finally, Jenna was certain that if she intended to end her life that way, she wouldn’t have failed to fasten the sliding chain lock on the door, to guarantee that there would be no interruption of the act. As it was, the maid entered the room at six o’clock to change the towels and discovered the body.