The Body Mafia

by Stacy Dittrich

  “Are you sure it’s her?” Alan Keane was hopeful.

  “Pretty sure. The front desk has security cameras, and we pulled the tape from the day she checked in. She had a dark wig on and a hat, but I’m confident enough to say I’m one hundred percent sure.”

  Alan breathed a sigh of relief as he nodded at the man who was sitting in a chair directly across from him, having come from Erie two days ago. At this moment, he looked like a rocket ready to take off. Alan’s nod made him relax considerably.

  “Alan, there’s something else that I don’t think you’re gonna like,” Agent Nicholas sighed into the phone. “Joseph Filaci is gone, too. We think they’re together.”

  Alan stiffened. “Together as in he took her, or together voluntarily?”

  “We think voluntarily. Keith and Steve saw someone matching her description go into the diner Filaci goes to about fifteen minutes before he went in. They sat together. They saw the same woman pull out of a parking garage later on that Joseph drove into, but they didn’t see him with her. He might’ve been crouched down in the seat or something.”

  The man across from Alan stood up and faced him, fists and jaw clenched. His relaxation was short-lived.

  “Now relax,” Alan coaxed him as he hung up the phone. “It may not be a bad thing. If she’s with Joseph, she may have a better chance of getting the information.”

  The man walked out of Alan’s hotel room, slamming the door behind him. This wasn’t good, Alan thought. If she was with Joseph, she might be giving him information as well. Alan picked up the phone again and called Agent Nicholas back.

  “Go to Youngstown,” he ordered.

  “Huh?”

  “I think they’re in Youngstown trying to get the Iacconas. Grab Keith and Steve if you need to. Don’t worry about surveillance on the Filacis right now. Just get your asses there and see if you can find them. Remember, don’t let them see you!”

  “We’re on our way.”

  “Gary, wait. What have you turned up on the mole? If we know she’s here or in Youngstown, they will soon enough.”

  “Didn’t I tell you, Alan? We haven’t identified him yet, but we know where he’s at. The mole is in Mansfield.”

  Because of the snow, Joseph and I didn’t get going until after two the next afternoon. We decided to go directly to the ware house, and I wasn’t the least surprised to find it located in a run-down, deserted-in-daylight part of town. Then again, what part of Youngstown wasn’t? Almost all of the buildings and shops were boarded up or had bars on the windows. Only a handful of cars lined the litter-strewn, potholed street, and a sole homeless man sat on the steps of a long-since-closed-up convenience store. The building Joseph pointed at was one of the smaller warehouses on the street. Lined with broken windows and gray chipped paint, it resembled an old assembly shop.

  “Is that it?” It didn’t look to me like a living human being had ventured into the building in years, and I stress the word living.

  “That’s it.”

  “Eeks. How do we know who’s inside?”

  “Usually it’s janitorial services and such, but I don’t see their trucks here. Sal comes rolling in around four or five,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know—?” I stopped. I didn’t want to hear it.

  “It looks like we might be in luck, CeeCee. The snowstorm probably kept everyone else at home today. We might be able to get in there right now.”

  “What are you waiting for, partner?” I raised one eyebrow at him.

  Joseph smiled and began slowly circling the building to confirm no one else was there. When he was satisfied, he parked on the street that faced the rear of the building, almost a block away. He had already determined that the way into the ware house would be through one of the loading docks. The door on the dock had its hinges rusted out, and according to Joseph, flapped back and forth like a rubber pet door. We would be able to get in with no problem. Taking one last glance around, we started for the ware house. As cleaned up as we were, and wearing our dark trench coats, we would probably be mistaken for real-estate agents by most people. The black duffel bag that harbored the electronic equipment was over my shoulder, concealed under my coat.

  Getting through the dock door was, as predicted, a breeze. Finding Salvatore Iaccona’s secret office was not.

  “I’m fairly sure it’s on the second floor. I watched them once before and saw a light on in the rear corner,” Joseph said as we climbed the two flights of stairs.

  The second floor was enormous. Small offices, closets, inventory rooms, and file-storage rooms were everywhere. We searched for at least half an hour before Joseph called out to me.

  “I found it!”

  Following his voice, I found him standing in the doorway at the end of a long hallway in the front of the building. He had been wrong about the office being in the back.

  “Are you sure it’s the one?” I asked, out of breath as I jogged toward him, taking off my coat.

  “I’m sure.” Joseph’s voice was flat and he was looking at the floor.

  As I made my way to the doorway, Joseph stepped aside so that I could walk into the small office. I looked at the large bloodstain on the floor that he was staring at.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, my trepidation growing.

  “Yes, it is. Someone pissed Sal off again.” Joseph looked at me intently. “We need to hurry up and get out of here. They would never leave this stain unless they had something else to tend to. They’ll be back to clean it up—and soon.”

  He had me terrified as I anxiously looked around the mostly empty office for a place to conceal the camera. As Joseph had predicted, there was no phone. Taking the small, dime-size microphones out of the bag, I placed one underneath a lonely plastic plant that sat in the corner. The other was placed inside one of the tears of a chair that sat facing the desk. I manipulated it as far into the foam of the chair as possible. The camera was going to be a problem. I needed to think, and Joseph wasn’t helping.

  “CeeCee, hurry up! We need to go!” he urged.

  My heart, which was already racing, kicked up to breakneck speed. I was sweating from nervousness. My eyes veered to a hole in the wall that was directly in front of the desk. It wasn’t big enough to hold the camera, but it could be widened. I grabbed a switchblade from the duffel bag and began to dig out the wall.

  “What are you doing? They’re going to see all that drywall and shit on the floor!” He almost looked panicked.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it all up. You just keep watch.”

  Digging violently, I needed to keep the hole the exact same size on the outside, but make it deeper. By now, even though it was below freezing outside, I was soaked with sweat. Joseph made it worse when his face turned to sheer horror.

  “Jesus Christ! Someone’s coming! Forget the camera, CeeCee, let’s go!” he whispered loudly.

  “Just two more seconds.” After placing the camera in the hole and flipping the switch on, I brushed all of the broken pieces and chips of drywall into my hands and dumped the mess into my pockets.

  I blew the drywall dust and scattered it with my hands, then grabbed the duffel bag as Joseph grabbed my arm.

  “Hurry!”

  He pulled me down the hallway and toward the staircase before jerking me behind a large filing cabinet. He put his hand over my mouth, but I slapped it away and tried to quiet my breathing. We had been running, and as the sounds of the men’s voices and footsteps grew near, I took his hand and held it to my mouth again. We could hear them as they walked by.

  “Just cut that section of carpet out and we’ll burn it out at the lot,” a man with a deep, gruff voice said.

  “We could probably just burn it out back here. None of these local degenerates are gonna say anything,” the other man said.

  “No! Sal said we’re not taking any chances. That’s why he wanted Frankie buried out at the construction site.” The man with the gruff voice started to laugh.
“Man, if Frankie only knew, he’d shit! I wish Sal would’ve left him alive long enough to tell him he was gonna be buried underneath the Pelican condos full of old people shittin’ in bags and flappin’ their gums!”

  The men’s laughter faded as they walked down the hallway toward the office. Joseph pulled his hand away and led me toward the staircase, putting his finger to his lips to signal me to be quiet. As if I needed to be told. Once inside the safety of our car, Joseph pulled away and shook his head. He looked rattled.

  “Unbelievable,” he mumbled to himself.

  “What?”

  “You know who they were talking about, don’t you? Sal killed Frank Trapini. That’s hard for me to believe. Frank was Sal’s closest captain, and he must have done something outrageous for Sal to whack him.” Joseph slowed the car down and looked at me. “I’ll bet it has something to do with the little stunt you pulled in Florida with Tommy.”

  I was stunned at the accusatory nature in his voice. “Little stunt?” Now I was fuming. “Little stunt? The guy tried to decapitate me with a fucking wire. I had to defend myself, and you call it a little stunt? Are you defending the Iacconas now, Joseph? Maybe we should just split up today and cut our losses!”

  He stopped the car and put his hand on my arm. “Look, CeeCee, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that, well, Salvatore Iaccona just murdered Frank Trapini. In my eyes, and I know you don’t fully understand, that means things are bad—really bad.” He caressed my cheek with his hand. “I couldn’t bear to see something happen to you. I feel protective of you somehow.”

  “You don’t need to be.” I pulled my face away, determined to keep my distance. “I can handle myself just fine, with or without you, Joseph.”

  He sighed but remained silent after that while he drove back to the motel. We went into my room to see if the camera and microphones were working. They were; they had recorded everything the two men had done inside the office, audio and all. After setting the computer on the desk so we could both see, Joseph and I watched as the men, whom he identified as Petey Iaccona and Henry Mastragna, cut out the bloody section of carpet and placed it in a garbage bag. We also heard a useful piece of information. The next meeting to take place in the office would be in two days.

  At that moment, I came up with a glorious idea that we hadn’t planned. Joseph was less than enthused.

  “You want to what? Are you crazy? We can’t go digging around a construction site in Youngstown looking for Frank’s body!”

  “Of course we can. We already know where it is. He said the Pelican Condominiums. This will be one more way to fuck with them. Please, Joseph.”

  “How the hell are we going to find it, with all the snow?” He looked incredulous.

  “The more snow, the better. The snow will tell us exactly where they buried him.”

  Joseph shook his head. “All right, I hope you know what you’re doing. We’ll need to stop and buy some shovels.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The majority of the Pelican Condominiums were already built and being occupied. There was a small section to the west of it that they were expanding; that was where we needed to start our search. Since it was nearing dark, I instructed Joseph to pick up a couple of flashlights as well. He began to pull the car off the gravel construction driveway and onto the snow-covered paved road.

  “No! Don’t!” I yelled.

  He slammed on the brakes. “Why not? The construction’s over there. That’s where we’ll need to check.”

  “Because the snow on the gravel is gone, but not on the asphalt. We’ll leave tire tracks. We’ll have to walk, and we’re going to put tape on the bottom of our shoes first.”

  I had personally worked with several of the Youngstown homicide detectives, and they were no amateurs. With the number of murders the city had, some of their detectives were at the top of their field. I would take no chances leaving shoe tracks in the snow. Always prepared, I grabbed a roll of duct tape from the glove box and ripped several strips off to stick on my shoes before handing it to Joseph. We put on gloves and warm hats, and we were on our way.

  “With the heavy snow, it’s easy to assume no construction workers have been out here in the last twenty-four hours,” I explained to Joseph. “So any tire tracks, footprints, or drag marks can easily be associated with the Iacconas. Start looking, and remember where you’ve walked.”

  Finding the tires tracks wasn’t hard. I found a set coming out of the woods within ten minutes. They had driven off the road through the woods coming up on the rear of the construction site. Common sense told me they had one hell of an SUV to be able to maneuver through the thick snow and mud. The tire tracks had stopped near the last set of condos when I found the footprints.

  A halfhearted attempt had been made to cover them up. They led me to the basement of the second-to-last condo on the street, one that hadn’t had the cement poured yet. The footprints stopped at the cement sidewalk, but since only the basement had been dug, it was safe to assume Frank Trapini’s final resting place was in there.

  What they had done was walk around the entire basement floor, kicking up snow and spreading it around in an attempt to make it look like someone had been there working or kids had been playing. The back corner, where the snow was uneven, was a good place to start. I whistled to Joseph and waited for him to walk over. We needed to help each other down the wooden temporary stairs.

  “I’m surprised they didn’t break their necks carrying a body down these steps,” I said.

  “Let’s just get this over with.”

  We went over to the corner and I started walking around. Only when I felt the ground sink ever so slightly did I convince myself we had found Frank’s burial site.

  “Here.” I pointed. “They probably dug a significantly deep hole. But even if they tried to pack the dirt in, it’s still going to be a little soft, unlike the rest of the dirt. It’s winter, so most of it should be frozen.”

  Joseph took a deep breath as he jammed the shovel into the ground. I didn’t dare ask how many times he’d done this—another detail of his life I didn’t want to know. The snow and the dirt were heavy. After a while, my back was screaming.

  “You guys make this look so easy in the movies,” I said.

  Joseph, clearly unamused, kept digging. Two hours later and three to four feet deeper, I felt my shovel hit something hard.

  “Shine your flashlight down there and hold it.” I got on my knees and leaned into the hole, brushing away the dirt and exposing a black garbage bag.

  Tearing a small portion of the bag away revealed Frank Trapini’s elbow. Feeling my way down his arm to his hand, I tore apart that portion of the garbage bag and pulled Frank’s hand out, letting it stick straight up into the air.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Joseph was out of breath and leaning on his shovel.

  “Just making it easier for the cops is all. We’re done here. We only need to find a pay phone.”

  I found a long piece of wood with a bright orange piece of tape around it and stuck it upright in the snow to the left of Frank’s body. Joseph was already at the top of the steps, reaching his hand out to help me. He had been quiet most of the time. Ever since his semiadmission of his feelings for me in the car, he hadn’t said much.

  About two miles from our motel, Joseph pulled up next to a pay phone at a gas station. Looking through the phone book hanging by the silver wire, I found the nonemergency number for the Youngstown Police Department. It would take longer for them to trace the number than if I called 911. The dispatcher answered on the second ring. Lowering my voice to the level of a prepubescent boy, I gave the dispatcher the information.

  “In the Pelican Condominium construction site, the second to the last condo on the west side of the street, there is a body buried in the basement. The grave is exposed and marked with a wooden stake and an orange ribbon. The body is Frank Trapini, and Henry Mastragna is responsible for his murder.”

 
I hung up the phone and instructed Joseph to drive away. When he pulled into the parking lot of our motel, he finally spoke, looking confused.

  “Why did you tell them it was Henry? I figured you would want to give up Sal first?”

  “I’m just getting Henry out of the way. I want Salvatore Iaccona to myself.” I was driven by pure rage.

  Joseph whispered a solemn good night to me as he went into his room and I went into mine. After taking my suitcase and throwing it on the bed, I pulled the inside flap down and grabbed the thick cache of files and the yellow envelope containing the tape. My arms full, I went over to Joseph’s room and used my foot to knock on the door. His face told me he was surprised to see me.

  “CeeCee? What’s all that?” He nodded at the pile of folders in my arms.

  Not waiting for an invitation, I brushed past him and walked into his room, letting the files spill all over the bed.

  “These are the files on your family, and the files on the Iacconas. Here’s the tape.” I held the small envelope out to him.

  He was stunned. “I thought you were going to turn those over after we were done. Are we done?”

  “You are. I’m not.” I sat down and ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t want to put you in any more danger, Joseph. I care about you—please believe that—and I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”

  His face softened into concern as he sat down next to me. Now that he had the files, he could walk away easily. He certainly didn’t have to stay and help me. Joseph gently pulled my face toward his and kissed me. Instantly, I pulled away. To say I cared about him was true, but as a close friend, and nothing more.

  “Joseph…,” I began quietly as I looked at the floor.

  “You don’t need to say it, CeeCee. I know, and I’m sorry.” He stood up and walked to the window. “I know you don’t feel for me the way I do you.” He turned around. “Never in my life have I met someone like you, someone I admire and respect.”

  “You are a good person, Joseph, I know that. It’s just that…” I felt tears brimming. “I can’t begin to explain how much I loved my husband or how much I miss him. I don’t know that I’ll ever get over it.”