by Paul Lindsay
“Okay,” Kasdan said, “I’ve heard that when Danny wants to fence something, or discuss exchange rates, or anything else he doesn’t want to hear coming from a courtroom tape recorder, the place he feels most secure is in his car. I know what you’re thinking, but that’s why he has it checked once a week.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And now I don’t have anything to worry about because…”
Straker smiled. “That Tiffany bowl, don’t give it another thought. We’ve got sixteen more of them in evidence. And they’re all going to be destroyed.”
“Destroyed?”
“That’s what the FBI does with counterfeits.”
Lo Kim’s was at the end of a narrow curved street, crammed into the clutter of Chinatown. Hanging in its window were half a dozen orange-glazed duck carcasses, but Danny DeMiglia hadn’t come for the Peking duck. As part of his personal security program, he maintained a list of places he frequented no more than once a year to discuss business. That way, his attorney assured him, the government couldn’t have them bugged. Wiretaps required court orders based on probable cause, something that depended on established patterns. Legally, once a year was not considered a pattern.
Part of Lo Kim’s appeal was its small balcony with room for only one table. No one, not even the employees, could get close enough for what the Feds called “an overhear.”
Mike Parisi walked in and sat down.
DeMiglia poured him some tea. “You found it okay?”
“If you’re asking because I’m late, sorry.”
“Only ten minutes.” DeMiglia handed him a menu. “You hungry?”
“I had trouble finding parking.”
“I like the congestion. Makes it harder to be followed. Especially with Angelo outside keeping an eye on things.”
Parisi set the menu down without looking at it. “I had a late breakfast, but you go ahead.” He wondered why the volatile underboss was being so accommodating. Ignoring tardiness, pouring tea—these things were not in Danny DeMiglia’s nature. Had he found out about the don’s improving health and decided to perform some damage control? Parisi doubted it. DeMiglia had never demonstrated any desire or aptitude for long-range diplomacy. He had worked his way up by being impulsive, taking care of problems when and where they happened. He was the non-commissioned officer, the one who got his knuckles skinned so the boss could strike a patriarchal pose. On the rare occasion when an underboss was promoted to don, his tenure usually proved short-lived due to his inability to make the transition from violent enforcer to savvy administrator.
The waiter climbed the stairs and in a thick accent asked, “You ready order?” DeMiglia could smell kitchen odors on him, most prominently peanut oil.
“For now, bring us both an order of egg rolls. With lots of that plum sauce.”
Parisi figured he was about to be given the order, that the time had come to rob the diamond vault. But DeMiglia’s uncharacteristic tact told him that he didn’t want that order refused. A charge of disobedience would have to be decided by the commission, and that was always a questionable route. It could backfire and derail his plans. Contrarily, if he could convince Parisi, the don’s anointed capo, to commit a violent crime and it brought the wolves of notoriety to the mob’s door, DeMiglia would be in a position to make a strong case for a change in leadership.
DeMiglia possessed the one weakness that ambitious men of marginal intelligence all seemed to have in common, the need to prove himself smarter than everyone else. He needed to succeed where others failed; in fact, Parisi suspected that their failure was more satisfying to him than his own success. It was how men like him kept score, how they convinced themselves of who they were. He was not a man who lived off dead carcasses, but instead, rapacious, someone who dined on the living. While effective in the short run, his need to succeed while others failed was ultimately a flaw that carried the weight of its own destruction, and Parisi had an idea of how to use it against him. Delaying DeMiglia’s plot to take over the family was now Parisi’s primary mission. Maybe as much as a month would be needed, even though that now seemed impossible. But he had no choice but to try.
“I hope you’re doing something about the Lag,” DeMiglia said.
“I told you before, I had a long talk with Manny.”
“Why would the Feds go after a lightweight like him?”
“He said they tried to get him to turn.”
“No shit, little Manny. Has he got anything that could hurt us?”
Parisi knew DeMiglia was asking him if Manny needed to be eliminated. “Nothing. He couldn’t hurt a fly even if he wanted to. But take my word on this, Danny, he’d never go over on us. He’d rather do all day than give any of us a minute of jail time. That’s one of his strengths that’s easy to overlook.”
DeMiglia stared at him for a few seconds, testing the conviction of Parisi’s assurances. “Okay, Mikey, but if something goes south with this idiot, it’ll be your mess to clean up. As long as you understand that, I’m not going to give him another thought.”
“Good.” The waiter brought the egg rolls and quickly disappeared.
DeMiglia dipped one into the sweet-sour sauce and bit off the end. “You ready to make some real money?”
Parisi waited before he spoke. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that, Danny.”
DeMiglia stopped chewing, leaned back, and loudly dropped his hands on the table.
Unintimidated, Parisi continued, “This diamond guy, who’s into Jackie Two Shoes for two hundred K and obviously trying to stay healthy, says there’s ten million in the vault. Which means, because he wants to be in our good graces, there’s probably not even five. If we kill more than one person, that means the conversion rate on the stones will be far below the usual. At best, ten percent. Now we’re looking at splitting up half a million dollars. After taking care of my uncle, me and my crew are probably looking at something in the neighborhood of fifty grand apiece. To tell you the truth, Danny, I’d rather sell handicap license plates.”
DeMiglia leaned forward slowly. “Are you sure you want to refuse to do this?”
“You say this is about money. Is it?”
“What else would it be about?”
“Then I assume you would rather cut up thirty to fifty million dollars.”
DeMiglia took another bite of egg roll and then laughed sarcastically. “Thirty to fifty million? Where’s someone like you come up with a number like that?”
“Granted, this isn’t a sure thing, but there’s zero risk.”
Ambivalence seized the underboss. He wanted Parisi out of the way, but the numbers he was offering—and, as Parisi had just demonstrated, he knew numbers—were impossible to ignore. He at least had to hear what it was about. “I’m listening, but it better be good.”
“Dutch Schultz’s treasure.”
DeMiglia burst out laughing again. “Dutch Schultz’s treasure? You got to be shitting me.”
“Then you know about it.”
“I’ve been hearing that tale since I was a little kid.”
“What exactly did you hear about it?”
The unsettling sureness in Parisi’s voice compelled DeMiglia to answer. “You know, he thought he was going to prison so he buried all this money and jewels in a metal box somewhere upstate. People been looking for it ever since. It’s all bullshit.”
“Two minutes ago, you were ready to believe in ten million from some degenerate gambler. Did you ever hear anything about a map?”
“Every good buried treasure story has a map—a missing map. I suppose you’ve found it.”
In careful detail, Parisi told him how Manny’s father had secreted the map in the New Jersey safe deposit box for twenty years, and how it had just been discovered.
In spite of not wanting to give Parisi a way out, DeMiglia said, almost to himself, “Manny’s father wasn’t nobody’s mark.”
/> “Exactly. So we take a minute or two to find out if there’s anything to this.”
“Where’s the map?”
Parisi took out Joseph Baldovino’s notebook and the map. He unfolded it and pushed it in front of DeMiglia.
“Well, it looks old, but who knows. They can make these things look old.”
“You use that lawyer Max Stillman, don’t you?”
“Yeah. He’s the family’s lawyer. What about him?”
“He’s got to have someone who does document exams. Let him see if this is legit.” Parisi had decided on the examination ploy because he knew “experts” usually charged by the hour so they took their time, and time was what he was looking for.
DeMiglia ran his fingertips across his lips three or four times. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”
“If it’s a phony, we haven’t lost anything. If it’s real, then we can figure out what to do next.” Parisi could see the underboss was conflicted. For the moment, the treasure was at least as compelling as his ambition to become head of the family. Parisi just had to make sure the two became inseparable. “Here’s what you have to remember, Danny. For three-quarters of a century, the men in our business have been trying to find the Dutchman’s treasure. And they’ve failed. Their explanation is always the same: that the box doesn’t exist. But just imagine if we do find it. We’d be as big a legend as Schultz, maybe even bigger. Would anyone be able to say no to the person who found Dutch Schultz’s treasure?”
DeMiglia folded the map with unusual care. “Okay, I’ll have it checked out, but for now, this doesn’t go any farther than you and me. If it’s a phony, I don’t want to look like some moron.”
Parisi handed him the notebook. “You’d better take this, too. It’s in Manny’s father’s handwriting. To my eye, it looks like he’s the one who wrote ‘Lulu’s Map.’” He didn’t tell DeMiglia that the other half of the map was buried in some archival catacomb inside the New York FBI office. That would be discovered soon enough because it was spelled out in the senior Baldovino’s journal. Also, Parisi hadn’t explained how Tommy Ida had traced the genealogies of those mentioned in the book either, even though it would have lent even more authenticity to the map’s promise. That trump card could be played later when DeMiglia, confronted by obstacles not yet visible, used the argument that no proof existed that the map was real and ordered the hunt to be abandoned. One problem at a time, Parisi reminded himself. That was the way to keep DeMiglia on the hook: keep the prize large and the hurdles small and distant. The important thing was to distract the underboss of the Galante crime family.
“The minute this comes back as bogus, you’re doing that diamond job.”
In a tone DeMiglia couldn’t fully read, Parisi said, “You’re the boss.”
DeMiglia reached over and stabbed one of Parisi’s egg rolls. “You’re not going to eat these?”
Jack Straker was due for his interview with Lansing in five minutes. The inspector used the time to go through his personnel file again to make sure he had all the ammunition he needed to prove that Straker’s performance in the FBI was in an advanced state of disrepair. The file revealed one problem after another, almost without a break. Why he had not been fired was inexplicable. Then he found the letter of commendation for the air piracy case and realized that it was Jack Straker who had fired the Shot. But that was a long time ago. In his second year, without any documented reason, he had been abruptly transferred from the range at Quantico to New York City as a street agent. That winter marked his first full-blown letter of censure and a forty-five-day suspension. Apparently tired of the snow, and without requesting leave, he drove a Bureau car to Florida, charging gas and lodging on an FBI credit card, an act egregious enough to get any other agent fired, but that wasn’t the end of it. Once in Miami, he decided that the “clunky”—his word offered in defense—sedan was not suitable for such a well-deserved vacation. He traded it in for a convertible at a less-than-reputable used car dealership, using the Bureau credit card to make up the difference in the down payment.
There were also indications that he had cut a wide swath through the steno pool and other female support employees. No official complaints had been lodged, but the office services manager had filed a written protest that he was constantly distracting her girls. He was called in, and when told about the OSM’s concerns, his response was, “Sounds like she needs a little servicing herself.”
Without a knock, the door opened and Jack Straker smiled down at Lansing. “Am I late?”
“Yes you are. Have a seat.”
Lansing noted that the stitches on Straker’s forehead had been removed and the remaining scar seemed to add some ruggedness to his appealing face. He leaned back and pushed his hands into his pockets. “I’ve got to admit, that is one impressive personnel file you’re working on there.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s not meant as a compliment.”
“I guess it all depends on your perspective. For me, there’s a whole lot of living in those pages. Some gooood times.”
“Good times? I think it’s safe to say that any other agent would have been fired for any one of them. What I can’t figure out is why you haven’t been.”
“I don’t know. I guess like anything else, breaking rules can be done with varying amounts of style. I try to make mine as outrageously endearing as possible. Take the time they had a drug wire on some Cubans up here. The Miami office sends up this knockout translator because she was familiar with the dialect. I tried approaching her, but she had been warned not to fraternize with any of the agents. What was I supposed to do, let her slip away? So I got the number that they had the wiretap on, and I called it. The guy answers in Spanish, or Cuban, whatever it was, and I just started talking in English. I tell this gal how sexy I think she is, and if she wanted to see the real New York while she’s up here to call me, and then I left my number. Where was the harm? The dope dealer didn’t speak English, so he thought it was some wrong number or whatever. But when she was translating the tape and heard it, she called me. A violation of Bureau policy? I’m sure if you looked through enough manuals, you could find a rule or two bent, but the bottom line was that while she was up here she had a much better time. And so did I. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice had to go hat in hand to the judge who authorized the wire and explain what I had done. But after he thought about it for a minute, he laughed. See, that’s me. A little bit outrageous, but at the same time begrudgingly admired. Be honest now, wouldn’t you like to have that story on your résumé?”
“I’m curious. While you’re sitting around dreaming up these excursions into the outrageous, do you ever feel any compulsion to accomplish any part of the Bureau’s mission?”
“I’ve done some pretty fair undercover work.”
“Oh yes, I saw the letter from the director’s office mandating that you never be allowed to work undercover again. Seems when you were in Los Angeles staying in a four-star hotel, in a one-week period your hotel bill was thirty-eight thousand dollars.”
Straker chuckled. “Yeah, and that wasn’t easy. I was taking the bad guys out on the town and getting the restaurants and clubs to charge it to the hotel. The bottom line: we recovered three and a half million in laundered cash.”
“Twelve of that thirty-eight thousand was for hookers.”
“Escorts. Have you ever seen the high-end prostitutes in L.A.? They’re beautiful, smart, and they can dance. I mean, you go out on actual dates because you want to be seen in public with them. Hooking those guys up with escorts was what turned the deal.”
The interview wasn’t going as Lansing had anticipated. “Since you’re so willing to discuss your problems, let’s talk about the misstep that landed you on this squad. The only thing I see in the file around that time is a very minor infraction of posting the wrong information on your locator card. That hardly seems worthy of a man of your appetites.”
Straker smiled. “Do you think I should petition
to have it removed?” Lansing just stared back dourly. “Actually, that’s all they could put down on paper.”
Lansing rolled forward in his chair. “Well, maybe it’s time to set the record straight. Save your reputation.”
“I’ll bet you, right now, that after I tell you this story, you won’t want to write any of it down anywhere.”
Lansing considered Straker’s ability to read the situations he became involved in and set his pen down. “Please proceed.”
“As you can see by the date on the memo, it was a few years ago. At the time, we had this assistant director who was a real pain in the ass. I mean he would do anything to stick it to an agent. Fortunately for us, he also had a few weaknesses, two of which were booze and women, something I know about. I was acquainted with this woman who, let’s just say, would do just about anything for money. So one night the ADIC was speaking at this corporate dinner, which I managed to get a ticket to. Twelve hours later and with the loan of some FBIHQ night photography equipment, I was able to convince him that a man with such unusual urges needed to treat agents with a little more respect. Which he did until he retired a year later. But I guess he had the last laugh because the last Bureau document he signed was my transfer out here.”
Lansing slapped the personnel file shut. “You evidently take great pride in your candor. In fact, I’d say you enjoy shocking people with it. I hope you’re going to be equally candid about the night you all were working on the Dimino case. I believe that was the night you were injured.”
“Well, I think I’ve proven during our little chat here that I can be as honest as anyone, but about that night…did you know that the cut on my head took fourteen stitches, but the real injury was actually a concussion. Damnedest thing, I can’t remember a minute of what happened. I have a note from the doctor at the ER. Should I bring it in?”
Although his mouth was held in a straight, unemotional line, Straker’s eyes were smiling. His “candor” during the interview could, if necessary, be later offered as evidence of his not hiding anything, no matter how damning or embarrassing. Lansing felt relatively certain that among an undoubtedly large cache of mitigating documents suitable for every occasion, Straker could produce some sort of medical record verifying a bout of temporary amnesia, or spinal meningitis, or multiple personality. Lansing had been checkmated. Without a word, he bowed his head in defeat and gave a gracious backhand wave toward the door.