The Big Scam

by Paul Lindsay

  He supposed that’s why Vanko had picked the place, so there was less chance he’d run into someone he knew. Still, it left him empty, like having only salad with the smell of steak in the air. Maybe he was trying to find something wrong, a reason to turn and run like he had at the bridge. Feeling a little nervous but not quite panicked—not yet anyway—he considered taking one of his pills. He hadn’t needed them in a while, but he no longer knew how his nervous system was going to react to stress. While calming, the pills slowed his thinking, a disadvantage someone nicknamed the Lag could not afford. Maybe a little bit of fear was good. At the moment it seemed to be speeding up his brain.

  That’s when he noticed the man sitting alone at the bar, almost leaning in behind a couple to shield himself from view. His face was tan and his perfectly arched eyebrows were artificially raised in an expression of boredom. His drink was tall and clear with too much ice and too many lime wedges to be alcoholic. He wore an expensively cut white linen jacket over a navy blue turtleneck. His thick brown hair was swept straight back. In the crowd of staid, immobile northern Europeans, he looked like he was in the process of breaking the land speed record. A dazzling Manhattanite.

  Manny stepped up to the bar and, as he waited to give his order, tried to catch Linen Jacket’s eye to tell him that he knew. Never pass up the opportunity to bust the FBI’s balls; it was an unwritten law for mob guys. “Double scotch rocks,” he told the bartender.

  Bradley Kenyon had seen Manny’s mug shot early in the evening. He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and hit the speed-dial number programmed in a half hour earlier. The phone in the room where the rest of the agents waited rang. Kenyon let it ring for ten seconds and then disconnected the call. He sipped his drink as he cautiously searched the small bar to determine if Baldovino had come alone.

  Ten minutes later, Manny was about to order another drink when Sheila walked in and sat down next to him. She was wearing an emerald green silk sheath dress, and while she was as slender as the other women in the bar, her figure was convincingly American. “Hi, Manny,” she pecked him on the cheek, “have you been waiting long?”

  “Ah, no, not long. How are you…?”

  “Sheila.”

  “Sheila.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Red wine would be nice. Why don’t I get a booth.”

  He brought the drinks over and sat down. “Don’t you think you should sit next to me?” she asked.

  He swung around next to her. Blushing a little, he said, “I thought you Feds couldn’t drink on duty.”

  “Like everything else, it’s all right as long as we don’t get caught…but look who I’m telling that to.”

  Manny laughed. “So, are you a real lady agent?”

  “I’ve got a badge if that’s what you mean. How about you? You a real mob guy?”

  “You obviously haven’t read my file.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I’m not made, if that’s what you mean.”

  “We’ve all got management problems. I’ve got bosses who think J. Edgar Hoover was a vacuum cleaner salesman. But you’re in good hands with Nick. He’s someone you can trust.”

  “You’re all right. Too bad we had to meet like this.”

  “Yes, it is.” She patted his hand. “You about ready?”

  He fired down what was left of his drink. “Absolutely.” She hooked her arm through his and they walked to the elevators.

  When they got to the room, she opened the door with a key card. It was a three-room suite with a small bar along the living room wall. Vanko was sitting in a leather chair with his legs crossed. He sat still for a moment before extending his hand. It was a gesture he used when someone was seeing his face for the first time. He smiled warmly. “Manny, I’m Nick Vanko.”

  Baldovino forced himself to stare straight into Vanko’s eyes. He shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Nick.”

  “Come on into the sitting room. Can we get you anything?”

  “Yeah, some scotch would be nice. I’m still a little nervous.”

  “That’s understandable. Water?”

  “Just ice, thanks.”

  They sat down and, when Vanko didn’t say anything, Baldovino felt a need to break the silence. “I got to hand it to your guys, they got me good on that license plate beef.” He smiled stiffly.

  “To steal a line from your outfit’s book, it was just business, nothing personal.”

  Baldovino laughed and seemed to relax a little. Crowe handed him a drink, then disappeared into the other room. He took a healthy swallow. “No offense taken. These things happen.”

  “So, tell me what you want from us.”

  “I want this case dropped.”

  “What about the Witness Protection Program?”

  “That would mean I was going to testify. What I’m giving you really won’t need any testimony. In fact, part of this deal is that my name never comes up.”

  “What you’re talking about is becoming an informant.”

  “Just on this one thing. I’m trading it for a walk, straight up.”

  “I’ve already talked to the United States Attorney’s office, and they pretty much gave me a free hand. So tell me exactly what it is you’re offering.”

  Baldovino bit the inside of his cheek hard. “I can take you to the Mafia graveyard.”

  Vanko’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Mafia graveyard?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How come I’ve never heard about this before?”

  “There aren’t that many even within the family that know about this place.”

  “No offense, Manny, but as far as we know, you’re not even a made member. How would you know about it?”

  “You know who my old man was?”

  “We know he was a capo until his death.”

  “He was the most respected man in the family, maybe in any of the families. It was his job to dispose of bodies. One time he took me along. It was only the once, kind of an emergency deal. I was his son, trust was not an issue.”

  Vanko searched Baldovino for signs of deception. He showed almost none of his initial nervousness. The one advantage to having a disfigured face was that Vanko could use it to gauge people’s ability to think on their feet, how fast they could ignore it, how good they were at hiding their true reactions, and how fast they could improvise. Baldovino had adjusted as quickly as any, which did not help Vanko judge the truth of his story. “How many bodies are you talking about?”

  “No telling. It wasn’t something my father talked about. But think about how many of our people have disappeared over the last ten years. The night I went with him Nino Leone came too. He was my capo before Mike Parisi. Every once in a while when we were alone, especially if we were drinking, he’d bring it up. See, when he got drunk, he got religion. He had all this regret that their wives and kids couldn’t have a proper burial and mourning. I guess because I was with my dad that night, he felt it was okay to discuss it with me. Sometimes he talked about it too much, you know, like he had to unload.”

  “He’s dead now.”

  “Yeah, liver cancer.”

  “And you’ll take us there.”

  “I’ll take you as close as I got.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s upstate. Near Phoenicia.”

  “What do you mean as close as you got?”

  “Once they got close enough that they didn’t need me, they went in by themselves. I may have been his son, but he still followed the rules. It couldn’t have been far though, because they were gone less than an hour. Figure in digging time and then covering up, it had to be close by.”

  “I’m just surprised we’ve never heard about it before.”

  “You mean on wiretaps? There’s only a couple of guys who knew about it and they’re dead. Neither of them ever went to jail because they never said anything on the phone. And tell me this, Nick, what kind of moron would I have to be to come to yo
u and lie when you can put me in prison anytime? I know that if you don’t find any bodies, I’m going to prison and maybe for longer for wasting your time.”

  Baldovino’s point was inarguable. As Vanko considered it, he heard the just-audible strains of Sheila’s voice from the other room. He thought he caught a hint of her shampoo, that damp, scratchy scent from the car. And that stunning green dress. Surprisingly, she had worn makeup, the first time he had seen her use it. Applied skillfully, it had smoothed the uneven texture of her skin and given it a consistent color. But she had allowed herself to slip into her role only so far. She wore no nylons or nail polish, and when she walked in front of him to the car, he noticed the back of her hair was still wet from the shower. “I hope you don’t have any immediate plans, Manny. We’ll want to go up there in the morning.”

  “So I guess that means you believe me.”

  “It means that I want to believe you.”

  The squad had assembled in the office by 8:00 the next morning. Vanko had been there since 6:30 making last-minute arrangements for the trip north, an odyssey he hoped would not be filled with the Homeric obstacles it somehow promised. When Charles Lansing walked in and saw all the activity, he headed straight for the vault.

  Receiving word that the inspector had shown up, Vanko knew he had little choice but to brief him on the information provided by Manny Baldovino. When Vanko mentioned Baldovino, Lansing realized that his “information” was part of what Egan had been planning on the phone. Aware of Egan’s duplicity, plus whatever story Baldovino was telling, Lansing could find out what was really going on. But he would have to be careful not to know too much because Vanko already had two people trying to deceive him; a third might expose everything. “A Mafia graveyard? I’ve never heard of anything like that, have you?”

  “No. But according to Baldovino, it was an extremely well guarded secret. His father was one of only two men who had detailed knowledge of its existence and had involved him only once, peripherally.”

  “Any problem me tagging along?”

  The last thing Vanko wanted was to give Lansing prolonged exposure to his squad. Any one of them might divulge secrets out of boredom or do something stupid simply to get a rise out of the inspector. “It’s going to take the entire day.”

  “That’s all right, something like this would probably be worth getting behind schedule a little.”

  “As long as you don’t mind being in the car with me for a couple of hours.” He had hoped to make the trip with Sheila, but that small luxury was about to vanish.

  “I can ride with someone else if you like.”

  “No, we can go over some of the inspection deficiencies you’ve been wanting to discuss.”

  “I’ll get my briefcase.”

  Vanko instructed T. H. Crowe and Dick Zalenski to make sure Baldovino wore sunglasses and some kind of large hat until they were out of the city on the off chance someone spotted the easily identifiable agents and recognized their backseat passenger. Baldovino expressed some concern for what the hat would do to his hair. Crowe said, “Manny, it’s my job to get you to Phoenicia safely. You know, so no one will shoot you. So please don’t make me want to shoot you.”

  “The hat’s fine.”

  Crowe looked at his hair. “Guys with your hair usually prefer hats.” Zalenski gave a low chuckle.

  “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “Where it’s still growing, I guess it’s fine.” Zalenski looked over at Crowe and wagged his eyebrows in appreciation.

  Manny ran his fingers through the hair at the back of his head where it was longer. “Hey, I’ve got good hair,” he protested, his tone rising. Suppressed laughter shook Zalenski’s shoulders. Baldovino looked over at Crowe, who seemed stoically frozen in his seat. The older agent’s hair was thick and full, but he was a couple of weeks past needing a haircut. “I spend a lot of money on my hair. I get it cut every week, by a stylist, not some Marine Corps taxidermist. It costs me a half a buck. What do you pay, six dollars at the barber college?”

  Crowe turned around slowly. “Okay, let me have a good look. Take the hat off.” Baldovino took it off and smoothed down the sides. Crowe tilted his head appraisingly. “I hope that fifty cents included a tip.”

  After two and a half hours and less than a hundred words later, the three men pulled into the parking lot of the old train station. Vanko and Lansing were already there. Straker, Snow, and Kenyon drove up in one of the squad’s surveillance vans, which had been outfitted with as many digging instruments and probing devices as could be rounded up on short notice. Egan and Sheila pulled in behind them. Just prior to leaving Global Fish, Lansing had called the chief inspector from his cell phone, telling him to call off the surveillance on Egan. On that long a trip, and with so many agents, someone might notice they were being followed.

  On Vanko’s instruction, Crowe and Straker checked around the area before Manny was allowed out of the car and then only with the sunglasses and hat, which he had pulled down as far as possible in protest. But when Sheila got out of her car, he pulled it off and gave her a self-conscious wave.

  With Lansing close at hand, Vanko said, “Okay, Manny, is this it?”

  “Yeah, this looks right.”

  “Now that we’re physically here, maybe your memory will be a little more detailed. Tell us exactly what you remember.”

  “Well, like I said, it’s got to be close to ten years ago. Like one o’clock in the morning when we got here, maybe later. Pitch black. My old man told me to wait right here while him and Nino took care of the body. They drove out of the lot and over that way.” Baldovino pointed in a generally southwestern direction.

  “And how long were they gone?” Vanko asked.

  “Forty-five minutes, an hour tops. I can’t remember for sure.”

  “When they got back, did they say anything that might narrow it down? You know, like the ground was hard, they had to drive across a stream, any landmarks? Anything like that?”

  “I’ll have to think about it, but nothing comes to me right at this minute. I’m sorry, Nick, but it isn’t easy with everybody standing here expecting me to recall every little detail from a dark night ten years ago.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. So let’s try something else. Do you know the last time they buried a body here?”

  “Nino only talked about it in general terms. He wasn’t stupid.”

  “So as far as you know, it was ten years ago.”

  “That I know of, yeah, ten years.”

  Checking the map, Vanko had everyone follow him down to High Street, where he took a right onto Woodland Valley Road. A bridge crossed over Esopus Creek; on the other side, he drove as far as the terrain would allow. Getting out, he called everyone together and handed out photocopied maps they had downloaded off the Internet that morning. The air was thick with the sour odor of decaying vegetation. He divided them into teams to search sectors designated on the map.

  “What are we looking for?” Straker asked.

  “Anywhere it looks like a hole has been dug and then filled in. They weren’t hauling dirt away, so logically there would be mounds in the spots where the bodies were left, maybe overgrown by now. Aside from that, I don’t know.”

  The small groups, each with a handheld radio, took off along some of the foot trails that generally ran parallel to the creek. A solitary man fly-fishing in rubber waders was startled as the agents streamed past him. It was obvious they weren’t there for the trout.

  For the next two hours, the squad searched the area, doubling back and crisscrossing paths. After some of them straggled back to his position, Vanko radioed the rest to meet at the van. He asked Baldovino, “Did you remember anything else?”

  “Not really.”

  “And you don’t have any idea how many bodies might be here?”

  “Just what I already told you.”

  “Manny?”

  “What?”

  “Could it be there was just one body?”


  “No. Nino said it a couple of times, ‘All those poor bastards.’ I’m not saying every mob guy that’s ever been hit is up here, but I got the impression there’s a bunch. I just don’t know where.”

  “Anybody have any ideas?”

  Egan said, “When I was in Kansas City, we had a kidnapping that wound up being a search for the victim’s body. They brought in this cadaver dog. It was pretty amazing.”

  “But that was a fresh body, right?” Vanko asked.

  “Yes, but there’s been cases where they’ve found them after years.”

  “Even if they’re fully decayed?”

  “I guess the soil becomes saturated with decomposition fluid. And they can detect that for years.”

  “How deep do they have to be buried before the dogs can’t smell them?”

  Egan hadn’t noticed, but Lansing had carefully moved just out of his peripheral vision and was watching his gestures closely to see if he had any “tells” when he lied. “They said there’s been instances where they’ve detected bodies under eight feet of concrete. I don’t know how they do it, but they’re used all the time to find bodies under water, which is relatively easy because when a body is decomposing it gives off gases, which rise to the surface. It probably works the same way underground.”

  “How big an area can one of them cover?” Vanko said.

  “I’m no expert, but I think it depends on a lot of different things like how long they’ve been buried, how deep, the terrain, stuff like that. And you have to be careful. They can get over-stressed in a hurry, and it makes them hypersensitive. Once that happens, they’re pretty much through for the day. A guess—I’d say a square mile, under perfect conditions, would take a dog at least a week.”

  Vanko looked at his map again. “I’d say we’ve got at least five or six square miles here, maybe more, and with this undergrowth, we’d probably need a dozen dogs for a month. Can you give us anything else, Manny?”