“Mr. Boff,” the cook said, “I hope you have a big appetite now.”
“I always do.”
A few minutes later, McAlary and Kate walked into the restaurant and sat at the table across from Cullen.
Cheffy pointed at the dishes on the table. “What we have here, my friends, is beef, chicken, and vegetable patties.” He pointed at a second grouping of plates. “These here are corn and avocado salads. The others are one of my specialties, jerk chicken salad.”
As Cheffy left to prepare more courses, Cullen caught McAlary staring at his face.
“Had a wee bit to drink last night, did you?” the trainer asked.
Bellucci laughed out loud. “Danny drank a whole bottle of champagne by himself. Plus a six pack of Bud Light. He invited Dina from the escort service over…and there was a lot of screaming coming from his room. I guess his arm must’ve hurt him.”
Cullen didn’t think this was funny. “Thanks a lot, pal.”
McAlary frowned and turned to Bellucci. “What about you, Mikey? How much did you drink?”
Bellucci shook his head. “I don’t drink. My father was a drunk, remember? I never want to end up like him. But I did get in a little action in the sack. Dina brought this knockout Japanese girl named Hazuki with her. Oh, marone a mi, I think I’m in love.”
About the time they started eating, Damiano arrived and joined the party.
“Congratulations, Danny,” the detective said. Then she turned to Boff with a grin on her face. “From what I saw on TV, you, my friend, need a better chin.”
“If I had a better chin, Victoria, I might be dead.”
Just as they were polishing off the last of the appetizers, Cheffy and Mattie the waitress brought two big, steaming bowls to the table. One was a hearty Jamaican pumpkin soup, the other, cow-foot and pigeon peas. After the soup, several platters of entrees arrived, and Mattie came back a few minutes later with pitchers of fresh carrot juice and lemonade.
After an hour of feasting on the special goodies, McAlary and Kate stood up to leave. “I gotta get back to the gym,” the trainer said. “I have some fighters to train. Fighters, I might add, who aren’t hung over.” He looked straight at the champion. “I’ll expect to see you there tomorrow, Danny. Right after your therapy session. Even with the sling, you can walk ten miles a day on the treadmill. And when the doctor says you can take the sling off, you’re gonna do stomach exercises and one arm pull-ups and pushups. I don’t want you getting too far out of shape. Understand, son?”
Grinning, Cullen saluted his trainer. “Yes, sir!”
McAlary leaned in closer. “You won’t think it’s so funny when your arm’s fully healed, and I work your arse into the ground to deflate that swelled head of yours.”
At which point Kate pulled her husband away from the table. “Oh, for god’s sake, Ryan! Can’t you ever stop pushing Danny and just let him enjoy his moment?”
“That’s exactly what this is,” McAlary replied. “A moment. He still has his whole career and a big list of challenges ahead of him.”
Kate bent down, kissed Cullen, and then grabbed her husband’s arm and steered him out of the restaurant. A few minutes later, with another “Good job, Danny,” Damiano also took off.
Cullen pointed a fork full of curried goat at Boff. “Now that this case is over, what’s next on your morally-challenged agenda?”
“I’ve got a malpractice case involving an orthopedic surgeon accused of operating on the wrong knee of a patient.”
Bellucci made a face. “That doctor must be a real quack. What kind of idiot does that?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Boff said. “My client is innocent of the charges.”
“Meaning,” Cullen said, “that he’s guilty, but you’ll get him off.”
Boff shrugged. He was really thinking about whether he should tell them there might still be another loose end out there. But until he knew what it could be, he decided not to say anything.
Chapter 68
After leaving Cheffy’s, Boff met for a few hours with the surgeon at his penthouse in Manhattan to go over details of his case. Although Boff didn’t like doctors, it turned out that this guy had once been team physician for his beloved Knicks, so he cut him some slack. From the surgeon’s place, he drove into Williamsburg to see Wright. As he walked into the back office, Wright, who was in his usual spot in front of a computer, swiveled around to face him.
“I saw that whole circus on HBO,” the information broker said. “You’re lucky to be alive. Cullen saved your ass.”
Boff winced. How many times was he going to have to be reminded of this?
“Cullen got lucky,” Boff said. “I wish it’d been Wallachi who saved me. Then I wouldn’t have to hear about Danny’s heroics.”
Wright laughed. “Why can’t you ever give credit where credit is due?”
“It’s not in my nature.”
“Well, in any case, Frank, it’s over.”
“I hope so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there might be a loose end. I got a call last night from Vinny Gorgeous.”
“And?”
He repeated what Alfano told him, then added for emphasis, “He said BBs.”
“BBs? I don’t get it.”
“Me, neither. But until I can figure out what the old man meant, I’m going to exercise some caution.”
“Okay. Two questions come to mind. One, why would someone use a BB gun to shoot you? The other, who’d be holding the gun?”
“The only thing I can think of is Emilio found a button or two and they’re still out there hunting me.”
“But if he hired buttons, why’d he try to kill you himself and risk getting arrested?”
“Good question.”
“Unless,” Wright said, “he just hired backup in case he didn’t get the job done.”
“That’s certainly possible. But I’ve never heard of a button using a BB gun.”
“Me, neither.”
“The thing that troubles me is Alfano wouldn’t have called to warn me about something if he didn’t think it was serious.”
“So why don’t you call him back and ask him what he meant?”
Boff shook his head. “If he wanted to spell it out, he would have. He thinks his phone is tapped.”
Wright rubbed his chin. “Why don’t we brainstorm this for awhile,” he said. “Maybe we can figure it out.”
Chapter 69
After a fruitless hour in which he and Wright came up with zilch, Boff left Wright’s shop a little after eight. He stopped on the sidewalk outside and surveyed the street, looking for signs of trouble. Satisfied that there was none he could see, he used his bomb detector twice on his car before climbing in and heading home.
As he drove, Boff still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he had missed something in Alfano’s message. Maybe he should listen to it again.
Pulling over by a hydrant, he took out his cell phone and dialed RecordiaPro, a service he used. It recorded every conversation he had had on his cell phone. It was a pretty simple setup. You give the company your phone number, pay a small fee, and then you can access all your recorded calls through the Internet.
Once online, he went to the RecordiaPro website, punched in his code, and listened to his conversation with Alfano again.
Did you ever get shot with BBs gun?
Can’t say as I’ve had the pleasure.
Well, then this is a warning. Watch out for BBs gun.
Boff played it twice more. Then he suddenly got it. Shit. BB stands for Bruno Benvenuti. He must still be alive and gunning for me. Arriving at his building, Boff drove into the basement garage and parked in his designated space. Before getting out of the car, he took a pair of binoculars out of his glove compartment and scanned the garage for signs of trouble. When he heard a car entering the garage, he lowered the binoculars and watched it carefully as it pulled into a space thirty feet away from his. The driver stepped out of
his car. It wasn’t the mobster. Putting the binoculars down on the seat, he called Damiano.
“I’ve got some news,” he said. “I have reason to believe Bruno Benvenuti is still alive.”
He could hear Damiano’s police radio squawking in the background.
What? What? Benvenuti alive? How do you know?
“I was tipped off by a very reliable source.”
So…you’re thinking Benvenuti might try to hit you?
“After my part in what happened to his son, I’d say, yes, he certainly might be coming after me. Assuming he’s alive.” Boff spotted someone else in the garage. “Hold on a minute.”
Picking up his binoculars, he trained them on a man wearing a green janitor’s uniform and heading in the direction of the boiler room. He watched him for a minute, then put the binoculars down and shook his head. The guy was too small to be the mobster. Suddenly feeling like a sitting duck in the car, he stashed his binoculars back in the glove department, opened his door, and started walking at a brisk pace toward the basement elevators.
Boff? You still there?
“Sorry about that. I saw someone and checked to see if it was Benvenuti. False alarm.”
Where are you?
“Heading for the elevators in the garage under my building.”
Just as Boff reached the elevator, a shadow stepped out from behind one of the cement columns. Boff’s heart sank. It was Benvenuti. He was holding a gun.
“Get off the phone, Frank,” the mobster said as he walked forward. “Don’t say another word or I’ll shoot.”
Boff increased the phone’s volume to max, put it on speaker, then slid it into his pocket, hoping Damiano could still hear.
Benvenuti stepped closer. “Keep your hands in front of you. Where I can see them. Are you packing?”
Boff shook his head. “You know I haven’t worn a gun since I left the DEA.”
The mobster studied Boff’s face a moment, then apparently decided to believe him. He punched the elevator button. “Okay, let’s take an elevator ride.”
When the door opened, Benvenuti led him inside, hit the button for the top floor, then moved toward the rear, keeping Boff in front of him as a buffer to hide the gun. “If anybody gets on, you say nothing. Capiche?”
Boff nodded. As the elevator rose, he said, “Bruno, I gather you’re not real happy with me.”
“Frank, I love you. But I love my son more. You defied my wishes and went against him. The D.A. and FBI have been crawling up my ass and now I’m a hunted man. Even my own soldiers want me dead.”
Boff knew his only hope was that Damiano had to be listening and would try to rescue him. He was confident his phone would work here in the elevator because he’d done it before. Modern elevators aren’t Faraday cages anymore. “Why are we going to the top floor?” he asked for Damiano’s benefit.
“There’s a nice panoramic view of the city from the roof.”
“The roof? Bruno, I’m afraid of heights. Can’t you just shoot me in the elevator and get it over with?”
Benvenuti did not reply.
As the elevator stopped on the eighth floor, an elderly woman with a toy poodle on a leash stepped inside. She was carrying a pooper scooper. If the woman was going to walk her dog, Boff thought, she was heading in the wrong direction. As soon as the doors closed and the car continued going up, she realized her mistake.
“Oops!”
She hit the button for the ninth floor, and when the doors opened, got off. The elevator started rising again.
Boff looked over his shoulder at Benvenuti. “Do you really have to kill me?” he asked. “Isn’t there another way to do this?”
“Frank, I can’t see how.”
“I’ve got connections that could get you out of the country.”
“So do I, Frank. But I like the Bronx. If I’m gonna die, I want it to happen here. I’m not big on running and hiding.”
“Maybe you could flip and give the D.A. enough info on some of the other families so they’d let you into Witness Protection. I promise not to tell them you sent your nephew, Nicky the Knife, to carve up Alicia.”
More info for Damiano.
“How’d you know that?”
“Because unless the killer was a surgeon, only somebody like Nicky—who you yourself called a genius with a knife—could’ve sliced her body up with such precision. A cop told me all the dismembering cuts were incredibly clean. Not ragged.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not flipping. I may be a lot of things, but a squawk isn’t one of them. And besides, there’s always a risk the D.A. might decide to put me in jail, anyway. Sorry, Frank. I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
“Me, too.”
When the doors opened on the top floor, the mobster said, “Get out. Walk down the corridor. If someone comes into the corridor, you say nothing and do nothing.”
At the end of the corridor was an exit door.
“Open it,” Benvenuti said.
There were stairs going down and up.
“Climb.”
One flight up, they reached the door to the roof. After Boff opened it and they went through, the mobster pointed to the center of the roof with his gun. “Over there.” The view of the sparkling lights of the city was spectacular, but Boff didn’t even notice. Even knowing it was highly unlikely that Damiano was coming, he wanted to give her as much time as possible, so he tried to keep the conversation going.
“Are you going to push me off?” he asked.
“Nah. You’d make a mess on the sidewalk and that’d attract too much attention. I’ll do it here. Nice and neat.”
“Ummm. And where will you go after?”
“I’ll start hunting down the men in my family who’ve turned against me. I’m planning on taking out as many of those bastards as I can before I head for heaven to join my wife.”
“I’ve got some bad news, Bruno. They don’t allow murderers in heaven.”
“You know this for a fact, huh?”
“My wife is a devout Catholic. She told me.”
Boff’s biggest regret about dying now is that he wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye to his wife and kids. Even though he thought religion was a joke, and just in case there was a God, he played the percentages and said a silent prayer that Damiano would come to the rescue in time. Then, Hell. That might be worse than death. First, Cullen saves my ass. Then Damiano. A cop, no less.
“Bruno, I thought guys like you killed for business reasons. Not personal.”
“You made it business when you fingered Emilio and encouraged the D.A. and the feds to go after me, Frank. I blame you for all this. But you weren’t alone. My son may have had the smarts for college, but he never had a lick of sense. None of this woulda happened if he hadn’t gotten involved in that damn escort service. I still don’t get it. If the kid wanted to get into the life, why the hell didn’t he come to me? He coulda stood by my side. Had power and all the money he wanted.”
“Emilio told me he didn’t do that because he wanted to get out from under your shadow.”
“That’s bullshit! I always let him be his own man. Even as a kid. Jesus, maybe that’s what I did wrong. I shoulda raised him like my father raised me. Shoulda taught him discipline and respect.”
Boff couldn’t think of anything more to say to buy time. Thankfully, the mobster wanted to keep talking.
“When his whole life collapsed around him, the Emperor Nero committed suicide with assistance. Did you know that?”
“No. I wasn’t very good in history. Not that Roman stuff, anyway.”
“You shoulda studied harder, Frank. Me? Personally? I don’t have the stomach for suicide. I’d rather my men shoot me. It’d be more honorable. But, like I said, I’m gonna take a few down before I go.” He looked around at the view. “I guess it’s time, Frank.”
“Can I make a request?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t pop me in the head. I’ve always thought that was a degrading way to die
.”
“No problem.”
If Benvenuti shot him in the chest or stomach, Boff knew it would buy him more time. Not much. But in a situation like this, any extra time was welcome. But he also knew that once Benvenuti realized he wasn’t dead, and was wearing Kevlar, he’d plug him behind the ear.
“Does the condemned man get to say his last words?” Boff asked.
“Sure. Go ahead. But make it fast.”
He tried to think of something to say that would allow him to die with dignity. But any way he looked at it, this was a bad way to go, especially for a man who had once been a legendary DEA agent and had no peers as a private investigator. He had committed a cardinal sin. He’d let someone get the drop on him. He was supposed to be way too smart for that.
“It would mean a lot to me,” he finally said, “if you didn’t harm my wife or kids.”
“I’ve never hurt a woman or a child. Well, at least until Alicia. But she was more like a man. So don’t worry about Jenny and the kids.”
“Thanks.”
Boff took a deep breath, called a picture of his wife’s face in his mind, and waited for the gunshot.
Instead, he heard the whaap, whaap, whaap of a helicopter approaching. He looked up to see an NYPD copter swooping down toward the roof. Suddenly a spotlight from the copter zeroed in on Benvenuti. Then a voice on a megaphone said, “POLICE! PUT YOUR GUN DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM IT!”
The door to the copter swung open while it was still in the air, and a SWAT sniper pointed his rifle at Benvenuti. The gun’s red laser beam zigzagged across the mobster’s chest.
Boff let out a sigh of relief. God had heard. Or at least Damiano had.
Frowning, Benvenuti turned to Boff. “Clever to the end, huh, Frank? How’d you alert the cops?”
Boff said nothing.
The Killer Sex Game (A Frank Boff Mystery) Page 32