Susan lowers herself onto one of the torn couch cushions, lifts a plastic cup, and takes a sip. A tea bag hangs over the edge. He sits carefully on one of the ruined chairs on the other side of a tinted-glass coffee table, the only thing that hasn’t been trashed.
“My God, Susan. What happened?”
“Vandals.” She looks away from him as she says this.
He casts her a disbelieving look.
“Or robbers. Who knows?”
He shrugs. “Susan, come on. I’m your friend.”
Susan closes her eyes, then opens them and looks directly at him. “Leave it alone, Mick. Please, just drop it. If you are my friend, that’s what you’ll do. It’s what I want.”
He stares at Susan for a long moment. He doesn’t know what to do.
No, I do know what to do. Pry the information out of her.
He leans toward her. “I’m pretty damned sure you know both the who and the why of this.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Have you called the police?”
“No.”
That seals it for him. The only reason she wouldn’t report it is because she has a relationship with the guy who did it.
“Why are you protecting him?”
“You don’t understand.”
“So please explain it to me.”
She stands and heads for the bedroom. “I asked you to leave, Mick. So leave.”
She slams the bedroom door behind her.
He stands, stares at the door. He starts to move toward it, then stops, reaches into his jacket pocket, and pulls out his iPhone. He presses the camera app and takes pictures of the damage.
Minutes later, Ubering back to the office, he calls Tommy and tells him everything.
“It’s that soccer player,” Mick says. “I know it. The Argentine. Armand Romero. Everyone knows he’s a hothead. Susan told Piper they broke up. I’m guessing Armand’s not happy about it.”
Tommy agrees to look into the guy, find out where he hangs out, buddy up to him at the bar. “If I can’t win his trust, maybe I’ll take a more direct approach.”
“Okay,” Mick says, worried, as always, that some act of violence will land his brother back in prison. “But don’t do anything stupid.”
Frank Valiante hangs up the phone, fuming. Twice now he’s told his boss, Don Savonna, about his discussion with the old man from the transportation company. There’s no doubt that Nunzio is planning to launch a direct assault against him. That Nunzio has gone so far as to order a fleet of bulletproof attack vehicles for the job. But Savonna refuses to believe it, claiming that neither Nunzio nor his boss, Don Moretti, would dare to make such a move without the Commission’s approval. And Savonna himself won’t approach the Commission for permission to take out Nunzio in retaliation for Nunzio’s murder of Antonio.
“It’s a terrible loss,” Savonna said. “And an inexcusable thing to do. But the Commission doesn’t want a war right now. And that’s what would happen if you hit Nunzio. You know how much Moretti loves him.”
“Does he love him as much as I loved my son?”
“Watch your tone, Frank. I know you’re upset. But there are limits.”
He apologized, of course; a don was a don.
But there is no way he’s going to sit back and wait to be attacked. He’ll find out where Nunzio is going to stage his army, catch the bastard preparing to launch an unsanctioned war. Then he’ll attack first. He’ll have to, and no one will be able to blame him. Not Savonna, not Moretti, not the Commission. Nunzio’s army will be eviscerated, his wife and daughter dead. Antonio will be avenged. And Philadelphia and South Jersey will be wide open.
He reaches for the phone and calls the old man.
“Hiram,” he says when the old man answers.
The old man says, “Frank!” There’s warmth in his voice. “You have good timing. I was just about to call you.”
“You know the where and when of his attack?”
“One week from today. Monday, the twenty-seventh. That’s when he’s planning to hit you. This weekend he’s assembling his troops at a place he owns in the Poconos.”
“How solid is this?”
“Have I ever been wrong before?”
He smiles. “Not once in fifteen years, my friend.”
“So, what do you want to do?”
“Those bulletproof vans you told me he ordered . . . you got any more?”
A pause at the other end. “That’s a special order. Vehicles like that have to be fitted out. It takes time. Costs money. Of course,” he chuckles, “the more money, the less time.”
“How much money to get them to me by Saturday?”
“Uh, hold on.”
The old man puts him on hold for close to five minutes, then gets back to him with an amount that takes Frank’s breath away.
“That much for six vans?”
“Six bulletproof attack vans.”
He closes his eyes. Sees his dead son’s face, followed by the sneering mug of James Fucking Nunzio.
“Get it done.”
19
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22
It’s just after 4:00, and Tommy is at the desk in his cluttered office, reviewing property records, copies of old newspaper articles, and photos. He compares two pictures, one of a woman in her fifties, one of a girl aged eighteen from her high school yearbook.
“You’re the same person,” he says aloud. “I know it.”
Matt Crowley, the guy Piper hired, learned that “Lois Beal” was an alias stolen from a dead child, as was the case with Lois’s husband. Tommy figured that Lois probably dropped her alias after she left the farm following her husband’s death in 2009. So anyone looking online for Lois Beal would hit the same dead end as Crowley. He racked his brain trying to figure out a way to track her down and finally hit upon the answer when he remembered that Buck Forney had referred to Lois and her husband as “renters who showed up out of nowhere.” Renters. That was the key.
The law firm subscribes to Westlaw, which has various public-records databases, including ones that list property owners. So he punched in the address of the Beal farmstead and found that from the late 1960s through 2010, it was owned by Jeffrey and Heather Warden. Searching through other public-records databases, Tommy learned that Jeffrey inherited the farm from his father, Edwin, who had been raised on the farm before moving to Georgia in the late 1940s. Born in 1950, Jeffrey would have been about Lois Beal’s age, and any sibling he had could have been, too. But Jeffrey was an only child, and he remained in Georgia his whole life, so he couldn’t have become Lois Beal’s husband, “Jason Dell.”
Jeffrey’s wife, however, Heather Corbett Warden, had a brother and two sisters. The brother died in Vietnam in 1970. The elder sister moved to California, where she went into politics, eventually serving in the state senate. And then there was the younger sister, Megan. Born in 1950, Megan was nineteen years old and a sophomore at Berkeley in 1969 when she disappeared with her boyfriend, a student radical named Bobby Moffat, the two of them having committed a terrible crime.
Tommy holds up Megan’s picture from her high school yearbook and compares it to an old newspaper photo of Lois Beal, taken at a pumpkin festival held at the Beals’ farm in 2003, the year before the Dowd murder.
“Oh yeah, it’s you.”
He gets up and walks to the conference room, where Piper has the Darlene Dowd file spread over the conference table.
“I think I found her,” he says. “Lois Beal.”
Her eyes brighten. She smiles and stands. “That’s fantastic. Where is she?”
“Georgia, if I’m right.”
“We can fly out first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll call Susan.”
“No, let me go down first. Do some reconnaissance. Figure out the best way to approach her.”
“Why do you need to do that?”
“Because if I’m right about who she is, who she was, there’s a good chance she won’t want to talk to you.”
<
br /> Piper exhales. “Then she’s in hiding. Like we thought.”
He nods. “Give me a couple days. It’s Wednesday, so plan on coming down Friday or Saturday.”
“How bad is it—the reason she’s running?”
“Bad.”
They stare at each other for a moment; then he turns to leave.
“Tommy?”
He turns back. “What?” A little edge to his voice.
“Nothing.”
He walks back to his office, sits behind the desk. He knows Piper wants things to go back the way they were before the Hanson case. Their friendship began just after she married Mick. Piper reached out to Tommy while he was in prison, writing him every week, encouraging him, giving him hope. Once he was out, she invited him into her family, even more than Mick did, helped him rebuild his life. But then came the death of Jennifer Yamura, David Hanson’s lover, and it changed them all.
“People,” he says.
The whole race of us. Hopscotching from one fuckup to another.
His mind jumps to Susan. He wonders what on earth is going on with her.
Someone smashes up her apartment, and she doesn’t call the cops? Doesn’t even want to admit to Mick what’s happening?
He leaves his office, walks to the kitchen, brews a cup of Starbucks French Roast on the Keurig. He walks back down the hall, pauses at the threshold of Susan’s office. She’s at work today but in a foul mood, according to Angie.
“Hey,” he says, walking into the office, doing his best to sound upbeat.
Susan looks up from her computer screen without raising her head. She doesn’t say anything.
“I just told Piper I think I found Lois Beal.”
“You’re not here to talk about the Dowd case, Tommy.”
He stares.
“I’m sure Mick told you what happened. But some things are private, okay?”
“I just thought—”
She raises her hand, signaling him to stop.
“Private, Tommy.”
“You’re the boss,” he mumbles, turning away.
“Thank you for closing the door on your way out.”
He returns to his office. “Hell with this,” he says, grabbing his helmet off the couch.
Thirty minutes later, he’s inching down I-95 South on his blue-and-silver Road King Special. It’s sixty-five degrees, sunny and dry, great conditions for a ride. Or it would be, were it not for the traffic. Rush hour down 95 is a slog. But he has somewhere to be.
The Philadelphia Union are playing the Colorado Rapids at Talen Energy Stadium in Chester, a little more than twenty miles southwest of Center City. The game starts at 7:30. He’ll get to Chester by six, buy a ticket, hang out for a while, grab something to eat from the Chickie’s & Pete’s inside the stadium, or maybe the Q Barbeque, then watch some soccer. Along the way, he’ll talk to some people, maybe some cops assigned to the stadium, find out where the Union players go for drinks after the game. With luck, by midnight he’ll be sitting next to Armand Romero, talking about the game, about his Harley, about fishing or hunting or whatever the fuck else the guy’s into. Then he’ll give Armand a chance to complain about his uppity lawyer girlfriend. What it’s like to date a female attorney, how good she is in the sack, maybe how he needs to put the bitch in line every now and then. Show her who’s boss. Then, later, when the bar closes, he’ll follow Armand to his house or apartment. When he gets out of his car, Tommy will be there to show soccer-boy what happens when you go up against an ex-con hard case who doesn’t go in for the woman-beating routine.
Yes, Susan, he thinks, some things are private. Even from your friends. So I won’t ever tell you why Armand doesn’t come around anymore.
“That is not going to happen,” Nunzio says calmly. “Christina is not going to be subpoenaed, and neither is Johnny.”
Mick McFarland has just told him about the federal prosecutor Brenner’s threat to haul his daughter and enforcer before a grand jury.
“And you’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen . . . how?”
“You’re the lawyer. That’s your job.”
“Any idea why the New York feds decided not to move against you?”
Nunzio shrugs, but he knows they were told to leave him alone by certain powerful government officials who owe him.
The lawyer taps his pen on his legal pad, says, “Let’s switch gears. Under the new schedule, your trial is less than a month away. Are you ready to let me in on whatever story you’re planning to run with?”
“Next question.”
More tapping of the pen. “Do you at least want to tell me about the plasticuffs? If your narrative is built around a self-defense tale, you’ll have a hard time selling it to the jury if they think Valiante was bound when his throat was slit.”
“What is it they say? Truth is stranger than fiction?”
Admittedly, that part is tricky, but he’s working on an answer.
McFarland shakes his head, frustrated.
Nunzio smiles, enjoying parrying with the lawyer. “You play chess?”
The lawyer’s eyes flatten. “That’s what this is to you? A game?”
He jumps to his feet, sweeps the lawyer’s briefcase and legal pad off the table.
“My life is no game!”
He pounds the table, brings fire to his eyes, shoots it at the lawyer. He leans over the table, gets in the lawyer’s face, lets him watch Jekyll turn to Hyde. It takes him back to the night “Jimmy Nutzo” was coined. It had been a month since his father was killed, and he’d taken over the crew. Most of the men under him were older, some by decades, and he was having a hard time keeping them in line. They weren’t taking him seriously enough. One guy in particular, Donny Ricci, seemed to recoil at taking orders from him. One night, he was in his cramped office behind the bar—the old place. He waited until after closing, when all his guys were hanging out, playing pool, throwing back a few. Then he stormed into the bar area, picked up a full bottle of Bud, and smashed it against the side of Donny’s face, screaming, “The next time I hear one of you motherfuckers called me Jimmy Nutzo, I’ll cut out all your fucking tongues!” He stormed back into his office and slammed the door. As he’d expected, it was a lot easier from that point on to keep the crew in line. Even Donny, once he got out of the hospital, treated him differently. Also, as he’d expected, the nickname stuck. Jimmy Nunzio became the smooth-talking mask from which “Jimmy Nutzo” could spring at any moment.
He closes his eyes, takes some deep breaths, sits back down.
“This is no game to me. I promise you. I asked about chess because I figured maybe we could play someday, after this is all over.”
“All over?” The lawyer looks confused. “Jimmy. Mr. Nunzio. When this is over, chances are . . .”
Nunzio puts up his hand. “I know. I know what you’re going to say: chances are I’ll be upstate. But I can’t let myself think that way.”
“I get it,” McFarland says. Then he switches topics again. “Do you have any better sense as to when the war with Frank Valiante will come? And in what form?”
Sunday. In the form of white attack vans.
“I wish I did.”
“Tell me honestly. Is this something you want? War?”
He smiles. “The greatest generals are those who win without fighting. Sun Tzu.”
McFarland is staring at him now, trying to see behind his eyes.
Good luck with that.
Frank Valiante, his son Angelo, and three other top lieutenants stand around the conference-room table. The surface is covered with Google satellite photos showing a large building positioned in the center of a ten-acre clearing in the woods. A number of smaller buildings, log cabins, sit at the periphery of the clearing, adjacent to the woods that surround it for miles.
“The place was a luxury resort,” Frank says, repeating the information he was given by the old man. “The owners fell on hard times a few years back, and Nunzio bought it for a song.”
&
nbsp; “I’ll bet he got it for a steal,” Angelo says. “I’ll bet the owners didn’t fall on hard times, he pushed them.”
Frank stares at his youngest son, hears the hate in his voice. Angelo will never get over Nunzio killing his brother.
That’s good. He’ll need that hate to get this job done right.
“My source tells me Nunzio’s going to bring his whole crew together at this place over the weekend. His plan is to come at us in force on Monday. He ordered six bulletproof vans to move his guys in.”
He pauses, lets that sink in, watches Angelo and the others look around the room at each other.
“Problem for Jimmy Nutzo is that we’re going to have our own vans—and hit him first.” He leans over the largest photograph, a 36-by-40-inch printout of a satellite photo of the property. “I planned it all out. We’ll have six vans. A driver and nine guns in each. The back windows will all be tinted. That’s important, because the drivers are going to drive the vans empty onto Nunzio’s property, park them in a circle right on this big lawn. Nunzio’s guys will go apeshit, attack the vans with everything they have, thinking all our guys are inside the vans like sitting ducks. It’ll be like Indians surrounding a wagon train. Except that when Nunzio’s guys go after the vans, our guys will surprise them—run out from the woods and mow them down. They won’t know what hit ’em.”
Frank looks up and smiles. His guys are smiling, too, liking the visions of Nunzio’s men getting cut to pieces, blood spraying everywhere, the air filled with screams and curses and moans. It makes him feel good, too, settling things this way. The way of his grandfather. Before the business got so civilized and political and you had to crawl before a Commission with your hat in your hand, begging for permission to do what needed to be done.
He looks at Angelo. “Then, once you’re done with his crew, you go for the wife and the daughter.”
A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal) Page 16