Fatal Cure

by Robin Cook

  “Exactly,” Ben agreed. “I think we might want to buy this new company or at least exclusively sublicense the new process. We’ve been in negotiations with another company up in Worcester, Massachusetts, for their process to do the same thing, but their process is nowhere as efficient as this new one in San Diego.”

  “What kind of money are we talking about,” Michael asked, “and how do you see doing it? As stock or as a bridge loan?”

  “Stock if we decide to buy, and maybe as a bridge loan if we decide to exclusively sublicense.”

  “How about the money. What are we talking about, approximately?”

  “I’d say in the neighborhood of half a million if we sublicense, which is what I think we should do. At first I thought about buying, but it would be much more if we buy, and buying is more risky with how fast the technology is advancing.”

  “After the signing yesterday,” Michael said, “I’d recommend we use stock whether we buy or sublicense. I can make a good case that our market value has gone up considerably.”

  “You think our angels will go for it?”

  “I don’t see why not. I know for a fact their business is booming, particularly in the gambling arena. They are virtually swimming in money.”

  “I’ve never asked,” Ben said, “but something tweaks my curiosity about how their partnership works.”

  “You mean between the Mafia and the Yakuza? It’s interesting you ask, because I had to ask as well. It’s actually quite simple. It’s the Lucia people who site, set up, and run the Italian restaurants that front the high-end gambling joints they have peppered around the Upper East Side. They’re also the ones who arrange for the women or whatever. It’s the Yakuza who find the clientele: mostly high-end businessmen from Japan, who, by the way, notoriously love to gamble. I mean really love to gamble. It’s also the Lucia people who provide the credit when and if needed, and it’s usually needed, as the Japanese clients more often than not run out of cash. As Japanese, they are encouraged to borrow as much as they want from the Mafia, with the understanding that they can pay back the loans on their next trip to New York. Of course, this affords the gamblers the opportunity to borrow much more than they ordinarily would, because they have the mistaken idea that, if needed, they can avoid ever repaying by never returning to NYC. But here’s where the partnership really works. The grossly in-debt Japanese businessman then returns to Japan, where he believes he is immune from the Mafia. But he soon learns that that’s not the case. It is the Yakuza who collect, and the Yakuza are very good at collecting, as they can be extraordinarily violent. The Yakuza then share the take with the Mafia, often in crystal meth, not cash. It is a very lucrative setup for both sides.”

  Ben shivered with the thought of what a nasty surprise that would be for an unsuspecting Japanese businessman.

  “So, let’s go over this again so there is no misunderstanding,” Michael said. “You want me to go to the Lucias’ capo, Vinnie Dominick, and Yamaguchi-gumi’s saiko-komon, Saboru Fukuda, and talk about increasing their stake in iPS USA even though just yesterday afernoon you were talking about sidelining them. Are we on the same page here?”

  “Yes, unless you have another potential angel investor?”

  “I have a couple of people I could go to, but I think it’s better to stay with what we got.”

  “You’re the placement agent, not me!”

  “I’m actually glad that you’ve changed your mind.”

  “How so?” Ben questioned.

  “I was worried you were coming in here this morning to insist on my going to them and telling them they were being demoted to garden-variety investors.”

  “It will have to happen, but just not now,” Ben said. “But it will have to be before any IPO. Due diligence might bring it out in the open.”

  “I think you’re being a bit naïve. You don’t tell either one of these guys what to do and what not to do.”

  “I fully plan to reward them with extra stock for the role they’ve been playing.”

  “I think the only thing you will succeed in doing is pissing them off, which is not a good thing to do. But let’s not argue and become distracted. Let’s keep our eyes focused on when we want to go for the IPO, because that’s when we all get our just rewards.”

  “Maintaining a working relationship makes me nervous,” Ben admitted. “As soon as we don’t need them, I want to break it off.”

  “I was open with you when you first came calling. These are not people you can order around.”

  “I know you were open with me, and I appreciate that you were.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Michael said. “I’ll call our friends and find out if I can see them this afternoon. I’ll tell them the good news concerning yesterday’s contract signing, then hit them up for more equity, which I’m sure they’ll like to hear. Then I’ll bring up the issue that they’ll have to fade into the background for the IPO. With the good news, maybe they’ll take it all in stride. I’ll see what I can do and get back to you.”

  “I appreciate it,” Ben said, rising to his feet.

  A few minutes later as he was on his way down in the elevator, Ben placed a call to Jacqueline and said he’d be back at the office soon and asked if she wanted to get lunch at Cipriani, located in the Sherry-Netherland up the street from the iPS USA office. What he really wanted was for her to tell him Satoshi had shown up, since he was superstitious about asking. When she didn’t offer the information, he finally asked and was told he hadn’t appeared. With similar superstition, Ben had avoided redialing Satoshi’s cell phone but finally did. What he got was voicemail, and passive-aggressively he chose not to leave a message. Ben was now angry that the man didn’t have the sense to call if he wasn’t planning on showing up.

  7

  MARCH 25, 2010

  THURSDAY, 11:35 a.m.

  Carlo Paparo pulled into the strip mall on Elmhurst Avenue that housed the Venetian restaurant. The restaurant was situated between Gene’s Liquors, which was more of a wineshop than a liquor store, and Fred’s DVD Rental. Several years previously Fred’s had gone out of business, but the old sign was still in place.

  Sitting shotgun was Brennan Monaghan. They regularly commuted together from their homes in New Jersey to Elmhurst, Queens, on Tuesdays and Thursdays to play penny ante with their boss, Louie Barbera.

  Several years previously Louie had been ordered by the don of the Vaccarro crime family to take Paulie Cerino’s place in Queens while Paulie was in the slammer. Previously Louie had been head of the New Jersey operation, but the Queens branch was considerably bigger and much more important. Initially, the higher-ups thought Paulie would be paroled in five years or so, but the years had dragged on. Every time Paulie had come up before the parole board, he’d been turned down.

  “Should we bring up about last evening and what went down with those crazy Yakuza guys right away or put it off until after lunch?” Brennan asked as he got out of the car. “I know Louie’s going to be fucking fit to be tied.”

  “That’s a good question,” Carlo said. He slammed the Denali’s door and started toward the Venetian’s entrance. “I think we should tell him right off. I don’t want him taking it out on us in any way or form, which he might do if we delay it.”

  “Yeah, but it’s going to ruin his game, and he hates to have his game ruined.”

  “True. So in a way we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. What do you say we flip for it?”

  “Good idea.”

  The two men stopped in the middle of the parking area while both searched their pockets for a coin. Brennan was the first to come up with a quarter. “Heads, we tell him right away; tails, we wait until after lunch and after the game.”

  “Right on!” Carlo said.

  Brennan used his thumb to flip the coin up over his head before snatching it out of the air on its way toward the ground. With a quick motion he slapped the coin onto the back of his left wrist. The two men leaned forward. It
was heads.

  “It’s decided,” Brennan said.

  A car horn beeped, making the two men jump out of the way. When they glared at the offending vehicle, they saw the driver was Arthur MacEwan, one of their colleagues, who was laughing at having startled Brennan and Carlo. As he drove past, Brennan gave him the finger. Behind Arthur was a black Chevrolet Malibu driven by another colleague, Ted Polowski. Both cars found slots in the angled parking lot, and their drivers joined the others.

  “What are you two losers doing out here in the middle of the parking lot?” Arthur asked, still chuckling about how much he’d scared Carlo and Brennan. He had a high-pitched voice that drove everyone nuts.

  “Screw you,” Carlo said.

  “We were deciding when to tell Louie what happened last night,” Brennan said, immune to Arthur’s antics.

  “What happened?” Arthur questioned.

  “You’ll know soon enough,” Carlo said.

  Together the group walked toward the restaurant, the façade of which was sheathed in fake stone. Beyond the door, they pushed through a heavy dark green curtain whose job it was to seal out the cold on frigid nights. Inside, the walls were full of paintings of Venice on black velvet. Most of the classic scenes were represented, such as the Ponte dei Sospiri, Saint Mark’s Basilica, the Ponte di Rialto, and the Doge’s Palace.

  To the left was a small bar with a half-dozen barstools. Running along the right wall was a row of tufted red velvet-upholstered booths with white tablecloths, which were considered the coveted tables from dinner to the wee hours of the morning. The establishment was open for lunch only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then only for the owner, Louie Barbera, and his soldiers: Carlo, Brennan, Arthur, and Ted. The other tables in the room featured a newly added Chianti bottle nestled within a straw basket and covered with layers of candle drippings. In keeping with the rest of the décor, the tablecloths and napkins were red-and-white checkered fabric. The room was dimly lit from several hanging fixtures over the bar and over each booth.

  “You guys are late,” Louie snapped. He folded his newspaper and pushed it aside as he glanced at his watch. “When I say noon, I mean noon. You got it?” Louie was an overweight man in his mid-forties with dull features indistinctly indented into a full face the color and texture of dough. He was dressed accordingly in stretched-out corduroy with worn patches over the knees and elbows. The only thing exceptional about his appearance was his eyes. They were sharp and piercing between flaccid lids, reminding one of a sluggish, fat reptile.

  The men didn’t respond, knowing that no matter what was said, Louie would pounce on whoever had the nerve to speak. The one thing everyone learned over the years was that when Louie was in a bad mood, which seemed to be the case that day, it was better to say as little as possible. As they slid into the booth from both sides, since Louie was sitting in the very back, they were all silent.

  Louie looked from one to the next to find a victim to appease his irritation, but no one was willing to lock eyes with him.

  “Benito!” Louie finally called out, loud enough to be heard from the kitchen, making everyone at the table jump. Then he added, “You guys are pathetic,” recognizing that no one was willing to stand up for the group.

  Benito burst out of the double swinging doors and sprinted to the booth. He was a slight man with a pencil mustache and was dressed in a tired tuxedo. “Yes, Mr. Barbera?” he questioned with an Italian accent seemingly from central casting.

  “What’s for lunch?”

  “Pasta con carciofi e pancetta.”

  Louie’s eyes brightened. “Terrific! Let’s also have some Barolo and San Pellegrino and arugula salad.” He then glanced around at the group. “Everybody happy with that?”

  Everyone nodded in turn. “That’s it, then,” Louie said to Benito with a wave of his hand. He then yelled after him, “And tell John Franco it’s gotta be al dente or it’s all coming back.”

  Louie turned his attention to his guests, looking directly at Carlo. “Well, did you bring the cards or not?”

  Carlo pulled out a new box, broke the seal, and placed the deck in front of Louie, all the while continuing the debate with himself whether to bring up the issue of the two crazy Yakuza guys and what had gone down the previous evening then or later, despite the results of the coin toss. As Brennan had reminded him, Carlo was certain Louie was going to go through the roof, because he’d been making it a strict point over the last several years to tone down violence, meaning murder, with all of the local gangs, be they Asian, Hispanic, Russian, or American. His leadership in this regard had been paying off dramatically, and everybody was thriving, even in the depressed economic environment. His point was that by eschewing killings the police were leaving everybody alone, allowing the gambling and drug businesses to prosper, particularly on the drug end. Without police interference, Louie had actually spearheaded an association with the Japanese Yakuza group Aizukotetsu-kai, run by Hideki Shimoda, who called himself a saiko-komon, which Louie interpreted to be equivalent to capo, like himself. The association afforded Louie an inexhaustible supply of “ice,” as well as access to high-stakes Japanese gamblers. The association had increased to an extent that it now comprised a very large portion of the Vaccarros’ income. Of course, Louie’s main rival, the Lucia family, got wind of the operation and found a rival Yakuza group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, to form an equivalent association. They were now competing directly, a situation that in the past would have resulted in some sort of turf war. But not under Louie’s leadership. Instead, he saw the competitive situation as a plus rather than a minus in that it stimulated demand. Ice was becoming an extremely popular recreational drug in the city, a fact he used to convince Vinnie Dominick of the Lucia family that there was more than enough room for both their organizations.

  As Louie dealt out the first hand, Carlo found himself focusing on a compelling reason to break the bad news right away. If he did, he was reasonably confident Louie could not blame him, as Louie had ordered Carlo to help the Yakuza guys. On the other hand, if Carlo waited, as he was tempted to do for convenience’ sake, there was a good chance he would be blamed, at least to some degree, for the killings, making a bad situation even worse. Carlo understood that Louie was not fun to be around when he was angry, but it was also much worse when he was specifically angry at him.

  “Yesterday afternoon when you sent us to help the Aizukotetsu-kai guys, things went ...” Carlo paused, trying to think of the most soothing way to bring up the issue, but no words came to mind until he thought of the word awry. He’d probably never used the word in his life, and he questioned himself where it had come from when it came out of his mouth.

  Louie stopped organizing his cards, and after slowly lowering them, he stared at Carlo. “ ‘Awry’?” he questioned with true confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Sorta unexpected,” Carlo explained.

  “‘Unexpected’ is as confusing as ‘awry.’ Unexpectedly good or unexpectedly bad?”

  “I’d have to say bad.”

  Louie glanced at Brennan, as if he expected Brennan to explain Carlo’s word choice. When Brennan refused to make eye contact, Louie said, “Okay, you guys, I think you’d better tell me what the hell happened.”

  “We’re not a hundred percent sure about the first part, but we’re totally sure about the second part.”

  “Come on, quit beating around the bush.”

  “You told us that we were supposed to help these two Yakuza guys shake down a Japanese named Satoshi who worked for a company called iPS USA.”

  “That was what Hideki Shimoda told me. There was some problem with this Satoshi back in Japan. I assumed it was probably a big gambling debt, since the man had recently fled Japan and showed up here in New York City.”

  “Well, it wasn’t much of a shakedown. They followed the dude down into the Fifty-ninth Street subway station. But they weren’t down there for more than ten or fifteen minutes. When they came back they were kinda jazzed up
and had the man’s athletic bag, the contents of which seemed to disappoint them. When I asked them what had happened they told me that Satoshi had had a heart attack, which caused one of the dudes to burst out laughing.”

  “I know about this supposed heart attack,” Louie said. “Hideki Shimoda called me earlier to thank us for the help you guys gave his boys. Actually, what he really called about was that he’d heard from his boss in Japan. Anyway, the big boss asked him to ask me for your help again for tonight, which made me ask if everything had gone okay last night and if he’d gotten what he wanted. He then told me no, he hadn’t gotten what he needed, which is why he needed help again tonight. He also told me Satoshi had had a heart attack, which he finally admitted was actually a hit. When I blew up at him, saying we American families have learned to avoid all killings to keep the authorities off our collective backs, he told me to calm down, that the hit was done in a way that would look like a heart attack, or at least natural, and that no one was going to figure out that the guy had been whacked. I mean, those weren’t his exact words, but that’s what he was saying.”

  “I knew it was a hit!” Carlo said with an air of self-congratulation. “It was over too quickly. It ticks me off they weren’t square with us. They should have told us what they were up to. They were treating us as taxi drivers, which I guess we were. I tell you, I’m not excited about helping them again.”

  “I can understand,” Louie said, “but the situation is a little more complicated. So what is this second part you’re referring to?

  “When Susumu and Yoshiaki popped up out of the station, they had Satoshi’s wallet as well as his athletic bag. From the wallet they found out where the guy was living with his family out in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Then they argued with each other in Japanese, which ended up with all of us driving to Fort Lee.”

  “I didn’t tell you to drive them to New Jersey. What the hell did they do in New Jersey?”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t specifically tell us not to drive to Jersey; you told us to drive them around wherever they wanted to go.”