Act of Revenge (5 page)

Karp took the notes at these meetings, a somewhat unusual role for someone with his rank, this necessary task being regarded by the average legal bureaucrat as suitable only for peasants, or women. Karp had assumed it for two reasons. First, it made him appear to pompous idiots less important than he was, which made them tend to ignore him, which made it easier for him to sneak up behind them if need be and yank their pants down. Besides that, he understood that who takes the notes at executive meetings controls the memory of an organization, and since Karp had never cultivated a political base, any control he could develop was welcome. While he respected Jack Keegan's skill and competence, and actually liked him well enough as a man, Karp was under no illusions about the district attorney's ambitions. He understood perfectly (for Keegan, to his credit, had made it no secret) that if a sacrifice had to be made to that altar and if Karp was at hand and unprotected, the D.A. would not hesitate for a New York minute before yanking his plug.

Karp took meeting notes in thick accountant's ledgers bound in pale green cloth, items not much in demand at the supply room since computers had come in. He had rows of them in his office in a locked steel cabinet whose sole key was ever in his custody, and he never showed the notes therein to anyone. Thus no one knew what Karp had written down, which tended to make Keegan's more haughty satraps less willing to get into arguments about who had promised what to whom. The note business was an absurdly simple ploy, but it worked to the D.A.'s advantage and polished the luster of Karp. Swiftly, using his idiosyncratic quasi-shorthand, Karp wrote down the purpose of the meeting—“strategy for Catalano murder”—and the date and the names of the three participants besides himself and the D.A.

The first of these, sitting to Keegan's right was Roland Hrcany, the chief of the Homicide Bureau. Hrcany had the look and build of a professional wrestler, and, like many of them, he wore his straight blond hair combed back from a cave-man brow ridge and long enough to reach past his collar in back. Despite this brutish appearance (or perhaps because of it) he was the best homicide prosecutor in the office, next to Karp, a fact that rankled him, as did Karp's former incumbency as homicide chief. Some months ago he had been shot by a Mexican felon trying to introduce south-of-the-border criminal justice practices to the New York area, and he was still not back on duty full-time. The event, and its wasting effects on his massive body, of which he was inordinately proud, had oddly enough improved his disposition, which had been churlish and of an aggressiveness outstanding even in the testosterone-rich precincts of the D.A.'s office.

Opposite Roland sat Frank Anselmo, the chief of the Rackets Bureau. He was a dapper, dark man with a full head of thick black hair, well cut, and small, active, manicured hands. Anselmo, the son of a police inspector, and thus a man with important cop credibility, had pitched for Fordham during the same years that Keegan had played football. The two men were cronies from way back, and Keegan had brought him in as Rackets chief from the Queens D.A. shortly after taking over the New York office. This made sense, since the D.A. had to trust more than anyone else in his office the person responsible for, among other things, investigating public officials. Karp did not know him well. Rackets was a small bureau, its work was perforce somewhat secret, and it brought few cases to trial. The book on Anselmo around the office was that he was smart, ambitious, and, it seemed, temporarily content to play in the shade cast by Jack Keegan's lofty oak. The relationship with the boss was, of course, well-known, and hardly anyone gave him any trouble. He was smiling and joshing with Keegan about a sports bet. He smiled a lot. In general, Karp was suspicious of people in the criminal justice business who smiled a lot, as he himself did not see much to be happy about there, but Anselmo always seemed to put Keegan in a better mood, which was never to be sneezed at.

The last man at the meeting was clearly not in a good mood and not amused by Anselmo's patter. Raymond Guma, slumped like a bag of dirty laundry in the chair just to Karp's left, was one of the few ADAs who did not at all mind giving Anselmo trouble. Guma had on occasion been mistaken for the former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, although he was less pretty than Berra, and unlike Berra he had shown (during a tryout for the Yanks, for he had been quite the star at St. John's) that he could not reliably hit a major league breaking ball. He was nearly the same age as Keegan and Anselmo—late fifties—but carried his years more heavily, for unlike the other men there he had never been promoted to any position of authority, and never would be. He had been a homicide prosecutor for over twenty-five years, and he knew more about the New York Mafia than anyone in the building, which was why he was at the meeting. Some said he knew rather too much about the New York Mafia, which was one of the many reasons he had never been promoted. He was a sloppy, ill-disciplined man, a sexist in the current parlance, sour and cynical, but—and this is why Karp loved him—with boundless heart and a sense of humor made of Kevlar.

In the normal course of things, Guma should have been in Rackets under Anselmo, but between the two men lay a morass of near visceral antipathy. This, even more than the hazards of the case on the agenda, accounted for the tension in the room. Keegan let the sports talk peter away. “Guys, you all know how important this one is. We're going to come under a lot of pressure, and I want some early resolution. Butch has my full authority on this one.” He looked up as O'Malley came in looking concerned and tapped her wristwatch. “The goddamn lieutenant governor,” growled Keegan. He stood, said, “I'll be back,” and left. All faces rotated to the other end of the table. Karp nodded to Anselmo.

“Frank, your meeting.”

Anselmo's smile broadened by an inch, showing even, small white teeth, and he ducked his head in a fetching gesture of humility. He shuffled some papers on his lap and passed out a set of neatly bound blue manila folders stamped
confidential
in big red letters. Guma turned his face toward Karp, out of Anselmo's view, and flashed his gargoyle imitation—a convincing one, given his physiognomy.

“All right: Catalano,” said Anselmo. “To review the bare facts: on the night of June ninth, a body later identified as that of Edward Catalano was found in a car parked under the West Side Highway at Vestry Street. He'd been shot from behind at close range with a small-caliber weapon. Five shots to the head, a typical gangland murder.”

Here what might have been construed by an unsympathetic listener as a snort of derision issued from Guma's direction. It was a low sort of snort, however, and if Anselmo heard it, he paid no attention.

“That method,” he resumed, “and the fact that Catalano is known to be a
capo regime
of the Bollano family suggested that this was a professional hit having to do with the politics of the New York Mob. So—as you probably know, when they start hitting
capos
, it means that the power balances are shifting. There's disorder in the ranks, shifting loyalties, the wise guys are all looking for where they're going to end up after the dust settles, and so this is a prime time for us to do ourselves some good. Now, the first question we have to ask when something like this goes down is, naturally,
cui bono.
We look inside the family first, table one in your handout.”

Shuffling of papers. Karp cast an eye on Guma, who had leaned back in his chair, the unopened file on his lap, and seemed to be getting set for a snooze. It was not unknown for Guma to drop off in meetings, and Karp hoped that he would not break out in snores. That too was not unknown.

“At the top, of course, we have the don, Salvatore Bollano, known as Big Sally. He's seventy something and not in good shape. Last of the breed, by the way, actually born in Sicily. There's some question as to whether he's still in control. Next in line is Salvatore Bollano, Jr., Little Sally, but not to his face, ha-ha, aka, Sally Jump, age forty-three. You have his arrest record there. Assault, rape, jury tampering, bribery, dozens of collars, never convicted. Violent, short-tempered, little son of a bitch; he may be mentally unstable, in fact.”

Here came a snort from Guma. This time Anselmo paused and directed his attention to Guma's chair. “Um, Ray? Did you have a point to make?”

“Uh-uh, Frank,” said Guma. “You're doing fine.”

“Thank you. Next came Carlo Tonnati, street name Charlie Tuna, currently serving a life stretch in Attica for ordering the murder of Vinnie Ferro a dozen or so years ago.”

Karp knew this, as he had personally put Charlie Tuna away, and everyone else did, too. Anselmo was often excessively thorough. He listened with half an ear and took precise notes on autopilot as the man ran through the order of battle of the Bollano crime family and presented his Machiavellian analysis of their various rivalries. The Bollanos were the smallest of New York's Mafia families, not looking to expand at all, but what they held, they held very hard. Their base was the Lower East Side, and Anselmo had charts and tables showing their various estimated sources of income, so much from drugs, so much from prostitution, so much from shakedowns and loan sharking. This was boring. Who cared about the enterprises or politics of thugs, except someone planning to write one of those inside-the-Mob books? Karp's instinct was for the concrete, for the facts, for the evidence. They had a crime; was there a case? Anselmo came to the end of his aria. In the silence that followed, Karp asked, “So you like Joe Pigetti for it?”

“Yeah, I do. It's the only scenario that makes sense. Pigetti and Catalano were the two most powerful
capos.
Catalano was tight with Little Sally, Pigetti was on the outs with both of them, but he was Charlie Tuna's protégé and he had more or less replaced Tonnati with Big Sally. If the old don were to kick off, though, he'd be up shit's creek. Or maybe he heard that the two of them were going to do him. So he goes to the don and lays something bad on Catalano. Some betrayal, he's skimming—whatever. The old guy's not so sharp, so he gives the okay. For Pigetti it was a good career move.”

Karp seemed to give this serious attention. “Roland?”

“Well, Pigetti's out as the actual trigger,” said Roland. “He's alibied to the neck. Apparently there was a big party the night of. One of the don's nephews was getting married, and the goombahs threw him a party at the Casa D'Oro on Elizabeth. Pigetti was there until two or so, and then he and a bunch of them went out clubbing until four-thirty. Catalano was at the party and he left around one-thirty, or it could've been an hour earlier or later, because all the boys were feeling pretty good by then and vague about the time. In any case, it happens that we know the exact time of death because one of the bullets fired into the back of Catalano's skull came out through his eye and broke the dashboard clock at three-fourteen
a.m
.” He paused to see what effect this detail had on the assembled group.

“That's a fancy touch,” said Karp carefully.

“It
is
a fancy touch,” Roland agreed. “A little fancier than we're used to from the wise guys. Call me cynical, but you might suspect that it was done on purpose that way to give Joe an alibi. It turns out that a little before three, Joe was checking into the valet parking at a club at 57th off Eighth. So clearly the cops are looking for an associate of Joe's who doesn't have an alibi for the time of, and they come up with Marco Moletti. Moletti was also seen leaving the Casa D'Oro with Catalano and a couple of other guys. Catalano was going to drop by his girlfriend's house, and he took this bunch along for the ride, maybe call up some ladies and continue the party. But Mutt and Jeff got talking to some girls at a light and they bailed. According to Mutt and Jeff, Marco was the last guy in the car. According to Marco, Marco wasn't feeling so hot, having overindulged at the fiesta, so after dropping Catalano at the girl's place at Park and 36th, he handed over the keys, walked to his place, Lex and 49th, and crashed. He says.”

“That's a long walk, you're not feeling so good,” said Karp.

“The cops thought so, too,” said Roland. “Besides that, Catalano never made it to the girlfriend that night. The cops think Marco stuck a gun in Catalano's back, made him drive to under the highway, and popped him there. Then either someone picked him up or he walked away and took a cab or the subway home. In any case, Marco was the last person to see Catalano alive.”

“The second to last if he wasn't the shooter,” said Karp. “Are you charging him?”

Roland waggled a hand and twisted his face into a doubtful expression. “It's thin. He was in the car, but they all admit that. The search found a box of .22 longs in his place, but no gun. The vic was killed with .22 longs. There was also a bag with a little short of fifty K in it. Payoff money? Ordinarily, I'd give it a pass, but . . .” Here he looked over at Anselmo, who put in, “Right, but this is not an ordinary case. I'm pushing Roland to charge him and then squeeze him to give us Pigetti. This could be the thing that cracks the whole Bollano family.”

Karp looked at the faces: Anselmo avid, smiling like a kid at the circus; Hrcany pretending forbearance, willing to go along as long as no one made him responsible for a weak case, and perfectly willing to see Anselmo carry this freight; and Guma? Was the jerk actually asleep or just pretending the most elaborate boredom? Under the shelter of the conference table Karp's cap toe reached out and gave Guma one in the ankle. The monkey eyes opened, the floppy mouth yawned, showing more bridgework than anyone wanted to see.

Hrcany said, “Now that you mention it, Frank, Guma has some thoughts on that. Ray?”

“Yeah, Frank,” said Guma pleasantly, “my thoughts are that you try to squeeze Moletti, you might get some of that scungilli he scarfed down at the party there, but nothing else.”