Damaged Goods (39 page)

C
ARMINE STETTECASE COULDN’T HELP
it. When he was nervous, he ate. That’s how it had always been and that’s how it was going to remain. He’d fought it when he was younger, fought the urge and lost so many times he’d finally surrendered altogether, let the pounds and the inches accumulate, kept his mouth full, his jaws working.

This time it was the money that set him off, actually touching all those stacked hundreds, three million dollars’ worth of stacked hundreds, now resting behind him in a trunk on the floor of his office. Never mind the fact that nobody in their right mind would try to rip him off, that only his closest lieutenants knew he had the money, that his house was an actual fortress, that two of his boys sat outside in a Buick sedan. If something went wrong (if On Luk Sun was preparing a little surprise in that warehouse), the investors would expect him to make good. Meanwhile, he’d be dead broke.

Slowly, his fingers calm and deliberate, he peeled the silver foil away from a Perugina chocolate, then set it on his tongue without soiling his fingers. A little fear on the inside was useful, made you take precautions. But fear on the outside? Men like Guido Palanzo, who sat on the other side of Carmine’s desk, lived on fear, sucked it in like crack junkies on the pipe.

“So, whatta ya think, Guido?” Carmine ground the chocolate between his back teeth, crunched the little nuts inside, let the mass drop onto the tip of his tongue. Guido, he knew, was surprised to be talking business in the office instead of the kitchen. That was okay. Once Guido found out what Carmine wanted, he wouldn’t be thinking about where he was sitting when he got his orders.

“About the job?” Guido Palanzo, short and jockey thin, perched on the edge of the chair like an eager squirrel.

“Yeah, the job.” Carmine took another wrapped chocolate from the box. “First, the job.”

“What could I say?” He stared at Carmine, his perpetually drooping eyelids nearly covering a pair of shiny-black irises. “Everything looks good.”

“That’s it? That’s your fucking counsel?”

Palanzo drew back, clearly offended. “Carmine,” he said, “We been talkin’ about it for the last two hours. In the kitchen, remember?”

Carmine leaned back, dropped the unwrapped chocolate on his tongue, tossed the foil into the wastebasket. “I wanna hear ya sum it up,” he mumbled. “In the kitchen, nobody summed it up.”

“Whatever you say, Carmine.” Guido held up a thick hand covered with curly gray hair and began to tick the items off on his fingers. “First, the Chink comes highly recommended. Second, we got the money together. Third, our people are ready to go. Fourth, we got enough guns to start a war.” He dropped his hand to his lap. “Carmine, how could it be better?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Carmine swallowed hard, then took a sip of water before snatching another Perugina out of the box. “Anyways, I got somethin’ else I wanna talk about.” He watched Palanzo’s shoulders drop slightly, his neck inch forward. “I gotta make a hit on somebody and I want ya to set it up for the day after the deal. Get me a shooter with balls, Guido, somebody from the outside who knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“No problem, Carmine. I’ll pull somebody out of Newark. They got a lotta shooters in Newark.” Guido’s head bobbed once. “Yeah, no problem,” he repeated. “Who’s the lucky target?”

“The target, my good buddy, is a piece of shit I been tryin’ to get outta my life for twenty goddamned years.” He spit the last part out, the emotion surprising him. “The target is Josie
fucking
Rizzo. I want the crazy bitch should disappear forever.”

Guido Palanzo recoiled slightly, the jerk purely reflexive. According to official mobster mythology, family members were noncombatants. Like Mafia bosses were wise old men with cotton-stuffed cheeks. Then he actually pictured Josie Rizzo with the barrel of an assassin’s .22 pressed behind her right ear.

“Awright, Carmine,” he said, “I’ll call Frankie Fish tonight, let him pick the shooter.” He paused momentarily, then repeated, “I hear they got good shooters in Newark.”

“I don’t care who ya give it to, Guido. Just set it up before we do the deal. And pay for it in advance. I don’t want nothing should go wrong.” He looked at his watch. “Meanwhile, I got work to do. On your way out, tell my son I wanna see him.”

Ten minutes and the remaining chocolates later, Tommy Stettecase walked into the room. He glanced once at the locked trunk behind Carmine’s desk and half smiled before sitting down. “You takin’ a trip, pop?” he asked.

It took Carmine a minute to understand his son’s comment, to remember that when it came to the family business, Tommy was an outsider.

“Yeah,” he finally said, “that’s just what I wanna talk about.” Nodding to himself, he opened a lower desk drawer, removed a can of honey-roasted almonds and peeled back the lid. “Look, Tommy, I got some news I think ya oughta know, but which I want ya to keep under your hat for the time being. Me and your mom, we’re probly gonna retire, like real, real soon. I’m too old to be doin’ what I’m doin’ to make a living.” He popped a handful of nuts into his mouth, waited patiently for his son’s comment.

“I think that’s great, pop.” Tommy looked down at his hands for a minute. “But what’s that have to with the trunk?”

Carmine ran his fingers across his naked scalp. “We’re leavin’ is what it is, Tommy. No way could we stay here in the middle of the action. Me and your mom are gonna sell the house, go live in Europe.” He chewed relentlessly as he spoke, letting the words drop, one after another, like the lash of a whip. “Coupla months from now, ya gotta be gone. You and Mary.”

“And Mama-Josie,” Tommy interrupted. “Unless you plan to take her with you.”

“What I’m gonna do,” Carmine persisted, “is set ya up with twenty large. If ya should need more, ya can write me.” He dug into the can of almonds. “Cause what it is, Tommy, is me and your mom decided that you’re a big boy now. It’s time ya were out on your own.”

Josie Rizzo set the phone on the table next to her bed and smiled. Agent Ewing, faithful as a trained dog, had just informed her that she would no longer be able to contact her nephew. He’d expressed regret, explained that he was following orders, but his voice had been tinged with barely repressed derision. Josie had responded with the proper indignation, had roundly cursed the agent, threatened to withhold the tape she held in her hands. On the inside, however, where it really counted, she felt a rising satisfaction, a peace unknown since the time before her brother was murdered. The spirit, her
jetatura,
had popped out of her soul like a squeezed grape deserting its skin. It was now hovering just above Carmine’s bloated frame.

Gildo would have to take care of himself. He knew the schedule, knew what would happen to him if he didn’t get out. Besides, Gildo had done everything he was supposed to do already. Annunziata Kalkadonis would never be free of him. Every spring, for the rest of her life, she’d think of her child, of her ex-husband, of what she’d done to bring down his wrath.

Josie Rizzo closed her eyes, remembering Gildo’s description of Carol Pierce after Jackson-Davis was through with her. “Lemme put it like this,” he’d said. “The doc won’t need a scalpel to get to the bitch’s vital organs. All he gotta do is pick ’em off the carpet.”

With a shake of her head, Josie reminded herself that a decision had to be made. Should she deliver the tape or destroy it? If Carmine found her with the tape, if he pulled out of the deal, she’d lose everything. On the other hand, if Holtzmann didn’t get his package, he might panic, try to contact her. She’d listened to the tape, knew there was nothing important on it, nothing the FBI didn’t already know.

Footsteps sounded on the stairway three floors below her own and Josie quickly shoved the tape into the pocket of her dress. Despite recognizing Tommaso’s quick tread, despite having heard him descend a few moments before, her heart pounded in her chest.

No more, she decided. No more tapes. If the FBI won’t let me speak to Gildo, it’s because they don’t need Josie Rizzo
or
the tapes.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, Josie ripped the tape out of the spool, crushed it in her hands, dumped it beneath a pile of corn husks on the bottom of her kitchen garbage. Then she stepped over to the sink and quickly rinsed her hands. Downstairs, the steel door at the front of the house squeaked open, then clanged shut. That would be Carmine, heading out to meet the Chinaman.

Snatching a towel, Josie half ran to the window in her living room and pulled the drapes aside. Carmine, as expected, was ducking into the back of his Lincoln town car. Totally unaware that, five floors above, Josie Rizzo, her chin raised high, nodded her satisfaction at the dark, voracious creature that followed him.

“Here, pussy. Heeeeeeere, pussy-pussy. Come to daddy, you cock-sucker.”

Agent Bob Ewing, as he prepared Jilly Sappone’s breakfast, shook his head in amazement, told himself not to lose his temper, that Sappone would be gone soon, this amazingly repulsive assignment over and done with. Twenty-four hours, a single day, that was all that remained of what he’d come to consider a sentence.

“Hey, Agent Bob, you got a daughter somewhere, little kid maybe catching the school bus even as we fucking speak? One day I’m gonna track that kid down, see if she can fly. That was Theresa’s problem, Agent Bob. I mean, how was it
my
fault if she couldn’t fly? Ya can’t expect a busy man like me to pay attention to every little detail.”

Ewing snatched a bowl of ham cubes, onions, and peppers. He spread them over the omelet cooking on the stove, then gave the pan a quick shake to prevent the eggs from sticking. It was a little after eleven o’clock in the morning and he’d already had a phone call from his boss. Holtzmann had listened to his complaints, clucked sympathetically from time to time.

“We’ll be coming for Mister Sappone tomorrow, Bob,” he’d finally interrupted. “Jilly’s going to be taken into custody, charged with kidnapping and murder. The US Attorney will push for the death penalty and he’ll get it. What jury could find redeeming value in Jilly Sappone?”

The question had been strictly rhetorical and Holtzmann had rung off a few minutes later without answering the deeper question. When Ewing had first been assigned directly to Holtzmann and this particular investigation, he’d been overjoyed. No question about it, Carmine Stettecase and his dope had career-making potential. Of course, he hadn’t known anything about Jilly Sappone or the deal Abner Kirkwood had cut with Josie Rizzo, but his ignorance was all to the good. The only important thing was to be standing in front of that table, the one piled high with guns and dope, when the video cameras began to roll.

Ewing lifted the omelet pan, flipped the half-cooked omelet back on itself, laid the pan on the glowing burner.

“Hey, pussy, I’m holding it in my hand. Right now. I’m holding my dick in my hand and I’m thinking about your wife. She’s blond, right, a perfect blond wife for a corn-fed pig on his way up. She’s blond and she’s hot and you’re out here all alone with me.”

Ewing slid the omelet onto a plate, then poured out a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee. He put cup, glass, and plate on a tray, added a plastic fork, took a deep breath. This was the worst of it, the look of triumph in Sappone’s eyes when Agent Bob Ewing played the servant. When he straightened up or ran the vacuum or fetched the telephone. As if Jilly Sappone really believed the Justice Department would put him in the witness protection program.

Maybe, Ewing thought, as he picked up the tray and stepped out of the kitchen, I’ll let him skip his next meal. And the next and the next.

“Hi, sweetie-peetie.”

Ewing glanced up, felt distinctly relieved to find Jilly Sappone with his pants zipped. He placed the tray in the door slot, leaned briefly against the interlaced bars, finally stepped away.

“Tell ya what, Agent Piggy.” Sappone put the edge of the plate against his lower lip and pushed a third of the omelet into his mouth. “I got an idea we could both live with. After I get outta here, whatta ya say we
swap
wives. Cause it looks to me like you could use a little ethnic pussy, a little guinea girl with olive oil between her legs. Somethin’ to give that whitebread face a little character. And me, I ain’t had no pink-pussied blond bitch since before I went to prison. Be a lotta fun to make her beg.”

Ewing, propelled by the torrent of abuse, backed halfway across the room. Sappone had been going at it for the better part of two days, as if something or someone had triggered a switch in his brain. Going on and on and on, the hatred clearly visible in the twisted sneer, the flared nostrils. The cumulative effect was almost physically painful.

“One more day,” Ewing said. His hand dropped to the waist of his trousers, to an empty holster. Then he remembered that his nine-millimeter Glock was in the kitchen where it belonged. Ewing wondered if the procedure had been designed to prevent agents from executing prisoners in custody.

“Say what, sweetie-pie?” Jilly’s smirk remained firmly plastered to his face. “Are they sending new troops to the front? Is my honey being relieved?”

Ewing took a step forward. “Wrong guess, scumbag.” He held up a shaking finger. “You think you’re going into the witness protection program, you and that crazy bitch? Well, here’s your fate, Jilly Sappone. You’re going to spend the next ten years in the worst prison the federal system has to offer while you appeal your death sentence. After that, it’ll be up to God.”

Jilly Sappone’s face relaxed for the first time. The information—the timing—was interesting enough; it fit into his personal schedule nicely. But, all along, he’d simply assumed that Ewing would be the triggerman. Now Ewing was babbling about arrest and trial, which wasn’t gonna happen. No way could they let Jilly Sappone talk to a lawyer, have access to the media. Still, if Ewing really believed it, if he thought he had no reason to fear Jilly Sappone …

Well, credit where credit was due, Jilly finally decided, Agent Bob
was
right about one thing. Another day was all it would take.