Death Of A Dream Maker (19 page)

Herbert waited for a moment, willing himself to
project as much dignity as he could muster. He was a Chinese
businessman taking time out for lunch, he decided. Until he
remembered that he was wearing a windbreaker, not a suit jacket.
Another subterfuge was called for. He hurried inside the
electronics store and purchased a small camera without even
bothering to haggle over the price. Pushing his credit card at the
delighted clerk, he asked for a roll of high-speed film as well.
You could not be too careful. For all he knew, he'd be pushed
against the wall and searched. An empty camera would be far too
suspicious.

Bells tinkled as he entered the restaurant, camera
dangling around his neck like a proper Asian tourist. The interior
was dimly lit and smelled of garlic, olive oil, and simmering
tomatoes. The inside of the restaurant was much larger than it
appeared from the sidewalk.
Saint Teresa's
had long since
taken over its next-door neighbor's space. A waist-high stucco wall
ran down the center of the restaurant, and small tables were
arranged on either side of this partition. Most of the handful of
patrons ate silently, hunched over platters heaped high with food.
Clatter and faint music emerged from a small kitchen in the rear,
visible through the round window of a swinging door. Herbert
spotted billows of steam through the glass. But where was
Lillian?

A loud cough alerted him. Auntie Lil was seated on
the other side of the stucco wall. Joey Galvano sat across from
her, busily studying a wine list.

Auntie Lil's enormous hat drooped over the dividing
stucco, making it seem as if a vase of flowers had been placed on
top of the wall for decoration. The arrangement was quivering: she
had turned his way. Herbert relaxed. His presence had been noted.
He eased his finger to his camera and casually recorded the tableau
on film.

“Can I help you?” the lovely hostess asked, appearing
from the kitchen. She seemed agitated and twisted a wet washcloth
in her hands.

Herbert bowed deeply and affected a heavy accent. “I
wish to dine,” he told her. “I have come all the way from
Singapore. My colleagues tell me I must not miss your cooking when
I come here to New York.”

The young woman was nervous but polite. She had been
told to keep the dining room as clear as possible. But she could
not turn the stranger away, not if he had come all the way from
Singapore to sample her cuisine.

“This way,” she said, leading him to a table in a far
corner against one wall.

“If you please, madam,” Herbert insisted with another
bow. “I wish to dine along this low wall where I can view your
charming street. I find it most pleasurable to watch the people
walking past.” He raised his camera as if offering proof that he
was a voyeur, then headed determinedly for a table behind Auntie
Lil. He sat down before the hostess could protest. Now he was
separated from Auntie Lil only by the low wall and one other
unoccupied table.

The girl cast an anxious glance at Galvano, but he
was too engrossed in the wine list to notice the small Asian man
slipping into place. Once seated, Herbert was blocked from
Galvano's view by Auntie Lil's hat.

He did draw the attention of a table of beefy men
sitting near the front door cramming chunks of garlic bread and
strings of dripping spaghetti into their mouths. They looked like a
quartet of bulls slurping mash from a trough. Herbert grinned at
them in the overly friendly fashion of the village idiot. It
worked. The goons satisfied themselves with a round of suspicious
glares, then returned to their lunches. Herbert set his camera down
on the table and carefully clicked off a few photographs of the
bunch. They were not for his Christmas card.

T.S. was beside himself. He was trapped in a stuffy
van around the corner from the restaurant arguing with Agent
O'Conner. “What do you mean, you can't pick them up?” he demanded.
“What's the use of all this?” He waved his hand at the equipment
lining the truck walls.

“That's receiving equipment,” the agent explained
miserably. “We can't receive anything unless it's being sent. Get
it? It's not all that complicated.”

“Don't get snippy with me,” T.S. said, sinking
against the carpeted back doors. He put his head in his hands.
“You're the one who claimed that you had that cheap crook 'bugged
out the wazoo,' I believe you told my aunt. You're not the one
whose favorite relative is stuck inside some restaurant where they
probably blow gangsters away as the blueplate special. Good God, I
hadn't thought of that.” He stared anxiously at O'Conner. “Suppose
she gets stuck in the middle of gang warfare?”

Agent O'Conner stared back, unblinking. “Mr. Hubbert,
frankly speaking, I believe your aunt can take care of herself. I'm
more concerned about not having a record of their conversation.
Even if Galvano says something incriminating, I have no proof.
She's eighty-four years old, and you and I both know she's a little
bit deaf or she wouldn't shout all the time. And you can call her
eccentric, but a jury might find her pretty damn strange.” He
sighed miserably. “The defense would make mincemeat out of her on
the stand. I'd be laughed out of the courtroom. This whole
operation is a wash.” He kicked a carpeted wall in frustration and
sank next to T.S. to commiserate.

Auntie Lil was calculating how long she had before
her microcassette recorder ran out of tape. Since it was
voice-activated, it could accommodate ninety minutes of
conversation, not including silences. If only Galvano had not
chatted his head off on the way here. He'd said absolutely nothing
of use, just offered a half hour of memories involving every old
female relative he'd ever had. She had resisted the urge to
reciprocate with a rundown on every crook she'd ever known. Still,
there should be a good forty-five minutes left, so long as she was
careful to...

“I'm picking up the tab if that's what you're worried
about,” Galvano told her, interrupting her thoughts. “I mean, you
look like you're adding and subtracting in your head or something.
You're my guest. Lunch is on me. Order what you like.”

She smiled despite her dismay at having her mind read
by a gangster. “I was just having trouble deciding between the
shrimp or the calamari,” she lied.

“We'll have both,” Galvano told her. He waved the
hostess over and ordered. Auntie Lil did not argue.

Once they were alone again, Galvano lectured her on
the proper technique for making marinara sauce. She listened
politely, wondering how a man who liked to talk so much could
survive in this surveillance-happy world.

“Let's get down to business,” Galvano said suddenly.
He cast a practiced look around the restaurant. So far as he could
see, they had privacy.

“All right,” Auntie Lil agreed. “You said tit for
tat. Did your men kill Max?”

“Whoa!” He held up a tapered palm and smiled
unctuously. “You go right for the jugular, Miss Hubbert. But since
you asked, no—they did not. And if they had, I would not be sitting
here with you. I'm here because I want to know the truth as badly
as you.”

“Did you have his nephew killed?”

“No. In fact, his death is costing me a lot of
money.”

Their food arrived before she could ask why. When you
were Joseph Galvano, you seldom had to wait for anything. The
hostess brought in a tray of platters piled high with bowls of
fried shrimp, calamari, side orders of spaghetti, and stewed green
beans. Rich marinara sauce had been ladled over the seafood and a
small mountain of garlic bread completed the order. Auntie Lil took
a deep whiff and sighed. This was an unexpected benefit. The food
smelled heavenly.

“
Mangia,”
Galvano said, serving Auntie Lil a
generous portion of each dish.

“Thank you,” she replied, ladling even more of the
food on her plate. She attacked her lunch with gusto. Galvano
watched with astonishment. Auntie Lil ate the way she lived: with
gusto and without apology.

“Got a good appetite for someone your age,”
Galvano remarked as he picked at the fried shrimp and sauce. He
would have liked to bury his face in the food but had long ago
determined that he had to choose between wine and roses or fat and
beefy. There were enough obese gangsters running around town.

“I like good food,” Auntie Lil admitted, dipping her
garlic bread into a pool of sauce and munching happily. She was
starting to relax but knew enough not to be lulled into stupidity.
“Why would Davy's death cost you money?” she asked.

Galvano pretended to think over his answer, but
Auntie Lil knew that whatever he chose to reveal today had been
planned in advance. She'd listen but reserve her right to remain
skeptical.

“I tell you this in confidence,” he finally said.

“Of course.” She hoped Herbert could hear and shifted
her hat slightly so it did not entirely block the way.

“You're right about Max not being the type to do
business with me. He didn't like me. I can't understand it, but
that's the breaks.” His feelings were wounded at the recollection.
“I guess he had a misconception about me. A lot of people do.”

Auntie Lil murmured something unintelligible.

“I tried to get him to see things my way. We'd have
had a very profitable relationship. He'd have none of it. The man
was a control freak. I've seen the type.”

Oh Lord, thought Auntie Lil. There are too many talk
shows in this world. Today, even gangsters fancy themselves amateur
psychologists.

“His nephew was a different story,” Galvano said.
“Davy knew a profit opportunity when he saw one.”

Of course. She should have thought of that before.
Davy had been a womanizer, a gambler, a shirker, and, by all
accounts, a man of weak moral character. In short, the perfect
soulmate for Joseph Galvano.

“He approached me,” Galvano explained defensively,
although she had not uttered a word. “I had washed my hands clean
of Max Rose Fashions, understand. If a person doesn't want to
cooperate with me, fine. I walk away. No problem.”

Right. It was who cleaned up after you that was the
problem. “I understand,” Auntie Lil said.

Galvano tore a tiny piece of garlic bread and nibbled
at it fastidiously, his small white teeth dainty in their
precision. Like a weasel might eat a mouse.

“He had an idea,” Galvano said. “It was a good one.
If Max would agree to take his company public, the whole family
stood to profit.”

“Not to mention you?” she suggested.

He ignored her tone and continued: “Of course. I'm a
businessman. Davy offered me a partnership of sorts. For my
expertise, you might say. IPOs are hot right now. Initial public
offerings. Taking a private company public. Max Rose Fashions could
have cleared an astronomical amount of money. Maybe a hundred fifty
million or more. You know the apparel business, Miss Hubbert. It's
a whole new ball game every ninety days. You can be up on top one
season and down the next. But Max always stayed in the middle and
the middle is starting to look pretty good to a lot of investors.
Shares in his company would have sold out in an hour.”

“But Max didn't want to give up control,” she stated
matter-of-factly.

“That's right. He told you?”

“No. I would have expected it. That's Max.”

“When Max wouldn't go for it, Davy asked me for a
loan. It was all above board. He wanted to hire an investment bank
to look into some corporate options. He thought that maybe if he
took the numbers to Max, he'd see that it made sense to at least
consider going public. I loaned him the money. He had some fancy
bank working on it. The projections were supposed to be ready next
week.”

“I hadn't realized you were such a serious
businessman.”

“It's the greatest racket in town. The markets, I
mean.” He shrugged. “And it's completely legitimate.” His skeletal
smile unnerved her. She busied herself with lunch.

“Why would Davy come to you?” she asked Galvano.
“There are banks. There's his own father.”

“The kid's credit was... poor, shall we say. With
banks. With his family. Hell, with everyone. And he knew me.
From... prior business ventures. He knew I was good for the bucks.
It wasn't peanuts. We're talking a hundred grand here. Just for the
bank's retainer. I stood to lose everything, you know, if the plan
didn't fly. I was doing him a favor.”

Auntie Lil knew only too well that Joseph Galvano
would never have lent Davy Rosenbloom money unless he had absolute
assurance that he would get it back—along with a nice fat profit.
“What was in it for you?” she asked sweetly.

“I won't lie. I stood to profit.” He dabbed the
corners of his mouth with his white cloth napkin and peeked at his
reflection in the window. He had a habit of glancing in mirrors and
preening when he thought no one was looking.

“Profit how?” she asked.

“If the company went public, I was going to get a cut
of it. Consultant fee. Plus first dibs on a nice chunk of stock.
I'd have ended up as a major shareholder.”

“How major?” Auntie Lil was no slouch when it came to
voting rights. She'd seen too many fine garment houses go down the
tubes because management hadn't been equally aware.

“A modest share. Around fifteen percent is all.”

Right. No doubt, Galvano would have ended up as the
largest single shareholder, with control over a majority of the
remaining shareholders. Translation: Davy Rosenbloom and Joseph
Galvano had been conspiring to push Max right out of the business
he'd taken decades to build by taking the company public—and then
taking over.

“What does V.J. Productions have to do with it?” she
asked. She thought he must have had something to do with her name
being placed on the phony corporate papers. How many other people
had known she was inheriting Max's money in time to have them
altered so quickly?