Little Easter (21 page)

Roberto Gandolfo cupped my wet beard in a cold, bony hand. “Your friend came here to kill me, Mr. Klein. That I cannot forgive.”

“Yeah, and what was that song and dance before about saving my life and his?” I was stalling. The thought of having my arm food processed while I was awake and still attached to it gave me sufficient motivation to stall.

“A white lie, Mr. Klein,” he gave my face an affectionate pat. “Please forgive me. Now your choice is a different one. I will keep you alive until you tell me what secret my son was willing to jeopardize this organization for, but life can be very painful. You and the cop can go peacefully or in pieces. The decision is yours.”

“Can you give me thirty years to think about it?”

“No, but I can help you understand your situation better,” the old don moved his hands away from my face. “Vinny, help Mr. Klein.”

My arm was in the chipper’s throat before the echo of the don’s voice had stopped pinging around the corrugated steel building. I could feel the wind of the blades blowing back the hair along my forearm. I balled my hand reflexively, but too late to save the tip of my index finger. There was no immediate pain, but the realization gave me a burst of strength to retard the chipper’s appetite and to knock Vinny slightly off balance. When the pain did come, someone screamed. I noticed it was me.

MacClough, feigning unconsciousness till that point, caught Cheech enjoying the show and broke free of the fireplug’s grip. Naturally distracted by Johnny’s charge, Vinny eased his hold on me and braced himself to absorb MacClough’s blow. I pulled my left arm free of the dragon’s teeth and drove the back of my head into Vinny’s nose. I went down, squeezing what remained of my left forefinger in my right hand. MacClough’s shoulder dug deep into Vinny’s ribs. The pony-tailed bodyguard stumbled, throwing a careless arm out for balance. It was the last time he’d throw that arm out for anything ever again.

The chipper made fast work of the muscle boy’s appendage, spitting out bits of bone and flesh against a corner of the shed. The machine, however, did not seem satiated by Vinny’s arm. Apparently, his leather blazer had got caught up in the blades and the chipper used it to pull its quarry further and further in. Eventually the teeth bit into something they could not digest and the blades stopped churning. The old man rushed to shut the chipper off, but he was way too late. The bodyguard’s legs hung limply as a rubber chicken’s from the mouth of the machine.

Cheech was literally sitting on MacClough’s back, holding his 9 millimeter to Johnny’s ear.

“Shit!” morgue-eyes slammed the chipper and actually kicked the soles of Vinny’s dead feet. “
Stunad
! Idiot!”

“See what happens when you don’t pay attention in metal shop,” MacClough chided and was rewarded by having his face scraped along the concrete floor.

“Kill them,” the raving man yelled at Cheech. “Kill them both now.” And when the somewhat startled soldier didn’t immediately blow a hole in Johnny MacClough’s brain, Don Roberto took a wild run at him, slapped the hard guy twice across the face and relieved him of his automatic.

“But Don Roberto,” Cheech offered meekly. “Not a cop. Not here.”

It was sound advice, but the old man wasn’t having any and pointed the confiscated gun at MacClough’s shredded face.

“Stop Papa,” Dante Gandolfo’s voice rang in my ears like a cavalry bugle blowing ‘Charge!’ “Enough Papa, enough.” The son strode into view, an automatic pistol in his paw to match the one his father held. Larry Feld walked up right behind the junior Gandolfo.

“Someone take a picture,” the elder gunman mimed a photographer with his free hand. “I need proof. Mr. Klein,” unfortunately Don Roberto remembered I was still alive. “Do you see this? My son has never made his bones like a real man and he points a gun at his father. It’s to laugh, no?”

“You’re wrong Papa. I’ve made my bones. Quite recently, but I guess killing a man counts no matter when you do it.”

I could swear the old man’s face took on a prideful countenance.

“O’Toole,” I blurted out my favorite answer for the evening.

“Don’t respond to that, Dante,” Larry counseled.

“Shut up, Larry,” Don Juan rejected. “That’s right, Mr. Klein. He deserved to die for going to my father about Azrael. And then he tried blackmailing me.”

“Blackmail?” I hung the question on the line to dry.

“What blackmail?” the old man asked scornfully. “What did that donkey prick threaten you with? Do you think I don’t know about you and that cunt reporter from the
Times
and how you were her pipeline to us? Good thing for her, the bottom fell out.”

Roberto “the Boot” couldn’t have known it, but his venomous disclosure had just answered a whole set of questions I had on another matter. It also reaffirmed, to everyone’s relief, that he had no inkling of Azarel’s daughter.

Dante Gandolfo went white, his gun tip dropping slightly. “How did you know about the
Times
thing? How Papa?”

“Do you think that I have lived this long by not knowing things? I know what I have to know. Do you think I hired that idiot stickin’ outta the machine just to drive your car?” We all took another look at Vinny’s rubber legs. In a few hours we’d be able to use them as parallel bars.

“What does it matter, Dante?” his father continued. “You’re like clockwork. Every ten years you try to destroy me. All I have to do is check the calendar and wait for you to hurt me. But no more. I’m glad to have killed that old bitch of yours. Too bad I couldn’t have done it before she taught
you
how to sing. That bird in her mouth was a present for you.”

Don Juan’s gun hand was shaking now. That wasn’t good news for Johnny. The shakes don’t exactly make for good aim and if the old don made a move to kill MacClough, there was no way Dante could have stopped him with one bullet. I had to try something.

“You’re a man who needs to know things,” I shouted at Don Roberto from my concrete chair. “That need cost me a finger,” I held the still seeping stump up for inspection. “But I’ve always been bad at holding a grudge, so I’m gonna tell you what you need to know.”

“Shut up!” MacClough gurgled through the blood.

“Don’t!” Don Juan chimed in, almost stepping on the ex-cop’s plea.

“You got any grandchildren, Don Roberto?” I asked, slipping on my own blood as I got to my feet.

“No,” the old man choked out as if he’d swallowed a piece of glass. “That is yet another way in which my son has failed me.”

“Wrong, Don Roberto.” The room got quiet enough now to hear the amber lights buzz above our heads. “You’ve got a granddaughter. And what you need to know is that you killed her mother in the snow and cold of Christmas Eve.”

MacClough had told me he wasn’t sure who the father had been, but this wasn’t the time to quibble over details. Besides, everyone in the shed, except Cheech, thought I knew more than I did.

“Tell me he’s lying, Dante,” father ordered son.

The latter stayed silent.

“Tell me he’s lying,” the old man swung the gun up from Johnny and pointed the 9 millimeter at my heart. “Tell me, Dante. Tell me.” His trigger finger twitched.

Two shots snapped the tension, their reports echoed and amplified by the metal walls and concrete. The old don’s neck exploded like an overripe watermelon and he hit the deck with a skull-cracking thud. I don’t think he felt the fall. The gun in his dying hand shot the second bullet into Vinny’s ignorant left thigh, showering me in the by-products of ballistic impact. Cheech lay down on top of Johnny, and Larry Feld grabbed some floor. Dante Gandolfo just stood there, looking at the cool barrel of his gun. I imagine he wanted to confirm he hadn’t fired the fatal shot.

“Police,” a bored voice announced as if he’d repeated the word so many times it hurt. “Just everybody relax and no one else’ll spring a leak.”

Larry Feld popped up like an unwanted pimple and began explaining to the cops that his client was licensed to carry a handgun in New York City and that he would have no statement this evening. Cheech ran like a loyal dog to its fallen master, cradling the old man’s lifeless head in his polyester lap. I could see MacClough’s face from where I stood and he placed a vertical finger across his scabbed and swollen lips. I understood. Sirens became the world’s dominant sound. I was glad to hear them because my ex-finger was starting to hurt like hell.

“Klein! God, you look like shit,” Detective Mickelson critiqued, holstering his .38. “I got concerned when you didn’t show to claim your jacket.”

“A little outta your jurisdiction,” I noted, my muscles contracting from pain. “Who plugged the don?”

“One of the city boys. Like you said, I’m out of my jurisdiction.”

“I’ll have to thank him for saving my ass,” I leaned against Buddha belly to stop myself from falling. “How’d’ya know where to find me?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been reading the same book as you, only I was a few pages behind. Now let’s get a doctor to look at that finger,” the Suffolk cop deflected.

“No!” I pulled away. “How’d ya know to show up here, now, just when you did?”

His eyes scanned the building until they were focused directly on the back of Larry Feld’s head. And when Mickelson was certain I’d taken note of his stare, he said: “Phone tip. Anonymous, of course.”

“Of course,” I seconded.

So the tip had come from Larry Feld. I could never confront him about it, because he would never confess to it. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t see the self-interest in what he’d done. I don’t know. Maybe it was the phone conversation we’d had earlier. I hadn’t pressured him directly, but rather talked about the old block and the de facto friends we knew and how they’d all disappeared. I talked about his joyless parents and how I’d always known he was as much a victim of Auschwitz as they. I reminded him of the Irish kids kicking our Jewish asses on the way home from synagogue on Saturday mornings. I’d like to think I appealed to whatever humanity there was in Larry Feld, but I would never really know.

All of us refused to make anything but the vaguest of statements that evening. The doctors insulated both Johnny and me from any curious law enforcement officials and the press. Dante Gandolfo had previously, through his lawyer, made it clear that he wouldn’t be speaking to anyone until after his father’s funeral. And Cheech, the old school soldier that he was, refused to give the cops his name let alone a statement.

Before they loaded us into the ambulance, I had a few parting words with Detective Mickelson.

“You know that book we’re both reading . . .” I drifted.

“Yeah.”

“Can you give me a few days before you discuss it with anyone else?”

“You know I can’t guarantee that,” he stated calmly, “but there are a few parts of the book I don’t see as being of general interest.”

“What parts might those be?”

“I think we both know the answer to that. Don’t we, Detective Bosco?” he shook his head disapprovingly. “If people are interested in those parts of the story, they can read the book for themselves. Good night, Mr. Klein. Your jacket will be waiting for you in my office.” He slammed the ambulance door shut.

MacClough had used some of his old cop charm and connections to insure we were alone in the back of the sick wagon. I guess we had some important things to talk about. But as we pulled away from the gates of Fort Gandolfo, Johnny seemed to be out of it. I looked out of the ambulance back window and noticed that we were just passing the late Paul Palermo’s estate. This was a different view from the one I’d seen in my earlier approach, yet even from here I could make out the circle of painted plaster Marys. I couldn’t help but ponder what the significance of these statues was. Maybe, I thought, they were like Don Roberto’s mahogany bar; something for a powerful man to stare at and wonder why. They certainly made me wonder.

“Dylan,” MacClough’s strained voice broke the trance.

“You’re up.” I had a gift for the self-evident.

“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”

“How do you feel?” I knelt down next to him.

“About as good as the tip of your fuckin’ finger. How do you think I feel?”

“Stupid question. Listen, we got to get some stuff straightened out before we get to the hospital. I think I know where—”

“I don’t wanna know, Klein. I don’t wanna know where she is and I don’t want anyone else to know. I’m sure she’s had enough hurt in her life. She doesn’t need to catch any more. The curse died with Azrael. Let it stay that way. Just make sure she gets the hundred grand.”

I thought of a thousand reasonable things to say against the course MacClough had chosen, but said none of them. This part
was
his business and somewhere in the pulp of my bone marrow, I even understood.

“It’s Gandolfo’s money.”

“Nevermind about him,” Johnny assured me. “He won’t ask for it back.”

“Listen,” I shifted gears, “if you want me to protect Azrael’s daughter, I need you to do something for me. You gotta get Kate Barnum in to see me tomorrow before I talk to the cops.”

His puffed and bruised face puzzled at the request, but all he said was that he could probably manage it. Apparently, injured detectives, even retired ones, pulled a lot of weight.

“Here,” he yanked his hand free from under the restraining straps and dropped something onto my right palm. It was a white gold and diamond confection. I counted twenty-four stones aligned like stars in the shape of a heart. Each gem rested in the petrified fingers of white gold hands. “Make sure she gets this, too.” And having finally let go of the heart, Johnny Blue closed his eyes to sleep.

Prepayment

The trauma unit orthopedist visited my bedside and rambled on about the median nerve, radialis indicis, abductors, phalanges and occupational therapy. When pressed for a translation, he said I’d lost the top of my left index finger and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do about it. He went on to say that there’d been considerable damage to the traumatized area and that I should consider myself fortunate that he didn’t need to remove more tissue. After witnessing Vinny’s metamorphosis from bodyguard to shark chum, I found the doctor’s little pep talk about good fortune anticlimactic. When I mentioned that my former finger really didn’t hurt much, he assured me it wouldn’t last. How comforting.