Operation Bamboozle (37 page)

“We know what we know.” Denny ticked off the facts with his fingers. “One, Ukraine state lottery. Huge. Two, KGB runs it. Three, KGB general is a crook. Four, he sells counterfeit tickets. Five, everyone loses except the general, who always wins big.” Denny raised his clenched fist. “Comrades! A unique
opportunity for clandestine subversion! Capitalism at its purest—we screw the Soviet workers and the USA gets all the benefit.”

“That's cute,” Vito said. “One thing wrong. You didn't do it. We did. Bamboozle beat the field.”

“Indubitably.” Denny like the sound. “Incontestably. Irrefutably. We had our ducks in a row. We called it Operation Masquerade, which translates unforgettably into Ukrainian as …” He saw that Vito was absorbed in making a silver dollar perform gymnastics across his knuckles and back again. “Nothing that need concern us. Bamboozle's launch put Masquerade on the back burner. You took the ball and ran with it and scored. Congratulations. But now the team has a new owner, a new coach, a new name. You've served your nation well. You can retire from the field with honor.”

“That's horseshit,” Nicky said.

“But steaming hot,” Luis said, “and beautifully shoveled.”

“This ain't about honor,” Vito said, “it's about money.” He walked to Denny's desk and made the silver dollar spin on it. “Compensation. Payback. In full.”

The coin took a long time to fall. “Not from the Agency,” Denny said. “Ask Mr. Cabrillo. He's the treasurer for Bamboozle.”

“You ain't buyin'?” Vito said. “Then we ain't sellin'.”

“For Christ's sake, Vito,” Agent Moody said. “Don't go to war with the CIA. They'll boobytrap your toilet, you'll get blown into Pasadena with your pants around your feet.” But Vito and Nicky were on their way out.

Denny shut the door. “That went rather well, don't you think?”

“Masquerade,” Luis said. “Bloody silly name.”

“Sit down,” Moody said. “I have a number of questions.”

“Yes? I have a number of answers. Some of them almost relevant.”

Nicky drove. Vito sat in the back. For ten minutes he said nothing. Then: “If Uncle was here, I know what he'd say. He'd say, grab Cabrillo, grab your money, cut your losses. That's what he'd say, and it's crap. I see the big picture. That's why Uncle's under the Freeway and I'm in Beverly Hills.”

“The big picture,” Nicky said. Somebody had to say something, and he was it.

“Yeah. So I go after Cabrillo, what do I get out of it? Maybe a hundred grand, tops. What do I lose? Everything, is what. Word gets out I've been conned. Vito DiLazzari is the mark in a scam as big as the Ritz. People laugh. My reputation takes a dump. My kudos is on the skids. I'm a busted flush.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That can't happen. Nobody cons Vito DiLazzari. But nobody.”

“Sure, sure.” Nicky negotiated an S-bend through some roadworks. “Could be that nobody conned you twice today.”

Vito didn't like it and he couldn't ignore it. “Give,” he said.

“Charlie Denny was sellin' snake-oil, guaranteed cure for broken legs, blindness and six bullets in the breadbasket. He's got no Operation Masquerade. Not unless you count the one he just flimflammed you with.”

“He got nothing out of me!” Vito shouted. “Not one red cent, you total jerk!”

Nicky steered smoothly onto an off-ramp. “Maybe he's partners with Cabrillo,” he said. “Maybe they're splittin' two hundred grand right now. A double con. One squeezed you, the other dumped you. How does that sound?”

No more talk. Vito stretched out on the back seat and, for the first time in his life, experienced despair. You do your best, you work hard, you make sacrifices—Marco, the Bruno brothers, Uncle—and where does it get you? Shat on by fate. Pissed on by Kismet. Fucked by destiny.

They were in Beverly Hills when he remembered being hit hard by his father, twice, for no reason, except to remind him: self-pity is not box-office. He sat up.

Inside the house, he went to his bedroom and came back with a sawed-off shotgun. Sawed-off at both ends, so the stock was little bigger than the grip on a handgun.

“This was dad's favorite,” he said. “He left it to me. Part of my heritage. One day my son's gonna have it. Symbol of my legacy. No two-bit con artist is gonna tarnish that legacy. Take it. It's loaded, both barrels. You whack Cabrillo and you whack Charlie Denny. Or do Denny first, I don't give a shit. You ever fired one of these? Know how to use it?” Nicky nodded, and cocked it. “Like this?” he said. “And like this?” He aimed and fired and blew a hole the size of a grapefruit in Vito's chest. He
had lied: knew all about shotguns but he had never fired one before now, and the recoil knocked him flat on his ass, his wrist felt like it had been stamped on by the Marine Corps, and his ears were playing the Bells of St. Mary's on a broken harmonica. The blast had blown Vito ten feet. He lay on his back except for his head which was propped against a chair. He seemed to be squinting down at the bloody disaster. His knees had folded outward, his elbows inwards. He looked foolish. He looked like a clown failing to get a laugh.

Nicky got his breath back. “Just business,” he said. “Nothing personal, you dumb stupid stinkin' miserable sonofabitch.” The acrid smell of explosive revived him. Nobody came. The staff were few, and knew better than to investigate the sound of gunfire. He searched Vito's pockets for shotgun shells and found six: enough. He found a thousand dollars too, and took that.

Agent Moody began the questioning.

“We met once before, Mr. Cabrillo. Remember? Tony Feet got into the trunk of his car, shut it, shot himself dead, and threw away the gun, never found. All this, outside your front door.”

“Total mystery,” Luis said.

“But he'd already called at your house, hadn't he? To see Stevie Fantoni.”

“Ah, now she was a total mystery of a different kind. Did you know she—”

“Yeah, yeah, we know. Three-times-married virgin. But Stevie Fantoni's not at home and Tony Feet is permanently absent. On your premises. Explain that.”

“You chaps are very hard on the girl. She didn't choose to be born a Fantoni. She was trying hard to escape the family. She was
chez moi
as a life model for the eminent painter, Princess Chuckling Stream.”

“Vito DiLazzari bought her pix. By the truckload.”

“Join the dots,” Fisk said. “Tony Feet, Fantoni, DiLazzari. Do we start to see a different picture?”

“Have you no charity, sir?” Luis cried. “No generosity of spirit? DiLazzari is a patron of the arts, in the great tradition of
his native Italy! Where would Michelangelo have been without Lorenzo de Medici? Where Raphael? Leonardo? Hispano-Suiza?”

“That's a car,” Denny said.

“It's a car and a half. It's poetry on wheels.”

“Forget Stevie,” Moody said. “Let's go back to your time in El Paso. Two more bodies on your doorstep. What's going on?”

“Irresponsible, inconsiderate, antisocial behavior, sir. Americans dump their rubbish without thought for their neighbors. One discarded corpse attracts another, and soon …”

“You're enjoying this, aren't you?” Denny said.

“You make the jokes,” Luis said. “I just tell them.”

Hollywood has a lot to answer for. It shows a killing by gunshot and immediately the shooter—bright-eyed, unworried, even a little cocky—charges into the turmoil of the plot, facing challenges and making decisions as calmly as if he had just put his socks on.

Perhaps a veteran hitman can be so cool. Perhaps a soldier, fighting for his life, can kill and instantly forget. But most people experience a severe shock when they know they have taken a life. Tough policemen who kill a man are not fit for duty for some days. Nicky Zangara had never killed anyone, had never even wounded anyone, and the shock caught up with him as he walked to his car. He couldn't breathe properly, his heart was a runaway train, his knees tried to bend the wrong way. He got his keys out and his hands were sticky. His face in the wing mirror had streaks of blood. He had blood in his hair, on his shirt, everywhere. He closed his eyes and saw Vito with a hole in his chest you could put your fist in. Both fists. He got out of the car and puked. On his pants. On his shoes. Some on the ground.

He walked in big circles until his hands stopped shaking. He got into the car and said aloud: “Priorities.” First get cleaned up. He spat on his hands and wiped the blood streaks off his face. He drove out of Beverly Hills, found a general store, bought some jeans, a work shirt, a pair of sneakers. They guy didn't like the smell but he took the money. Nicky added a dollar and said,
“Somewhere I can change?” and bought the freedom of the men's room.

Back on the road, second priority: get the money from Cabrillo, all two hundred grand. Screw Cabrillo the way Cabrillo had screwed the Mob. Which needs a new top man. Step forward Nicky Zangara, proven troubleshooter. Why not? Time for a change. And if Cabrillo wants a fight? Blow his foot off. Blow both his feet off. Leave him without a leg to stand on. For the first time that day, Nicky smiled.

“Enough bodies,” Charlie Denny said. “Let's look at Ukraine. Take us through Operation Bamboozle from the beginning.”

Luis thought. “It all goes back to my years with Allied Counter Intelligence in World War Two.”

“Skip that. Cut to the chase.”

“Oh.” Luis looked hurt. “It was jolly riveting stuff … Still, if you know better, you kick off and I'll chip in as necessary.”

“Your agents in the Ukraine,” Denny said. “The ones who found the no-good KGB general. Names.”

“Donald Margaret Ferguson. A bisexual. The gender varies from day to day. That's what fascinates the general. He's besotted with him. Her. Them.”

“Screw the general,” Moody said.

“They did their best,” Luis said. “Not easy.”

“Tell us about the money. How much, who got what and how.”

Luis walked over to Fisk and stooped and looked him in the eyes. “I don't trust this man. I operate on the basis of need-to-know. He told me he is a garbage contractor called Thomas G. Duffy.”

“Need-to-know,” Denny said. “I wondered when we'd get around to need-to-know.”

“Four o'clock,” Luis said. “Any chance of some tea?”

Even with the car windows open, Nicky couldn't stop sweating. He could feel it dribbling from his armpits. His body was cold but he couldn't stop sweating, and it worried him. He wasn't a sweaty sort of guy normally, so what was going on? A fever? He
never got fevers. The wheel was slippery. He dried his hands on his jeans.

There was no car outside Konigsberg. Didn't prove anything. Maybe they had a garage somewhere. He parked, and mopped his face and his neck, and looked at the house. Big and ugly. He asked himself how he got into this situation. Yesterday life was routine Mob business, today was all blood and sweat and cleaning up Vito's shit. “Jeez,” he said. “Mother warned me there would be days like this. But not like
this.”