Shakedown (5 page)

SEVEN

Eddie had been on Monica's mind since she'd climbed out of bed. With the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on, she drove her silver Porsche 911 slowly down Las Vegas Boulevard past the Silver Dollar Motel, a cheaply built thirty-rooms-and-pool which looked like hundreds of others in the city; this place catered to gamblers down on their luck, hookers, transient crooks, and poor tourists who preferred to spend their money on the slot machines rather than a deluxe room at one of the luxury hotel/casinos. Noting that there were no suspicious-looking cars in the area (she knew cops loved to use such places to set traps), she pulled into the crowded parking lot and, to make sure a nosy motel manager couldn't take down her license plate, parked away from the registration office. Having checked her platinum coiffure in the rearview mirror, she climbed out of the sports car and strutted past a swimming pool in which a couple of Styrofoam cups floated to a room on the ground floor. She looked around again, knocked softly.

"Who’s there?" said a man with a British accent.

"Monica"

The door was opened by a bearded, overweight man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and gold chains. "Long time no see," he said. He glanced about suspiciously, then invited her in.

"I prefer to talk out here," she said, moving toward the pool.

"What, you afraid of me?"

"Please don't be difficult, Leo. I'm in a hurry."

Leo shook his head and stepped out of the room. He closed the door behind him, followed her to the pool. "I don't know what you're so worried about. We've done business before."

"Then you should know that's just the way I am," she said as she sat down in a deck chair.

"If you're looking for some more of those stock certificates, you're too late. I already unloaded 'em."

"Stock certificates are shit, Leo."

"So don't buy 'em."

"I'm looking for something I can turn quickly."

Leo sat down on a deck chair next to her. "I have some cashier's checks...credit cards..."

She shook her head. "How about some of those nice chips that have been hitting the street?"

Leo took out a package of chewing gum from his shirt pocket. He unwrapped a stick. "Who told you about those?" he said as he placed the stick of gum in his mouth.

"What the hell's the difference who told me?"

"So I'm a little paranoid. That's how I keep out of jail."

She stood up. "If you don't trust me, then I don't trust you, you son of a bitch." They stared at one another for a moment, then she turned to walk away.

"What kind of a deal are you thinking about?"

She stopped walking, turned to face him. "I'm not thinking about anything until I see a sample," she said.

He looked both ways, then reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a pale blue gaming chip and tossed it to her. She caught it. It was a hundred-dollar chip, and the round label in the center bore the spaceship logo of the Stardust Casino. She turned it over. The other side was the same. As far as she was concerned, the chip might as well have been real.

"You like?"

"I like."

"The price is fifty percent."

"Nothing sells for fifty percent, Leo."

"So talk to me."

"I could take a lot of it at ten points. But I can't go higher."

"Then we can't do business. Hell, I'll pass the shit myself before I unload it at ten points."

"Is it your stuff?"

"I'm just a middleman."

She tossed the chip. He caught it. "Did anyone ever tell you you'd look a lot better without a beard?" she said.

For a moment, Leo just sat there staring at her. As she turned and strutted toward her car, she heard him rise from the deck chair. "I got people waiting in line for this shit," he said. "You can have it for twenty percent if you can take at least a hundred grand worth."

"Fuck you, Leo," Monica said as she opened the door of the Porsche. She climbed in and drove off

Later, back at her spacious air-conditioned apartment, Monica still couldn't get Eddie off her mind. Lying on the sofa, wearing only a black bra and panties, she looked up from the
Wall Street Journal
and faced her reflection in the decorative mirrored tiles which covered the ceiling. It occurred to her that her black underwear contrasted nicely with her platinum-blondness.

Her living room was decorated with what she liked to think was a sense of organization: cypress-paneled walls, a Shaker rocker, wood-and-rush chairs, and no pattern in either the azure carpet or the upholstery. A wall drama composed of reproductions of American artifacts, including a horse-and-surrey weathervane and a cigar-store Indian, was the focus of the room. Though she had no real affinity for such items, she relished the sense of nostalgia they created.

All in all, as she often said to herself, the apartment was the perfect front.

She removed the eyeglasses which she never wore in public, folded the newspaper, and tossed it onto a coffee table on which five telephones rested. For a moment she just lay there and considered whether she should get dressed and eat lunch in one of the restaurants on the Strip (Caesars Palace was her favorite), or masturbate, or take a swim in the pool. Before she could decide, one of the phones rang. She picked up the receiver.

"Investment Associates," she said. "Monica Atwood speaking."

"This is the answering service," a woman said. "You have six calls from that man in Utah. He's still screaming about his money and says you never return his calls."

"The next time he calls tell him I'm in...Saudi Arabia. You don't know when I'll be back." As she set the phone down, another phone rang. She picked it up. "Nevada Gold Mining Trust," she said. "Monica Butler speaking."

"This is Mrs. Dorchester," said a woman in a feeble voice. "I think I should wait before I invest. I'm just not sure.

"I was just going to call you," Monica said. "The mine started back into operation this morning, and the first assay was positive. A team of executives from IBM is en route from New York at this very moment. It looks like they are going to make an offer for the entire mining conglomerate
later in the day. It may be too late for small investors anyway."

"Oh," said the woman hesitantly. "I just wonder what I should do."

"If you can send me a money order for six hundred, I'll try to place a hold order on a stock option. That way even if IBM buys the mine you'd be guaranteed to at least double your money within sixty days. But I can't allow you to send any more than six hundred. I have to share the opportunity with my other clients."

"Should I send the money to your post-office box?"

"That's right...and I've gotta run. The assay people are here."

"Well, uh, thank you," Mrs. Dorchester said as Monica set the receiver down.

She stood up and strutted across thick shag carpeting into the bedroom. At the mirror, she removed her brassiere, stuck her chest out. Great nips, if she did say so herself. Standing there, her platinum hair a mess and her face devoid of makeup, she decided how she would kill the rest of the day. She would do her nails, check her post-office box, pay her telephone bill, and perhaps smoke a joint.

But first, she said to herself as she pulled down her panties, it was time to do something strictly for herself.

EIGHT

John Novak sat with Elliot at a table to the right of the witness stand.

The federal grand jury's hearing room, a starkly decorated chamber with high, polished wooden doors, was on the top floor of the federal courthouse. It was only nine o'clock but already, because of the temperature outside, the air conditioner was on in the room. Next to the witness stand was a large easel on which were blown-up color photographs: the wreckage of Bruno Santoro's car, and a morgue photo of a coroner's deputy pointing at what was left of Bruno's body.

Novak thought the grand jurors, sixteen middle-class men and women fidgeting in high-backed swivel chairs, looked less bored than usual. And the steno typist, an oriental man with thick glasses, was sitting up in his chair rather than slouching as he normally did. They always perked up with well-known witnesses.

The foreman of the grand jury, a well-dressed, gray-haired man who looked as if he used pomade, rapped his knuckles on the long table in front of him to get the attention of the group. Talking subsided. "The Grand jury for the Southern District of Nevada calls Anthony Parisi." He nodded to a younger man sitting near the door.

The man stood up, opened the door. "Please step in, Mr. Parisi," he said.

Tony Parisi, fortyish, well-fed, well-groomed, dark, and wearing a gray silk necktie and charcoal suit tailored to hide his paunch, entered the room. The man showed him to the witness stand. Having been sworn in by the jury foreman, he sat down.

Elliot stood up. "Please state your full name."

"Anthony Salvatore Parisi."

"Mr. Parisi, be advised that you are before the United States Grand jury for the Southern District of Nevada. For the record, I am Ronald Elliot, attorney-in-charge of the Department of Justice Strike Force Against Organized Crime and Racketeering. Do you understand that, sir?"

"Yes."

"I am going to ask you a number of questions concerning a matter that this federal grand jury has chosen to investigate. You have the right to consult with an attorney before answering any of these questions. Do you understand that, sir?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever had the occasion to meet one Bruno Santoro?"

Parisi reached into his breast pocket, removed a piece of paper. He unfolded it. "On advice of counsel I respectfully refuse to answer that question on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States in that any answer I may give could tend to incriminate me." He set the paper down on the witness stand.

Elliot looked at Novak, then at the foreman of the grand jury. He cleared his throat. "Mr. Parisi, are you a member of the Vacarillo crime family?"

Parisi picked up the paper. "On advice of counsel I respectfully..."

Novak bit his lip. He sat there for the next hour as Parisi read the statement over and over again in answer to Elliot's questions. The members of the grand jury began to slouch in their chairs, tip back and forth, yawn.

When the hearing was finally over and the grand jury was adjourned, Novak followed Parisi out of the hearing room and down a long hallway to an elevator bank. Parisi pressed the button. There was no one else in the hallway.

"Bruno told me your name isn't shit on the street," Novak said in a low tone.

Parisi glared at him.

"The word is the people back East think you're just a flash in the pan," Novak said. "They're waiting for you to make a mistake out here."

"I got nothing to say to you."

"Novak's the name... John Novak. I'm coming for you."

"You're coming for me?" Parisi asked sarcastically.

"That's right," Novak said. "I'm the one who's gonna lock you up." He smiled.

The elevator doors opened.

"Fuck you," Parisi said.

Novak winked.

Parisi, still glaring, stepped onto the elevator. The elevator doors closed. Novak stopped smiling.

Elliot approached, carrying the stack of legal papers he had had with him in the grand-jury room. "We can force him to testify with a grant of immunity. But if we do that, we can never prosecute him for any crime he testifies about. He's got us on a Ferris wheel."

"Until I recruit another informant."

"Considering the luck you've...uh...we've had with informants, maybe it's better to approach Parisi from another angle."

"Like what?"

"A month or so from now we could call some of his friends before the grand jury again. Make him sweat."

"They'll just take the Fifth like he did."

"If we do this
by the numbers
we can keep him guessing, keep his organization in turmoil, until we get an opening."

"I'd rather put him in prison than play the bluff game," Novak said.

"If you can figure a way to do just that, please let me know," Elliot said. He hurried toward an elevator.

Eddie Sands awoke early. He flipped his prison blanket onto the cement floor, scrambled out of his bunk as if out of a grave. He shaved and dressed. Immediately he began packing his possessions: a box of cheap stationery, a fountain pen, some paperback books
(The Art of Playing Craps
,
Inside the
Mafia, James Jones's
From
Here to Eternity),
and a hardcover titled
My Way in
American Free Enterprise
by
Harry Desmond, the one-time evangelist turned born-again flag-waving self-serving conglomerateur, a darling of the media who, Sands figured, was probably a ruthless prick and confidence man. He managed to fit all the items as well as a thick stack of letters from Monica into a brown paper sack. Because he was too keyed up to sit down, he stood at the cell door until breakfast time, when the door opened automatically.

It was noon by the time he was allowed to pass the last guard station and walk out the front door of the prison. Outside, as he marched across the parking lot and directly down Ferry Street, he felt a tingling sensation spread across his back, neck, and face. Then suddenly he was jogging-
jogging away from
the joint!
By the time he reached the sedan he was out of breath. He replaced the license plates, then climbed in, started the engine, and headed toward the freeway. As he wound from freeway to freeway across Los Angeles toward the Cajon Pass, he imagined, just as he had every night in his cell, the various ways he would fuck Monica when he was finally with her again.

Four hours later, as Sands neared the outskirts of Las Vegas, his rearview mirror was suddenly filled with the reflection of a police car's blinking red light. Holding his breath, he slowed down and pulled to the right shoulder of the road.

As he came to a complete stop, his eyes were riveted to the rearview mirror. A uniformed officer, a tall man with weathered features, lumbered out of the police car and put on his hat. Sands breathed an audible sigh of relief. He climbed out of the sedan and moved quickly toward the officer. Smiling, he offered his hand. "Eddie Sands," he said. "I used to be on the job-Detective Bureau, Organized Crime Intelligence."

"Haven't seen you since...uh," the officer said as they shook hands.

"Since I was fired from the department," Sands said, taking note of the officer's name tag-Fisher.

The officer, ill at ease, bit his lip. "What are you up to these days?" he said.

"I'm a private investigator...making lots of bucks," Sands said, maintaining his smile.

"I never believed any of that stuff I read in the papers about you."

"Thanks, buddy," Sands said as he gave the officer a friendly punch on the shoulder.

"Try to slow it down a little," the officer said on his way back to the squad car.

Sands gave a little salute. "You betcha," he said. As he climbed back into the sedan, the police car sped by.

A few minutes later, Eddie Sands cruised onto the Las Vegas Strip, a desert mirage of monstrous signboards, casino facades, and million-watt neon marquees which, to him, seemed alive and inviting.

He was back in his town-the city of lights, tights, and prize fights, pointy-titted showgirls, maitre d's with the slickest palms west of the Mississippi, gamblers who wore Stetson hats, whores who looked like movie stars, professional stick men, fixers, pickpockets, keno addicts, gallery spies, confidence men from all parts of the world, businessmen and their girlfriends in for the weekend, amateur and professional card counters, dice mechanics, and all manner of stage entertainers, those at the top of the show-biz circuit and those on their way down the drain.

As Sands knocked on Monica's door, he felt excitement well in his loins. He could feel himself becoming uncontrollably erect, like a teenager. Finally, she opened the door. They threw arms around each other. As their lips and tongues met he was enveloped in the scent of her perfume, the softness of her hair. They tore at each other's clothing. Naked, they dropped onto the plush carpet and fucked with abandon. Monica used her palms to wipe perspiration from Sands's brow as he concentrated like a yogi on not ejaculating. Finally, he moaned and gave in to what was perhaps the most powerful orgasm of his life. Neither tired nor spent, he pulled her to her feet and led her into the bedroom. There he lay on the bed. She climbed on top of him. As he massaged her breasts roughly, they screwed again until they were both completely exhausted.

"Goddam, I missed you," she said.

"Don't talk about it."

She kissed him on the cheek and reached to the nightstand for a package of cigarettes. "Was Bruce O'Hara easy?"

"Nobody is easy."

"Where are you taking me for dinner?" she said.

"Caesars Palace. Nothing is too good for you, fast-talking lady."