The Big Scam (20 page)

Vanko said, “Sheila, this is what we do for a living. Surveillance is ninety-nine percent a waste of time. Actually it's probably closer to a hundred percent. Otherwise the bad guys would be thoughtful enough to show up at the exact moment we did. Then we'd have to call it an appointment.”

“I know, it's just when you're planning these things they seem a lot smarter than they do after a day in a metal box.”

“Especially if you have to look at someone like T.H. the whole time,” Kenyon said.

Crowe said, “I think what bothered her was you humming show tunes and trying to dust.”

“I just hate wasting everybody's time. Does anybody have any other ideas?” Sheila asked.

When no one said anything, Vanko said, “Okay then, everyone has the same assignments for tomorrow morning, same time. Any conflicts? No? Then how about we head over to Hattie's for a beer?”

“I'm going to stay and get organized for tomorrow,” Sheila said.

“That was an order, not an invitation,” Vanko said.

Straker grabbed her hand and kissed it with exaggeration. “You don't want to be in here with these animals. Come with me, we'll fly to Rio, for Carnival.”

Vanko watched her hand float back down to her side. He looked away, embarrassed that Straker had done something so matter-of-factly that he couldn't. The visual exchange did not go unnoticed by the others. Sheila quickly regained her composure. “Carnival is just before Lent. You're a few months late. However, since everybody's apparently worked up a thirst on my case, I guess I have no choice but to buy the first round.”

“Everyone but T. H.,” Zalenski said.

Crowe said, “Yes, I've already had today's allotment of alcohol. In fact, I'm good until 2043.”

Sheila jumped to her feet. “Well, as long as Baron von Straker will be there kissing hands, I'm in.”

ARMED WITH BOTH HALVES OF THE LULU
Rosenkranz map and the optimism of having overcome the most recent insurmountable obstacles, Parisi set the departure time to Phoenicia at 6:00 a.m., an hour that he hoped would discourage the notoriously nocturnal underboss from coming along. Initially, DeMiglia did protest the time, but Parisi explained the difficulty they had had getting hotel rooms on their previous trip. “It's what, the Catskills? How can there be no rooms?”

Parisi started to tell him about the Washington Irving festival but considered DeMiglia's disdain for being lectured and said, “I think it was a Jewish holiday.”

“Hey, when ain't it a Jew holiday? I guess I'll have to be here at six.”

The closer the hour came, the more hopeful Parisi grew that DeMiglia wouldn't show. But at a couple of minutes past six, an unfamiliar white Cadillac pulled up to the curb. The back window lowered with an electronic whir, and the sleep-deprived underboss called Parisi over. “Morning, Danny,” Parisi said with as much irritating cheerfulness as possible, “you want some coffee?”

“Fuck coffee, it might keep me awake.”

“New car?”

“Loaner. My car's at the dealer. Four months old and already has electrical problems. It's all those goddamn computers they put in these days. How long is it going to take us to get up there?”

“If we watch the speed limit, two, two and a half hours.”

“Good. Watch the speed limits, it'll give me more time to sleep. Where's a good place to meet?”

“The old train station. Everyone in town knows where it is.”

DeMiglia grunted and fell back onto the seat. Parisi looked around at the others who were glazed by the same fatigue as the underboss. As the last of them pulled away, he got in his car. Leaning back against the leather headrest, he closed his eyes and inhaled the fleeting solitude, holding it in his lungs as long as possible.

Driving by himself would give him time to think, to recheck his increasingly tangled deceptions, their matrix slowly tightening around him. But once he cleared the stop-and-go cadence of the city's traffic, his mind refused to concentrate on anything remotely associated with business. The part of his brain that created and maintained conspiracies was demanding a few hours off.

Streaming along the interstate, he lost himself in the rush of images out the window. Simple stone buildings that would last several more of his lifetimes, constructed for purpose rather than comfort by owners possessing the same character, an earned indestructibility. As he neared the mountains, he began to notice the small tributaries that wound under the overpasses, their course unchanging as they gave life to the triangular evergreens and domed hardwoods that bordered them.

When he pulled into the old train station, he could see the cool green canopy of the Catskills in the distance, a place that had long generated legends and hauntings, one capable of both inspiring Washington Irving and conspiring with Dutch Schultz.

By eight-thirty, everyone had arrived. The night before Tommy Ida had thought to get a metal detector from a cousin who used it to find coins and jewelry on the Coney Island beach. He also brought three shovels and a pick from the club's basement. No one knew how they had gotten there. No one questioned it either.

They tried to visualize the surrounding landmarks' relationship to the rusty, inked lines of the map. It became apparent immediately that the map's X had to be on the other side of Esopus Creek. They found the bridge across and parked along the dirt road. They walked down to the edge of the creek, then followed it east until they came upon a small clearing.

The terrain opened to the west and south, rising gently toward the mountains. The sky was a remarkably pellucid blue, and a dry morning wind was gathering speed. The ground beyond was snared with thick, ropy undergrowth. The men looked for an accessible starting point. A few small clusters of trees were within walking distance, several of their limbs snapped off, as if in the wake of some apocalyptic storm.

Parisi turned the halves of the map in an effort to orient their position. Manny pointed at a scribbled tangle on the paper, then at a stand of half a dozen pines thirty yards away. “Maybe that's supposed to be a bunch of trees. What do you think?”

“Looks right,” someone offered more out of impatience than analysis.

“And how we supposed to know when we got the right spot?” DeMiglia asked.

“The most common story,” Ida said, “is that when Rosenkranz made the map, he carved an X in the tree that the box was buried under.”

“You're going to tell me that people have been looking for this for sixty years and nobody noticed a tree with a X on it?”

A little embarrassed, Ida lowered his eyes. “That's just what I read.”

DeMiglia looked at Parisi. “See, it's just like they say, too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

Jimmy Tatorrio had walked over to the trees while they were talking. “Hey, over here. I think there's an X on this one.”

Everyone but DeMiglia hurried over. Sure enough, the vague lines of an X were cut in the bark. “Looks old to me,” said Parisi. He stepped aside so DeMiglia could give his opinion.

“Yeah, it could be.” He turned to Ida. “Now what?”

“It's supposed to be buried right underneath. We'll go get the metal detector and shovels.”

For the next two hours, three of the men followed Ida and his metal detector around, digging at his direction. The only things they unearthed were an occasional beer can or railroad spike. With midday approaching, DeMiglia's mood went from combative anticipation to boredom to embarrassed anger.

Walking around, he suddenly noticed that another tree also had a shallow X carved into it. He started to tell them, but then something occurred to him. He inspected each of the other trees in the stand, confirming what he had suspected. Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked over to Parisi, who was studying the map yet again. When Parisi saw his contemptuous smile, he knew that DeMiglia had discovered a new problem that he was enjoying much more than Parisi would. “What is it, Danny?”

He pointed to the cluster of the trees. “See those?”

“Yeah.”

“Every one of them has an X on it.”

“What?” Parisi half-trotted over to the cluster of pines. “I don't understand.”

“Think about it. One of these treasure hunters came through here and put Xs on all the trees so he could fuck everybody else up. There's probably not a tree around here without an X on it.”

“Even if that's true, we still have the advantage because we've got the map, which we know is good because you had it checked.” He knew the argument was weak, but it was all he could think of at the moment.

“Yeah, well, maybe. I'm not sure I know what to believe anymore.”

Parisi was glad he had saved a trump card; he hoped it would be enough to keep DeMiglia interested. He turned to Tommy Ida. “Do you still have the genealogy stuff?”

“In the car, but I pretty much remember how it went.”

“Then tell Danny.” He looked at DeMiglia. “I didn't think this was that important at the time, but Tommy went on the Internet and traced the people in Joe Baldovino's diary.”

Ida quickly explained how the map had been passed from Lulu Rosenkranz to Marty Krompier and, when he was shot, to his brother Milton. And that Milton's adopted son was Anthony Luitu, who, according to the journal, gave it to the senior Baldovino in payment for some unspecified debt.

“So not only did your document guy say it was good,” Parisi said, “but the Internet confirms the bloodlines. It all fits.”

The new, confirming set of facts, while not inarguable, seemed to calm DeMiglia's doubts. “It does makes sense. Let me see that map again.”

At that moment, Nick Vanko was watching Eugene Diaz through a thousand-millimeter camera lens. The photographer was just entering his studio. “Just like yesterday,” Sheila said, her voice coming from the speaker under Vanko's dashboard. “And at about the same time.” The radio went silent, and, as it had done several times already, Vanko's mind drifted back to the night before.

Hattie's was a neighborhood bar with a small area in the back toward the kitchen where the Opera House crew could discuss business without being overheard.

Sheila had been the last one to arrive. She passed Straker, who was dancing next to the jukebox with one of the bar's regulars, a woman in her fifties who worked in a nearby used-car lot.

As Sheila approached the table, Vanko started to stand up to offer her his chair. She held up a hand. “Thanks, but I've got to use the bathroom.”

When she came back a few minutes later, she sat down on the edge of his chair, pushing him over until they each had half a seat. She nodded toward the jukebox. “Looks like my fling with Jack is over.”

Vanko closed his eyes, shutting out the blurry images coming through the telephoto lens. It had been a long time since he had felt that tiny arc of electricity that jumps from the touch of a woman…obviously too long.

He poured her a glass of beer and she took a hefty swallow. “I didn't get a chance to tell you this morning, but that inspector grabbed me for an interview yesterday.”

“How'd that go?”

“He wanted to know exactly how many of you guys were harassing me.”

“And you told him…?”

“I explained that I hadn't been there very long, and it would probably take a while for someone to take a shot at me because I'm the kind of woman men generally need to get a good running start at. I told him so far there had been only one problem: someone showed up at my place with beer and pizza.” Vanko laughed. “Well, you did come to my apartment—at night, uninvited—with enough alcohol to loosen my moral code.”

“I wish I had known your defenses were down,” he said, his tone unconvincing. He topped off her glass. “How much beer does it usually take?”

“You're at least a glass and a half past it right now. And speaking of half, could I at least get a quarter of this seat, Slim?” Her hip squirmed lightly against his.

Everyone at the table had turned their attention to Straker, who stood at the bar beside his dance partner, lighting a shot of tequila. He gave a little salute with the flaming liquid and fired it down. The woman did the same and ordered another. Some of her mannerisms reminded Sheila of her mother. She instinctively knew when men were watching her and would arch her back slightly and push her hair behind one ear, her laughter suddenly bubbling more noticeably. Sheila was always relieved when her mother started to take over a room because it allowed her to become even more invisible. She suspected it was one of the reasons her mother did it.

When Sheila first announced her intention of joining the FBI, signaling her more or less permanent departure from Iowa, her mother didn't protest. It seemed a relief for both of them. When allowing herself to think about it, Sheila missed her family, but she returned to Iowa only every other Christmas, and then for no more than three days. If she stayed a minute longer than that, the old feelings began to surface. The thing that she loved most about New York was that it wasn't Iowa. No more of the long, flat winters. No more of the inescapable smallness. Everyone knowing everyone. One of New York's greatest offerings was its ability to distract, enough to convince her that one's appearance was as insignificant as a flickering store window reflection. The faster she went by, the more out of focus she became.

Someone laughed and said something about Straker. “Is he always like this?” Sheila asked.

“He didn't get to the squad on good looks alone.”

 

“Nick?” Zalenski said. “Sheila's trying to get you on the radio.”

“Was I sleeping?”

“I don't know. Your eyes were closed.”

Vanko picked up the mike. “Go ahead, twenty-three eleven.”

“We're wasting time. How about if T.H. and I grab him up for an interview and a cheek swab.”

“If you're not worried about him running.”

“I'm just not getting much of a vibe off of him.”