The Ophelia Cut (2 page)

F
ORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER,
the gun locked away in his storage unit, the surgical gloves and the spent cartridges thrown into a trash container in the subway station on the way back, Ricci went down the four steps leading to his apartment, took out his key, inserted it into the lock, and started to push open the door.

The minute he turned the knob, a pair of strong hands took hold of him from behind and pushed him forward into the door, which slammed open in front of him, and then he was thrown down onto the floor, his face into the Persian rug, three men holding him down. When he stopped struggling after only a few seconds—resistance was obviously useless—a calm and measured voice said, “There’s four of us here and we’re all armed and very dangerous, Tony. You are, by the way, under all kinds of
arrest. But we’re really here to talk to you, which would be easier and so much more pleasant if you were sitting up. You think you want to do that?”

Ricci raised his head and saw a man sitting at his kitchen table with an open bottle of wine and a couple of glasses in front of him, one of them half-filled. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll sit up. Let’s talk.”

“No funny stuff.” The man reached under his jacket and showed a gun. “No kidding.”

“I get it.”

“Good.” The man nodded to his comrades, and the pressure behind him went away. “One of you get the door, please.”

Ricci slowly got to his feet. He looked around, and sure enough, there were three other guys, all about his size, complete professionals. “What do you want?” he asked the man at the table.

“Have a seat,” the guy said, indicating the other kitchen chair.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The man broke a tight smile. “Oh, yeah, the introductions.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, which he opened to reveal a badge. “We’re a little posse of federal marshals, Tony. My name is Frank Ladoux, and I predict that you and I are going to be good friends for a long time. Please, have a seat. Can I pour you a little wine? You’re going to want, maybe need, something to drink pretty soon, I expect.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ladoux tsked. “Tony, please. A little respect.” He leaned forward, picked up the wine bottle, and filled the bottom of Ricci’s glass. “Come on, take a sip. It’s your bottle after all. It’ll make you feel better.”

Ricci picked up the glass and drank. “Okay, now what?”

“Now you’re going to tell us how much you know about Martin Tedeschi.”

Ricci hesitated, scanned the kitchen, came back to Ladoux. “He’s a wine collector and business guy out in the Hamptons. He throws a lot of parties.”

“Parties where you’ve provided security.”

Ricci nodded. “Sometimes. So what? Half the force moonlights.”

“Maybe they do, but they don’t usually become pals with their hosts, do they?”

“I’m not pals with Tedeschi.”

“No?”

“No. If that’s what this is about, you got the wrong guy.”

Ladoux shook his head. “You disappoint me, Tony. You’re a cop. You know what it’s like to make an arrest. You don’t do it without preparation and evidence up the ass. Isn’t that right? So here we are, a team of four—and believe me, the team is much bigger than that—and you’re acting like you think we don’t have everything we need and then some. Of course we do. You’re done, dude. You have only two ways to go: one, you roll over on Mr. Tedeschi or, two, starting tonight you go to jail for the rest of your natural life, which won’t be too long.”

Ladoux poured himself a glass of wine, took a sip, and put the glass down. “Listen, you are the break we’ve been looking for for at least two years. We know you’re majorly connected to Tedeschi. We’ve got pictures, we’ve got tapes, videos, you name it. We know you’ve been working for him for five years and know everybody who’s anybody in his organization. We’re going to want you to testify against these people so we can put them away where they belong.”

Ricci barked a laugh. “And, even assuming that what you think you know is true, I’m going to do this why?”

“Because otherwise . . . I thought I’d made this clear . . . otherwise, you’re in prison forever.”

“For what?”

Again, Ladoux shook his head, smiling. “I’ll be honest with you, Tony. We don’t know for sure yet how many people you’ve hit, although the deposit list on the door of your locker ought to give us some leads on timing.” Ladoux nodded. “The locker? Oh, yeah, we know about that. In fact, we got its contents in evidence right now, collected by my colleagues right after you left, oh, about twenty minutes ago.”

Stalling for time, Ricci picked up his glass and drank up its contents.

“Here. Let’s pour you some more of that. I’ve got your attention now, don’t I? We were talking about the number of people you’ve hit, and the good news for us is we don’t need a lot of bodies. We just need one.”

“You’re saying you’ve got proof I’ve killed people?”

“Honestly, Tony, I’d have to call it an embarrassment of riches.”

“Because I have a locker?”

“It’s more what’s in the locker, but that’s a start. Seven guns that’ll match ballistics with who knows how many dead people. Thirty grand plus in cash. Ammo.” Ladoux held up his hand. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. That it’s all circumstantial. There’s probably no record you even rent that locker. Except we’ve been filming it round the clock for the past four months, and it’s pretty obvious it’s yours.”

Ricci sat back. “I want to talk to a lawyer.”

Ladoux clucked. “Shit, Tony, I’m giving you a chance to live here, and you’re pissing about finding yourself a lawyer. You get a lawyer and go to jail to await your trial and Mr. Tedeschi has you killed in your cell. I promise you this will happen, and you know it’s true. So let’s stop this nonsense talk about lawyers. I am offering to protect you forever. You testify for us and then you start a new life. You don’t get that?”

But Ricci crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. “I never killed anybody. I want a lawyer.”

Ladoux looked over at his colleagues, who’d found themselves seats in the living room. “Can you believe this guy?” He reached into his pocket pulled out a cell phone, came back to Ricci. “It’s amazing the clarity you can get with the video on these things, Tony. Take a look at this. No, come in closer. Get a look.”

U.S. Marshal Ladoux pushed a button and the screen came up. Ricci saw himself walking along a sidewalk. With a rush of blood in his ears, he realized that this was the block where James Di Marco lived. He watched himself stop at the front gate, walk up the short little path, knock at the front door. He waited, the door opened, and then the camera zoomed in on him and Di Marco. Ladoux was right. The clarity of the zoom was excellent.

Ricci couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. It seemed to take forever, though he knew that the whole thing hadn’t lasted thirty seconds. There was a moment of discussion, then he pulled the gun and stuck it under Di Marco’s chin. In his kitchen chair, his whole body reacted with a jerk at the clearly audible reports of the gun as Di Marco went down.

Turning away now, they got Ricci directly facing the camera, his face nearly filling the screen. Out of zoom, finally, he broke into a lazy jog.

Dumbstruck, Ricci shook his head in disbelief. “You had a guy tailing me?”

“Tony, we’ve had a dozen people tailing you round the clock for the past four months. I told you, this is a big operation and you’re in the middle of it. When the word got out you were at your locker earlier, we kicked it up to high gear, and, I must say, you didn’t disappoint.”

“You just shot the video knowing what was coming down? Thinking I was going to do the guy? When you could have stopped me and saved his life? What kind of fucking guys are you?”

“I told you, we’re fucking serious guys. Really. Any one of us. And we needed you to actually shoot the poor fucker. You can understand that, I’m sure.” The marshal sipped wine and tsked again. “Hey. Get over it. The world’s a tough place. Whoever he was probably deserved it. And we got what we needed, too. That’s what counts.”

Ricci came forward, poured himself more wine, drank half of it. His hands were shaking.

“So look,” Ladoux said, “let’s cut the bullshit about how you never killed anybody. We got you killing somebody. You’re going down for this, unless you want to play ball with us. And I mean you’re going down now.”

Ricci reached again for the wine. “How’d you get on to me? You mind if I ask?”

“You remember you dated Teri Wright? A fellow police officer.”

“Shit. Teri?”

“Maybe you want to let ’em down easier in the future. She was a little bitter. And then she got to thinking about all the great stuff you’ve got around this place, all the extra money you had all the time. It got her thinking with her cop’s brain. Where was all that coming from? And, of course, she also knew about you moonlighting for Tedeschi. She knows that you’re working in Vice; she knows he’s running lots of girls. It all started to fit—she didn’t know exactly how—but she came to us.” He spread his hands in low-key triumph. “And then there was today.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Well, I’m afraid now you disappear.”

“Just like that?”

“Pretty much. We get you out of here tonight, right now, and into a safe environment, and then we get your initial testimony and get you set up in a new place with your new identity. And then when we need you to
come back in to testify, you’re available for us. A case this size, it might be years. In the meantime, you got a life.”

“What about after I testify?”

“That is up to you, but you’ll probably want to stay in the program.”

“Forever?”

“Up to forever. But it’s your choice. You got family? Relatives?”

“No. Couple of cousins, but nobody especially close.”

“That ought to make it easier, the choice I mean.”

“And you set me up with a new identity, just like that?”

“Couldn’t be easier. I’ll show you. What’s the name of this wine we’ve been drinking? It’s delicious.”

“Solaia,” said Ricci. “It’s Italian. Wine of the year a few years ago in
Wine Spectator
.”

Ladoux put his finger into his wineglass and motioned Ricci to come in closer to him. “Anthony Xavier Ricci,” he said, touching his wine-soaked finger to Ricci’s forehead. “I hereby christen you Tony Solaia. Where do you think you want to live from now on?”

Tony Solaia reflected for a moment, then nodded and said, “I’ve heard good things about San Francisco.”

M
OSES HAD WANTED
to see Dismas Hardy alone.

He’d unexpectedly dropped by Hardy’s house on Thirty-fourth Avenue, and now the two men kept up a brisk pace as they walked along Geary toward the beach on this overcast November Sunday afternoon. Moses McGuire didn’t like to worry his only sibling, Frannie, Hardy’s wife. And he was, himself, worried to distraction.

That morning San Francisco’s second newspaper, the
Courier,
had run an article by a columnist named Sheila Marrenas. It was part of a series on unsolved crimes in the city. This one revisited an event dubbed the Dockside Massacre, in which six years ago, five people, including the city’s head of Homicide, Barry Gerson, had been killed in a gunfight on Pier 70.

For McGuire—and, he would have thought, for a lawyer like Hardy—it struck a little too close to home.

“They don’t call her Heinous Marrenas for nothing,” Hardy said. “Nobody reads her, Mose. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I read her. Lots of other people read her. She mentioned you by name.”

Although that sent a little shiver of apprehension down Hardy’s spine, he suppressed it. “She mention you?”

“No.”

“Abe, Gina, anybody else?”

“Freeman.”

“David remains dead, if I’m not mistaken. He’s not about to talk. Is that it?”

McGuire went on for a few steps, then stopped. “Tell me it doesn’t get inside your head,” he said.

Hardy pulled up, took in a breath. “It’s never
not
inside my head,
Mose. It never goes away. Not what we did. We had no choice about that. But the idea that it might come out. I live in fear of it every day.”

“You ever think it might be better if we just . . . I mean, as it is, I read an article like that, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Should we maybe bring it out into the open? Here’s the easy answer to that: never in a million years. You shouldn’t even begin to think anything like that. It would ruin a lot of lives, including yours.”

“All right. But this living under the constant threat of exposure—”

“—is far better than living with the alternative, and don’t you kid yourself.” Hardy started walking again, and Moses fell in beside him. “You feel guilty?” he asked after a few steps.

McGuire shook his head. “No. That’s why I think it wouldn’t be so bad. If people knew what really happened, they’d see we had no choice. It was pure self-defense.”

“True, but probably better not to let other people make that decision. We know it. We live with it. That’s enough.”

“It’s wearing on me. That’s all I’m saying.”

“It wears on us all, Mose. I wish it hadn’t happened, but talking about it isn’t going to make things better.” Now it was Hardy’s turn to stop. “You don’t think I haven’t had nightmares? I’m watching a damn ball game and suddenly I’m zoned out, back there on that pier, taking the hit to my Kevlar. I’m not wearing that vest, I’m dead right now, you realize that? You don’t think that makes an impression?”

“That’s what I’m saying. We keep it a secret, we’re basically saying it wasn’t the right thing to do, and we know it was.”

“No. Completely wrong. What we’re basically saying is that, right or wrong, we can’t tell anybody—not ever—because nobody would understand, and our worlds, as we know them now, would end.” Hardy hesitated, then went on. “This is your damned twelve-step program talking. I don’t care what they’ve been telling you all this time, having every issue out in the open, in the bright light of day, so you can talk about it and analyze how you feel about it is not the solution to every problem. Sometimes the solution—trust me here—is you just shut up and suck it up.”