The Piranhas (11 page)

I looked at him. “Then you’re really not retiring.”

He smiled. “I’m retiring.”

I watched him sip his wine. I had no idea what he had in his mind, but I knew my uncle. In his own way he was a genius. He knew exactly where he was going.

He looked over at me. “How are you doing?”

“Fair,” I answered. “I have five of the big banks ready to lend me ten million each. That, with my own twenty, makes me seventy million up.”

“Pretty good,” he said. “Is that enough?”

“No,” I answered. “I need a minimum of a quarter billion.”

“Where are you going to get that kind of money?” he asked.

“You,” I said.

He stared at me. “Are you crazy?”

I laughed. “You told me you have the money. And you want to use it legitimate. I’m legitimate.”

“I’m not crazy,” he growled. “If I wanted to piss away my money, I’d throw it in the gutter.”

“You’ll make ten percent interest on your money and fifteen percent of the profits. All in all you might wind up with forty million a year before taxes. Legitimate.”

“You gotta prove it,” he said.

“I’ll bring you the papers tomorrow morning,” I said. “You’ll see it then.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Check it out,” I said. “You can always keep your money in the banks and live comfortably in Atlantic Shitty.”

“You’re a little prick,” he said.

“Family,” I said.

He dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “Let’s go,” he said.

I looked for his bodyguards. Their table was empty. I gestured. “Where are your friends, Uncle Rocco?”

He glanced at the table. “They’re probably getting the car.”

I felt a knot gathering in my gut. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Did you tell them to go out?”

“No,” he said. “Why should I? They always get the car for me.”

“They know you are out of the business?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said gruffly. “Everybody in the world knows that now.”

“And nobody complained?” I asked.

My uncle thought for a moment. “Maybe only one. ‘Lilo’ Galante, one of the underbosses of the Bonanno family. He never liked me. But there is nothing he can do. He is in jail.”

“Does he still have connections in the family?”

“Many,” my uncle answered. “Many of them want him to be the Capo when he gets out.” He thought a moment. “I heard he didn’t want to give me any part of Atlantic City. He’s a greedy bastard.”

I looked at Uncle Rocco. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

He nodded. “We’ll go out through the kitchen, then into the hallway and up the staircase. We’ll go over the roof to the next building.”

The hallway was dimly lit and we hurried up the old rickety staircase and onto the roof. I looked at Uncle Rocco. He was breathing heavily. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m not in condition,” he growled. He reached into his jacket and came up with two silver automatics. He held one out to me. “You know how to use this?”

“Yes,” I said.

It was a dark night, and we had to walk carefully across the roofs between the other buildings. Fortunately they were all old tenements, and there was little space between them. We began trying to open the roof doors of three of the buildings. It wasn’t until the fourth building that the door pulled open.

We stepped onto a completely black staircase. The moment we landed on the fifth floor, we realized that the building was deserted. No lights flickered under doorways, and I heard the scamper of rats or mice as we slowly made our way down the steps. By the time we hit the top of the third staircase a pungent odor of Chinese food came to our nostrils.

“There is a Chinese restaurant on the first floor,” I said.

He grunted. “And mice on the staircase. That’s why I never eat Chinese.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “The building is closed, but they still allow a restaurant to stay there.”

“That’s normal,” my uncle said. “Half the buildings down here are like this. For money you can do anything.”

There was a flickering light on the ceiling as we came down the first landing. Quietly we slipped through the opened door leading toward the Chinese kitchen. I looked into the kitchen; there were several men working. They didn’t see us. We walked out the hall door into the street.

“Don’t step out too far,” my uncle said. “Just see if my boys are out there.”

I peered around the corner of the building. There were a number of cars and limousines piled in front of the Palm and McCarthy’s restaurant on the corner of Second and Forty-fifth Street. “I don’t see them,” I said.

“What about my car?” he asked.

“There are a few black limos,” I said. “But they all look alike to me. I don’t know which one is yours.”

“I’ll look,” he said and peeked over my shoulder. He moved back. “My car is there. Parked right on the corner under the streetlight.” He cursed. “The sons of bitches are setting me up. They know better than to park my car under a streetlight.”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Fuck’em,” he said. “I still have some friends in town. We’ll go into the Chink’s and I’ll make a few phone calls.”

I followed him back into the hallway, and we went into the Chinese restaurant through the kitchen. A few Chinese looked surprised to see us but did not say anything. We sat ourselves at the bar and ordered a couple of scotches, and my uncle went to the telephone. I watched him make two calls; then he came back to the bar and drank his scotch and ordered another. “We wait now,” he said quietly. “They’ll let me know when everything is straightened out.”

I stared at him. “Just like that?”

“It’s just business,” he said.

“But they were going to have you killed,” I said.

“That’s one of the hazards of this business.” He smiled. “I’ve been through it before. I’m still here.”

I finished my scotch and ordered another. “What about your bodyguards?” I asked.

“They’ve lost their jobs,” he said.

“You’re going to fire them?”

“I don’t have to,” he said. “Their new boss will take care of that. They quit the job with me the moment they walked out of the restaurant. They’re not my problem anymore.”

I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

My uncle smiled at me without humor. “You don’t need to,” he said. “Now tell me more about your proposition.”

“It can keep,” I said. “You have enough problems of your own just now.”

“Don’t be stupid,” my uncle said harshly. “I said it would all be straightened out. You tell me about your great idea.”

“It’s simple,” I said. “I have an arrangement with eleven small countries right now. They all want their own airlines but they don’t have the money to pay for them. Still they feel it is important for their prestige. I rent them planes almost like my father leased automobiles.”

“How do you know you can get the planes?” he asked.

“I’ll pay cash. Money talks. Besides, I hired General Haven Carter as the president of my company. He’s a heavyweight, former head of the Air Force.”

“He’s gotta cost you a bundle,” Uncle Rocco said.

“Two hundred thousand a year,” I said. “And that’s cheap. I would have given a half a million if he asked.”

It was a big, deep voice that came from behind us. “Mr. Di Stefano.”

Uncle Rocco and I turned on our bar stools. The big voice came from a big man. Black, six four, and four feet wide, a banker’s gray suit, a white shirt, and a thin black tie. A dark gray snap-brim fedora was tilted back on his shining black head as he smiled, showing large white teeth.

Uncle Rocco smiled back at him. “Joe,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Sergeant Joe Hamilton, my nephew, Jed.”

The man’s hand was the size of a catcher’s mitt. “Nice to meet you, sir.” He turned to my uncle. “We located your boys,” he said.

“Where?” my uncle asked.

“Down the block, in a car between Forty-third and Forty-fourth. They have two other men in the car with them. They were double-parked on the other side of Second so they could see your car parked on the corner.”

“Damn,” Uncle Rocco said. He looked up at the policeman again. “Do you recognize those men?”

“Out of town,” he said. “Contract men. I figure that because we never saw either of them before.”

Uncle Rocco nodded. “What did you do with them?”

“Nothing,” Hamilton answered. “I didn’t know what you had in mind. I just have them under watch.”

Rocco turned to me. “There’s always a greedy pig. I offered everyone a fair deal.”

“I learned something in business school. There’s no such thing as a fair deal. Someone always wins, and someone else always thinks he’s losing.”

“So where do we stand?” my uncle said.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Somebody thinks you were screwing them.”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s your business,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it. All I know is that someone was going to kill you.”

“Then what would you do?” He met my eyes.

“You’re my uncle,” I said. “And I love you. And I don’t want anyone to ever hurt you. But these assholes are only errand boys. If they don’t get you, somebody else will be sent after you. You have to get to the head of the snake and straighten him out.”

“It’s not that easy,” Uncle Rocco said. “Lilo is in jail. I can’t talk to him there.”

“Somebody can, I’m sure,” I said.

“Meanwhile what do I do with these assholes, just let them off?” he said sarcastically.

“That could be the first step,” I said. “Then you can find someone who can reach him.”

The black policeman turned to Uncle Rocco. “I can talk to him. I can tell him that life is simple. There’s eight blacks to two whites in that jail, and if he doesn’t behave he goes out in a box.”

Uncle Rocco thought silently for a moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “We’ll go that way.”

“Good,” I said. “I feel that your other friends would approve of what you’re doing. No one wants to start another war.”

My uncle smiled. “Frank Costello just died. After Lucky, he took the job of being the judge. He kept things quiet for a very long while.”

“Maybe they’ll give you that job.” I grinned.
“Capo di Tutti Capi Emeritus I.”

My uncle stared at me. “That’s stupid,” he said, but I saw he liked the idea.

He turned to the policeman. “Can you get to Lilo?”

“Easy,” he said. “I own that can.”

“Okay, it’s done,” my uncle said.

Sergeant Joe Hamilton nodded and asked one more question. “What do you want us to do about the four guys out there?”

Uncle Rocco lifted his glass. “Beat the shit out of those bastards and leave them in the gutter.”

We watched the policeman leave the restaurant, and my uncle turned back to the bar and ordered us another round. “You have a proposition for me, now I have one for you.”

“What?” I asked.

“You buy my brownstone on Sixtieth Street. It’s a great house and the right location for you. It’s big enough for you to have office space as well as living space, and in the upper class that you’re going into, living on the West Side isn’t the image you should have.”

“That’s expensive,” I said. “I haven’t got my business organized yet.”

“You’ve got it organized,” he said. “You meet me at my place tomorrow morning. Bring your lawyer and accountant and I’ll have mine. I’ll give you the money you need and you buy my house.”

I stared at him. “Do you think I can afford it?”

“Three hundred thousand, fair enough? In fifteen years it will be worth two million.”

I reached for his hand. He pulled me to him and hugged me. “I love you,” he said.

“And I love you, Uncle Rocco,” I said and kissed his hand.

He took his hand away. “No,” he said quietly. “We’re family. We kiss on the cheek.”

Book Two

LOVE, MURDER, AND THE RICO ACT

1

THE HUM OF
the twin-engined four-passenger Beech-craft came softly into the cabin. Daniel Peachtree, president of Millennium Films Corporation, sat comfortably at the controls. He glanced down at the vector dial, then at the Sat-Nav indicator. “We should be there in about twenty minutes,” he announced with satisfaction.

“I think you’re a fuckin’ nut,” Neal snapped.

“What a bitch,” Daniel said to himself. “Always complaining. Besides I’ll get more publicity out of this than anyone else.” He turned to the beautifully gowned MTV rock stars seated behind him. “How are you both doin’?”

“Scared shitless, darling,” Thyme replied, her voice sounding nothing like her video that had made the top of the hits list. “Shouldn’t you be looking out the window or something, darling, instead of looking back at us like a Roman taxi driver?”

Daniel smiled. “We’re on automatic right now. I have nothing to do until we begin to land.”

“Then get us down, darling,” Thyme said. She opened her purse, took out a vial of coke, and turned to her girlfriend. “Here, Methanie, a couple of snorts of this will straighten you out.”

Methanie nodded and snorted quickly. “You’re saving my life, baby.”

Thyme helped herself and then slipped the vial back into her purse. “That really do help.”

Daniel looked at her. “Don’t get too stoned. We’re having reporters and photographers at the airport, and remember this is zero tolerance time.”

“Fuck’em, they won’t know the difference, darling,” Thyme replied. “I’ve been stoned all my life, no one ever saw me any other way.” She leaned forward toward him. “You sure Donald Trump will be there?”

“If you have the hots for him, forget it.” Daniel laughed. “He’s got a Czech wife. But maybe he’ll give you a gig at his hotel in Atlantic City.”

“I can live without him or his hotel,” she snapped. “I want him to get me next to Mike Tyson.”

Daniel stared at her. “What makes you think Tyson will want to meet you?”

“I heard he was playing my albums all the time at his training camp,” she replied. “He may be the champ, but he’s nothing but an overgrown pussy-whipped baby to me.”

“I never knew you really went for men anyway.”

“Never men.” She laughed. “Only boys. They bring out the mother in me.”

“You’re a real bitch,” Daniel remarked as a buzzer sounded above his head. He pressed a button and reached for an earphone clip. “We’re coming in, kids. Remember, keep cool.”