The Murderers

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Fuck you, Joey,” Dominic said.

  “There are places you talk about certain things, asshole,” Joey said, “and places you don’t, and this is one of the places you don’t. Right, Frankie?”

  “Right,” Frankie agreed.

  “No offense, Frankie,” Dominic said.

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Frankie said.

  “He don’t mean no harm, but sometimes he’s stupid,” Joey said.

  “Fuck you, Joey, who do you think you are, Einstein or somebody?”

  “Where do you guys work?” Frankie said, both to change the subject—Dominic looked like he was getting pissed at the way his brother was talking to him—and to see what they would say. He didn’t think they were cops, but you never really could tell.

  “We’re drivers,” Joey said.

  “Truck drivers?”

  “I’m a people driver,” Joey said. “Asshole here is a stiff driver.”

  “Huh?”

  Joey reached in his wallet and produced a business card, and gave it to Frankie. It was for some company called Classic Livery, Inc., with an address in South Philly, and “Joseph T. Fatalgio, Jr.” printed on the bottom.

  “What’s a livery?” Frankie asked.

  “It goes back to horses,” Joey explained. “Remember in the cowboy movies where Roy Rogers would park his horse in the livery stables?”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said, remembering. “I do.”

  “I think it used to mean ‘horses for hire’ or something like that,” Dominic said. “Now it means limousines.”

  “Limousines?”

  “Yeah. Limousines. Mostly for funerals, but if you want a limousine to get married in, we got white ones. We even got a white Rolls-Royce.”

  “No shit?”

  “Costs a fucking fortune, but you’d be surprised how often it gets rented,” Dominic went on.

  “Most of our business is funeral homes,” Joey said. “Only the bride, usually, gets a limousine ride for a wedding. But if you don’t get to follow the casket to the cemetery in a limousine for a funeral, people will think you’re the family black sheep.”

  “I guess that’s so,” Frankie agreed, and then started to hand the Classic Livery business card back to Joey.

  Joey held up his hand to stop him.

  “Keep it,” he said. “You may need a limousine someday.”

  “Yeah,” Dominic said. “And they’ll probably give you a professional discount.”

  Joey laughed in delight.

  “I told you shut up, asshole,” he said.

  “A professional discount for what?” Frankie asked, overwhelmed by curiosity.

  “Shit, you know what for. Increasing business,” Dominic said.

  Joey laughed.

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

  “Right,” Joey said, and laughed, and winked.

  “Yeah, right,” Dominic said.

  “Actually, Frankie, that’s sort of the reason we’re here.”

  “What is?” Frankie asked.

  “What you don’t know we’re talking about,” Joey said softly, moving so close to Frankie that Frankie could smell his cologne. “Frankie, there’s a fellow we know wants to talk to you.”

  “Talk to me about what?”

  Joey winked at Frankie.

  “I don’t know,” Joey said. “But what I do know about this fellow is that he admires a job well done.”

  “He’s done a job or two himself,” Dominic said. “If you know what I mean.”

  “He already told you he don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole,” Joey said.

  “Right,” Dominic said.

  “What this fellow we know wants to talk to you about, Frankie,” Joey said, “is a job.”

  “What kind of a job?”

  “Let’s say a job where you could make in an hour about ten times what you make in a month pushing furniture around the Wanamaker’s warehouse.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s say this fellow we know has a sort of professional admiration for the way you did your last job, and we both know I’m not talking about throwing furniture on the back of some truck.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “He’s like you, Frankie, he likes to sort of maintain a low profile, you know what I mean. Have a sort of public job, and then have another job, like a part-time job, every once in a while, a job that not a hell of a lot of other people can do, you know what I mean.”

  “Why does he want to talk to me?” Frankie asked.

  “Sometimes, what I understand, with his full-time job, he can handle a part-time job, too, when one comes along. But sometimes, you know what I mean, more than one part-time job comes along. Actually, in this case, what I understand is that there’s three, four part-time jobs come along, and this fellow can’t handle all of them himself. I mean, you’d have to keep your mouth shut—you can keep your mouth shut, can’t you, Frankie?”

  “Like a fucking clam,” Frankie said.

  “I figured you could, a fellow in the part-time job business like you would have to keep his mouth shut. What I’m saying here, Frankie, is that you would be like a subcontractor. I mean, you come to some financial understanding with this fellow, you do the job, and the whole thing would be between you two. I mean, the people who hired him for the particular part-time job I think this fellow has in mind wouldn’t ever find out that this fellow subcontracted it. They might not like that. I mean, they pay this fellow the kind of money they pay, they expect him to do the job himself, not subcontract it. But what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?”

  “Right,” Frankie said.

  “So maybe you would be willing to talk to this fellow, Frankie?” Dominic asked. “I mean, he’d appreciate it. And if you can’t come to some sort of mutually satisfactory arrangement, then you walk away, right? No hard feelings. You’d lose nothing, and it might be in your mutual interest to get to know this fellow. You never know what will happen next week.”

  “What the hell,” Frankie said. “Why not?”

  Frankie had never seen so many Cadillacs in one place in his life as there were lined up in the garage of Classic Livery, Inc.He thought there must be maybe a hundred of them, most of them black limousines. There were also a dozen Cadillac hearses, and that many or more flower cars. Plus a whole line of regular Cadillacs and Lincolns, and he saw the white Rolls-Royce Dominic had told him they had.

  The floor of the garage was all wet. Frankie decided that they washed the limousines every day, and had probably just finished washing the cars that had been used.

  He had never really thought about where the limousines at weddings and funerals had come from, but now he could understand that it must be a pretty good business to be in.

  I wonder what they charge for a limousine at a funeral. Probably at least a hundred dollars. And they could probably use the same limousine for more than one funeral in a day. Maybe even more than two. Say a funeral at nine o’clock, and another at eleven, and then at say half past one, and one at say four o’clock.

  That’s four hundred bucks a day per limousine!

  Jesus Christ, somebody around here must be getting rich, even if they had to pay whatever the fuck it costs, thirty thousand bucks or whatever for a limousine. Four hundred bucks a day times five days is two fucking grand a fucking week! After fifteen weeks, you got your money for the limousine back, and all you have to do after that is pay the driver and the gas. How long will a limousine last? Two, three years at least…

  Joey Fatalgio stopped the regular Cadillac he had parked around the corner from Meagan’s Bar, and pointed out the window.

  “Through that door, Frankie, the one what says ‘No Admittance.’ You’ll understand that this fellow wants to talk to you alone.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Frankie said.

  “I’ll go park this and get a cup of coffee or something, and when you’re finished, I’ll take you back to Meagan’s. OK?”
r />   “Fine,” Frankie said.

  He got out of the car and walked to the door and knocked on it.

  “Come in!” a voice said.

  Frankie opened the door.

  A large, olive-skinned man in a really classy suit was inside, leaning up against what looked like the garage manager’s desk.

  He looked at Frankie, looked good, up and down, for a good fifteen seconds.

  “No names, right?” he said. “You’re Mr. Smith and I’m Mr. Jones, right?”

  “Right, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.

  Jones, my ass. This is Paulo Cassandro. I seen his picture in the papers just a couple of days ago. The cops arrested him for running some big-time whore ring, and bribing some fucking cop captain.

  “Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Smith,” Cassandro said.

  “Don’t mention it, Mr. Jones.”

  “Look, you’ll understand, Mr. Smith, that what you hear about something isn’t always what really happened,” Cassandro said. “I mean, I understand that you would be reluctant to talk about a job. But on the other hand, for one thing, nobody’s going to hear a thing that’s said in here but you and me, and from what I hear we’re in the same line of business, and for another, you’ll understand that, with what I’ve got riding on this, I have to be damned sure I’m not dealing with no amateur.”

  “I know what you mean, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.

  “You want to check me, or the room, for a wire, I’ll understand, Mr. Smith. I’ll take no offense.”

  Jesus Christ, I didn’t even think about some sonofabitch recording this!

  “No need to do that,” Frankie said, feeling quite sophisticated about it. “I trust you.”

  “That’s good. I appreciate that trust. In our line of work, trust is important. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So tell me about the job you did on Atchison and Marcuzzi.”

  And Frankie Foley did, in great detail. From time to time, Mr. Cassandro asked a question to clarify a point, but most of the time during Frankie’s recitation he just nodded his head in what Frankie chose to think was professional approval.

  “In other words, you think it was a good, clean job, with no problems?”

  “Yeah, I’d say that, Mr. Jones.”

  “You wouldn’t take offense if I pointed out a couple of things to you? A couple of mistakes I think you made?”

  “Not at all,” Frankie said.

  “Well, the first mistake you made, you fucking slimeball, was thinking you’re a tough guy,” Paulo Cassandro said.

  He pushed himself off the desk and walked to the door and opened it.

  Joey and Dominic Fatalgio came into the office.

  “Break the fingers on his left hand,” Paulo Cassandro ordered.

  “What?” Frankie asked.

  Joey wrapped his arms around Frankie, pinning his arms to his sides. Dominic pulled the fingers of Joey’s left hand back. Frankie screamed, and then a moment later screamed much louder as the joints and knuckles were either separated from their joints or the finger bones broken or both.

  “Oh, please, Mr. Cassandro,” Frankie howled. “For Christ’s sake!”

  “That was another mistake,” Paulo said, and punched Frankie in the face while holding a heavy cast-metal stapler in his hand.

  “You never seen me in your life, you understand that, asshole?” Mr. Cassandro said.

  Frankie now had his left hand under his right arm. When he opened his mouth to reply, he spit out two teeth. His whole arm seemed to be on fire. He wondered if he was going to faint.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “One of the mistakes you made, you pasty-faced Irish cocksucker, was going around saying untrue things, letting people think, telling people, that you were working for some Italian mob. For one thing, there is no mob, and if there was, there wouldn’t be no stupid fucking Irish shit-asses in it. The Italians in Philadelphia are law-abiding businessmen like me. You insulted me. Worse, you insulted my mother and my father when you started spreading bullshit like that around. You understand that, you fucking Mick?”

  Frankie nodded his head to indicate that he was willing to grant the point Mr. Cassandro had just made.

  Mr. Cassandro struck Mr. Foley again with the heavy cast-metal stapler, this time higher on the face, so that the skin above Mr. Foley’s eye was cut open, and he could no longer see out of his left eye.

  “Say ‘Yes, sir,’ you fucking Mick scumbag!”

  “Yes, sir,” Mr. Foley said.

  Mr. Cassandro, with surprising grace of movement, then kicked Mr. Foley in the genital area.

  Mr. Foley fell to the floor screaming faintly, but in obvious agony.

  Mr. Cassandro watched him contemptuously for a full minute.

  “Stop whining, you Irish motherfucker,” he said conversationally, “and stand up, or I’ll really give you something to cry about.”

  With some difficulty, Mr. Foley regained his feet. He had great difficulty becoming erect, because of the pain in his groin, and because his entire right side now seemed to be shuddering with pain.

  “Now I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen carefully, because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. You don’t even know shit about the law, so I’m going to educate you. You know what happens when you plead guilty to murder?”

  Mr. Foley looked at Mr. Cassandro in utter confusion.

  “Nine times out of ten, it don’t mean shit,” Mr. Cassandro said, “when you confess and plead guilty, which is what you’re going to do.”

  That penetrated Mr. Foley’s wall of pain.

  “Confess?” he asked.

  “Right. Confess. What happens is your lawyer can usually come up with something that will make the jury feel sorry for you, so they won’t vote for the death penalty. Even if he can’t do that, the judge usually knocks down the chair to life without parole, and what that means is that you have to do maybe twenty years.”

  “Why?” Mr. Foley asked, somewhat piteously.

  “I told you. You dishonored the Italian people of Philadelphia. And if there was a mob, you would have dishonored them too. How would it be if it got around that a stupid Mick asshole like you was associated with the mob? If there was a mob.”

  “I didn’t say any—” Mr. Foley began, only to be interrupted again by Mr. Cassandro striking him a third time in the face with the heavy cast-metal stapler. This blow caught him in the corner of the mouth, causing some rupture of mucous membrane and skin tissue and a certain amount of bleeding.

  “You know what’s worse than going to the slammer for twenty years, Frankie?” Mr. Cassandro asked conversationally after Mr. Foley had again regained his feet. “Even worse, if you think about it, than getting the chair?”

  Frankie shook his head no and then muttered something from his swollen and distorted mouth that might have been “No, sir.”

  “Dying a little bit at a time, is what would be worse,” Mr. Cassandro said. “You know what I mean by that?”

  Again there came a sound from Mr. Foley and a shake of the head that Mr. Cassandro interpreted to mean that Mr. Foley needed an explanation.

  “Show him,” Mr. Cassandro said.

  Mr. Joey Fatalgio went to Mr. Foley, this time grabbing his left hand, which Mr. Foley was holding against his body with his upper right arm, and twisted it behind his back. Then he grabbed Mr. Foley’s right wrist, and forced Mr. Foley to place his right hand, so far undamaged, on the desk at which Mr. Cassandro had been standing.

  Mr. Cassandro moved away from the desk. Mr. Dominic Fatalgio then appeared at the desk, holding a red fire ax in his hand, high up by the blade itself. He flattened Mr. Foley’s hand on the desk, and struck it with the ax, which served to sever Mr. Foley’s little finger between the largest and next largest of its joints.

  Mr. Foley screamed again, looked at his bleeding hand, and the severed little finger, and fainted.

  Mr. Cassandro looked down at him.<
br />
  “We don’t want him dead,” he said conversationally. “Wake him up, wrap a rag or something around his hand, and make sure he understands that if I hear anything at all I don’t want to hear, I will cut the rest of his fucking fingers off.”

  Mr. Dominic Fatalgio nodded his understanding of the orders he had received and began to nudge Mr. Foley with the toe of his shoe.

  Mr. Cassandro left the office, and then returned.

  “Make sure you clean this place up,” he said. “I don’t want Mrs. Lucca coming in here in the morning and finding that finger. She’d shit a brick.”

  Both Mr. Dominic and Mr. Joey Fatalgio laughed. Mr. Cassandro then left again, carefully closing the door behind him.

  There were a number of problems connected with the arrests of Mr. Atchison and Mr. Foley for the murders of Mrs. Atchison and Mr. Marcuzzi.The first problem came up when Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein telephoned the Hon. Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, on his unlisted private line in Chestnut Hill to tell him that the Honorable Thomas Callis, District Attorney of Philadelphia County, had been his usual chickenshit self, but had come around when he had told him that he was going to arrest the two of them whether or not Callis thought there was sufficient evidence.

  “He already called me, Matt,” the Mayor said. “To let me know what a big favor he was doing me.”

  “That figures,” Lowenstein said.

  “Would it cause any problems for you,” the Mayor began, which Chief Lowenstein correctly translated to mean, This is what I want done, you figure out how to do it, “to bring Mickey O’Hara along when you arrest Atchison and the shooter, preferably both?”

  Chief Lowenstein hesitated, trying to find the words to tactfully suggest this might not be such an all-around splendid idea as the Mayor obviously thought it to be.

  “When I had Officer Bailey in here this afternoon, to personally congratulate him for his good work in catching that scumbag who shot Officer Kellog, I had the idea Mickey was a little pissed.”

  “Why should Mickey be pissed?”