Storm Rising

by Douglas Schofield

  “That was always the story, but you know there was more to it than that.”

  “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “I want to talk about it now!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I just met a Mafia don, and he knew my maiden name!”

  Ricki took a breath. “Lucy, how did you get mixed up with the Mafia?”

  “I’m not mixed up with anything!” she fibbed. “I’ll tell you about it some other time. I just want to know what really happened, before we were born. Do you know?”

  There was a long pause.

  “I don’t know the whole story.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I just know what I overheard one night. You were just a baby. I was in the hallway and Mom and Dad were talking in their bedroom.”

  “What about?”

  “Something about how Dad got the Bronte. But they were speaking Italian! I was only about seven, and you know my Italian wasn’t that great. Mom wanted me to learn English, so she—”

  “I know, I know. Just tell me what you remember!”

  “It sounded like somebody gave him the bar.”

  “Gave it to him? I thought he bought it!”

  “I’m just telling you what I think I heard. And Mom was saying something about ‘those people,’ that they never let go, that he’ll never be free, that they’d be coming to him one day, wanting something … a favor, something bad.”

  Lucy remembered the men …

  The well-dressed men who showed up at the Bronte once every few years and kissed her father on both cheeks. Who sat with him at his corner table, drinking grappa. Who sometimes followed him into his office behind the bar.

  The men who never came to their house.

  Ricki was still talking. “Mom kept saying, ‘We have the girls, Joseph! Think of the girls!’ And Dad, he said, ‘Giulia, how many times do I tell you? It was a settlement.’”

  “A settlement?”

  “Like, a reward. He called it un debito d’onore.”

  “A debt of honor.”

  “Yeah. He said, ‘They helped us come here, and they bought us the bar, and they will never ask us for anything in return.’ I remember he told her, ‘Mettiamoci una pietra sopra. Il debito è saldato.’”

  “‘Put a stone on it,’” Lucy translated. “‘The debt is paid.’”

  “Those were his exact words.”

  Lucy went quiet, trying to process what she had just heard.

  “Lucy?”

  “I’m here.”

  “There was something else…”

  “What?”

  “I never said anything, because I didn’t want to upset—”

  “Ricki! What?”

  “Cappelli’s not our real name.”

  Ricki waited while Lucy silently grappled with that.

  “What is our name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  After that unnerving conversation, Lucy went to her computer. She ran a search phrase: Lanza crime family.

  The boast at the top of the screen was startling—About 184,000 results (0.27 seconds)—but the phrasing of the links directly below startled her more:

  San Francisco crime family …

  California Connection: the Lanza crime family …

  James “Jimmy the Hat” Lanza, San Francisco crime boss …

  She opened the James Lanza link, and discovered that the man had died in 2006.

  “James Lanza was the last godfather of this crime family, which is now extinct.”

  Extinct?

  Lucy clicked to the next page. More San Francisco Mob articles. She amended her search term: Dominic Lanza.

  The first hit solved the mystery:

  The East Coast Lanzas are not to be confused with a small San Francisco crime syndicate that once bore the same name. That family became dormant with the death of its last godfather in 2006. The two families were distantly related, and law enforcement agencies suspect that the Bay Area group subsidized the rise of the New Jersey branch during the 1950s, but no hard evidence of that connection has ever been uncovered.

  The East Coast Lanzas’ reach covers New Jersey, New York, and South Florida. Florham Park, NJ, businessman Dominic Lanza, 67, is rumored to be the current head of the family. His paternal uncle, Tommaso Lanza, who died in 1991, was said to be the driving force behind the family’s phenomenal growth after the Second World War. Journalist Edgar Leech, the author of two books on the Watergate scandal, has suggested that the elder Lanza had close ties with Peter Brennan, president of New York City’s Mafia-linked Building and Construction Trades Council. Brennan served as secretary of labor in President Richard Nixon’s short-lived second administration. The connection between the two men came to light during a 1972 Army investigation instigated by General Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief of staff. If true, this tends to support unproven allegations about the Lanza family’s influence over certain construction industry unions.

  The Lanzas are the least known of the so-called “Cosa Nostra” crime families, due mainly to the family’s CIA-like obsession with secrecy. Most associates and soldiers, and even some capo regimes, don’t know the names of their counterparts, making it extremely difficult for local police and federal law enforcement to cultivate valuable informants. (This paranoid approach may be a legacy from the San Francisco family, which never grew larger than twenty-five to thirty members due to a strict policy of restricting the admission of new “made men.” While this may have protected the West Coast family from being infiltrated by informants, an aging membership eventually led to its extinction.)

  Sources within the FBI, who spoke to Edgar Leech on condition of anonymity, view the family with a mixture of frustration and admiration. Only one member of the extended family has ever attracted wide public notice, and even that came long after his death. Ironically, this notoriety was not due to the man’s numerous crimes, but because of his public service. Joseph “Socks” Lanza, a distant cousin of Dominic’s father, was a vicious Mafioso who controlled the Fulton Fish Market and, through his connections, much of the New York waterfront. During World War II, he placed his entire organization at the disposal of U.S. Naval Intelligence in an ongoing effort to identify Axis saboteurs and sympathizers among the thousands of fishermen, seamen, and longshoremen who worked out of the hundreds of piers and warehouses in Manhattan, Queens, New Jersey, and Brooklyn. Only in recent years has his invaluable assistance to the war effort come to light.

  Lanza’s contribution did not, however, deter law enforcement authorities from arresting him for extortion and conspiracy in 1943 and sending him to prison.

  Since 1945, only two of the family’s alleged members have ever been convicted of a serious crime. In 1985, a long-time soldier named Alphonso Jovinelli was sentenced to twenty years for extortion. Four years into his sentence, he died of brain cancer. Two decades later, Aldo Gianotti, an enforcer who was said to be closely connected to the family’s top leadership, was convicted of murdering the leader of a Jersey City street gang. He was sentenced to life in prison, but on November 11, 2006, he vanished from the New Jersey State Prison at Trenton after serving only fifteen months of his sentence. Prison authorities were dumbfounded by his escape. In the words of the warden’s spokesman: “At seven-forty last night, the prison’s entire electronic surveillance system went dark. The blackout lasted exactly six minutes. We still don’t know how that happened. Shortly after the system came back online, our officers determined that inmate Gianotti was missing. As far as we can determine, the prisoner simply walked out the front gate and someone drove him away. We are conducting a thorough investigation.”

  The results of that investigation have never been made public, and Aldo Gianotti remains at large. He is rumored to have been involved in the murder of a Bayonne police officer a few weeks after his escape.

  The final sentence riveted Lucy’s attention. There was a footnote reference link. With tremblin
g fingers, she clicked on it. It led her to an article she’d never seen before. It was dated June 23, 2007, nearly seven months after Jack’s death. It summed up what she already knew about the rumors of Jack’s involvement with organized crime, but with one addition:

  Based on certain physical evidence found at the scene, unnamed sources within the investigation are saying the killing may have been the work of a Lanza crime family enforcer who had escaped from prison just a few weeks earlier.

  She had already seen one piece of physical evidence that allegedly connected the Lanza family to the murder—a trinacria bracelet. Detective Carla Scarlatti had shown it to her a month after Jack’s murder. The sight of that bracelet, and Detective Trousdale’s description of where it was found, were seared into her memory.

  But was there other “physical evidence” she hadn’t been told about?

  Other physical evidence linking the crime to the escaped Lanza enforcer?

  Evidence like … DNA?

  Lucy was overcome with confusion and suspicion.

  15

  Over the next several days, Lucy was in a turmoil.

  She debated with herself about whether she should track down Scarlatti and Trousdale and tell them about Lanza’s visit. Or, visit Jack’s now-retired partner, Ernie Tait, to ask for some off-the-record advice. Or, take the bait, call Lanza, and find out exactly what he could do for her, and what he wanted her to do for him. Or, pretend to take the bait, meet with Lanza, and then track down Scarlatti, or Trousdale, or Tait, or visit the nearest FBI office.

  Or, take a few days off and fly down to Florida to confront her father about his past. Ask him who gave him the Bronte, the bar and grill he had owned for Lucy’s entire life. Ask him why it was a gift. Ask him why he and Mom had used a phony surname all these years.

  Ask him what the hell their real name was, because Ricki said she didn’t know.

  But while all this was driving her crazy, her daily routine plodded on. The tumult in her mind made her feel like a visitor in her own life, but she had to keep on teaching, keep on walking Kevin to daycare, keep on meeting with students after hours, keep on reading Kevin his favorite bedtime stories, and keep on paying the bills.

  The next turning point came while she was doing just that: paying the bills.

  Ever since Lanza’s visit, Kevin had developed an odd obsession with one particular corner in Lucy’s office. Whether she was in the room or not, he would stand stiffly erect in the corner calling, “Mommy! Mommy!” until Lucy finally came to him. She would cuddle him, humor him, do whatever it took to distract him, and the episode would end.

  But Kevin kept returning to the corner.

  The penultimate incident took place on Sunday afternoon. She was in the kitchen when she heard his calls. When she reached the office, she froze. Her little boy looked almost spectral, awash in the brash sunlight that streamed into the room, glinted off the golden hairs on his bare arms, and shimmered off his face. Adult eyes watched her. In a flash of panic that she was completely unable to explain to herself later, she rushed over to him, scooped him up into her arms, and ran out of the room.

  She set him back on his feet in the kitchen, kneeled in front of him, and held him by the shoulders. “Tell Mommy why you keep going in that room!”

  He burst into tears.

  Instantly regretting her sharp tone, she hugged him and held him close.

  But he never answered her question.

  Two evenings later, Lucy was wrapped in a shawl, sitting at the desk in the office, calculator in hand, wrestling with her household accounts. It was the same desk she and Jack had used together, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with it, so she’d kept it in storage while she lived down south.

  She had left Kevin sitting on the living room floor with his new AnimaLogic game. Once she’d shown him the basics, he’d taken immediately to the idea of solving the puzzles and helping the animals to cross the river. When she left the room, he was totally absorbed.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard his voice behind her.

  “Mom!”

  She spun her chair.

  The boy was back in the same corner of the room. But this time he wasn’t standing at attention. He was on his knees, head down, peering through the grating of the forced air heating vent.

  He looked up at her.

  Those eyes again …

  “Luce, you gotta look!”

  Thoroughly shaken by her son’s tone, and his unprecedented use of another of Jack’s nicknames for her, she crossed the room and kneeled beside him. He was trying to push his fingers through a gap in the grate’s metal scroll work. Lucy gently removed his hand.

  “What’s wrong, honey? Did you lose one of your animals?”

  “Down there.”

  She attempted to pry up the grate with her fingers, but it was wedged too tightly into the ductwork.

  “Mommy will be right back.”

  Jack’s old toolbox was in the closet by the front door. She fetched a screwdriver and used it to pry up the grate. Almost immediately she spotted a white triangle peeking past the first elbow in the ductwork, several inches below floor level. It appeared to be the corner of a piece of paper. She reached down. Her fingers detected something odd. It felt like an envelope. It was held in place by tape.

  She ripped it from its moorings and pulled it out of the vent.

  The sealed envelope was the size normally used for a birthday or Christmas card. Not big, but big enough to block the free flow of warm air through the heating duct.

  No wonder this room always seemed so cold.

  Lucy could feel something inside the envelope—something rectangular and flat. She tore it open.

  The object was a USB flash drive.

  Dumbfounded, she held it up to Kevin. He blinked at it, and then ran from the room. After spending several seconds trying to make sense of what had just happened, Lucy went looking for her son. She found him on the living room floor, fiddling with his AnimaLogic game as if nothing had happened.

  She went back to the office and resumed her seat at the desk.

  Beyond anything she had experienced since Dominic Lanza’s mysterious visit, the jumble of thoughts and emotions now tumbling through her mind and tensing her body made her wonder if she was truly losing her mind. Kevin’s increasingly bizarre behavior since last Christmas, his use of pet names only Jack had used, his retelling of the “car following” technique Jack had once described, his sudden swings between childhood spontaneity and brooding maturity …

  And now this.

  It was all too much to process.

  Exercising pure will, she crammed all the wild and distracting speculations into a back corner of her consciousness and focused her attention on the small digital appliance in her hand. Only one person could have hidden the USB drive in that vent.

  Jack.

  Her stomach churned at the thought of what might be on it.

  Evidence that all the rumors were right—that Jack had been corrupt?

  Evidence that he’d been on the Mob payroll?

  “We may be able to help each other…”

  Was this what Lanza was after?

  Was she holding evidence Lanza already knew existed? Evidence that he suspected Jack had left behind? Evidence that he and Lucy, for their separate reasons, would each want destroyed?

  She inserted the device into the port on the side of her laptop.

  Heart racing, she opened the drive.

  There were three icons on the menu: a pdf file, a data file, and an audio file.

  The pdf was titled “NICB.” She opened it first. It was a copy of a National Insurance Crime Bureau report. The title read: “Vehicle Thefts in the United States.” She scrolled quickly through the document.

  1.24 million vehicles stolen … thousands shipped intact to other countries … buyers pay a fraction of legitimate cost … NY, NJ, PA are high incidence areas … organized crime heavily involved …


  No! Jack, please not this!

  She quickly closed the file.

  The data file bore a simple identifier: “SS”

  She opened it.

  It was a spreadsheet, eighteen pages long. Lucy’s heart sank as she realized it listed vehicles—dozens and dozens of vehicles. Scanning the entries, and judging by the fancy letters and numbers embellishing their names, they seemed to be mainly high-end foreign models. Page after page recorded Mercedes CL65s, BMW X5s, Infiniti Q45s, Lexus LFAs, Jaguar X350s, and even one Maybach 57. She had never heard of a Maybach, but when she later ran an online search, she discovered that a new one sold for close to $400,000.

  She had no trouble understanding most of the column headings on the spreadsheet. They listed year, make, color, VIN, state, tag number, owner’s name and address, and “blue book” value.

  The total value at the bottom of the last column, on the last page, read: “$7,822,380.”

  Below the figure, across the bottom of the page, a string of odd names appeared: Orcone, Dorilla, Oronte, Doraspe … and others she didn’t recognize.

  Feeling suddenly ill, Lucy clicked on the last file.

  The audio file.

  What she heard almost stopped her heart, but in the end, it rescued her from her fears.

  With a sudden chill, she recognized her dead husband’s voice.

  “It’s Hendricks.”

  “Okay, Hendricks. Last time we were in one of these little rooms, you told me Parrish is dead and nobody cares. So why are you here?”

  “I’m here to tell you that, maybe, somebody does care. I’m here to see if you’ve got something that’s more than just talk. If you do, I’ll speak to the prosecutor…”

  As she listened, she realized that the topic of discussion was an auto theft ring. The content, and certain background noises on the tape, made her think the recording was made somewhere in or near a police lockup area, or maybe in a prison. Jack and the other man were discussing someone named Parrish. Lucy vaguely recollected that Ernie Tait’s former partner was named Parrish. She also recalled Jack saying that Parrish had been murdered and the case had never been solved.

  With a surge of relief, she realized that Jack had not been part of the theft ring. He’d been investigating it. On his own.