Rampage

by Justin Scott

  Warner took that as fair warning not to voice the question that was still driving him crazy.

  If Christopher Taggart wasn’t in it for the money, what the fuck was he doing with the Mafia?

  BOOK I

  SLAUGHTERED

  SAINTS

  (1976–1984)

  1

  CHAPTER

  Christopher Taglione remembered the day for its crisp heat and its promise. Nothing, it seemed, could be better, and nothing could ever go wrong. He bounded out of the hole, the enormous pit they were excavating between two buildings in midtown Manhattan, and hit the sidewalk running, signaling the next truck. Sweat glistened on his bare chest, poured between the cement spatters that spotted him like a gray leopard. His hair was long then, gold flying from the rim of his hardhat. A great-looking woman smiled at his exuberance and he grinned back—a star, twenty-one years old and future partner in Taglione Concrete and Construction.

  His father’s trucks filled Fifty-sixth Street, enormous concrete ready-mixers that towered over the taxis inching past and thundered at the pedestrians scuttling between their lofty wheels and the plywood construction fence that rimmed the hole. It was the summer of the American Bicentennial and Mike Taglione had painted his fleet patriotically in grateful celebration. Red and white stripes swirled around their chassis, and white stars spangled the blue mixers, rising in a jaunty heaven as the huge barrel-shaped tanks rotated half-turns to make the concrete flow.

  Tony Taglione, Chris’s dark and slender brother, who was two years older and sixty pounds lighter, came charging up the ramp hot on Chris’s heels. Tony’s jet-black hair, long like Chris’s and that of the younger men on the job, was held out of his eyes by a sweatband fashioned from a Tall Ships T-shirt, which had started the morning white but was now as gray as his jeans, his heavy, laced construction boots, his battered gloves, and his skinny chest. They were working side by side and, as usual, in a race.

  “That’s my truck.”

  “You’re next.”

  The woman who had enjoyed the sight of Chris’s youthful exuberance stopped and stared at the dark-eyed Tony with frank and open interest. Tony slowed to return a practiced smile and Chris stepped into the street, pumping his fist, and reestablished his claim to the lead mixer. The driver was leaning half out the window to express admiration for another lady in a loose summer dress.

  “Frankie! Move that truck!“

  The behemoth swung ponderously across the sidewalk, splintering the planks wedged against the curb, and groaned down the steep earthen ramp, with its air lines sighing and brake drums protesting the weight. Chris harried it into the pit, exhorting the driver and impatiently tugging the massive bumper.

  Posters on the ramp gate depicted the emerald-green office building taking life ... Taglione Tower; Thirty Stories; Michael Taglione, Owner-Builder. Down the ramp, men and machines were deepening the hole and erecting wooden forms for the concrete footings. A chain saw blared, the forest sound incongruous until the city walls banged it back like shrapnel.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. You’re good. Come on!

  His father was experimenting with a new building concept called fast-tracking, in which the stages of construction were overlapped to save time. Thus Chris and Tony were pouring foundation piers in the middle of the hole even as excavation continued around the edges. Beside the ramp a tread-mounted pneumatic drill drove a long steely tongue into a granite ledge, tearing the stone apart with a quick-time bang-bang-bang. Back hoes seized shattered granite, chucks of old cellar walls, and rusty pipes from the former building, and hoisted them into dump trucks, which drove out of the hole on flattened springs. Half a block away, the blasters’ whistle blew, the ground shook, and steel mats jumped like startled dogs.

  Chris guided the mixer into position and jumped for the chute as the driver climbed down from the cab and started the barrel spinning. The big truck roared; the concrete hissed, tumbling inside, and the stars on the barrel spun in a blur. Chris manhandled the chute over the dark maw of the pier hole, which was bored deep into the bedrock. A wooden frame that rimmed the hole would contain the wet concrete until it set, forming the top pads on which the ironworkers would raise the building’s steel columns.

  Thirty feet away, Tony was furiously urging his truck to the next pier. “Come back, Rocco. Back her up. Come back, come back. Whoa!”

  Chris grinned at his brother’s expression as Tony watched Rocco, bull-necked and bullet-headed, descend ponderously, the live ashes of a hangover smoldering dangerously in his eyes. Rocco squinted at the sun, rubbed his temples, belched, and strolled to the back of the truck, where the mixer controls and the pour lever were located. Tony waited, exasperated, and when Rocco paused again to relight his stogie, brushed past him and, goosed the throttle himself.

  “Don’t strain yourself, speedy.”

  “Watch the mouth, kid.”

  “Get off your fat ass if you don’t want to hear it. We got schedules.”

  “Frankie, take over,” Chris snapped, breaking into a lithe run.

  Rocco reddened to his bristly scalp and lunged for Tony, who had turned his back to nurse the machine. Just as he reached him, he felt an arm drop on his own shoulder, a firm tug, and then Christopher Taglione was walking him away from his truck, asking amiably, “So, Rocco, you getting married or not?”

  Rocco looked at the big, rangy kid with the arm wrapped around his shoulder like a length of hoist cable. If he really wanted to dig in, he might have stopped their forward march, but then what? Chris, who had been full-grown since he was fourteen, seemed to have added a few more inches this past year at college.

  “You know, one of these days Tony’s gonna get his mouth handed to him.”

  “No,” Chris countered, still gripping Rocco’s shoulder, still steering him away, still smiling. “He’s got me to look out for him. That’s what brothers are for. Right?”

  “Yeah, well, he’s gonna pull that shit on the wrong guy when you ain’t around and he’s gonna get his ass busted.”

  Hardly a thing about Chris changed, Rocco noticed. His grip was firm, and his smile friendly. Maybe his eyes turned a little gray, though it could have been the way the hot sun crossed them as he faced Rocco with utter conviction.

  “If you ever run into that guy, Rocco, tell him for me he’s going to have the kind of trouble that never forgets.”

  Rocco was surprised at how much he believed Chris. He wished he hadn’t gotten into this. Somehow, he’d done more than threaten the guy’s brother; he had blundered into some private territory where Chris was dangerous.

  “Forget it. My head’s killing me.”

  Chris’s eyes flashed in the sunlight, bright blue again. “Hey, there’s a reason to get married—no more hangovers. I’ll have your truck out in a second. Take a break.”

  Rocco sat down on a form, muttering that if his old man owned the company he’d be at the beach. Chris ran to help Tony with the chute.

  “I can fight my own battles, Bro.”

  “I know you can fight them. Winning them worries me.”

  “I can take him.”

  “Oh, yeah, Godzilla? Then who drives the truck? Go!”

  Tony scampered to the pour lever and Chris shot him a triumphant grin as twelve cubic yards of cement, broken stone, sand, and water erupted from the mixer. Tony threw him a shovel to speed, it along. The concrete rattled down the trough and cascaded fifty feet to Manhattan’s core.

  “Not bad for college kids.”

  “Hey, Pop! Hey, look at you. Tony, check out the threads.”

  Tony peered over the chute. “Goes great with the hardhat.”

  Mike Taglione dodged a puddle of the spilled concrete that splattered his sons, planted his fists on his hips, and beamed at the pour. He was decked out in his blue “meeting suit,” a fine old gabardine whose broad lapels had come back into style around 1970 and was ordinarily unearthed for nothing less than contract signings and permit hearings. Chri
s spotted a silky new tie, fashionably wide and probably bought by his secretary, who had the hots for him, a ceremonial white handkerchief in his breast pocket from the same source, and a whiff of the aftershave lotion dispensed at the Waldorf barber shop. He was even wearing his gold watch; the last time Chris and Tony had seen that had been at their mother’s funeral.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  Mike Taglione drew an old red handkerchief from its hiding place in his back pocket and pretended to flick the dust off his shoes. “While you college geniuses hump concrete, your dumb hod-carrier old man’s been invited to testify before a United States Congressional Housing Committee.”

  “You been indicted?” Chris said, ducking futilely as his father belted his hardhat with a lightning hand.

  “I’ll indict you, wise guy. Congressman Costanza called up. Could I please catch the first plane to Washington to tell ’em about the new concrete?”

  “I guess those contributions paid off,” Tony said quietly.

  Proud and thrilled for his father, Chris said, “Congratulations,” and reached to hug him.

  “Hands off the clean suit, you dirty guinea. Jeez, if only Irish could see me now.” Irish had been his pet name for their mother, Kathleen Taggart. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Arnie’s watching the job, so you guys watch Arnie.”

  “We got it, Pop. Secretary know where you’re staying?”

  “Yeah, well, uh, Sylvia’s gonna fly down with me to... ”

  Chris laughed. “Take notes? It’s about time, Pop. Three years.”

  “Yeah, well, no big deal.”

  Tony’s face clouded and Chris shot him a warning glance. When his brother turned judgmental, as he had now, his dark, intelligent eyes burned beneath his pale high brow as surely and sternly as a Jesuit priest’s. “Have a good time.” Chris fired a second warning look at Tony, who went along, muttering, “Sure, Pop. Have fun.”

  Mike grinned and cast a satisfied eye on the bustling foundation site. Suddenly his expression changed. “Here comes that greaseball Rendini.”

  Chris saw Joey Rendini, a heavyset man in a business suit, standing just inside the gate. He looked about, spotted them, and swaggered down the ramp. Chris knew that Joey Rendini was in the rackets. He controlled a Teamsters local and was connected to the Cirillos, the biggest of the New York Mafia families. He was, as Chris had often heard his father yell, a pig when it came to payoffs, abusing to the hilt the power that the Cirillo connection gave him.

  “The greaseball walks like he owns my job.” In Mike Taglione’s Brooklyn-tuned lexicon, “wops” and “guineas” were fellow countrymen, respectable Italians or Sicilians, but “greaseballs” were the greedy, hard types of any nationality who tried to horn in on legitimate businessmen.

  “Until you say no,” Tony said, “you’ll pay him forever.”

  Keyed up by his father’s anger, and frustrated because he couldn’t do anything about it, Chris turned on his brother. “Grow up! A little grease is a sensible investment. It gives people incentive to do a good job.”

  Tony, who seemed to have inherited their mother’s strict Irish-Catholic morals, said flatly, “It’s illegal.”

  “There’s a middle ground,” Mike Taglione said. “The trouble with Rendini is he’s so greedy he turns grease into blackmail.”

  “No, Pop. It’s like Watergate. You’re straight or you’re crooked. There’s no middle.”

  When his father turned away, Chris leaped to his defense. “That’s cool for you, if you’re going to be a lawyer. But me and Pop, we gotta face the fact that Rendini can pull the drivers off any job we contract.” Alarmed by the angry flush darkening his father’s face, he stopped arguing with Tony and said, “Take it easy, Pop.”

  Rendini picked his way across the beaten earth, grimacing at the dust and splashed cement. He was a darkly handsome man in his thirties, overweight and perspiring freely. Mopping his plump face with his sleeve, he called, “Hey, Mike, we had a meeting.”

  “Something better came up. What do you want?”

  “We gotta talk.” The mobster glanced at Chris and Tony. Chris gave him a cold nod, but Tony glared.

  Mike Taglione addressed Rocco, who was hosing his chute. “Get that truck out of here.” He waited, silent, while Rocco hastily coiled his hose and drove away. “Okay. Talk. My boys and me got no secrets. Chris is going to work with me when he’s done with college, and Tony’s going to be my lawyer.”

  “Yeah, well, this wildcat strike looks like it’s heating up.”

  “Spell that another payoff?”

  “Spell it how you like, Mike. You know the rules.”

  Mike Taglione shook his head. “Rules change. This time it’s my building. Thirty years I been pouring foundations, and general contracting. But this time I’m the developer, and this job is all Taglione from the doorknobs in the crapper to the peastone on the roof.”

  “Mike, what are you busting my balls for? So you’re moving up in the world. Congratulations.”

  “You know where I’m going right now? I’m going to the United States House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.”

  “So?”

  “So I think I earned the right to say ‘Go fuck yourself.’”

  “Don’t be dumb, Mike. I don’t know if I can control my drivers.”

  “Rendini, if you tell the poor bastards to squat, all they can ask is what color.”

  “My drivers—”

  “Hold it! They’re your union members, ’cause they got no choice, but they’re my drivers.”

  Rendini shrugged. “I don’t care if you’re going to Washington. I don’t care if you’re eating supper with President Gerald T. Fucking Ford. You know the rules. You wanna play, you pay.”

  Chris shot a glance at Tony, who was regarding Rendini with open hatred, apparently unaware their father was rising onto the balls of his feet, telegraphing his sometimes violent temper. Yet his voice stayed calm, so detached that Chris wondered if he had somehow convinced himself that he had finally risen above the dirty side of the business. “You pull one driver off my job and I’m going straight to the U.S. Attorney.”

  “You nuts?” Rendini blurted.

  Chris was dumbfounded. The New York cement business was a collusive industry, with bidding often controlled by the few outfits that ran it. Quality material got delivered on time, but the U.S. Attorney had more than once expressed the government’s interest in how they had arrived at the price; whoever visited his office for a frank talk stood a chance of leaving in handcuffs.

  “You nuts?” Rendini repeated, his mouth agape, and Chris wondered what in hell his father had in mind.

  Mike Taglione laughed, suddenly enjoying himself, and grinned at Tony. “Maybe I’ll take the advice of number one son here and ask for immunity. Maybe I’ll answer every question the U.S. Attorney can think up.”

  Tony clapped him on the back, leaving a gray handprint. “Nice going, Pop.”

  Frightened, Chris cautioned, “Pop—”

  Rendini cut him off with quiet menace. “While you’re there, Mike, ask for protection. You and your kids might need it.”

  His father threw a lightning right cross, faster than the eye. Chris barely sensed a blur before he heard the impact. Rendini flew backward and landed flat in the mud, blood spouting from his nose. Mike Taglione advanced, his balled fists floating like wire springs. “Get off my job.”

  Men came running. Chris and Tony moved shoulder to shoulder, Chris in the boxer’s crouch his father had taught him and Tony seizing a length of reinforcing rod. But by then it was over. A driver, one of Rendini’s clique, helped the union man up, and he staggered away, holding his sleeve to his face. Taglione watched, rubbing his hand, until they disappeared behind the street fence at the top of the ramp.

  Chris said, “That wasn’t too bright,” and Tony said, “Pop, I didn’t mean to push you into—”

  “Nobody pushed me. Rendini got what he deserved. Should have done it years ago.” He loo
ked at the men who had gathered. “All right, fellas. Show’s over.”

  “Pop?” Tony looked awed. “Where’d you learn to punch like that?”

  Mike Taglione gave Chris a wink that warmed his heart in the hard years to come, and explained gently, “Nobody gave me the concrete business, Tony.” Then he laughed, and the laugh stayed with Chris a long time, like an echo in an empty room. “I must be getting old, I hurt my hand.” He fanned it in the air and sucked a knuckle. “Shit, hurts like a son of bitch. Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

  Chris said, “Why don’t we ride out to the airport with you?”

  “Bodyguard? That’s all I need.” This time he winked at Tony. “You hit some hood with that fist and Tony’ll spend his law career defending you from a murder rap. No. I’m paying you guys to pour concrete. Back to work.”

  “Pop. Please.

  “I’ll be fine. Take care, both of you. Go home together. Take a couple of your buddies with you. This’ll blow over. I’ll get Congressman Costanza to talk to some people. Don’t worry about it. Okay?”

  He pulled out his watch and started across the excavation with his head held high and shoulders thrust forward like an adventurous bull.

  “Look at him,” said Chris. “Looks like he just got laid.”

  Mike Taglione turned and waved at the bottom of the ramp. Then he cupped his hands and yelled over the clatter of the pneumatic rock drill. “Keep an eye on Arnie. Takes him one day to throw a job off a week.”

  A mixer rounded the turn and started down quickly.

  “Where the hell’s he going?” Chris said. “Pop! Move!”

  Freewheeling, with brakes and engine silent, the concrete mixer hurtled down the ramp, pushed by its tremendous load to twenty miles an hour in the short space between the street and the rock drill at the bottom.

  “Pop!”

  Chris raced toward him, shouting and waving his arms. Mike Taglione whirled, saw the danger. His reflexes were superb. He gathered his legs, pivoted and jumped in an astonishing liquid motion. Chris thought his father had made it, and had he been wearing his regular workboots instead of what he called “cab-catching shoes,” he would have escaped. But the smooth soles skidded on the earthen ramp and he stumbled. The trunk’s bumper slammed into his chest. His head snapped back and his hardhat disappeared under the wheels with a loud crack.