Rampage

by Justin Scott

  “I’m around.”

  “Around criminals?”

  “Guys talk. I listen.”

  “Who are you hanging out with?”

  “What is this, the third degree?”

  Tony looked at him. He was dead serious. “You better believe it.”

  “Hey, I’m just a businessman.”

  “Businessmen don’t come in here with dope deals.”

  “Bullshit. Guys with money are offered deals all the time.”

  “Not straight guys.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m just a businessman. But I got two reps around the city. One for being honest. And one for live and let live.” He clasped his hands together, doubled his index fingers, and pointed them at Tony. “But you know, and I know, that they owe us.”

  “They owe the law.”

  “In this case it’s the same thing.”

  “Where’d you hear this?”

  “I’m in a bar one night. Somebody starts bragging he knows a guy who knows another guy who opened the wrong crate of anchovies, and he nearly got shot for it by the Rizzolos... Doesn’t the name ring a bell?”

  “Sure, Eddie Rizzolo runs South Brooklyn. He used to be linked to the Cirillos.”

  “What else? Don’t you remember? Blue Bus Line?

  “Yeah, they own a legitimate bus company. It gives them enough profit to file real tax returns.”

  “Restaurants? Canarsie? Remember the little doll in Abatelli’s?”

  “Miss Universe. The night you got your head beat in.”

  “Her father. When I heard the name I remembered the connection between Eddie Rizzolo and Don Cirillo, so I started paying attention. I paid a guy for the codes he overheard in the Rizzolos’ restaurant. And now, whenever I hear something I listen. Real close. When I get home I write it down. I write down his name, what they called him—‘Bugsy’ or ‘The Beast’ or ‘Eddie the Cop,’ whatever the fuck. I write down where he’s from and what family somebody whispered he was connected to. I got a research guy in my office who checks things out for me. My secretary looks up addresses and businesses. Then I talk to my friends in the cops. Sometimes what they say fits what I heard someplace else. When I get the same rumor from two sides I end up knowing more than either side.”

  “How’d you find the guy who sold you the codes?”

  “What are you busting my hump for?”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “They killed Pop, goddammit. I got a right.”

  “How’d you find the guy who sold you the codes?”

  Chris contrived to look embarrassed. He turned to the window, gazed awhile at the ramps looping onto the Brooklyn Bridge, and finally admitted in a low voice, “I hired detectives.”

  “Detectives?” Tony asked scornfully. “Are you nuts? What are you, a one-man gangbusters?”

  “Hey! I’ll spend my money the way I want to. I’m not breaking any laws.”

  “Okay, okay.” It was Tony’s turn to study the bridge. Finally he said, “What do you expect? You waltz in here with a name and I’ll authorize the FBI to arrest the guy?”

  “Tony, you know and I know the FBI has tons of organized crime investigations going. So does the DEA. So does the NYPD, State Police, Labor Department, IRS, Customs. The agents and cops do the planting and the prosecutors harvest. All I’m doing is pointing you toward some wise guy you might not know about. If it looks like the beginning of a case, use it.”

  “Do you mind me asking why you didn’t give it to the cops ?”

  “Cops? Why should I give it to strangers when my brother’s in the Criminal Division of the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s office?”

  “Uncle Eamon—”

  “He’s ready to retire. Besides, cops don’t have the clout that your office does. What’s your problem, Bro? Are you telling me you don’t want me messing around in your career?”

  “I’ll take any source I can get,” Tony replied hastily. “But I just got here. It took you time to put this together.”

  Taggart laughed. “I waited for you. I had faith you’d get where you were going. Tony, what do you got to lose? Put Rizzolo away and they might even invite you to join the Strike-force.”

  Three office buildings, a midtown hotel, and a Westchester shopping center later, Christopher Taggart returned to England. He stayed at the Savoy because Chryl and Victoria told him he would like it. He visited the British foreign office to discuss building a new British consulate in Manhattan. He met with the managers of the Royal Family’s estates to pitch erecting a hotel tower on one of their valuable and vastly underutilized midtown Manhattan properties. He wrote Tony a postcard: “London’s picking up. Might buy it. Congratulations on making Strikeforce. (signed) Deep Throat.”

  Although he was now twenty-nine years old, when he stepped out of his hotel on the last day of the trip with a knapsack slung over one shoulder, he still looked more like a professional graduate student than a Manhattan developer that New York magazine had dubbed—quoting a rival builder— “the slickest new dude in the Big Apple.”

  He drove southeast of London to a country pub outside Maidstone that Reggie Rand frequented for lunch the rare times he was in England. The bar was thick with young car salesmen and insurance agents, but the former Scotland Yarder was seated alone at a table in the bay window, reading his newspaper by the rain-filtered light and smoking an expensive cigar. A plate of cheese and pickled onions sat untouched beside a freshly poured Newcastle Brown Ale.

  He looked prosperous; the Burberry trenchcoat folded on the bench beside him was new, and his blue suit looked like a twelve-hundred-dollar job Chryl and Victoria had talked Chris into having made at Kilgour, French and Stanbury. The British racing-green Jag parked in front, Chris had learned, was registered to the arms trader that employed him.

  Seven years had passed since Chris had shared his plan with Reggie in the student pub on the River Cam, but physically, Chris was relieved to see, the Englishman appeared not to have aged. He had a little more gray in his hair, perhaps, but he was still thin as a knife and appeared either remote or dangerous, depending upon how the light caught his eyes.

  Chris tossed his knapsack on the Burberry. “Remember me?”

  “I certainly do. What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  Reggie unzipped the flap, turning the opening to the window, and closed it again. “It appears to be money.”

  “Your first year’s salary. A million bucks. Cash.”

  Reggie looked at him, the flat pools of his eyes seeming to ripple. His mustache twitched as he shook his head with a rueful smile. “I’m rather taken aback. You passed my little test.”

  “Let’s get something straight, Reg. When you work for me, I don’t pass your tests. You pass mine.”

  Reggie Rand might have bridled, but he could not help smiling at Christopher Taggart’s earnest audacity. “How long has it been since your father died? Eight years?”

  “Eight years since the Mafia murdered Mike Taglione.”

  What a strange young man, Reggie thought; equally strange were his own emotions. Widowed for decades by the last German V-2 to fall on London, he had learned to enjoy his life alone and the dalliances that went with it. But of late, as he rocketed through his fifties, he had begun to take notice of children, and he wished sometimes that he had fathered a son.

  Then along came this driven, vengeful, frightfully clever American—and an orphan to boot. It was too bizarre. “I made no promise to work for you.”

  “You need a job.”

  “You’re misinformed.” He thrust a proprietary hand toward the window, indicating boundless opportunity to the south and east—Africa, the Levant, a festering Orient. “There’s a world full of angry natives out there, many of them violent. I’m doing very well arming them, thank you.”

  “Your business card says Hovercraft, but in fact you’re the senior rep with Breech Arms Limited of Slough.”

  Reggie’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “That
’s not common knowledge.”

  “I just bought an interest in Breech.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m a director through a Luxembourg holding company. I thought it might be handy for writing end-user documents for buying weapons. I’m going to get you fired. So like I say, Reggie, you’ll need a job.”

  “What have I done to deserve your largesse?”

  “There are four men in the world I could have hired, but each of them told me you’re the best. We want only the best.”

  “We.”

  “I’ve got a great start on cop contacts and a pretty good intelligence profile on the current state of the mob. The feds are starting to romp all over them. We’re going to finish the job. I’m nearly ready for your cutthroats. But first, we’ve got to get some dope flowing. The American market imports about four tons of uncut heroin a year. We need a ton for bait.”

  “Two thousand pounds of heroin? Why, if I had the ability to get rich importing heroin into America, would I do it for you?”

  “You can do it. I checked. Selling guns, your contacts are even better than when you were a cop. You’re tight with people from Amsterdam to the Golden Triangle. You know the Chinese Triads and their Swiss bankers and the shippers and airlines that mule the dope in and the money out. But you never run dope. Remember, when you shook me down in my office you said, ‘One has desires, but one has obligations.’ You seem to be a guy with a code, Reggie.”

  “And you’re still prepared to spend millions and years more for revenge?”

  “I’m projecting three years. Two more to get ready and a year to fight.”

  Reggie drained his ale in measured swallows. He pulled a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his mustache, which was perfectly dry. Then he smiled like a man who had seen the future and liked the look of it.

  “You appear to have matured, Mr. Taggart.”

  Two years separated the day in Kent that Taggart hired Reggie from the night on Forty-fifth Street when they betrayed Nino Vetere to the Strikeforce. In that time Taggart had laid the groundwork for his Shadow Mafia. He strengthened his political connections and boosted the prestige of Taggart Construction by starting the Spire; he continued playing Deep Throat for his brother Tony, and he penetrated the heart of law enforcement via the President’s Organized Crime Commission. Reggie shuttled tirelessly between Europe and Asia, forging links to terrorists and mercenaries and connecting with international heroin merchants. Under Taggart’s direction he established financial conduits in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore, and the Cayman Islands and corporate fronts to shield Taggart’s legitimate business. The Englishman subverted Mafia spies in Sicily and New York and formalized Taggart’s cop and agent friendships by placing the officers on his own payroll; when the two years were over, the cops were still friends with Taggart, but worked, secretly they thought, for the Englishman with the bulging wallet and the empty eyes.

  Taggart’s opening gambit—the setup of Nino Vetere—appeared to be a success. Nino Vetere cooperated with the Strike-force prosecutors that hot Memorial Day weekend and turned in Nicky Cirillo; New York’s most powerful crime family was thrown into sudden disarray. But it was only the beginning, and that night, when Taggart suspended the treacherous Jack Warner from the top of his Spire, he already knew that his biggest challenge loomed. He still had to seduce a Mafia family into waging his war of vengeance.

  BOOK II

  SWEET KISS OF

  REVENGE

  The Present

  8

  CHAPTER

  A white dress of soft jersey, which never quite touched her hips though it moved as if it might, high-heeled shoes, and silken jet hair turned heads when Helen Rizzolo jumped down from her chartered Cessna. The pilot, who had made no headway with his silent passenger, tried again, but his eager smile got lost in the off-putting solemnity of her gaze. She refused help with her bag and hurried toward the hangar, where a lone taxi waited.

  The driver didn’t ask her destination. There was only one place to go—the federal prison, whose colorless stone walls dominated these remote western New York flatlands just as a castle cowed a medieval town. They hassled her at the main gate, as usual, but once inside, a guard captain on her payroll showed Helen into an attorney-consulting cell and made a show of closing the barred spy hole. Her father stuffed his cap between the bars anyway and scooped her into his huge arms.

  “Sweetheart.” Eddie Rizzolo buried his face in her hair, and she stroked his head until at last he stepped back, holding her shoulders in his hands, shaking his head, and grinning delightedly. As always, he stared at her face as if desperate to memorize her features for the long days to come. She noticed that he hadn’t shaved in days, which wasn’t like him.

  “You look tired, Pop.”

  “But you look gorgeous. Jesus, it’s good to see your face. How’s your mother?”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey.” He took her chin in his thick fingers. “What’s the matter?”

  She couldn’t say that his hair seemed thinner than at the time of her last visit, or that it had turned nearly white since his conviction, so she forced a big smile. “Everything’s okay. I just wish you were coming home.”

  “You live to gain,” he replied, seriously. “And to gain you sacrifice. Right? It’s the only choice we can live with.”

  “I know. I’m not complaining.”

  “How are your brothers?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  “Trouble?”

  She shrugged. “I can handle it. It’s you I worry about. Are they treating you all right?”

  He looked away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “A guy pulled a knife on me.” He raised his sleeve. His forearm was bandaged from his wrist to his elbow.

  “What? We paid—”

  “Maybe we paid the wrong ones,” he said quietly. All of a sudden he looked frightened, and she had never seen that before. Her throat gorged with helpless anger. “We’ll get on it, Pop,” she promised fiercely. “We’ll take care of it.”

  He looked away again, his brows working. She took his hand. “Does it hurt?”

  “No. Yes! I don’t know.” Then his expression relaxed and he gave her a strange smile. “I’m doing fine. I’ll be home any day now.”

  “Home? What do you mean, home? What happened?”

  He glanced at the steel door and shook his head. No bribe could guarantee they weren’t being bugged. Wives and daughters were, after all, time-honored couriers, and sometimes she suspected that the Feds ordered the guards to accept the bribes to trick her father into speaking freely. She made him sit so she could lean close to his ear and whisper, “What do you mean, home?”

  Even in his prison uniform, even using prison soap, he still had the sweet smell which was her earliest memory of him. But it was odd that he hadn’t shaved. He was usually as neat and precise as she.

  He smiled vaguely. “I’ll be home as soon as I’m better.”

  “Better? They didn’t tell us you were sick.”

  “My... my. As soon as my... my... my... gets better.”

  “You mean your arm?”

  “No. No. My... ”

  “Pop? What gets better? What are you talking about?”

  “My, my, you know! When the doctor says my, my, my... So I can go home from the hospital.”

  She felt fear seep into her body. She shivered. “What hospital? What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, this hospital. This... I... ” His eyes roved over the room and settled on the bars in the door. His voice trailed off. Suddenly he looked afraid again, as if he had finally heard the empty ring of his own words in the crazy way she was hearing them. He blinked, walked around the table, and stared at her. Then he asked in a small, puzzled voice, “Why are you crying, sweetheart?”

  “What is wrong with him?” she screamed at the guard captain.

  “I don’t know, miss. I really don’t.”

  “H
as he been to a doctor?”

  “Couple of times. Said he felt funny. We took him there right away. Don Eddie has no troubles here.”

  “What about that knife?”

  “We took care of the guy. It was just a scratch.”

  “It frightened him. He’s different. I want to talk to that doctor.”

  “I don’t know if he’s around today.”

  “Find him, goddammit!”

  She paced in the captain’s office, running her nails through her hair, sinking into helpless terror. When the captain returned with the news that the doctor would see her, she said, “I don’t know what, but something’s wrong. He’s confused; he doesn’t know where he is.”

  “Like a little senile?”

  “I didn’t say that! He’s only sixty years old.”

  She tore frantically through her bag and hurled a roll of hundred-dollar bills on the captain’s desk. “Listen, you take care of him until he gets better. If he gets confused like that, he can’t defend himself.”

  “I’ll watch him as close as I can. It might help if I had a little money to pay a few more guards.”

  “You’ll get it tomorrow. As much as you need. But if anything happens to him... you’ll die.”

  “Hey, listen, lady—”

  “You want to try me?” She stepped toward the captain, the blood rising in her face, her lungs filling, and he backed up. Helen took a deep breath. “Pass the word. Whoever hurts my father dies! I don’t want him touched! Now, please, take me to the doctor.”

  The doctor, who had not been bribed, treated Helen as he would have the relative of any inmate. “What’s wrong with him?” he repeated her question casually. “I would guess arteriosclerosis. Hardening of the arteries.”

  “He’s not even sixty.”

  “Then call it Alzheimer’s disease. That strikes men young. I don’t know a darned thing about it except I can promise that it’s never going to get better.”

  “But that’s crazy. You don’t understand. He’s always been healthy. He doesn’t smoke. He hardly ever drinks and then only wine and—”