Rampage

by Justin Scott

  “I’ll get the doctor.”

  “No. Just let me rest.” She knelt, shaking her head. Taggart kicked the large shards of broken glass into a corner.

  Helen tried to stand, pulling herself hand over hand up the chair. Taggart reached again to help, encircling her in one arm. She stiffened and shrugged him off coldly.

  “Why do I get the feeling that you’re FBI?”

  “Come here.” Taggart stepped to the window and opened the shutters. The whitewashed stone wall was two feet thick. Outside, sheep dotted brilliant green hills under a lowering sky. “Look.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The west of Ireland.”

  “Ireland?”

  “It’s not FBI territory.”

  She touched the thick, wavy window glass. “How long was I out?”

  “Sixteen hours.”

  “Do you realize my brothers are tearing New York apart looking for me?”

  “They started to, but we convinced them to wait quietly.”

  “We? What is this?”

  Taggart left the shutters open. “Let’s talk business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Organized crime.”

  Helen walked unsteadily to the chair and sat down. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ll talk and you listen. There’s no risk... The government has busted the council, and the situation in New York is that the old Mafia is nearly washed up. The Federal Strikeforce is winning. I give you five years, tops.”

  “If I ever meet someone in the Mafia, I’ll tell ’em what you said.”

  “It’s going to take you a while to get this,” Taggart replied patiently. “Just listen. Demographics were killing you even before the Strikeforce. You haven’t enough soldiers anymore to run your operations and protect them from your enemies. Italians are the new Jews in New York. Their kids are going to college, so they’re no longer cannon fodder for Sicilian warlords.”

  Helen looked up. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but don’t you think that college-educated Sicilians might be more capable Mafiosi?”

  “You’ve become too organized. All your lawyers and MBAs and accountants make you an easy target for the Strikeforce. Just like tax evasion got A1 Capone, RICO and dope convictions are getting a better-organized generation. The old dons never adapted to the changes. Their heirs, your father’s generation, aren’t much better—sitting around swapping stories as if electronic bugging didn’t exist. And your generation is hopeless. Maybe they’re smarter about bugs, but when they get arrested for something, they talk to the cops. So who’s going to replace them?”

  “I don’t know what this has to do with me.”

  “Your father, for example.”

  Her eyes flashed and Taggart was surprised to see pain in their depths. The next instant, however, they went blank again, revealing nothing.

  “Don Eddie,” he continued, “is a long-term resident in federal prison because the modern veneer he adopted played right into the government’s hands. He let a smart accountant talk him into laundering heroin profits—which was theoretically a better idea than burying them in a hole in the ground. Your father was right to try it, but the Feds found the records. So even though they couldn’t pin the heroin on him, they got him on the heroin profits. I don’t mean to make light of your father’s situation, but his misfortune might help you and me understand each other.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Do you agree that the system is a mess?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “But the market is still growing. Ordinary people’s appetite for criminal services is insatiable. They still want to borrow money, get high, gamble, and pay strangers to lay them. These services are currently earning one hundred billion dollars a year.”

  She fixed him with an intent and somber gaze. Her extraordinary beauty pulled him like a whirlpool. Taggart felt himself sucked down, getting lost in her eyes. He turned away. She said, “That’s an exaggerated figure.”

  “Settle for eighty? Eighty billion dollars a year is the gross national product of Austria. Or the total gross of General Motors.”

  “What do you mean, settle?”

  “I’m taking over.”

  “Taking over what?”

  “Organized crime. All of it—everything. I’m filling the vacuum left by the Strikeforce.”

  “With what?”

  “That’s where you come in. The Rizzolos will run the street in New York, Long Island, Westchester, Fairfield County, Jersey. Everything the five families currently control is yours. I’ll protect and supply you from the top.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “On the street level, you will subcontract, as it were, supplying the labor for extortion, shylocking, numbers running, whorehouses, porn, and muscle for the unions. On the upper level, I will eliminate your rivals and provide banking services and protection.”

  “You’re dreaming.”

  “Am I?”

  Helen stood up and started pacing from one stone wall to the other. Taggart sat down in the chair to put her at ease. She stepped behind him and massaged her wrists, a pretense to draw out the long sliver of glass she had secreted in her sweatshirt sleeve when she had dropped the drinking glass. She held one end in the cloth, slipped her other arm around his throat, and slid the point of the shard through the right eye of his mask.

  Taggart froze. The glass glittered a centimeter from his eyeball.

  “Who are you?”

  “You can’t get out of here.”

  “The hell I can’t. You’re walking me through the front door. Who are you?”

  “Don’t you see what I’m offering?”

  “You’re crazy. This whole thing’s crazy. You can’t just move in. There’s a war in New York. Strikeforce on one side, the rackets on the other. And you think there’s room in the middle? Don’t move!”

  He had started to reach for her hand.

  “I’ve already done it. Trial runs. Smuggling, wholesaling, money laundering. And today, kidnapping.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Miss Rizzolo, you’re the leader of the most secure, best-run crime family in New York. A few hours ago you were jogging in your own neighborhood surrounded by your best bodyguards. You woke up tied to a chair in Ireland.”

  “How?”

  “I hired an experienced IRA kidnap team to subcontract the job. A second contractor brought you here. When you’ve agreed, you’ll be sent home, having crossed international borders four times without anyone the wiser. I’ve done all this without maintaining armies the way you do. Don’t tell me there’s no room in the middle.”

  “You’re stalling me. I don’t believe you. Tell the truth!”

  She sliced the skin that rimmed his eye. Blood trickled down the mask.

  “My subcontractor thought you were a piece of cake compared to the British politicians they’ve snatched. He said your security was a big joke.”

  “The truth!” She cut deeper. He jerked from the pain. She moved the sliver to the surface of his eyeball.

  “Reggie!”

  Reggie, who was watching through the one-way glass, had waited for Taggart’s signal. Now he stepped into the room, his Remington P51 cocked like an eleventh finger between his clasped hands.

  Taggart said, “Reggie will be the richest retired Special Branch officer in the history of the British Empire—provided I remain alive—which makes him, among other things, the best bodyguard in the world. He’s been a killer for thirty years. He’s going to kill you in one second if you try to hurt me.”

  Helen Rizzolo let the glass sliver fall to the floor, where it broke again. Reggie backed out of the room and closed the door. Taggart stood up.

  She eyed him fearlessly.

  He seized the sleeve of her sweatsuit, pulled it to his face, and dabbed the blood.

  “Don’t
worry, I won’t hit you.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “I won’t hit you, for the same reason your kidnappers were ordered not to rape you. The job I’m offering demands respect.”

  “May I ask what a non-rapeable Sicilian-American girl is worth to the Irish Republican Army?”

  “Fifty Ml’s Ones and enough ammunition to slaughter a British regiment.”

  “You got a bargain.”

  “Damned right I did! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Sicily isn’t the only source of drugs and murderers. Helen, there are cities in Asia and Africa whose names we’ll never know, where millions of people play the lottery every day and the prize is a ticket to America. The whole Third World is an endless supply of hungry sons and daughters. They’ll fight, they’ll kill, they’ll fuck, they’ll mule drugs. They’ll do anything for a meal or a lucky break. Don’t you see it? I can import violence— when and where I need it.”

  Taggart released her sleeve, but neither he nor she moved.

  “The world is much more violent than we Americans are. If a Conforti or a Cirillo, or even a Strikeforce, messes with my people, I can hire a subcontractor to blow them up, machine-gun them, or kill them quietly with a knife. Radicals, mercenaries, whatever the job calls for. When my murderers are done they go home, clutching whatever little treasure they wanted— guns, explosives, money.”

  “Then what do you need me for?”

  “The street. I’m not going to hire Palestinian bombers or South African guerrilla fighters to slap around a welsher. That’s where your family comes in. Your people take the street. I’ll attack the other families’ leaders. You’ll never worry again about a rival family. Your soldiers can concentrate on business instead of defense.” He smiled suddenly, hot on his own juices, because he was getting through to her.

  “You’re wasting your time and mine. You know your answer.”

  “Don’t push me!”

  She went to the window, rested her chin on her folded hands on the stone sill, and gazed out at the fields of sheep. A mackerel sky was drifting in from the sea and the sunset was tingeing it pink. The scene looked like a holy card the nuns gave for being good. She hungered suddenly to be out-of-doors.

  Taggart asked, “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

  “All right. I’d like that.”

  She gave him an ironic smile when he handed her a lavender windbreaker in her size. “Thought of everything?”

  A stone path gave onto the fields, where deepening grass rippled in the steady sea breeze. She held her face to the wind and the sun and picked up speed. Taggart strode easily beside her, learning her moods. The fields spread along a crumbling rim of cliffs. Whitecaps dotted the dark-blue sea lough below. Miles to the west, the Atlantic stirred. Helen drank it in, pausing now and again to stare with frank pleasure. Her silky black hair fluttered about her cheeks. The wind swept it back.

  Taggart feasted on the remarkable beauty of her profile, the richness of her mouth. Sexually the heat shimmered off her, yet he felt an enchantment more complex, brushed by forces unknown in his experience.

  Reggie trailed at a distance, flourishing a walking stick that concealed a four-ten squirrel gun loaded with buckshot.

  “Does he think I’m going to throw you off the cliff?”

  “Reggie assumes the worst, always.”

  “I already took my best shot.”

  Taggart grinned. “He’s a little put out because he missed you palming the glass. Did they teach you that in your father-in-law’s casino?”

  “You know too much about me.”

  “You heard about my offer. You think I’d make it blind?”

  “If Reggie is English, why would he give the IRA guns and ammunition?”

  “Reggie makes his own arrangements—just like you will— but if I know Reggie, that particular branch of the IRA is going to have a problem. Make up your mind, Helen.”

  “What about the Strikeforce?”

  “I’ll take care of the Strikeforce. You won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  “That’s a little hard to believe. The Strikeforce belongs to the U.S. Attorney.”

  “I can handle them.”

  “Let me explain something, mister. If the Brooklyn or Manhattan District Attorney comes after my brothers, our lawyers handle it. One way or another, they can deal with it. But if the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York gets on their case, it’s ‘Oh shit.’ Who do you think got my father?”

  “Tell your brothers to stop using the phone in the bus barn. The Strikeforce is tapping it from a street vault on the corner.”

  “You’re inside?”

  “I can also assure you that the Rizzolos are low down on their hit list at the moment. Taglione is concentrating on the Cirillos.”

  They found a sheep path worn to the stone and followed it toward a promontory. “You must give me a sign,” she said thoughtfully. “Something by which I can trust you.”

  There was a rhythm to this dance and Taggart knew suddenly and surely that the time had come. He led her to a lichen-covered rock wall and sank to one knee before her. Then he pulled off his mask and placed it in her hand.

  “Look at my face, Helen.”

  Helen Rizzolo stared. At last he had astonished her.

  “I know you!”

  “My name is Christopher Taggart. I build skyscrapers. I own Taggart Construction and Taggart Realty. I am a director of the Association for a Better New York. I’m a charter member of the Mayor’s Commission for Growth in the Eighties. My new Park Avenue spire will make Trump Tower look like a box of Saran Wrap. When you get back to New York you can look at my picture in the newspaper and my address in the telephone book.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “Maybe you saw me on TV,” Taggart said, wondering whether she remembered their brief encounter ten years ago at Abatelli’s. “I happen to be a member of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime.”

  Helen’s face turned blank with distrust and she asked harshly, “How’d you get appointed? Your brother? Your name isn’t Taggart. It’s Taglione. You changed it when Tony Taglione became a prosecutor. Who do you think you’re kidding? Your brother put my father in prison.”

  “And now I’ve just put my entire life in your hands,” Taggart countered. “Until you say yes, I am at your mercy.”

  “No,” she said, with devastating accuracy. “Your plan may be at my mercy—maybe. But not you. I can’t touch you. Who would ever believe this conversation?”

  “Only you have to believe it. I’m all your prayers answered. I’ll free you to operate by your best instinct and observation, instead of fighting a hundred years of Sicilian history.”

  “What are you doing this for?” she asked suspiciously. “You’re a rich man. You run things.”

  “I intend to be richer.” Taggart had concluded that only wealth and power were motives that would make sense to this empress of the Rizzolo clan. Certainly, if he were she, he would not throw his lot in with an avenger. “A lot richer. Which is what you’re going to be if you join me. A lot richer. And a lot more powerful.”

  She searched his face, hunting God knew what. But while Taggart waited, quelling his impatience, Helen was, in fact, less concerned with his motives than with the opportunities he offered her family, and the risks. His family was the problem. Tony Taglione.

  “Is your brother in on this?”

  “Christ, no.” Taggart shook his head emphatically. “If my brother had a tape of this conversation, he would send me to the electric chair.”

  She believed him, but didn’t understand. “Why does he hate you?”

  “He doesn’t hate me. He loves me, deep down somewhere, but he’s a law-and-order guy. He’s what used to be called a moralist.”

  “Yeah, fine, but you’re his brother.”

  “Tony sees life like two tunnels. Right and wrong. Once you’re in one, you can’t transfer to the other.”

&n
bsp; “I don’t get it. He’s your brother.”

  “It’s his way,” Taggart said simply. “Our family is half construction workers, and half cops. Tony got the cop half.”

  She still didn’t understand and knew she never would. “Then who do you have inside his Strikeforce?”

  “I have many contacts in many agencies, and in many families. That’s all you have to know. Capish? Do we have a deal?”

  “I expect trust from a partner.”

  “Subcontractor. I don’t take partners.”

  “I’m not interested in being a subcontractor,” Helen replied coldly.

  “I’m not doing business that way. I’ve chosen you over the Cirillos, the Bonos, the Imperiales, or the Confortis. The Rizzolo family will survive the Strikeforce and prosper. But on my terms.”

  “What if I refuse?”

  “It’s a deal breaker.”

  “You’re asking a lot.”

  “I’m offering the whole goddamned city of New York.”

  “You’re asking me to put my family under your control.”

  “No. I will tell you what needs to be done. You will control your family.”

  “And you will control me. I don’t like it.”

  Angrily Helen faced the now darkening sea lough. Yet her anger was merely from pride, which she could not afford to indulge. Her father, she knew, would never make a deal with an outsider. But he was weak now, helpless, while she, beset by the other families and the Strikeforce, was on her own; for if the power of the Rizzolos was not yet all hers, the responsibility surely was. She had little to lose and much to gain; besides, a deal was a deal only as long as it served both sides. She faced Taggart with a smile. As her father used to say, it was a choice she could live with.

  Taggart saw that patience had again curtained the diamond-hard light in her eyes, which he suddenly realized was not at all at odds with her extraordinary beauty, but its foundation. For an eerie second he saw something else that almost made him shiver, but the feeling evaporated when she stretched her sleeve over her thumb, wet it with her tongue, and dabbed his face where the cut had opened up again. “We’re going to have to find a better way to meet.”