Rampage

by Justin Scott

  “He won’t be hurt. You have my word.”

  “Not good enough. I don’t like it.”

  “Forgive me,” Reggie said softly, “but I can’t take no this time. It must be yes.”

  “Sorry, fella.”

  “So am I,” Reggie replied, crouching and drawing his gun from his ankle in a single smooth action. He backed up, sheltering the gun against his side, because a New York cop who had survived eighteen years on the street ought reasonably to be considered a dangerous man.

  Warner grinned. “I really don’t believe you’re going to shoot. I’m not trying to take a gun away from a guy who has no reason to shoot me.”

  “Stand still.”

  “Sorry.” Warner grinned again, patiently trying to puzzle out where Reggie was heading. Reggie reached into his pocket and tossed him a small metal container. “Do you recognize that?”

  Warner turned it to the parking lot lights. “Sure. Magazine for your little ankle gun.”

  “Have another look.”

  Warner tried to remove a slug. “What is this?”

  “Tape recorder.”

  Warner felt the blood rush from his head. “What?”

  “I carry it in the gun whenever I’m more interested in recording—which I have been doing whenever we’ve met— than in shooting.”

  Warner lunged.

  “But not tonight,” Reggie replied, swiftly stepping back and cocking the slide.

  “What the fuck are you doing to me?”

  “When you report to me what Ponte has told Tony Taglione, I’ll pay you three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Slick, Reggie. Very slick. What are you doing this to me for? I never hurt you.”

  “I’m making you rich.”

  “There’s a big chance I’ll get fucked. To get in on the flip, I’m going to have to push to make the arrest.”

  “I’ll look out for you, Jack. Remember, Mr. Taggart still regards you as a most valuable asset.”

  Warner ran his hand through his hair and looked at the mud on his handmade shoes. “Okay. What’s her name?”

  “Mrs. Hugel. She’s married and lives in Great Neck. Ponte seems deeply in love with her.”

  “How in hell did you find this out?”

  Reggie smiled. “As my friends in the rag trade say, ‘Does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s?’ Now listen. Tell Taglione you can arrest Ponte secretly when they tryst. You might suggest he can use the girlfriend as additional leverage to break him down.”

  “I think he’ll figure that out himself.”

  “Walk to your car. Don’t look back.”

  Warner started to walk away, but a thought struck him. “Hey, what makes you think that Taglione has something to arrest Ponte for?”

  “I can feel it in my bones.”

  On the drive back to the city Warner concluded that the Brit had made a mistake telling him about the tape recorder. The existence of evidence that he had sold information meant that if Taggart were ever caught, Warner had to immediately offer to testify against Taggart in order to plea bargain his way out of going to jail himself. But, he reflected unhappily, he would still be finished on the Force. He comforted himself with the thought that Taggart was too careful to get nailed. And despite the spot Reggie had put him in, Warner found himself wondering how in hell Taggart’s scam fit the weird stuff going down with the mob.

  First, Taggart was dating the Rizzolo girl while the Rizzolos were romping over Brooklyn. Then the Cirillos hit the Rizzolos and, all of a sudden, Taggart was interested in Sal Ponte—Crazy Mikey’s and old Don Richard’s consigliere. Why? Suddenly, he remembered that last year, when Taggart had hung him off the building, Taggart had engineered the arrest of Nicky Cirillo. Warner smiled to himself, he was about to spend a long night with his files.

  Reggie drove country roads until he was sure that Warner hadn’t been followed, then headed down to Auberge Maxime in North Salem. It was late on a weekday night and the customers were finishing dessert. The exceptions were a company of fat men eating duck at a long table—chefs from the other country inns of Westchester, Putnam, and Fairfield counties— and Christopher Taggart, alone in a corner, sipping Bordeaux and reading the menu.

  “Wine?”

  “Whiskey, please.”

  A waiter was dispatched.

  “How’d you do?”

  Reggie covered his face and rubbed his eyes. “Splendidly, I suppose.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He shrugged and thought about his answer. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Warner is naturally treacherous. Now we’ve threatened him, which makes him dangerous.” His scotch arrived. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers. And cheer up. The next thing, Reg, we gotta get Mikey back on the tit.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “Tell his people we’re considering rolling his debt so he can pay it off in new deals.”

  “Even if they’ll listen, we don’t have the heroin.”

  “We’ve got twenty or thirty keys.”

  “That’s not enough for Mikey.”

  “More than enough.” Taggart smiled. “More than enough. Just get him interested.”

  “You want to thank me?” Uncle Vinnie asked when Tony Taglione telephoned. “You have dinner with me and your brother.”

  “I’m really tied up.”

  “He helped, too. Come on, kid. You owe me. Abatelli’s. Ten o’clock. You can work late. You gotta eat anyhow. Then around the corner to sleep.”

  Taggart sat across from them, warily. Tony—razor-slim to Vinnie’s beachball-round—was remote at first, but his dark eyes warmed with affection as he said, “Uncle Vinnie, you really started something with Sal Ponte. I can’t go into it, but you opened a whole can of worms.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t just me,” Vinnie protested. “It was Chris, too.”

  “Sure. Both of you. Don’t expect to read it in the papers, but you’ve done a service.”

  “Anytime,” said Taggart.

  Helen Rizzolo was doing warm-up stretches in front of the house. Eddie stood by, instructing her bodyguards. “If you fuck up, you’ll be guarding my uncle in Westport. No bars, no broads, no movies. Just trees.”

  “I’d rather do time.”

  Eddie forced a laugh, as he was forcing bad jokes, working hard to keep up morale, while his soldiers were going nuts waiting for the Cirillos’ next surprise. Helen shot him a worried look.

  Physically, Eddie still seemed indestructible; the only reminder of three Cirillo bullet holes was a slight limp and an occasional headache. But he seemed lost without Frank, quicker than ever to fly off the handle, and, she feared, even more inclined to take wild chances. Frank in his quiet way had been a calming influence.

  Eddie had taken their father’s death hard, too, harder than she would have guessed. Suddenly, in his thirties he found himself apparent head of the family—which was young for an Italian man with a strong father. He seemed to resent her, as if angry that they had survived while Frank and their father had not. Worse, he seemed determined to prove that he could stand alone. Her mother had suggested that he was afraid of losing her, too, which had the ring of simple truth; but her mother, of course, did not know how dangerous Eddie could be on his own.

  Helen motioned him close. “What are you doing when I’m gone?”

  “Digging a hole in the ground.”

  “Eddie. No dope deals.”

  Sure.

  “I mean it. I don’t want to see any more of these so-called importers coming by the house. All I need is you busted.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry. You’re all I have left.”

  She jumped the low hedge and hit the sidewalk running.

  Eddie whirled angrily on the bodyguards. “What are you clowns waiting for? She’s halfway down the block.”

  Three Rizzolo soldiers bolted after her. Cars followed.

  She ran for miles. At last her stomach stopped churning and
her exertions dissipated the adrenaline which had seared through her body like fiery knives. She circled Canarsie Park, slowing to study the canvases of the painters who were taking advantage of the day’s uncommon warmth to stalk the shore like longlegged water birds. Down the sea wall one painter worked alone. Heart soaring, she walked toward him, tucked her arms under her breasts, and studied his canvas. It was the same gulls over the same barren islands in Jamaica Bay, but this painter had a gift for light, depicting the sun’s angle so precisely as to date its swelling rays forever in early spring.

  “You buy this or are you doing it for real?”

  Reggie Rand indented a gull with his thumbnail and wiped his thumb on a handkerchief which extended from the sleeve of his neatly ironed smock. They had met this way often, up until the Christmas massacre, but this time he was actually painting. “I took up oils to mend once when I was convalescing. Food for the harried soul.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m learning how to play the violin.”

  “Face the water when you speak in case they’re using a gun-mike.”

  “Yeah, what if they’re out there in a submarine? Listen. What’s Taggart doing? Does he know what’s happening to us?”

  “Mr. Taggart indicated the risks at the beginning.”

  “We’re getting killed.”

  “Can you hold out a little while longer?”

  “How much longer?”

  “I can assure you that Mr. Taggart has a plan in motion.”

  Helen stood silent as long as she could. She hated to ask, but had to. “Reggie?”

  He looked at her. “What is it?” he asked, not unkindly.

  “Why won’t he talk to me himself?”

  Reggie picked up his brush. She wished she hadn’t asked. He must think she was a fool.

  “Between us?”

  “If you say so.”

  “He’s embarrassed to face you.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  “He won’t until he makes it up. He blames himself. He can’t apologize without doing something to set it right.”

  “So he sends you.”

  “We are in business.”

  Angry at herself for admitting she cared, embarrassed in front of Reggie, and enraged at Taggart for ducking her, she flared, “So he puts you up front just like me, and you take the heat just like me. While he’s clear.”

  Reggie twirled the brush in gray paint and worked a moment on the western edge of the island, where the waves had molded a shallow beach. “People make a serious error thinking gray is a color between black and white. Gray is gray, my dear. It doesn’t want to be black or white. It likes being gray, as I like being Mr. Taggart’s servant. His youth and exuberance are stimulating. And as I grow older I crave more than the excitement of simply killing for killing’s sake.” He showed his even teeth. “Though I haven’t lost the taste. Are we in understanding?”

  “Don’t threaten me,”

  “I’m not. Mr. Taggart has ‘complex’ feelings for you. That is all that matters to me. Therefore, you and I are not enemies. And you may take what you dubbed my threat as friendly advice never to try to drive a wedge between Mr. Taggart and me.”

  Helen looked into the flat pools of the Englishman’s eyes and saw herself reflected. “Do you have any Italian blood?”

  Reggie returned a smile as cold and mirthless as hers.

  She burst into motion. Her bodyguards streamed after her, and when she looked back she saw Reggie dabbing thoughtfully with a long brush. Would the Englishman be as surprised as she was at how Christopher Taggart filled her thoughts?

  Complex feelings? That was putting her own feelings quite mildly. Her father was gone and Frank was gone—reasons enough to hate Taggart. She had tried, but failed miserably, for she could not forget the earlier events of the night her father and Frank were murdered: Chris’s pride at the Waldorf ball; the way she had poured her life out to him in front of Saks; making love like molton gold; and his sure, animal reactions when he nearly killed himself saving her on the Spire. Far from hating him, she felt a guilty longing to take him in her arms and curl up in his, share the blame, and start anew.

  Jack Warner discovered that Sal Ponte’s girlfriend, Mrs. Hugel, was a very pretty strawberry blonde of forty-five or so. Her husband owned a Volvo dealership, and neither had mob connections. Armed with arrest warrants written by Tony Taglione himself, Warner and a partner followed her for a week. On the eighth day she drove from her Great Neck home to the Boxtree Inn in Purdys, New York, an hour’s drive north of the city. She entered the white clapboard inn with a timid flourish, and who should drive up in a rented Caddy and swagger in after her, but handsome Sal Ponte.

  “Alone,” sang Warner. “The prick’s alone.”

  The agents hunkered down to watch from the Metro North train station across the highway. The afternoon darkened and grew cold. They smoked and talked and imagined the couple making love in the near-empty inn. For Warner she was all the rich women he saw in the department stores, stripped of their fancy clothes and makeup, perspiring freely, gasping their pleasure. His partner’s imaginings, relayed in a monotone, were irritating him.

  “Think her husband’s got something on the side, too?”

  “If he does he’s an idiot.”

  “Think she knows Ponte’s a hood?’

  “No,” Warner said firmly. He put away thoughts of the woman in bed and reviewed the Taggart situation, which was equally frustrating. It was as if Taggart had joined the Rizzolo family, but that was impossible; no family took in an outsider at the top level, especially not an old-fashioned clan like the Rizzolos. And why was Taggart on Ponte’s case? Could he be looking for old Don Richard?

  Warner’s partner tried to guess what time she had to be home.

  “Six.”

  “Her kids are in college.”

  “Seven.”

  At five, as the northbound traffic thickened, they moved closer, in front of the country grocery. Minutes later the couple came out and got into their cars, Ponte in the rental, Mrs. Hugel in her husband’s Volvo. They drove in tandem down Route 684 to the Hutchinson River Parkway, which she took to the White-stone Bridge and home to Long Island, while Ponte veered onto the Cross County Parkway, tooting his horn and blinking his lights goodbye.

  Warner’s partner made his move where the Thruway South exit of the Cross County emptied onto a service road in the path of cars attempting to enter the parkway. He tore ahead of Ponte, who had slowed to see if the road was clear, and cut across the Caddy’s nose, forcing it into the Howard Johnson’s parking lot.

  Warner shoved his badge against the windshield.

  Ponte took a long moment to hide his relief that they were not hit men. He pulled a red silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his upper lip.

  “Warrant?”

  “Four of them. One for your office. One for your house. One for you and one for the car. Open the door.”

  Warner handed him the warrants and shoved behind the wheel. “More over!”

  He handcuffed Ponte’s wrist to the frame of the passenger seat to emphasize he was in deep trouble, and headed for New York, allowing the consigliere time to read the charges. He waited until he turned off the FDR Drive into lower Manhattan before he spoke.

  “It’s RICO, Sal. You’re looking at twenty-plus.”

  Ponte leaned into the cuff, folded up the warrants, and passed them back coolly.

  Warner said, “You want me to call the Strikeforce chief? See if he’s willing to talk things over?”

  Ponte smiled mirthlessly and shook his head.

  “Nobody knows you’ve been arrested.”

  Ponte looked away. Warner hammered at him. “I can take you straight to prison. Or we can meet the chief. You don’t lose anything talking... Want me to try?”

  “Want you to try?” Ponte mimicked. “Who do you think you’re shitting? I know why you picked me up in the middle of nowhere. Tony Taglione wants to deal.”

  J
ack Warner smiled back. “Mr. Taglione’s offering twenty years. You got something worth twenty years?”

  Warner parked behind the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

  “That’s the jail. It’s connected to the U.S. Attorney’s building and the Federal Courthouse. And there’s a little church.”

  “What are you, a tour guide?”

  Warner went on casually, “I like how they’re clustered. Always reminds me of a medieval castle. You know? The king’s chambers—his court, chapel, and dungeon. All of law and civilization right in one spot. Where the king is, so is God, law, and punishment.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Of course, times change. Goddamned Supreme Court abolished trial by fire. So now the king’s only a federal prosecutor. He has to convince a jury to order the judge to chuck you in the dungeon... We got you cold, Sal. Why don’t you talk to the king?”

  Ponte shrugged. “I’ll listen to anybody.”

  Warner signaled his partner, who cleared a side entrance. The mobster swaggered across the covered walkway into the U.S. Attorney’s building, strutted the empty halls, and lounged insolently in the elevator. Upstairs, he cocked an ironic brow at the big “Strikeforce” sign.

  One thing, Warner noticed, gave Ponte pause—a bold color photograph of a dozen Secret Service agents guarding the President’s limousine. It shimmered with a kind of power that Ponte seemed to understand, though he sneered the next moment at the work-beaten furnishings. “Somebody oughta tell the king he’s living like a peasant.”

  “Tell him yourself.”

  He led Ponte to a cluttered office ablaze in the fiery light of the setting sun. Papers buried the desk, extra chairs, and deep windowsills. Filing cabinets heaped with briefs and transcripts lined the walls. Evidence boxes overflowed a wire supermarket shopping cart parked behind the door. Snake nests of cables slithered from a row of battered telephones.

  Tony Taglione sat behind his desk in a white shirt and navy tie. His sleeves were rolled up his slim forearms and his tie was loose at the neck. He stared at the mob lawyer like an angry priest, sickened and unforgiving.