by Justin Scott
“Taps on your secret phone line,” Taglione said, handing Ponte a bound transcript. “The one in the office down the hall.”
Ponte tried to meet his forbidding gaze, failed, and looked down at the transcript.
“We overheard the number on this bug we installed in Cris-to’s where you ate steaks with contractors you were ripping off.”
Taglione watched him skim the phone taps. When Ponte turned to the bug transcriptions, he said, “Your busboy was moonlighting,” and turned on his cassette player, a big silvery ghetto blaster with a sharp treble tone. The mobster’s voice filled the room, loud and clear against a background of silver clinking and an oceanlike murmur of conversations at other tables. Ponte stared at the player. Taglione stoped the tape in mid-sentence. “You were in good voice, Sal. The jury won’t even need headsets.”
“That’s bullshit. That guy won’t testify against me.”
“He doesn’t have to. In fact, we’re not even going to ask him. But the busboy will.” Taglione allowed himself a chilly smile. “Profitable investigation, Sal. Extortion led us to narcotics. You did a lot of business at the same table. Richie Cirillo’s in the clear on this one, but you are fucked.”
“You can’t use this crap in court.”
“Title Three warrants, Sal. Approved in Washington by the Attorney General himself. Scrupulously minimized—when you called your little girl about her sweet sixteen party, the agent turned his tap off. When your godson Mikey Cirillo telephoned about the heroin that gets pushed in the Bed-Stuy schools, the agent turned it back on. One hundred percent admissible evidence.”
“My lawyers—”
“RICO, Sal—Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations. It’s like your confirmation name.”
“My lawyers—”
“It’s a federal crime to organize to commit crime. Every consigliere in town knows that’s how we got the council. You and little Richie are the last.”
“My lawyers—”
“Your lawyers are going to advise plea bargaining. I’m advising you to bargain now.”
“You think you can send me to jail?” Ponte blustered. “Go ahead, send me to jail.”
“That’s easy. But I have a better idea. I’ve persuaded the U.S. Attorney to let me offer immunity—”
“You can shove your Witness Protection Program up your ass.
“I don’t want your testimony.”
“No?” Ponte asked warily, eyes darting toward Warner, who stared back blankly. “What do you mean, you don’t want me to testify?”
“I want an informant.”
“Informer? You’re nuts. I’ve been on the other side too long to turn on my people. I’ll do the time.”
“Twenty years for the Cirillos? They’re not your blood. You’re going to tell your wife and children that twenty years is okay?”
“I’d rather my kids know I’m a standup guy.”
“Jack, see if Mr. Koestler and Ms. Gallagher are working late. I want some attorneys to witness our conversation with this gentleman.”
“Here it comes,” said Ponte, when Warner closed the door and they were alone.
“Here what comes?”
“The third choice. If I don’t talk, you tell people I talked, anyway. So they kill me.”
“Not in this office.”
“Tell me another.”
“We don’t do business that way, Sal. We nail you fair and square in court.”
Taglione studied Ponte. He was a standup guy. But he was also a fifty-one-year-old man who had fallen happily and unexpectedly in love, which made the woman the key to flipping him because suddenly he had more to lose than he had ever had in his life. It was a rare lapse by such a criminal, one to be exploited to the hilt. And Ponte knew damned well that Jack Warner hadn’t caught him at the Thruway interchange by accident.
“For a man your age, prison is tantamount to life. Even if you gain parole, you’ll be in your sixties.”
Ponte pulled a face, but he was suffering. “What do you do this shit for? You get kicks locking up people you think are crooks ?”
Taglione answered civilly to make it easier for Ponte to surrender. “If you believe in public service, which I do, you naturally believe people have a right to order in their lives. You guys take away that right.”
“Come on. You want criminals, arrest Wall Street.”
Taglione shrugged, though it was getting harder to play the part of an understanding and respectful opponent. “Democracy’s too fragile to survive guys like you.”
“We protect democracy,” Ponte retorted, rising to an avid defense. “We’re like revolutionaries. We protect poor people, protect them from the rich people’s rules. You call them crimes, but smuggling’s been an American necessity since the Revolution. Jack Kennedy’s father was a bootlegger, you know. Union organizing? Where would labor be without our muscle? You got a problem with shylocking? Tell it to the banks, who won’t talk to the little guy.”
“Robin Hood bullshit! You prey on the weak. You play by your own rules. And then you steal the game. When your victim protests, you murder him.”
“Hey, if we weren’t needed, we wouldn’t be in business.”
“You’re in business, as you put it, by force.”
“We provide services people want.”
Taglione felt his blood rising. “Stop dicking with me. The mob says: ‘We’re here! And you’re there! We take what we want.’ You’re the enemy, Sal, a second, brutal society engulfing the first. Maybe I hate you for it, maybe I don’t, but I’m sure as hell not going to let you get away with it.”
“Maybe?” Ponte sneered. “Maybe? Everybody knows you hate us, Taglione. The prosecutor’s so fucking high and mighty till it gets personal. Then you want revenge. What could be more Sicilian?”
“If I wanted revenge I’d do what you thought before.” He closed the affidavits in his fist. “I’d use murder, extortion, dope as my excuse to tell the street you squealed. Let your friends take care of you.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
“We’re not all greaseball hoods, Sal, no matter what you’ve made people think.”
Ponte turned very cold. “There’s an expression I haven’t heard in a long time.”
“My pop used it for wise guys like you. Behind that fancy so-called law office you’re a greaseball hood.”
“Your old man got his ass kicked, so you’re going to get back at the whole Mafia?”
Tony Taglione heard the blood start roaring in his head. He pressed his long, tapered fingers to his ears and walked to the window and stared at his reflection. The sun was down, the window glass nearly black. Ponte started to get out of the chair. “Sit down!”
“I don’t understand you,” said Ponte. “Why can’t you just accept things like your brother?”
“Careful, Sal.”
“Chris Taggart lets bygones be bygones. He moves ahead. He takes responsibility for his family’s business. There’s a son your father would have been proud of.”
Taglione jammed his hands in his pockets before Ponte could see them shaking. “Have you ever seen a man hurt so bad he cried?”
Ponte shrugged. “I’m a lawyer. I don’t know about that shit.”
“There was nothing left of him but the pain to cry. You say you don’t know? Let me tell you, Robin Hood, the tears make streaks through the blood, but the sound is worse... My pop finally got the guts to tell some hood to go fuck himself. So some guy like you in your goddamned Fifth Avenue office gave the order and hurt him so bad he died crying.”
“Didn’t they make a movie about that?”
“Jack, get in here! Let’s get this creep down to arraignment.” As Warner returned, Tony locked eyes with Ponte, forced him to look at the floor. Then he went back to the window and stared at the blocks of light the cleaning ladies had scattered around the Wall Street towers. He had blown it and lost his famous temper by letting Ponte get to him.
Ponte looked up when the door opened
again and a young woman entered. “Put away your steno pad, sweetheart. I got nothing to say.”
Taglione gave her a stiff nod of gratitude and she lighted like a candle. “Ms. Gallagher’s not a stenographer, Sal. She’s a prosecutor. In fact, she was on the team that prosecuted Pauly Conforti. Now she’s bugging me to let her try your case if we can’t come to an agreement which meets the approval of the United States Attorney. Ms. Gallagher, Salvatore Ponte, or to his intimates, ‘Sally Smarts.’”
Sarah extended her hand, allowed Ponte to run appreciative eyes over her white-blonde hair, and asked, “What’s it going to be, Counselor? Twenty years in prison? Or a little public service, undercover?”
“Pauly’s gonna appeal.”
“Not out on bail he isn’t.” Sarah smiled. “And I don’t lose appeals.”
Taglione nodded to her to join him at the window. Ponte looked a little shaken by the “cookie-cutter blitz,” the threat that the Southern District could field endless ranks of assistant United States attorneys, elite, mean, and infuriatingly young. Having just made an ass of the Strikeforce chief by goading Taglione into losing his temper, he found himself confronted by a twenty-eight-year-old woman anxious to dedicate long hours to putting him behind bars.
“You’re doing all right,” Tony told her. “Where’s Ron?”
“His wife’s having a baby.”
“Fuck. I really need him. What are you doing now?”
“I have to write warrants for the FBI bust.”
“They can wait. Come on. Let’s hit this turkey again.”
“Do you want me to be nice?”
“Not yet.” He whirled around and leveled the full force of his penetrating gaze at Ponte. “Who’s your girlfriend, Sal?”
Ponte looked alarmed. “Her husband’s a Volvo dealer. Take my word, they’re straight.”
“Your word?” Taglione picked up the affidavits. “Sal, I look at murder, I look at dope, I look at extortion. And I find it very hard to accept your honorable word.”
“I’m telling you the truth. She—”
“You’ve lied and cheated your whole fucking life, you asshole. You want to finish it in jail or you want things moving almost as good as before we nailed you?”
“What do you mean?”
Taglione drew up a chair and sat down to face him. Perspiration dotted the mobster’s tan skin. “In exchange for immunity from prosecution on these charges—and only these—I want regular reports on Cirillo operations.”
“I can’t turn in my friends.”
“You better believe when I find Old Man Richie, he’ll turn you in.”
“Don Richard has been my friend for—”
“He’d do it to save his kid.... The line forms outside that door. We’re busting left and right. Tonight’s your last chance. That’s it, Sal. After tonight, you’re on your own.
He nodded to Sarah. She leaned close, stroking aside the hair that fell across her cheek, and whispered, as if all three were conspiring, which, of course, they were, “The Cirillos are a big family, Mr. Ponte. And they’re not all your friends.”
Craft and greed warred with the fear in Ponte’s eyes. Suddenly Taglione gave Ponte what his assistants had dubbed “the Smile.” Wry and fleeting, it hinted that there but for the grace of God go I, that maybe next time the luck of the draw would find the consigliere the prosecutor and Taglione his prisoner. He didn’t believe it for a second, but it was very effective with lowlifes who liked to think they were really decent fellows underneath it all.
“Sarah’s right. You can save your own life.”
Ponte looked from him to Sarah and back. Taglione held his breath. The noises that made silence in an office, the whisper of forced air, the buzz of the fluorescent lighting, the hum of traffic beyond thick glass, gathered deeply. Taglione listened to his heart, watched the blood pulse through a blue vein in Sarah’s temple, watched Ponte’s lips grow tighter and tighter. He glanced longingly at the door.
“You’re going to get me knocked off.”
“No way. We’re going to be very, very careful. You’re worth too much alive. Jack will set up a safe house.”
Ponte still hesitated.
Taglione said, “You just may get out of this mess relatively intact, Sal. You’re young enough to retire, start something straight, and maybe make a new life for yourself. We won’t stand in your way if you serve us.” He reached into his desk and flashed a Polaroid shot Jack Warner had pulled down with a telephoto lens.
“I’ll bet she thinks you’re straight already.”
Ponte nodded.
Taglione handed him the immunity agreement. “Contingent upon the United States Attorney’s approval.”
Ponte gave him a sour smile. “Pretty sure of yourself. Had it ready to go.”
“Let’s just say I was sure you weren’t stupid.”
Ponte opened a gold pen and signed. Taglione witnessed his signature, as did Sarah.
Taglione said, “You have my word. You play fair with me, I’ll play fair with you. But if you ever go back on our agreement, you’re finished.” He stuck out his hand to seal the bargain.
“Fuck you. I’m not shaking your hand.” He threw his pen at Taglione’s brimming waste paper basket. Taglione watched it land on top, nestled on scrap. It looked to be solid gold and surely cost more than any single item in his office.
“You think it’s all over when you get us?” Ponte shouted. “You think you win?”
“We are winning, Sal. We’re going to beat you. We’re going to break the rackets.”
“You win shit.” Ponte laughed savagely. “You’re digging holes in sand. Guys’ll fill our place.”
“Not guys with thirty years’ experience, Consigliere Ponte. Not pros like you.”
“Maybe guys worse.” He lunged blindly toward the door, and Warner followed.
“Sal? Before you go?”
“What now?”
“Where’s Don Richard?”
Jack Warner made sure Sal Ponte returned his rental car without incident. Then, as they waited for a cab on East Forty-eighth Street so Ponte could return to his office, his bodyguards, and his real life, Warner said, “Sal, if you ever blow my cover I’ll put it on the street about tonight.”
“Fuck you. I made my deal with Taglione. You have to protect me.”
“You made your deal with a lawyer. I’m a cop. You never saw me in your life.” Smiling, he took Ponte’s hand—one businessman bidding another good night—and ground the consi-gliere’s rings until he winced.
A gyspy cab approached. Ponte hailed it, but Warner stopped him and put him in a yellow cab instead. Then he started walking toward Second Avenue. When Ponte’s cab had rounded the corner the gypsy caught up and Warner got in.
Reggie Rand was at the wheel, wearing a cap and doper glasses so dark that Warner wondered how he saw in the night. “What did he say?”
Warner sighed. He hadn’t intended to report so soon to Reggie, hoping the FBI would find Don Richard quickly. But when Reggie stopped for a red light, removed his glasses, and turned his empty eyes on him, Warner could not risk lying. “Little Richie’s in Miami.”
“Anything else?”
“Anything else? It’s the biggest secret in town.”
Reggie shrugged and returned his attention to the traffic. “I’m interested in whatever Ponte reports next.”
He was so casual that Warner got alarmed. “You gonna pay me?”
Reggie glanced in the rearview mirror. “Of course, Jack. We always pay you. Where can I drop you?”
“Foley Square.”
Reggie let him off a hundred yards from the U.S. Attorney’s building and drove blithely into the night. Warner went upstairs, more puzzled than ever about Christopher Taggart’s dance with the Mafia. He had assumed that they were going to hit Don Richard and worried that he might get burned in the resultant heat. Reggie might be jerking him around, but he had seemed genuinely unimpressed by the news of the Cirillo boss’s where
abouts. Tony Taglione was still at his desk, though it was nearly nine o’clock.
“Home free?”
“Ponte’s fine.”
“Good. Jack, sit down a minute. Stick that on the floor.”
Warner removed the pile of papers and sat down warily. Tony Taglione never asked you to sit down before he got to the point.
“I have a problem. I think you can help.”
Had he screwed up? Had the Brit turned on him? Taglione clasped his hands together and eyed Warner over his fingertips.
“I want to know something.”
“Yeah?”
“Who my brother Chris hangs out with.”
Warner had to stifle a smile of relief. Taglione’s brother— the freelance racketeer—and he thought the Strikeforce chief was on to him. He said, “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Just what I said. But I want it done quietly.”
“Any idea what I’m looking for?”
Taglione sighed, clearly upset. “I don’t know. The Rizzolos, maybe. You know about his thing with Eddie the Cop’s sister?”
Warner nodded carefully. “I hear the rumors.”
“Rumors! Try the newspaper.”
“I thought that had cooled down.”
“I’m hoping so, but I want to know about her and whoever else he’s involved with.”
Warner hesitated, trying to figure how best to work what could be a very nice opportunity. He said, “Okay if I talk out of turn?”
“What?”
“Listen, Mr. Taglione. It’s tough having your brother date a Mafia girl, but when you get down to it, so what? There’s no law against fucking a good-looking broad whose brother happens to be a hood.”
Taglione flushed.
“Or are we talking about something more than dating?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like what I’m feeling.”
“Can you—?”
“No! Just find out who he hangs out with.”
Warner stood up. “Okay.”
Taglione forced a smile. “Hey, you did a good job with Ponte. Thanks, Jack.”
“You want I should get down to Miami?”
“No. The FBI’s put Don Richard on the ten most wanted list. They’ll find him. You just check out what I told you.”
