Rampage

by Justin Scott

  Taglione returned to his work, dismissing him. Warner put the papers on the chair and backed out. The funny thing was that he was already checking out Taggart on his own. He walked into Chinatown to a pay phone, called Reggie Rand’s answering machine, and waited a few minutes for a return call.

  “This is worth fifty grand.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “The boss asked me for postage on his brother’s pals.”

  He listened to a short silence. Then Reggie said, “Your money will be deposited tomorrow.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Stall him. We need a little more time.”

  Reggie hung up and turned to Taggart, who was avidly studying a silenced pistol. “That was Jack Warner. Your brother is getting curious about your friends.”

  “He’ll waste six months on Helen. I was right to go public with her.”

  Reggie thought that was overly optimistic. “Perhaps, but—”

  Taggart cut him off with a gesture. He was deeply absorbed in the weapon; the silencer screwed on and off the barrel like the finest machine tool, and the bullet-packed magazine was as heavy as a surf-casting weight. “Guaranteed they use this gun, right?”

  He extended it to Reggie, who put it in a briefcase where it nested in a green velvet cradle. “Guaranteed.”

  “How do I know for sure?” Taggart demanded.

  “Hit men never lie.”

  Don Richard Cirillo was sunning in a sand chair on an empty stretch of private beach situated slightly north of Miami. The house behind him was owned by a guy nobody knew. The ocean sparkled in ribbons of pale green and robin’s-egg blue. Beside him sat Frankie DeLuca. Their acquaintance went back fifty years to Don Richard’s apprenticeship breaking welshers’ fingers at the Glen Island Casino.

  The warm wind drove a brightly colored beach ball toward them. Some distance behind the ball came a girl chasing it. Don Richard saw she was pretty and was wearing a tiny bathing suit. He tried to stop the ball, but it skipped on a footprint in the sand, took flight for a short hop over his sandal, and rolled on, blurring red, white, and blue like a barber pole. The girl glanced over her shoulder. Way down the beach a child was toddling after her. It was too far away for him to hear if the child was crying, but Don Richard presumed it was.

  “A grand on the ball.”

  Frankie DeLuca looked up from the racing form. He rubbed his rheumy eyes, adjusted his sunglasses, and eyed the ball, which had rolled well past them. Then he gauged the girl, who broke into a determined run.

  “You’re covered,” Frankie said, betting that the girl would catch the ball.

  He had failed to notice the child, as Don Richard had assumed he would, because Frankie was closer to the umbrella they’d set up against the wind and it blocked his view; besides, his eyes were going bad.

  The girl looked back at the kid and ran even harder, pumping her firm legs in the sand, shaking her breasts. Frankie gestured toward the water, where a catamaran with an orange sail was skimming onto the beach.

  “Run on the hard sand! On the hard sand! By the waves! ... What does she think, she’s a mudder?”

  She looked over her shoulder again, stopped abruptly, and jogged back to collect her baby. The ball rolled on, a bright dot receding in the distance where a cluster of high-rise condos gleamed like crumpled tinfoil.

  Frankie smacked his forehead with his palm and picked up his paper. “That’s why they use jockeys.”

  “You owe me a grand.”

  “Can you wait till lunch?”

  Don Richard noticed his bodyguards, local boys who were edging nearer as the catamaran skidded onto the beach. The orange sail flapped in the stiff wind, crackling like pistol shots. Four guys jumped off—two rough-looking blacks with twists of dreadlocks swinging from their brows, and two whites carrying towels. The blacks were handling the boat. They looked like natives who had sailed straight from Jamaica. They quickly dragged the front of the catamaran around, heaved the twin hulls back into the low surf, and made the sail stop flapping. The whites trotted toward Don Richard, but his bodyguards intercepted them, twenty feet away.

  “What’s that?” asked Frankie, looking up again at a pair of muffled sounds, like somebody spitting. The noise was fainter than that of the sail, but the bodyguards dropped on the sand. The tourists stepped over them and crouched in front of the old men. They had pistols with long, fat silencers under the towels.

  “Mr. Cirillo?”

  Don Richard jerked a thumb at his old friend Frankie. “Him.”

  24

  CHAPTER

  Christopher Taggart stood with his back to the door of a dark LaGuardia Airport hotel room. The wood vibrated against his spine as jets rumbled over. A thin, fuzzy gray line marked where the curtains touched, and a red dot glowed on the cigarette the coked-up gunman was smoking. Neither could see the other’s face, and for double his usual fee, Don Richard’s killer was describing the job. He was a New Zealander who traveled the world as foredeckman on a maxi ocean-racing yacht; his accent was mild, as if Reggie’s crisp English had been slightly diluted by Ronnie Wald’s Southern California accent. Swiftly he reported sailing into the beach and shooting the bodyguards.

  “Down they go like stones, and we’re over them and up to the old geezers in their chairs. I say ‘Mr. Cirillo?’ like I’m paging him for a phone call in the next coconut tree, and do you know what he does? He tells me his friend is him.

  “Shit. Two old geezers side by side, no hair, no teeth, chests like spars with ribs, hair in their noses, how the fuck am I to sort them out? Strike me lucky, ’cause when the Pommy gave me the job, he slipped me Cirillo’s picture. So I whip out the picture and, sure thing, Cirillo’s sending his mate down the river. His mate looks like he’s going to cry; really fixed him, doing him in to save his own neck.

  “What else do you want to know? Right. I say, ‘This is for Mike and Helen.’ Just like the Pommy told me.... His mate’s just sitting there and sort of smiles when it’s over, like he won a race by living longer. I look at him arid I know for sure that when the cops come, this old geezer will swear he was fast asleep. So I say ta-ta and he says ta-ta. I give him a little salute and we back down the beach, board the boat, and breeze out.”

  “Did Cirillo know what you meant?”

  “He knew he was going to die.”

  “But did he know why?”

  “Do you mean, ‘Say, who are Mike and Helen?’ Mate, if he didn’t know then, he’s got eight billion years in heaven to think it over.”

  “Heaven?”

  The killer laughed. “Bastards like him phone ahead. They’ll comp him right through the Pearly Gates.”

  Taggart walked through a long hall, down the stairs, and into the elevator. The deed was almost done, nearly eleven years since they had killed his father. Sometimes in the night he had wondered whether the long years’ wait for vengeance might blunt his satisfaction; it had not.

  Two uniformed state troopers intercepted him in the lobby. “We were about to come looking for you, Mr. Taggart. The governor’s plane just landed. He wants to ride in your car.”

  “We’re running late. I’ll need an escort.”

  “Lights and sirens?” The trooper grinned, knowing what a cop buff Taggart was, and reached to slap him on the back. But Taggart was already striding toward the door, and his cold look told the young trooper that the governor’s friend would not welcome being touched today.

  They hurried from the hotel across the highway and into a side entrance to the airport. Taggart’s driver maneuvered the Rolls onto the private docking apron as Costanza’s New York State Gulfstream trundled in from the runway. The governor bounded athletically down the ramp and climbed in beside him.

  “Welcome home,” Taggart greeted him, waving a split of Moёt that he was struggling to open with shaking hands.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Pulled off a big one.”

  He tore the wire, but he could
n’t get his fingers around the cork.

  “Let me,” said Costanza.

  Taggart stabbed the partition button and thrust it at the driver. “Open this. Don’t shake it up.”

  The driver fumbled.

  “Hold the cork and twist the bottle, for crissake!”

  The cork popped out at last and Taggart snatched the foaming bottle. He filled two glasses, handed one to Costanza, who was eyeing him curiously.

  “Let’s drink to my pop.”

  “Anytime.” The governor raised his glass and touched Taggart’s. “Mike Taglione.”

  “Mike Taglione.”

  Taggart drank deep. The car lurched into motion, and they raced out the airport, bracketed by howling state cruisers. The governor settled back. “Oh, that’s delicious. What did you do this time, co-op Gracie Mansion?”

  “Don’t tempt me. The first sporting event in the SuperSpire Stadium, if I have my way, will be a fundraiser for Friends of the Zoo—throw that bald son of a bitch to a lion. So how we doing?”

  They discussed the stadium project on the way into Manhattan. The governor was returning from Washington, where he’d had some luck with the DOT about the subway spur, but the reality, he reminded Chris, was that the mayor was still lukewarm. When Taggart dropped the governor at the World Trade Center, Costanza repeated what he had been saying for some time: “You’re golden if you get the mayor’s support. Without him we’re in a nasty fight. I’ll back you like I promised, Chris. And I’ll lean on the UDC, but you know damned well I don’t carry the weight in Manhattan that he does.”

  “I’m going to get him, one of these days, for jerking me around.”

  Costanza gave him a hard look. “You seem to be forgetting that politics isn’t war, Chris. You don’t win by destroying a guy

  you’ll want on your side next time. Ease up... Say hello to your

  brother.”

  Taggart ordered his driver to head back to Queens.

  At Visions, Helen’s club, the bartenders were setting up and vacuum cleaners were whining on the carpets. He pushed through the front door, wrote a note, and told three tough Sicilians guarding the hall to her office to deliver it.

  Helen was at her desk, icily beautiful in a white silk blouse and black velvet suit. She seemed older, he thought, tempered, and dark with knowledge. She had changed her red nail polish to pink, and her lipstick, too, was paler. She was wearing large diamond stud earrings. Reggie’s people had kept a close eye on her and there was no word that she had been going out, but he wondered with a stab of jealousy if the jewels were a gift.

  She touched his note with her long fingernails. “Good news?”

  “You know it was Don Richard who attacked your family.”

  “I know that,” she said coldly. “And I know why.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “When?”

  “Today. In Florida. Shot. The papers will have it soon.”

  She studied his triumphant expression before saying, “My father would have been pleased.”

  “How about you?”

  “Part of me cheers and says the old men are canceling each other out. The other part asks what difference any of it makes.”

  “I’m bringing the news to the part that cheers.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you blame him for killing your father, too?”

  “I told you I didn’t.”

  “I never believed that.”

  Taggart nodded; of course, he hadn’t fooled her. “It’s good news for me, too. Very, very good news. A big debt’s been paid.”

  “And now what?”

  “I’ve paid you a debt, too. Crazy Mikey’s next.”

  “And then?”

  Taggart wanted to say, We’re getting out, but this was not the moment. There was still Crazy Mikey. He said only, “We’ll talk about castles after Mikey.”

  “Castles?” Helen picked up a pencil and drew A’s into stars across the top of a letter. “In the meantime, we’ve lost territory and momentum. Eddie and I are holding on by our fingernails.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “You are? Has anyone taken your buildings? Has anyone firebombed your plant, your trucks?” She drew the stars harder, gouging lines in the paper. Suddenly she turned the letter toward Taggart. “See this?”

  Taggart’s pulse quickened.

  The Justice Department seal. And under the text, the razor strokes of his brother’s signature. “It’s a ‘request’ to come in for a little talk.”

  “He can’t make you. Your lawyer can take care of it.”

  “I already went.”

  “What for?”

  “Curiosity. Besides, as my father used to say, ‘There’s answers in questions.’”

  “What is Tony investigating?”

  Helen gave him a strange smile. “Everything... and nothing.”

  “What did he ask about?”

  “He didn’t ask. He told me to keep my ‘filthy’ hands off you.”

  “Tony called you into his office just to say that?”

  She raised her eyes and gave him a shy smile. “You know what? I hate to say this. I feel like a fool, but I missed you these three months.”

  “Three months, two weeks, and one day. I couldn’t call until I gave you Don Richard.”

  She nodded. “I think that’s one of the things I like about you.... How are your women?”

  “I haven’t seen them except for business.”

  She stood up, rounded her desk, circled her arms around Taggart’s neck, and kissed him. “I’m glad. Thank you for coming back.”

  “What did you tell Tony?”

  “I told him he was abusing his office. I told him he was taking advantage of his power. I told him I ought to sue the government.”

  “You don’t know how hard it was for him to do it.”

  “I do. He couldn’t hide how much he cares for you. For a second I thought he would kill me right there at his desk.”

  “He’s only trying to save me from myself.”

  “It’s way too late.”

  She said it with a smile, and kissed his mouth again, and even allowed him to carry her urgently to the couch for a sort of primitive victory feast. But inside she felt chilled by the matter-of-fact way he had reported the murder, and frightened by the icy look that turned his blue eyes gray when he promised Mikey was next. The Cirillos were her mortal enemies, yes, deserving to die if anyone did; but Chris seemed unable to see that the time was hurtling near when it would be too late to pretend he was different from them. And too late to pretend that their game of castles was more than a fantasy.

  What did she care? she asked herself. And her answer, ironically, was that she had fallen in love—a dangerous state of the heart and mind that revealed beauty in places she had never seen it, and horrors that her father had raised her to ignore.

  Sal Ponte was driving to meet Mrs. Hugel when he heard the news on the radio. He turned around and got on the Hutchinson Parkway south over the bridge to Long Island. Crazy Mikey’s bodyguards had apartments around his in the townhouse condo. When Ponte arrived, two of them were watching Mikey’s front door and three more waited in a car.

  Mikey was drinking coffee alone at the kitchen table. It was a modern kitchen with a breakfast nook, all clean and shiny. There was a red-checked oilcloth on the table. The windows overlooked the broad, blue East River and the points spanned by the silvery Whitestone Bridge. Mikey had on a V-neck cashmere pullover, his gold chain and spoon, and tight shorts. Ponte smelled perfume, but the girl was gone.

  “I got bad news, kid.”

  “I just heard. Sit down.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The fucking radio. Sit down, Sal.”

  Ponte sank to the kitchen chair. “You got any more coffee?”

  “I knew where he was. And you knew where he was. I didn’t tell anybody. That leaves you.”

  “Wait a
minute.”

  “Wha’d they give you?”

  “Who?” "

  He saw the coffee mug coming, clenched in Mikey’s hand, but couldn’t move fast enough. It shattered against his forehead. Hot coffee burned his eyes. The force of it knocked him off the chair and he hit his head against the refrigerator as he went down. Mikey snatched the coffeepot off the stove and held the spout over his face. “What did the Rizzolos give you to tell ’em where my father was?”

  “I didn’t tell the Rizzolos!”

  He said it with such utter conviction—after all, it was the truth—that Mikey hesitated long enough for Ponte to talk. “I didn’t tell the Rizzolos. What the hell would I tell ’em for? You think I’m going leave you and your father for a bunch of South Brooklyn cafone? What am I, crazy?”

  Mikey didn’t move. “Somebody told ’em.”

  Ponte had prepared an answer in his car. It was thin but he reasoned that if he himself didn’t know that he had betrayed Don Richard to the Strikeforce and that someone on the Strikesforce blew it, he would have made a similar guess. “Probably somebody spotted him. Lousy luck.”

  Mikey shook his head. “I can’t believe that. I can’t do business believing in lousy luck. You know what I think? Maybe you didn’t tell the Rizzolos.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “So who did you tell?”

  Ponte died inside. Mikey tipped the coffeepot and half a cup splashed in his face. Ponte yelled and covered his face. His heart started going in his chest like he was going to blow up.

  “Sal. I’m not as dumb as you think. Who’d you tell where my father was?”

  Ponte knew his only chance was to keep clearly stating his case. “Will you do me one thing for all the years I served your old man?”

  “What?”

  “Will you listen why?”

  It was tantamount to an admission of betrayal and Mikey went rigid.

  “Get up!”

  Mikey wiped the shards of broken mug off the table and found a new one in the cabinet. He filled it for Ponte, topped off his own cup, and put the pot back on the stove. “Why?”

  “For you.”

  “For me.” Mikey looked out the window, looked back at Ponte. “You killed my father for me? I didn’t like the bastard, but you know goddamned well I didn’t hate him enough to kill him.”