“God damn it!” John yelled.
Melinda had been listening alongside him at the pay phone. “They went to your mother?”
“They sent somebody to scare her and it worked.”
“You can’t blame her for being scared.”
“I know that. Obviously they do, too.”
“This is getting out of control.”
John motioned toward the car. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“My mother’s.”
“What if they’re watching?”
“Then they’ll see me.”
She stopped before getting in. John slid behind the steering wheel. He put the key in the ignition and started the engine, then turned to Melinda as she got in.
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
* * * *
Bridget Malone was extra nervous today. Two nights ago she’d nearly been killed by somebody Special Agent Stebenow insisted had been hired by the red-haired cop on Eddie Vento’s payroll. She had assumed the government would bring her in off the streets, but they hadn’t. Stebenow said her life was still in danger and that she should stay with him, but Bridget knew her only real freedom would come when she gave them something to convict Eddie Vento with. After spending the night wondering what to do, she decided to give it one last try.
She’d returned to the bar the following day and was lucky to learn Eddie had spent the night with his wife. Then when he turned up early this morning, she was in the shower when he yelled at her to hurry because he wanted to get laid.
Concerned he might want to fuck as soon as he saw her, she was forced to remove the recording device she had taped to her right thigh. She wrapped it with a pair of black panties and stuffed them in the hamper.
Vento said he needed to use the bathroom when she came out. Bridget used the opportunity to move the backup recorder from the bottom drawer of a night table in her bedroom to under the couch in her living room. Then she removed her clothes to expedite their sex and Vento made her put on high heels when he was ready. He made it rough, bending her over the arm of the couch and not bothering to use a lubricant. He insisted she remain naked but continue wearing the heels afterward.
She used the bathroom again, making sure to flush while she checked the hamper to make sure he hadn’t discovered the tape. Then she plugged herself with a tuft of tissue and returned to the living room. Vento was on the couch. He had lit a cigar and had his feet up on the coffee table. He made her stand in front of him while he peppered her with questions about where she had been the night before.
“Out,” she said. “Why?”
“Because I called and you didn’t answer,” he said.
“So? Where were you? With wifey?”
“That’s my fuckin’ business where I was.”
Bridget set her hands on her hips. “So?” she said.
“You fucking somebody?”
“Besides you, no.”
“You sure?”
“Are you serious?”
“Extremely.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Unless you are and I don’t know about it.”
“I’m not fucking anybody, Eddie. Jesus.”
Vento stared at her until she was nervous enough to smile. “What?” she said.
He didn’t answer. He got up off the couch to use the bathroom again.
Bridget noticed a wire under the couch skirt and quickly dropped to the floor to hide it. She heard the toilet flush and stood up. The tissue plug she’d used dropped to the floor without her noticing. She quickly moved to the windows and adjusted the air-conditioning from high to medium as the bathroom door opened.
“You got any coffee?” Vento said.
“I can make some.”
“Make it then. I need to stay awake.”
“Sleepy, baby?”
“Fuck tired’s more like it. The hell is that?”
Bridget stopped midway to the kitchen and turned around. Vento was pointing to the tissue plug on the floor.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s me.”
“You?”
Bridget went to the tissue and picked it up. “Actually it’s you,” she said. “It must’ve fell out.”
Vento still didn’t get it. Then he looked to where she was pointing and saw his milky liquid had run partway down the inside of her right thigh.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Take a shower.”
Bridget wiped her leg and proceeded to the kitchen. “After I make the coffee,” she said. “Takes two minutes.”
“Shower first, for Christ’s sake,” Vento said.
The telephone rang. Bridget picked up in the kitchen.
“It’s me,” someone said.
Bridget remained silent.
“Eddie?”
Bridget recognized the voice. It was Mister Horse. “It’s for you,” she told Vento.
He shooed her out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she heard him say.
Bridget removed her heels and hustled into the bedroom where she could listen in on the other phone. She slowly, carefully released the receiver and put it to her right ear.
“Where?” Eddie said.
“The mother’s house in Queens.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. Kid’s there, too.”
“Albano?”
“Not that I could tell. I don’t think so, but he’ll probably be there soon enough now I scared her.”
“What’s the address? Hold a second, let me get something to write on.”
“I’ll hold,” the cop said.
“Fuckin’ cunt doesn’t own a note pad. I gotta use a pizza box out the garbage. Go ahead.”
Bridget heard the cop rattle off an address, then Eddie said, “Anything else?”
“You could take a look-see while you’re there, the apartment.”
“Those things you mentioned?”
“Due diligence. Something’s there it won’t be hard to spot.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Don’t take your time, I’m not comfortable being around here after my initial appearance.”
Vento hung up.
Bridget hung up behind him, then went to the door and quietly stepped out into the hall. She went up as far as the kitchen wall and peeked around the corner. She saw Vento was on his hands and knees looking for something under the chair. Then he seemed to see something under the couch and Bridget headed back to the bedroom. She locked the door behind her, slipped on a pair of low-heeled flats and opened the window leading to the fire escape. Then the bedroom door was kicked open.
Chapter 48
Angela Santorra bypassed the crowd because her husband had been brought in by ambulance. She waited for him in the partitioned area he’d been assigned a few hours earlier.
She didn’t hear the curtain open when Nick was back from having his broken nose set.
“Air a kids?” he grunted more than said.
Angela could see his upper lip was very swollen along with his cheeks around the bandage.
“At Mom’s,” she said.
“Ors or ine?”
“Mine. You okay?”
“I ook it?”
She saw there was black and blue around the edges of the bandage near his eyes. His lip was gross. She wondered if he had lost any teeth.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I ot umped. Ee eyes.”
“What?”
He held up three fingers. “Eee,” he said.
“Does it hurt?”
“Ony en I eeth.”
“What?”
“Es, it urs.”
She tried not to talk to him during the drive home. He had that look that scared her, the way he sometimes got when he’d made a big bet and lost. Like a few months ago when Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes and Nick kicked the television screen in because he had wheeled all the other horses on top of Secretariat, four fifty-dolla
r exactas he had sworn would make them rich. His eyes had that same look then they did now.
Angela didn’t know what had happened the night before. She assumed it had to do with what had happened last week when he came home with that knot on his forehead and said some guy had given him a cheap-shot. Maybe it was the same guy again. She wasn’t sure she believed it was three guys.
She managed to keep him calm until he told her to turn left rather than right on Cross Bay Boulevard near their home.
He grumbled when she asked why.
She didn’t understand what he’d said and asked again.
“A un,” he repeated.
“I’m sorry, Nick, I can’t understand. What?”
“A un. A un.”
She saw he had those eyes again. “I can’t make out what you’re saying.”
He pumped his right hand a few times until she realized he had made a gun out of it. “A un,” he said. Then he pointed left for her to turn that way.
Angela didn’t bother asking anything else.
* * * *
Holly hadn’t said a word the entire trip. Louis stopped at a service area along the Garden State Parkway to call about the Cadillac Eldorado. Sharon Dowell yawned into the phone when she answered after six rings.
“Hey, doll,” Louis said.
“Huh?” Sharon said.
“It’s me, Louis.”
“Oh, you woke me,” she said with no emotion.
“Sorry.”
“Can you call back? It’s not even noon yet.”
“Late sleeper, huh?”
“What do you want, Louis?”
“You’re the one told me to call.”
“To call, not to wake me.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s here.”
“What?”
“Your car.”
“It is?” Louis felt a tingle of excitement.
“In the driveway,” she said.
“You serious?”
“Louis, it’s too early in the morning for me to joke. You can come see it this afternoon, but not before three o’clock.”
“This is great. How’s it look?”
“Like a car. A big one.”
“Great. And you have the paperwork?”
“Yes. He already signed it over to me.”
“To you?”
“Don’t worry, I don’t want it. You buy it from me and I’ll sign it over to you.”
“Wait a minute. You bought it? For how much?”
“I bought it as a technicality. He’s waiting on the money.”
“How much?”
“Original sticker price.”
“What was that?”
“Seventy-five hundred.”
“Seventy-five? I thought it was closer to six.”
“Look, hon, we can argue about it when I’m awake.”
Louis huffed. “Alright, but the car looks good?”
“It’s beautiful, yeah.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Okay. It’s okay.”
“Good. I’m going back to sleep now. We’ll talk again later.”
“Alright.”
He didn’t like the twist to the car deal, but Louis was still excited when he hung up. He glanced at his watch and saw he could make it back to New York by mid-afternoon. When he returned to the car Holly was gone.
“Now what?” he said.
He decided he’d give her two minutes.
* * * *
“Put me through to Eddie,” John told Eugene.
He had stopped on his way to his mother’s and made the call from a pay phone on Metropolitan Avenue.
“This John?” Eugene said.
“Yeah, Eugene. He in?”
There was a pause before Eddie Vento said, “It’s me.”
“I didn’t steal that money,” John said.
“I’d like to believe that, but you don’t make it easy.”
“I’m telling you I didn’t steal it. I figured you’d think it was me is why I didn’t call or come back to the bar.”
“And I’m telling you I can’t just take your word.”
“Why not ask the little prick busted my windshield when I was in Northport,” John said. “Last night I busted his nose.”
“Excuse me?”
“Santorra, Eddie. The prick gave me flats during the week, then busted my windshield the same day I was robbed.”
“You fuckin’ kidding me?”
“I broke his nose and I’m not about to apologize for it.”
“After I told you hands off? You’re talking an awful lot of shit for a guy in your position.”
“I’m no tough guy, but I’m not gonna let some punk like Santorra take potshots at my car and then maybe set me up for the crime of the century.”
“The way you two talk about each other makes me suspicious of both of yous.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Remember who you’re talking to, jerkoff.”
John could see Melinda watching him from the car.
“You there?” Vento said.
“I’m here,” John said.
“The point is I need to see your face up close where I can read your eyes better than through a phone.”
“I’m sorry, Eddie, but I can’t do that yet. I need to clear myself of this bullshit and getting my legs broken won’t make it any easier.”
“Who said anything about breaking legs?”
“I’m not coming in yet.”
“You’ll do what I tell you to do, my friend.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said John before he hung up.
“How’d that go?” Melinda asked when he was back in the car.
“It didn’t.”
“Where to now?”
“My mother’s place.”
“You sure?”
“I need to make sure she’s out of there. I don’t trust these pricks. They get to her, she’ll sign her house over.”
“It might buy you time if they think they’re getting paid. Why you should tell them you have it. I have it.”
“I’m not letting you or my mother get robbed.”
“Maybe we don’t see it that way, saving your life.”
John was preoccupied wondering why Nancy had gone along with such a crazy scheme. Melinda turned east onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway when he finally realized why.
“That bitch!”
“What?” Melinda said.
“Nancy.”
“Excuse me, but about fucking time.”
“She told my mother about the money,” John said.
“She was probably counting on telling her.”
“It’s how she justified this from the start.”
“They steal from you and your mother pays it off so nobody gets hurt.”
“Only Nancy’d be stupid enough to think nobody’d get hurt.”
“She knew exactly what she was doing,” Melinda said. “Stop telling me how stupid she is. Right now you’re the stupid one in all this. You’re the one protecting everybody else.”
John saw a sign for an exit and pointed to it. “Take McGuinness Boulevard.”
Melinda checked her rearview mirror and switched from the middle to right lane.
John leaned across the console. “I appreciate your concern,” he said. “I do.”
“It’s about time.”
“Now how ’bout a kiss?”
“How ’bout I break your face?”
“Never mind,” John said.
She was glaring at him again. He winked.
“I’ll kick your ass,” she said. “I swear it.”
* * * *
Brice was growing anxious waiting for Kelly outside the Sutphin Boulevard subway stop. He knew Levin was watching from the van parked half a block behind the Mustang and was nervous Kelly might spot the surveillance. The two had trailed Kelly to a Queens precinct less than an hour ago. When Brice called the precinct, Kell
y had left a message for him to meet outside the subway stop. That was ten minutes ago.
Brice finished the last of a Yoo-Hoo drink and stuffed a napkin inside the mouth of the bottle before setting it down on the floor beneath the passenger seat. As he straightened up, he glanced at the Daily News and saw the headline: Agnew’s Lawyers Start Own Probe.
“Everybody’s dirty,” he said.
A moment later he yawned into a fist. A loud knock on the passenger window made him jump.
“Jesus Christ!” he said.
Kelly removed the Daily News from the passenger seat as he got in the car. “Morning, boyo.”
“More like afternoon,” Brice said.
“I got a lift,” Kelly said.
Brice pulled the fifty-dollar bill from his pants pocket and held it up. “I think you dropped this in my car.”
Kelly waved it off. “Careful, boyo, we’re in the jungle here. They’d cut your nuts off for a pound, never mind something that big.”
Brice went to hand him the bill.
Kelly waved it off again. “Isn’t mine,” he said. “I haven’t seen one of those since I was married.”
“It was on your seat after you got out,” Brice said. “I didn’t put it there.”
“You ask Levin? He sat up front the day before, right?”
“Only till you came, but there was too much traffic back and forth between you two for it not to’ve been noticed. I know it isn’t mine.”
“Looks like it is now.”
Brice was still holding the bill. “You gonna take it?”
“It’s not mine. Keep it, boyo. Get yourself laid tonight. At least put it away before you get us both killed.”
“Shit,” Brice said, stashing the bill in his pants pocket.
“You talk to Levin?” Kelly asked.
“Nope.”
“Give him another few minutes. At least it’s not a sauna again today. Rain last night must’ve helped. Maybe it’ll keep the apes in this jungle in their trees. I’m on the train here once a few years ago, this part a the Congo, there was a guy must’ve shit his pants six years ago the stench was so foul. Which is one reason I don’t like Jamaica. A guy has to piss, his tires could disappear. But don’t talk like that in front of Levin. Guy’s a bleeding heart faggot it comes to the darkies.”
“There’s a rash of stolen cars over in Canarsie,” Brice said. “Worse than anywhere according to a friend a mine in the precinct there, the Sixty-ninth. That’s a white neighborhood.”
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