The Piranhas
Page 15
“She makes good coffee,” Uncle Rocco said.
Jed nodded. “You didn’t come here for coffee.”
“That’s right.” He took another sip. “The Canadian got whacked,” he said.
“I know,” Jed said. “I was there.”
“He was a bad man,” Uncle Rocco said.
“No worse than the others,” Jed said. “Everybody gets greedy when it comes to money.”
“It’s not only money,” Rocco said. “He turned on his friends. That’s against the rules.”
“I don’t understand,” Jed said.
“Rico,” he said. “He went to New York and told Giuliani where I get all the money I loaned him. Now Giuliani is getting the U.S. District Attorney in New Jersey to prepare another case against me. They tried to get me in Manhattan, then in Brooklyn, and lost. Now they’re trying again.”
“What is that law about double jeopardy?” Jed asked.
Rocco laughed. “Don’t be stupid. Each case is different. They’re digging up other charges. The latest I hear from the grapevine, they’re trying to tie me into the unions and the corruption in Atlantic City.”
“Can they make it stick?” Jed asked.
“I don’t think they can. When I was offered Atlantic City unions, I turned it all down and gave it to the Scarfo family from Philadelphia. They wanted it, so I told them they could have them all. I was not interested in the day-to-day bullshit. I wanted to be like Frank Costello. An elder statesman.”
“Then what do you have to worry about?”
“Nothing, I hope,” he said. “The only hard information they have was from Jarvis. But he can’t go in front of the grand jury now. Dead men can’t give testimony.”
Jed stared at his uncle in surprise. “Don’t tell me you had him whacked?”
Uncle Rocco was indignant. “Do you think I’m stupid? Then Giuliani would really crawl up my ass.”
“He’ll still try to nail you,” Jed said.
“Trying and getting are two different things,” Uncle Rocco retorted. “Not that I wouldn’t have liked to get the son of a bitch, but somebody beat me to it.”
“I need a drink,” Jed said, getting up. He looked down at his uncle. “Would you like something?”
The old man nodded. “Do you have any vino rosso?”
“Bolla Chianti,” he said.
“Vintage?” his uncle asked.
“Of course. I learned something from you.”
He walked into the living room. Uncle Rocco’s men were sitting on the couch, a pot of coffee on the small table before them. He went into his bedroom.
Kim was sitting on the bed, a newspaper spread out in front of her. She looked at him. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. How about you?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “A little bit nervous but okay.”
“Relax,” he said. “Uncle Rocco wants vino rosso and I need a drink, too. I just came out to get it.”
“Want me to help?” she asked.
“No, I can handle it.” He went back through the living room to the kitchen. He opened a bottle of wine. Then he went to the bar in the corner of the living room and picked up a bottle of Glenlivet, glasses, and a bucket of ice, put them on a tray, and went back to the den.
His uncle picked up the wine and checked the label. “Eighty-two,” he said in a satisfied voice. “A very good year. You really learned something.”
Jed smiled and helped himself to scotch on the rocks while his uncle poured himself a glass of wine. He held up his glass. “Salute.”
“Salute.” Jed sipped at his drink. He waited until his uncle finished his wine and refilled the glass. He met his uncle’s eyes. “Do you have any idea who did it?”
“I have an idea,” Uncle Rocco answered. “The hit was ordered out of Canada. The hit man was a French Canadian who works both sides of the border.”
“It ought to be easy for the police to pick him up then,” Jed said.
Uncle Rocco smiled. “They’ll never come near him. He’s a real pro. By now he’s probably on his way to Europe or South America.”
“You seem sure of that,” Jed said.
“That’s where he’ll be paid. France or Peru.” His uncle drank more of his wine. “If he’s really smart he’ll go to France. If he winds up in Peru, he’ll be finished. He’ll get whacked.”
“You know something that I don’t?” Jed asked.
His uncle nodded. “Alma Vargas.”
“The Peruvian girl?” Jed said in surprise. “Where did she get into this?”
“She had married Jarvis in France three years ago. He was getting ready to divorce her. She didn’t like it. Jarvis was a very rich man. Now she’s a very rich putana.” Uncle Rocco chuckled. “You don’t know how difficult it was for me to get her out of the country when you came back with her. She wanted to marry you.”
“Jesus,” Jed said. He poured himself another scotch. “There goes your money.”
“Maybe not.” Uncle Rocco smiled. “She still likes you.”
“Wait a minute,” Jed said. “She’s not going to give you back the money.”
“I know that,” Uncle Rocco said. “All I want you to do is arrange for her to put Jarvis’s interest in support of Shepherd.”
“Does she know that you gave Jarvis the money?”
“She introduced me to Jarvis. I thought he had a great plan.” He stared into his wineglass. “Maybe I wasn’t so smart, but neither was Jarvis. That Peruvian putana was smarter than all of us.”
“Peruvian pussy.” Jed laughed.
“I don’t understand,” his uncle said.
Jed looked at him. “One day, many years ago, when I was young, she stood naked on the deck of the boat in the Amazon, and she told me about Peruvian pussy. It was the best in the world, she said. But she never told me as well that it was the smartest.”
“What do you think?” Uncle Rocco asked. “Will you talk to her?”
“Of course I will,” Jed replied. “But we don’t have to do anything. The money is already in the company and there’s no way she can get it out. Believe me, Uncle Rocco, this is something I really know about. By the time I’m finished, Shepherd and I will control it all, and she will have only a minority interest.”
The old man stared at him. “You mean that?”
“That’s my kind of business,” Jed answered.
Uncle Rocco sat there silently for a while, then he sighed. “I’m getting old,” he said. “Ten years ago I would never have gone for a scam like this. It was too legal for me.”
“Legal or illegal—it’s where they draw the lines. They’re the same thing.”
“No,” the old man said. “I’m too old. I’ve lost my smarts.”
“You’re the same as you always were, Uncle Rocco,” Jed said gently. “It’s just a different game.”
Uncle Rocco shook his head slowly. “I want you to come back to the family.”
“I’ve never left the family, Uncle Rocco,” Jed said. “What is it that you want me to do?”
“I am getting old,” Rocco said in a weary voice. “I want you to help me.”
Jed took the old man’s hand. He felt it trembling. “Tell me, Uncle Rocco.”
“Get me out of the battlefield,” Uncle Rocco said. “I want to die in bed.”
The Last Man of Honor
SALTWATER TAFFY. THE Steel Pier. The auction houses that filled every other store on the boardwalk with phony antiques. The two-passenger rolling chairs pushed back and forth along the boardwalk by a smiling black man who also acted as a tour guide for seventy-five cents an hour. The white sand covered with picnicking families. The vendors, mostly teenage kids, selling candy apples, Eskimo pies, and popsicles. That was the Atlantic City I remembered when I was eight years old and spent two weeks at Aunt Rosa’s in the small house she had rented at the far end of the boardwalk.
It was not anything like the monster hotels and casinos I looked down on from Uncle Rocco’s penthouse th
at turned the million lights into Las Vegas-on-the-boardwalk. I moved away from the windows and went back to Uncle Rocco’s large mahogany desk. On the corner of the desk was a large candy dish of saltwater taffy. I gestured toward it. “I never knew that you liked that.”
“Why not? The President has a jar of jelly beans on his desk.”
I laughed. “Okay. But I remember when I stayed at Aunt Rosa’s she wouldn’t let me have any. She said it would make cavities in all my teeth.”
“All women had funny ideas in those times. Did it ever give you any cavities?”
“I had a few when I was a kid,” I said. “But I don’t know whether it was from saltwater taffy. I never got to eat that much.”
“I eat it all the time and I don’t have any cavities. All it does is stick to my choppers and I have to take them out and clean them.”
“I never knew you had false teeth.”
“I’ve had them a long time,” he answered. “When I was young some son of a bitch hit me in the face with a baseball bat.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. “I was going to blow the bastard away but your grandfather stopped me. He was a Genovese, and it would have started a war. That would have been really crazy because they would have wiped us out. At that time the Genovese was the biggest family in New York. So my father sent me to the best orthodontist in Manhattan and I wound up with the greatest-looking choppers in the world.”
I laughed. “They’re still pretty good.”
He nodded. “This is about the fifth pair.”
I looked at him. “We have some things to talk about.”
“That’s right,” he said. The telephone rang and he picked it up. He listened for a moment, then answered, “Send him in.” He looked up at me. “I have to talk to this man. It won’t take too long.”
“I can wait,” I said. “Do you want me to leave the room?”
“No,” he answered. “You can stand near the windows.” He opened a drawer from his desk and handed a Luger automatic to me. “I know you know how to work one of these.”
I stared at him. “You’re expecting trouble?”
“Not really,” he said. “But in my business—” He shrugged his shoulders.
I walked over to the windows as I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket. From the corner of my eyes I saw the man come through the door—a swarthy man of medium height wearing a tight-fitting suit and sporting a dark and angry face.
My uncle rose from his desk and held out his hand. “Nico,” he said smoothly, “good to see you.”
The man ignored my uncle’s hand. “You screwed me out of three hundred grand,” he said harshly.
My uncle was unruffled. “You’re a fool,” he said. “If I wanted to screw you I would have taken you for three million.”
Nico seemed to get angrier. “It isn’t the money,” he snapped. “It’s the principle.”
“What do you know about principle, you asshole?” Uncle Rocco’s voice grew cold. “You screwed your father before he was cold on his deathbed. What happened to the money your father wanted to divide between you and your uncle?”
“My uncle disappeared,” Nico said. “We never could find him.”
“You made sure that nobody would look for him,” Uncle Rocco said, his voice still cold. “Especially in the pig farm you owned in Secaucus.”
“That’s all horseshit,” Nico said angrily. “That has nothing to do with this. You still owe me three hundred grand.”
Uncle Rocco stood up behind his desk. “I am a man of honor,” he said quietly. “I made an agreement with your father when I came down here. He took over the unions and he gave me five thousand a month for expenses. After your father died I never asked for the money. It was sent each month to me by messenger just as it came from your father.”
Nico stared at him. “Nobody was authorized to do that.”
“That’s your problem,” my uncle said flatly. “Maybe nobody in your organization likes you.”
“I’ll get rid of the son of a bitch,” Nico said.
“Still your problem,” Uncle Rocco said. “You make sure that the five grand comes to me every month. Just as your father and I had agreed.”
“And if I don’t?”
Uncle Rocco smiled and again sat back in his chair. “As I said, I am a man of honor. I keep my word, and I believe you will honor your father’s word.” He paused a moment, then smiled gently. “Or you will find yourself joining your uncle in the pig farm.”
Nico stared at him. “You’re crazy, old man. I can hit you right here.”
I started to take the Luger from my pocket, but Uncle Rocco, who was watching from the corner of his eye, shook his head. I let the gun stay in my pocket.
“Then you’re more of a fool than I thought,” Uncle Rocco said easily. “You’d never get out of here alive.” He laughed. “I’m seventy-two, you’re only forty-seven. You’re getting lousy odds. Insurance companies give me four years, they give you twenty-seven.”
Nico sat quietly for a moment. Finally he nodded. “Don Rocco,” he said in a respectful voice, “I apologize. I was angry.”
“It is nothing, my son,” Uncle Rocco said quietly. “Just think before you act. You will find that life will be easier.”
“Yes, Don Rocco,” Nico said, rising from his chair. “I apologize again.”
“Goodbye, my son,” Uncle Rocco said. He watched Nico leave the room, then turned around to me. “Now you know why I want you to get me out. I’m tired of dealing with these crazies.”
“Do you really think he would have done anything?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Uncle Rocco asked. “But he won’t get another chance. I have his first underboss already talking to the Feds. They’ll get him.”
“You deal with the FBI?”
“No,” he answered.
“But you had his man talk to the Feds.”
“That man came to me for advice. He knew I was a man of honor with much experience,” he said quietly. “All I told him is that the Feds would not kill him, and Nico would. What he decided to do was his own choice.” He held out his hand. “Give me the gun.”
I placed the Luger on the desk in front of him. He placed it in the desk drawer, but not before he polished it with a soft rag. “I don’t want any of your fingerprints on it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And why did you leave it unloaded? I might have been killed.”
Uncle Rocco smiled. “No way. I have a sawed-off shotgun built into the desk aimed at the chair he was sitting in. He would have been blown across the Atlantic Ocean.”
I stared at him. “You lie a lot, Uncle Rocco. What else have you lied to me about?”
He shook his head sadly. “You’re family. I am a man of honor. Whatever I tell you is for your own protection.”
“What protection do I need?” I asked. “I live a straight life. General Avionics is a respected company. All we do is buy airplanes and lease them to airlines. Everything is legitimate.”
My uncle looked up at me sadly. “A Di Stefano is a Di Stefano even if his legal name is Stevens. Maybe the world you live in doesn’t know that, but the world that you were born into knows who you are. Even back in Sicily. That’s why your father went off the mountain in Trapani. Old worlds don’t die, their hatreds and vendettas live on.”
I stared at him. “You haven’t retired, have you?”
He didn’t answer.
“My father said that,” I said bitterly. “Not to trust your word.”
Uncle Rocco looked straight into my eyes. “You have to believe me. I have never betrayed my family.”
“A man of honor,” I said sarcastically. “I haven’t heard that before. Where did you pick that up?”
His voice was cold. “The five biggest families are in New York. They respect me. The Sicilian commission, composed of the most important families, including the Corleones and the Borgettos, honor me as the only American who is their equal. I h
ave never betrayed their trust and respect.”
“If that is true,” I asked, “why are you concerned that someone would kill you?”
“The older men are gone. The young are taking over and they’re all greedy. They can’t wait.”
“What do they want from you?” I asked. “You tell me you’re out of the business.”
Uncle Rocco shook his head. He tapped his temple with a forefinger. “This is what they want. I am the only one left who can communicate between the old world and the new. They know that one word from me, and they would be cut off from the old country.”
“Why should that bother them?”
“Ten to fifteen billion a year,” he said.
“The Sicilians have that much power?”
“They have a worldwide army. They have made deals with the Chinese triads and the Colombian cartels. That gives them thousands of soldiers.” He took a deep breath. “But here in America, it’s not like it used to be. Once we were kings, now we’re scrambling for crumbs. The Americans are getting weaker, each family is becoming smaller and smaller, what with the American government nailing them from all sides with the Rico Act.”
I was silent for a moment. “I still don’t know what you want me to do.”
He stared at me. “How much do you think your business is worth?”
“Maybe two or three billion,” I said.
“How much do you get out of it?”
“Over a million a year.”
He laughed. “Chicken shit.”
I just looked at him.
“What if I could put you into a legitimate investment company with over twenty billion in cash and assets that you would own forty percent of, and earn you more than five million a year?” His voice was dripping honey.
“And who would own the other sixty percent?” I asked.
He nodded. “Other men of honor?”
I shook my head. “Uncle Rocco, Uncle Rocco,” I said, laughing, “that’s too rich for my blood. I’m happy in my own little store.”
“You’re getting more and more like your father,” Uncle Rocco grumbled. “I could have made him into a multimillionaire. But he went his own way.”
“He did all right,” I said. “He had a good business and a good life. What more can any man want?”