by Eric Rill
“We’ll sell two and a half million worth this month. Break it down into two or three transactions and run the paper trail around the Horn like usual.”
“Do you want me to show it as a sale to Concept Refiners?” Craven asked.
“Shit no! You’ve used them too often. If the feds ever audit us…”
“They’re too stupid to figure that out,” Craven said. “Besides, Concept charges us half of what the others do.”
“It’s your ass, Johnny boy. Do whatever you think is best.”
“Anything for your account?” Craven asked.
Castellano opened his briefcase and took out a bulky envelope. “There’s just under a hundred in there. Take your cut and then send thirty down to my Nassau account and ten to the cop’s account. And I want you to open an account for a lady friend of mine,” Castellano said, pulling out a scrap of paper. “Here’s her details and a sample of her signature. Deposit the rest of the cash in it, and get me a debit card for her.”
“Consider it done,” Craven said. “Should I have Grant come in now?”
“Yeah,” Castellano said, folding his papers and putting them back in his briefcase.
*
“Lawrence,” Craven said as the heavy wooden door opened. “Please join us over here.”
Lawrence Grant shook hands with the banker and nodded to Castellano before settling into a Regency side chair.
“Do I have to check you for a wire?” Castellano asked.
“If you check me every time we meet, I’ll begin to wonder whether you’re looking for an excuse to get close to me,” Grant said, forcing a laugh.
“If I ever turned, it wouldn’t be for an old fart like you,” Castellano said, a thin smile passing his lips. “How much can you move for us this month?”
“Occupancy is slow again this week,” Grant said, “so we should be able to handle a big number, bigger than last month.”
“Nice,” Castellano said, taking a dog-eared notebook and a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket. “What’s the breakdown?”
“Most of it at the Excelsior—as much as eighty rooms a night.” Grant went on to give a detailed account while Castellano jotted down figures in his tiny, cramped scrawl. Except for the Crown, which Grant’s son had turned around, all the other hotels still had poor occupancy and almost no food and beverage business. And they had spent a lot of money on renovations and repairs and maintenance—illicit money from Castellano’s operation. Yet the books showed almost 90 percent occupancy and a thriving restaurant and bar business week after week as Castellano funneled cash from the Pascale drug business into the hotels, disguised as revenue—another way the family legitimized their dirty money. Although Levin and Grant owned the hotels on paper, they had become partners with the mob. And, in conformance with a contract executed years before—except for a small portion left to his widow—Levin’s share had been purchased from his estate for promissory notes from offshore charitable trusts owned by the Pascale family.
“What about the Crown?” Castellano asked. “If we had those three hundred and fifty rooms and built an addition on the vacant land next door, we could really ratchet things up.”
“I told you, the Crown is not part of this,” Grant said.
“But your son isn’t there anymore,” Castellano said.
“He’s going to come back one of these days,” Grant insisted. “The Crown is not on the table and that’s final. You’ve screwed up my life enough as it is!”
“Easy, Lawrence,” Craven said. “Tommy was just asking.”
“Mr. Pascale wants more rooms, maybe even a few restaurants,” Castellano said, putting away his notebook. “He’s willing to finance it. You interested?”
Grant thought for a moment. “Look, Tommy, my life is in shambles; my daughter-in-law, grandson and partner are dead.…”
“You interested or not?” Castellano persisted.
Grant stood up and pulled two envelopes stuffed with bills out of his breast pocket and handed them to Castellano. “There’s only five grand in each,” he said in a flat voice. “That’s all I could do without raising my comptroller’s eyebrows.”
Castellano gave one to Craven and tossed the other into his open briefcase. “You didn’t answer me?”
Grant avoided Castellano’s stare. “If I’m not, I guess I don’t have to ask what the consequences would be.”
14
Maggie Parks sprawled out on a leather sofa in the living room, an ashtray filled with cigarette butts on the floor beside her. She picked up the phone on the second ring. “No surprise,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I figured it was him.” She grabbed her pack of Camels, lifted one out with her lips, and lit it. “Yeah, Leo. I got it, but what about the girl?… Well, get back to me as soon as you hear.”
“Napoli is Castellano?” Roskind said.
“You should be assistant director with an IQ like that.” Maggie snorted. “Who else did you expect? Al Capone?”
“What about the broad in the counting room?”
“Leo said he’s expecting to hear any minute,” Maggie replied. They had pulled the same sting on Angela, getting fingerprints and pictures when she accepted a package from Roskind, this time from the U.S. Postal Service.
“My guess is she’s a girlfriend of one of the capos,” Roskind said. “Can’t have looks like that and brains too.”
“You are such an asshole, Roskind! I can’t believe I even speak to you.”
“You think she’s a mastermind in the Pascale family?” Roskind grinned.
“They have to trust her to let her count all that money—especially if she’s not family.” Maggie’s phone rang. “But I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” she said, picking up the receiver.
Maggie listened, thanked Rigby for the information, and hung up the phone.
“So?” Roskind asked, chewing on the remnants of his ham and Swiss.
“Her name’s Angela Ferraro. She got released from Marysville a few months ago,” Maggie said.
Roskind parted the drapes, put the binoculars to his eyes, and scanned the parking lot. “Castellano’s car has been parked there for almost an hour,” he said. “He’s in a fifteen-minute delivery zone.”
“What do you give a shit?” Maggie asked. “You want to ticket him?”
“Cute, Maggie,” Roskind responded, trying not to smile. “Just not his usual pattern.”
“Didn’t know you were so intimate with him.”
“There she is!” Roskind exclaimed. “She’s running past the dumpsters in the parking lot.”
“Let me see,” Maggie said, wrestling the binoculars away. “Shit! What did you do to these?” she yelled, fumbling with the binoculars, finally bringing Angela into focus. “Jesus Christ! Looks like she’s been in a catfight!”
Maggie’s eyes followed Angela as she limped across the courtyard toward the north tower’s lobby. “Gary, get down there and see what you can find out. Just make sure she doesn’t see you!”
*
Nick Grant was cleaning a window on the fifth floor of the north tower when he heard the screams. He followed the sounds to the edge of a ravine past the south tower. He could see two people rolling on the ground. The woman freed herself and began running toward the courtyard, but the man grabbed her and brought her down again, pummeling her with his fists. Then he dragged her back toward the ravine. Suddenly she heaved up to a ninety-degree position and grabbed for the man’s foot. He jerked back, slipping on the soggy topsoil. The woman hobbled away back across the courtyard. As she got closer, Grant realized it was Angela Ferraro. He dropped his squeegee on the carpet, ran out of the apartment, and flew down the service stairs to the courtyard.
Grant tore across the pavement—unaware that Maggie’s binoculars were now trained on him. As he reached the entrance of the south tower, he noticed a dark-colored sedan drive behind the building near the dumpsters. He raced through the lobby and up the service stairs to the second floor and banged on Angela’s do
or, but there was no response. He looked down the corridor and, seeing no one, reached in his pocket for a master key that he planned to use to get into Apartment 718 later in the afternoon. He turned the key in the lock and the door opened a few inches until the safety chain stopped it. “What are you doing here?” Angela demanded, her eyes peering through the gap.
“I saw what happened,” Grant said, grimacing as he looked at her cut lip and the lacerations on her face.
“Get out of here. It’s none of your business,” Angela insisted.
“I’m going to call the police,” Grant said.
“No!” she said, letting the chain fall away. “Come in here—quickly!”
“I need to know what’s going on,” Grant said, slamming the door behind him.
“It was just an accident.”
“Bullshit!” Grant shouted, now pacing back and forth in the small living room. “I remembered where I’ve seen you before—you were a cashier at that motel down off Broad Street.”
“Yeah, I worked at the Bluebird. So what?” Angela said, an arm perched on her narrow hip.
“And I’m sure it was you in Apartment 306,” Grant said. “And you were counting money—a lot of money!”
“I told you before, you must have mistaken me for someone else.”
Grant’s eyes bore down on her. “Angela, don’t take me for a fool!”
15
Captain Hank Morton stuffed the last of his double cheeseburger into his mouth, wiped the ketchup from his chin, and picked up the receiver. He scribbled notes on a yellow pad as he listened. Then he looked over at the board on the wall beside his desk, where all the detectives on his payroll and their cases were listed. Most cases were in black marker, indicating they were closed. The few unsolved ones were in green. Homicides had gone down from a high of 131 a few years back, when he first got the job, to fewer than 70 this year. He checked to see who was next up on rotation and reached for the phone.
A half hour later Jimmy Rosa walked into Morton’s office without knocking. “Where have you been, Bones? You look like shit!” Morton said, eyeing Rosa’s crumpled clothes and dirty shoes. “You’re on the bubble, but I almost gave this one to Peters.”
“I was finishing a tail on some asshole in the Blair case,” Rosa replied, sinking into a black vinyl chair in the cramped office.
“Got a call on a white male over by the Langham Apartments,” Morton said, handing him an empty file folder with a case number printed on white tape stuck on the top right corner. “Two of our squad cars are over there now. Looks like it’s probably a grounder so I’m going to give you the rookie as backup. Teach him, Bones, but don’t cut his balls off.”
“If his voice is an octave higher next week, you’ll know I didn’t follow orders.” Rosa laughed. “Where is he?”
“On his way over from lunch,” Morton said.
A few minutes later, Virgil Parks knocked on the open door. “You call for me?” he asked, trying to catch his breath.
“You didn’t have to get indigestion, Parks,” Rosa said, shoving the folder into his hands. “Dead bodies don’t move.”
“Where’s the body?” Parks asked.
“On the fucking ground, you moron,” Rosa said.
“I mean where?”
“Down by the Langham Apartments.”
Parks looked down at the floor and then over at Morton. “I was by there just before lunch, didn’t see a thing.”
“Well, either you’re blind, or it happened later,” Morton said.
“He’s blind,” Rosa said, poking Parks in the stomach with his pen. “Let’s go check it out.”
*
Rosa pulled up behind the two squad cars near the north tower. Before getting out he noted the time, weather, and other pertinent information on his pad and handed it to Parks. Then he and Parks got out and slid under the yellow tape that had been jimmied up between a tree stump and a boulder that jutted out of the uneven ground near the ravine. “Well, if it isn’t the new suit,” one of the cops said. “How does it feel to be a prima donna?”
Parks straightened his tie. “You’re not going to treat me any different ’cause I’m wearing this fancy set of clothes, are you?” he laughed, clipping the top of the officer’s head with his open hand.
“Cut the shit!” Rosa ordered. “Where’s our John Doe?”
“Down there,” the officer said, pointing toward the bottom of the ravine.
They traversed the steep terrain from one side to the other until they reached the base of the ravine. Parks reached into the bag he was carrying and handed a pair of plastic gloves to Rosa before snapping his on. Rosa knelt down and felt for a pulse, even though he figured that the cops and medics had already done the same. “Has the Crime Scene Unit photographed him?” Rosa asked one of the cops who had followed them down.
“Yeah, they’re just waiting till you’re done and then they’ll finish their work,” the officer replied, pointing to the two men standing by the bushes.
Rosa grabbed the dead man’s shoulder and slowly turned him over.
“Do you know him?” Parks asked, watching Rosa’s eyes.
“No.” Rosa hesitated, releasing the man. He reached into the man’s coat pocket, pulled out a wallet, and opened it. “This guy is Tommy Castellano!” Rosa said, not looking up at Parks.
“Who’s Tommy Castellano?” Parks asked.
“Wiseguy. Works for the Pascale family out of Cleveland,” Rosa said. “He’s right up there next to God!”
“If he wasn’t before, he is now.” Parks laughed.
“Get his ID and record it in the file,” Rosa said, tossing the wallet to Parks.
Parks took the dead man’s elbow and bent it with little effort. He felt his skin. It was still warm. He opened his shirt. There was no dark red pooling of blood. He scribbled down on his pad that the man had been dead for less than three hours. Parks checked his eyes and inside his mouth, looking for signs of petechial hemorrhages. Then he went through his pockets. There was nothing but a candy bar and some change. He dropped them into separate plastic bags and sealed them.
Parks took off his plastic gloves and tossed them into a separate bag.
“Detective, should I tell the Crime Scene Unit it’s okay to diagram the scene now?” one of the cops asked.
Rosa looked up the hill and then back at the officer. “Yeah. And when they’re finished, call into Dispatch and tell them we have a ten-twenty-eight here and we’ll need a road commode to get the body over to the morgue,” he ordered.
“I think we’re done here,” Rosa said as he and Parks started the long walk up the ravine. “What’s your take?”
“He might have slipped and fell,” Parks said. “The ground looked pretty unstable by the edge from all the rain we’ve had.”
“Yeah, he might have been standing by the edge. Makes sense,” Rosa said.
“There were a bunch of footprints, Bones. But it will be almost impossible to find anything in that muck. Could have been one of the homeless guys wandering up here from the Bottoms.”
“Don’t bother looking for prints,” Maggie Parks said as she reached the edge of the ravine.
“Maggie! What are you doing here?”
“You know this broad?” Rosa asked.
“Bones, this is Maggie Parks.”
“She don’t look like she’s your mother,” Rosa grumbled.
“My ex-wife,” Parks explained. “Maggie, what are you doing here?”
“Maybe I should be asking you the same thing,” she said. “Since when did you trade your uniform in for that cheap suit, Virgil?”
“Lady, we have work to do,” Rosa said, yanking on his earlobe. “Virgil, say goodbye to the little woman.”
“Who is this dickhead?” Maggie asked.
“Detective Jimmy Rosa—Homicide, Columbus police,” Rosa said, squaring his tight shoulders.
“You really need better manners, Detective,” Maggie said, flipping open her ID. “Special Agent Magg
ie Parks, FBI.”
“Maggie, what are you doing here? Do you have a case going?” Parks asked.
“Doesn’t matter why I’m here,” she said in a clipped tone.
“You telling me you was married to a fed, Parks?”
“Do you want to know what I saw or not, Detective?”
“What did you mean when you said don’t bother about the footprints?” Virgil asked.
“There was a woman running across the courtyard,” Maggie said. “She dashed into the south tower. Far as I can tell, she’s still in there.”
“Which apartment?” Rosa demanded.
“I’m not sure,” Maggie said. “It’s kind of complicated.”
“How complicated can it be? Either you know or you don’t,” Rosa said.
“Virgil, I have to run, but check out the guy who washes the windows,” Maggie said. “I saw him chasing after the girl.”
“Maggie, how do you know all this?” Parks asked.
“Nice seeing you again, Virgil,” Maggie said as she turned back toward the parking lot.
“Good thing you didn’t let on who the corpse was,” Rosa said after Maggie walked away. “This is our investigation. I wouldn’t want the feds butting in.”
*
Nick Grant slipped out the service door of the south tower and weaved his way through the police cruisers that jammed the parking lot.
“That’s him,” Jimmy Flinker said. “He’s the window washer.”
“Jesus Christ! What are you doing here, Nick?” Parks exclaimed. “And what happened to your face?”
“Courtesy of one of our tenants,” Flinker intoned.
Grant yanked his cap down over his forehead.
“Mr. Grant?” Rosa said, equally surprised. “We met up at the hospital.”
“I remember,” Grant said, looking over at one of the cruisers.
“Where were you just now?” Rosa asked.
“In the south tower, doing some inside work.”
