You Get What You Pay For (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “Were they FBI?”

  “They said it several times. When I didn’t let them in. They held their wallets up to the peephole.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said to let them in, they just wanted to ask me some questions. I said that my husband told me never to let anyone in when I was alone. ‘But we’re the FBI, ma’am,’ they said. Like anyone would let them in. That’s when they put their plastic cards up to the peephole. To tell the truth, I couldn’t read them. My eyes, Tony, they’re not what they used to be. They said it would be beneficial to everyone if I talked to them. I told them they would have to come back when my husband was home. I wouldn’t let them in till then. Did I do right, Antony?”

  “Ma, you did wonderful.”

  “What should I do if they come back?”

  “Tell them the same thing. You can’t let them in until your husband’s home.”

  “And if they find out I’m a widow?”

  “Just keep saying the same thing. If they have a warrant, which they won’t, keep saying it. Then give them the name and phone number of your lawyer.”

  “Come to dinner,” she said.

  “Mom, I’m real busy right now. … ”

  “It’s because you don’t like Guido.”

  “I’m real busy is what it is,” I said.

  “You’ll come next Thursday,” she said. “He really likes you. And he’s very intelligent. Give him a chance.”

  I’d given him a chance. That’s how I knew he was slightly wacko. He had taken to dropping in on the office unannounced. He’d even gone to Dannemora to make contact with Scorcese. The warden must’ve spent his spare time watching old Pat O’Brien movies in which the “fadder” gentles mad-dog psycho killers with trust and a prayer. Guido did get to see Scorcese. When he returned from his second visit, he was visibly excited. “We had a great meeting,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s good. Did you give him absolution or something?”

  “He has agreed to tell all!”

  “Really?” I said. I was skeptical.

  “There are conditions,” Guido said.

  “Conditions?”

  “This is exciting,” he said. “The last time I had such an adrenaline flow was when I was certain that I had detected underlying fallacies in the Summa Theologica. That was a half century ago. And of course”—he sighed—“I hadn’t.”

  “What’s with Scorcese?” I asked him.

  “The first time, I told him that I would help him appeal to the parole board. That was to establish rapport. This trip I turned the discussion to his son. As soon as we touched on that, I knew I had found a way to reach him. He said that Felacco and Ventana were going to pay. I said it was wrong to take vengeance. The Lord would take vengeance. We’re supposed to say that sort of thing. Santino said, ‘But, Fadder, he won’t enjoy it like I’ll enjoy it.’

  “Then he said, and this is the important part,” Guido said, “ ‘I’ll tell you what, Father. If you would do the job on Felacco and Ventana for me, I would tell you anything you want to know.’ So. What do you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’ll talk!” Guido said fervently. “He’s willing to talk under the right conditions. But we have to work together on this. I don’t know how to find these Felacco and Ventana people.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I miss something, or are you talking about murdering two people?” It was definitely time to get him away from my mother.

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t ask you to do something like that.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” I said.

  “I must have gotten ahead of myself. You see, once he said that, I knew we had him. It’s rather like the conversation Mr. Bernard Shaw had with one of his actress acquaintances. He asked her if she would sleep with him for a million pounds. She said, ‘Of course.’ Then he asked her if she would do it for five pounds. ‘What do you think I am?’ she said with outrage. ‘Madame,’ Shaw said, ‘we have already established what you are. Now we are merely haggling over the price.’ ”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “We established that there was a condition under which he would talk. Then it became merely a question of negotiating that condition.”

  “I see,” I said. I didn’t.

  “Which I did. All we have to do is find Felacco and Ventana. Then Scorcese will talk.”

  “We find them? I didn’t know they were missing.”

  “Yes. They are. I’m not sure why, but they’ve gone into hiding.”

  “And then what?”

  “Oh,” Guido said airily, “we give that information to some person that Santino designates. Or to Santino.”

  “I get it,” I said. “We don’t have to do the hit. Just finger the victims.”

  “Is that what we would be doing?” Guido said innocently. “Do we know that? As a moral certainty? Particularly when we consider that such information could be used to serve the ends of justice in a lawful and legal manner, such as turning over the information to the authorities. Really, it’s only a matter of establishing our bona fides, creating an atmosphere of trust, of give and take, in which communication can flourish.”

  “Argued like a priest,” I said.

  “Yes indeed, my son, there are few places like the Church for circuitous and specious logic. It is a grand school for hypocrisy.”

  I put him off. I wasn’t happy about doing a mobster’s dirty work or about working with a seventy-year-old priest aching to enter a Warner Brothers film noir detective fantasy. And I still didn’t understand what the relationship was between my mother and the father.

  Actually, everything else was so unproductive that I might have done something with Guido’s deal. Except that I couldn’t find either Felacco or Ventana. I couldn’t even determine exactly why they were missing. Joey, with his police contacts, had picked up two different stories. One was that the Bronx D.A. finally had something on them that would have them trapped between perjury and a murder rap, so they disappeared before he could bring them in. Entirely possible. If the Bronx D.A.’s office leaked enough for us to hear about it, it leaked enough that all of the five families could discuss it over espresso and anisette.

  “Scorcese, he’s getting it together to get revenge,” was the other story Joey had heard. From a friend at the NYPD Organized Crime Bureau. “Scorcese’s making nice with the Soul Association, which is the most current gang for blacks don’t want to be Muslims. Trying to do, maybe, what Joey Gallo tried to do. Which I, personally, don’t think it’s gonna work.”

  Although we weren’t making progress, we were making money.

  As I told Straightman again, it was a slow and expensive proposition. We talked to reporters, lawyers, wise guys. We spoke to Gunderson’s college professors and people he’d gone to school with. We needed more manpower than just us two. Mostly we used ex-cops, friends of Joey’s. Or friends of his friends. Plus I had Miles Vandercour digging away day by day, tracing the Gunderson empire, billing me week by week. I even had a guy working in Vegas to see if there was a way to tie Gunderson directly to the skim from Le Puta d’Oro. It felt like he was just yanking my chain, but a lot of detective work seems that way until the answers appear.

  I sent out one of our guys, Billy DeVito, to see if any of the grand jurors felt like chatting about his or her experience investigating Randolph Gunderson. The day after he made his first contact, the FBI visited Billy at home. Before breakfast. To notify him that it was considered a federal faux pas.

  Joey was splitting his time between the Gunderson job and what Silverman sent to us. Silverman paid cash. Plus we had a couple of maritals. I put two of Joey’s buddies, named Farrell and Dentato, on that. They called themselves the SAD squad. Special Anti-adultery Division. We paid them fifteen dollars an hour and billed the clients thirty dollars.

  The paperwork was killing me. I called my accountant, Sam Bleer. I said, “Help!”

  “Maybe,” he said, “it’s time for you to get
someone in there, to do the books and watch the billing.” I agreed. “I might even have somebody for you,” he said. “Came in to see me last week. Just got a bookkeeping degree from a junior college. Types ninety words per minute. Smart. And very, very cute.”

  I had a short but delicious fantasy. The one about the secretary under the desk. “You know what?” I said. “My significant other couldn’t handle a just out of junior college and very, very cute. Send someone aged, overweight, with a hint of a mustache.”

  “That’s why Hal didn’t take her.” Sam sighed. “I’ll come by end of the week. Get you squared away for now and figure out if you’re ready for someone full time or part time.”

  I also dug out Eddie Alfoumado’s card. Gene Petrucchio’s nephew. If he was good enough to sweep Dom & Angie’s Luncheonette for listening devices, he was good enough to sweep Cassella-D’Angelo. The FBI has microphones like dogs have fleas. We came up clean. Eddie suggested that we have the office swept weekly. It’s what all the best people do. I thought it was a good idea and billed it to Straightman.

  The following Thursday, I went out to Brooklyn for dinner. As I had promised. Mother was fine.

  Guido had been back to see Scorcese. He was excited again. “We have to get on this,” Father Guido said.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked him. “Scorcese’s gonna be where he is for another five or six years. The soup is delicious.”

  “Where he is,” Guido said, “is in the hospital!”

  “It is good,” my mother said, also tasting the soup.

  “He was stabbed,” Guido said. “They’re out to get him.”

  “How,” I asked, “do you know? And who are they?”

  “Santino reserved The Prince, by Machiavelli. On my recommendation. When it finally came in, he was so pleased that he went to the library without his bodyguard. He had his back to Science Fiction, and someone assaulted him with a homemade ‘shiv.’ The assassin struck from behind, in a most cowardly fashion, but he also struck too high and hit the shoulder blade. Not very competent. You see, if you must attack someone from behind, you should strike low, for the kidneys. That’s the easiest target. Or, of course, attack commando style, slitting the throat.”

  “I didn’t know they covered that in seminary, Father,” I said.

  “Sometimes,” my mother said to me, “you mistake rudeness for wit.”

  “Santino’s actually quite lively. He required only twelve stitches. Normally they prescribe Tylenol for knife wounds, but he has plenty of cash and was able to obtain morphine.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. “I’d hate to think of Santino Scorcese in pain.”

  “It’s a very long trip. Very tiring,” my mother said. “I told Guido that he ought to bill you for his expenses and perhaps you could get the money from your client. He kept all his receipts.”

  “So you can see the urgency of the situation,” Guido said.

  “No. Actually, I can’t.”

  “Is everyone finished with the soup?” my mother asked.

  “They’re certain to try again,” Guido said while my mother collected soup bowls. “Felacco and his people that are behind this. They want to eliminate Santino before he can strike back. Would you like some salad?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll help myself.”

  “We can’t let them get away with that,” Guido said. “A dead witness is no good to us. I told him about us. And how we would find Felacco for him.”

  “Oh, you did,” I said, a little dryly. “Was he thrilled?”

  “He was pleased, I thought. But not overwhelmed. He already has some people looking for them. So you see, it’s sort of a race. Obviously, if the others find them first, Scorcese won’t tell us anything.”

  “This salad is excellent,” I said.

  “When do we start?” Guido said. “I am ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

  “Guido, you’re a friend of my mother’s. You’ve been a great, great help. Really. But you’re what? Sixty-five? A little more? Without insulting you, I don’t think you’re quite fit for this kind of thing.”

  “Frank Felacco, do you know his age?” Guido asked.

  “Age often means wisdom, knowledge,” my mother said.

  “I am exactly the same age as our quarry,” Guido said.

  “Our quarry?”

  “At what age do you propose that people should be put on the shelf?” my mother said.

  “I thought you might be on my side,” I said to my mother. “The people we’re dealing with here are very bad people. For real. Not like when they come to church with their families and it’s ‘How are you, Father?’ ‘How are your adenoids? Your hemorrhoids, I hope they’re better.’ ‘My daughter, she’s so thrilled to be making her first communion.’ And all that crap. Fat Freddy Ventana, he looks like a joke. Felacco told him to hit Arthur Scorcese, and without blinking he put a bullet through the back of Arthur’s head. It wasn’t his first time, either. Frank, he’s into loan sharking. When he leaves church, he goes and has some guy’s legs broken. If he still doesn’t pay, he drops ’im in the bay.

  “Let me put it this way, Father,” I said, turning to him. “You’re too old to die. These are bad people.”

  “I am fascinated with this entire business,” Guido said.

  “Look, I don’t want to be rude. Out of respect for my mother. But the answer is an unequivocal no.”

  “Do you know where to look for them?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. Though the real answer was that I hadn’t a clue.

  “Do you want some dessert, Antony? I have ice cream,” my mother said. “Carvel.”

  “I know,” Guido said. “Not to pinpoint it. But I have a general idea where they can be found. I had some conversations with Mrs. Ventana’s parish priest. She doesn’t know exactly where Fat Freddy is. But she knows approximately where he is.”

  “Where are they?” I asked him.

  “Anthony, Santino Scorcese won’t even speak with you. Your only contact to him is through me. Your only hope of finding Felacco and Ventana is through me. I hate to impose myself on you,” Guido said with that calm, infuriating smile, “but what option do you have?”

  25.

  Men of the Cloth

  IT WAS HIS FOOTBALL.

  I hoped my mother would talk sense. But she supported him. So I took Guido on, reserving the option to get rid of him at the first opportunity. He was the type, with his pleasant, innocent manner and his clerical ways, that invited disasters to happen to other people. I put my foot down about one thing. No black suits and white collars. Guido got that helpless look on his face. I gave him a C-note and told him to buy himself some clothes.

  Even then, the sly bastard didn’t tell me where we were going. Only that we would go somewhere from Miami.

  I was supposed to pick him up to take him to the airport, but at the last minute Jerry Wirtman called. I tried to get Joey to cover it. But he’d been on surveillance late the night before, and he was tired. “What I need is a vacation,” Joey said. “I got to take some time. Like maybe a month.”

  “A month?”

  “What’s been wrong with me, it’s some kind of low-grade virus, is what the doctor said. Rest and sunshine. That’s what I need. And no work. So I got to get away, like for a month.”

  “When?”

  “What I was gonna ask you, you take care of Mario for me. Also the car. I’ll leave the car for you. Well, I should do it soon. You know. Couple of weeks. Soon’s you come back, maybe.”

  So I told Guido to meet me at La Guardia, and that he could borrow cab fare from my mother if he didn’t have it, and I went to see my landlord.

  “I’ve been very pleased with the work you’ve done for me,” Jerry Wirtman said. “That Bergman thing, I have to admit, I doubted you when it took so long. And when you went to Paris, I was certain—I’m sorry, I’m a suspicious person, the world we live in”: he sighed in Yiddish—“that a vacation you were taking on my money. Such terrible th
oughts. I know now that you are an honest person. Even if there is no such thing as a detectives’ union, is there?”

  “In a more perfect world,” I said.

  “The FBI came to speak to me,” he said, “about the Bergman case. They said that the French police were interested.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They said they were going to try for extradition.”

  “For a goy, you have a Yiddisher kop,” he said. It’s a great compliment for one of them to say a Gentile has a Jewish mind, since they’re convinced we’re all as intellectually dull as Midwesterners. “So from one Yiddisher kop to another, I’ll tell you something. This gonif shyster … Madigliani?”

  “Magliocci.”

  “ … who was stealing my money under the pretense of being a Bergman. Him. He was not the only person they were interested in, these FBIs. I think they were interested in you. A lot of questions they asked that had nothing to do with Magliocci. With you.”

  I thanked him again, this time genuinely.

  “Such bad thoughts that I had about you before.” He shook his head. “I would like to make that up to you. A free-lance person—pardon if I am being presumptuous, but banks often do not understand. The days when a banker would look at a person as a person, and say this is an honest and hardworking man, a man of his word, if such days existed, they are long gone. All they have are profiles and formulas. So perhaps if you and the young woman, the two of you are planning to make a purchase of the apartment, you may find—again pardon my presumption—difficulty in dealing with the mortgage. If that is the case, I would be willing to carry the mortgage. This is not in any way charity,” he added. “It is a very shrewd maneuver on my part. If you were to default, I would be obtaining the property at the insider price and make an excellent profit.”

  “Thank you,” I said. What he didn’t say was that it was important to him that we buy the apartment. He needed two or three more votes to get approval of the conversion plan. Glenda was one of the more vocal holdouts. “On what terms?” I asked him.

  “Oh, whatever the going rate is.”

  “OK,” I said in my most disinterested tone. If he wanted us to make a private deal behind the backs of our neighbors, he was going to have to add the sellout bonus.