Criminal Conversation

by Ed McBain

  “I know you all understand the importance of this case,” he’d said, “and I think you understand, too, how serious a breach it would be if any one of us provoked suppression of the material we’ve been gathering so painstakingly. So I’d like to tell you one more time: when in doubt, shut down.”

  He’d also told them to pay strict attention during the days and weeks to come because the death of Rudy Faviola was sure to cause ripples. So here they were, three days after the beginning of spring, sitting in the middle of all those ripples, listening to the broken noses discussing who was going to take over The Accountant’s position in the organization.

  The mucky-mucks began arriving at two that afternoon.

  Benny Vaccaro no longer pressed clothes in the back of his father’s shop. From conversations between him and Andrew Faviola, earlier overheard and recorded, they knew that he was now working on a pier on the West Side, probably offloading false-bottom crates containing all sorts of controlled substances. Or so they surmised. In none of the conversations had anything illegal ever been mentioned. They had tuned out the moment they’d realized Faviola was offering the kid a seemingly honest job.

  The new presser was someone named Mario.

  They hadn’t yet got his last name, but they figured he had to be a cousin or nephew of a mob soldier, or the son of someone a mob soldier knew, in any event a person who could be trusted to witness the comings and goings of various higher-ups without later discussing it with anyone.

  “Hello, Mario.”

  “Hello, Mr. Triani.”

  Mario sounded younger than Benny. They figured him to be sixteen or seventeen, a high school dropout working his way up the echelons of organized crime, starting as a presser who mistered and sirred all the big shots to death.

  “Hello, Mr. Bardo.”

  “Hello, Mario.”

  Followed by the familiar voice on the speaker, Faviola telling each of his business associates, the fuckin’ creeps, to come on up, and then buzzing them in. By two thirty, all of them were assembled. Regan and Lowndes had counted an even dozen of them, six more than had been present the last time there’d been a meeting here, when all they had going for them was the downstairs bug. This time if a flea farted upstairs, they’d be hearing it and recording it.

  The first order of business was to tell Faviola how sorry they were about his uncle and to tell Triani how sorry they were about his father-in-law, who happened to be one and the same dead gangster. Sal the Barber led off with his condolences, and he was followed by Frankie Palumbo and Fat Nickie Nicoletta, who knew Rudy from the old days and who was one of the elderly thugs present who still called Andrew Faviola by his childhood nickname “Lino.” On and on the ritual grief went, each and every wop hoodlum paying his respect to that poor, dear, departed fuck, Rudy “The Accountant” Faviola.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Regan said.

  That out of the way, Faviola told the assembled mobsters that his uncle’s death left a gap in the organization which he had discussed with his father when he went out to Leavenworth last week …

  “So that’s where he was,” Lowndes whispered.

  “. . . and my father feels the way I do, we both agree on who should take Uncle Rudy’s place, may he rest in peace.”

  “Amen,” Regan said.

  “Petey, I don’t want you to get upset by this,” Faviola said. “This has nothing to do with the very real value the family places on you …”

  “I don’t want it, anyway,” Bardo said at once.

  “It’s simply that you’re too valuable where you are,” Faviola said.

  “I told you I don’t want it, Andrew!”

  His voice rapping out angrily. He was no dope, Petey Bardo, and he’d undoubtedly guessed what was coming, and had prepared himself to get through this one with his dignity intact. But venting steam at little Andy Boy was one thing. Getting pissed off by a decision jointly arrived at by the Faviola padre e figlio was quite another thing.

  “What you want matters to us, of course,” Faviola said smoothly. “But what’s best for the family matters even more. We need you where you are, Petey. And we need Bobby to take over Uncle Rudy’s responsibilities. That’s the way we think it’ll work best.”

  The room went silent.

  The words “underboss” and “consigliere” had never once been mentioned. This could have been a meeting of the board of any legitimate family-run business anywhere in the world. The chairman had just announced a promotion. Bobby Triani—Rudy Faviola’s son-in-law and until this moment a capo who’d been overseeing the family’s stolen-property operation—had just been promoted to the number-two spot in the organization, where he would answer only to Andrew Faviola. But apparently Faviola felt that the ruffled feathers of Petey Bardo needed further smoothing.

  “Petey,” he said, “we can’t afford to lose you where you are.

  “Look, I told you I …”

  “Please. Hear me out. Please, Petey. If there are problems inside the family, you’re the one who smooths them. Somebody wants a territory here, a territory there …”

  Never once mentioning what kind of territory. Always cognizant of the old Italian expression that said “I muri hanno orecchi.” The walls have ears. No suspicion whatever that the place was bugged six ways from Sunday, but nonetheless no one was saying anything that could be considered incriminating. Not yet, anyway.

  “. . . to you to make the case for each of the disputing parties,” Faviola was saying. “I don’t know anyone who can do it better. No one. Whenever a sitdown becomes necessary …”

  Sitdown was criminal slang, but nothing you could take to court.

  “. . . you’re the one who tries to make peace between the skippers …”

  Another word for capo. Skipper. Or captain. So sue him.

  “. . . you’re the one who has the experience, and the patience, and the diplomacy to work things out to everyone’s satisfaction. There’s no one we have who could fill your shoes, if we moved you up a notch, Petey. But does this mean Bobby’s going to take home a bigger piece of the pie because technically he’s a step above you? I can promise you it won’t, Petey. You have my word in front of every person in this room. I’m going to work out a proper compensation for you. I don’t need to go into it now, but you have my promise. And when I say that technically Bobby’s moving above you, I mean that. This is only technically. As far as I’m concerned, especially now with the new business that’ll be coming our way …”

  “What’s this, what’s this?” Regan said, and leaned closer to the equipment, even though he was wearing earphones.

  “. . . I’m going to need a three-way sharing of responsibility at the top. Three ways. This is a vast new challenge we’re undertaking. My hope is that everything will be fully operational by the summer. To do that, we all have to work together, starting with the top, and continuing on down to the smallest member in the organization. Once we begin distributing the new product here in New York, I’m going to …”

  “Dope,” Lowndes whispered.

  Regan nodded.

  “. . . support, and cooperation of everyone here today. This can’t work without you. It’s too complicated and there are too many risks. But once it’s in place, I promise there’ll be plenty for all of us. I’m talking billions of dollars. For all of us to share.”

  “Fuck’s he talking about?” Regan said.

  “The Chinese have a saying, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ We have the ability here right in this room …”

  “Fuckin’ shitheads,” Regan said.

  “. . . and we’ve got a lot of needy people in this room, too.

  Laughter.

  Lowndes shook his head.

  “So what I’d like to do now is pour some wine all around … Sal, you want to open some of those bottles? Nic
kie? Can you lend a hand?”

  The two detectives listened while the wine was being opened and poured. They could overhear several conversations at once now, chairs being shoved back, people moving about the room, and then finally the clinking of a utensil against a glass. Faviola began speaking again.

  “I want to lift my glass first to my Uncle Rudy, who I loved to death and who I miss with all my heart. His fondest wish was to see this idea of my father’s become a reality. He’s not here to see it as it begins to take shape, but he was in on the meeting we had in Sarasota, and before he died, he was on the phone day and night with the people in Italy and with the Chinese. So he knows where he is in heaven that it’s just a matter of time now, just a matter of getting all the nuts and bolts in place. Uncle Rudy, rest easy, this is about to happen, believe me.”

  “Salute!” someone shouted.

  “Salute!” they all joined in.

  “Next, I’d like to congratulate both Bobby and Petey, because in my eyes there’ve been two promotions today, and I plan to make that evident to Petey by way of compensation as you all heard me promise. Bobby, Petey, congratulations!”

  “Thank you.” From Triani, modestly.

  “Thank you.” From Bardo, skeptically.

  It was almost four o’clock.

  “There’s a lot of work to be done in the weeks and months ahead,” Faviola said. “I know I can count on you to get that work done. My father’s keeping a close eye on this, this is his baby, he wants it done right. I want it done right, too. Don’t let me down. That’s it.”

  Before the men began filing out, they paid their individual respects to Andy Boy again by promising him he could count on them for their support and hard work. Fat Nickie Nicoletta said, “You need any spic heads busted, Lino, they don’t like our move, you let me know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Faviola said.

  Sal Bonifacio said, “You hear about Richie Palermo?”

  “Richie … ?”

  “Palermo. This kid used to do some work for me? He was most recently in jewelry? You remember him?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

  “He got killed in a shooting on Eighth Avenue,” Sal said.

  Faviola said nothing.

  Regan and Lowndes were listening intently.

  “A basement on Eighth Avenue,” Sal said. “Two shots the back of his head. It was in the paper last week.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Faviola said.

  “Yeah,” Sal said. “A fuckin’ shame, hah?”

  Regan and Lowndes lost the assorted hoods as they went down the stairs to the back room of the tailor shop, and then picked up their voices again once they were in the room saying their farewells to Mario. The new presser showered bouquets of sirs and misters on their royal asses as they filed out onto Broome Street where video cameras manned by two detectives in a second-floor window across the way recorded their separate departures for posterity.

  Oona Halligan materialized out of thin air at seven thirty that night. The two detectives who’d relieved Regan and Lowndes on the wiretap figured she’d been there all afternoon. Otherwise, since the tailor shop closed at five, how the hell had she got in?

  Harry Arnucci was forty-eight years old, a bald and burly detective/first who’d worked Narcotics out of Manhattan North before his transfer to the DA’s Office Squad. The one thing he knew about hoods was that as smart as they thought they were, they were basically very stupid. He kept sitting the wire waiting for Faviola to say the one dumb thing that would send him away for a hundred years. Sooner or later they all said the one dumb thing. The minute Faviola fucked up, the minute they arrested him and the parade of bums who marched in and out of his office up there over the tailor shop, the sooner Harry would make lieutenant.

  His partner’s name was Jerry Mandel, and he was shooting for lieutenant, too. He’d joined the police department over the protestations of a great-grandmother who could still remember when Irish cops were breaking Jewish heads on the Lower East Side. It was a fundamental principle of police work in this city that only an Irishman could rise above the rank of captain. Mandel wanted to prove this axiom false by becoming the first Jewish police commissioner in the city of New York. He was now only thirty-three years old, and was already a detective/second grade on the DAOS. Like Harry, he knew how important this case was, and was hoping it would result in an arrest that would almost certainly lead to a promotion.

  Both men had felt insulted when Michael Welles gave them his little pitch about minimization this morning. They’d been keeping the line sheets scrupulously, turning off the equipment whenever Faviola was in bed with his Wednesday night bombshell. They knew what was riding on this wiretap, and they didn’t need to be told again. They were, in fact, about to turn off the equipment when they heard the Halligan girl’s voice out of the blue—where the hell had she come from? Must’ve been here all along, they figured, but then Faviola said, “Let me take your coat,” and Oona said, “Thanks,” and they realized she’d just come in, but how? There was a short silence, and then Oona murmured a long “Mmmmmmmm,” which meant they were kissing. “Can I mix you a drink?” Faviola said, which meant they weren’t in the bedroom, but were instead in the living room just above the tailor shop. Freddie Coulter had provided a rough diagram of all three floors, to assist them in visualizing movement from room to room. They were thinking now that maybe Faviola had gone down to let her in through the tailor shop, or maybe he’d given her a key to the tailor shop. In either event, the team running the video camera across the street would have picked her up coming in, if that’s how she’d got in, end of mystery.

  Mandel signaled to Arnucci to turn off the equipment. Arnucci nodded, and was reaching for the switch when the girl said, “Why is that door fake?”

  “Architect thought it would look better that way,” Faviola said.

  “Hold it,” Mandel said.

  Arnucci nodded again.

  “Makes it look just like the rest of the wall,” Oona said.

  “Well, that’s the whole idea,” Faviola said.

  “I mean, no regular doorknob or anything. It looks like a panel there, instead of a door. Part of the walnut paneling.”

  “The architect didn’t want to break the look of the wall.”

  “Yeah, but a staircase should lead to a door, not a wall.”

  “It is a door,” Faviola said. “On the other side.”

  “Well, yes, I can see that.”

  “With a regular doorknob,” he said.

  “Not a knob that turns,” she said. “I never heard of a door with a knob you have to pull on to open the door.”

  “That’s a touch latch,” Faviola said. “From this side, you push on the panel. From the other side, you pull on the knob.”

  “Also, there’s no lock on it,” she said.

  “There are two locks downstairs,” he said.

  “Even so,” she said.

  “How’s your drink coming along?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Why don’t we go upstairs?”

  “Finish my drink first.”

  “Okay,” he said, “take your time.”

  “Fine. Don’t rush me.”

  “Nobody’s rushing you, “he said.

  Edge to his voice. The cops figured she was beginning to get on his nerves. Toying with her drink, wanting to know why a door was designed to look like part of the wall, when all he wanted to do was take her upstairs and boff her.

  “Why didn’t you let me know you were going out of town?” she asked.

  Which they guessed was the reason for the stall. He hadn’t informed her of his comings and goings, so now she …

  “I didn’t know I had to,” he said.

  The edge to his voice was a bit sharper now. They wondered if little Oona here knew this guy was a hoodlum
who could order people killed if he wanted to. Few weeks ago, he’d complained about some dumb ring, and the crackhead who’d unloaded it on Sal the Barber ended up dead in a basement room. They wondered if she knew who she was playing games with here.

  “You keep telling me you love me …”she said.

  “I do love you,” he said, which they guessed meant Finish your fuckin’ drink and let’s go upstairs.

  “. . . but you’re out of town for two days and you don’t call me, and then you’re back and I can’t get in touch with you till Sunday.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Do you have some problem with that?”

  “Well, no, not what you’d call a problem …”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I just think if you care for somebody, you’re a little more considerate to her. I didn’t even know you were leaving. You just all at once disappear, and …”

  “Lovers’ quarrel,” Mandel said, and reached for the OFF switch.

  “Hold it a minute,” Arnucci said.

  “. . . wondering if you got hit by a car or something.”

  “Harry,” Mandel warned. “This is …”

  “Shhh, shhh.”

  “. . . important came up, and I needed advice from one of our officers.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have gone wherever you went …”

  “I went to Kansas.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I …”

  “Wherever you went, I’m saying you should have called me to tell me you were going. Or called me when you got there. Don’t they have phones in Kansas? Where in Kansas were you, anyway?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Faviola said.

  There was a dead silence.

  “Hey, listen,” she said, “I don’t have to …”

  “That’s right, you don’t,” he said.

  “I mean … what do you mean it’s none of my business? I’m telling you I missed you, I was worried about you, I was hoping you’d call and you tell me it’s none of my business? What does that mean, it’s none of my business?”