by Dave Daren
Chapter 1
“Once more unto the breach,” my client murmured as we stood outside the FBI building in New York City.
I nodded in agreement as I studied my client. His brown hair was still on the longish side, no doubt an attempt to hide the impressive ears he’d inherited from his father, and his face, for the moment, looked smooth and unlined. But I could see the stress and fatigue in his grey-green eyes, brought on by endless requests for interviews from the FBI, the NYPD, the DA, and several other government agencies. I’d seen that same look in my own brown eyes this morning when I’d looked in the mirror, and I’d told myself that I had to put an end to this. We’d played nice so far, had done so since the massacre in Smithtown, and it hadn’t earned us anything but more requests.
“I doubt they’ll have anything new to ask,” I mused. “Still, they keep hoping you’ll trip up.”
“On what?” Anthony asked in frustration. “I’ve told them the truth. It’s not going to change just because they want it to.”
“These days, I wouldn’t count on that,” I noted.
Anthony waved off my comment and then drew in a slow, deep breath. He held it for a few seconds, then slowly exhaled.
“Let’s get this over with,” he sighed.
We stepped inside the building and were greeted by the same two agents we’d seen every time we’d been here. The pair seemed a part of the lobby, like the desk they sat behind or the turnstiles where employees swiped their badges. I noticed that the black woman, Special Agent Duella, was already preparing our visitor passes. Her partner, a hispanic man by the name of Ramirez, waved at us like he was greeting an old friend.
“Here again, huh?” he asked nonchalantly as we stepped up to the desk.
“Unfortunately,” I replied. “Though that’s not a reflection on the two of you.”
Ramirez chuckled as he waved a messenger through to the mailroom.
“Maybe you should just rent an office in the building,” Ramirez suggested. “It would probably save you time and money.”
“I’m hopeful this will be our last visit for a while,” I noted.
“Better notify Agent Spellman,” Duella replied as she handed us our visitor passes. “He’s been running the pool on how many visits you would make.”
“Fantastic,” Anthony muttered.
“Personally, if you could squeeze in two more trips, it would be good for me,” Ramirez added. “There’s a box of Krispy Kreme donuts at stake.”
“Like you need more donuts,” Duella chided as she nudged her partner in his stomach.
Neither agent was fat exactly, though Ramirez did look to be carrying an extra pound or two around his gut. He laughed, though, and patted his stomach with a Happy Buddha smile on his face.
“I’ll share the winnings if you two will help me out,” Ramirez said with a wink.
“Krispy Kreme is tempting,” I replied as I pulled my client towards the elevators.
Ramirez’s laugh followed us across the lobby to the security checkpoint, and I saw Anthony roll his eyes as we joined the line.
“I can’t believe we’re part of some betting pool,” Anthony complained.
“I imagine it gets pretty boring being on desk duty all the time,” I pointed out. “At least we don’t have to have an escort any more.”
I didn’t recognize either of the men on x-ray duty, but they were fast and efficient, and waved us through in record time. Even the elevator was in our favor, and rather than wait several minutes for one to arrive, we stepped into a car as soon as we were past the security checkpoint. I chose to view all of this as a good omen, even as we stepped off the elevator and were greeted almost immediately by name by the young woman who manned the reception desk.
“I believe you’re in conference room four today,” she said as she glanced at her screen. “Special Agent Tremain is on his way.”
We both nodded and stepped to the side as another visitor stopped by the desk. The receptionist tapped away at her computer while the person spoke, then pointed towards the pair of uncomfortable chairs that constituted the waiting room. Anthony and I had already learned that the chairs were to be avoided at all costs, but I couldn’t help but watch as the visitor, a plump woman in her mid-forties with a wheeled bag and a too tight dress, tried to make herself comfortable in one of the chairs.
The visitor was slowly sliding out of the chair when Tremain arrived. He was a tall man, with a buzz cut that only emphasized the gray at his temples and a pair of soft brown eyes that concealed a quick mind and a spine of steel. He was a man I could respect, even if we were on opposite sides of the table, and of all the agents and representatives of authority we had dealt with so far, he was easily the most even-handed, and dare I even say, fair-minded. I took it as another good sign that Tremaine was part of the group we would be dealing with today.
“Special Agent Tremaine,” I said when the man opened the door to the inner offices. “I’m glad to see you here today.”
Tremaine smiled for just a moment before his usual blank face reasserted itself. He held the door open and waved Anthony and I inside before he nodded to the receptionist and closed the door behind us. We followed Tremaine’s tall frame past the all too familiar rows of cubicles towards the inner conference rooms that had no windows, not even a glass door with a view of the hallway outside. The FBI insisted that they weren’t interrogation rooms, though everything about them screamed full government investigation, from the light over the door that indicated when a room was in use, to the linoleum floor and the cheap, uncomfortable furniture. It was a step up from the room at Rikers Island where I had first met my client, but not by much.
“Sorry,” Tremaine said as he opened the door and led us inside. “I tried to reserve one of the rooms on sixteen, but most of the rooms are being used to prepare for the start of session at the U.N.”
“Already?” I asked.
“We started the planning last year as soon as the bigwigs all left town,” Tremaine replied as he sniffed at a pot of coffee that someone had supplied. “But they’ll be finalizing plans now. The coffee’s fresh, if you’d like some.”
There were a stack of paper cups nearby, and Tremaine set three on the table. When Anthony and I both nodded, Tremaine filled each cup, and then passed them around the table. There was a bowl in the center of the table with small creamers and packets of sugar, and after tasting what passed as coffee in the FBI, I grabbed a creamer and a couple of packets of sugar. Anthony did as well, and even Tremaine finally added some creamer after his second sip brought a scowl to his face.
“Special Agent Hawkins should be here soon,” Tremaine announced after we’d tended to our coffee.
On cue, the door opened and Special Agent Hawkins entered the room. She was a trim woman who hid her short height by wearing an impressive set of heels. I knew they couldn’t possibly meet the FBI’s regulations, but apparently no one had called her on it yet. She never smiled, as far as I knew, and that wasn’t just because of her training. I had a suspicion that her face was permanently set in a frown, an outgrowth of her total dislike for the rest of the world and everything in it. She was an equal opportunity hater which created its own weird version of equality.
“Mr. Febbo,” Hawkins announced as she slammed the door and stepped to the other side of the table.
“Miz Hawkins,” Anthony drawled as he carefully placed his coffee cup back on the table.
“Mr. Morgan,” Hawkins added dismissively without even a glance in my direction.
I didn’t respond as I opted for another sip of what was almost drinkable coffee after the sugar and creamer had been added.
“So, what’s today’s topic?” Anthony asked
in a bored voice. “Weather? Traffic? Mets versus Yankees?”
Hawkins ignored him as she sat down in one of the plastic chairs. She glared at the three men in the room, and we all slowly joined her in our own uncomfortable seats. For nearly a minute, there was the sound of scuffling and shifting as the three of us tried to make ourselves slightly less miserable while Hawkins glared at us with her frosty blue eyes.
“Smithtown,” Hawkins announced when the room was quiet.
“Mmmm,” Anthony replied.
“Tell us what the purpose of the meeting was,” Hawkins demanded.
“I don’t know,” Anthony said as he had said every time that question had been asked. “Ben said that he needed to call a meeting. All he would tell me was that there was a rat in the operation.”
“A rat in the operation,” Hawkins repeated as if she was hearing that phrase for the first time. “And who or what was the rat?”
Anthony held his hands out wide and shrugged.
“Never said,” Anthony replied.
“Really?” Hawkins asked. “I find that hard to believe.”
I could tell my client wanted to respond, but I tapped his hand with my finger, and he simply stared at the agent.
“Is there a question for my client in there?” I asked.
“How did Mr. Kroger feel about the Serbians?” Hawkins asked.
“He hired a few Serbians,” Anthony replied. “I don’t know what they did.”
“Right,” Hawkins said skeptically.
There was a long silence as Tremain and I both sipped our coffee while Hawkins stared daggers at Anthony. My client kept his cool, though I could see the tension in his shoulder blades. I debated how much longer to let this drag on, then decided I would give Hawkins a few more minutes to see if she actually had any new questions or not.
“Your father didn’t trust the Serbians,” Hawkins noted.
“If you say so,” Anthony said blandly.
“You are running his businesses now,” Hawkins retorted. “Surely Mr. Kroger informed you of your father’s views on the Serbians?”
“He mentioned that dad didn’t like hiring them,” Anthony replied.
“Why not?” Hawkins pressed.
“He would rather hire people he knows,” Anthony said. “But like I’ve told you before, I only learned about the business operations recently, and what I know about the way things were done while my father was in charge comes from Ben Kroger. I asked a few questions, sure, but Ben was in charge after my father was shot. I know you’ve looked through the bylaws, and I know you saw that Kroger was the acting CEO of all of my father’s businesses, not me.”
“Until you bought your mother’s shares in the olive oil company,” Hawkins pointed out with a sneer, though I wasn’t sure if it was the olive oil she disapproved or my client’s purchase of the shares.
“A deal that was completed after Kroger was killed,” I pointed out. “So Gulia wouldn’t have to worry about running the company.”
Hawkins didn’t need to know that Anthony had put the sale into motion before that, or the disagreements the pair had with each other. My client, quick as always, nodded in agreement.
“Maybe we should talk to Gulia, then,” Hawkins suggested.
“You could do that, certainly,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I mean, you might learn something new if you do that, but we both know that won’t happen. So my client and I will just pretend we didn’t hear that empty threat, and maybe we can wrap this up before dinner time today.”
It dragged on like this, for nearly a full hour, with Hawkins asking the same questions that had been asked by every other agent since that fateful day in Smithtown. With the other capos dead, the Serbians missing much of their own leadership, and the traditional Mafia families looking to reorganize, only Anthony Febbo was still conducting business as usual, all in the name of his father, Salvatore Febbo, who was still locked in a coma at a private hospital near the Febbo estate.
Everyone expected there to be more bloodshed as various lieutenants battled with the wanna-be’s for control of the other families, and no one was discounting the Serbians, whose plans to infiltrate and seize control of the mob operations had started all this. Anthony had been careful not to grab any more territory for himself and watched the scuffles between the families with mixed feelings. He knew many of the people involved, had even gone to school with some of the young upstarts, but he refused to get sucked even deeper into the quagmire. A few people had accused him of being timid, but I knew my client well enough by now to know that he was just waiting for the perfect moment to strike. At the end of the day, he only had one interest to protect, and that was the Febbo family fortune.
“I’m calling it,” I announced as Hawkins started to ask Anthony about the deaths of Francine Mott and Giorgio Marinello yet again. “You clearly don’t have any new evidence or even new questions, so we’ll be leaving. Unless and until you think you have something new to discuss, don’t call us again.”
I stood up as I said this and Anthony followed suit. I saw the look of relief that passed across my client’s face before he put his bored look back on, and he gave me a slight nod to show he was in agreement.
“I’m not done,” Hawkins said as she stood up.
“Yes, you are,” I said sharply. “These are the same questions you’ve been asking for weeks, and the answers never change. So if you really want to ask them again, then you can read the answers in your notes.”
I pointed Anthony towards the door and exchanged a nod with Tremain. The tall agent had been quiet for most of the day’s interrogation, but he gave me a nod and a tip of his coffee cup without leaving his seat. Hawkins, however, had made it around the table and followed us into the hall.
“You can’t leave,” the high-heeled agent insisted.
“Unless you’re arresting my client, we can leave,” I said calmly.
Hawkins’ mouth worked frantically, but she knew I was right. I took my client lightly by the arm and led him back towards the elevators. We passed the cubicles, where agents worked feverishly at their computers, and slipped out the glass door to the lobby. The receptionist looked up from her computer and gave me a friendly smile, which I answered with a small wave. I half expected Hawkins to appear and order us to return to the conference room, but the elevator arrived and we stepped inside without any more demands that we finish answering questions.
We rode in silence to the lobby, where we returned our visitor passes at the desk. Duella was nowhere to be seen, but Ramirez was busy signing in another visitor. I dropped our passes on the counter, which he acknowledged with a nod as he scooped up the passes.
Anthony and I stepped out into a warm, sunlit day and slowly walked across the concrete towards the side of the building and the car that was waiting for us. For a moment, when we first stepped outside, Anthony looked like a happy-go-lucky youth with nothing more worrisome on his mind than what to do with the rest of the day, but as we waited for the light to change so we could cross the street, a more speculative look came into this eyes.
“Come back out to the house,” Anthony said. “I have something I want to discuss with you. And mom would like to see you again. You haven’t been out for a while.”
That last line was said in an accusatory voice, and I offered Anthony the classic hands spread wide gesture.
“I’ve been busy,” I pointed out.
Anthony snorted as we started across the street and offered me a grin.
“Mom can’t believe that you’re so busy that you can’t come by and say hello,” he said.
“I live in Brooklyn,” I pointed out, “and most of the work I’ve been doing has been in Queens and Manhattan. A trip to Riverhead isn’t exactly along the way.”
“I’m not the one you have to convince,” Anthony protested as we started down the sidewalk.
The Febbo car was still parked in its spot, partially blocking a loading dock. I almost laughed, when I remembered that a similar bad pa
rking job had led to the first meeting between me and my now one and only client. Anthony chuckled when he saw the way the car was parked, and for a moment, we shared a friendly laugh.
“Seriously,” Anthony added as well slipped into the back seat. “I have something I want you to tackle now that we’re done with interviews for the time being.”
“As long as I’m back by five,” I said. “I’m supposed to be helping out at a pro bono clinic tonight.”
“More criminal cases?” Anthony asked as the car eased into traffic.
“Actually, no,” I replied. “I signed up for a clinic that helps provide wills and powers of attorney for hospice patients who can’t afford their own attorneys.”
“That’s a good cause,” Anthony replied quietly.
“I thought so,” I agreed, then could have kicked myself when I realized how close to home that probably hit for Anthony. His father was still in a coma, though the doctors insisted that the signs were promising. Anthony’s mother, Gulia, was there every day as were the Febbo children and grandchildren, even if it was for only a few minutes each time.
“Have you been to see him yet today?” I asked.
“I’m going with mom later,” he said. “We’re going to have dinner with him.”
I nodded as the sound of the day game at Yankee Stadium filled the car. The driver and the muscle, both long-term Febbo men who had been with Salvatore since the day he had taken over, added their own colorful commentary as the game went on. Anthony and I both sat back, lost in our own worlds as the car slowly left the city behind, followed by the tightly packed suburbs, the first of the beach towns, and then, finally, we were in the small villages and rolling farmland that make up the distant reaches of Long Island.
It didn’t occur to me how long we had gone without speaking until the Chrysler we were in turned into the drive that led to the Febbo home. It was a large, Naples-inspired home that was somehow hidden by the surrounding woods and the twists in the road. The house always seemed to appear as if by magic as you came around the last turn and the long line of trees gave way to a pale yellow home with a red tile roof and a splashing fountain that was popular with the songbirds.
