by J. L. Abramo
Il Toscano Ristorante sits off 235th Street and 42nd Avenue, a stone’s throw from the Douglaston station of the Long Island Railroad.
The restaurant is closed on Mondays, but at eleven a sharp dresser greeted me at the entrance and led me inside. He walked me to a small private room with one table. Ferdinand “The Fist” Pugno sat alone and invited me to take a seat. My escort left.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I said.
“Detective Sullivan was very persuasive,” Pugno said. “My time is short.”
“You met with Vincent Corelli a few weeks ago. Can you tell me what it was about?”
“Why would that be any of your business?”
“I’m a target for extinction. I would like to know why, and I believe your meeting with Corelli may be pertinent.”
“On what do you base that belief?”
“The murder of both Corelli and Theodore Lincoln.”
“I heard about Vincent’s misfortune, I had not heard of Lincoln’s. And I still I don’t see how I can help you.”
“Please try.”
“Vincent Corelli came to me with information he thought might trouble me. I assured him, as I now assure you, that I had nothing to fear from Theodore Lincoln. And I had nothing to do with Vincent’s or Lincoln’s death. Whether you believe this or not is not my concern.”
“Would your son have been worried about Lincoln?”
“Carmine knows what I know.”
“And Freddy?”
“I have nothing to do with Freddy. I pay him to stay away. Now, if there is nothing else.”
“Just one more question, please, if you will indulge me.”
“Let me hear it.”
“Do you know where I can find Mario Grillo?”
“You may not want to find him.”
“I need to, before he finds me. Is Grillo protected?”
“Mario Grillo has no allegiances. He is available to any who will pay for his services. The man kills indiscriminately. He is under no one’s wing. But Freddy.”
“Yes?”
“Freddy is a worthless gambler and I have lost all feelings for him. He has caused our family much grief and embarrassment. He is a great disappointment. If he has earned punishment for a transgression, I would not get in the way of allowing justice to take its course. But for the sake of his mother, I would not tolerate seeing him fatally harmed.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Try Mom’s Bar on Forty-Second Street and Second Avenue in Brooklyn. And forget where you heard it.”
“Thank you.”
I rose to leave. Pugno’s man suddenly materialized and escorted me out to the street.
I had failed to mention Mario Grillo to John Sullivan. Grillo was a stone-cold assassin-for-hire who made Charlie Mungo look like a choirboy. I knew Grillo well enough to easily recognize his moonlit face outside Angela’s house the night before.
I climbed into the Monte Carlo and headed back to Brooklyn.
Charlie Mungo had reminded me that the most effective way to get the drop on someone is to surprise your target at his home, and bring the rope. Of course, you need to know where the mark lives and that often takes time and patience. I got lucky.
I had been staking out Mom’s Bar for less than three hours when Mario Grillo appeared and entered the bar. I waited another two hours or so for him to come out and I followed him to his crib. It was a converted warehouse on Kingsland Avenue between Nassau and Driggs Avenues in Greenpoint. He entered the building and the waiting began again. He came out an hour later and took off toward Nassau Avenue, on foot. Good news, he would likely be returning soon. I needed to be ready for him and had little time to lose.
I rapped on his door, hoping no one would be there to greet me. I always carried lock picks, and I was good with them, but Grillo saved me the trouble by leaving his door unlocked. I entered the large open space and waited.
Grillo was back in twenty minutes and I smacked his head from behind with my gun. He was stunned, but managed to turn toward me. I landed a round house to his jaw with the .357 in my fist and he went down like the Titanic.
I tied him to a chair, gagged him, and looked around the place while I waited for him to come to. I found an FN Five-seveN semi-automatic pistol, with a magazine that could hold twenty 5.7x28mm SS197SR V-Max cartridges.
The weapon Grillo emptied outside the bungalow in Ocean City.
I was sitting in a chair facing Grillo, his gun in my hand, when he finally opened his eyes. He looked as if he’d seen Lazarus. I uncovered his mouth.
“Who hired you to kill me?”
“That gun is not loaded.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said, and I struck him with considerable force on his left knee with the grip of the weapon.
“Fuck you,” he screamed through his pain.
“Not likely,” I said.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I want to.”
“You won’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you understand that what I did is what I do. It’s work. My occupation. It’s not personal.”
“Tell me who hired you, then we can talk job description.”
“The anonymity of my clients is as important as the job itself. I’m a professional.”
I was certain I would get nothing out of him.
I walked to the kitchen counter.
I found a Wüsthof Classic 8” Chef’s knife and waved it in front of his face from behind.
“You’re mistaken, it is personal,” I said. “Any last words?”
“Fuck you.”
That settled it.
I grabbed Grillo by his hair and slit his throat.
I wiped down the knife and dropped it to the floor.
I wiped down and replaced the FN Five-seveN where I had found it and I left the building.
I made a quick stop at my apartment to throw together suitable travel clothing.
I also collected my best suit, dress shirt and tie and grabbed the shoulder holster for my Smith & Wesson 65-3 .357 Magnum.
I used my cell phone to call John Sullivan.
“Well?” he asked.
“Old man Pugno was no help.”
“And it took you all day to find out?”
“I drove back down to Atlantic City.” I lied. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Nick.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
Mario Grillo had stayed mum to the end.
I headed out to the Jersey Shore to find out if I could find someone who was more inclined to talk.
22
Freddy Fingers was not difficult to find. His address was listed in the Atlantic City phone directory. The house was a two-family on South Kingston between Ventnor and Atlantic Avenues, a minute from the Boardwalk and two miles from the Taj Mahal. Fingers had the first floor apartment.
It was just before ten in the evening, the last Monday in August, a week before Labor Day and the official end of summer. The first floor was lit up. I walked up the steps to the front porch and rapped on the door.
Fingers looked surprised to see me, but unlike Mario Grillo he didn’t seem shocked to see me alive.
“I didn’t think you were still in town,” he said.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“Sure, come in. Would you like a drink?”
“Scotch, rocks.”
There were two matching armchairs in the front room, separated by a small table. Fingers produced two iced glasses and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, invited me to take a seat and took the other.
He poured.
I picked up my drink and replaced it with the weapon from my shoulder holster.
“What do you plan to do with that?” he asked.
“I promised your father I wouldn’t kill you, but I will beat you with this gun until you wish you were dead if you don’t come clean.”
“Where would you like me to begin
?”
“At the beginning,” I said.
“Vincent Corelli approached me a few weeks ago. He said he knew a way I might inspire my father to reconsider his opinion of me, and added I could make some serious cash at the same time. Corelli said I needed to be on call.”
“Go on, you’re doing fine.”
“He called me last Monday, told me to sit in at a card game at the Taj Mahal. I didn’t expect to find you in the game. I knew it was about Theodore Lincoln and how he might be planning to hurt my father, but I wasn’t expecting to see Lincoln’s brains on the table.”
“And you never did see the shooter.”
“Corelli called me again later that night. I told him about you being there and about Kitty Lincoln approaching you after the shooting. Vinnie named Mungo. I never looked up at the shooter. Corelli asked me to keep an eye on you, learn if you were considering getting involved, and to try discouraging you if you were. I thought I had warned you off until you phoned me at the casino. I tried calling Vinnie to tell him you were back in Atlantic City but I couldn’t reach him, so I hired a private investigator to tail you from the Howard Johnson after we met there.”
“Vinnie was already dead when you tried calling him, and I’m certain Corelli was killed by the same man who killed Charlie Mungo, a very good friend of mine who was mistaken for me, and Angela DiMarco.”
“Please, I swear on my mother’s life. I don’t know about any of that. All I wanted to do was help my father—get out of this hell hole and back into the family.”
Freddy Fingers was clearly terrified.
“If you had asked your old man about it he would have told you what he told me. Lincoln was not a threat to him.”
“My father won’t even talk to me, do you have any idea what that’s like?”
“I don’t. My father talked so much when he was drinking, I had to shut him up.”
I changed the subject.
“The name Mario Grillo ring a bell?”
“I know the name. And Vinnie Corelli asked if I knew how to find Grillo, I told him I didn’t.”
I believed him.
“You haven’t seen me since the day Theodore Lincoln was killed,” I said. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t help feeling you are to some extent responsible for all of this carnage, and it makes me very angry.”
I reached across the table, punched Freddy in the head with all I had, and sent him and the chair backwards to the floor. I finished off my drink and put the weapon back into the shoulder holster.
“If I find out that you are holding out on me or are more than partly responsible for Grillo’s killing spree, I will hurt you very, very badly. Meanwhile, I would strongly suggest you stay out of sight. Don’t bother getting up,” I said, and I left the house.
23
Someone had contracted Mario Grillo, and had kept him very busy.
It wasn’t Vincent Corelli, unless Vinnie put a hit on himself. I couldn’t see Corelli dreaming up so imaginative a suicide.
I believed the denials of both Freddy Fingers and his father.
Call it deductive reasoning. Call it the process of elimination. Call it the last resort.
There was only one avenue left to investigate—the road I suspected I would inevitably land on minutes after Theodore Lincoln’s head landed on the table. I would need help negotiating that road, and it would have to come from someone with a badge.
Someone who might not hold me accountable for murder.
I ruled out Detective Lawrence of the Atlantic City PD. I didn’t know him, didn’t particularly like him, and was not sure I trusted him.
I decided against Detective Sullivan of the NYPD. I knew Sullivan too well, liked him a lot, and I refused to put John in a compromising position.
I was left with one final candidate, and a confrontation which I hated to consider.
But when there is only one choice, even when it is a very difficult choice, it is not a hard one to make.
It would have to wait, until some of the dust had settled and grieving families had time to say their goodbyes.
And the waiting would be the hardest part.
I decided I would wait it out in Newark, to avoid difficult to answer questions in Brooklyn.
So, after leaving Freddy Fingers on the mat in his living room, I once again took a two-hour drive north.
I checked into a Holiday Inn on Route 9 near the airport with a full bottle of scotch and I drank myself to sleep.
The next morning I woke up famished.
I ordered breakfast and a newspaper from Room Service.
Eggs, potatoes, bacon, toast, juice and coffee.
I devoured every scrap and I washed it all down with scotch.
An obituary in the Newark Star Ledger gave me the details on the where and when. The funeral and burial were scheduled for the following day at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Bloomfield.
I kept drinking. Tried reading to pass the time, the book Angela had given me, but I couldn’t focus my eyes or my mind.
I kept drinking. Tried watching a shoot ’em up Western on the TV, but I kept drifting in and out of sleep.
I dreamed of Tom Romano, cruising out to sea on his houseboat, never to be seen again.
I dreamed of Theodore Lincoln, his damaged head hitting the poker table, again and again.
I dreamed of Vinnie Corelli and Charlie Mungo, offering to buy me a drink as thanks for cutting Mario Grillo’s throat.
I woke up and took the drink.
Drink. Sleep. Drink. Sleep.
Seven in the evening. I needed food again.
I thought about going out for dinner, but realized I could hardly walk let alone drive.
I called down to Room Service for a grilled Porterhouse steak. Twenty-four ounces, medium rare. Hold the salad. Hold the baked potato. Hold the vegetable.
Bring the beer.
Eat. Drink. Sleep. Drink. Sleep.
When I woke up again it was Wednesday morning.
At one that afternoon I watched as the large gathering at the burial site was breaking up.
Groups of two, three and four walking away to their vehicles.
An embrace between two grieving parents.
The priest led the woman away, leaving the father at the grave.
He stood there for nearly ten minutes, alone, before moving to join his wife.
I intercepted him on his way to the limousine.
I knew he would be tied up most of the day with friends and family. I had written a note on Holiday Inn stationary briefly explaining who I was and why I needed to speak with him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, handing him the note.
He read the note, looked at me, looked toward the limousine and back to me again.
“I’ll be at the hotel waiting to hear from you,” I said.
“I’ll come as soon as I can.”
He turned and walked away.
As a means of distraction and to kill time I spent most of the afternoon sightseeing.
The Empty Sky Memorial at Liberty State Park, a ferry ride to Ellis Island continuing on to the Statue of Liberty, a walk down the Hudson Walkway in Jersey City.
At all the stops I watched people.
Those reading the inscribed names of September 11th fatalities. Those hoping to learn something about their ancestors. Those gazing up in awe at the torch-carrying symbol of freedom. Those staring across the Hudson River at the breathtaking Manhattan skyline.
I wondered which of them had deceived another lately, had robbed or cheated or physically harmed another, which of them had been victims, and if justice could or would be served.
I returned to the hotel to consider how justice might be served.
I sat and waited, in a staring contest with the half empty bottle of scotch, deciding to stay dry for the time being, hoping I had found an ally.
Going over and over what I needed to do and how I needed to do it.
He arrived a
t my room just after nine. I told him everything, from the moment Theodore Lincoln was killed to the moment I left Freddy Pugno on his back in Atlantic City. He listened quietly. Stoically. I told him how I had dealt with Mario Grillo, a confession to first degree murder. He remained silent, his reaction unreadable. I explained what I had in mind for the next day, and told him how he could help.
Finally he spoke.
“Are you saving that for something?” he asked, indicating the half full bottle of scotch.
I poured the drinks.
We talked it out until we agreed on a worthy plan.
Then he spoke proudly about his daughter until all of the scotch was gone.
24
I woke late Thursday morning. I could not remember being haunted by disturbing dreams. Good sign. I was feeling optimistic. I drove straight down the shore into Atlantic City and to the Resorts Hotel and Casino.
Resorts International purchased the historic site of the Haddon House in 1976 while generously funding the campaign to pass the gaming referendum which became law that year. The Haddon Hall building had been constructed in stages during the 1920’s and was the largest hotel in Atlantic City when completed. Resorts became the first legal gambling casino in the United States outside of Nevada when its doors opened in May 1978. In 2010 renovation of Haddon Hall, now called Ocean Tower, began transforming the hotel and casino to recall the Roaring Twenties.
Boardwalk Empire revisited.
It suited my mood.
I was informed by the desk clerk that I had stumbled across the very last unoccupied room in the building.
“We received a cancellation just a few minutes ago,” she said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t find another accommodation in town before the end of the holiday weekend.”
“Sold,” I said.
“I can’t get you into your room before two.”
“No problem.”
“You are very lucky, Mr. Ventura.”
“We’ll see.”
I had a few hours to kill. I decided on lunch, I wasn’t sure when I would find another opportunity to eat. Dining accomplished, I took a seat on an empty Boardwalk bench and sent the text message from Vincent Corelli’s cell.
CELL PHONE FOR SALE. $250,000. ONE DAY ONLY.
