" I am not afraid of you," he said primly.
"I ain't told you the riddle yet."
"If you must."
Cadillac beamed a smile as broad as his namesake. "It goes, 'How many lawyers does it take to stop a bullet?'" And then Cadillac cocked the old weapon.
At the sound of the charging bolt being pulled back, the sturdy phalanx that was Greenglass, Korngold, and Bluestone gave out a collective gasp and broke for every exit. They stumbled over one another in their mad rush to leave the room, in some cases stepping out of their own expensive shoes.
Suddenly Walter Weld Hill found himself staring down the maw of the Thompson submachine gun, his chest protected by nothing more substantial than his double-breasted suit.
He swallowed.
And as he swallowed, the man who called himself Cadillac growled, "The correct answer is, 'None.' 'Cause when the guns come out, the lawyers get lost. Any questions?"
"Actually, I must be going," said Walter Weld Hill, his knees shaking. "I have an appointment with bankruptcy court in less than an hour."
"Bankruptcy court? Gee. That's too fuggin' bad."
"Isn't it, though?" said Walter Weld Hill, walking backward to the open door behind him. He continued walking backward until he rounded a corner and the machine gun was no longer in view. Then he twisted around and ran for the elevator, vowing that if he survived the coming financial debacle, he would move Hill Associates lock, stock, and barrel to a more hospitable business environment.
Romania came immediately to mind.
Chapter 23
"And then I said, 'The correct fuggin' answer is none.' That's when I pulled the fuggin' tommy and stuck it in the first lawyer's kisser. You shoulda seen 'em scramble. You would have thought they was cockroaches when the lights come on."
Raucous laughter filled the corporate boardroom of LCN in Quincy, Massachusetts. The Maggot snorted. Pink Eye tittered through his sharp nose.
Don Carmine Imbruglia waved for silence and continued his story.
"That's when the stiff who owned this joint mumbles that he's late for bankruptcy court and, get this, he exits the joint backwards! Like if he turns around he's gonna pee his pants. His own joint, and he walks out of it backwards!"
The laughter returned. Don Carmine joined in it. His squat body shook with merriment until tears squeezed from his squinched-shut eyes.
It settled down only when Bruno the Chef ambled in carrying several bags of takeout food in his big paws.
"Chow's in, boss," he said good-naturedly.
"Great," said Don Carmine, rubbing his hands together. "I'm so starved I could eat an Irishman, washed or not."
Everyone laughed. Don Carmine watched as Bruno the Chef brought out the food. As it was served to him on china taken from a cupboard, Don Carmine's expression settled into the familiar lines of befuddlement it assumed when confronted with New England cuisine.
"Did I order this?"
"It's supposed to be seafood marinara. I asked for seafood marinara. With linguine."
"This ain't fuggin' linguine. It looks like egg noodles."
"Maybe it'll taste all right with the marinara sauce on it."
Don Carmine attempted a forkful. He spit it back into the plate. "Ptoo! You call this marinara sauce? There's no garlic. Only onions." He pawed through the remaining bags, extracting a cellophane package of sliced bread.
"This fuggin' looks like Wonder Bread," he complained. "I don't believe this. I can get better Italian bread down at the Cathay Pacific. This state in unbelievable. The chinks bake better bread than the wops. "
"Want me to take it back, boss?" asked Bruno the Chef.
"Later. Right now I wanna decent fuggin' meal. Go cook me somethin'. "
"Sure. What's your pleasure?"
"Clam chowder. Manhattan clam chowder. The red stuff. Fresh clams, too. And if I so much as chip a single tooth on a piece of shell, you're gonna hear about it."
"No sweat, boss," said Bruno the Chef, leaving the room to seek fresh clams.
As he was going out, Vinnie (The Maggot) Maggiotto was coming in, clutching a grayish, slick sheet of paper.
"I'm the fuggin' Kingpin of Boston and I cant get a decent meal," Don Carmine was saying. "What happened to the respect we once got? I was fuggin' born too fuggin' late, I guess." He spied the Maggot and asked, "What's that?"
"Fax from Don Fiavorante."
"Give it here," said Don Carmine. He fingered the slick paper unhappily. "You'd think a classy guy like Don Fiavorante would spring for better paper to write on," he muttered. "Stuff's always waxy."
"Maybe it gets that way coming through the phone," postulated the Maggot as Don Carmine read through the note carefully, moving his lips with every syllable.
"Listen to this," Don Carmine said suddenly. "Don Fiavorante wants to know how come our sports book is doing so well. Wait'll I tell him, huh?"
"You bet, boss," said the Maggot, producing a notepad and pencil.
Don Carmine scribbled a hasty note and said, "Fuggin' fax that. "
Obediently the Maggot walked over to a nearby fax machine and started to feed the sheet into the slot.
"Wait a minute!" Don Carmine roared. "What the fug are you doin'?"
The Maggot turned. "Like you said, boss."
"Like I said, my fuggin' ass. That's a business secret. You don't fax it open like that. The wire could get crossed and someone might hear what's written on it or something."
"Sorry, boss," said the Maggot, withdrawing the sheet sheepishly.
Don Carmine snatched it away. "You gotta watch yourself every step with this technology stuff. You guys have no conception how this works. No conception."
Don Carmine carefully folded the sheet into thirds and produced an envelope. He placed the folded note inside, sealing it with a tongue that belonged on a size-fourteen brogan, and handed it back to the waiting Maggot.
"There. Now you can fax it."
While the Maggot was studiously feeding the envelope into the fax machine, Don Carmine Imbruglia picked up the evening Patriot Ledger and turned to the sports page.
As Carmine's eyes settled on the race results, they narrowed reflexively. Then they expanded like blackened kernels of surprised popcorn.
"What the fog is this!" he howled.
"What is it, boss?" wondered the Maggot.
"Get Tony, that weasel. Haul his butt over to the Bartilucci yards. I'm gonna make him rue the fuggin' day he ever met me. "
"Gotcha, boss," said the Maggot.
Tony Tollini lived for the day when he had worked off his debt to Carmine Imbruglia.
The trouble was, that day looked further and further distant.
No matter how hard he worked, helping build LCN into a moneymaking operation, his own vig kept going up. At first it was because Don Carmine kept remembering new losses that had been logged on the stolen hard disk. Then it was for rent in the condo in which Don Carmine and his men had installed themselves.
It was the Windbreak condominium complex, on Quincy Shore Drive, barely a stone's throw from LCN headquarters. It had been deserted when they had all moved in. There were no other tenants. Tony had the impression that Don Carmine was not exactly paying rent to the owners, yet he insisted or adding a thousand dollars a week to Tony's mounting debt. And food. Don Carmine had it sent over every week. More than Tony could eat, much of it spoiled or out of code. That was four hundred a week.
"I'm never going to get out from under," moaned Tony Tollini one day as he was walking along Wollaston Beach. "I'm never going to see Mamaroneck again." Even the dimming memory of the IDC south wing made him nostalgic for his old life. He would cheerfully eat mashed-potato sandwiches from the comfort of his old desk if only he could somehow be transported back there, free of debt, free of LCN, and most of all, free of the knowledge that if he attempted to run for it, he would have not only Don Carmine after him but also his own Uncle Fiavorante.
Hands in his pockets, Tony Tollini trudged back
to his condo apartment.
He got as far as the Dunkin Donut shop on the corner of Quincy Shore Drive and East Squantum Street when a long black Cadillac rolled up onto the sidewalk to cut him off.
Doors were flung open. Tony's hands came out of his pockets in surprise. Familiar chisellike fingers grabbed his elbows and threw him into the waiting trunk. The lid slammed down and the car backed off the sidewalk, jouncing, to rejoin the hum of traffic moving toward the Neponset River Bridge and Boston.
In the darkness of the trunk Tony Tollini could only moan two words over and over again: "What now?"
The first thing that Tony Tollini saw when he was hauled out of the trunk was a rusty white sign affixed to a chain-link fence. It said "BARTILUCCI CONSTRUCTION COMPANY."
They walked him around to the back of a long shedlike building of rust-scabbed corrugated sheet steel.
Don Carmine Imbruglia was waiting for him. He sat up in the cab of a piece of construction equipment that Tony had never seen before. It resembled a backhoe, except that instead of a plow, a kind of articulated steel limb ending in a blunt square chisel hung in front of the cab like a praying-mantis foreleg.
"What did I do?" asked Tony, eyes widening into half-dollars.
"Lay him out for me," ordered Don Carmine harshly.
They laid Tony Tollini on the cold concrete amid rusty discarded gears and other machinery parts, which bit into his back and spine. His face looked up into the dimming sky, which was the color of burnished cobalt. A single star peeped out like a cold accusing eye.
Machinery whined and the articulated limb jerked and jiggled until the blunt hard chisel was poised over Tony Tollini's sweating face like a single spider's fang.
Don Carmine's raspy voice called over, "Hey, Tollini. You ever heard the expression 'nibbled to death by fuggin' baby ducks'?"
Tony Tollini didn't trust his voice. He nodded furiously.
"This baby here's a nibbler. They use 'em to bust up concrete. You know how hard concrete is?"
Tony kept nodding.
"You wanna bust up concrete," Don Carmine went on, "you need brute force. This baby has it. Watch."
Machinery toiled and the nibbler's blunt implement jerked leftward. It dropped, almost touching Tony's left ear. The Maggot was holding down Tony's head so he could not move.
Then a stuttering noise like a super jackhammer filled Tony Tollini's left ear. The hard ground under his head vibrated. The lone star in the cobalt sky above vibrated too.
When the noise stopped, Tony's left ear rang.
Don Carmine Imbruglia's voice penetrated the ringing like a sword slicing through a brass gong.
"You been holding out on me, Tollini!"
"No, honest. You have all my money. What more do you want?"
"I ain't talkin' money. I'm talkin' the hard-on disk."
"Which one?"
"The one the Jap stole, what do you think? You told me you hired him right off the fuggin' street. Never saw him before. Right?"
"It's the truth, I swear!"
The nibbler jerked up. It moved right, like a mechanical claw in a grab-the-prize carnival concession.
"I'm from Brooklyn, right?" Don Carmine was screaming. "I don't know my fuggin' ass from yesterday's paper."
"You do! You do! I know you do!"
The nibbler slashed to the right.
Tony screamed and tried to avert his face.
The hard nibbler point only brushed the tip of his nose, but it felt like the cartilage had been yanked off.
The point dropped. It started hammering again, this time in Tony Tollini's right ear. He was crying now, loud and without shame. He was asking for his mother.
When the sound stopped and Tony could hear a resonant ringing in both eardrums Don Carmine was saying, "Tell me about the guy Remo. You hire him off the street too?"
"It's true!" Tony swore, blubbering. "On my mother. It's true."
"Then how come he breaks my computer and three of my best guys end up dead? That's a fuggin' coincidence, right?"
"I don't know."
"So how come the Jap is trying to con me into buyin' my own hard-on disk back?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
The nibbler jumped up. It moved leftward again. Tony tracked it with his eyes. The concrete on either side of his head was shattered. The only place left for it to go was his head, which suddenly felt as fragile as an eggshell.
When the point was poised over Tony's mouth, he shut it. The nibbler's engine started up. He could smell the diesel-exhaust stink.
The nibbler point retreated a few inches until it was over Tony's sternum.
Then it dropped.
The weight was like the Washington Monument on Tony Tollini's fragile chest. He couldn't breathe. But he could yell.
"I didn't do nothing! Ask Uncle Fiavorante. I didn't do nothing. On my mother, Don Carmine."
"You watch what you say about your mother, weasel," Don Carmine warned. "She is Don Fiavorante's sister. I won't have you defamin' the sister of Don Fiavorante with your fuggin cogsugger lies."
"Please. Don't kill me."
"Show him the ad, somebody," ordered Don Carmine.
A newpaper was thrust into Tony Tollini's field of vision. He blinked the blurry tears from his beady frightened eyes and scanned the crumpled page.
Smack in the middle of the racing results was a blackbordered notice. It read:
LANSCII DISK FOUND
WILL RETURN FOR PROPER REWARD CALL CHIUN 555-522-9452
"Chiun was the name the Jap gave," Don Carmine growled. He glared at Tony. "Your Jap."
"He's not my Jap," Tony moaned.
"You sent him."
"I hired him off the street, Don Carmine. Please don't nibble me to death like a baby duck."
"I own you, Tollini. If I wanna nibble you into the ground, I can. And you know why. Because I'm the fuggin' Kingpin of Boston, that's why. Now, tell me where the hard-on disk is."
" I don't know. I swear to God!"
"Okay, if that's the way you want it," said Don Carmine, jerking levers. The nibbler sank an eighth of an inch, but it made Tony Tollini's tortured sternum creak like a loose shutter in the wind.
"Had enough?"
"I swear," Tony sobbed.
The nibbler dropped again.
Now Tony could not breathe because his cracking ribs were compressing his lungs. His heart felt like it was about to burst.
He clicked his heels together and thought: There's no place like home. There's no place like home.
Abruptly the nibbler lifted. The pressure went away. When Tony opened his eyes, he could inhale again. He filled his lungs greedily.
A shadow crossed his face. He looked up. Don Carmine's brutish face was looking down at him. "Scared you, didn't I?" he said.
"Yes. Don't shoot me."
"I ain't gonna fuggin' shoot you." Don Carmine made motions with his paws. "Let him up, boys. Let him up."
Tony Tollini's head, wrists, and ankles were released, and he was hauled to his feet.
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"Nothin'. You're tellin' the truth. You gotta be. A weasel like you ain't man enough to be stand-up in the face of a nibbler." He swept his hands around to indicate the rusting
construction yard with its idle equipment and piles of metal. "How'd you like my latest acquisition?"
"You bought a construction company?" asked Tony, prying a rusty gear off' the back of his dirty Izod shirt.
"Naw. I just stuck a gun in the owner's face and he said it was mine. That's what I love about this state. Nothin's worth nothin' no more. So people don't put up a fuss when you take it away from them. I figure when things bounce back, I'll be in the driver's seat."
Tony found a hearty arm around his shoulders. He looked. It was Don Carmine's arm.
" I like you, Tony. Did I ever tell you I liked you?"
"No. "
"You're sharp. You got brains.
You also got what we call intesticle fortitude." He shook a lecturing finger in Tony's miserable face. "This is a good thing to have."
They were walking toward the Cadillac now. Bruno the Chef opened the rear door. Carmine stepped in. Tony meekly walked around to the trunk and waited for the lid to be opened.
"G'wan," said Don Carmine. "Get in here. From now on, you ride up front with me."
Tony slid into the back seat. The others got in. The Cadillac pulled out of the construction yard.
"Something's up," said Don Carmine as they hummed south along Route One. Tony saw sights he had never seen before. A miniature golf course guarded by a twenty-foot-tall orange plastic dinosaur, strip joints with fruit names like the Golden Banana, the Green Apple, and the Pink Peach. Chinese restaurants sprouted along the roadside like deformed mock-bamboo mushrooms.
"What do you mean, boss?" asked the Chef.
"Something about this doesn't add up. Think about it."
Everyone thought. Even Tony Tollini, although thinking wasn't in his job description.
"Anything, any of yous?" asked Don Carmine.
"Nope."
"Naw. "
"I ain't got a thing," admitted the Maggot.
"Hah. That's why yous are all soldiers and I'm the kingpin. Listen up," said Don Carmine, ticking off points on his left hand with a stubby forefinger. "Tony hires this Remo character off the street. He breaks the box and whacks out Frank, Luigi, and Guido. Bing bang boom. Just like that. Dead. All three of 'em."
"Yeah?"
"What was the last thing I said before they dragged this Remo away?"
Everyone thought. The Maggot ventured an opinion.
"Scroom?"
"No, not scroom. I said, 'Get me a Jap.' Right?"
"Yeah. So?"
"You dummies. I say 'Get me a Jap' in front of this mook, Remo. He lams. I say 'Get me a Jap' to Tony here. And what happens?"
"He sends up a Jap."
"Right."
"So?" Pink Eye pointed out in a reasonable voice. "You're the Kingpin of Boston. Of course he sends up a Jap. Who wouldn't?"
"But follow my thinkin'. He wasn't any old Jap. He's a fuggin' thief. He robs me blind. Now he wants to sell me back my hard-on disk. What does that tell you?"
Mob Psychology td-87 Page 18
