Over the beer Pat told me about Anthony DiCica. He had a listing of all his arrests, convictions that were a laugh, and the victims he was suspected of killing. Every dead guy was involved in the mob scene and two of them were really big time. Those two were hit simultaneously while they ate in a small Italian restaurant. It was suspected by the police that it was more than a social dinner. It was a business affair and the killer, after shooting both parties in the head twice, made off with an envelope that had been seen on the table by a waiter. Following the hit there had been an ominous quiet in the city for a week, then several more persons in the organization either died or were mysteriously missing before a truce seemed to be declared. It was two weeks later that Anthony DiCica’s head collided with pipe in a street brawl.
“Let’s make a script out of this, Pat.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “Our boy Anthony went a little bit further when he hit those mob guys. He knew they were plotting against his employer and grabbed the papers. When he saw what he had, he knew he was in a position of power, but didn’t quite know how to handle it, so hid it somewhere.” He paused. “Now your turn.”
“The mobs turned on themselves thinking of a double cross somewhere, then realized what had happened and cooled it. It took a couple of weeks to locate our Anthony, but they went a little overboard in bringing him in and cracked his skull. After that he was no good to anybody. They still needed his goods and had to wait for him to come out of the memory loss before they could move . . .”
Pat lifted his beer and made a silent toast. “We really took his place apart, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. What did you find?”
“Zilch. There were no hiding places at all. We even tried the cellar area. If he had anything at all, it’s someplace else.”
“Now what?”
“We wait the way we usually do,” he told me.
I grinned at him. “Balls. When are you going to ask me?”
He grinned back and said, “Okay, wise guy, when are you going to see General Skubal?”
“Soon. Since you’re off this case I go alone, but there’s no reason why we can’t have a few talks together later, is there?”
“None at all.”
“And I’m not investigating the Penta affair at all. Just seeing an old friend. Right?”
“Right.”
“And the next time old Bradley boy demands I do something, I think I’ll rap him in the kisser with a civilian citizen hook.”
“Good thinking. You know where Skubal is?”
“I have his address in my office. I’ll get it tonight.”
We finished our beers and when Pat left I made two calls looking for Petey before I found him in his office at the paper. He told me to come on over. He sounded excited.
Until I saw his office, I hadn’t realized Petey Benson’s status at the newspaper. Most of the working reporters had a desk with a console in the quiet bedlam of the main section, but Petey had his own room, not a compartment, with a door that closed and his own bank of filing cabinets.
“Man,” I said. “I thought you did all your work out of barrooms.”
“That’s all eyewash for the peasantry.”
“You’ve ruined your image, pal.”
“Nope. Been around too damn long to do that. What you see here is seniority at work. Plus sheer expertise, of course. Technology and computer chips rule the system these days and he who has the most gadgets wins. Wait till you see what I’ve come up with.”
I tossed my hat on an old Smith-Corona typewriter and pulled a chair up next to Petey. “You have a work-up already?”
He nodded. “We’re lucky we’re dealing in areas that have good terminal systems. You know anything about computers?”
“Very little.”
“Okay, let me brief you a little. In backtracking DiCica, I was able to get into records of public information, had some friends on the other end do a little legwork and between the FOI Act and the power of the press, we’ve got some history on Mr. Anthony DiCica. Ready?”
“Hit it.”
Petey’s fingers moved over the keyboard and the console came alive. “Where do you want to start?”
“All right, we’ll go for basics.” Then he brought Anthony Ugo DiCica up in green electronic reality. Born January 2, 1940, of Maria Louisa and Victorio DiCica in Brooklyn, New York. Victorio was a cabinet maker by trade, a World War II veteran honorably discharged in 1945. Maria DiCica had two stillbirths There were no other children. Anthony graduated Erasmus Hall High School, June 1958, worked one year in Victorio’s cabinet shop, then left and was arrested for the first time a year and one week later.
“How do you like it, so far?” Petey asked me.
“He made the streets pretty early. Pat’s got his rap sheet, so skip that part and stay with the personal stuff.”
Petey hit the keys again. “His father was killed in a holdup shortly afterward, as you see. Now, here’s an excerpt from the News about the murder of a man suspected of having killed Victorio. He was even wearing Victorio’s watch. Anthony was picked up and questioned, but released for lack of evidence. However, the word was that Anthony found the guy and hit him.”
“He discovered his profession, didn’t he?”
“More than that,” Pete said, “he found a patron. Juan Torres.”
I knew the name, and it hit me with force. “Now we’re into the heavy cocaine scene.”
“You’d better believe it,” he agreed. “You know where Torres stood with the organization?”
“He was a damned lightweight for a long time, I remember that. Something happened that pushed him right up the ladder.”
Pete nodded, chewing on his lower lip. “He’d just disappear for months at a time and when he showed up he was a little bit bigger. We finally figured out. Juan Torres was a finder. You know what that is?”
I shook my head.
“He’s got family scattered all through Mexico and South America. A million cousins, you know? He’s got that touch, and where there’s a coke source he taps into it. He was a nobody, a nothing, but maybe that’s how he made it work. The way prices are on the street, no operation was too small to tap into. Torres got the leads, made the deals and the organization moved him up. Oh, he was a damned good finder, all right. He was right inside the Medellin cartel when it first started.”
Reaching across me, Petey picked four printed photos off his desk and handed them to me. In each one Juan Torres and Anthony DiCica were in close conversation against different backgrounds, obviously very familiar with each other. Here DiCica was dressed in expensive outfits, jewelry showing on both hands.
Again Petey keyed the board and brought up bills of sale and records of deeds to two houses. “DiCica was the sole support of his mother. She still lives in the Flatbush house enjoying an income from two dry-cleaning establishments he bought for her years ago.”
“What about the other one?”
“A two-family place. Both rentals of long standing. The house was in his name, the rentals went to his mother. In the terms of his will she inherits the houses.”
“Does Maria know what happened to her son?”
“Here’s a copy of a report on her. When Anthony was in that trauma following the beating, she assumed he would die. She collected his belongings and only saw him once after that when he was released. He didn’t even know her. All he remembered was something his papa had made, she said.” He erased the screen and brought up another report, a letter from the medical supervisor in the hospital that attended to Anthony. He concluded that DiCica had absolutely no memory of his previous life, his mental faculties were severely impaired in certain areas, but he was capable of leading a satisfactory, if minimal, existence.
“What are you saving for me?” I asked him.
“Somebody else was keeping a watch on both those houses,” he told me. “Look at this.” Two minor items from the Brooklyn Eagle appeared. The home of Mrs. Maria DiCica had been burglarized
, but nothing seemed to have been taken. The elderly lady and her live-in housekeeper had been locked in the pantry while the ransacking went on. The dateline was two days after Anthony had been admitted to the hospital.
One day later a minor squib reported an attempted robbery of another house, where the residents downstairs were trussed up and gagged while the robbers prowled through the premises before doing the same thing to the upstairs apartment where the residents were away.
“Both those houses belonged to DiCica,” Petey said. “However, since nothing was reported stolen, they were after something else entirely. Now,” he said with emphasis, “check this one out.”
The headline was bigger this time, under a partially blurred photograph of a pair of frightened old ladies. For the second time in a month their home had been entered and this time the women had been bound, their mouths taped shut, and kept unceremoniously on the kitchen floor while the intruders went about systematically tearing their house apart. Apparently they found nothing. Neighbors reported that street speculation assumed the DiCica woman to have a horde of cash in the house since the ladies lived so frugally.
Before I could say anything, Petey keyed the console and grinned. “Don’t ask me how I got this.” It was a copy of a bank statement. The amount was over three hundred thousand dollars, all in the name of Maria DiCica. Deposits were regular and automatic from several sources. “Our boy Anthony had set his old mother up in fine fashion. So, what were the houses being burglarized for and who did it?” He sat back and looked at me. “Or should I ask?”
“I can give you an off-the-record opinion, Petey, but that will have to do for now.”
“Good enough.”
“DiCica had some devastating information on the mob. He hid it somewhere before he was clobbered.”
With a look of finality, Petey shut the console down. “End of case. It died with Anthony.”
“The hell it did,” I said. “Somebody in the organization thinks DiCica suddenly remembered and dropped his secret on me.”
“Brother!”
“So if it dies, it’ll die with me.”
“Only you’re not dead yet?”
“Not by a long damn sight.”
“But they got pressure on you, I take it?”
I nodded. “The bastards as much as said it was my ass if I don’t produce.”
“Shake you up?”
“I’ve been in the business too long, kiddo. I just get more cautious and keep my .45 on half cock.”
He watched me frowning, grouping his thoughts. “That mutilation of DiCica could have been a message to you then.”
“It’s beginning to look like it,” I said.
“What do you do now?”
“See how far I can go before I touch a tripwire.”
“You don’t give a damn, do you?” he said.
“About what?”
“Anything at all. You don’t want any backup, no protection ... you want to be out there all alone like a first-class idiotic target.”
I shrugged.
“There’s a lot more of them than there are of you, kiddo.” I watched him and waited. He finally said, “They know how you are, Mike. You’re leaving yourself wide open.”
I felt that tight grin stretch my lips and said, “That’s the tripwire I set out.”
When she answered the phone, I said, “Would you really like to be president?”
There were three seconds of quiet and I knew she was studying the way I had said every word.
“There are a lot of obstacles on that road.”
“I think I can clear a few of them out.”
“How?”
I looked at my watch. “I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes.”
All I had to do was walk around the comer and I made it in five. The doorman nodded, called Candace’s apartment, then told me to go up. As I expected, I caught her in the middle of getting ready, obviously flustered at being half-dressed.
“You’re a real bastard,” she said. “Come on in.”
I tossed my hat on a chair and followed her into the living room. She walked against the light and for a brief moment her naked body was silhouetted through the fabric of her housecoat and she did a half turn, looking back at me impishly, and I knew she was well aware of what she was doing.
“Like?” she asked.
“Cute.”
“Just cute?”
“Kiddo, you are one helluva broad, as they used to say.”
“Oh?”
“Especially in the buff.”
“But you’ve only seen me once in the buff.”
“It made an impression then too.” I grinned at her. “Now go finish dressing.”
“That I will do, believe me.” She held out her hand and took mine. “You, Mike, are going to sit and watch and tell me all about the presidency.” Without any hesitation, she led me toward the bedroom, ushered me in and pointed to a satin-covered chair next to her vanity. “And, of course, you are going to be a gentleman. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Certainly.” She was playing my game right back at me and my voice sounded hoarse. I sat down, but I wasn’t comfortable.
Women are born clever. They begin life as little girls who have an instinct base that turns little boys inside out. They never seem to lose any of it, just getting better every day. They can comb their hair or put on lipstick in a way to make any guy feel a sultry ache in his groin, and now I had to watch her sitting there, deliberately opening the housecoat around her shoulders, letting it slide down to her elbows so that it lay across the fullness of her breasts, seeming to balance on her nipples. She studied herself in the mirror, her tongue licking out to wet those luscious lips before she touched them with a feathery brush end.
Her reflected glance met mine. “You were saying?”
“The police have been pulled off the Penta case.”
“Our office was notified.” She did the trick with her tongue again.
“If you ... and I mean you personally . . . suddenly came up with something very explosive that would put you in the headlines even bigger than you expected when you busted into this affair ...”
Her eyes held mine again.
“It’s another step up. The DA’s office is next.”
She took the hairbrush now, running it through the blond silkiness. It made a quiet, snaky sound and the muscles played very gently under her skin with the movement of her arm. The back of the housecoat slid down almost to her waist.
“Your office isn’t the police department. It’s still an investigative agency if it chooses to be.”
Her eyebrows arched an affirmative and she put the hairbrush down on the vanity, studied herself again and stretched herself, arms out, fingers splayed in an odd theatrical gesture. She crossed one leg over the other, the gown falling away carelessly, leaving one side nude to the hip.
I said, “You have the intellect and the machinery to do something I need and do it fast. The cops have snitches out there you can reach if you play your cards right. Most likely you already have programs in place you can tap for the information I want.”
She seemed to glide around on her seat until she faced me, the movement an instinctive feminine device that shocked a man’s nerve endings, making me feel as if I were giving up to a slow drowning. Then a survival instinct jerked me back and I watched while she folded her hands in her lap, the motion letting the housecoat fall all the way, so she sat there, seemingly unconscious of the fact that the lovely swells of her naked breasts were mine to see.
She smiled and I said, “You’re a pretty beastie, lady.”
“Are you disturbed?”
“Not that much.”
“You lie, Mike.”
“Nicely, I hope.”
“Yes. Very nicely. Now, what is it you want of me?”
“Something has our local organized crime group bent out of shape. It’s big enough to squash them if it gets out and big enough to kill for to keep it quiet.”
<
br /> She said, “You’d better explain.”
“It started with Anthony DiCica,” I told her, then laid the details out for her one by one. She let me finish without saying a word and when I got to the end she unconsciously pulled the robe up around her again, frowning in thought.
She tilted her head at me, her eyes carefully shrouded. “No games?”
“Straight, kid.”
“I’m simply an assistant district attorney.”
“Nevertheless, you have the clout. Your boss has enough on his desk to keep him busy. All he wants is to get into court anyway. The legwork isn’t his speed.”
Candace nodded and asked, “Will Captain Chambers cooperate?”
“Why not? Interagency cooperation isn’t active participation. He’d like to screw that State Department patsy anyway.”
“Oh, Bennett Bradley is all right. He’s pretty disappointed at not having found Penta after all these years. When all of a sudden the name showed up here... well, you can imagine how he feels, especially with a replacement for him due.”
“Well, hell, he doesn’t give a damn what we do about DiCica anyway. All he wants is one last clear shot at this Penta character. When can you get things started?”
She got to her feet before I could and smiled down at me. “The first thing in the morning, Mike.”
Her tongue made her lips wet and she held out her hands and when I took them, she pulled gently and I stood up, feeling her fingers kneading my shoulders.
“Where do people like you come from, Mike?”
“Why?”
Girls can do strange things with their clothes too. With barely a movement, everything can suddenly fall away and they are naked and bare and nude all at once, the poutiness of their flesh pressing against your clothes like a hot iron, and they can squeeze themselves into the forbidden areas of your body the way water follows the contours of the earth.
Her mouth was soft, warm lips so cushiony and alive, feeling and tasting that it was like a kiss within a kiss. I enjoyed the flavor of her, the pillowed sensation of being enfolded by nakedness, and when it got too much, I pushed her away gently.
I knew what the look in her eyes meant. I knew what her smile meant. I grinned at her and took my lumps because she was getting back at me for the last time.
The Killing Man Page 12
