Some shots were heard from deep in the woods off to the right.
“They’re doing the guy,” Fratino commented flatly, as though reading from a program.
“Be perfect if we could only find the fucking wife. Wrap this thing up. I got to be back in town by seven, no later than eight.”
“What can I say?”
“Nothing. Keep quiet,” Riccio snapped. His bad cigar was spoiling the taste of Straw’s good wine, not that he realized that.
His attention was drawn to a mid-air skirmish almost directly above the terrace. A pair of starlings trying to peck and outmaneuver one another like enemy aces. The two birds were really going at it and neither seemed to be getting the best of it until one took flight out to a field beyond where the grounds were kept.
Distance transformed the bird into a black, indefinite creature that dropped from sight out there in the tall, untended grass.
Riccio, with nothing better to distract his aggravated mind, had followed the bird’s retreat. In doing so he happened to notice that the uniform texture of that grass was interrupted by a contrasting line that ran straight all the way to a large white structure. It was worth a look, he decided. He and Fratino went down and out to the unmowed meadow.
It was obvious to them that someone had recently cut through the grass, and they had no difficulty following the same trampled course. To the large double doors of the barn. Fratino slid those apart and they went in.
Riccio knew in a breath she was in there. The predominant old barn odor of the interior was laced with the scent of lilies. Now, exactly where in here was she?
He looked around, then walked around clockwise. An insouciant, old-mob smugness about him as he took in the disparate contents of the place: cardboard boxes of canning jars, storm windows, a stack of mildewed and rusted steamer trunks, various pieces of unfortunate furniture, a dresser minus two drawers, chairs without seats.
He paused every few steps to sniff and gauge the strength of the giveaway scent. At the far end of the barn stood the stove, the potbelly that Maddie and Mitch had pocked up with shots from the Beretta. The scent was not entirely undetectable there but much fainter.
He moved on, down the barn’s other long side. Past a pileup of tubular outdoor loungers and numerous sections of cast iron grill-work.
The lily scent was more pronounced.
And even more so when he came to the lineup of forsaken farm equipment. Two tractors, a backhoe with all tires flat, a rake and a hay baler.
Only the hay baler offered a hiding place.
Riccio centered his attention upon it. He raised his chin a fraction to indicate it and gestured to have Fratino come over to him. Riccio was positive that she was hidden in the baler. He savored the moment, relighted his cigar, chewed it from the left corner of his mouth to the right. He rotated his paved diamond, ruby and emerald Italian flag ring.
The pressing chamber, the oblong, lidded compartment where the hay was compressed and bound, was just barely large enough to contain Maddie. She was doubled up tight and hunched in a kneel and, for the first time in her life, experiencing claustrophobia. She felt crammed, crunched, as though her flesh and bones were now literally the shape of a bale of hay. And what a relief it would be when, if ever again, she was able to take a deep breath.
Her heart was galloping, the roof of her mouth had gone dry. She had the Beretta in her right hand. Off safety.
Riccio was about to order Fratino to open the lid on the baling compartment and pull her out. No need to be concerned about her being armed. She was blind. At most she’d put up a clawing, kicking struggle.
The lid flew open.
Maddie sprung up like a released jack-in-the-box and began firing the Beretta. She relied entirely on her sense of direction, altering her point of aim slightly every couple of rounds. She fired the clip empty, released it, rammed in a full and rapid-fired another fifteen rounds in the same hopeful left to right manner.
The smell of lilies and gunpowder and Sicilian cigar.
It had been over for fifteen minutes by the time Mitch got there.
Riccio and Fratino were down, sprawled in surely dead positions. Blood was pooling beneath and around their heads. There was an entrance wound in each of their temples. Neat little holes in almost precisely the same spot.
A shaft of sunlight permitted through the barn’s old roof was striking upon Riccio’s hand, causing scintillations from his Italian flag ring.
Maddie was seated off to the side on the edge of a rusted-out cast iron love seat. She looked bedraggled. The Beretta was still in her hand.
Mitch spoke up to keep her from possibly taking a shot at him. He went to her, held her. To have her in his arms again was an unexpected pleasure. She, however, wasn’t able to give entirely to the embrace. Some of her body’s usual compliance had been appropriated by rigidity.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“No wounds or anything?”
“Some scrapes and scratches is all.”
“Tell me, if I could what would I be seeing?”
He told her, but didn’t elaborate. It was evident to him that she wasn’t too happy with herself at the moment.
She did an on and off small smile, trying to demonstrate her pluck.
“Let’s go in,” she said. “Maybe a little later on I’ll feel up to fixing you something special for supper.”
Chapter 35
The bodies of five mob guys.
What to do with them had Mitch sitting in the dark on the side of the bed. Waiting for daylight as though it might bring the answer.
Five dead mob guys strewn all over Strawbridge land. What a feeding frenzy the police and the media would have with that, Mitch thought. He could hear himself attempting to explain it: “There were these two emeralds, see …”
A mass grave was the most expedient solution he’d been able to come up with. He’d get that forsaken, old backhoe running somehow, fix its flats and all and use it to dig a hole so deep that hungry dogs would walk right past it. Somewhere remote on the land, in the woods maybe where the disturbed ground would cover over quickly with leaves and brush.
It would take a lot of doing, at least all day.
It would also mar the pleasure of this land for him. He’d never be able to see it the same, knowing its grisly, buried secret.
He dressed, went down, microwaved a mug of yesterday’s coffee and at first light, went out to the West Meadow. Along the way he reminded himself that he knew nothing about operating a backhoe. He also wondered by what means he’d be able to extract Fat Angelo from the muck of the marsh. That would take a goddamn derrick.
When he arrived at the equipment barn he didn’t believe what he saw, or, rather, he disbelieved what he didn’t see.
The bodies of Riccio and Fratino weren’t there.
Coagulated blood but no bodies.
Was it possible that his wishful thinking was so intense that he’d manufactured an illusion? Had something supernatural occurred? When he’d last seen Riccio and Fratino they’d been dead as dead could be dead and he didn’t believe in resurrections, anyway certainly not when it came to mob guys.
No bodies in the barn.
Nor was the body of Little Mike or the carcass of the cow out in the pasture.
Nor was the corpse of Fat Angelo mired in the marsh.
Mitch hurried to the bluff. At the base of it not a sign of Bechetti, who’d plunged the equivalent of thirty stories.
There was, however, a clue on the exterior ramp of the Straw-bridge boathouse. Along the length of it, soaked into its dry, weathered wood were numerous streaks of blood. As would be caused by bleeding bodies being dragged.
Within the boathouse Mitch noticed the boat with the outboard motor was tied up in its slip bow first. It had previously been tied up bow out. The motor was cold. Blood had been wiped from the gunwales, seats and floorboards. Dried, remnant smears of it were visible to a close look.
Mitch gazed down the wide Hudson. Like many major rivers, especially in summer, its placid appearance belied its swiftness and currents. The water he was now looking at would be flowing past Manhattan, including West 47th, in practically no time.
Chapter 36
It was the second day that Mitch and Maddie had been back in the city. Four o’clock in the afternoon.
Since early yesterday Mitch had been putting off going to see Visconti and, now, standing on the corner of West 47th outside 580 Fifth he was still procrastinating.
It seemed to Mitch that Visconti was the final person he’d have to contend with regarding this Iranian emerald matter. He’d expressed to Maddie that it was about seventy-five percent his opinion that he shouldn’t wait for Visconti to make a move but face up to him with the truth and hope he believed it. Visconti was new mob, Visconti was not as irrational as Riccio had been, Visconti had enough understanding of the abstract to accept unapparent circumstances. Thus were the sort of persuasions Mitch had been offering his judgment. His better judgment insisted on having its say, to remind him that new-mob Visconti and his type of have-arounds were far more efficiently lethal.
Maddie convinced Mitch’s other twenty-five percent that it would be best if he took the initiative. Besides, she said, she had important things to tend to in town. Her birds were, no doubt, in need of fresh water and would stop loving her unless she provided some soon, and Casimiro Ramírez was scheduled for a lesson.
Casimiro Ramírez was a ringing name Mitch would have remembered had he heard it.
“He’s an eight-year-old who wants to be a great jazz guitarist,” Maddie had told him.
“Another prodigy.”
“He plays like he has webbed fingers. If anything he should take up cymbals.”
“So why the lesson?”
“That’ll be the lesson,” she’d said.
So, now, while she was high up in the Sherry gently dashing the dreams of Casimiro Ramírez, there was Mitch doing some last-ditch vacillating. He thought he was thirsty enough to have an iced tea somewhere; he thought he’d go to Barnes & Noble and see what new books on tape they had in for Maddie; he thought he’d stroll down five blocks, like it was some other day, and sit on the New York Public Library steps.
Not because he was intimidated to the point of weak-knee by Visconti. He’d just undergone such an ordeal with Riccio that he felt, in all fairness, life ought to give him a breather. When had any straight good guy such as himself had to go up against two crooked bad guys so consecutively?
Not fair but fuck it, he decided.
He entered the 580 building and went up to Visconti’s offices. In the tastefully done reception were the same pair of youthful have-arounds as the time before. Dressed to kill in Calvin and looking as though they swam two hundred butterfly laps every day before breakfast and did Shorin-Ryn Karate during lunch breaks.
They remembered Mitch by name. It was like he was expected. His arrival was phoned in and without wait he was shown down the narrow interior hall to Visconti’s private office.
Visconti was in shirtsleeves seated at his desk. On the phone. He raised his chin abruptly as though throwing his smile to Mitch. He placed his hand over the mouthpiece. “Be right with you,” he said and continued with his phone conversation.
Mitch couldn’t help but overhear some of it. Large sums of money being stipulated and, cryptically, a hundred pieces of white, two hundred of blue, which Mitch knew meant diamonds and sapphires.
The phone call in progress gave Mitch time to fit into the situation with more ease. Most of his misgivings were being chased. Coming there had definitely been the right decision.
The phone call also allowed him to appraise this day’s Visconti: lively blue custom-tailored shirt with long closely separated collar points and monogrammed cuff, dyed blue ostrich skin suspenders, Hèrmes two-hundred-dollar silk tie. No casual shirt and canvas tennis shoes this day. For some special reason, Mitch presumed.
Finally, Visconti hung up, stood up and came from around his desk for a handshake. A firm grip with his right, four pumps instead of the usual two, while his left clasped Mitch’s upper arm. “I was getting concerned about you Mitch.”
“No reason to be.”
“For days now whenever I happened to look across your office was dark.”
“I’ve been out of town.”
“I thought as much.” Visconti squinted, examined. “Hey,” he frowned, “that’s a nasty scratch.” Referring to the perforated-looking scratch that ran from the outer corner of Mitch’s left eye to below his earlobe. He also had numerous scratches on the back of his hands. Those on him elsewhere were concealed. “Where did you get that?” Visconti asked.
Mitch evaded the inquiry with admiration for Visconti’s necktie.
Visconti let him evade and for a moment Mitch thought he was about to take off the tie and give it to him. Be a shame to undo the perfect, tiny knot.
As before they sat in the visitors’ chairs.
“How’s your uncle-in-law?” Visconti asked.
“Better,” Mitch replied, and because Wally came to mind, added: “greatly improved.”
“And Maddie?”
“She’s fine.”
“I bought a town house,” Visconti said.
“Where?”
“In the seventies. East, of course. Actually, I bought it about eight months ago and had it renovated to suit. Practically gutted the place.”
Mitch thought of Ruder.
“This coming Saturday I’m having people in for the first time. Not a large crowd. Just a few special people like yourself. You’ll recognize some of the faces. And some of the figures too.” Visconti did a slightly salacious smirk. “Movie people.”
“This Saturday.”
“Hope you can make it.”
“Depends on Maddie.”
“She’ll want to come. Anyway, come solo if it gets to that. I’m sure Maddie doesn’t keep you on too short a leash.”
She doesn’t keep me at all was what Mitch wanted to say. He was becoming increasingly resentful of Maddie being called Maddie by Visconti, who had never met her, and never would if Mitch had his way. How, under the circumstances, could he turn Visconti down on this Saturday night thing?
“Along with my new town house I have a new lady friend,” Visconti said. “I want to impress her with you and Maddie. She thinks my only close acquaintances are emaciated models and way overweight gem dealers. How about a drink?”
Mitch nearly automatically declined but decided he could use one. “Any scotch,” he said, “straight or on the rocks, doesn’t matter.”
Visconti ordered the drinks through the intercom on his desk and returned to his chair. “I’m planning on showing a film Saturday night,” he said, “one that hasn’t yet been released. Not coincidentally I have a sizeable chunk invested in it.” Visconti named a couple of stars who were the leads. “Film-making must be in my blood, the way I’m drawn to it.” He directed a glance intended to direct Mitch’s attention to the Luchino Visconti poster on the wall to the left.
Mitch pretended to be unaware that was expected of him.
Which irked Visconti but only slightly and he was able to smooth it over. “Something you ought to get into, financing films,” he said. “That it’s such high-risk is only greedy bullshit spread by those making plenty from doing it. Perhaps you and I could do a film venture together. I’d enjoy that. Wouldn’t you?”
Mitch did a very small smile and a single, almost imperceptible nod, meanwhile thinking Visconti’s surmise that he was so financially well off came from the impression that he could dip into the Strawbridge money pot anytime for any amount. Or else …
He got Visconti eyes to eyes and got to the point. “I don’t have those Iranian emeralds.”
“Of course you do.”
“No.”
“Perhaps what you mean is you no longer have them.”
“I’ve never had them.”
“You e
ither still have them or you’ve already cashed them in.”
“Neither.”
Visconti didn’t appear upset; however Mitch couldn’t trust that.
“You made a nice score. Why deny it?”
Visconti will turn any moment, Mitch predicted.
“Is it because you think it’s so fucking important to me, that I’ll press you for a piece of your score, or even all of it?”
Don’t say, Mitch thought.
“You insult me, Mitch. That was Riccio, not me.”
Mitch noted the past tense.
“Think I got no feelings, I don’t mean sympathy, I mean feelings, for what a guy with such a rich wife has to put up with, the constant stretch it is for him to keep his cogliones?”
When Mitch didn’t comment, Visconti did a little conceding shrug and went on. “Sure, twenty-five extra large isn’t chicken fat by anybody’s count, and if this particular twenty-five had come my way I would have gladly stuffed it away down in the Caymans or put it out to the street. But the way it went down it didn’t come to me, it found you, and I’m not going to begrudge you a dime of it. Capish?”
Mitch didn’t capish. There had to be a catch. Say yeah, he told himself. “Yeah.”
“That didn’t sound like thanks,” Visconti said coolly.
A thanks won’t kill you, Mitch thought. “Thanks.”
Visconti warmed up as instantly as he’d cooled. “Anyway, it’s not entirely magnanimity on my part. I owe you.”
“For what?”
“For clipping Riccio, what else?”
How it was that Visconti knew of Riccio’s death was only momentarily a question, for just then the answer entered carrying the drinks on a silver tray. Mitch recognized him right off, despite his changed appearance, the immaculate white serving jacket, fresh white shirt and neatly executed black bow tie; despite the polished, mannerly way he acquitted himself as he underlaid the drinks with coasters before placing them just so on the marble-topped table and arranged appropriate, small linen napkins folded just so and, before making his exit, inquired just so with a sir if anything more was wanted.
Caselli.
West 47th Page 36
