“Yes. Of course, but—”
“There have been many times over the years when I’ve wished that those laws were still available to us today. Believe it or not, King Solomon’s laws are still practiced, in some manner, in many countries around the world.”
“But not here,” I stated emphatically.
He grinned. “Try to keep an open mind, Agent Mather. Life is filled with all kinds of possibilities.”
Chapter 27
Soto ground his cigar into the ashtray until the end looked like a worn floor mop. He had just hung up with Mather, who had drilled him with a list of difficult questions.
Mather began the second conversation in the same aggressive tone as the first. “Mr. Soto, it’s Agent Mather.”
“Actually, Agent Mather, I’m very busy. I have several matters—”
“You’ll have to put them on the back burner. It seems that Central Intelligence and Interpol have quite interesting dossiers on you. According to their files, your background reads like a who’s who of grand larceny.”
“I don’t have to talk about this. That was a long time ago, and I have no criminal record in this country. My past is not relevant to your investigation. So, if you have nothing more important to discuss, I need to attend to my business.”
“Try to blow me off again, and I’ll consider it a personal insult, Mr. Soto. Believe me, you don’t want to see me when I get angry. Did I tell you that I’m an ex-marine? I was taught that a person’s word is everything. Are you familiar with the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fi?”
“That sounds like Latin. I’m sorry. I don’t—”
The hell you’re sorry. “Semper Fi means always faithful, always honest. Are you always honest, Mr. Soto? Is your conscience clean?”
“One hundred percent, Agent Mather. I tell only the truth.” He was rolling his Havana between his fingers and still looking at the end of the mutilated cigar. “But what do the events of my previous life have to do with—”
“I checked Ms. Rabin’s answering machine. As you previously stated, there was a call from you, checking into her whereabouts.”
“There, you see. I’ve been completely honest with you. Semper Fi,” he boasted loudly.
Don’t you fucking dare! Those words … coming from his mouth they dishonored the marine chant. It took me a moment to swallow my outrage. “No. No, you haven’t. You made your phone call just to cover your ass, a couple of hours after our meeting.”
“That can’t be. Please, check again. I was very concerned about her. I called her several times. You know those cheap answering machines. The messages must have been accidentally erased.”
“No. I don’t believe they were. Ms. Rabin had a very good answering machine, and I was able to verify each and every one of her calls. The answering machine and the phone company’s records matched perfectly. You do realize that perjuring yourself to an agent of the FBI is a punishable offense and another absolutely fantastic way of pissing me off. You know what? I think you’re right. Why am I wasting time with you on the phone? We can save a lot of time if we do this face to face. I’ll send a car to pick you up.”
“Agent Mather, I’m sorry. I’d like to start over. Can we do that? Please,” he pleaded apologetically. “I was embarrassed. I asked one of the girls to call Rachel for me, but she neglected to do so. After our meeting I checked to make sure that the phone calls were made and was angered to hear that they weren’t, so I—”
“Do your teeth hurt from lying through them so much? Don’t you ever worry about the hereafter?”
“Sorry, the hear what?”
“Haven’t you ever thought about what’s waiting for you on the other side? I mean, all of your bullshitting and lying—all the people that have been hurt by you.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t follow.”
Goddamn shit bird. “In plain English, man, aren’t you afraid that you’ll burn in hell?”
“No. I’m not a man of God.”
“No? Well, you’re going to wish you were. We’ve got testimony that puts you and Rachel Rabin together on the evening she was murdered.”
“Who told you?”
“Look, let’s save each other a lot of time and trouble. We know that you had a meeting with Thomas Linuzzi, a member of organized crime, and some of his stooges the evening that Rachel Rabin went missing.”
“Mobsters? It couldn’t be. I only do business with legitimate people. If they were criminals, I certainly didn’t know it.”
“I didn’t ask you who you do business with. I asked you what happened that evening.”
“My clients had just given us a large shipment to handle. They were laying out a program, a series of shipments of office furniture to be exported to the Middle East. Have you ever done business with that part of the world? It is very complicated. There were many details to discuss, and I was hungry, so I took Rachel to dinner so that we could eat while we worked them out.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you take her?”
“To a local diner not far from here.”
“And after dinner, then what?”
“It was late. I drove her home. That’s all.”
“Which diner did you take her to? I’ll need to verify your story.”
“The Apollo Diner, Agent Mather. You can ask for Stavros. He knows me very well. He’ll vouch for me.”
Yeah, I’m sure he will. “What time did you take her home? I’ve met Rachel’s landlord, and I’m sure he’ll know the exact time that she got in. He treated her like a daughter.”
“It was around nine thirty. Now is there anything else I can help you with?”
“I understand that you have Rachel’s personal effects. They need to be turned over to me immediately.”
“Yes, by all means. I didn’t know what to do with them. Thank you, I’ll get them to you right away. Is there anything else?”
“Yes. While I’m checking out your information, I’d like you to think about something. Ms. Rabin was murdered sometime on the evening that you had dinner with her. You say that you drove her home and deposited her safely for the night.”
“Yes. That’s exactly right.”
“Well, somehow between the time you brought her home and midnight, she was raped, injected with heroin, murdered, and cut up into fish bait. So if you’re lying to protect Linuzzi and his friends, that’s just fine, because you’re my number one suspect.”
The line went dead in his hand.
Soto stood and began to pace around his desk. Why? he wondered. Why wasn’t I more clever? He had severely underestimated the female FBI agent. What will I tell Linuzzi? He trembled. What will I tell Silvestri? The thought of running away crossed his mind, but organized crime had friends everywhere, and he’d never know when the crooked arm of the Cosa Nostra would catch up with him. They never gave up. A bullet would hit its mark one day when he least expected it. The authorities would pursue him, but there were places in the world from which no extradition was possible, and he had friends in many of them. No, he decided. Despite Mather’s pummeling, the authorities were not his primary concern. Anthony Silvestri worried him far more.
Soto reached for the phone and then jerked back his hand. They could’ve tapped the lines. He grabbed his coat, ran outside, and crouched beneath the building overhang to shield himself from the rain. He called his old friend Stavros at the diner. His instructions were simple. He gave him the date and time that he was supposed to have had dinner with Rachel Rabin. He paid in cash. “Stavros, I owe you one.” One more chit added to the stack. Stavros spoke to him from the diner kitchen as they were preparing for the dinner rush. The conversation, filled with the clatter of pots and pans in the background, took less than a minute.
Soto thought for a moment, unsure of whether or not to call Linuzzi. He knew that phone calls were not appreciated. He hesitated a moment and then looked up the number on his smart phone. He was familiar with the popular Que
ens eatery that Linuzzi used as a base of operations.
An unfamiliar voice at the end of the line answered, “Good afternoon. Ricardo’s.”
“Yes. Eh, Mr. Thomas Linuzzi, please.”
“Hold.”
Soto grew nervous while he waited for Linuzzi to come on the line, and second-guessed his decision. There’s still time to hang up, he thought. He was about to end the call when he heard Linuzzi answer the phone.
“Linuzzi. Your dime is my time. Start talking.”
“Mr. Linuzzi, Soto speaking. Do you have a moment for me?”
“Soto, you asshole,” Linuzzi shouted. “Don’t you know better than to call me?”
“No, no. It’s all right,” he interjected. “I’m not calling from an office phone.”
Linuzzi seemed to settle down a bit. “Make it quick,” he snapped.
“I received another call from this FBI agent, the woman … Mather. She’s an ex-marine and she’s very persistent.”
“I really don’t care if she’s a marine or a fucking hairdresser, and I don’t have time for your chicken shit. Just keep your mouth shut, and I’ll take care of everything else.”
“But she knows, she knows so much.”
“She knows what?”
“She knows that you were in the office the night Rachel lost her life.”
Lorraine that lying bitch! he thought. “That all adds up to nothing. Just tell her that you don’t know and that you don’t remember. You can do that, can’t you?” Linuzzi listened for a reply. His patience lasted about two seconds. “Hey, are you there? Oh no,” he said, intuiting that Soto had blundered. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her that I went out to the diner to discuss business with Rachel. I kept everyone else out of it,” he boasted.
“Ah, ya dumb shit. Did you lie to a federal officer?”
“Don’t worry, Stavros at the diner is like my brother. I already spoke to him, and he’ll cover for me. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Aren’t you smart enough to know that you don’t lie to a fed? They’re not all jackasses like you. They’ll check out your story, and it won’t take them ten minutes to figure out that this guy Stavros is your beard.”
Soto shrugged. He’s my beard? “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Jesus. Never mind. What else did you tell her?”
“Nothing. I told her that I took her home. That’s it!”
There was a long pause on the line. “Don’t worry,” Linuzzi said in a sinister voice. “I’ll fix everything.”
The rain grew more intense. Droplets of water began to run down Soto’s face. He began hurrying back to the shelter of the office. As he ran, the telephone reception was washed away by static. Linuzzi picked up on the noise immediately. “Soto, where are you calling from?”
“Don’t worry, Linuzzi. I’m on a cell phone outside the office.”
“The cell phone’s not registered to the business, is it?”
“No. It’s a throwaway phone.”
“Very good,” Linuzzi said in a menacing voice. “Good-bye.”
Chapter 28
Carolyn Abate leapt from her lounge chair when she saw her husband approach. Gaetano Abate walked through the patio doors and onto the pink marble surface that surrounded the immense swimming pool. Carolyn bounded energetically toward her aging spouse. Her feet, still damp from a recent swim, left imprints on the marble as she advanced. She threw her arms around his sloping shoulders and kissed him passionately on the lips.
Abate stepped back to admire his young wife. Like the marble statuary on his estate, Carolyn Abate was a work of art and one of his most valued trophies. In her lace bikini she looked like an erotic Vargas drawing.
He brought his wrinkled arms around her waist and could feel the faint stirrings of youth within himself as he ground against her.
Abate had made her life sweet. Her only real concern was getting laid without the old-timer catching on. She glanced down at his groin and smiled wickedly. “Someone’s getting hard.”
“Yeah, I wish. But I still love it when you talk dirty.”
Abate thought briefly about Netta, his first wife, who had given him two strong sons and had devoted her life to him. Now that was a real woman, he thought. He glanced at Carolyn’s generous cleavage. But this ain’t bad.
He’d had many women in his life. But this one, Madonna mia. Carolyn reminded him of Marilyn Monroe. She had her eyes. She had her heat.
He had never forgotten the comment Jack Kennedy made one morning as the commander in chief tiptoed out of Marilyn’s Room. “You ought to try that, Guy,” he said in his Boston accent. “She’s a terrific piece of ass.”
They strolled hand in hand over to the patio table. Carolyn poured her husband a glass of fresh lemonade, took a seat at the table, and stared at the old man with counterfeit longing. “You shouldn’t leave me alone so long.” She dipped her fingertip into the lemonade and then sucked on it suggestively. “A girl could get lonely.”
Abate’s cheeks grew flush. “My, but you’re an incredible mind fuck.”
“C’mon, Guy, take me upstairs.”
Madonna. If only I still could. “Beg!” he demanded.
She ran her tongue along the underside of her finger to conjure images for the old man’s benefit. “Don’t you want to?”
“Beg,” he repeated.
“Please, Guy, please take me upstairs. You know I want it bad. I’m such a horny bitch.”
Abate leaned over, took her hand, and slid it into her bikini bottom.
Carolyn’s eyes flashed. Her seductive pout transformed into an expression of ecstasy. “Oh yes, Guy, you are the man.”
The charade ended when he heard the patio door slide open behind him. “Yeah,” he grumbled. “You fucking go, girl.”
Carlo Maltisse paused just beyond the patio doors and waited for Abate to acknowledge his presence.
Abate gestured with his hand, beckoning Maltisse forward. “From the mouth of the rat,” he said.
Maltisse regarded him with a puzzled expression.
“You’re from Boca Raton. Imbecile. In Spanish?” His open palms separated, imploring Maltisse to answer. He waited one additional moment to see if Maltisse would catch on. “Boca Raton means the mouth of the rat.” He waved his hands at Maltisse, dismissing him for his ignorance. “Forget it. Anyway, what the hell are you doing here, Carlo?”
“It was unavoidable, Gaetano. I had some labor problems and grabbed a flight down here to make sure nothing went wrong.”
Abate eyed Maltisse suspiciously. “And?”
“I took care of it,” Maltisse replied. “The merchandise will be picked up on schedule. I had a successful meeting with Silvestri and Soto, the freight forwarder, when I was in New York.”
“Great,” Abate replied sarcastically. “You know my beautiful wife, Carolyn, don’t you?”
Carolyn stood just behind Abate, fidgeting in place while she waited for Maltisse to greet her. She smiled politely. “Good to see you again, Carlo.”
Abate turned to his wife. “Carlo and I won’t bore you with business talk.”
Understanding that she had just been dismissed, she bent from the waist to pick up her sandals and in so doing treated Maltisse to a parting glance of her spectacular flank.
“Take a picture,” Abate said angrily. “It lasts longer.” He gave Maltisse a searing glance as his wife walked away. “How fucking dare you leave New York?” he said the moment she was gone. “I told you to oversee everything until the job was done.”
Maltisse was quick to appreciate his predicament. “I apologize. But really, everything is under control. It’s all safely tucked away at a commercial freight warehouse at Miami International. It will all be over in a few days. I thought it best to make sure that the shipment was picked up when it was supposed to be. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the feds are checking all the warehouses down here with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Bullshit. All you
had to do is make a phone call. I could have seen to everything from this end.” He gulped some lemonade, staring angrily at Maltisse as he quenched his thirst. “Why are the feds jumping through their assholes, anyway?”
Something I hijacked that I shouldn’t have. He kept a straight face as he answered. “Beats me, Gaetano. Who knows what they’re looking for?”
“Look,” Abate said, pointing a finger in Maltisse’s face. “I want you on the next plane back to New York. If anything goes wrong with this job, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
Carlo began to sweat profusely. He took out a handkerchief and began to mop his forehead. “It’s hot as hell out here.”
Yeah, you’ve got every reason to sweat, Abate thought.
Carolyn reappeared at the patio door. She had pulled on a pair of denim shorts and carried a white man-tailored shirt over her arm. “Honey,” she called out, “I’m going shopping.” She jingled her car keys and waved goodbye.
“Carlo.”
Maltisse snapped to attention. “Yes?”
“Jesus,” Abate mumbled. “Who but my wife wears a shirt on her arm?”
Carlo couldn’t help but eye Carolyn as she stood in the doorway, the sweet curves of her body crying out to him. He looked at Abate sheepishly. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” Abate rolled his eyes and then yelled to his wife, “Cover yourself up.”
Carolyn looked down at the shirt. “Oh.” She pulled it over her shoulders but would take it off again as soon as her Mercedes was out of the neighborhood. She glanced at her cleavage. Too pretty to cover up, she mused. She blew her husband a kiss before vanishing into the house.
Abate picked up the pitcher of lemonade and refilled his glass. “Remember, Carlo … the next fucking plane.”
“As you wish, Gaetano.”
Abate watched Maltisse walk away, knowing he would never lay eyes on him again.
Chapter 29
Linuzzi passed through the kitchen, barking his dinner order at the headwaiter without breaking stride. He had just enough time to wolf down a quick dinner and arrive ahead of Soto at Transglobal for his late night meeting.
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