by Robert Greer
Most of the first page contained sketches of what looked like rows of tenement houses, the kind of lower-working-class common-walled buildings her relatives up North had lived in a half century earlier. America now called them townhouses. The second page was filled with a series of times and October dates that ran down the page in two neat columns. Between the columns, near the middle of the page, Antoine had circled the word Gary. Beneath that he had drawn what appeared to be two ladders. One ladder extended from just beneath the G in Gary almost to the bottom of the page. The other started beneath the letter Y and also ran almost to the bottom of the page. Beneath the ladders was the bracketed word Shore. Between the two ladders Antoine had printed NOV.
For Willette, the third page, which she’d pored over more times than she could remember, remained the strangest. Written rather than printed on that page was a paragraph that was very obviously a description of someone. She took a sip of JD as she read the paragraph. He was real dark. To me he looked almost colored. And he smelled like garlic and onions and something sort of sweet. Never got a good look at his hair because he was wearing a hat. But it was black. His shoes were dark brown and square toed. Never really seen anything like them before. He never said his name and I never said mine. He seemed okay with that, just like he seemed okay with our cab ride and with taking orders or at least pretending to take them from Ornasetti. Beneath that paragraph, Antoine had written five words as if they were afterthoughts: sunglasses and low post and high post.
She stared at the handwritten paragraph for several more minutes, frowning and running two fingers along the edge of the long, deep gouge in the tabletop as she thought about her long-dead sister. She didn’t know exactly what the three pages of notes meant, but she knew they were tied to the JFK assassination and that they likely said a lot about why Antoine had died.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on what had come over her thirty-six hours earlier when she’d opened that trunk that contained Antoine’s most precious things and realized she’d never before opened it without thinking that he might still be alive. She had cried briefly and asked her Lord and Savior to unburden her of her guilt, and for the next nineteen hours she’d done just about everything but sleep. She’d driven around the parish asking anyone she thought might have known anything, including the remaining few Marcello-connected people still alive, about the exact nature of the assignment Antoine had been on when he’d gone up North to Chicago in 1963. She’d screwed up the courage to ask a longtime perishable goods and liquor hijacker she’d known for over sixty years, a man who’d once supplied Carlos Marcello with the Creole women he preferred, “Do you know if my baby, Sugar Sweet, was in on the Kennedy killin’?” And the man had replied, “If I was you, I’d tread lightly, Willette. Word’s come down that all of a sudden you’re pushin’ too hard. You may wanna think about a little time away from here.”
After thinking it over, she’d taken the hijacking whiskey runner’s advice to heart, but not before making a few other contacts and finding out that the corporate account number on the FedEx envelope she’d received with the newspaper clipping about Antoine had originally been scanned in Boulder, Colorado. A few hours before parking herself at the kitchen table and once again reading through Antoine’s things, she’d packed a suitcase with clothes, nosed around the parish one last time, and bought a plane ticket to Denver on the Internet. Now that Antoine was officially dead to her, the same guilt that had weighed on her for over forty years was driving her to find out what had happened to him.
Tired and laden with guilt, she eyed the gouge in the tabletop one last time, muttered, “You’ve taken them both from me now,” and poured herself a final glass of Jack Daniel’s, knowing that now, instead of awakening to the painful, haunting memories of her long-dead sister, she’d forever awaken to the confirmed loss of her baby, Sugar Sweet.
Fortified with a double dose of her arthritis medication, no longer lying to herself, and no longer dreaming, she left her house just before midnight, nosing her Cadillac toward Baton Rouge and a twelve-unit, black-owned, mom-and-pop motel a few miles off Interstate 10. She’d stay the night there before catching a 7 a.m. flight from Baton Rouge to Dallas. A second flight would take her from there to Denver. Her long-barreled .38 and the shoebox full of Antoine’s papers occupied the passenger’s side of the Caddy’s front seat. She knew she would have to leave the gun behind, but she’d find a replacement in Denver or Boulder, or wherever the account number on the FedEx envelope led her. After all, she’d been the one who’d taught Antoine to milk the information and illegal firearms pipelines.
Julie Madrid stood in front of the fireplace she had enlarged, rebricked, and remanteled before she and Damion had moved into the vintage Tudor-style house she’d bought in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood three years earlier. The 3,400-square-foot house was far more spacious than the two of them needed, and sometimes when she thought about growing up in a Jersey City tenement in one-third the space, she felt self-conscious, but she’d always dreamed of living in a sprawling Tudor like the ones she’d seen on grade school field trips to the New Jersey shore. When she’d spotted the “For Sale” sign in the front yard of the Washington Park house one day while jogging, she’d made a beeline for the empty house, gawking and peering through the windows for the next half hour. She’d put the house under contract without even setting foot inside.
Glancing briefly at the mantel, which was dotted with photographs of Damion, CJ, and CJ’s longtime friend Billy DeLong fly-fishing, trap-shooting, and branding cattle at the fifty-thousand-acre Wyoming cattle ranch where Billy had once been foreman, Julie tried to hide her displeasure. But when she turned her attention back to CJ and Damion, who were seated a few feet away from her, the hurt etched on her face told a different story.
“All I can say is, I’m disappointed,” she said, eyes darting back and forth between them. “Terribly disappointed in you both,” she added softly. She locked eyes with a grim-faced Damion. “I’ve moved past the point of being a terrified mother, Damion. Past the point of wringing my hands, and past the point of crying. Right now I’m simply wondering when the police—or better yet, some hit man—will show up on our doorstep. What were you thinking? Has it sunk in yet that you tried to kill someone?”
When Damion answered with a downward glance and silence, she turned her attention to CJ. “Why didn’t you immediately come and tell me what had happened, CJ? After all, it was you who put Damion’s life at risk. You might have a mobster for a business partner, but Damion and I certainly don’t. He’s my only child, CJ.”
CJ, who couldn’t remember having had even a minor disagreement with Julie in all the years they’d known one another, paused thoughtfully before answering. “I made a mistake,” he said hesitantly.
“I’ll say. And you made an even bigger one when you hooked Damion up with a former mafia don. Look at the two of you, conniving and lying and even trying to kill people—just like him.”
“Mom, come on.”
Julie flashed Damion the kind of steely eyed look she normally reserved for cross-examinations in the courtroom. “You might be twenty years old, Damion, and you might think you’re a man, but you’re not. I expect you to listen.”
Having had his mother lash out at him in a way she never had and watched her tear into CJ, the person most responsible for turning their desperate lives around ten years earlier, Damion couldn’t hide his feelings any longer. He knew he’d scared and disappointed her and forced her to do something she rarely did—cry—but he couldn’t suffer through another round of accusations or hurtful words. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I’ve been listening, Mom, all my life. Listening to you tell me to do right, listening to you tell me to stay away from the wrong kind of people, listening to you talk about what the mob did to Grandpa back in New Jersey.” Damion paused and locked eyes with Julie. “This isn’t New Jersey, Mom, and I’m not my grandfather. I’m the one who made the decision to work for Mario, not CJ, and I
’m the one this has happened to, not you. I know I should’ve told you what happened sooner, and I know you’re pissed about us not calling the cops, but I’m the one who made that call, not CJ or Mario. Besides, siccing the cops on Mario would kill him.”
Caught off guard by Damion’s response and taken aback by his intimation in front of CJ that her father had suffered at the hands of the mob, Julie said, her voice booming with displeasure, “That’s enough, Damion!”
“Maybe I should leave,” said CJ as the words a mother and her son filled his head.
“No, don’t, CJ. Please.” Damion turned to face Julie. Trembling and with his voice quavering, he said, “CJ already knows about Grandpa, Mom.”
Julie’s jaw dropped. “Damion, how could you?”
Sounding more worldly than Julie would have expected he could, Damion said, “Some burdens have to be shared with others, Mom, or they’ll sink you.”
After a moment of reflective silence, with the two people she cared most about in the world seemingly staring right through her, Julie looked at CJ and asked, “How long have you known about what happened to my father?”
“A couple of years.”
“Have you ever mentioned it to anyone else? Flora Jean, Billy, Mavis?”
“Julie, please. Of course not.”
Julie’s eyes welled up with tears. “It’s the biggest hurt I’ve ever had to deal with, CJ. Aside from my mother dying.”
“I understand.”
Julie flashed CJ a brief, insightful smile. “No, you don’t. And I couldn’t expect you to, really.” Looking as if a lifetime of pent-up pressure had suddenly been released, Julie walked away from the fireplace and took a seat in a small wingback chair a few feet away from CJ. The only sounds in the high-ceilinged room were the ticking of a century-old grandfather clock in one corner and the soft, rhythmic wheeze of three people breathing. She eyed the floor and rubbed her hands together nervously as CJ and Damion sat motionless in their chairs. When she finally spoke, her words were measured. “But it’s something I should’ve told you, especially in light of our relationship and your friendship with Mario. And it’s a burden I never should’ve saddled Damion with.”
Fighting back tears, Damion rose, walked over to his mother, and clasped her hand in his. “I’m sorry, Mom. I had to tell someone. I didn’t want to have to carry all that hurt around with me the way you always have.”
Julie slipped her hand out of Damion’s and stroked a lock of hair off his forehead. “Are you okay, Damion? Really?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.” He kissed Julie reassuringly on the forehead and looked up at CJ. The look on his face as much as said, It’s a new day now. Again clutching Julie’s hand tightly, Damion said, as if to test his new-day hypothesis, “I won’t turn my back on Mario.”
“I’m still trying to deal with all that’s happened today, Damion. Let’s delay that discussion.”
Not wanting to force the issue, Damion nodded and said, “There’s something else you should know.”
Prepared for the worst, Julie said, “Go ahead.”
Damion let out a barely perceptible sigh. “This afternoon, outside the courts over in Glendale, I think somebody might’ve been following me. Shandell spotted him.”
Julie shook her head. “Damion, no.”
“It was nothing, Mom,” Damion said, wrapping an arm around his mother’s shoulders.
Suspecting that Damion may have gotten himself involved in a kind of game he wasn’t prepared for, CJ said, “The whole story, Damion. Now.”
Frowning and taking in the look of concern on CJ’s and Julie’s faces, Damion considered just how to go about explaining Shandell’s phantom man. Uncertain where to start, he said, “First let me get a glass of water.” As he headed for the kitchen, he suddenly felt small and juvenile and unseasoned. But now wasn’t the time to think about that, he told himself. He’d consider those shortcomings—how he’d betrayed his mother’s trust and the issue of how best to deal with Mario—at a special place in the morning. A place where he could collect his thoughts and not be persuaded, disregarded, or interrupted.
Chapter 17
Randall Maxie latched on to CJ’s Bel Air a block from Julie’s house as CJ headed north on Downing Street toward home. Hugging the rear of an out-of-service RTD bus most of the way, Maxie told himself that Floyd and the Madrid kid had to be stink-on-shit tight if Floyd was at the kid’s house holding his hand until after midnight.
He knew just about everything there was to know about Floyd and his reputation as a no-nonsense bounty hunter and bail bondsman. But he also knew that no one could live on rep forever. Floyd was pretty much past his prime, as far as he was concerned—a lot like Mario Satoni. Why Floyd was sniffing up the kid’s shorts at midnight didn’t matter. Maybe Floyd was priming the Madrid kid to be his replacement, or maybe he was banging the kid’s mother. What mattered was that Maxie had a score to settle with Damion Madrid, and if some over-the-hill bounty hunter was stupid enough to toss himself into the mix, he’d end up paying a hefty price.
When CJ turned off Thirteenth Avenue onto Delaware Street and then quickly into his driveway, Maxie stopped for the light at Thirteenth Avenue and chuckled. He watched Floyd get out of the car, light up a cheroot, tip back his Stetson, and disappear into his house before continuing west on Thirteenth. Two blocks later he opened his glove box, reached inside, and extracted a CD. He slipped the disc into the car’s CD player, turned up the volume on the $6,000 after-market stereo system, and prepared to enjoy the familiar and always energizing first melodic strains of La Bohème.
Deciding that he’d done enough reconnaissance for the evening and that he could deal with Floyd and the Madrid kid later, he eased his 310-pound girth back into his seat, primed to enjoy twenty minutes of his favorite opera on the crosstown drive home.
Carmine Cassias drifted into a fitful sleep a little after 12:30. An hour and a half later, with less than thirty minutes of what could be called real sleep under his belt, he woke up, slipped out of bed, and walked from his bedroom to his office at the opposite end of his sprawling, split-level, seven-thousand-square-foot Mediterranean-style house.
He normally turned the air conditioning up at night to keep his sensitive sinuses from drying out and giving him fits, but on this night, he’d cranked the system down a notch to combat the insufferable Louisiana heat and humidity. His house, forty minutes north of New Orleans, had escaped the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, and the only things he’d lost in the subsequent flooding were a couple of old cypress trees. At first blush, his post-Katrina world looked much the same as it had before the hurricane. In reality, the gaming, prostitution, and drug trafficking he controlled had taken a significant hit, and the cash flow had just recently started to come back from the enterprises that Carlos Marcello and the other men who had once controlled organized crime in Louisiana, Mississippi, and southeast Texas all the way down to Brownsville had entrusted to him.
Smiling and thinking that Marcello and the hard-knuckled boys of mid-twentieth-century America would’ve had a hard time imagining the dividends their efforts to grow the gaming industry had reaped, Cassias was reminded of something Marcello, his mentor, had been fond of saying: Always view the glass half full, Carmine; that way you’re halfway home to a horn of plenty.
Angling across his office to the refrigerator behind his desk, he took out a half-gallon jug of lemonade and a chilled glass, filled the glass, and took a sip before walking over to the room’s massive swinging French doors and opening them. Inhaling the warm, moist Louisiana air, he reveled in the soothing effect the air had on his sinuses. He stood in the open doorway for several minutes listening to the sounds of the crickets and cicadas and the hundreds of species of ambiguous swamp bugs that seemed wholly unaffected by Katrina. When he closed the doors a few minutes later, the aggravations that had stifled his sleep seemed to have abated. Walking back to his desk with a new sense of purpose, he picked up the re
ceiver of one of three phones that occupied his desktop, sat down, and dialed a rarely used long-distance number.
The voice of the person who answered was groggy with sleep. “What’s the problem, Carmine?”
“Did my number come up on your caller ID?”
“How else would I have known it was you who’s waking me in the middle of the night?”
“Did you get a call from Jimmy earlier this evening?” asked Cassias.
“Yeah, that cue-ball-headed gofer of yours called me. He’s a zombie, and he sounds like a fuckin’ elf. I don’t know why the hell you use him.”
“Did he tell you to deal with Ornasetti?” asked Cassias, ignoring the commentary.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m callin’ to add a little cream to that coffee, and to give you a heads-up. This whole issue with Ornasetti is interferin’ with my sleep. So here’s the new deal. If you get any meltdown out there in the Rockies, any kind of fallout from the Mongoose thing that might send a spark of some kind flyin’ down my way, I want you to extinguish it.” Cassias paused before continuing. “You’ve got the green light to do Satoni as well.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I thought Satoni was golden.”
“He was. But since Jimmy called you about Ornasetti, I’ve talked to people in Chicago, Jersey, and Vegas. Satoni’s become expendable. Things like that happen when all your cronies are dead and there’s nobody left to speak up for you. Food for thought, don’t you think?”
