Sons and Princes

by James Lepore

  “How would he do that?” Anthony asked.

  “He’ll work the Palisades murders,” Chris replied. “Someone will break: Labrutto, the albino. I’m guessing there was a helper. Someone would rather give you up and go into witness protection than get executed. Dolan will put the making of the snuff film on you. Whether you were behind making it or not is irrelevant to him. He’ll charge you with the vicious killing of an innocent girl for profit. Even if you fight it and win, you’ll lose. You’ll be the Snuff Film Don. Dolan wants you, Junior Boy. Nailing you for the snuff film will make him a huge star, untouchable. And he wants me worse than he wants you.”

  “So you want us to kill Dolan?” Aldo said. “Is that it? A federal prosecutor?”

  “No,” Chris answered. “I’ll kill him.”

  “You’ll kill him?” Frank said, raising his eyebrows. “Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “In return for what?”

  “Two things,” Chris said, directing his reply to Junior Boy. “I want my son to live with me for the next four years, and I want Labrutto and the albino to help me.”

  “Your son?” Aldo said. “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “Help you how?” the don asked.

  “I’ll set Dolan up,” Chris said to Junior Boy, ignoring Aldo. “When I say come, I want Labrutto and his friend to come, immediately.”

  The set of Junior Boy’s face – passive, unperturbed, alert – had remained unchanged from the moment Chris entered the room, but on hearing this answer, his eyes narrowed and he appeared to smile slightly. What he was thinking Chris could not tell. It might have been approval, it might have been respect, it might have been sudden insight into Chris’ motives.

  “How will you set him up?” Frank asked.

  “I’ve been playing Joseph’s tape to him on the phone. He’s probably ready to crack. He’ll meet me to get the tape.”

  “He’ll meet you to kill you,” Frank said.

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Who’s Nick Scarpa to you?” Aldo asked.

  Chris had attributed Aldo’s confrontational attitude thus far to the bad blood between them going back to the incident with Aldo Jr. and Sal. He now guessed from this out-of-left-field question that the stocky, quick-to-anger DiGiglio brother had a special interest in Guy Labrutto, who he was worried Chris would kill to avenge Nick Scarpa’s murder. In the Mafia culture, this meant one of two things: blood or money. It was virtually impossible to imagine that Aldo had a secret financial arrangement with Labrutto. Disloyalty was not in his nature. Which left blood. If Labrutto was somehow related to Aldo, then it would be that much more satisfying to Chris when he killed the chubby porn producer with the goatee and the supercilious attitude.

  “Nothing,” he replied. “A friend.”

  “You said you brought us a copy of the tape,” Junior Boy said. “Where’s the original?”

  “In a safe place.”

  “What if Dolan refuses to meet? What happens to the original tape?”

  “I won’t use it against you, if that’s what you’re asking. But he’ll meet me, to kill me. He’s wanted me dead for twenty-five years.”

  “So you’re telling us we have to trust you, put the family’s fate in your hands?”

  “I asked for this meeting,” Chris replied, looking Anthony in the eye. “You could have me killed as soon as I walk out the door. The tape was intended to hurt Dolan, not the DiGiglio family. I’m sure Joseph tried to explain that to you. He was acting foolishly, but honorably. I won’t turn the tape into something he never intended it for. I won’t dishonor my dead brother.”

  “Then it’s a deal,” Junior Boy said, returning Chris’ gaze and ignoring his brothers. “When do you want Matt?”

  “Not until early September,” Chris replied, “Just before school starts.” As he said this, Chris reflected on the raw power the don would have to wield over Teresa in order to accomplish the transfer of custody of Matt. The fierceness of her resistance would make her ultimate defeat even more bitter, for it was a certainty that her father, having given his word to Chris, would prevail. Chris did not deny to himself the measure of satisfaction this thought gave him. Provided, of course, he lived until early September.

  Junior Boy nodded his assent, and then readjusted himself in his chair and crossed his legs. Chris had watched him carefully, knowing how difficult, and important, it was to try to fathom his thinking. He took the don’s ready assent to his proposal as clear evidence that the Dolan/snuff film problem had preempted all other family concerns. Jimmy Barsonetti, for example, would have a few more months of life. Except for the lone, indecipherable smile, his former father-in-law’s eyes had remained expressionless, his demeanor calm. He had let Aldo vent but had not allowed him to push the meeting off course. For Junior Boy, the meeting was over, and Chris had no doubt that he was now thinking of the next several moves on the board.

  “There’s one other thing,” Chris said, reaching into the black bag and placing its contents – the DVDs that Vinnie had bought for him, ten thousand dollars in cash secured by a rubber band and the Dolan cassette – on the coffee table. “I want Labrutto to bring these movies and the cash with him when he comes. The small one is the Dolan tape. That’s for you.”

  “Are these snuff films?” Frank asked, picking up the DVDs and turning them over in his hands.

  “No,” Chris answered, “but they’re nasty.”

  “So Dolan is killed in a deal that goes wrong,” Aldo said.

  “Something like that,” Chris answered.

  “Why can’t you carry this?” Aldo asked, indicating the DVDs and the cash with a nod of his head.

  “You want to do this hit yourself, Aldo?” Chris replied. “You’re welcome to it.”

  “If you’re playing both sides of the street, like your brother, you’ll end up dead for sure,” Aldo replied. “Like him.”

  There had been no attempt at revenge for Chris’ assault on Sal and Aldo Jr., and the explanation for this came clear now. Aldo had wanted to seek it, but the don would not let him. The malice in Aldo’s hooded eyes revealed another truth: it was Aldo who executed Joseph as a means of vicariously avenging the unforgotten insult to his sons. Chris would have bet his life on this.

  “My brother died for me,” Chris said. “I’m sure your sons would do the same for each other.”

  Aldo, his eyes flashing, was about to reply when Junior Boy, holding his hand up, said sharply to his brother, “That’s enough,” and then to Chris, “When will this happen?”

  “A week, maybe two. No more than that.”

  “Here,” Junior Boy said, handing Chris a piece of paper. “That’s Rocco Stabile’s cell phone number. Don’t call him to chat. Call him when you want Labrutto and the albino. He’ll make sure they go where you want them to.”

  Chris took the paper and nodded his assent.

  “I have one more question,” the don said.

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you accompany Scarpa to Labrutto’s house?”

  Somehow, Chris knew from the faces that stared back at him that Aldo and Frank still did not know about Junior Boy’s offer regarding Barsonetti. What was it that seemed to be so important about sharing this secret with the don? Alone with Anthony, he might have answered truthfully, and, in that way, attempt to fathom the don’s biggest secret, the secret to his power. He decided not to go there in the presence of Aldo and Frank, who he now realized had no power themselves. Junior Boy had it all. Without him, the family would cease to exist.

  “Like I said,” he answered. “He’s a friend from the old neighborhood. I ran into him. It was a good chance to catch up.”

  Chris looked one last time from brother to brother to brother. He knew that the Palisades murders did not bother them. They could easily kill Labrutto and Mickey to cut off the trail of evidence that led from the botched killings to the family. But an obsessed Ed Dolan – with a Labrutto-made snuff film in his ha
nd – could hurt them badly, and a DiGiglio hit on him was not an option. It would put the entire Justice Department on the warpath against the family. Now here comes Chris Massi offering to do it for them. The same Chris Massi whose brother they had just executed. The same Chris Massi who could devastate them if he decided to tell the authorities what he knew about the Dolan tape and the snuff film.

  Aldo’s anger at Chris was clouding his thinking. Frank, drone-like, with no dog in the succession fight, was content to follow Junior Boy’s lead. Not that it would have escaped either of them that Labrutto and Mickey were meant to die along with Dolan. The don saw this, too, of course, but he saw much more. There was something in his eyes that could not be disguised by the matter-of-fact way he handled this meeting, a glint that spoke of both shrewd calculation and the cool reserve of a great king, which in effect he was.

  I haven’t fooled him, Chris thought. He knows I’m going to try to kill him to avenge my brother. It’s almost as if he wants me to try. Labrutto and Dolan are throwaways somehow. I’ll accommodate you, Junior Boy, I promise. I’ll kill Aldo and Frank, too, if they get in my way, but first things first.

  5.

  “I think I found him, Ed.”

  “Good, where?’

  “On Suffolk Street, the building that the McRae girl lived in.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. The list of tenants turns up nothing, but I followed Rosamelia here twice, and the super told me that a gay guy with a goatee paid the rent on McRae’s apartment and on a woman’s named Michele Mathias.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A local addict, a friend of the brother’s, maybe.”

  In the pause that followed this statement, Ron Magnuson, sitting in his car on Suffolk Street, with a clear view of the front of number one-twelve, wondered what his boss was thinking. After ten years of working with him, Magnuson thought he had grown accustomed to Dolan’s strange ways, but recently – just within the last week – the prosecutor’s behavior had reached a new level of weirdness.

  “Have you seen Massi?” Dolan asked.

  “No.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “An hour. Rosamelia left a few minutes ago. Are you sure you don’t want me to pick up Massi?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I can serve the order for the hair sample.”

  “That can wait.”

  “You want him followed if he comes out?”

  “No. I just wanted to know where he was, in case we need him.”

  “He may not be in there.”

  “I think he is. Rosamelia’s his good friend.”

  “I’ll pack it in, then.”

  “Go ahead, and you might as well go to your seminar upstate. I can use Rick or Dean if I need something over the next few days.”

  Magnuson clicked off his cell phone, started his car, and sat for a moment as it idled and the gray dusk turned to night around him. It had been a long, and, in his opinion, wasted day. He had worked hard, not only to track down Chris Massi, but on the entire investigation into the double murder on the Palisades. And now it appeared that Ed Dolan, incredibly, was backing off. On reflection, the turning point occurred sometime last Monday afternoon, a week after the murders. Until then, Dolan had directed a very aggressive investigation. Antoinette Scarpa, in shock at the news of her husband’s death only a few hours before, had been worked hard; Labrutto, Massi and Junior Boy DiGiglio hauled in and braced for more to come. Forensics had been all over Labrutto’s house, and hair samples collected there were being matched to the McRae and Scarpa corpses, both still in the Bellevue morgue. A hair sample was wanted from Chris Massi, as well. He had moved from his Bedford Street apartment, but no doubt he would be found soon enough. Detectives were looking into Labrutto’s story about his BMW sedan being in a body shop in Queens on the day of the murders. Others were tracking down the actors in the dozens of West Coast Productions’ porn flicks to see if anyone knew or remembered the McRae girl.

  Magnuson had no doubt that Massi, Scarpa and McRae were in Labrutto’s pretentious house in Alpine on the day of the murders, and he felt equally certain that either physical evidence or independent witnesses would confirm this. Arrests could then be made, and there was nothing like an arrest for first-degree murder to get someone to open up, perhaps point the finger further up the food chain. Magnuson had only a passing interest in Chris Massi. He had watched him for two weeks as, a year ago, he stood trial on Dolan’s flimsy stock fraud charges. and, in his gut, did not believe the ex-lawyer was involved in the Scarpa/McRae murders. Labrutto on the other hand was a scumbag of the first order. It would be nice to nail him, and even nicer – an extraordinary coup – to make a case for murder against Anthony DiGiglio, probably the last and certainly the smartest and most elusive of the old school Mafia dons.

  Last Monday – the day of Dolan’s strange one-eighty – an intriguing NYPD report came across Magnuson’s desk. A small-time drug dealer named Woody Smith had been gunned down, gangland-style, in front of his home in Bed-Stuy. A neighbor, though she claimed not to have seen or heard the killing, had been suspicious enough of a car parked outside her door for several hours that morning to take down its plate number, which traced to a lessee named Marsha Davis. Davis, in a brief interview, told detectives she leased the car for her boyfriend, one Joseph Massi. Distraught, looking ill, she claimed she had seen neither Massi nor the car in several days. Because the Smith murder had all the earmarks of a Mafia hit, the NYPD had reported it, along with its findings, to Ed Dolan’s task force. It struck Magnuson as too much of a coincidence that both Joseph and Chris Massi had been connected to Mafia hits occurring within a few days and a few miles of each other.

  Magnuson did not know, and did not care to know, its genesis, but it had become clear in the last year or so that Dolan had a personal vendetta against the Massi family and Chris Massi in particular. Perhaps it had to do with another never-caught Mafia figure, the hitman, Joe Black Massi. It didn’t matter. Magnuson had had a few vendettas himself over the years. In his business, personal motives to put criminals behind bars were not uncommon, and often fueled good work. When he brought the Smith report into Dolan to get authority to re-interview Marsha Davis and to start looking for Joseph Massi, he, therefore, expected the prosecutor to react not just positively but with near manic glee at having both Massi brothers in his sights. Instead, Dolan, his face drained of color, looking traumatized by something, waved him distractedly away and told him to come back in an hour. An hour later, some, but not all, of his color back, trying but not succeeding to make his request sound routine, Dolan told him to drop everything, including running down Joseph Massi, and find out where Chris Massi was staying; no more, no less: just his current address.

  It had taken Magnuson a week to accomplish this task, a week in which he had done no other work, a week in which Ed Dolan kept to his office and called him two or three times a day for updates, a week of trailing and losing Vinnie Rosamelia in the city’s sweltering heat. The detective had a life of his own, with two kids and a mother in a nursing home. He had gotten close enough to Ed Dolan over the years to know that no one got close to Ed Dolan. Talented, driven, lonely, moody was how he described him to his wife and colleagues. Magnuson pulled out of his prime parking space – in front of a hydrant – and drove off.

  He did not know about Dolan’s deal with Joseph Massi, the snuff film or the anonymous telephone calls the prosecutor had been receiving. If he had, he would have seen his boss’ current behavior for what it was: not a mood swing, but a descent into dementia.

  Fifteen minutes after Magnuson left, Ed Dolan turned onto Suffolk Street and parked in the space the detective had vacated. In his suit jacket pocket was the standardissue .38 caliber revolver that Dolan had reported stolen three years earlier, taking advantage of a legitimate break-in of his car one night while he was having dinner in Chinatown. On the seat beside him, in a faux-leather carrying
case that looked like a point-and-shoot camera cover, was a cattle prod that he had found at a drug dealer’s apartment a few months ago and surreptitiously pocketed. Powered by a single nine volt battery, it had been re-rigged to transmit thermal heat to its two metal prongs rather than electric impulses. Operated by a simple trigger, it was capable, Dolan had found, of burning through wood with not much in the way of pressure. A pair of FBI regulationissue handcuffs and his cell phone were in the car’s glove compartment. Number one-twelve was right across the street.

  Eying the building, Dolan placed three twenty milligram tablets of Adderall, a dexedrine-based stimulant prescribed by one of his rotating psychiatrists, in his mouth and washed them down with the coffee resting in the cup holder on his console. Sixty milligrams would easily keep him awake through the night and probably for twenty-four hours. He had no doubt that Joseph Massi was dead and that Chris Massi was the person calling him to play the tape Joseph had so cleverly made. No doubt Chris thought he was being clever, too. His cleverness would soon have a deadly payoff, just as his brother’s had, and Ed would be even with the Massis once and for all, their blood debt to the Dolans paid in full.

  6.

  While Ed Dolan was getting settled in his car, ready to wait the night out if necessary, Chris was sitting on the sofa in the living room of Allison McRae’s miniature apartment. He had a direct view into the kitchen, where Michele was scooping vanilla ice cream into two blue bowls at the counter next to the refrigerator. Watching her lean into the oversized Häagen-Dazs container that was among the items Vinnie had brought over earlier, he saw her as a woman for the first time since he’d met her. Her head was covered with a fuzz of blonde hair not too much darker than the yellow-white ice cream. Below it, unweighted by heroin, her brow had cleared, and her eyes had been revealed to be an arresting gray-blue and very pretty. Her injuries had healed, but her fine-featured face, in profile, still seemed tender and vulnerable as she concentrated on the frozen bucket of ice cream, unaware that he was watching her. She was wearing the low-slung faded jeans and sleeveless cotton top that seemed to make up her entire wardrobe. Her body, food-starved until recently, was still rail thin, but somehow, full breasts and the outline of a round and pert rear end had appeared.