Psycho Hill (JP Warner Book 3)

by Derek Ciccone

  “We’re good—we’ll holler if we need you,” I abruptly said and took the bottle of wine. Omar took my rudeness in stride—dealing with asshats is part of the restaurant business—he just smiled and informed us that our waitress would be by soon to take our order.

  Based on the dirty looks I was receiving from the rest of our table, I thought she better come quick … before I became the meal.

  Chapter 9

  A few silent, awkward moments later, a woman approached our table. She was heading directly for me with a confident strut.

  Guys are much simpler when it comes to what determines attractiveness of females, and this woman checked off all the boxes. Her Christmasy red dress was short, her heels were high, and there was a lot of scenic real estate in between. Her straight blonde hair fell below her shoulders, and contrasted with her exotic features that appeared to be of mixed heritage, including Asian.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I am a really big fan,” she gushed with a slight local accent, reaching out her hand to shake. “You’re the one who inspired me to get into this business—I’m a reporter at Channel-3 here in Savannah.”

  I have traditionally not taken well to those who interrupt my dinner with the “You’re JP Warner, aren’t you …” routine. And it has sometimes led to a confrontation and hurt feelings. But it hasn’t happened that much since I retired from the fame business, and I was feeling nostalgic. So I would make an exception for this young lady.

  I smiled. “I’m honored that I could play a small role in your career, but I’m sure you got there on your talent.”

  “It may be unprofessional to ask of a colleague, but would you mind signing an autograph for me?” the woman asked nervously.

  “Not at all—we’re not working right now. And if you want unprofessional, you should have seen the first time I met Bob Simon—I was a drooling idiot. But I’ll only sign on one condition.”

  She looked unsure. “Which is?”

  “That you sign one for me, so that I have it when you’re a big star someday.”

  I could feel Gwen rolling her eyes, but I didn’t want to look.

  So my biggest fan and I traded cocktail napkins, which we scribbled our autographs on, along with a brief note of admiration. She acted like I’d given her a life-saving kidney, and thanked me profusely.

  “The pleasure is all mine, Jennifer,” I said, noticing the name on my napkin read Jennifer Shito.

  After she left, our table returned to silence. Finally Pam broke the ice, “Well, she was cute.”

  To which Ella added, “Not as cute as Omar!”

  The line received laughs, but not from Ethan, who was surely dreading the “boys are cute” era that his daughter was racing toward.

  But it did loosen things up—with an assist from the complimentary wine—and likely saved me from mob justice.

  When the food arrived, it proved to be worth the wait. A few bites in, and I was almost willing to concede that this was the best Italian I’d ever tasted. But something else clicked in my mind—I’d eaten this food before. I was sure of it. I now knew that it was the smell of the sauce, seeping through the kitchen doors, which initially made me think I’d been here before. I couldn’t place it, but it was familiar.

  I asked Kyla, our waitress, about it. And she told me that Charlie made the sauce himself, and that none of the staff were allowed in the kitchen when he was at work. She whispered that he was paranoid that someone would steal his secret recipe. When I requested to meet Charlie, she looked at me like I was crazy. “He’ll come out and greet customers when he’s finished, but nobody talks to Charlie while he’s working.”

  I took that as a no. Unfortunately, no and me don’t go together well.

  As I finished my meal, wiping the remaining sauce from the plate with a piece of thick-crusted Italian bread, and still plotting ways to get an audience with the mysterious Charlie, the kitchen door opened, and a slender, older man with white fluffy mustache stepped out. He wore a chef’s hat that drooped to the side, and an apron over his formal, three-piece suit.

  I stared at him from across the room. At first I thought my mind was playing tricks, but now it made sense. I knew exactly who Charlie was, and I was right—this wasn’t the first time I’d tasted his cooking.

  I watched as his eyes swept the room, taking in his satisfied customers, until he came across the man staring back at him. We made eye contact, and held it for a long second.

  He looked surprised at first, but people in his line of work don’t survive this long without being able to change course when storms are on the horizon. He gathered himself and flashed a big grin in my direction, before slipping back inside the safety of his kitchen.

  This time there would be no stopping me. I needed to talk to Charlie. But as I neared the kitchen doors, Omar stepped in my way. I was really getting tired of this guy.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Warner, but nobody is allowed in the kitchen.”

  I tried to reason with him, which didn’t work. I pleaded, to no avail. So then I just went primal, and attempted to push past him. I shoved him with two hands and he took a couple of steps back. Omar remained under control, but looked like he was one shove away from losing that calm.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said in a neutral voice.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I talk to Charlie.”

  That’s when I felt the hand grab hold of my suit jacket. “Yes you are … we’re leaving, JP,” Gwen said, her voice as rigid as I’d ever heard it. I wasn’t going to win this one, so I turned and followed her out of the restaurant.

  Chapter 10

  We stepped out into the mild night. Harvey McClure, Panama hat now perched atop his head, led the way.

  He couldn’t wait until we arrived at the Savannah Historical Society to drop some knowledge, providing an overview of Savannah—founded in 1733 by a General James Oglethorpe, and earned the moniker “Hostess of the South.” It later became a strategic port city during both the American Revolution and the Civil War.

  He continued on, but my mind was still back in the restaurant. More specifically, it was on the man who went by Charlie, but whom I knew as Basil Capolla.

  Back in New York, most people called him Uncle Basil, because he seemed like he was everybody’s uncle. He lived in the same Upper Manhattan neighborhood as I did, and was best known for owning Calogero’s, one of New York’s most popular Italian restaurants.

  He was always connected to the Mob, but never connected, as far as I had known. They were just part of the world he grew up in, the people in his circle, and his restaurant was often a who’s who of New York Mafia families. Which made him the perfect source for numerous organized-crime stories I did for GNZ. But what really pissed me off is that he became more than that. We would meet on a park bench at nearby Morningside Park, where he would spend his mornings feeding the ducks. We’d start talking about a story, but our conversations always turned to life. He offered sage advice, and he was one of the few people I actually opened up to about losing Gwen.

  When he’d provide me information about a case, he would always stop short of discussing specific people involved, saying in his broken English, “I ain’t-a no snitch, capisce?” But that turned out to be another lie. He was the ultimate snitch—the key witness in a recent trial that put away crime boss, and his lifelong friend, Frank Rossini.

  At trial, Basil admitted to being a longtime hit man for the Rossini family. He took orders directly from Frank, dealing with the most sensitive and challenging enemies of the family. He was given full immunity for his testimony, and was supposedly in witness protection since the trial ended. Owning a thriving restaurant in downtown Savannah didn’t match any protocol I’d ever known about federal witness protection, and seemed like a good way to get yourself killed. Or as the mobsters like to say; “snitches end up in ditches.”

  It didn’t make a lot of sense, but one thing that did was the name—Charlie is the Ameri
canized version of Calogero. It was the name of Basil’s six-year-old son who died in a car crash many years ago, and whom he had named his New York restaurant after. There was no doubt it was him.

  We arrived at a Gothic-style building at the northwest section of the Forsyth Park, which had a spooky feel to it at night. Museums, large parks, mobsters, good Italian eats … for a moment I thought I was back in New York.

  The building that housed the Savannah Historical Society was called Reinhold Hall, named after the first family of Savannah. And my mind turned to Basil once again, focusing on the connection between him and my new friend Sam Reinhold.

  Reinhold was the lead prosecutor in the case that put Frank Rossini away, and the architect of the controversial immunity agreement that Basil received. Did he even know that Basil was hanging out in his hometown, making himself a possible target? He must have. Something very strange was going on.

  Once inside, Harvey McClure went into full tour-guide mode. There was a poetry in the way he spoke of Savannah and its history, at times sounding like he was singing the lines.

  “They say Savannah drips with two things—humidity and history,” he began. “And some would say that you don’t need a building to capture Savannah’s history … all you have to do is walk the streets. And if the living don’t know the answer, the ghosts surely will—Savannah is known as the most haunted city in America.”

  As we ventured further into the museum, I grew impressed. The high vaulted ceilings, the thousands of records, and a majestic reading room that reminded me of the one inside the New York Public Library.

  My mother mentioned, “This place is a thousand times the size of our little Rockfield Historical Society, and has over five thousand members and donors, but we both essentially do the same thing—collect, examine, and teach the history of the area.”

  “And the gods were smiling on us, delivering us someone so experienced and passionate as your mother,” McClure added jovially.

  “He’s only saying that because I work for free,” she said.

  Then my mother giggled. In my thirty-eight years on the earth I’d never witnessed my mother giggle. I looked to my father, who didn’t seem to have a care in the world about my mother’s, dare I say, flirtation.

  As someone who’d been dabbling in murder mysteries of late, I took note of the section dedicated to Jim Williams and his seven murder trials, which the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was based upon. McClure let me know that in these parts it is known solely as The Book, and the later film version became known as The Movie. It was kind of a big deal around here.

  My mother added, “What I’ve found interesting in my first weeks on the job, is how many treasure hunters I’ve come across, who’ve come to Savannah looking for clues.”

  “Treasure hunters?” Pam inquired.

  McClure eagerly replied, “Yes, Savannah is a central location when it comes to trying to discover what happened to the Confederate Treasury, or what some people call the Confederate Gold.”

  “I get the feeling if it was here, that you would have already found it, and it would be exhibited somewhere in this building,” I said.

  McClure chuckled. “True, but we don’t like to discourage the tourism traffic. There are several theories, which very few people agree on, and they can’t even determine how much they think is hidden—I’ve heard anywhere from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions.

  “The most common theory focuses on a train robbery at the end of the Civil War, which took place in Wilkes County, Georgia. What happened next is up for interpretation, but many believe the gold was buried in a cemetery right here in Savannah, under the name of a Confederate general, sitting between the headstones of two false generals.”

  “I’m sure that area has been dug up and searched,” I said.

  “More times than the head of the cemetery would have liked,” McClure said with a snicker. “And no, there was no gold.”

  “Do you think it was there at one time, and then moved?” Gwen asked, sounding like this was a press conference for a real news story.

  He threw up his hands. “Darned if I know. When President Davis ordered the evacuation of Richmond, the goal was to hide the treasure from the damned Yankees until we could rise again. Based on the history of the last century and a half, I would wager that it ended up in the hands of thieves, or got dumped to keep it away from Union soldiers when capture appeared imminent.

  “Out at Chennault Crossroads in Lincoln County, there have been reports over the years that every time there are heavy rains, numerous gold coins wash up along the road. I’ve always said—let these so-called treasure hunters do all the work, and if it’s ever found, the Savannah Historical Society will gladly help in returning it to its rightful owners.”

  And by rightful owners, I got the feeling that McClure meant the South. His language was interesting, referring to Jefferson Davis with reverence, and calling him President. Damned Yankees, until we could rise again. Making a distinction between the Union and the Confederacy, as opposed to one United States of America. It was like the war was still going on.

  The tour wound down, and I started to grow tired of the unknown. Ghosts and hauntings. Treasure that nobody knows where it might be, or even if it exists. A Mafia hit man whose reason for being here I couldn’t figure out. I was eager to get home and focus on a man who we could count on … Santa Claus.

  Chapter 11

  The good news was that most of my problems had washed from my mind, including Grady Benson.

  But I had a new problem, which had captured my total focus and attention: Basil Capolla.

  I needed something to change the channel in my mind, and it came in the form of Santa Claus. He barged through the front door of my parents’ home, carrying a sack of gifts, or possibly old laundry. Granted, he was a few hours early, and the sleeves had been cut off the Santa suit to show off his “pythons,” as he likes to refer to his arms. He didn’t have a white beard, but did feature a menacing goatee that hung off his chin, and wore wraparound sunglasses, even though the sun had long set. But it was still good to see him.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” he belted out in his booming voice, “and I’m not talking about my ex-wives.”

  Ladies and gentleman, I give you Jeff “Coldblooded” Carter.

  Carter had been my scout, confidant, and bodyguard, as we chased down some of the toughest stories in the world’s most dangerous places. He both saved my life and almost got me killed an equal amount of times. But he’s probably best known for his previous job of professional wrestler.

  He was greeted warmly, because Carter was always greeted that way. Traveling with him was like touring with a rock star, and he was beloved in countries that most people had never heard of. This usually balanced the dislike most people had for me, which made us a good team. My parents were so happy to see him that they didn’t even take issue that he parked the thirty-foot tour bus that he lives in when he’s States-side, along their street, blocking their neighbor’s driveway.

  He’d driven here from Charleston, where he was performing his best-man duties in preparation for our friend Byron Jasper’s wedding later this week. I’m not sure exactly what that entailed, but my guess is that free food and lodging was involved, and the local strip clubs were noticing a sudden boom in business.

  “How is Byron doing … ready for the big day?” my mother asked.

  Carter bowed his head like he was mourning the dead. “It’s hard to watch someone you care about deteriorate before your eyes, and you know there is nothing you can do to stop it, except try to make them as comfortable as possible.”

  “He’s getting married, not dying,” Gwen said.

  “You say to-may-to, I say tom-ah-to,” Carter replied, before turning his attention to the kids, who had wrapped themselves around his giant legs.

  “What’s going on, Carter?” Ella asked.

  “I don’t get it—Carter is Santa?” Whit appeared completely confused.
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  “Think of me as Santa’s scout, kid—I go in first to make sure nobody’s going to shoot at us, and then Santa comes in later and takes all the credit. Just like when I worked with your Uncle JP.”

  Still confused, Whit asked, “But if you go in first, shouldn’t you use the chimney like Santa?”

  I decided to add my two cents, “There are seven chimneys in this house, and Carter has been hit in the head a lot, so he wasn’t sure which one to use.”

  He glared at me. “Nice monkey suit.”

  “Being the holidays and all, I thought I would honor your family.”

  Carter remained in the Christmas spirit. Or at least he didn’t body slam me to the ground, and then finish me off with a flying elbow.

  He took the burlap bag that was slung over his shoulder and handed it to the kids. It was full of every Coldblooded Carter item you could imagine—action figures, a signed poster, a plastic replica championship belt, and a calendar … from 2009. I have never seen Ella and Whit so excited to receive a gift.

  If it was the thought that counts, I was pretty sure that Carter’s motivation was to clear some space in his warehouse where he maintains his memorabilia and the enormous amount of fan letters he receives every day.

  Carter also offered a gift to the adults—a bottle of Wild Turkey, which I was sure would be put to good use. He handed it to my father, who replied, “No wonder Santa is so jolly.”

  Carter boomed a laugh. “The reason Santa is always so jolly is because he knows where all the naughty girls live.”

  On that note, we began the Warner Christmas Eve traditions … a few still remained. It started with my father’s reading of The Night Before Christmas. We then watched the greatest Christmas movie of all time—Christmas Vacation.

  After helping Carter leave beer and cookies for the real Santa, the kids went to bed, while the adults began the process of surrounding the fake white tree with presents.