Family Matters

by New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  The man Michael was following stopped abruptly. Michael watched as he turned his head and looked up toward the elevated walkway. A bald man in a dark suit looked down at Michael’s aggressor and then touched his ear. Was it possible the suited man was wearing a wire? Was it possible the two men were communicating? As if on cue, the aggressive runner tilted his head as if he was listening to something.

  Michael panicked. What the hell was this game and whose team was the bald man on? It was one thing to play cat-and-mouse with some screwball runner, but a wired goon in a suit was another story. Michael considered running after the bald man, but the situation seemed hopeless. In his state of confusion, he almost smacked into the aggressive runner.

  Margo? Michael was certain he’d heard the man say his wife’s name, but before he could react the aggressive runner disappeared into the crowd.

  Michael wasn’t imagining it. From the first altercation on the Verrazano, the man had been trying to get his attention and now he knew it had something to do with Margo. The man had a gun. He was going to kill Margo.

  Like a sprinter out of the blocks, Michael pumped his legs hard in alternating rhythm with his arms. Oxygen filled his lungs, soaring north to his foggy brain. He did his best thinking while running, and there was no time like the present. He felt his head clearing as random, disconnected thoughts merged. Suddenly, it came to him. The Muslim Center.

  The beginning of the end of his relationship with Margo. How horrible he’d been to her at the exact moment she was doing her best to calm neighbors’ fears. Didn’t she have enough enemies without her husband’s harassment? She’d been a diplomat of fairness and understanding to both sides. It had always been the same with Margo. She drew people in, and at that moment, he felt her pull for the first time in years. In the end, he knew she’d vote yes to the Muslim Center and encourage neighbors to do the same.

  Michael stepped onto the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. The cries of spectators faded into the background, and the sound of silence settled as he sifted through possibilities. There must be a reason the aggressive runner chose the marathon to hurt Margo.

  Michael caught a glimpse of the man no more than ten runners in front of him.

  Same height as himself, same build with a middle-aged crown of brown hair. It all seemed so obvious. The two men were nearly identical and wearing the same race number. He imagined the news report: 9/11 survivor suffering post-traumatic stress murders his newly-separated wife days before she casts her positive vote for the proposed Midtown Muslim Center.

  Michael reached the peak of the bridge. The guy was waiting for him to catch up. If he shot Margo within the next fifteen minutes, there’d be enough people on the bridge to identify Michael as being near the scene. In fact, Michael would be running directly into the scene of the crime to save Margo at the exact moment the true killer disappeared. Like a well-scripted play, the killer would let Michael go for the gun, placing the murder weapon in Michael’s own hand. It was the perfect trap. Someone or some faction wanted to prevent Margo from swaying the neighbors to vote yes and they were going to pin her murder on her damaged husband.

  He had only one solution, and it was thin. Run like a mad man and get to Margo first. He couldn’t call her. In the seconds it took to dial and connect, the killer might be squeezing the trigger. Michael felt his calves popping as he hauled down the bridge. He was tiring and at a disadvantage. The bald man had probably crossed into Manhattan and was covering Margo’s location at the building. The people who wanted Margo dead planned this with an inside track on their lives. They knew about the race. They knew about their marital problems. They knew Margo would vote yes and persuade others to as well. If the killers’ plan was on point, Margo would be with the neighborhood committee a few blocks north of Fifty-ninth Street.

  If Michael was right, and he prayed he was, Margo would bypass her plan and be waiting for him at the usual spot on the other side of the bridge. If Margo met him there, it might throw off the killers until they realized their mistake. Please, he begged, after all I’ve put you through, please still love me. Be there for me.

  Michael’s prey moved to the right-hand lane of the bridge. Most likely, he was preparing for a hard turn north, leaving Michael at a crossroads. If Margo was on the southwest corner of First Avenue, his best bet was to fan left. If Margo wasn’t there, the killers would reach her first.

  Margo had asked for the GPS tracker, and there was a chance she was using it. Then she’d know he was seconds away from their traditional meeting spot and she’d be looking for him. He considered screaming her name, but as the runners tumbled off the bridge, the roaring crowds were impenetrable.

  The killer held tight on the turn, leaning right and heading up First Avenue. Michael veered off the killer’s course and headed toward the south corner of Fifty-ninth and First. Without anything to go on but the fragile threads of love, he chose to run toward his marriage.

  The density of the crowd on First Avenue hit him like a stone wall. He searched wildly for his wife’s face, sweat pouring down his brow, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. The crowd seemed impossibly happy, like a sea of children at a party before the balloon pops.

  Margo. God help me, he thought. She was there like an angel reaching out for him. She must have thought he was ill, because she stepped off the curb and ran toward him.

  “No,” he choked as he spotted the bald man hustling against traffic and reaching into his suit jacket.

  Michael dove forward and grabbed Margo, covering her slight frame with his body. He clung to his wife and with his last ounce of strength he shoved her backwards. He’d made his share of mistakes since 9/11. If I have one chance to make it right, he thought, let this be it.

  The force of the bullet propelled the couple further into the mob. Michael felt a blast of heat spread across his abdomen. He knew it was over and he knew, too, that he’d made it. He’d won.

  MURDER ITALIAN STYLE

  Catherine Maiorisi

  NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli stopped on the proverbial dime to avoid crashing into the cheering crowd standing just inside the door of the station house.

  “Assholes,” she said, and headed upstairs to her desk. On the fifth step she paused to see what the excitement was about. The overweight, waiting-to-retire uniform assigned to the front desk was grappling with a corpulent woman flogging him with her purse. And, given the heavy breathing and sweat glistening on their flaming faces, this had clearly been going on for a while. A double cardiac could not be too far off. She shook her head in disgust, then went down to end it.

  “Mio figlio è morte, mio figlio è morte.”

  Chiara stepped into the battle space. “Game’s over,” she shouted. The woman hesitated mid-swing. Taking advantage of the distraction, the officer pinned the woman’s arms to her sides, and they stood face to face, chests heaving. “Calm down, lady. I can’t help if you keep hitting me,” he said, between gasps.

  The woman screamed again. “Mio figlio è morte.”

  “You gotta talk English,” said the officer. “This is America.”

  Chiara sensed they would soon rally and have another go at each other. “Let go,” she commanded.

  Still puffing, they unlocked arms and faced her. The crowd quieted.

  Chiara asked the woman, “Posso aiutarla?” Can I help you?

  It was hard to tell who was more shocked to hear her speak Italian. The woman opened her mouth, closed it, then took a deep breath and responded in Italian. “She murdered my son, my baby. You have to arrest her.”

  The officer stared. “You understand that, Corelli?” From the awe in his voice, you’d think he’d just seen Corelli fly in the window.

  “That, Kelly, is Italian.”

  He wiped his face with a crumpled handkerchief, straightened his uniform, and moved behind the big desk. “Yeah, well, she’s all yours, Corelli,” he said, smirking.

  “Please come with me,” Chiara said in Italian. At the top of the stai
rcase, she turned, surprised to see the woman using the railing to pull herself up step by step, wheezing, each step like a baby Everest for her. Maybe upstairs wasn’t such a good idea, but the woman was more than halfway there. She waited. The woman hauled herself to the landing and, covered again in sweat, arms shaking, and gasping for air, leaned against the wall.

  “Sorry, signora, I didn’t think about the steps.”

  “The steps are nothing. I don’t even feel them so great is my pain,” the woman said, pushing each word out between gasps. “It is only important that you arrest the whore who murdered my son.”

  Chiara took stock as the woman composed herself. In her eighties, under five feet, wearing a black low-cut dress that featured her breasts, and black patent leather heels too small to contain her feet. With Raggedy Ann red hair, too-light foundation, bright red lipstick on and around her lips, and shaky penciled eyebrows, she looked like a worn-out doll.

  “Can you walk now?” Chiara asked when the woman’s breathing had slowed.

  The woman nodded, took the arm Chiara offered, and allowed herself to be guided to a chair. Chiara sat, then opened her notebook and placed her pen on the desk. “You want to report a murder?”

  The woman tilted her head toward the other detectives in the room. “It’s not nice, a girl here alone with all these men.” She leaned in close. “You could be beautiful. Fix your hair, put on a little make-up, buy some sexy clothes, you’ll find a man easy. I could give you some tips,” she said, with a sly smile.

  Oh great. Bad enough she heard this from her family. “Did you want to report a murder?” Chiara couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice.

  The woman’s smile disappeared. She clasped her black purse to her stomach, seeming to push out the low-pitched inarticulate sounds of grief and the tears that filled her suddenly mournful eyes. “She killed my baby. You have to arrest the witch.”

  The baby, it turned out, was sixty-year-old Aldo DiMartini, who, according to his mother, Mariana, had been poisoned and died at St. Vincent’s Hospital yesterday. With Mariana sitting across from her, Chiara called the hospital and was told the cause of death was a massive heart attack. She repeated that to Mariana DiMartini, but the woman continued to insist her baby had been poisoned.

  Chiara sighed. “Who do you think poisoned him?”

  “That bitch, Concetta Moretti. I warned him to stay away from her, not to marry her daughter. I knew this would happen.”

  “And when did . . . um, Aldo get married?”

  “Thirty-nine years ago, but that bitch hated him from the day she met him. I told him Angela meant trouble.”

  “Why would his mother-in-law kill him after thirty-nine years?”

  She blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. “She’s a sly one. She waited for the right time.”

  “And what made this the right time?”

  “Ask the bitch who killed him.”

  “Mrs. DiMartini, I know you’re distressed, but, as I said, the hospital attributes your son’s death to natural causes. There’s really nothing I can do.”

  “If you don’t investigate, I’ll go to the newspapers.”

  Chiara leaned back. The woman was annoying, but that was no reason not to take her seriously. It wouldn’t be the first time that what appeared to be a natural death turned out to be murder. Chiara excused herself to run it by her lieutenant. He concurred that the department didn’t need any bad publicity right now and approved her investigating, but only if the family agreed to an autopsy. Well, she wouldn’t hold her breath waiting for DiMartini to authorize an autopsy. But no autopsy, no investigation.

  Steeling herself for an outburst, she went back to the woman. “Mrs. DiMartini, I’ll investigate if you and your daughter-in-law agree to an autopsy. That’s the only way we can determine whether he was poisoned.”

  “A mother has no say in these things,” she sniffed. “They asked if they could do an autopsy for science, and that stupid Angela gave them permission to butcher my beautiful son.”

  THE Italians once dominated Greenwich Village. Most had moved to the suburbs, but the Moretti clan still lived on Carmine Street, a short walk from the station. Chiara rang the bell at the brownstone of Mr. and Mrs. Sal Fortuna, first on her list of guests at the fatal Sunday dinner. The woman who answered the door frowned when Chiara showed her shield, but invited her into the kitchen.

  Chiara introduced herself to Sal and Gloria Fortuna and explained why she was there.

  The Fortunas exchanged a glance. “Didn’t he have a heart attack?” Gloria asked.

  “Just routine follow-up,” Chiara said. “How well do you know the people who ate dinner there Sunday?”

  The man opened his mouth, but before he could make a sound, his wife spoke. “My mother, God rest her soul, and Concetta were sisters. It’s mostly family that eats at Concetta’s house every Sunday, so give or take a few, it’s usually the same people.” She hesitated. “Corelli? You’re Italian. You know how it is.”

  She did know. Her family was the same, but since she’d joined the force, she was persona non grata in her family and hadn’t been welcome there. “Did she cook anything special this Sunday?”

  Gloria shrugged. “Every Sunday is special. You know: fish salad, lasagna, sausage, meatballs, beef and pork braciole, pork skins, roast loin of pork, fried cipolle, mushrooms, candied sweet potatoes, string beans, and stuffed artichokes. I think that’s it. Right Sal?”

  He grunted.

  “Wild mushrooms?”

  “Yeah. We picked them ourselves. Sal drove us to some woods in New Jersey.”

  “Any chance the mushrooms were poisonous?”

  “Nah, she knows. I picked a bad one, but she threw it away. She fried them with hot peppers.” She met Chiara’s eyes. “We all ate them.”

  Chiara nodded. “Did she cook anything special for Aldo?”

  “She always made his favorites.”

  “It sounds like Concetta was fond of Aldo.”

  Neither said anything for a minute. Gloria’s eyes darted to Sal. “Well, he didn’t do right by his family. One stupid-ass, get-rich scheme after another failed, and while he sat around dreaming up new ways to lose money, Angela worked herself to the bone to keep the family in food and clothes. Concetta thought he was ruining her daughter’s life. Right Sal?”

  “Um.” Sal had picked up a newspaper and didn’t look up.

  Chiara thanked them and walked three doors down the street to Tony and Filomena Moretti’s brownstone. The door swung open before she could knock. The native drums were working well.

  She stepped into the living room.

  “That old bitch went to the police?” Tony Moretti said, before she could explain the reason for her visit. “This has been going on for years. Every time that fat bastard got sick—cold, headache, anything—his bitch of a mother accused my mother of poisoning him.”

  Moretti began to pace. “If it wasn’t for my mother, Aldo and Angela and their kids would’ve starved to death a long time ago. She’s been feeding them for years while he started business after business and ran them into the ground. Then last year, he finally got somethin’ good goin’ with the Italian imports. Is he happy? No. Big shot needs to expand. I told him, Angela told him, everybody told him, you got a nice little business here, you’re makin’ a good livin’ for you and your kids, why screw it up? But Aldo thinks he’s smarter than everybody, so he borrows big from the bank and loses everything. My father and I shoulda killed the bastard years ago, saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  “Calm down, Tony,” Filomena said, her eyes flitting from him to Chiara, “You’ll give the detective the wrong idea.”

  “So what’s the right idea?”

  Filomena hesitated. “Look, it wasn’t just Tony. Nobody liked Aldo. He drove a big car, lived in a big house, and bragged about how much money he had, but he sponged off everybody and was always looking to borrow money. Everybody put up with him because of Angela and the kids and mostly because my m
other-in-law insisted. Family is family.”

  “Was there anything different about this Sunday in terms of what she served, what the atmosphere was, any fights or anything?” Chiara asked. If the Moretti family was anything like her extended family, there were always fights, usually over stupid things, but sometimes more serious.

  Tony sat down. “Nothing. About six weeks ago, the bank took their house and everything they owned. Why my sister didn’t throw the good-for-nothing bastard out, I don’t know. Anyways, his crazy mother refused to let them stay with her, so they moved in downstairs. Now my mother’s taking care of him and Angela and both his kids and their families too, and, saint that she is, Mama cooks all his favorites because she feels bad for him.”

  “So it wasn’t just Sunday that he ate her food, but every day for the last month or so?” Chiara wondered whether having them move in was the last straw.

  “Yeah, but Filomena and me and Philly eat there every night too, because we all work in our construction business. But I give her money every week so she can cook to her heart’s content. It’s what she lives for. Anyway, we all ate the same food. And she would never waste food by putting poison in it.”

  “What makes you say poison?” Chiara asked.

  “Isn’t that why you’re investigating? Because his bitch of a mother is accusing my mother of poisoning him?”

  “Is your son, Philly, home?”

  “No, he’s in Atlantic City with his girl. They’ll be home tomorrow.” Filomena eyed Chiara. “We closed the business in respect for Aldo, so why shouldn’t Philly have some fun?”

  “I understand. Your mother-in-law lives downstairs, right?”

  Tony coughed.

  “She’s in Atlantic City with Philly,” Filomena said. “She likes to play the slots, and we thought it would do her good to get away. They’ll be home late tonight.”