She’d packed Michael enough casual clothes for several days. She didn’t question the necessity of taking a dark suit and white dress shirt, not knowing Polly’s instructions and assuming there would be a small service before the body was sent to the crematorium. She drove her husband and his brother into town. He couldn’t remember where he’d left his car and they circled the law school several times before finding it. He owes the city over two hundred dollars for parking violations. Kit defused his fury, telling him to put it in perspective, then kissed him good-bye, making him promise to reconsider her offer if she can be any help out there.
He’d sent Frankie to dress for court as soon as they arrived at the house, telling him to pack whatever he’ll need for the foreseeable future since he won’t be returning any time soon. By noon, Eighth and Carpenter will be a designated crime scene. Law enforcement personnel will descend like locusts as soon as Walter Rudenstein arranges for Frankie to turn himself in. Five days ago Michael could never have imagined himself in this situation. He wishes he had a magic wand to turn back the clock, the world restored to its natural order.
Michael’s watch says seven forty-five. He’s going to call the lawyer precisely at eight. He’s untying his shoes, preparing to change into appropriate attire to appear with his brother before a judge, when he hears banging on the door to the shop downstairs. Whoever wants inside so badly isn’t likely to let a sheet of plate glass stand in their way. There’s already one broken door in the building. He doesn’t need the aggravation of boarding up a second. It’s a woman. No one he recognizes from the neighborhood. She’s high as a kite, filthy, wearing a souvenir T-shirt that looks like it’s never been laundered.
“Can I help you?” he shouts through the glass.
“I’m looking for Frankie,” she says, fumbling a cigarette, dropping it on the sidewalk and falling to her knees to retrieve it. “Mariano’s mother is dying and wants to see her baby.”
“Frankie isn’t here,” he lies. “What is it I can do for you?”
Maybe his brother’s wild tales of meth labs and drug busts and nefarious characters with mysterious connections to Mariano weren’t the delusions of a man on the verge of cracking up.
She starts pounding on the door again, clearly infuriated by his cold stare and refusal to answer. He has no choice but to open the door before her clenched fist cracks the glass. She’s quick, but not fast enough to slip through his grasp. Her arm feels brittle, as if it could break under the pressure of his grip. He blocks her from entering, pushes her out onto the street, and confronts her on the sidewalk.
“Who the fuck are you?” she shouts, trying to wrest free from his hold.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Where’s Frankie?”
“He’s not here. He’s gone.”
“That fucking faggot lied to me. He knows where Mariano is. The bitch admitted she drove him to the bus station.”
His heartbeat accelerates, but his demeanor is glacial.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any Mariano. I think you better leave.”
“The bitch drove him to the station. She wouldn’t tell me where he was going.”
“What bitch?”
“The one who works here.”
“Look, I told you there’s no one here named Mariano. I think you ought to leave.”
“Let me go inside and talk to Frankie. Please.”
She tries an abrupt change in demeanor, hoping it will be more effective. Her smile is malicious. She’s a poor judge of her ability to charm and seduce.
“Look, just let me talk to him. Just for a minute.”
“I told you. Frankie isn’t here.”
“You’re not doing him any favors lying to me. He’s crazy if he thinks Randy can’t get to him. He’ll send his boys to find his little brother. Frankie will be lucky if all they do is break his legs if he won’t tell him where the little bastard has gone.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Who the fuck is Randy?”
She says time is running out, dropping any pretense that Mariano’s needed at the bedside of a dying mother in Puebla.
“Randy. His guys on the street told me to find Mariano. He shouldn’t be afraid. He doesn’t need to hide. It wasn’t his fault. Randy’s not going to hurt him. He loves his little brother. He just wants to send him back to Mexico where he’ll be safe. Let me talk to Frankie. He knows me. We’re friends. Really.”
“Safe from what?” he asks, an unreceptive audience for her little performance.
His refusal to be swayed enrages her. She tries shaking him off and attempts to kick him, losing her balance as she aims for his groin, sending a filthy flip-flop sailing into the street. She reaches for his face with her free hand, her nails seeking his eyes. He grabs a handful of her hair and slams her against the wall of the building. He yanks her head back when she spits in his face, intending to crack her skull against the bricks, but the sound of a crying child stops him. A little boy, sobbing and terrified, runs to the woman and clings to her leg. Michael leans forward and speaks quietly, his message for her ears only, careful not to further frighten the pitiful child.
“Come around here again and I’ll kill you myself. Do you understand me? I will kill you myself.”
He realizes he’s drenched with sweat after locking the door behind him. The first thing he does is reach for the bag Kit had packed for him. His instincts as a prosecutor are deeply ingrained. He had been half way out the door this morning when he claimed to suddenly remember he’d left Polly’s power of attorney upstairs. Just knowing a loaded handgun is tucked among his carefully folded clothes—legally issued, the object of Kit’s scorn and fear, kept locked in a safe in their bedroom—comforts him.
“Take off that suit. What time does that shampoo girl get here? You be down there to meet her.”
“I thought you said—”
“Never mind what I said.”
Michael seems impatient, agitated, even afraid. He’d just sent Frankie to change and to pack. Now he’s insisting he act like it’s a normal day, nothing out of the ordinary.
“Just go do it. Now. Do you hear me?”
Connie is standing at the bottom of the staircase, shouting for Frankie, announcing her arrival.
“Tell her you’ll be down in a minute.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he hollers.
“I’m going to go out the back door. Don’t mention that I’ve been here. Don’t say anything to her. I’m trusting you.”
“You said the longer we waited, the worse it will be.”
“I know what I said. Don’t ask questions. Just do as I say.”
Vinnie’s Place, a block away, sells American Spirit cigarettes, an all-natural carcinogen for suckers willing to pay premium prices to delude themselves into believing they are polluting their lungs with a healthier alternative. Michael quietly seethes while Vinnie’s widow, the battle-scarred matron working the lottery ticket machine, ignores him.
“You going to see Hill-ree? Hill-ree’s gonna give a speech down the street,” she asks the flustered woman who’s trying to concentrate on the figures scratched on the back of a Rite Aid receipt.
“What numbers did I give you?” the customer mumbles, clenching an extra-slim menthol between her teeth as she fumbles for her reading glasses.
“Twenty-three. Seven. Sixteen. Seven. Thirty-six.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” she sighs, relieved. “Where?”
“Down the street. In front of the cheese shop.”
“When?”
“Now. The cameraman was just in for sodas and coffee. He told me she’s on her way. Eight bucks,” she demands as she finally hands Michael his top-shelf smokes. It’s extortion; the off-label brands sell for only four twenty-five.
“I’m gonna go down and see her. Maybe I’ll get her autograph,” her friend announces as she stashes her lottery tickets in her pocketbook and stubs out her cigarette in the overflowing as
htray on the counter, next to the Saran-wrapped slices of banana bread and day-old bagels.
“You make sure you vote next week. We can’t let the nigger get in,” Vinnie’s widow advises as she hands the woman her lottery tickets.
“Shove these fucking things up your ass, you fucking fat cunt,” Michael spits, disgusted by her casual, smug arrogance, throwing the cigarettes back in her face.
She reaches under the counter for her weapon of choice—a pipe, a baseball bat, maybe a gun—but he’s out the door before she can threaten life or limb. She steps into the street and shouts after him.
“I know who you are, asshole. I remember you. Mr. My-Shit-Don’t-Stink. Stay the fuck out of my store!”
His nerves are on edge; he almost jumps through his skin at the sound of the shrill ring tone of the phone in his pocket. Walter Rudenstein is nothing if not persistent. Michael can’t avoid speaking to him and answers on the sixth ring, the last before it’s programmed to roll into voice mail. He forces himself to sound cheerful, as if it were a pleasant but unexpected surprise to hear from Walter on this beautiful Friday morning.
“Michael, I’m flying to Chicago early this afternoon to speak at a symposium at Northwestern. I know you were eager to reach me.”
He was. Is he still? Does he really want to divulge to Walter Rudenstein a body is on ice in his brother’s freezer chest? There’s nothing Walter Rudenstein can do to help Frankie now. There’s nowhere that the man responsible for Mariano’s disappearance will ever be safe from an animal seeking revenge. Retribution won’t be quick and it won’t be painless. Frankie says this Randy is in custody, that the papers say he’ll never be released, but his network is a beast with a thousand heads intent on blood revenge. Michael’s spent his life prosecuting criminals and he knows the woman, hopped up as she was, spoke the truth. The monster’s nose is on the trail of the dead boy and it will eventually lead to the door of the house at Eighth and Carpenter. It will toy with Frankie, sadistic bastard that it is, threatening unspeakable things, maybe hold a knife to his throat or a gun to his head trying to extort a confession. But if Frankie can keep his wits about him, stick to the story, it might believe he’s telling the truth. It could never imagine a maricón would have the balls to deceive it. It will move on, quickly forget the silly old fag who pampered the brat and showered him with gifts before he went on the lam, his tiny role in the drama ended unless . . .
. . . Unless it’s splashed on the front page of the daily paper, the leading story on the local news, that the brother of the Chief Deputy District Attorney of Delaware County has been released on bail and is awaiting trial on charges of voluntary manslaughter for cracking the skull of a young man identified as Mariano Garza with a toilet lid and drowning him in the bathtub. Walter Rudenstein may very well succeed in winning Frankie an acquittal on a manslaughter charge, but nothing and no one can ever protect his brother from the fury of violent criminals intent on literally extracting their pound of flesh and settling the score.
“No. No. It wasn’t anything important. It can wait until you get back.”
Michael knows by the silence on the line that the shrewd old counselor-at-law suspects something is amiss.
“Actually, Walter, my brother and I are on our way to Pittsburgh. Our sister isn’t expected to live for more than a few days.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Michael. My condolences to your family. Call me when you’re back and we can meet for lunch. Better yet, dinner. Are you still fond of aged bourbon, Michael?”
“I’d like that, Walter. We should catch up.”
The man Walter Rudenstein knows isn’t the one who has just made a rash, impulsive decision to risk branding himself a criminal without any thought to his wife and son. The Michael Rocco Gagliano who Walter Rudenstein mentored is an unimpeachable career public servant who’s dedicated his professional life to pursuing justice for the victims of violent crimes. That Michael Rocco Gagliano would never stigmatize his family as the spouse and offspring of a felon who is certain to be convicted as an accessory after the fact if he’s caught.
If he’s caught.
How hard would it be to make Frankie vanish without a trace? Where can he send him? How will he get there? There’s still time for him to disappear. No one is examining passports for a suspect wanted for questioning in the wrongful death of a young man buried in an ancient freezer in the basement of the building at Eighth and Carpenter. Frankie could be on a plane to Madrid or Prague or Timbuktu this evening. But what will he do when the cash in his pocket is spent and he has no credit cards or access to the cash in his accounts? How long will he survive? A week? A month? A year? He’ll be on his own, unable to ever contact Michael again. Michael will never know his brother’s fate, a mystery that will deny him any peace of mind until the end of his days. And what assurance does he have that the beast seeking vengeance will retreat, defeated, if somehow Frankie is able to elude its grasp? Will it follow the blood trail to a House with a Name in the Friendly Village of Wayne, where Kit and Danny reside, unaware of the threat to their peaceful existence lurking beyond their locked doors?
He slips into the Donut Connection, where a huddle of Mexican day workers are stuffing their cheeks with microwave egg sandwiches and super-size glazed coffee rolls. The radio is crackling behind the counter, announcing the time and weather. Michael’s fishing in his pocket for change for two chocolate frosteds as the DJ on WMGK, the Magic of the Seventies, announces a Bee Gees triple-shot without commercial interruption, three hits from the classic Saturday Night Fever sound track, a record Frankie had played over and over until the needle wore down the vinyl grooves. The donuts are stale, but he eats them anyway, tasting nothing.
The Mexicans are giggling at some private joke. The youngest is a boy, no older than the kid in the freezer. He’s got a chocolate-milk mustache on his upper lip and there’s yellow yolk on his chin. He looks too fresh and well pressed to be soliciting eight hours of hard labor hauling sod and trimming hedges. His sneakers are blinding white and the crease in his jeans is sharp. His Sopranos T-shirt looks brand new, Gandolfini’s face uncracked by the heat of the dryer. Tony Fucking Soprano wouldn’t have broken a sweat over Michael’s problem. He knew what to do when he had to take care of Big Pussy. Take him out to sea, put a bullet in his head, weight him down, and toss him overboard to sink to the bottom of the ocean. The seed of an idea begins to take root. It’s brilliant, inspired, classic, straight out of The Godfather and Luca Brasi sleeping with the fishes. The Mexicans cast suspicious stares at the crazy gringo who is laughing to himself and slapping his palm on the counter, not knowing what they’ve done to deserve his generous offer of two boxes of donuts.
The plan is perfect. An undocumented illegal with no medical records or available genetic samples never officially existed. The dead boy will be laid to rest in a watery grave. It’s too risky to dump him locally. The Delaware River and its estuaries are out of the question. Even Jersey is too close. Best to drive a few hours, south, to Virginia, the Eastern Shore where Frannie Merlino had had a trailer she’d been left by her first husband, a sportfisherman. Even if the body is found, they’ll never trace it back to Philly.
“He’s never been to the doctor, has he?”
“I took him to the ER once. For stitches.”
“No X-rays, right?”
“No. Only by the dentist.”
Dental records.
The forensic pathologist’s Rosetta Stone.
Granted, he doubts that the Virginia State Police will ever think to issue a search warrant for office files of Vincent Calabro, DDS, “Dr. Smiles” of 738 Wallace Street, but there’s always a risk. The greatest criminal minds have been tripped up by making the tiniest mistake.
“Fuck,” he spits, disheartened by this unexpected glitch in his foolproof plan.
“What’s the matter?”
“The X-rays. The goddamn dentist has the X-rays,” he patiently explains to his dense older brother.
; “The X-rays are in a drawer upstairs. Pamela Canarsi’s brother is an oral surgeon in Jersey. He said he’ll charge my insurance for Mariano’s implants. I got his records from Dr. Smiles last week.”
“That’s insurance fraud! You could go to prison for that!” Michael warns, shocked and angered by his brother’s casual admission of his willing participation in a criminal conspiracy. “Go get them. Right now. Go.”
Michael sets a match to the flammable strip and tosses it into the kitchen sink, watching it turn to ash.
“They’ll never connect a decomposed body found in a Virginia swamp to a missing kid in Philadelphia. The farther away he is, if they ever find him, the safer we’ll be. Tonight’s not good. It’s already too late. It might take longer than we expected. People will ask questions if you don’t open on time on your busiest day of the week. We’ll leave tomorrow night, be back early Sunday. No one will even know we’ve been away. Everything has to seem as normal as possible. Nothing can seem strange or unusual.”
“Why? Why are you doing this?” Frankie asks.
Michael’s too distracted to answer. He wants to be alone, to be able to go over the plan in his mind, again and again, obsess over every detail. Where to buy the chains and cinder blocks. How to get the body from the back door opening to the alley behind the house to the car without drawing attention. How to hide the kid so that any curious eyes standing at the windows of the neighboring houses would never recognize the tidy package they’re loading into the trunk as a human body.
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 33
