Mafia Fix

by Warren Murphy

  “No,” said the driver. “They’re just looking. I want dis here pitcher and yer gonna take care of me.”

  “Certainly. You know I have a confession. You’re my first customers. All so sudden.” She pointed toward the back. “Are they bankers?”

  “Dey’re da American Kiwanis International.”

  “Funny. I didn’t think so. They seemed too polite for that. Well, now you see, Gaugin saw life, Gaugin saw color differently… ” and the redheaded artist was off into her explanation of color as an art form, as Willie the Plumber nodded and went over his four more questions mentally. He would use them if she slowed up. He would not have to use them.

  In the back room, Don Dominic Verillio raised his hands, both for silence and as an indication that the formalities of gathering should be abandoned. He stood before a dark green-blue impression of a night park.

  “Last year, I told you all individually when I visited you that drugs had become a serious problem. I told you that little independent dealers all over America were importing and selling heroin. Many of your people were involved. Many of your people were more involved in heroin than in working for you. Many of your own people were losing respect for you because they could independent the merchandise at a better price.

  “What could you buy? A suitcase of the stuff. None of you ever got a trunk-full. Quality was irregular. People were selling you sugar. Sand. Baking powder. Cutting the stuff with strychnine. When you got pure stuff, people began overdosing. To get money for their habits, the junkies robbed indiscriminately. More crime. More police. More police meant you had to provide bigger pads and that was only when you could get them to take mordido, payoffs. This heroin stuff is going to kill us as sure as if we were shooting it up ourselves.”

  Grunts of agreement filled the room. A few men looked nervously out the door. They were within earshot of the shop’s proprietor.

  “Don’t worry about her,” said Don Dominic.

  “She can hear,” said Fat O’Brien.

  “She’s in her own world. An artist that good has a high of a different kind. We’re here to talk horse. When I talked to you last year about my plans in your supposedly safe offices and homes, it took less than a week before it was known where we didn’t want it known. Now I told you I was going to bring in tons of the stuff. You expressed doubts. Well, I’m ready to take orders.”

  “You mean, it’s really coming in?” said Francisco Salvatore.

  “It is in,” said Don Dominic Verillio. “Forty seven tons. It’s 98-percent pure and we’re going to ship it in pills that the junkies can break down and in serum bottles that look like they could be medicine. We’re gonna be able to sell this stuff so cheap they’ll be able to smoke it, like in Vietnam.

  “You’re going to be able to take the bottom out of this market and when you’ve cleaned out the independents, you can raise the ceiling on it. You’ll own whole cities. I mean, own them. America can say goodbye to the glassine envelope.”

  “Don Dominic. Don Dominic. Don Dominic,” the capos cried. Pietro Scubisci kissed the hand of Dominic Verillio, but Don Dominic knew that was more of an opener to bargain for bulk rates rather than a sign of respect.

  “And none of you knew it, did you? Forty-seven tons and none of you knew it. Now tell me who to worry about listening in and who not to worry about. Tell me what a safe place is and what a safe place isn’t. I will take your orders now, once, and we will meet again in six months for more orders. The same way.”

  “You must have the fix in big,” said Pietro Scubisci, who was the first to order.

  “I got the best fix you can get. They don’t come any better,” Don Dominic said.

  And Scubisci ordered a ton for New York City. Seven hundred pounds were destined for Los Angeles, 200 pounds for Boston, 600 pounds for Detroit, 300 pounds for Dallas and another 300 for New Orleans, 700 pounds for Philadelphia and a ton for Chicago. Cleveland wanted 300 pounds and Columbus 100 and Cincinnati 100. San Francisco ordered 200 pounds as did Kansas City. Fifty pounds each were ordered by Denver, Phoenix, Norfolk and Raleigh, and Charleston, Las Vegas, and Wheeling.

  Don Dominic Verillio totaled it up mentally. Over eight thousand pounds, more than four tons. It was about a six-months’ supply for the entire nation. He was satisfied. Orders would grow in size as he proved ability to deliver.

  “We’ll get it to you,” he said. “And it’ll have labels of your local druggists. You won’t be able to tell the stuff from aspirin, penicillin or seidlitz powder. Gentlemen, this is the big fix.” He smiled as befits a man who has just sold $160 million worth of goods to men who would resell them for $800 million.

  “Don Dominic, Don Dominic, Don Dominic,” again came the voices and Don Dominic Verillio received the adulation. He stood at the doorway and said goodbye to each one personally, as they went out to the front of the shop and then out to the street where the cars waited. The artist hardly looked up.

  Scubisci was the last to leave.

  “Pietro,” said Don Dominic. “I have loved you like a father. I give you, with utmost respect, some advice.”

  “The Scubisci family always welcomes the advice of Don Dominic Verillio.”

  “As I told the others, if you don’t sell high at first, you can establish your control. I say this for your own good.”

  “That is good advice if there is a second shipment.”

  “Is there something that makes you believe there won’t be?”

  “I am an old man, Don Dominic. Who knows if I live to a second shipment?”

  “That is not what worries you,” Verillio said.

  “If I tell you what causes me concern, you laugh. As I laugh. I think it not worth your ears.”

  “Anything you say is worth my ears.”

  The old man nodded slowly. “My Angela, she believe in the stars. The stars this—the stars that. She plays her games. I listen. You know how she said you gonna get married. And you did. And how your wife die. And, may I bless her memory, she did. You know how she says you be capo of all capos. And you are. Maybe it an accident. She also say you get fine daughter and you no have children, so you knows what the stars say?”

  Don Dominic’s grip tightened on the old man’s shoulders. But as soon as it tightened, he caught control of himself and loosened.

  “Well,” continued Pietro Scubisci, rolling his greasy pepper bag in his fingers. “She come up a crazy this time. I tell you last year, this thing maybe is not the best thing. But I go along.”

  “Yes?” said Verillio.

  “You know how Angela say this day is not the day and to wait and she says wait forever, so you don’t wait at all. But I go along because stars are stars and business is business. But this time Angela is frightened. She say… you must promise no laugh. She say you going against a god.”

  Don Dominic could not control the laughter, and he apologized as he guffawed.

  “You see, it is nothing,” said Pietro.

  “Tell me about this god.”

  “Well, it’s not like a god, like a saint. It’s like olden times God.”

  “Zeus. Jupiter. Apollo?”

  “Like Chinese,” Scubisci said. “A crazy thing. Angela sends away to this old lady in Greenwich Village, because the stars Angela cannot read. And comes back more confusion. What is the word the Jews use when they mourn their dead. Sit on boxes and do not shave and things?”

  “Shiva,” Verillio said.

  “Yah. That’s him. Except it sounds like sleeve.”

  “Shiva? Well, I’ll be on the lookout for any eastern gods,” Verillio said.

  Pietro Scubisci smiled and shrugged. “I tell you it crazy. It’s just that sometimes Angela… ” and his voice tailed off as the two men left the shop together and Willie the Plumber made his five thousand dollar purchase.

  That night, Don Dominic Verillio made a mental note to look up the god, Shiva, in an encyclopedia.

  CHAPTER SIX

  REMO WILLIAMS WAITED IN THE SEDATE outer office
of Dominic Verillio, chairman of the Hudson Action Council, and dawdled his note pad on his knee. Through one window he could see the vague outline of New York City’s skyscrapers reaching up into the noonday smog of carbon monoxide and factory wastes. Through the window opposite him, across the spacious paneled room, he could see Newark, a distant blotch of buildings that seemed to blend together in a conglomerate of despair, but which he remembered with warmth.

  And he was in Hudson, the land mass between them, separated by the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers, the opening of America. The room smelled faintly of aspen pine and an attractive, conservatively dressed woman pored through a very fat and rather old book at her desk.

  On the wall was a painting of strawberries that Remo did not know had been purchased the day before for five thousand dollars, but if told that, he would have believed it. The artist had the kind of vision beyond sight, the kind of control beyond genius.

  Remo’s plan was simple, as were most incipient disasters, he thought. He would make his presence known in town. He would annoy, browbeat and insult. Someone would come to him. And that someone would talk. It was a simple process. Unlike movie actors, people—brave people and cowardly people—would disclose anything to stop pain. The mysterious interrogation technique of the Russians consisted of punching people; Henry the 8th had them beaten with sticks; Genghis Khan ordered them kicked.

  Only the mental detectives of Hollywood and Hitler found it necessary to use hot coals, organ crushers and skin peelers. Professionals just hit.

  And if no one came after him, Remo would go after them. He’d start with the most likely candidate—Police Chief Brian Dugan, a man of ready wit and warmth, and a thief. According to CURE, he had paid $80,000 for his job from a previous administration. A man didn’t pay that much for that job to bring law and order to a town. And if Dugan didn’t have the lead, then it would be Verillio or Gasso or Palumbo or the mayor or the local editor, or any of the people whose names Smith had given him.

  But that was Phase Two. This was Phase One, interviews and annoyance. And first on the list was Verillio who, according to CURE, was either the Mafia kingpin of Hudson and maybe the nation, or was just an unwitting dupe of Mafia interests.

  Which was something like the report to the German general staff that the allies were going to land at Normandy on June 6, 1944. They had the exact time and the place. Fortunately, they also had thirty-nine other exact times and places ranging from Norway to the Balkans and from 1943 to 1946. So much for intelligence.

  “I’ve got it,” said the secretary. “I’ve got it.”

  Remo smiled. “Got what?”

  “Shiva. I’m looking up Shiva.” She began to read: “Shiva. One of the three major gods of Hinduism, also known as the destroyer.” She looked up.

  Remo was definitely interested. He had heard that word before. “I heard he was called the shatterer of worlds, too.” He said slowly, from memory: “I am Shiva… ” but he could not remember the rest of it.

  As he said that the door opened and a strong faced businessman poked his head out of the inner office.

  “Joan, may I speak to you a moment, please? Oh, hello. You must be the magazine writer. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “I’ve got Shiva for you right here,” said the secretary.

  “Destroyer of worlds, I am Shiva,” said Remo.

  “What?” said Verillio, his eyes widening.

  “I was trying to remember a quote. I’ve got it now. ‘I am created Shiva the Destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds.’”

  “Are you Shiva?” asked Verillio solemnly.

  Remo laughed. “Me? No. I’m Remo Barry. I’m the magazine writer you spoke with last night.”

  “Oh, good. Be with you in a minute. Joan?”

  Remo watched the secretary grab a pad and pencil and disappear into the office. In five minutes, he was allowed into the office and pretended to write down the canned corn Verillio was spewing. Hudson faced the problems of all other cities: fleeing industries, rising crime and welfare, and, of course, a lack of hope.

  But Verillio saw great hope for Hudson. He saw great hope for nearly half an hour, then he invited Remo to lunch at the Casino at the Lake.

  He saw hope through his baked stuffed clams and his veal Holstein. When Remo ordered rice, just rice, he became very interested. Why did Remo order just rice? Was it an eastern custom? A special fad diet? What was it?

  “Would you believe I like rice, Mr. Verillio?”

  “No,” said Dominic Verillio.

  “You acquire a taste for it.”

  “When you started eating it though, you didn’t like it, right?”

  “I didn’t particularly like it.”

  “Then why did you start?”

  “Why did you start eating baked stuffed clams?”

  “Because I loved them.”

  Remo smiled and Verillio laughed.

  Remo shrugged: “What can I say other than that you’re a Mafioso?”

  Verillio guffawed. “You know if it weren’t so funny, it would be serious. I think that the Italian community at large suffers because of the greed of a few men of Italian ancestry. Doctors, lawyers, dentists, professors, salesmen, hard-working people like myself. I honestly believe that whenever the FBI has an unsolved crime, they arrest the first Italian they can lay their hands on. I honestly believe that. Are you Italian, of Italian ancestry, that is?”

  “I might be. I don’t know. I was raised in an orphanage.”

  “Where?”

  “I’d rather not go into it. It’s not too pleasant, not knowing who your mother and father are, not even knowing your ancestry.”

  “Could it be eastern? Oriental of some sort?”

  “I don’t think so. I figure the Mediterranean on the south to Germany on the North, from Ireland on the west to Siberia on the east. That’s kind of not knowing, isn’t it?”

  “You Catholic?” Verillio asked.

  “You deal in heroin?”

  Verillio did not laugh this time. “I think that’s insulting. Now what did you mean?”

  “I’m trying to find out if you’re in the Mafia and if you deal in heroin.”

  “This is too insulting,” said Verillio and threw his napkin down into the egg on top of his veal, gave Remo a hateful stare and left. So much for Verillio, Remo thought. One seed planted.

  Police Chief Brian Dugan couldn’t be needled. He dropped fifteen references to his standing in the Catholic church, the Little League, the “Clean Up— Paint Up—Fix Up” program, and community relations. He was very proud of his community relations program.

  “We teach our police how to deal with them better.”

  Chief Brian Dugan sat behind his desk with a picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt behind him. It was a desk cluttered with trophies, statue paperweights and an American flag on a little holder. The picture of Roosevelt had lost its color to the decades.

  “Who’s them?” Remo asked.

  “Well, you know. Them. Urban problems.”

  “I don’t know,” said Remo and made squiggles on his pad with his pencil. He crossed a leg.

  “You know. The colored. Blacks. Afro-Americans.”

  “Them?”

  “Yeah. Them,” said the chief proudly, his red face beaming, his clear blue eyes twinkling, his freckled hands playing nervously with themselves.

  “I hear your city is becoming the heroin capital of the nation.” Remo watched the blue eyes. They didn’t bat.

  “Heroin is a problem,” said the chief. “A growing national problem.”

  “What’s your cut?”

  “What?”

  “What’s your cut? Your rakeoff?” The tone was casual. The chief was not. He leveled a blue-eyed stare at Remo, his posture exuded integrity, his jaw showed courage. His lips tightened.

  “Are you accusing me of being involved in the traffic of drugs?”

  The tone was almost identical to that of Remo’s former chief when Remo had been a pat
rolman in Newark and ticketed the patrol car sent around to collect the chief’s Christmas liquor.

  “Somebody’s got to be protecting the drug traffic,” Remo said.

  “Are you accusing me?” demanded the chief.

  “If the shoe fits, chief.”

  “Get out of here.”

  Remo didn’t move.

  “This interview is at an end,” said the chief. “And I’d like to warn you there are laws against libel.”

  “Only if you print an untruth,” Remo said and smiled. Then he got up and left. Another seed planted.

  He walked out of the office, past the lieutenant who performed the duties of a clerk-typist, out into the hallway and waited for the elevator in the special mustiness that only a police station could manufacture. He wondered casually if his job would be necessary if police departments were better. But how could they be better? They didn’t recruit from Mars. No, the police of any city reflected the morality of that city. No better, no worse. It took two to make a bribe.

  The elevator door opened and Remo strolled in. It was a large elevator, the size of a small kitchen, apparently a good quarter-of-a-century old. He pressed main floor.

  The bronzelike metal door closed, almost painfully slowly. With a cough, the elevator descended. It stopped at the next floor to let two detectives and a prisoner enter. One of the detectives, a drawn-faced man of Remo’s height, wearing the standard fedora, saw Remo and said politely: “Hi.”

  Then the trio moved to the rear and Remo moved to the front. Remo had nodded, before he suddenly realized why he recognized the detective and the detective recognized him.

  “Balls,” thought Remo and attempted to keep his face forward toward the elevator door, hoping the detective would just be mildly troubled, trying to remember the face and then would forget it. Unfortunately, the policeman’s trade, especially the detective’s, did not allow for the casual filing of faces in the memory. At least not the competent ones. Remo hoped that Bill Skorich had not developed competence.

  Remo remembered their first year together on the force in Newark and how Skorich would forget little things and always end up on the short end of conversations with the desk sergeant, the detectives, the lieutenant and the captain. He never fouled up enough to stand before the chief.