by William Cain
Helen doesn’t have a good feeling about this, having seen Riggoti. She’s pretty sure the big guy that arrived earlier is Michael Seppi, and she knows how he operates. She knows about his machine, the one he calls “Junior.”
Juvieux then tells the tail to place transponders on both cars in front of the house. The tail signals to his partner who is nearby to the home about the transponders, and Helen sees the man placing the devices on the cars but doesn’t realize that he’s a member of a surveillance team watching her.
Riggoti and Biggie shake hands after he enters the home and they kiss each other on both cheeks. The men behind them are simply staring, waiting for the next move. After they’ve sat down and shared a drink or two, Riggoti begins to feel his stomach tightening up in knots. He knows something is going on here besides a discussion about expanding his business. He sees from Biggie’s expressions that there’s something else that he wants to talk about. And Biggie does want to talk about it.
There’s a pause between the two men. Biggie looks directly into Riggoti eyes and says, almost as a statement of fact, “Why did you have to kill my wife Elsie.”
And Riggoti is just staring in disbelief. “So this is what this is all about,” he says. “I’m sorry about Elsie. I heard it was very horrible. But I didn’t kill her.”
Biggie slams his fists on the table, “You are a fucking liar! Vinny told us everything!”
Riggoti, blinking, stares back at Biggie knowing that this is very pivotal and says, “That’s what happened to Vinny. You made him disappear. Listen, Gennarro, I did not kill Elsie. I didn’t order a killing. If Vinny told you I did…he couldn’t have said that,” Riggoti pauses. He’s searching for words and he tells Biggie, “Vinny would never say that. I did not kill Elsie, you have to believe me.”
Biggie still has his hands resting on the table and he’s trembling a little as he says, “Why should I believe you? Make me believe you.”
Riggoti says, “After what happened with my daughter? I mean Jesus! Biggie! She was just 15. Do you know where she is now? Eleven years later she’s in a mental hospital!”
Biggie and Riggoti remain staring at each other for a long time. They can hear their watches ticking. Each one is waiting for the other to strike first. It’s a sign of guilt. Biggie doesn’t care and he goes first, thick with disdain, “So my Elsie for your Sophie. That’s how it is, huh.”
Riggoti, raising his voice, “No, it’s not Elsie for Sophie. What I’m saying is I still work with you all these years after what you did. I want my daughter to get better. But I wouldn’t kill your wife for it.”
Biggie, spitting angrily, says, “I don’t believe you. I have no reason to believe you. Vinny told us that you did it. You have a reason to do it. You did it, and now you’re going to have your reward.”
Suddenly Riggoti pulls his knife and slices Biggie’s arm and begins to leap over the table to kill him. Everyone stands up and Riggoti’s bodyguard pulls his pistol. But it’s too late, and Gangi grabs Riggoti, puts a gun to his head, and tells his bodyguard to drop the weapon.
Michael steps over in front of Riggoti and punches him hard in the stomach. He’s a big guy, he’s all muscles, and Riggoti loses every ounce of air he has, doubles over, and he’s helped not so gingerly to the room in the back where Junior is waiting, with the rest in tow. Gangi motions the bodyguard to a chair and he’s bound and ball-gagged.
Riggoti is strapped to the table and he’s screaming and resisting. Michael punches him in the face and he stops. Once he’s still, Michael begins to attach Junior to him. Riggoti’s arms are stretched behind him and his legs are spread and strapped. Michael attaches wired clip pins to Riggoti’s scrotum, cheek, ear, underarm and toes. He doesn’t bother with the anus, he won’t need it. Next he pulls out his toolset from inside Junior and takes from it his favorite—the boning knife. Riggoti, seeing all this take place, begins to scream again, and again, and he‘s helped to the comfort of a ball-gag also.
Michael looks over at the guys and says, “You don’t really have to be here for this, it won’t take too long.”
Biggie looks at Michael, “I want to be here.”
And so Michael begins, turning his recorder on, and it is extremely gruesome. He slowly turns up the juice and Riggoti is as rigid as a board. When he turns it off after a few seconds, Riggoti is breathing quickly. Michael tells him to be truthful and after he removes the gag, Riggoti insists he didn’t do it. Michael tells him it’s only going to get worse, more intense, then replaces the gag and repeats. Biggie, after a few minutes, reaches for the controls that Michael is using and turns it all the way up. As quickly as he can, Michael turns it down and looks over at Gangi who whispers in Biggies ear, “Mike’s technique will deliver a confession; be patient. We don’t want him to say anything we want. We want him to confess, right?” Biggie, staring tensely, curses himself and steps back.
Next, Michael reaches for his boning knife and shows it to Riggoti, whose eyes give way to his terrified expression. Michael takes the boning knife and sinks it an inch into his underarm and Riggoti is screaming as loud as he can, but the ball gag does its job.
Still again, He won’t confess, and Michael reaches for one of Junior’s arms and has it clip Riggoti’s gonads. Michael tells him this is going to be extremely painful and he turns up the juice, careful to keep a safe distance away from the attached arm. Riggoti’s audience, including Michael, react in near disbelief as the arm pulls and stretches his penis and scrotum, squeezing and electrifying. The pain is so great, Riggoti passes out, but Michael wakes him after a few sweet seconds.
At times, steam rises from Riggoti; he’s practically on fire. When they’re done, Riggoti becomes the definition of confession. He confesses to having Elsie killed. He confesses to having a hitman try to kill Gennarro. He confesses to everything. Biggie gives him his last rites, “You prick, you fuck, not even man enough to come after me yourself. You aren’t a man.” Then, screaming, accusingly, “Killer of women!” Biggie’s scorn runs very hot and very deep, and there’s no hiding the sadness in his eyes. He looks like he’s aged ten years in the past hour, and, as he reaches for Junior’s power control, the men don’t stop him as he turns it up slowly.
As Riggoti is near death now, Michael pulls out the last piece of equipment for the evening. He prepares a lethal injection and tells Gangi and Biggie that it’s time to go and plunges the needle into his arm. Riggoti stops breathing.
The bodyguard is taking all this in, and he’s pretty sure that he’s next. He’s already shit himself a couple of times and he smells. He sees Michael, after Riggoti has passed on, cut off his boss’s fingers and extract all of his teeth and carefully place them in a small bag, making sure he doesn’t spill them on the floor. Then he burns his body with acid and unstraps him, turning him over, looking for other moles or tattoos and puts acid there. Last, he shaves his head and, again, into the bag it goes.
The idea of mounting Riggoti’s head at Glencoe was turned down by Vincent. He’s the boss now. He didn’t like Vinny’s head there. It was a turnoff, and visitors thought it was ugly.
They roll his body into a bag, put that into a ski bag, and after Michael is done cleaning up Junior, he dismantles it. He puts it into its crate, the three men walk out with the ski bag and Junior, and they leave. The bodyguard remains, sitting in his own filth, sweating and stinking.
Outside, Helen and the tail both saw five men go in earlier and now see three men, a ski bag and the crate come out, and drive away. The tail sees Helen get into her own car and leave. Juvieux signals to the tail to go into the home and when he and his partner do, they signal back to Juvieux that it’s empty except for the bodyguard, who’s more than happy to tell them everything, sniveling and groaning.
The agent tells Juvieux, “I have never seen a guy so scared in his life as that guy we found inside the house.”
“He’s got some story to tell.”
Chapter 36 The Great Outdoors
Februa
ry
I don’t want to die without any scars. Chuck Palahniuk
“I still don’t get why we are going to dump his body in a spot popular for dumping bodies,” Gangi complains to Michael, loud enough for Biggie to hear, who’s in the back seat, quiet, reflecting, satisfied. They’re traveling west, taking a short trip into the Everglades, as planned.
“The spot, if you want to call it that, is massive. The everglades is huge. It’s four million acres. This area has a lot of hungry alligators, and they’re looking forward to our arrival. Like I told you a while ago, this is young gator central. Adults are territorial and usually take up a square mile of marsh. Juveniles bunch together. We want this guy eaten, so we go where lots of hungry gators live. Anyway, I have an Indian guide. We’ll drop it off and be done in no time. Hey,” looking sideways at Gangi, “You know how the sex of a gator is decided? I’ll tell you. It’s the temperature of the nest when it’s incubatin’. Huh? Is that crazy or what?”
Michael goes on, “Remember that jet with all those passengers on it that crashed in the Everglades around ten, fifteen years ago? Word has it that the impact was vertical. Straight down,” and he motions with his free hand, his index finger held to the ceiling of the cabin and then pointing down, down, down. “Not one person was found. The animals, that’s their domain. We just visit and get the hell out. It’ll be fine.”
He continues, “By the way, how’d you like my show? Junior’s quite a machine. All that work makes me hungry. Can you open the glove compartment, there’s a breakfast bar or two in there. Get one for me? Help yourself.”
Gangi answers him, grabbing a bar, “Yeah, that boy of yours is something else. I thought it was going to rip Riggoti apart. When you started to bring the other arm toward him, that’s when he had an out of body experience. That’s when he found religion. How’d you learn to program that thing anyway?”
Michael looks hurt, “Hey Al, give me some credit, wilI ya? I went to college.”
High overhead of the truck is a drone, courtesy of the Miami Police Department and the U.S. military. It’s the quietest, most well equipped flyboy made, and it’s not cheap. It’s sophisticated, fast, and equipped with infrared thermography. It can pick out anything that throws off radiation, like warm-blooded animals, like warm-blooded humans. Right now it sees three figures in the SUV, two in front, one in back. MPD has already assembled a team to recover the body and made its adjustments now that they see Biggie and company are in the Everglades. Brass has made its calls and brought up the most experienced Everglades officers and operators. Everything is happening quickly. This evidence is going to unlock a lot of doors.
“Legend has it that the Everglades are home to bizarre animals. I mean bizarre, weird,” Michael says, talking out loud between mouthfuls. “There’s talk about GatorMen. Like they live in swamps all over here. And they’ve been seen. You get that? Seen since a long time ago, way back when. They’re supposed to be human-gator-like animals around five feet tall with scaly, green skin and yellow eyes, claws and a mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth. So watch out!”
Gangi’s getting a little restless. Biggie notices and tells him, “Don’t worry, Gangi, I’ll burp you later.” They all share a good laugh.
“Ok, we’re here,” Michael announces as they pull up to a shack at the end of a very long muddy road. A man steps out from the house, if you can call it that, as children sneak peeks from the openings inside. The air is thick with humidity and the methane like stench of a swamp. There’s no moon, and without proper light you wouldn’t see the hand in front of your face. The swamp is alive, but quiet, insects buzzing around their heads and in the distance, or rubbing their legs together and singing in unison, rising and falling. Occasionally they’ll hear a splash or a distant catcall, or an owl; nocturnal creatures ruling the night.
The man, dressed in full denims and plaid shirt with long, black hair and a straw hat, motions them to the rear of the house where his fan boat is tied up. Michael greets him with a word and together they step into the boat, holding Riggoti’s lifeless shell between them. The Indian doesn’t even look at it, and he appears to be bored as he looks over his map, deciding on the best way to his given destination, considering the rains that have fallen in the past week. And they begin to move.
The man is traveling slowly at times. The Everglades estuaries can be like tunnels of bushes and trees. During the day, when it can be seen, it’s impressive and speaks to danger. No mistakes here, especially at night, even for a trained, experienced guide. The man has lived in that house all his life, and he’ll die there. But he doesn’t want to die here. So, on he goes, slowly, looking at his map and his GPS. The boys occasionally look over at him and feel confident after a while that they’re in safe hands. Not much is spoken; they know they’re on a dangerous adventure. Their tensions are tight, and each one is excited and focused. At times, they reach open water and their speed increases and it’s not long before they’ve traveled some distance and arrived at their destination, as the guide looks over at Michael and says one word, “Here.”
Michael looks over at Gangi and Biggie and tells them quietly, “It’s suppertime.” Together they slowly lower Riggoti’s body into the water and it sinks, with the weight of the chains taking it to the shallow bottom of the Glades. Michael turns to his guide and tells him to return and they make a one-eighty and retrace their steps.
In the dark, as they return, the others can’t see each other. Biggie is thankful, a single tear finds its way down his cheek, and he embraces it, feeling it, making it part of this story, Elsie’s story.
◆◆◆
High aloft, the MPD drone isn’t heard or seen. But the thermal images it sends to the feed for MPD brass and for Juvieux in Asheville tell them about the four men, where they’ve been, where they stopped. That’s the drop off point. The location is delivered to the feed from the drone, and it’s accurate to the nearest centimeter. The trick is to get there before the body is consumed.
The Everglades team is launching from nearby, around two miles away from the spot where they believe the body was dumped, approaching it from the opposite direction of the Indian guide and his customers. The team is a group of hard men, experienced with the Glades and their equipment.
Juvieux is on edge, very hopeful. If they can recover the body, that along with the surveillance footage of the Miami beach house and the bodyguard confession will lead to an arrest of Battaglia. When he talks, Juvieux knows he’ll be headed to Washington, maybe even Deputy Director. He’s watching the feeds intently. His fellow agents know it’s important to him, and it’s important to them, too. This is the culmination of months of long, hard work. The drone is still following the SUV, and the feeds from the officer cams in the swamp are largely dark, with occasional glimpses of the waters before them as their searchlights sweep over the brackish waters.
After fifteen minutes, they reach the spot where the guide stopped, and they bring out their dredging equipment and their artillery. They can hear movements nearby, and they’ll clear the waters if they have to. But they don’t want to make any noise, and soon they find out they won’t have to, as the dredger quickly finds a few heavy pieces. When they’re hauled up, they find a branch and a rotting tree stump.
And a burlap bag wrapped in chains.
◆◆◆
Back in their SUV now, the boys are headed back to Miami. This time, the talk is subdued and they’re each a little tired and drained. But they have one more job to do before they can celebrate and call it a night. It’s not long before they arrive at the marina, leaving the SUV to follow Michael to the boat, where they board and cast off.
When they arrive at their destination, they bring out the bag with what’s left of Riggoti, tie a fishing weight to it, and drop it over the side. Plop.
Sharing a drink now, they head back, and their mood becomes lighter, even joking a bit. Then they become quiet as they’re sitting, looking at each other in the dim light of the deck, the soft, war
m breeze blowing their hair around.
Biggie speaks, slowly, quietly, taking turns to look at them each, to make his meaning clear and his words count; this isn’t a manufactured speech, but words that mean something. “Thank you. This is really important to me. I lost half of my life in July. Did you know we were both virgins when we married? Neither of us knew what to do. We made stuff up as we went along. We did that for over fifty years together. She made my life.”
Gangi and Michael nod their heads slowly and rest their hands on Biggie’s shoulders, and together they say a prayer. When they’re done, Gennarro Battaglia stands and walks over to the port railing, looks out at the endless waters, and hangs his head.
He remains like that for the rest of the trip, thinking about his wife Elsie, trying to release his anger and sorrow. After a while, he comes to terms with it. It’ll never stop, never go away. He’ll always be the guy that rose from poverty to become the most cunning underworld boss of any day and age. To marry the beautiful, funny little girl he met in the fourth grade. The one from the richest family in modern times. Fate smiled on him. He reached for the top and he took it.
But he fell short—he couldn’t protect Elsie when she needed him the most.
Chapter 37 Satisfaction
February
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for. Martin Luther King Jr.
Miami Police are none too happy to be used as muscle, tracking the inhabitants of the SUV and recovering the remains of whoever those guys killed. They weren’t told who the victim is, but the order came from high above and they did as they were told, cooperated. One day, they’ll find out, since it’s their turf, but until things fall into place, it’s hush-hush.
