The Blood of Saints (Tom Connelly Book 2)

by Nick Dorsey

  “When?”

  “Ever.”

  “Ever?” Nadine did look up then, with a look of horror. “LaRocca. Adelfi. No first names?”

  Jean shook her head. “Any of those last names represented by that firm.”

  “Going back to the beginning of time?”

  “I think the firm’s only been around since the late 80s.”

  “DiAngelo, Pascal, and Associates.” Nadine looked dubious at best. “That’s over twenty years of cases.”

  Jean gave her a helpless shrug. “I can do some looking on my end, but I don’t have their bar roll numbers and they aren’t exactly publishing their client lists.”

  Nadine took a gulp of her drink and sucked her teeth. “Okay. I might be able to get to it today.”

  “Really?” Jean brightened. “Thanks. I owe you.”

  The investigator turned back to her computer. She raised the smoothie lazily. “Add banana next time. The flavors compliment.”

  Back in her office, Jean scrolled through the Louisiana Bar Association webpage. She was looking for DiAngelo and Pascal and anything that could link them to the LaRocca crime family. Maybe it was Tom Connelly rubbing off on her, but she was developing a conspiracy theory all her own. When her search on the Bar webpage didn’t yield any results, she pulled out a pen and a stack of note cards. She shuffled the cards absentmindedly and tried to get her theory straight. It went like this.

  On the first card, she wrote SOFIA . She set the card on her empty desk.

  If Sofia Adelfi was innocent, then somebody else killed her husband. And if Ernesto was neck-deep in organized crime, then it wasn’t hard to believe that some member of the LaRocca family had a hand in his death. That followed. The next bit was a leap. Conjecture.

  On another card, she wrote ERNESTO and set it next to the first.

  What if the family wanted Sofia to take the charge for Ernesto’s death? They would have a vested interest in making sure she went away. They would have an interest in making sure Sofia’s defense wasn’t interested in defending her. To further the conjecture, Jean thought about Eason constantly asking her about the case.

  EASON went next to the other cards.

  He was put on the case to oversee her, but whose decision was that? Jean thought it was probably Eason’s own doing. Maybe he sold it as helping her out. Once he had a hand in the case, it wasn’t long before he took it over outright. And Eason wasn’t interested in defending Sofia Adelfi, Jean was sure about that. He wanted to be done with the thing. And if Jean was right, Eason had also been talking to Tony DiAngelo.

  DIANGELO .

  The next leap? DiAngelo was working for the LaRocca family. And he had approached Jean, maybe even offered her a job as an inroad, to try and convince her to scuttle the thing. Maybe he didn’t think Jean would do the job, so he approached Eason. Now Eason was doing the LaRocca family’s dirty work.

  Jean looked at her sorry collection of cards.

  It didn’t take long for Nadine to call Jean with the information she wanted. DiAngelo, Pascal, and Associates had indeed done some work for LaRocca Enterprises in 2007. Most notably for their dealership, Fine American Autos. DiAngelo had represented them in a few product liability claims. Jean thought that was probably the Katrina car scam that Patton told her about. Going back, the same firm was on the paperwork incorporating LaRocca Enterprises. The firm was all over the Pan Dell’Orso, too.

  Jean thanked Nadine and hung up. She wrote LAROCCA on a card and arranged the others around it. Satisfied, she kicked her shoes off and thought about it all.

  “Shit,” she told the cards. “It fits.” The link Jean wanted was there. But what could she do with it? She gathered her cards and slipped back into her shoes. Why torture herself with conjecture? She could go right to the source of information. She marched down to Eason Kandinsky’s office still shuffling those notecards.

  He was hunched over his computer, but he sat up and smiled at Jean quizzically when she cracked his door. “Hey,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.” Acting like he was going to make amends.

  Jean showed him the DIANGELO card. “Have you talked to Tony DiAngelo lately?”

  That stopped him. His smile faded into his beard. “Who’s that?”

  Jean flicked the card at him and he swatted it away. “What’s that for?” He said.

  “He’s a mob lawyer. You know the firm.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He offer you a job?”

  Eason was a good liar if not a good lawyer, but Jean caught him off guard. He sputtered for a moment.

  “Why did you want the Adelfi case?” She said. “Is it because that’s where DiAngelo wanted you?”

  For once, the other man had nothing to say.

  “Fuck you, Eason,” Jean said.

  The big man turned back to his computer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m busy, okay? Busy cleaning up your mess. So leave me in peace.” Eason didn’t have jokes now. He wasn’t his usual self. He was edgy. Sweat was beading his forehead. His face was boiling over red under all that beard.

  Shit, Jean thought. Her damn note cards were right. “I see you, Eason,” she said. And she did.

  “Okay,” he sighed, and finally wiped his forehead.

  “I see you,” she said, and left.

  Jean grabbed her things and left early. Not even noon yet and she was already fed up with the office and everyone in it. She didn’t exactly know where she was going to go, but she thought she had enough information to take to Tom Connelly. Not enough to go back to Juanita and be reinstated on the Adelfi case, not yet anyway. But enough for Tom and Patton to run with. She tried both their cell phones on her way to the parking garage, but again there was no answer.

  She was halfway to her car when she had the distinct feeling she was being watched. Jean took in the cars on either side of the garage. Mostly familiar vehicles inside the garage, but there was an odd car parked on the street. A big, pale old Cadillac. Leaning over the top of the car was a tall man with sideburns and a sort of pompadour. Almost like Elvis, although this guy was bigger around. Black button-down shirt and a bolo tie, like he was in some sort of costume. He was smoking a cigarette and squinting into the garage, trying to catch sight of her in the shade of the garage. The sight of the man made Jean furious. The look, the car, it was all so obvious. Jean had a sudden urge to run back upstairs and yank Juanita from her desk, pull her down to the garage and show her this man. He was just watching her come out of work. Right out in the open. How could Juanita deny Jean’s story if she saw Sal LaRocca’s goons, or footmen, or whatever they were called, hanging around the building? How could she deny that?

  The woman would probably find a way. First Dominic and now this man in the Cadillac. It was all too much. Jean mumbled the words. I’m a fighter. I’m a warrior. I’m a bad-ass bitch. She decided on less of a plan and more of an avenue of attack. She paused briefly at her car and popped the trunk. She poured her files in the leaf-strewn trunk and pulled her softball bat out. She was on the street and crossing it before the guy with the sideburns had time to get in the car.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you looking for me?”

  “Uh,” he said.

  The car’s brake lights were twin red torpedoes protruding from the rear fin. Jean lifted the bat and tapped one vintage light. It broke easily. She watched red glass scatter across the street.

  The big guy reacted, dropping his cigarette and coming around to the rear of the car. “What the hell was that for?”

  Jean gestured to him with the bat and he flinched. “Tell Sal to leave me alone.”

  “Uh.”

  Jean felt good. Popping the brake light was crossing some rubicon. Like she was already in a swinging mood. Would she take a swing at the big guy? Maybe. Maybe she would. While she thought about it, she smashed the other red torpedo. The big man flinched. He frowned down at the busted light like he didn’t understand what was happening. Not exactly a great mobste
r, Jean was thinking.

  “I’m not doing anything,” he said.

  Jean flicked the bat around and connected with the fin, denting it. The big guy moaned in response. Jean turned toward him, ready with the bat, and the man shifted from one foot to the next. Nervous. Like a kid who managed to wreck his dad’s car on prom night.

  “Stop following me,” Jean said. “Hey! Are you listening to me?” She waved the bat at him.

  He jumped up on the curb, backing into the tall grass of the easement. When his back hit a chain-link fence he dropped his hand and said, “I’m just here to make sure you’re okay.”

  That didn’t track. She said, “Do you know Tony DiAngelo?”

  “What?”

  Jean stuck the business end of the bat on the curb and scowled at the big man. The nerve of these guys. The worst part was, she was dealing with associates, or soldiers, or whatever these low-level idiots called themselves. They didn’t have enough brains to make any real decisions. They weren’t the guys giving orders. This Fat Elvis type wasn’t the guy talking to Tony DiAngelo, he wasn’t the guy screwing up the Adelfi case for her. If she wanted results, she’d have to work her way further up the food chain.

  “Take me to your boss,” she said.

  “Uh,” he said. Very confused now. Which was good. He pulled out his cell phone and Jean flipped her bat around and swatted the phone to the ground. She ground the end of the bat into the phone it crackled. The big guy sighed. “Why’d you have to do that?”

  “Let’s go.” Jean snapped. “You’ve been fucking with me for long enough. Everywhere I turn, I see one of you guys. Home, work, in my office. Doesn’t matter. There you are. Well, you got me now, and you can barely stack one word on top of another. So take me to somebody who matters. Let’s have a conversation. Okay?”

  She opened the Cadillac’s door and slid into the passenger side. When she saw he was still leaning with his back on the gate, she opened the door and cracked the bat against the side of the car. She said, “Come on. I don’t have all day.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Circle Beard and the muscle frog-marched Tom through the morning breeze, over a neatly trimmed yard and right to the front door of the big Bavarian house. Sal LaRocca’s house. The whole place was ringed with hedges so they were in no real danger of being seen. Sal himself opened the door when they reached the front porch. He was dressed in chinos and a sweater but the old man looked haggard. Unshaven. “You look like shit,” Sal said to Tom.

  The muscle was leaning his head back and holding his nose. “Mr. LaRocca, you’re answering your own door after last night? Come on.”

  “I had to send a guy with my wife and Louis is out with that other thing,” Sal said. “What happened here?”

  The muscle gestured to Tom.

  “Christ. Come on in, Mr. Connelly. What you know good ?” Sal said.

  “What happened last night?” Tom said.

  Circle Beard pushed him inside. The entryway opened up into a sitting room dominated by a huge oil painting of a pelican flying over cypress knees in some late-day swamp. Under the painting was a copper plate piled with potpourri, the dried flowers giving the room a cloying sweetness. Not Sal’s style, Tom thought. The room had a staircase on one side and a hall festooned with family photos on the other. Sal waved them down the hall.

  “Come on over here with me,” Sal said. He pointed to the muscle. “Go get cleaned up.”

  “Where’s Dominic?” Tom spat, standing still. Holding his ground.

  Sal wasn’t expecting that question. He looked at his two soldiers and Circle Beard showed him Ray’s silver pistol. “He was over on Napoleon.”

  Sal’s eyes drooped and he shook his head. “What did you have to do that for?” He turned down the hallway again. “Jackson, bring our boy.”

  The muscle hadn’t moved. He was wiping his bloody nose. “Shouldn’t leave the front door unwatched.”

  “Then sit out front like a lawn jockey. Jackson? Come on.”

  Circle Beard, or Jackson, nudged Tom with one hand and together they followed Sal. Sepia-toned photographs lined the wall and led down to a set of french doors that opened into a little study. A leather couch about a century old slumped along one wall and a grand writing desk cluttered with forgotten paperwork and magazines stretched out along the other. Here was the smell of decades-old cigarettes and aftershave. Sal LaRocca’s home-within-a-home. Sal took a well-worn spot on the couch and sighed as he dropped the clip from Ray’s gun. “It’s real bad, you showing up at Napoleon like that. Armed. Heavy, they used to call it.” Sal’s grey eyes moved over Tom’s face, trying to read his intentions. “Hypothetically that sort of thing could get a guy killed.”

  Tom was used to the little man’s bluster by now and thought that threat sounded pretty rote. Something Sal had to get out of his system to keep up appearances. He looked at the high-backed desk chair and decided to stand. “There was somebody at my home. They shot Patton.”

  “The kid?” Sal said, genuinely surprised.

  “In the head.”

  “Oh, God.” He mauled his face with one hand. “He’s dead?”

  “He’s alive, but barely. So I’m going to ask you again, where’s Dominic?”

  “Where? Who can say?” Sal’s arms went wide, encompassing the entire universe. “What’s he got to do with anything?” Sal glanced around like he was being watched. He looked at Circle Beard, sizing him up, then said, “The lawyer, I got somebody watching her. Just in case.“

  Tom took that in. It was good. It meant Sal was taking him seriously, no matter what he said to the contrary. It meant that the Barese kid was out on his own. “I think Dominic killed Ernesto.”

  The old man leaned his head back on the couch. “You got cop friends. So why you telling me?”

  Because he didn’t have that many friends of the force, Tom was thinking. “He tried to kill me. When I wasn’t there, he shot my friend.”

  “You think I sent him to kill you?” Throwing the question right out there and seeing what Tom would do with it.

  Tom sat with that. Eventually, he shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “I didn’t think so. So, what? You want me to help you do what, exactly? I’m sorry about your friend. I am. But just what is it you want to do? Find him? We going in like gangbusters? Guns blazing? Butch Cassidy and Sundance, me and you?” The old man’s face was red. He blew out his cheeks and shook his head. For a moment there was only the slow ticking of an ancient cuckoo clock over them.

  Tom said, “I just want to know where he is.”

  Sal shrugged. “Don’t worry about that.”

  There was an offbeat noise from the hallway, a shuffle-thump. The french doors opened and the muscle peeked inside the study. His nose had been poorly bandaged. The gauze puffed out on either side of his nostrils like thick whiskers, and it was already creeping with bloody tendrils. “Mr. LaRocca?”

  Sal waved him away, annoyed by the guy. “Thought you were out front?”

  The muscle moved aside and a metal walker appeared where he was standing. Amelia LaRocca shuffle-thumped into the room, leaning heavily on the walker even with the muscle supporting one arm. Her hair was gathered in a loose bun atop her head, her auburn streak spiraling against the white. She was still in some sort of faded purple nightgown. She eyed Tom. “Forgive me if I’m not dressed. But I simply had to see what the fuss was about.” She moved into the room, her hands wrapped in crepe paper and liver spots pushing the metal frame, green tennis balls easing the thing across the floor. Sal moved to make a space for her on the couch but she declined with a twitch of her mouth.

  “If I sit I’ll never get back up.” She turned to the muscle. “Perry, get me an au lait.”

  The muscle looked confused for a moment, then went off to get the woman her coffee.

  After he left, Amelia shuffle-thumped another step into the room. Examining Tom carefully. Tom met her cool gaze.

  “Perry said he had a gun?�
��

  “Ah, Christ,” Sal said, raising Ray’s gun and the clip.

  She craned her neck to Circle Beard. “Get him some coffee, Jackson.”

  Jackson nodded. Tom expected him to leave the room, but he took two steps toward Tom and grabbed his jacket with those long fingers. His other hand sank into Tom’s stomach, just below his solar plexus, and all the air forcibly left his body. Suddenly Tom was on one knee gasping for air. Circle Beard was stronger than he looked.

  Sal struggled out of the couch. “Okay. He’s got the message, Jackson. Thanks.”

  Tom pulled himself into the high-backed chair now, doubled over. Trying to fill his lungs and not quite making it. The edges of his vision went blurry, like an old movie shot with a lens full of vaseline.

  The leather crackled under Sal as he sat back down. Amelia was breathing through her nose. She said, “What’s he know?”

  Tom groaned and sat up in the chair. He was surprised at how badly things had gone. And how quickly it all happened. A few wheezing gasps later and he was able to see straight again. He looked around the room. The cuckoo clock ringed with elaborate woodwork ticking away. Framed pictures over the couch of “Pistol” Pete Maravich kneeling on the court next to a basketball. Signed, too. Another of Bobby Hebert, young. Must have been twenty years ago. And a younger Sal next to him, with Bobby handing him a football. Other, faded pictures showed a wedding attended by something like a hundred people. An even younger Sal, slim and smiling in the middle with a short woman. She was looking up at him like he set the moon. Tom croaked, “Dominic.”

  “Stop talking,” Sal said, sounding less like a mafia boss and more like somebody’s kid brother. “He’s not a cop. I got it covered.”

  Amelia rattled her walker, raging as much as she was able. The old woman’s face was red when she spoke. “After last night? I don’t think so.” She turned and Jackson helped her shuffle out of the room. She called over her shoulder, “Bring him to the slave quarters. I’ll talk to him there.”