Paradise City

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “The deal was worked through a Camorra crew working out of Margellina,” Lo Manto said. “A haul like this would have gone a long way toward showing the bosses that they were the real deal and could deliver the heavy goods.”

  “They are the Camorra’s worry now,” Bartoni said. “Not yours. It’s always a blessing when we can get them to do our work for us. The more of them who waste each other, the better it is for Naples.”

  “I’m catching the first hydrofoil out in the morning,” Lo Manto said. “I’ll stop by before I leave and hand over the paperwork.”

  “There’s no rush,” Bartoni said. “You can even mail it to me from Capri if you wish. I’m confident you did everything according to the rules.”

  “I followed the rules as I understand them,” Lo Manto said.

  “Which is all I can ask of any of my men,” Bartoni said. “I’ll keep an eye on your mother for you while you’re away. Make sure she doesn’t need for anything.”

  “The timing couldn’t be better for you,” Lo Manto said. “Her tomatoes are in bloom, and she has enough fresh basil in her garden to supply every restaurant in the city.”

  “It’s going to be good for you to get away,” Bartoni said. “Read a few books, swim every day, eat and drink to excess, and let the Camorra slip from your mind. At least for the month you’re on Capri.”

  “Even the Camorra take vacations,” Lo Manto said. “Who knows. If I’m lucky, I may run into some old friends.”

  “It’ll be even luckier if you don’t,” Bartoni said. “I only want to see pretty postcards from you for the next thirty days. If I want to read about shootouts, I’ll get them from the daily reports.”

  “If they decide to come at us because of this score we took from them, I want to know about it,” Lo Manto said. “It’s still my case, whether I’m here or not.”

  “If you hear from me, you’ll know there’s trouble,” Bartoni said. “Other than that, enjoy your stay in paradise. You’ll be back working in hell soon enough.”

  “It’s only hell if you hate it,” Lo Manto said.

  Lo Manto came out of the bathroom and walked into his large bedroom, glass windows looking out over the wide expanse of the Piazza Dante. He had a blue towel wrapped around his waist and another draped across his shoulders, his body still wet from the long, hot shower. There was a brown leather duffel bag on his bedspread and clothes strewn on all sides. In one corner of the room, next to an end table, was a tall stack of books, magazines, and newspapers he was eager to read. At the edge of the bed, next to a pair of black Puma sneakers, were his three guns—two nine-millimeters and a .38. On the CD player, Lorenzo Jovanotti was rapping his way through his latest hit, “Salvami.”

  Lo Manto paused in front of the bureau that dominated the center of the room, a gift from his mother when he first got the apartment. He stared at himself in the long, wide mirror that hung above it. His eyes were always drawn to the scars, etched on his body like lines on a mountain ridge. There was a long, curving slice running under his right breast, courtesy of a slashing he had received less than six months into his police career. The half-moon jagged scar along the side of his neck came from a bullet from a .38 that missed the kill mark by less than a centimeter. There was a six-inch scar just above his navel, where he had been stabbed with a shank of wood during a waterfront brawl on the night of his first big drug bust.

  He gazed at the small creases caused by more than three dozen stitches he had received during his battles with the Camorra, cuts that ran from his shoulders down to his legs, some noticeable only to his eye, others as visible as the stone-hard muscles that filled out his frame. Lo Manto scanned the healed wounds and damaged torso and shook his head as he sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled and wondered what kind of an old man he would end up becoming, assuming he made it that far. Probably the kind who smoked harsh-tasting tobacco out of a chewed-down pipe, telling and retelling the same old police stories to uninterested faces and uncaring eyes. It was one of a police officer’s biggest fears. Many lived with the quiet dread that a career devoted to keeping the bite of the wolf from the door of the innocent would skid to a silent end. Lo Manto wanted what he had accomplished to have some weight, to have an impact on the people he helped and on the criminals he put away. It mattered to him that his life would not be wasted, but one that served the greater good. He remembered his father telling him many times that a man could make such a life for himself in America. Lo Manto wanted to think that he could do the same in Italy.

  He turned when he heard the front door bell. Stripping off the two towels, he reached for a pair of jeans, slid into them, and walked out of the bedroom, past the small dining room and down the length of the long foyer. “Regina, bella,” he said as he opened the door and saw his sister, Victoria, standing there. He reached out and gave her a tight hug and immediately knew something was wrong.

  He walked her into the kitchen and sat her at the chair closest to the stove. “I’ll make coffee,” he said, “and you talk.”

  Two years older than Giancarlo, Victoria was a beautiful woman in the truest southern Italian tradition. She had long, thick brown hair, a shapely body she didn’t need to exercise to keep toned, arms and legs naturally tanned and thin. Her oval face lit up when she smiled, and her olive eyes could raise a man’s temperature, though today there was no smile to be found and her eyes bore the burden of sorrow. She had married young, too young according to their mother, and the wrong man, according to the whispers of friends and family. Her husband, Fabio, worked for a midsize bank, earned a good living, and, on the surface, all seemed well. They had one child, a daughter, Paula, who had just turned fifteen and was babied and doted on by relatives on both sides of the aisle. Victoria managed a floral shop in Lungomare and drove a bloodred 1998 Porsche she bought at a good price at a police auction, a car that may have suited her personality but certainly not her needs.

  Lo Manto put the espresso pot on the stove and turned the burner on low. He glanced over at his sister, catching her nervous gestures and fearful glances. “Coffee will be ready in less than ten minutes,” he said, “and you still haven’t said a word.”

  “Paula’s gone,” Victoria said, her usually calm voice filled with anxiety and worry. “No one’s heard a word from her in three days.”

  “When did you find out?” he asked.

  “About an hour ago,” Victoria said. “I got a call from the family she’s living with in New York. They told me not to worry—she might just be visiting some friends. Maybe she thought she didn’t have to let anyone know about it.”

  “They call the police?”

  “The mother called them just before she called me,” Victoria said. “They were on their way to the precinct to fill out a missing-person report.”

  “How well do you know this family?” he asked. He remembered checking them out with his friends in the NYPD the minute he first heard about his niece’s plan for a one-month trip living as an exchange student with a husband, wife, and two children on Manhattan’s East Side. By all accounts, they were an acceptable family.

  “They have a great reputation, Gian,” she said, waving away his mistrust. “You’re not the only one who knows how to use a phone and ask hard questions. They’ve been taking a teenager in every summer for the last six years and nothing’s ever happened. One of my neighbors, Constanza, sent her daughter Claudia to live with them last year.”

  “And with all that experience, they still waited three days before calling you and the police,” Lo Manto said.

  “It’s happened to them before,” Victoria said. “Three times in the last six years and always with the same result. Every other time, they called the cops and filled out forms and nothing was done. Eventually, the kid makes her way back to the apartment and thinks nothing of the worry he or she put everyone through. They’re teenagers, Gian. They don’t always do what’s right.”

  “Paula knows better,” Lo Manto said. “Besides, where would she go that she
wouldn’t want anyone to know? Who would she be with who would make her forget to call? Even if she didn’t trust this family, she would have called you. And if she was in trouble, she would have reached out for me.”

  “I need your help,” Victoria said. “I need you to find her.”

  “She have an international cell phone?” Lo Manto asked.

  “No, just a local one,” Victoria said. “She’s been calling at least once a week.”

  “When’s the last time you talked to her?”

  “The day before she disappeared,” Victoria said. “We spoke for about twenty minutes—fifteen or so with me, the rest with her father.”

  “How’d she sound?” Lo Manto asked. “Anything in her voice that didn’t feel right, that made you think something was off?”

  “She was a little homesick, but nothing more than that,” Victoria said, reaching for a napkin and wiping at the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “She had just come back from a day at an amusement park and planned to go to the movies with some friends. She even won a prize, a stuffed teddy bear. She was going to give it to Mama when she got back home.”

  “You know the names of any of her friends?” Lo Manto asked. He poured two cups of espresso and gave one to his sister, watching her reach for it with a trembling hand. “She ever mention them in her calls?”

  “Only one time,” Victoria said, resting the cup at the edge of the Formica table. “She met a girl at some party who spoke Italian. Turned out she lived nearby and had similar interests, so they started going to galleries and museums together.”

  “You get a name?”

  “Clara,” his sister said. “I never got her last name. But Paula did tell me that her friend’s grandfather was born in Naples, which I thought gave them something else in common.”

  Lo Manto pulled out a chair and sat down facing his sister, his steady hands holding tight her shaking ones. “I’ll make some calls to New York,” he told her, “see what I can find out. I’ll also need you to give me the name and number of the family Paula is staying with. After that, you go home and stay with your husband. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

  “She’s been missing for three days, Gian,” his sister said, the hard edge back in her voice. “People run away every day in New York; it’s the easiest city in the world to disappear in. And they are never found. I won’t allow that to happen to Paula. The New York police might look for her, but they won’t find her. To them, she’s just another name on a form, a stranger they know nothing about. She’s more than that to you. She’s your blood.”

  Lo Manto stared at his sister and stayed silent. Outwardly, he maintained a calm and reassuring presence, content to allay Victoria’s fears, choosing his words carefully, weighing each question without making it sound accusatory. But he knew time and reality were against finding his niece if she’d been grabbed or simply didn’t want to be found. Three days missing was a lifetime to a cop. Any clues left behind had to be treated as cold, any changes in pattern as too late to follow up. “I don’t want Mama to know anything about this just yet,” he said, his voice low and in control. “If you can’t hide it from her, then avoid seeing her for a few days.”

  “Fabio was going to take me to Lake Como for a short vacation,” Victoria said, holding her brother’s hands tighter. “Mama doesn’t need to know we’re not going. I’ll leave her my cell phone number in case she needs anything.”

  “She thinks I’m going to Capri for a month,” Lo Manto said. “And that’s what I want her to keep thinking.”

  “Find her, Gian,” Victoria said, voice cracking from the strain. “Promise me that. Promise me you’ll bring my daughter back to me.”

  “She told me she wanted to be here for Mama’s birthday party next month,” Lo Manto said. “Help her blow out the candles. I’ll make sure that’s what she does.”

  “I’m sorry, Gian,” Victoria said, overtaken by a sense of relief, tears once again flowing down the sides of her face. “This was the last thing you needed to find on your doorstep. I know how much you were looking forward to getting away. I never want to bring you any trouble. That job of yours gives you enough of that.”

  “Nothing’s changed all that much, Victoria,” Lo Manto said. “I was going to Capri, but I had nothing planned. Instead, now I’m going to Manhattan and I’ve got something to do while I’m there, something that’s important to both of us. And as far as I can see, one island is just as good as the other.”

  7

  LO MANTO LOOKED OUT at the lush farmland that separated Naples and Rome. Bartoni was shifting gears effortlessly as they eased their police sedan out of the congested city traffic and made for the wide-open Altostrada and the two-hour drive to the Leonardo Da Vinci airport. He could have taken a twenty-minute puddle jumper from one city to the other, but once he informed Bartoni of the change in his plans and the reason behind it, the chief inspector insisted on personally driving him up to Rome.

  He had packed in less than twenty minutes, leaving behind the books, newspapers, and magazines, but putting two of the guns in a corner of the duffel bag with as many extra clips as he could find and jamming a nine-millimeter into his hip holster. He placed two calls to New York, the first to his oldest friend on the force, Captain Frank Fernandez of the 47th precinct. He had known Fernandez since the captain was an undercover detective working buy-and-bust operations in the East Bronx, Lo Manto’s old neighborhood and still prime Camorra turf. Through the years, as each rose up the ranks of his respective department, the two worked on a dozen two-city task force operations, including a takedown of a $50 million drug smuggling ring. It was a bust that sent three high-ranking Camorristas to jail for double-digit sentences and put three others into early graves. They spoke frequently and e-mailed each other on a regular basis, sharing information and favors. As a visiting detective from a foreign country working on a case, Lo Manto would be thousands of miles beyond his jurisdiction and maintain no powers of search, seizure, or arrest. He would need to check in with a New York precinct, where the local commander would then team him with a shadow partner. Lo Manto could think of no one better suited to help find his niece than Frank Fernandez.

  His second call was placed to a pay phone in the rear of a dusty old candy store on the north side of the elevated subway tracks on White Plains Road in the Bronx. Lo Manto waited through eight rings before he heard the irritated, smoke-clogged voice on the other end.

  “This better be worth me getting off my ass,” the voice barked into the phone.

  Lo Manto smiled when he heard him. “It will be unless you screw it up,” he said into the receiver.

  “It’s the wop cop,” the voice on the other end said. “Is it Christmas already or you just feeling lonely and decided to call the one friend you think you got?”

  Carmine DelGardo was the best set of eyes and ears Lo Manto had in New York City, which was all the more amazing since he very seldom ventured beyond the borders of his candy store. Lo Manto had known him since he was a boy, and even back then his store had been nothing more than a poorly disguised front for the neighborhood gamblers and loan sharks to use as a base. He was not a member of the Camorra, but he cut them in on a fair share of his action and in return was allowed to run his business as he pleased. He also passed around regular payments to the uniformed cops who patrolled the neighborhood, asking only that they turn their heads when it came to his end of the street. DelGardo had no cell phone, pager, or beeper. He used only a battered pay phone, which was both unlisted and unregistered with any area phone company, next to the closet-size bathroom in the store. Once a month he had an ex-con nephew from Brooklyn come in and sweep the store for bugs. He didn’t smoke or drink anything heavier than a root beer packed in a large cup of chipped ice. He was as up-to-date on current events as he was on street rumors and the who’s-in-and-who’s-out carousel of crime life. He loved women, and his mood would always brighten whenever a young lady found her way to his store, looking to buy a
nything with a fresh expiration date.

  And there was always music blaring from the back of his shop.

  DelGardo was a Motown fanatic, collecting singles and LPs from every group to ever find its way to Detroit. He knew every member’s name and history and the title of every song they sang and recorded. He could rattle off within seconds how much money they should have made as opposed to how much they actually took in. “You want to steal and walk away clean,” he once told Lo Manto, “find your way into the music business. In that world, you don’t need a gun or a knife. All you need is to know somebody who knows somebody who works at a record label. After that, it all just takes care of itself.”

  Lo Manto knew that DelGardo had been a good friend to his father, though the two had never talked about it. His father had spent a lot of his free time in front of DelGardo’s store, sitting on the ends of wooden crates, drinking cold beers wrapped in paper bags, talking sports and work, the sounds of the Temptations or the Four Tops drowning out half their words. Lo Manto also knew that Carmine DelGardo did all that he could to keep his father from confronting the men who would eventually kill him. He tried to calm him, tried to make him understand there was no other way to go, no other place to turn, but failed.

  Lo Manto also knew there was a lot more that DelGardo knew about his father and his run-in with the Camorra than what he had heard from the gossips of the neighborhood. He just didn’t know if that was a conversation that the two men would ever be destined to have.

  Bartoni eased the sedan into fourth gear, riding the left lane of the superhighway, the sun at their back, the city of Salerno a dozen kilometers off to their right. “Take as much time as you need,” he told Lo Manto, who sat next to him, gazing out at the passing farmland, quietly chewing two sticks of gum. “Even after it’s over and you find Paula, take a few extra days and enjoy the city.”