Paradise City

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “There’s a first-aid center in the ballpark,” Lo Manto said. “Could have saved your friend a couple of pints of blood by making that your first stop.”

  “We didn’t even think of that,” Collins said, his voice cracking in the night. “I just thought I could make it to the car and maybe get to a hospital. It didn’t feel as bad when it happened as it does now.”

  “I’ve never bandaged a scrape before,” Lo Manto said. “At least nothing as bad as what it looks like you have. I did take a couple of bullets out of a few people, though. In some ways that’s much easier to do.”

  “Not as easy as putting one in,” Pullman said.

  “That all depends on how good you are,” Lo Manto said. “My guess is you got enough to take out an old man with too much time on his meter. But anything better than that and you’re going to get wasted.”

  “You saying that’s you?” Pullman asked.

  “I’m saying you got a chance to find out,” Lo Manto said.

  Rock Pullman yanked the nine-millimeter from the back of his waistband and pointed it at Lo Manto. Collins held a .38 in his right hand, the pain in his leg causing the fingers to twitch. “You can just walk away,” Pullman told Lo Manto. “All we want is the car. You can get to keep your life, you do it this way.”

  “I live for my car,” Lo Manto said.

  Pullman fired two rounds and Collins managed to get off a single shot. Lo Manto ducked behind his sedan and disappeared. There was silence for several long seconds, the two gunmen peering into the semidarkness, trying to get a gauge on their target. “Maybe the shots scared him off,” Collins said. “Could have made off into that grass field there and be on the main drag by now.”

  “He didn’t seem the type that scared easy,” Pullman said. “It sounded like he wanted a fight.”

  Collins peered over at the car, saw exhaust fumes coming out of the muffler, engine still in idle. “That car’s just crying to be taken,” he said. “We can stand here and wait out this asshole. Or we can take his car and split.”

  “You move for the driver’s side,” Pullman said, looking behind him and at his sides. “I’ll stay back and give you cover. Any noise you hear not coming from me, shoot at it and then worry about what it was later.”

  The large round rock came hurtling from the left side of the parking area and landed with a muffled thud against the back of Tony Collins. The force of the blow combined with the surprise sent the gunman to his knees, the .38 in his hands falling to the ground next to the car’s right front tire. Pullman swerved instinctively toward the direction from which he thought the rock was thrown and fired off two rounds, both shots echoing in the space close to the highway. Behind them the crowd was beginning to trickle out of the stadium and head toward the gates. Squad cars were starting to roam down the aisles, ready to monitor the flow of outgoing traffic. “Forget about the car,” Pullman said. “We just gotta get the fuck out of here. We’re going to be surrounded in two or three minutes.”

  “I can’t walk,” Collins stammered, still on his knees and sounding dazed. “My leg is bleeding pretty bad. I won’t be able to make it out any way other than by car.”

  Pullman looked down at his fallen friend. He saw the whirling lights heading toward him and heard a woman’s scream, close to where he had left Silvestri’s body. “Then forget about you, too,” he told Collins, turning to sprint out of the stadium and down a darkened street leading toward an access road.

  Lo Manto came from behind a parked black van, gun in his right hand. He ran up behind Collins, stopped, waited for the wounded man to look at him and then coldcocked him with the butt end of his pistol. Collins fell over backwards, his head hitting the pavement with a soft pop. Lo Manto picked up the chase, running full out for the side road, leaving the wounded shooter behind for the arriving cops to handle. He hurdled the grass embankment and ran full bore down the middle of the road, ignoring the oncoming traffic and the blaring horns. He couldn’t see the man he was chasing but could hear the echoes of his footsteps on the pavement, figuring him to be no more than two hundred yards ahead, off to his left, heading toward Northern Boulevard.

  Lo Manto picked up his pace, jumped over a fallen wooden police barricade, and crossed the divider leading to the main drag just outside the confines of the stadium. The streets now were teeming with men, women, and children, all happy and weary and eager to get home after a late-night extra-inning game. Lo Manto dodged and scurried past the slow-moving clusters, closing in on the tiring Pullman, who was out of shape and slowed by a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Lo Manto ran against a red light and a long line of oncoming traffic and stopped at a corner near the elevated subway station, his gun in his right hand. Pullman, his lungs burning and his face beet red from the long chase, stood across from him, his back to the glass panel of a Duane Reade drugstore. He had the nine-millimeter at his side. “Pick out anybody you want,” he shouted at Lo Manto. “And that’s who gets the next bullet. You don’t let me leave here—somebody that shouldn’t is going to die.”

  “You killed my friend tonight,” Lo Manto said. “He shouldn’t have died. At least not at your hand.”

  “And now a stranger’s going to take it in the head,” Pullman said. “Unless you step back and away.”

  “Why kill a stranger for all the wrong reasons,” Lo Manto said, taking two small steps forward, “when you can kill me for all the right reasons?”

  A handful of pedestrians had slowed their steps when they spotted both Pullman and Lo Manto with their guns drawn, and now shielded themselves behind a newsstand. “I’m going to leave that call up to you, cop,” Pullman said. “If you back off, let me go my way, then nobody here has to die. Not even you.”

  Police sirens blared behind them and three squad cars came to a screeching halt on opposite ends of the corner. The uniformed officers swung their doors open and jumped out of their black-and-whites, weapons drawn, each in a shooting position, poised to fire at either Pullman or Lo Manto.

  “You might fly that plan of yours by me,” Lo Manto told Pullman. “But I don’t think it’s going to sit too well with the crew behind us. They look as serious as a car wreck.”

  “Look ready to drop you just as easily as they would me,” Pullman said. “They don’t seem too sure which one of us is the cop and which one isn’t. I could let that play out to my benefit.”

  “It’s not something I would bet my life on,” Lo Manto said.

  The double door to the drugstore swung open and an elderly couple stepped out, the man bracing his stooped shoulders against the steel bar, waiting patiently for his wife, who clutched a plastic shopping bag in her right hand. Pullman turned his gaze away from Lo Manto and toward the old man and woman. He lowered his gun and took three steps in their direction.

  Lo Manto ignored the police weapons drawn against his back, shoved his gun into the side pocket of his thin leather jacket, and ran full out at Pullman. He caught the shooter at mid-waist, the force of the hit causing them both to land hard on the glass, cracks running along the center like arteries down an arm. Pullman’s gun fell out of his hand, skidding along the chipped concrete street. Lo Manto lowered Pullman’s dark brown corduroy jacket across his shoulders, locking his arms into place. He then leaned back and landed two hard punches flush against the gunman’s face, raising instant welts along his right eye and cheek.

  Pullman struggled to free himself from the grip of his jacket and the force of Lo Manto’s shoulders pressed against his upper body. But Lo Manto was now a mad bull unleashed, the fury of his anger over the death of Silvestri beyond anyone’s control. He had grown to respect and love Frank Silvestri, a brutal man who had known and helped him since his earliest days, a stone killer who had shown the fatherless boy nothing but acts of kindness. Silvestri was his main source inside the Rossi crime family, but he acted not out of disloyalty to his crew, but out of friendship for a young cop. He never gave Lo Manto too much information, forcing the detective to plot his moves ba
sed on the small nuggets tossed his way. They seldom spoke, knowing that to do so might prove fatal to both. They also made it a point never to be seen in public together. They communicated through third-party link-ups or through coded messages strategically placed in newspapers or on clear-channel cell phones. It was a relationship that spanned more than thirty years, and both men knew it was inevitable that one day it would come to an end. But neither Lo Manto nor Silvestri, the cop and the crook, would have placed much stock in it coming down at the hands of a crawler like Rock Pullman.

  Lo Manto slammed his right knee into the center of Pullman’s stomach and stepped back as he heard the loud gasp. He reared back and sent a closed fist crashing onto the bridge of Pullman’s nose, shattering muscle and tissue and sending a stream of blood in a circular pattern in the air. The uniformed officers had eased their way around the backs of their squad cars and were now within inches of the two men. Lo Manto was too laced with anger even to notice them. He stood there, in front of an all-night drugstore, and rained punishment on the man who had killed his friend.

  Lo Manto was soaked through with sweat, leaning his damp head of hair against a pane of glass as he watched two uniformed officers hovering over Pullman’s beaten body. Lo Manto’s breath was coming out rushed, his chest muscles pounding, his heart racing, his knuckles swollen red and tinted with blood. One of the uniforms came over to him and stood by his side. The officer was in his late twenties, moving like a young Denzel Washington with a razor cut and arms thick enough to crush bone. “You on the job?” he asked. “Or just a part of the party mix?”

  “I’m a cop,” Lo Manto said through hard puffs of breath. “On special assignment. You can check with Captain Fernandez over at the Four-seven.”

  “I figure this guy you worked over is hooked up with the other shooter, the one we found out cold in the stadium lot,” the officer said. “And that links them to the guy with the three bullet holes in his head.”

  “Bag their biologicals,” Lo Manto said, slowly easing his way into controlling the crime scene. “And run their guns for prints and a yellow, and the bullets through ballistics. This guy bleeding was the primary. The one by the car was his partner.”

  “We’ll need you to come over to the house and fill out a DD-5,” the officer said. “Make the bust official.”

  Lo Manto looked at the young man and stared at the name stenciled on his ID tag. “I don’t want the bust, Officer Thompson,” he said. “It’s all yours. I’ll give you a statement that will back up your heroic actions. It’ll be on your captain’s desk by morning.”

  “But the collar belongs to you, Detective,” Officer Thompson said.

  “Won’t take you long to piece together what happened,” Lo Manto said, pushing himself away from the drugstore window. “And what you can’t get on your own you can pull out of the two losers in cuffs.”

  Lo Manto patted Officer Thompson on the shoulder and began a slow walk toward the elevated subway. “I can get one of the black-and-whites to give you a ride,” the officer called out.

  “I could use some time alone,” Lo Manto said. “Clear my mind a little. It’s been a long night with a few even longer ones ahead. You could do me one solid favor, though.”

  “Does it involve breaking the law?” Officer Thompson asked, wide smile spread across a handsome face.

  “Not this time,” Lo Manto said. “I hot-wired a car and used it to block off the parking lot entrance. Can you see it gets back to the guy who’s still paying it off?”

  “This someone you know or should I just go and check the registration in the glove compartment?” Officer Thompson asked, holding the smile.

  “He’s a friend,” Lo Manto said, returning the grin and easing his way up the stairwell. “And I’m betting he likes me enough not to get completely pissed that I stole his car and had you return it.”

  “Share the name,” Officer Thompson said.

  “It’s my captain,” he said. “Frank Fernandez.”

  Lo Manto bounded up the steps, his energy returning as he disappeared into the dark void, looking to catch the number 7 express that was rumbling into the station.

  21

  JENNIFER FABINI WALKED into the main foyer of the pristine brownstone and stood facing an oil portrait of a distinguished elderly man dressed in a stiff white shirt and hand-stitched dark blue jacket. The floors were sanded down to their original wood, shiny and bright in the early morning light. Large bay windows filled the space leading out to the street, the soundproof and shatter-resistant glass easily drowning out the traffic inching its way crosstown. There was a library off to her right, the thick wooden door to the room partially open, the bookshelves inside running floor-to-ceiling, each row packed with leather-bound classics printed in two languages. There were white marble steps to her left leading to the upper floors, the center of each thick step padded with an ornate Venetian rug. The entire place reeked of hidden power and cloistered riches, each nickel built on the strength of an illegal workforce.

  The man came out of the small room next to the front door, walking with silent steps toward her. He was dressed in a light blue suit with a matching shirt and red tie, his loafers were spit-shined, and his manner was quiet and reserved. “Mr. Rossi asked that you wait for him in the library,” the man said. She figured him to be no more than twenty and fresh out of school, his voice still giving a hint of its southern Italian origin. “And to see to it that you were comfortable.”

  He bowed slightly, turned, opened wide the door to the library, and gestured for Jennifer to precede him. The room, filled to the brim with close to a thousand books, had the smell of old pages and fresh polish. The leather furniture and antique lamps dotting every corner seemed dwarfed by the sheer majestic reach of the dark oak shelves that had been hand-carved in a small alley in the Spaccanapoli section of Naples. “May I get you something to drink?” the young man asked. “An iced tea or a hot coffee? Whatever it is that you prefer.”

  “An iced tea would be good,” Jennifer said.

  “Make that a pitcher, Mario, with extra ice,” Pete Rossi said, standing with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorway and staring across the room at Jennifer.

  Mario nodded at his boss and quietly walked out. Rossi waited until he was deep down the hall and on his way to the kitchen before entering the library and gently closing the door. “Find a chair that looks comfortable to you, Detective,” he told her. “And I’ll do the same.”

  “Have you read any of the books in this room?” Jennifer asked, sitting in a deep red leather chair, its thick arms and width nearly swallowing her small body whole.

  “About half,” Rossi said. “And, if I live long enough, I will make my way through the other half. How about you? Have you read all the books in your library at home?”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” Jennifer said, trying to hide the fact that she felt ill at ease in the company of the Camorra don. “All I have are paperbacks. Thrillers and historical romances, mostly.”

  “In that case, feel free to choose any book that catches your eye,” Rossi said. “Consider it a gift, from me to you.”

  A knock on the door got their attention and they waited in silence as Mario, holding a silver tray filled with two large glasses, a bowl of ice cubes, and a pitcher of cold tea mixed with slivers of lemon, walked in. He placed the tray on a small table and poured out two half glasses, filling the rest with spoonfuls of ice cubes. He handed a glass and a thick napkin to both Jennifer and Rossi, bowed, and headed back out of the room.

  “I didn’t come here to borrow a book,” Jennifer said, resting the glass and the napkin on the floor by her feet.

  “I figured as much,” Rossi said. “What I haven’t quite figured out as yet is why you are here and what you expect to leave with, other than me in handcuffs.”

  “That may happen some day,” Jennifer said. “Just not today.”

  “Good to hear,” Rossi said. “It’s such a beautiful morning outside. I w
ould hate to ruin it by having to spend the day in a holding cell.”

  “I need to talk to you about your family,” Jennifer said. She was doing her best to hide the fact that she was as nervous as she had ever felt in someone else’s presence. This was a long way removed from a buy-and-bust and bringing in two low-level dealers. And it wasn’t as clear-cut as a shoot-out in a tenement stairwell, with one lucky bullet deciding the final outcome. This was a detective with a clean record sitting with the biggest mob boss in New York and asking for a favor that, if it was granted, could get both of them killed.

  “What about my family?” Rossi said, sitting back in a leather rocking chair, studying his glass of iced tea cupped between both his hands.

  “Look, it’s not like me to beat around in circles,” Jennifer said. “I have something to tell you. Maybe you know about it and maybe you don’t. My guess is you know as much about this end as Lo Manto does and that’s pretty much nothing at all.”

  Rossi stiffened at the mention of the detective’s name, his eyes betraying both his concern and curiosity. “What kind of part’s he play in this?” he asked. “Did Lo Manto ask you to set up this meeting?”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here,” Jennifer said. “If he did, I think he’d take a shot at me quicker than even you would.”

  “I’m not in the practice of taking shots at anyone,” Rossi said, slowly regaining the control he always kept on his emotions. “And if I were, it wouldn’t be at women. Not even a policewoman partnered with a blood enemy.”

  “What do you know about your mother?” Jennifer asked, jumping into the heavy flames with both boots, deciding that there was no tactful way to broach the subject. She stared over at Rossi and noticed the resemblance to Lo Manto. They both had the same hard and handsome features, their hair thick, their eyes as dark as a rainy night. Some of it could be written off as southern Italian bloodlines. But there was something else that tipped it toward the tale told to her by the old woman, Assunta Conte. It was the way Rossi read the moment and the motive. Both he and Lo Manto had that innate ability to anticipate what direction a conversation would take and what was really being said beneath the multiple layers of lies and distortions. They used an opponent’s body language to help telegraph to them the truth of the situation, using the movements as if each was a road map into a person’s very soul.