by Tom Barber
‘Chalk? We’ve got a prob…’ Archer stopped talking, listened, and looked at Vargas, closing his eyes in relief. ‘She’s OK. He’s with her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Manhattan,’ Chalky said, Archer putting the call on speaker as Vargas stepped in close. ‘I got up early, went for some coffee and to keep an eye on the block, in case anyone I didn’t like the look of was hanging around. I saw our young friend leave the building and head for the subway instead.’
‘Where was she going?’
‘Little Italy, she says. Her pop’s old stomping ground. We’re in a taxi on our way back.’
Vargas shook her head and swore quietly. ‘Meet us at the Bureau, Chalk,’ Archer said. ‘Keep your eyes peeled. And thanks. Owe you one.’
‘No problem. See you soon.’
‘Forget knife throwers and Venus flytraps,’ Vargas said, resting her hands on her hips as she started to breathe again. ‘I’m gonna kill that kid when I see her. I made her promise she would never go to that part of town without me.’
‘Marquez is waiting for us,’ Archer said, looking at his cell and seeing a message that had just come in. ‘Says she’s been doing some digging. Let’s clean up and see what she’s found.’
He gave her a half smile.
‘Hopefully you won’t still want to kill Issy by the time we get there.’
FIVE
‘Either of you manage to get any sleep?’ Shepherd asked Vargas and Archer, as they walked into the conference room to join the other members of the team and an analyst called Ethan.
‘Until I woke up and she wasn’t in the apartment,’ Vargas said, pouring herself a coffee.
‘What?’ Marquez asked.
‘Little Miss Sunshine thought it’d be a good idea to sneak out first thing and take a look around Little Italy.’
‘What?’ several other people repeated at the same time. They were from a fellow police team, an aggressive investigation detail who often worked closely with Shepherd’s; Mike Phillips, Karen Bridges, Devonte Williams and their leader, Sergeant Jake Hendricks, comprised the squad. The group had been through the wars themselves earlier in the year, when one of their colleagues had been killed and the others taken hostage.
‘So who has her right now?’ Bridges asked.
‘Archer’s friend from England, Chalky, is bringing her here,’ Vargas told them. ‘He spotted her leaving my building and followed. Luckily for her.’
‘Did you sleep, Lis?’ Archer asked Marquez, who was studying some papers from files she’d laid out on the desk. ‘Thought you were meant to be at home right now, taking a break.’
‘I snuck in an hour. Been cramming up on Isabel’s family history instead,’ she said. ‘Throw ‘em up top, Ethan.’
The analyst did as she asked, and Isabel’s father’s NYPD file appeared on the screen, Deceased stamped in red lettering across it.
‘For those who’ve never seen his file, meet Isabel’s dad, Gino Lombardi,’ Marquez explained. ‘Born in Manhattan, to an immigrant couple fresh to the US from Italy. Mom gave birth to him a few months after she arrived.’
‘Still alive?’ Josh asked.
‘No. Both parents deceased, natural causes. If they were still around, they’d be in the back end of their eighties or early nineties by now.’
‘Were they mobbed up?’ one of Hendricks’ team, Mike Phillips, asked.
‘No, although we believe some of their family were back in Italy. Gang squad included a summary in the folder, says Gino’s mom worked at a hair salon, dad as a hotel porter. The boy-who-would-be-king got drawn into the scene like a lot of kids around the city did back then. We’ve all seen it in mobster movies and it’s based on truth. Boys saw wiseguys walking around in flashy suits and waving wads of cash, driving nice cars with hot chicks in the front seat, getting free gifts from storefront owners. Gino’s dad was working too hard to keep him in check Bronx Tale style. He started doing jobs for the local outfit at twelve years old.
‘He drove for them,’ she read on, as the group listened and looked at the dead man’s photo: the story behind what had led up to the last day of his life, which had seen him and almost his entire family killed at a Long Island vacation home. ‘Like Issy, Gino was tall for his age, so even when he was a kid, he never got pulled over. Started taking the wiseguys to restaurants, clubs, strip joints-’
‘So he learned fast,’ Hendricks noted.
‘You bet. By the time Gino was fourteen, he was going into the clubs himself. Before he was thirty, he owned four downtown outright.’
‘You said earlier he spent time as an enforcer?’ Ledger said, looking at the screen.
‘Among other things. Became a capo in his late twenties. On his thirty fourth birthday, he took control of the organisation, and it became known as the Lombardi family from then on. He was there at the top for twenty four years. Married once, six kids, five of them with his wife Carla.’
‘The sixth?’ Phillips asked.
‘Gino stepped out and knocked up a waitress on the side who worked at their main bar downtown on Walker Street. She gave birth to Isabel’s half-brother: Michael.’ She glanced at Vargas, Archer and the other members of her team. ‘We all know how that story turned out.’
‘Isabel’s family’s network would’ve harmed a lotta people during her father’s life,’ Hendricks said. ‘For guys like him, money and power are everything, and they couldn’t give two shits who they hurt to get it. If we’re looking for an enemy who might want to retaliate by killing the kid, could be a long list. But with the Lombardis dead, what’s the point?’
‘That’s exactly what a former Devaney guy told us this morning,’ Josh said.
‘What’s the story with her mom?’ Devonte Williams asked.
‘That bitch was mean as a snake, but when she wanted to, story is she could’ve charmed the paint off these walls,’ Marquez said, looking at Vargas who nodded, having remained quiet so far, letting her partner explain the background. There were some photos in one of the open files and Marquez started to pass them around. ‘Carla Lombardi. Take a look.’
When Archer took the first one, he saw a group of men and women inside a restaurant of some sort. It was the time before smartphones, when photos were taken on film and you had to wait for them to be developed to see how the picture turned out, which meant some of the people in the shot weren’t looking at the camera, a guy at the back was mid-shout to someone out of frame, while one of the women had her eyes half closed.
He picked out Issy’s mother easily, recognising a young Gino with his arm around her. Carla’s eyes were open and she was one of those in the group looking off camera, her arms folded like she was pissed off at her husband. Unaware of it, or because he couldn’t care less, Gino was grinning widely, looking as if he was having a blast. Archer saw Isabel in both parents’ features.
He passed the photo on to the others, who looked at it in turn. On the main screen, Ethan pulled up a mugshot taken around the same time, Carla’s name printed in white letters on the front. She was more mature and very attractive with a face you’d remember, large brown eyes and long dark hair, a Gina Gershon lookalike, but in these mugshots anyway, appearing much more severe.
The expression she was giving the camera betrayed zero emotion.
‘What she get arrested for?’ Josh asked.
‘Beating the pay-check out of that waitress Gino knocked up at the bar on Walker,’ Marquez said. ‘Mike’s mom. My guess is, she went down there when she found out the girl was pregnant. Look at her hands.’
Carla was holding a placard for the photo with her name, date and NYPD on it. The group noticed her knuckles and nails were clearly marked up and cut.
‘When the girl was taken to hospital, NYPD came looking for whoever put the ass-whooping on her.’
‘What part of the city was Carla from?’ Josh asked.
‘Bensonhurst. She got arrested a few other times, but never spent the night in a cell. Husband’s infl
uence, I’m sure. Yo, Mikey, lock the door for a moment,’ Marquez asked Phillips, who was nearest the exit. ‘Close the blinds too. Don’t want Issy walking in on this.’
He did as she asked, before Marquez nodded to Ethan. The analyst switched to the crime scene file from the family’s death, that unseasonably warm March day in East Hampton.
Photos appeared on the screen, automatically scrolling from one to the next after a few seconds, a graphic record of the day that Carla’s life had ended alongside her husband’s, four of their children and the rest of the Lombardi family.
The transition from the bar and mugshot photos was dramatic.
‘Holy shit,’ Bridges said quietly.
‘Never seen them before?’ Marquez asked. Bridges shook her head.
‘And the girl was hiding there during all this?’ Hendricks asked.
‘In a laundry basket in the downstairs bathroom. Peeked through the lid and through the gap in the door.’ She paused. ‘Saw everything.’
Archer remained silent, looking at the photos which he’d seen before; they were hard to forget. The villa most of the Lombardi family had died in had been worth many millions of dollars, everything inside a shade of white or cream, lavish ornaments shot to pieces. Carla had been hit multiple times in the chest and head, and had ended up lying near the main table, her hair spread out around her, expensive jewellery clasped around her neck and on her wrists, the last dress she’d ever wear drenched in blood.
He couldn’t imagine the shock of being there and witnessing this at Isabel’s age.
‘Daughter of a powerful, influential gangster,’ Marquez said. ‘This is how it ended.’
‘Issy was the youngest of Gino and Carla’s kids, so she wouldn’t have been in the running to take over from her dad one day,’ Vargas said, the first time she’d spoken in a while. She’d spent her time studying the photographs of her adopted daughter’s biological family instead. ‘But if they hadn’t been killed, she could’ve ended up married to a high-ranking guy.’
‘So they wouldn’t have carved the business up between the kids?’ Ethan asked.
‘Doesn’t usually happen that way. She might’ve taken it on if her siblings didn’t want it or were killed. Or if she showed the most promise out of all of them.’
‘I thought only men could become bosses?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Vargas replied. ‘If she was a strong enough character. Look at Griselda Blanco in Miami. She was a drug lord for the Medellin cartel.’
‘Is there any way out for these kids?’ Josh asked. ‘Any chance of a normal life?’
‘Last night, after the knife throw at the carnival, I started wondering if other children born into these families ever make a clean break and escape their heritage,’ Marquez said. ‘Something to tell Issy to make her realise there could be a way out. I found an article online. Some judge from the south of Italy is heading up a programme to help kids born into a mafia family. He takes them from their families and places them in care homes.’
‘For good?’ Josh replied.
‘No. They can go home every two weeks or so. But the program aims to show them a different way of life from the one they’re being raised in. When they’re eighteen and free to live wherever they choose or live how they want, the hope is they make a wise choice.’
‘Mafia families allow that?’ Shepherd asked.
‘Apparently so. Judge must be persuasive.’
‘What about over here?’ Bridges asked.
‘Nothing like that’s happening in the US, least not regularly. It’s a different culture Stateside. Kids in these families are insulated, like Meadow and Anthony Junior in The Sopranos. But at some point Mom and Dad tell them, other kids tell them or they realise it’s not normal to have pizza or flower delivery trucks with FBI guys inside parked outside the gates of your house twelve months a year.’
She looked up just as she was finishing speaking, three new arrivals at the door stopping the conversation. The analyst from downstairs called Tamrah who’d escorted Chalky and the young lady of the hour up to the conference room nodded and went back downstairs. Anticipating their arrival, Ethan had already removed the photos on screen, and Shepherd had just unlocked the door while Archer made sure the files on the desk had been gathered up and closed.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Vargas said to her adoptive daughter, who was looking thoroughly sheepish. The Brazilian-American detective left her chair and grasped the girl’s shoulders. ‘You ever do that to me again, I’m gonna lock you in your bedroom until you’re twenty one Rapunzel-style, kiddo.’
‘I was just trying to help,’ she said quietly, as the assembled group of detectives watched. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re forgiven. But don’t scare me like that again,’ Vargas replied, the group glancing at each other, the photos showing the destruction of this girl’s family fresh in their minds, knowing she’d witnessed it all.
It wasn’t exactly hard to let her off the hook.
SIX
‘How did you get along with your family, honey?’ Shepherd asked Isabel, who had Vargas sitting beside her. Archer, Chalky, Josh, Ledger and Hendricks were also still there with them, Ethan in his usual spot behind his computer. The rest of Jake’s team had left the room to get back to their own urgent casework but had asked to be kept informed, volunteering to be pulled in if there were any breaks Shepherd’s squad needed help with.
‘OK. Papa was kind to me most of the time. But I didn’t see him too much. Sometimes he’d get mad. He had a crappy temper.’
‘Your mom?’ Josh asked.
‘She’d get more angry with me than Papa. I don’t think she liked me much.’ Pause. ‘They gave me a good birthday party once.’
‘Did they ever say anything to you?’ Vargas asked her, after a brief silence. ‘About what Papa did?’
‘My older brother Vic told me to keep my mouth shut and not ask them any questions. They didn’t speak to me much anyway. But I started noticing things. I didn’t think they were weird until…I lived more normal. With you and Archer.’
‘Like?’
‘He used to give us rolls of cash at Christmas, instead of presents. We always had the radio or TV on downstairs somewhere. And Papa’s guys showed up at the house all the time. When they were there, I noticed he’d write them notes and then burn them in the fire. He said they were playing a game when I asked once, but told me kids wouldn’t understand the rules.’
‘He was right,’ Shepherd muttered.
‘It’s the school holidays at the moment, correct?’ Chalky said to the group of detectives, twenty minutes later. Vargas had taken Issy downstairs to get a drink of water and something to eat, seeing as she’d skipped breakfast with her early morning venture into the city.
Archer nodded. ‘She’s off until mid-August. But Alice said she’s doing the summer theater program at a Chelsea performing arts school.’
‘Where’s Chelsea in New York?’ Chalky asked.
‘On the westside in Manhattan. She’s been there five days a week so far.’
‘She due there today?’
‘Vargas said yes. At 11 o’clock.’
‘Any security while the kids are on site?’ Marquez asked.
‘There’s a guard rotation, apparently,’ Archer told them.
‘So she’s got an established routine, with potentially poor security,’ she replied. ‘That’s not good. At all.’
‘While you all go deeper into this and juggle casework, I can keep an eye on her at the school,’ Chalky said. ‘If she still goes.’
‘This is your vacation,’ Shepherd said.
‘That doesn’t matter. This is important. But I don’t want to interfere.’
Shepherd nodded. ‘Appreciated.’
‘She should skip the theater today,’ Josh said, beside him. ‘They’d understand.’
‘She wouldn’t though,’ Archer replied. ‘Vargas said she’s one of the main parts in a play they’re putting on next month. Told me she
hasn’t seen Issy so happy for ages. Telling her she can’t go isn’t going to go down too well.’
‘Can he carry?’ Hendricks asked, looking at Chalky.
Shepherd shook his head. ‘Not at such short notice. But we can put some officers on site.’
‘There’s no way?’
‘After the pressure on the Department lately, we got a better chance of batting for the Yankees then getting a gun on his hip right now, Jake.’
‘Could we get clearance for a special case?’ Archer asked. ‘He’s had the same training as any of us.’
Shepherd shrugged. ‘The powers that be have been riding my ass like I’m a racehorse.’ He looked at Archer and Josh. ‘But the work you two did during the power cut in May bought us some slack. All I can do is ask.’
‘We’ll cover your caseload for the time being,’ Hendricks said. ‘Whatever you need.’
‘She’s got to be there by 11,’ Archer said, looking at the time. 9:27am
‘Then I got some calls to make,’ Shepherd said.
*
‘How much say do you think a person has?’ Archer asked Chalky, as they drove to the school from the Bureau. Issy had gone ahead with Vargas and Marquez, Shepherd and the other guys staying at the Bureau to co-ordinate with Nassau County police and the CSU lab, hoping for some forensic leads from the vicious booby-trap at Vargas’ apartment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In who and what you are. How much of you is how you’re raised. And how much is who made you.’
‘Like nature versus nurture?’ he asked. Archer nodded and Chalky considered it for a moment. ‘You’re 50/50 your parents.’
‘Of course. But what about your personality? Who you are.’
Chalky went quiet. ‘That’s a big question, mate. I’m not sure. You and I have known a lot of the same people. Some of the good ones had shitty parents. Some of the lowlifes were bred by decent people.’ He shrugged. ‘Suppose it’s both; genes and how you’re brought up. And comes down to choice. How you live your life. Some people are just born bad though.’
