Act of Revenge Read online

  “All right: Catalano,” said Anselmo. “To review the bare facts: on the night of June ninth, a body later identified as that of Edward Catalano was found in a car parked under the West Side Highway at Vestry Street. He’d been shot from behind at close range with a small-caliber weapon. Five shots to the head, a typical gangland murder.”

  Here what might have been construed by an unsympathetic listener as a snort of derision issued from Guma’s direction. It was a low sort of snort, however, and if Anselmo heard it, he paid no attention.

  “That method,” he resumed, “and the fact that Catalano is known to be a capo regime of the Bollano family suggested that this was a professional hit having to do with the politics of the New York Mob. So—as you probably know, when they start hitting capos, it means that the power balances are shifting. There’s disorder in the ranks, shifting loyalties, the wise guys are all looking for where they’re going to end up after the dust settles, and so this is a prime time for us to do ourselves some good. Now, the first question we have to ask when something like this goes down is, naturally, cui bono. We look inside the family first, table one in your handout.”

  Shuffling of papers. Karp cast an eye on Guma, who had leaned back in his chair, the unopened file on his lap, and seemed to be getting set for a snooze. It was not unknown for Guma to drop off in meetings, and Karp hoped that he would not break out in snores. That too was not unknown.

  “At the top, of course, we have the don, Salvatore Bollano, known as Big Sally. He’s seventy something and not in good shape. Last of the breed, by the way, actually born in Sicily. There’s some question as to whether he’s still in control. Next in line is Salvatore Bollano, Jr., Little Sally, but not to his face, ha-ha, aka, Sally Jump, age forty-three. You have his arrest record there. Assault, rape, jury tampering, bribery, dozens of collars, never convicted. Violent, short-tempered, little son of a bitch; he may be mentally unstable, in fact.”

  Here came a snort from Guma. This time Anselmo paused and directed his attention to Guma’s chair. “Um, Ray? Did you have a point to make?”

  “Uh-uh, Frank,” said Guma. “You’re doing fine.”

  “Thank you. Next came Carlo Tonnati, street name Charlie Tuna, currently serving a life stretch in Attica for ordering the murder of Vinnie Ferro a dozen or so years ago.”

  Karp knew this, as he had personally put Charlie Tuna away, and everyone else did, too. Anselmo was often excessively thorough. He listened with half an ear and took precise notes on autopilot as the man ran through the order of battle of the Bollano crime family and presented his Machiavellian analysis of their various rivalries. The Bollanos were the smallest of New York’s Mafia families, not looking to expand at all, but what they held, they held very hard. Their base was the Lower East Side, and Anselmo had charts and tables showing their various estimated sources of income, so much from drugs, so much from prostitution, so much from shakedowns and loan sharking. This was boring. Who cared about the enterprises or politics of thugs, except someone planning to write one of those inside-the-Mob books? Karp’s instinct was for the concrete, for the facts, for the evidence. They had a crime; was there a case? Anselmo came to the end of his aria. In the silence that followed, Karp asked, “So you like Joe Pigetti for it?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s the only scenario that makes sense. Pigetti and Catalano were the two most powerful capos. Catalano was tight with Little Sally, Pigetti was on the outs with both of them, but he was Charlie Tuna’s protégé and he had more or less replaced Tonnati with Big Sally. If the old don were to kick off, though, he’d be up shit’s creek. Or maybe he heard that the two of them were going to do him. So he goes to the don and lays something bad on Catalano. Some betrayal, he’s skimming—whatever. The old guy’s not so sharp, so he gives the okay. For Pigetti it was a good career move.”

  Karp seemed to give this serious attention. “Roland?”

  “Well, Pigetti’s out as the actual trigger,” said Roland. “He’s alibied to the neck. Apparently there was a big party the night of. One of the don’s nephews was getting married, and the goombahs threw him a party at the Casa D’Oro on Elizabeth. Pigetti was there until two or so, and then he and a bunch of them went out clubbing until four-thirty. Catalano was at the party and he left around one-thirty, or it could’ve been an hour earlier or later, because all the boys were feeling pretty good by then and vague about the time. In any case, it happens that we know the exact time of death because one of the bullets fired into the back of Catalano’s skull came out through his eye and broke the dashboard clock at three-fourteen a.m.” He paused to see what effect this detail had on the assembled group.

  “That’s a fancy touch,” said Karp carefully.

  “It is a fancy touch,” Roland agreed. “A little fancier than we’re used to from the wise guys. Call me cynical, but you might suspect that it was done on purpose that way to give Joe an alibi. It turns out that a little before three, Joe was checking into the valet parking at a club at 57th off Eighth. So clearly the cops are looking for an associate of Joe’s who doesn’t have an alibi for the time of, and they come up with Marco Moletti. Moletti was also seen leaving the Casa D’Oro with Catalano and a couple of other guys. Catalano was going to drop by his girlfriend’s house, and he took this bunch along for the ride, maybe call up some ladies and continue the party. But Mutt and Jeff got talking to some girls at a light and they bailed. According to Mutt and Jeff, Marco was the last guy in the car. According to Marco, Marco wasn’t feeling so hot, having overindulged at the fiesta, so after dropping Catalano at the girl’s place at Park and 36th, he handed over the keys, walked to his place, Lex and 49th, and crashed. He says.”

  “That’s a long walk, you’re not feeling so good,” said Karp.

  “The cops thought so, too,” said Roland. “Besides that, Catalano never made it to the girlfriend that night. The cops think Marco stuck a gun in Catalano’s back, made him drive to under the highway, and popped him there. Then either someone picked him up or he walked away and took a cab or the subway home. In any case, Marco was the last person to see Catalano alive.”

  “The second to last if he wasn’t the shooter,” said Karp. “Are you charging him?”

  Roland waggled a hand and twisted his face into a doubtful expression. “It’s thin. He was in the car, but they all admit that. The search found a box of .22 longs in his place, but no gun. The vic was killed with .22 longs. There was also a bag with a little short of fifty K in it. Payoff money? Ordinarily, I’d give it a pass, but . . .” Here he looked over at Anselmo, who put in, “Right, but this is not an ordinary case. I’m pushing Roland to charge him and then squeeze him to give us Pigetti. This could be the thing that cracks the whole Bollano family.”

  Karp looked at the faces: Anselmo avid, smiling like a kid at the circus; Hrcany pretending forbearance, willing to go along as long as no one made him responsible for a weak case, and perfectly willing to see Anselmo carry this freight; and Guma? Was the jerk actually asleep or just pretending the most elaborate boredom? Under the shelter of the conference table Karp’s cap toe reached out and gave Guma one in the ankle. The monkey eyes opened, the floppy mouth yawned, showing more bridgework than anyone wanted to see.

  Hrcany said, “Now that you mention it, Frank, Guma has some thoughts on that. Ray?”

  “Yeah, Frank,” said Guma pleasantly, “my thoughts are that you try to squeeze Moletti, you might get some of that scungilli he scarfed down at the party there, but nothing else.”

  “Why?” snapped Anselmo. “Because of the sacred code of omerta? They don’t do that shit anymore, Guma. They sing just like anyone else when you push them.”

  Guma looked up at the ceiling as if he thought the answer to this question might be inscribed there, and when he responded it was in the sort of voice a kindergarten teacher might use to explain that D came after C. “Actually, Frank, I wasn’t thinking of any high-tone Mafia stuff like that. I was thinking about Marco. You know what they call Marco M
oletti on the street? No, don’t look in the file, Frank, I’ll tell you. If they sort of like him, they call him Slo Mo. If they’re annoyed at him, like if the pizza they sent him out for is cold, they call him Marky Moron. He’s a gofer, Frank. He’s also real honest, because he’s too dumb to steal and he knows it, which is why the guys sometimes leave stuff with him, cash, like your bag of money, or hot property. He’s got his niche, you could say, and he’s happy in it. But to put it mildly, Frank, he ain’t a player. So anyone who thinks that Marky knows fuck-all about what goes on in the Bollanos is stupid. You want to squeeze something, squeeze the hubcap on Eddie Catalano’s Lincoln, you’ll get more out of it. And anybody who thinks that Marky Moron would get tagged to whack a capo regime is . . . words fail me. Felony stupid? Besides all that, in my opinion, you’re doing great.”

  Anselmo shot to his feet and flung his papers to the floor. “Ah, come on, Butch, what the hell!”

  “Sit down, Frank,” said Karp. “Guma?”

  “I apologize, Frank,” said Guma instantly, in monotone.

  “All right, now that we’ve all had our fun,” said Karp, “let me remind you why we’re here. Eddie Catalano was killed the day before he was scheduled to appear pursuant to a subpoena before a federal grand jury investigating Mob involvement in local businesses. This has greatly vexed our colleague on the other side of the square. The U.S. attorney believes that Mr. Catalano was slain to prevent his testimony—”

  “Horseshit,” said Guma.

  “We’re aware of your opinion on that subject, Guma,” Karp snapped, “but would you put a goddamn cork in it just for now? Thank you. And since the U.S. attorney has been kept from his goal of, as he so elegantly puts it, ‘breaking the Mob in New York,’ he has devoted his time and talent to breaking our boss’s balls instead. Why is Jack Keegan not pursuing this obvious gangland slaying with more alacrity and success? Why have we not seen the Mafia scumbags dragged into court? How come his crusade is stopped in its tracks? Is it that maybe Jack Keegan’s not up to the job? And so forth, as you know. Now, in order to get Tommy Colombo off our ass, we need to show movement on this goddamn murder. Either we have to have a plausible defendant behind bars, or, failing that, we have to find out why the scumbag got killed. Roland, what are the cops doing besides sniffing around this Moletti character?”

  Hrcany rolled his massive shoulders in a shrug. Not as massive as they used to be, Karp observed, but still meaty. The eighteen-inch collar of his shirt was loose on his neck.

  “Well, Butch,” he said, “you know how it is—they fall in love with a perp, it’s forever, unless they dig up something new. I got enough for an arrest warrant and an indictment. When he’s in the can, who knows? A pal of his could drop a dime—Marky didn’t do it, I heard it was X. Or he could talk in jail. Maybe he knows from nothing, like Guma said, but still, he’s around those guys. Even waiters pick up stuff. And then one of the regular jailhouse snitches could grab it. I don’t know—”

  “Roland, cut the horseshit,” said Karp. “Don’t give me warrants and indictments. We wanted to, you know damn well we could arrest and indict the cardinal archbishop for this one. What I’m interested in is, do you believe that this putz is a legitimate suspect? Did he fucking do the crime?”

  Hrcany looked down for a moment as if gathering himself and then met Karp’s gaze. “Since you ask, I don’t and he didn’t. Guma’s right. He’s a retard.”

  “Then forget him!” Karp ordered, and then, to nearly everyone’s surprise, he turned to Guma. “Ray, what really happened?” he asked, almost casually. Frank Anselmo’s smile became noticeably more false.

  “Oh, they brought in somebody,” Guma answered confidently, as if giving the correct time. “Probably a pair of guys. They picked him up in the girlfriend’s lobby, hustled him out to his car, tossed him in the trunk, and drove to the scene of in two cars. Then they stuck him in the driver’s seat and did him so it would look like he got popped by a buddy in the backseat. All these guys watched The Godfather fifty times, so they know how it’s supposed to go down. The clock’s a nice touch, and it ties it to somebody who might need an alibi.”

  “Like Pigetti?” asked Karp.

  “Oh, either Joey was involved, or somebody wanted to make it look like Joey was involved. If he did do it, though, the important thing is, did he clear it through the don? My guess is no, he didn’t. It’s hard to think why Big Sally would want to take out Eddie Cat.” He looked at Anselmo. “See, Little Sal doesn’t have any friends to speak of. Eddie was Little Sal’s baby-sitter. This is well-known. Used to be Charlie Tuna, then Eddie got the job when Charlie went upstate. Little Sal needs a lot of watching. He gets testy when he doesn’t get his way, and it interferes with business. So this is perfect for the don. He got one of his capos tight with his kid, the heir, keeping him in line, but also the kid is watching Eddie, of course. Neither of them can make a move against him without the other knowing. And he’s got his other capo right there in his pocket, Pigetti. Anyway, whoever did it, Pigetti, Little Sal, the don, or some combination thereof, it’s a sure bet it’s a family thing, got nothing to do with the federal grand jury. Eddie Cat would go to jail if he had to, but not into a witness program, which anyone who knew the guy would tell you in a second.”

  “So who did the deed, Guma? You probably already have a name for us.” Anselmo spoke sarcastically, but Guma took the question on, knitting his brows as if trying to think of an actual name.

  “Not a Sicilian, Frank. No Sicilian would hit a made guy and a capo in his own family without an order from his don, and if he was from another family, not unless he wanted to start a major war, which we got no evidence at all is what’s involved here. So who? Well, if Murder Incorporated was still in business, this is the kind of stuff they used to contract out to the Jewish fellas, but I don’t think Jews are into whacking anymore.”

  “Only whacking off,” said Karp. “You’re suggesting that Pigetti would reach out to one of our fine non-Sicilian ethnic groups?”

  “I am,” said Guma. “As far as which one . . .” He shrugged. “It’s a whachamacallit . . . an embarrassment of riches out there.”

  The meeting broke up soon afterward. Guma and Hrcany vanished into the hallway, and Anselmo walked through the door that led to the D.A.’s office. Karp finished cleaning up his notes. When he went a few minutes later into Keegan’s office, he observed Anselmo talking vigorously at the D.A., in undertones, and the D.A. not liking what he was hearing, shaking his noble head. When Anselmo ran down and left, Keegan hooked a finger, and Karp followed him to the other end of the office, where Keegan sat down in his chair with a snarling kind of sigh.

  “What did Frank want?”

  “Oh, he was pissed off about Ray, needless to relate. Christ, the pair of them are like a couple of brats. No, Frank, you can’t be in charge of Guma, for the ninetieth time. And of course Roland set the whole thing up, just to show Frank who’s got the biggest dick. Jesus!”

  “You could put Guma in charge of Frank,” Karp suggested.

  Keegan goggled at him until he saw Karp was joking, and then he barked out a laugh and grinned. “Oh, yeah! That’d be rare, our own junior Mafioso in charge of Rackets. Tell me, did Guma really once stash a material witness with an out-of-town wise guy?”

  “I’ve heard that story, too,” said Karp in a noncommittal tone. “You got a minute for this?”

  Keegan had, and Karp epitomized what had just happened in a little under two.

  “So you’re telling me we got bullshit.”

  “What can I say? Police baffled, as the headlines used to say.”

  “Well, that can’t be,” said Keegan, putting away all smiles. “No chance that this Marky guy was involved?” He sounded wistful.

  Karp said, “It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”

  For an instant Karp was afraid that Keegan was going to reverse him on arresting the fool, but the man’s better angels chimed in and he merely cursed under his breath and s
aid, “This isn’t your everyday public service Mob hit. Tommy is running for whatever the fuck he’s running for on fighting the big bad Mob, showing that although he’s an Italian-American gentleman he’s not that kind of Italian-American gentleman, and if he’s got to run all over me to do it, that’s fine with him. This is not one we can afford to lose.” A steely glare, before which Karp did not in the least flinch, and then he added, the grin returning, “Say, ‘Yes, boss,’ so I know you understand you have complete charge of this shit pile.”

  “Yes, boss,” said the good soldier.

  Chapter 3

  MARLENE CIAMPI WAS WEARING A RED T-shirt with white Chinese calligraphy on it, similar to the one her daughter owned. Unlike her daughter (as far as she knew) she was also wearing a pistol, a slim Italian 9mm semi-auto, in a nylon belt holster, and a blue cotton blazer to conceal it. This T-shirt had been a gift from Lucy on Marlene’s last birthday, back when she and her daughter were still friends. The child had ordered the shirt from a copy shop on Lafayette Street, where they would turn any design you wanted into a shirt, and the calligraphy was in Lucy’s own hand. It supposedly read, “What is the most important duty? The duty to one’s parents. What is the most important thing to guard? One’s own character.” Below this was the colophon (Meng Ke) of the author, Mencius, and that of the calligrapher (Kap Lòuhsì), the kid herself.

  Marlene stared at the pay phone in whose demi-booth she stood and let the events of the previous two days rankle in her mind. The Lucy business. The Chen business, now tangled together. She thought of calling home and talking directly to Lucy. She had two potential conversations in mind: one a cold interrogation, using all her considerable investigatory skills to determine what her daughter was doing between 3:45 p.m., when she had spoken with her at Columbia-Presby, and 6:10 p.m. when, according to her husband’s report, the little wretch had sashayed into the loft, or, alternatively, one that included some magical combination of frankness, wisdom, and empathy that would turn Lucy into the agreeable little girl she once was, and give to that vexed segment of Marlene’s motherhood a fresh start.