Marc Tallo was the first to arrive. From the back seat of his Rolls Royce, he could see no other cars parked along the cobblestone driveway that wrapped in front of the mansion. As the driver throttled down at the foot of the walkway to the main house Tallo motioned him forward, flicking his hand in a quick wave. “Pull on ahead. I’ll wait for the others and we’ll walk in together.”
The driver offered a slight nod and crept past the walkway to the far edge of the drive, easing to a stop with a squeak of the brakes, leaving the engine running. A moment later a second set of headlights appeared at the end of the driveway, small pinpricks that grew steadily closer.
“Turner,” Tallo said, watching as a 1921 Duesenberg came into view, sweeping around the fountain in the middle of the driveway. “Showing some class tonight. Good for him.”
The Duesenberg finished its circle and rolled to a stop behind the Rolls. It turned its headlights off and sat in line, Turner also waiting for the final guest to arrive.
Two minutes later, the high beams of the third visitor threw a blinding light across the front of the house. It grew brighter quickly, the car traveling at a great rate of speed.
“Look at that damn thing,” Tallo said, making a face and shaking his head. “Man never has had a single shred of taste.”
Twisting himself on the back seat he watched as a pearl white Cadillac Escalade whipped around the fountain and slid to a stop behind the Duesenberg, spewing gravel and Latin music as it went.
Tallo waited for the music to die away before climbing from the car, his back and knees aching in protest. Standing at five and a half feet tall, he had a thick midsection from years of indulging in Italy’s finest cuisine that gave him the appearance of a perfect square. His thinning, heavily oiled hair was combed straight back, framing a bulbous face. He stood and adjusted his Armani tie and suit jacket before reaching back inside for a large basket.
In order, Billy Turner emerged from the Duesenberg. A couple of inches taller than Tallo, he was fit and wiry. His strawberry blonde hair was cropped close to his head and he wore tan slacks with a white shirt and tweed jacket. He offered a terse nod to Tallo as he emerged, then reached into the car and removed a small wooden cask.
The last man to appear was Luis Cardoza. He climbed from the back of the Escalade and gave a small wave to Tallo and Turner. At six feet, he was the tallest of the three, a fact punctuated by the hat that sat jauntily atop his dark hair. The olive skin of his face was smooth, offset with warm brown eyes and a thin goatee outlining his mouth. He wore a light tan suit with a pink shirt open at the throat.
Cardoza stepped away from the Escalade carrying a small cigar box and waited for the other men to join him. He nodded again as they approached and side by side the three walked up the path to the front of the mansion.
Despite the gifts each man carried, there was no anticipation amongst them of an enjoyable evening.
Together, they represented the heads of the three largest cartels in Boston. Tallo headed the Italian contingent that swallowed most of the North End. Turner was the third generation leader of the Irish, notorious for their presence in South Boston. Cardoza led the Cubans, a group that numerically was inferior to the Italians and Irish, but was working its way up thanks to a booming smuggling empire.
Just ten years before, the thought of the three coming together peaceably would have been absurd. Each faction had a section of the city they were sworn to protect and bloodshed was the cost of doing business.
All that, though, was before Paul Hardy.
Hardy was a businessman, a shipping magnate who managed to build an empire in an era when most people barely understood the concept. From simple beginnings, he had never been on a boat until he turned nineteen, the first one he ever set foot on being the one that brought him to America. Within three years, he owned it and two more like it.
Within ten, he owned a fleet of them.
Holding sway over an untapped market, it didn’t take long for Hardy to become a large player in the Boston economy. Equal parts canny and cunning, his fortune was built on the misfortunes and ineptitudes of his competitors. Fearless to a fault, he quashed every other shipping competitor in New England in establishing his business. Along the way, he picked up several influential friends on both sides of the law, one of the few who managed to do so and live to tell about it.
It was through his reputation and his fortune that Hardy was first able to get Tallo, Turner, and Cardoza in the same room together.
Hardy paid good money to be informed of the happenings around his fleet, especially those occurring so close to home. When word filtered in of the escalating hostilities between the cartels, it became obvious the situation threatened his own interests.
Tallo and the Italians made the bulk of their money transporting automobiles in and out of the country. It was rumored that the cars were lined with copious amounts of cocaine and other narcotics, but nothing had ever been proven. The Italians ran hundreds of cars a year in and out of the city, using container ships to haul automobiles that had been lifted in all parts of America and Italy.
Cardoza and the Cubans also ran a smuggling operation, their cargo of the human variety. With Castro still in place on the island and America’s strict travel boycott, moving humans had become quite a lucrative dealing. At the time Hardy brought them together the operation was still blooming, but he envisioned that within years the enterprise could expand exponentially.
He was right.
The final piece of the puzzle was Turner, head of the Irish that ran the docks. Nothing got in or out without them knowing about it, a fact that presented more than a few headaches for both the Italians and the Cubans. Unable to get their wares past the iron grip the Irish held on the docks, they were forced to seek alternative shipping measures.
It was a situation Hardy recognized right off as a perfect partnership opportunity.
Hardy brought the three together and suggested an armistice in the name of business. He reasoned with Tallo and Cardoza that their overhead and operations would move a great deal smoother with the aid of Turner and the efficient Dorchester docks. To Turner, he implored reasonableness and told him to think of the lives and expense saved by no longer warring with two different factions, not to mention the increased traffic through the docks.
The negotiations took two solid days and resulted in a general understanding. The Cubans and Italians would use container shipping out of the ports to transport their wares. The Irish would allow them to come and go and would keep competitors out. In return, the Cubans and Italians could establish a sizable and profitable business, and the Irish would take a portion of the proceeds from both parties for their efforts.
For his trouble, Hardy took a cut and won the good favor of all three factions.
Some people believed it was only the good fortune he sought and that he could care less about the money.
To be fair, those people had never actually met the man.
Tallo, Turner, and Cardoza strode together through an enormous tiled mezzanine, past a marble staircase that led to the upper floors and into a grand dining room. A long, oak table ran the length of it with fine, high-backed chairs arranged in even intervals. Several crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling and filled the room with soft yellow light.
A buffet was set up alongside the entrance, though each of the men walked right past it. They moved instead to the far end of the room where Hardy stood waiting for them, his expression solemn.
He was of medium height and had a thick swath of hair cut short, with bushy eyebrows and a weak chin. His shoulders were very square, though he certainly was not a muscular man.
“Gentlemen, feel free to grab anything you like from the buffet and have a seat,” Hardy said by way of a greeting.
As the three men approached, Tallo held the basket out in front of him. “Gentlemen, the finest Italian meats and cheeses available. Please, feel free.”
He placed the basket down and walked around Hardy to a chair on
the far side of the table.
Turner waited for Tallo to find his seat before he placed the cask on the table beside the basket. “Imported Irish whiskey. Help yourself to as much as you like.”
He too circled around and took a seat next to Tallo.
Cardoza was the last to go, placing the cigar box on the table beside the other gifts. “Hand-rolled cigars from my native Cuba. It would be my privilege if you were to have one.”
He nodded at the other men and pulled out a chair alongside Hardy.
The usual protocol for their meetings was to spend some time sampling the buffet, followed by working their way through the various items on the table. Only once tumblers of whiskey were out and the thick fog of cigar smoke hung in the air did they get down to business.
Tonight, nobody reached for anything. There were no false pretenses to why they were present, no assumptions that the meeting would serve as business-as-usual.
Sensing the gravitas in the room, Hardy nodded and took his seat. He surveyed each of the men before stating, “Gentlemen, I think we all have a general understanding of why we’re here, but I would like to start by having you each describe things from your vantage point. Marc, would you like to begin?”
Tallo glanced at each of them and said, “Three of our last five shipments exiting the country have never made it out. We know they arrived to the port, but before they could be taken to sea, they seemed to disappear.
“In total, seventeen automobiles - gone. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, the kinds of cars that would stand out. So far, no word on them anywhere.”
Tallo contemplated going further, but decided to stop. He looked at Hardy, who paused a moment and turned to Cardoza. “Luis?”
“Last week, a container carrying two hundred and eleven people was sent from Cuba. At some point between its arrival at three in the afternoon and the time we intended to unload it at two in the morning, it disappeared.
“Not until a body was reported washed up two miles down the coast did we figure out what happened.”
Cardoza paused for a moment, letting the others infer what had transpired.
“Where is the container now?” Hardy asked.
His voice low and even, Cardoza nodded with the top of his head toward Turner. “With Billy’s help, we recovered it. All identifying markings have been destroyed, all bodies inside disposed of.”
A low grunt rolled from Hardy as he nodded, chewing on the information, before shifting his attention to Turner. “And on your end?”
Turner leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “In the last three weeks, I’ve lost six workers. We’ve installed motion lights and video cameras but, so far, whoever is doing this has been able to elude them. I’ve since doubled the number of men working and have them now armed at all times.”
Both his hands curled themselves into tight balls, the knuckles flashing white beneath the skin, before being released. As they did so a long sigh slid from him, his body receding back against his chair.
“So the take home message is,” Hardy said, “right now someone is meddling with our affairs, causing us all to lose a great deal of money.”
The words were issued as a statement, not one of the men around the table attempting to answer it.
Hardy rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and brought his fingertips together in front of him, just inches away from his mouth. “Who do we know that would be foolish enough to do such a thing?”
“And have the juice to pull it off?” Turner added.
Across the table, Cardoza jabbed a finger at him, nodding in agreement.
Again silence descended, each of the four men wrestling with the questions posed. Together, they represented most of the real muscle in town. Each faction was suffering losses, meaning the odds of a rogue amongst them weren’t good.
They couldn’t completely discount an outside player, but the chances of it happening weren’t good. The main chunks of turf in Boston had been spoken for for over a century.
Anybody that wanted in on that would have to be well-funded and backed by a significant force.
Chapter Eight