Joe nodded, as if it made perfect sense. “Sal was on the other side of the car, sitting on the other side of the street. Actually, he wasn’t sitting. He was lying there in a ball because I’d blown his fucking hip off. How’s he see anything?”
Carlos Marcello held up a placating hand. “So why did you think Freddy wanted to kill your son?”
“Think, Carlos? Would you be thinking if that was your son in the car?” He looked at Sam Daddano. “Your boy Robert?” He looked at Meyer. “If it was Buddy? I wasn’t thinking. I saw a man pointing a gun at my son. And I pulled my trigger so he couldn’t pull his.”
“Joe,” Rico said quietly, “look at me. Right into my eyes. Because I’m going to kill you someday. I’m going to do it with my bare hands and a spoon.”
“Rico,” Carlos Marcello said, “please.”
“We’re adults here,” Meyer said. “Men discussing a difficult piece of business. Seems clear that Joe’s not trying to back off anything he did. He’s not making excuses.”
“He killed my brother.”
Carlos Marcello said, “But your brother had a gun pointed at his son. That doesn’t seem to be in much dispute. Guns pointed at white children, Rico, that’s an infamnia, and you shouldn’t be fucking arguing otherwise.”
Rico had boarded the boat thinking the only guy who wasn’t getting back off was Joe, but now he was seeing his own corpse reflected in Carlos Marcello’s black eyes.
Sam Daddano looked down the table at Joe. “On the other hand, you killed a made guy and two valued associates. You cost us a lot of money.”
“A lot of money,” Meyer agreed.
“And not just now,” Sam said, “but for years down the road with all this bad publicity. That’s food off our table, money out of our pockets. Money we were counting on. And there’s no way you can make that up to us.”
“I think I can,” Joe said.
Carlos Marcello shook his big head. “Joseph, that’s wishful thinking. The mess you and Rico created last week in Tampa will drain us.”
Joe said, “What if I could spring Charlie from Dannemora?”
Meyer’s lighter paused halfway to his cigarette.
Carlos Marcello’s head froze in a cocked position.
Sam Daddano stared directly at Joe, his lips parted.
Rico looked around the room. “That all? Why don’t you part the Gulf of Mexico while you’re at it?”
Carlos Marcello waved at the air between him and Rico like he was batting away a fly. “Speak plain, Joseph.”
“I met with a guy from Naval Intelligence two weeks ago.”
“But we understand it didn’t go well,” Meyer said.
“It didn’t. But I could tell he was close to the hook. He just needed a little more convincing. The U.S. has lost ninety-two ships—military and commercial—in the last five months. They’re scared shitless but they’re telling themselves, ‘Well, at least it’s never happened along the shore.’ But if we could convince them that the only thing standing between them and Hitler parading down Madison Avenue is us? They’ll let Charlie out after the war. At the very least, they’ll leave us alone and let us make money.”
“And how do we show them they need us?”
“We sink a boat.”
Rico DiGiacomo exhaled loudly. “What’s with this guy and boats? Didn’t you blow one up ten years ago?”
“More like fourteen,” Joe said. “The government has a boat in Port Tampa right now, an old luxury liner they’re retrofitting into a warship.”
“Used to be The Neptune,” Rico said. “I know it.”
“And you got guys working on it, right?”
Rico nodded at the rest of the men. “We do all right, but it’s no cash cow. A little scrap metal here, some copper there, lotta old metal beds not ending up where they were supposed to, that sorta shit.”
“United States government wants that liner turned into a troop transport ship by June. Am I right?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“So . . .”
The corners of Carlos Marcello’s lips twitched. Sam Dadanno let loose a short bark of a laugh. Meyer Lansky smiled.
“Someone sabotages that ship? Make it look like Krauts did it or could have?” Joe sat back, tapped an unlit cigarette off the side of his brass Zippo. “Government will come to us on their knees.” He met the eyes of each man in the room. “And you’ll all be the men responsible for springing Charlie Luciano from prison.”
Nods from the table, a tip of the imaginary hat from Meyer Lansky.
Joe’s pulse slowed in his throat. He might make it back off this boat after all.
“Okay, okay,” Rico said. “Let’s say he’s right and this works. And I’m not pretending it’s not a good plan. No one ever questioned this guy’s brain, only his stomach for the grim stuff. What about here?”
“Excuse me?” Joe said.
“Here.” Rico stabbed a finger into the table. “He gets to build a kingdom with Meyer here, now that I pushed him out of Tampa and he got caught with his dick in the mayor’s wife.” He looked over at Joe. “Yeah, Romeo, everyone knows about that now. Big to-do back home.” He raised his eyebrows a couple times, then looked back at the bosses. “Do I get any of his action here? A little something to tide me over?”
Joe looked down the table at Meyer. Cuba was Meyer’s and Joe’s pampered princess-child; they protected her from everything in the world that could soil her. Now here came Rico DiGiacomo, pawing at her with grime and germs all over his hands. Meyer looked at Joe with a fatalistic fury that said, For this, I blame you.
“You want a piece of Cuba?” Carlos asked.
Rico DiGiacomo held his index finger and thumb a hair apart. “Tiny piece.”
Carlos and Sam looked over at Meyer.
Meyer threw it right at Joe. “Joe and I own that land we’re turning into a hotel once this war’s through. Hotel, casino, the works. You all know this.”
“How much a piece you own, Joe?”
“I got twenty, Meyer’s got the same. Pension fund’s owning the rest.”
“You give five to Rico.”
“Five,” Joe said.
“Five’s fair,” Rico DiGiacomo said.
“No,” Joe said, “three’s fair. I’ll give you three.”
Rico took the temperature of the room before he replied. “Three it is.”
Joe shared another look with Meyer. They both knew what had just happened. Even if they’d only given Rico half a percentage point, the result was still the same—his foot was now in the door. As he’d just done in Tampa, he could someday do in Havana.
Fuck.
Rico wasn’t done. “There’s still the matter of personal recompense.”
“Giving you credit for springing Charlie from Dannemora and a slice of the Cuban operation ain’t enough for you?” Marcello asked.
“It’s enough for me, Carlos,” Rico said solemnly. “Is it enough for my brother, though?”
The men looked at one another.
“His point’s fair,” Meyer finally admitted.
“What can I do?” Joe asked. “I can’t put the bullets back in the gun.”
“Rico lost a brother,” Daddano said.
“But I don’t have a brother to give him in return,” Joe said.
“Sure you do,” Rico said.
It took Joe less than half a second to see what should have been obvious from the moment this meeting had been arranged. He looked across the table to see Rico smiling at him.
“A brother for a brother,” Rico said.
“You want me to give up Dion.”
Rico shook his head.
“No?”
“No,” Rico said. “We want you to kill Dion.”
Joe said, “Dion’s not—”
“Don’t insult us,” Carlos Marcello said. “Joseph, don’t.”
Meyer lit a cigarette from the butt of his previous one, Meyer capable of filling an ashtray faster than a roomful of junkie gamb
lers. “You know the Commission doesn’t give a death sentence lightly. Don’t dishonor us or embarrass yourself by pleading his case.”
“He’s a real piece of shit,” Daddano said, “and he’s gonna fucking go. Only questions left are how and when.”
A pause, particularly a contemplative one, would be read immediately as weakness, so Joe didn’t skip a beat. “Then it’ll be done first thing tomorrow. Over and done. You want to pick him up? You want me to send him to a spot?”
If they gave him the night, he’d figure something out. He had no idea what, but something. If, instead, they sent somebody back with him, he had no clue what miracles he could work. Or couldn’t.
“Tomorrow’s fine,” Meyer said.
Joe made his face blank, as if the answer meant nothing to him.
“It doesn’t even have to be done in the morning,” Daddano said. “By the end of the day’s fine.”
“Just so long as it gets done,” Carlos Marcello said.
“By you.” Rico’s chair creaked when he leaned back in it.
Joe kept his face still. “Me.”
Four nods.
“You,” Rico said. “You do him like you did my brother. Same gun. That way every time you look at it, you piece of . . . every time you look at it, you think of my brother and you think of yours.”
Joe looked at each of the men in the room again. “Done.”
“Sorry,” Rico said, “I didn’t hear that.”
Joe looked at him.
“Seriously. I get that tinnitus sometimes, like kettles going off in my ears. What’d you say?”
Joe let a few ticks come off the clock above the door.
“I said I’ll kill Dion. Consider it done.”
Rico slapped the table lightly. “Well, then, I’d call this meeting a success.”
“You don’t call this meeting anything,” Carlos Marcello said. “We call meetings and we adjourn them.”
As Rico sat back down, three men walked into the room. Saint Viv came through the doorway first and walked down the left side of the table toward Joe, his brokenhearted eyes locked on him the whole way. When he reached Joe, he stood directly behind his chair, and Joe could hear his breathing.
The second man, Carl the Bowler, came down the other side of the table and stopped between Sam Daddano and Rico DiGiacomo, his hands crossed over his waist. Rico looked at Saint Viv the Executioner standing behind the man who’d killed his brother. He met Joe’s eyes and couldn’t help himself—he smiled.
The third man who entered the room was a stranger. He was very thin and nervous and kept his eyes on the floor until he reached Meyer. He placed the satchel in front of him and removed one black binder and put it on the table. He spoke low into Meyer’s ears for a full minute, and when he was done, Meyer thanked him and told him to get something to eat.
The man followed the carpet back out of the room, his scrawny shoulders hunched, his balding head catching the light.
Meyer slid the binder across the table to Rico. “Yours, right?”
Rico opened it and leafed through it. “Yup.” He closed it, slid it back. “What’s it doing all the way over here?”
Meyer said, “This is your ledger? This is everything you make for us?”
Rico’s eyes were moving a bit when he lit his cigarette. For the first time in a while, Joe suspected, he found himself a step behind the play. “Yeah, Meyer. It’s the one I send out to you guys with the cash every month. Same ledger Freddy used to bring in that alligator skin briefcase of his.”
“And that’s your handwriting, no question?” This from Carlos Marcello.
Rico didn’t like where this was going at all, but there wasn’t much he could do but answer. “Yes. All mine.”
“No one else could have scribbled anything in here?”
“No. No. Definitely not. You’ve seen my chicken scratch; it’s not pretty but it’s definitely mine.”
Meyer nodded, as if that settled everything, tied it off with a bow. “Thank you, Rico.”
“No problem. Happy to help.”
Meyer reached into the satchel and came back with the second binder. He tossed it onto the table.
And Rico caught up to the play.
“Ho,” he said. “Fuck is this?”
“This is a second ledger.” Meyer slid it across the table to him. “Recognize the chicken scratch?”
Rico opened it up, his eyes flying back and forth as he leafed through the pages. He looked across at Meyer. “I don’t get it. Is it a copy?”
“Appeared to be at first. Then we had the accountant look it over. According to him, you’ve been cooking it.”
“No.”
“To the tune of thirty thousand this year, forty last.”
“No, Meyer. No.” Rico looked around the room and then his eyes fell on Joe and he knew. “NO!”
When Carl the Bowler placed the plastic bag over his head, Rico raised his arms, but Sam Daddano grasped them at the wrist. He and Carl the Bowler turned Rico in his chair and Carl twisted the plastic at the back of Rico’s head into a knot.
Carlos Marcello said to Joe, “Who can replace him? Can’t be you.”
When Joe had hired Bobo Frechetti to break into Rico’s office, he’d honestly thought there would be a second ledger. But just in case, he’d had Bobo’s brother-in-law, the forger’s forger, Ernie Boch, on standby if the need arose.
The need arose.
Rico’s lit cigarette rolled into the center of the table and Meyer reached for it, put it out in the ashtray before him.
“You know that guy hangs at the Italian Social Club in Ybor?” Joe said.
“Trafficante?” Marcello said.
“Yeah. He’s ready.”
Bobo had handed off the ledger to his brother-in-law, and Ernie duplicated Rico’s handwriting—its looping capital letters, its undotted i’s and j’s, its slanted t’s and flat-lining n’s. The rest was just a matter of shaving off a number here, some zeroes there.
Rico’s feet kicked Sam Daddano’s chair hard enough to lift the man out of it, but he held on to Rico’s wrists.
“Trafficante’s a good earner,” Daddano managed, already a little out of breath.
Marcello looked at Meyer and Meyer said, “I’ve always found him reasonable.”
Marcello said, “Then Trafficante it is.”
Rico’s body voided and the smell of it found the room. He stopped kicking. His arms went limp.
Carl the Bowler kept the bag on for another two minutes just to be sure as Joe watched the other men file out.
When Joe stood to leave the room, he gave the corpse one last look as he gathered up his cigarettes. He waved his hand at the stink that emanated from it.
That’s all you did with your time on this earth, Rico—you soiled the air.
And fucked with the wrong Irishman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Send You a Postcard
DRIVING TO AN APARTMENT he kept in the Old City, Joe considered his options.
He came up with two:
Kill Dion, his oldest friend.
Or don’t kill him and die.
Even if he did kill Dion, the Commission could still vote to kill Joe. He’d cost them money and he’d left a big mess behind. Just because he walked off that boat didn’t mean he was safe.
His driver, Manuel Gravante, said, “Boss, Angel drove by while you were on the boat, told me there’s another package back at the place for you.”
“What package?”
“Angel said it was a box.” Manuel held his hands about a foot apart and then put them back on the wheel. “Said it was sent to the palace in your name. The Colonel’s men brought it over.”
“Who sent it?”
“Somebody named Dix.”
One of his last acts aboveground apparently.
Christ, Joe thought. When all this is over, will any of us be left?
EVEN THOUGH HE’D BEEN EXPECTING THE PACKAGE, he still opened it in the courtyard behi
nd his apartment building just in case. If Joe did, as many suspected, have nine lives, he lost two when he opened the flaps on the box and the smoke poured out. He jumped back, stood there with fresh sweat running into a suit that had already been sweated through, as the white vapor poured off the dry ice and over the flaps and dissipated into the palm fronds above him. Once he’d ascertained that the source was, in fact, dry ice, he waited until the last of the vapors had cleared, then reached in and lifted the smaller box out of the package and placed it on the stone table.
It was dented on all four corners. Oily stains on one side of the cardboard where the contents had rested. Spots of blood speckled the words on top: CHINETTI BAKERY, CENTRO YBOR. The twine still crisscrossed the carton, and Joe cut it with the same pair of scissors he’d used to open the shipping box. Inside was the torta al cappuccino, although you could barely recognize it as such. It was collapsed and green with mold on one side. It reeked.
Every week for the past two years, rain or shine, hot and humid or cold and rainy, Dion had gone to the bakery and walked back out with a cardboard box with a cake inside.
But was that all that had been inside?
Joe lifted the ruined pastry.
All that lay below it was soiled wax paper and a circular piece of cardboard. He’d been wrong. He could feel his heart still pounding in his chest while all around it a warm river of relief flooded his body. His suspicions shamed him now. He looked up at the window of the bedroom where Dion had stayed the first night before Meyer confirmed that Rico was sending hitters over from Tampa. They’d moved Dion that morning, had him tucked away under the Colonel’s care and the Colonel’s guards about thirty miles south, which was running Joe a pretty penny.
Joe sent a silent apology to his friend.
Then he turned back to the cake box and listened to the darkest part of his heart. He reached in and lifted the wax paper out and then the cardboard circle.
And there it was.
An envelope.
He opened it. He shuffled through the small stack of hundred-dollar bills inside and then found the slip of white paper at the end of the stack. He read what was on it—one name, nothing more. But then there didn’t have to be. The content of the note was irrelevant. The note itself told the whole story.