Louie used a tissue and some Purell to wipe off the telephone handset, which was still warm from the previous user. Paulie had yet to arrive. Louie’s plan was simple: give Paulie the details, get Paulie’s response, then get the hell out. Although Rikers Island was the biggest and busiest penal institution in the world, the place was also notorious for its run-down condition. Louie shivered at the thought of staying in the place overnight, much less for more than a decade.
Glancing to his right, Louie looked at the long line of other visitors, most of whom appeared to be women talking to husbands. Many appeared as if they were barely making ends meet, though some tried to dress up. There were guards on both sides of the glass with glazed eyes and bored expressions. Louie looked at his watch. It was after two, and he already wanted to leave. He promised himself he’d never come back to this place.
At that moment he caught sight of Paulie and started. The last time he’d seen him, Paulie had looked much the same as always, plus the scars he’d suffered after someone had thrown acid in his face a year or so before he had been imprisoned. He’d always been heavy and unconcerned about his appearance. Now he was comparatively skinny, and his prison outfit hung on him like an oversized shirt on a metal hanger.
As Paulie took his seat on the other side of the glass, Louie had to briefly look away. He’d forgotten about Paulie’s double corneal transplants, where the clear area of his eyes contrasted so sharply with the scarred area as to be startling.
Controlling himself, Louie picked up the telephone and raised his eyes to Paulie even though it was like looking down a couple of gun barrels. After a bit of chitchat, Louie said, “Paulie, you look different, like you lost some weight.”
“I am different,” Paulie agreed wistfully if not mystically. “I’ve found the Lord.”
Good grief, Louie thought but didn’t say. He lamented the fact that he’d made the effort to come all the way to Rikers Island to seek advice about a difficult underworld conundrum now that Paulie had found God. It made the whole situation so absurd that Louie thought about leaving, when Paulie suddenly refocused and said, “I know you probably came out here to get some advice about some problem, but I want to ask you a question first. How did that bastard Vinnie Dominick weasel his way out of all those indictments last year? I thought for sure he was going to end up in here with me. Nobody’s told me nothing.”
The question took Louie by surprise. Maybe Paulie wasn’t quite as overwhelmed by his newfound Christianity. Maybe he could still offer some advice.
“Strange you should ask, because I was the problem with Vinnie Dominick and most of the others getting off, and it’s related to how they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar.”
“I don’t follow,” Paulie admitted with interest.
“I found out Vinnie had himself a yacht for all sorts of nasty work-related entertaining. I had my guys place a GPS on the boat. When I knew Vinnie and company were up to no good, I gave the password and user name to Lou Soldano so he could nab them, which he did.”
“Lou!” Paulie exclaimed. “How is the old bastard?”
“As much of a bastard as always. Why do you ask?”
“We butted heads for so many years, we became sorta friends. He still sends my wife and kids a Christmas card every year. Can you believe it?”
As far as Louie was concerned, he saw Soldano as the embodiment of the enemy and refused to see him any other way, Christmas cards or not. “Do you want to hear how Dominick got off or what?”
“I want to hear,” Paulie admitted.
“Dominick got some great lawyers who jumped on the role played by the GPS, and with one of New York’s famously liberal judges, they were able to get thrown out all evidence obtained from the GPS device, since there was no warrant. Can you believe it? In one fell swoop the guts of the prosecutor’s cases was unusable. I tell you, on occasion the whole justice system in this country is its own worst enemy.”
“Thanks for clueing me in about Vinnie, the lucky bastard,” Paulie said. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you want. I can’t imagine it’s a sermon.”
“No sermon, thank you,” Louie began. “Just your advice. After more than a year of smooth sailing businesswise, we’re in one of those no-win situations that could easily escalate into a disaster. Now, it’s a bit on the complicated side, so let me fill you in about our partnership with one of the Yakuza families.”
To be certain Paulie understood the whole situation, Louie went back and explained how their relationship had developed between himself and Hideki Shimoda, the head of the Aizukotetsu-kai Yakuza. “I set up a number of high-stakes gambling locations on the Upper East Side that looked and acted like restaurants to ensnare foolish visiting Japanese businessmen, which Hideki supplies. We offer unlimited credit and female companionship, and then Hideki’s associates collect from the surprised deadbeats back in Japan. After the Yakuza back in Japan take their cut, they pay us off in either cash or crystal meth, but generally crystal meth, which we prefer, and they seem to have an endless supply. The setup has been working perfectly, providing a large percentage of our current working cash. In fact, it has been so profitable that the copycat Vinnie Dominick has created his own setup with another Yakuza organization called the Yamaguchi-gumi.”
“We never teamed up with nobody,” Paulie commented with disdain.
“I understand, and maybe I shouldn’t have done it,” Louie admitted, lowering his voice when a guard drifted near. “But Dominick is now doing as well as we are, and it’s actually helping up the demand for crystal meth. The current problem I want to talk to you about came out of the blue. Hideki Shimoda called me up just a couple of days ago, asking me to help a couple of his guys shake down some Japanese researcher type and steal the man’s laboratory books. I didn’t necessarily like the idea about getting involved in someone else’s business, but Hideki was insistent, and I went along because, as I said, it was supposed to be only a shakedown. But that wasn’t what it turned out to be.” At that point, Louie related what had happened the previous night, and the potential bomb that had been created.
“You’re surprised that these Yakuza thugs are prone to violence?” Paulie asked with surprise of his own.
“I was surprised about the extent. There’d been no problem until last night. They seemed respectful of the way we were operating, keeping killings to a minimum. I mean, Vinnie Dominick and I are hardly friends, but we’ve just learned over the years that real violence is bad for business. Maybe it’s more that I learned and Vinnie has been willing to follow suit. I’ve actually made it a personal crusade of sorts.”
“Okay, so now what?”
“Hideki calls me up this morning, supposedly to thank me for sending the help, and he doesn’t admit anything had gone wrong. I had to pull it out of him. And he didn’t even mention the New Jersey part. Then he demands we help him again tonight to get the lab books he didn’t get last night, with the same trigger-happy soldiers. The plan is to break into an office building on Fifth Avenue. When he senses my obvious hesitation about agreeing to such a harebrained idea, he threatens me with breaking up our comfy business relationship. He says that Dominick would surely help him with the robbery if he were offered to get the Aizukotetsu-kai business as well as the Yamaguchi-gumi’s. You got the picture? The man is extorting me.”
“I’m getting the picture, but I don’t understand why you were willing to hook up with these Yakuza guys in the first place.”