“Do I know you?”
“You do.”
“You’re gonna have to remind me.”
“Look harder,” I said, and removed my sunglasses.
He squinted at my face, then said, “Ah, shit. I didn’t figure you for a suicide.”
“Hard to recognize me with the beard?”
“Yeah, but what really threw me was the Yankees cap and jersey. Fuckin’ good disguise.”
“Take a walk with me.”
“Hang on a sec,” he said.
He walked through the store’s charred doorway and disappeared into the ruins. A couple of minutes later, he emerged carrying a stack of six wooden cigar boxes.
“Might as well have these,” he said. “The heat dried them out, but throw some apple slices into the boxes, and some of them should come back okay.”
I thanked him and locked the boxes in the trunk of Ruthie’s car. Then we strolled together under the old, half-dead maples lining the sidewalk, where a few of the leaves were starting to turn.
“I’m so sorry about Rosie. I know the two of you were close.”
“My best friend.”
“John McCready was mine, so I know how you must feel.” He threw his arms wide. “So many fucking fires. So many neighbors dead.”
“Sorry about the store,” I said.
“Hell, that’s the least of it.”
“Going to rebuild?”
“Gonna reopen next week in a storefront on Hope Street,” he said. “It’s a good space. Giordano gave it to me in a straight swap for the old place. Guess he’s thinking of building something here. Damned good of him, though. And to think I had him pegged for an asshole.”
“The DiMaggios still on patrol?”
“They disbanded back in June when it looked like the fires had stopped. Big fuckin’ mistake. As of last night, they’re back on the streets. They catch the prick what burned my place down and I won’t be calling the cops next time. He’s going right into the Field’s Point sludge incinerator.”
“Whoever he is, he’s just a hired hand,” I said. “Want the names of the bastards who sent him?”
76
“It’s Mulligan. I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“I need you to get the recording and documents out of your safe deposit box and bring them to me.”
“What’s up?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Okay. When and where?”
“The Battleship Cove visitors’ parking lot in Fall River at eleven A.M. Saturday.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You still driving the black Acura?”
“Yeah.”
“Just pull in, and I’ll see you.”
77
Saturday morning, I splurged on a couple of Tommy Castro CDs at Satellite Records in Boston. “Take the Highway Down” boomed from the speakers of Aunt Ruthie’s Camry as I cruised south on Route 24 toward Newport, the documents and recording McCracken had delivered locked in the trunk. As I crawled along Ocean Avenue looking for an address, I cued the CD to “You Knew the Job Was Dangerous.”
The house was a sprawling Nantucket-style cottage with weathered shingles, a broad white porch, and an expanse of chemical-green lawn. It perched on a rocky outcrop with a glorious view of the sea.
As I turned into the crushed-shell drive, two heavyset men stepped in front of the car and ordered me to get out. They were dressed in identical navy blue suits with chalk pinstripes, and from the way their jackets hung, I could tell they were carrying. They patted me down, politely asked me to unbutton my David Ortiz jersey so they could be sure I wasn’t wearing a wire, and then swung the car doors open. They felt under the seats, checked the glove box, and asked me to open the trunk for inspection. When they were done, they directed me to continue up the winding drive and park under the trees. I nosed in behind five new Cadillacs, their paint shielded from the sun by sprawling oaks. All of the cars had “Cadillac Frank” emblems affixed beside their brake lights.
As I walked across the lawn to the house, Whoosh stepped down from the porch to shake my hand. Then he took me by the arm and guided me around back, where the smell of good cooking mingled with the salt air. A slight old man with a spatula in his hand was fussing over two gas grills laden with steaks, chicken breasts, and Italian sausages. Three somewhat younger men in white Bermuda shorts and Tommy Bahama shirts lounged by a glistening pool. Babes in thong bikinis passed among them with trays of tall frosty glasses decorated with little umbrellas.
“Nice,” I said.
Whoosh looked at me and smirked.
“What were you expecting? Satriale’s Pork Store?”
He handled the introductions, but I already knew all their names.
Giuseppe Arena, free on bail pending his labor-racketeering trial, put the spatula down, wiped his hands on his “Kiss the Cook” apron, and clasped my right hand in both of his. “Good of you to come,” he said. “Grab yourself a drink. The meat will be ready in a few minutes.”
We ate with Gorham sterling knives and forks, balancing Limoges plates on our laps. Music poured softly from poolside speakers. Joan Armatrading, Annie Lennox, India.Arie—voices that sparkled like the Atlantic on this cloudless late-September day.
I turned to Whoosh, who was meticulously constructing a sandwich from a heap of sausage, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and Italian bread.
“Great choice of music.”
He smirked again.
“What were you expecting, Wayne Newton?”
The conversation veered from the Red Sox to the attributes of the waitresses and back around to the Red Sox again. The Sox had stormed back when I wasn’t looking and had a headlock on a play-off spot. With Rhode Islanders going out of their minds placing bets on the looming play-offs, Whoosh was primed for a killing.
By three in the afternoon, as the plates were being cleared away, I fetched the recording and documents from my car. Then Arena led us down the sloping lawn toward a stone breakwater that thrust forty yards into the sea. Halfway down the breakwater, a long table covered with a white tablecloth had been set with wine glasses and carafes of red and white. No worries about listening devices in this unlikely meeting spot.
Arena claimed the chair at the head of the table. The rest of us seated ourselves as Whoosh filled our glasses. Arena, labor racketeer and acting boss. Carmine Grasso, Rhode Island’s biggest fence. “Cadillac Frank” DeAngelo, car dealer and chief executive of the state’s biggest luxury-car theft ring. Blackjack Baldelli, the no-show jobs king. And Whoosh, Rhode Island’s most successful bookmaker.
Johnny Dio and Vinnie Giordano were conspicuously absent.
Two more men in chalk-striped navy suits stood at the end of the breakwater, binoculars hanging from their necks, making sure none of the sailboats tacking in the light breeze ventured too close.
Once, Raymond L. S. Patriarca had ruled the rackets from Maine to central Connecticut from his little storefront office on Atwells Avenue. But in the seventies and eighties, federal investigators used their new toys—electronic surveillance and the RICO act—to break the power of the Mafia here, just like almost everywhere else. Now the mob was small-time, scratching for a piece of the action against the big boys who ran the drug cartels, the state lotteries, the Indian casinos, and the “escort services” that let you choose your whore on their Web sites.
“Okay,” Arena said. “Let’s see what you’ve got for us.”
I spread the lot plan and architectural renderings out on the table. The men stood and hunched over them. Whoosh pointed a bony finger at the “Dio Construction” label in the right-hand corner of the lot plan and muttered, “Bastard.”
Once they were satisfied, I placed the billing records for the incorporation papers on the table. Arena picked them up, examined them, and passed them to his right.