“Why?”
“It’s nice to have confirmation. Wouldn’t you?”
“Will you believe me? I mean, totally believe me without reservations?”
Her answer was quick and direct. “Yes.”
Hooker stared into her eyes and told her. “His name is Tony Pallatzo and he started as a street bum in Brooklyn.”
For a full ten minutes he filled her in on what he knew and what he thought of Anthony Pell, speculating on what could have been when he was out of the jurisdiction of his own outfit. His information was sketchy about Pell’s later life, but one thing he was sure of was that Anthony Pell hadn’t changed a bit. Right now he was rich and important with an attitude of being well educated, but Hooker knew that he was still a street bum at heart underneath the facade.
Judy let it all sink in, then asked Mako, “Daddy was a pretty shrewd judge of character. I remember some pretty heavy operators trying to con him in business situations and he took them to the cleaners. In fact, several wound up in prison.”
“Your dad could have been good, doll, but there are others who can be just as good and sometimes even better.”
“But Anthony Pell never tried to cheat my father!”
“Not yet,” Hooker said simply.
“Everything they did together was successful,” she insisted. “Do you know they made millions? Even Anthony’s lesser share has made him rich.”
“No doubt.”
With a touch of exasperation, Judy said, “Then what are you getting to?”
“How much was his employer getting?”
“Anthony Pell worked for himself. He had no employer.”
Mako just looked at her. There were taut lines around his mouth. Finally he said, “Pell had a boss. He couldn’t walk away from him, he couldn’t be retired from him and no way could he quit. His boss is one hell of a big businessman with enough power and money to control governments and an army big enough to back up his demands. In plain words it’s called the mob. Organized crime.”
“But...”
He anticipated her question and shook his head. “I don’t care what you read or hear. They made a big deal of stopping the Gambino family and they put on a show when Colombo got hit. When John Gotti did his thing it took all the heat off the background action, and when Gotti got sent up you’d think crime had gone down the drain.”
“But...,” she started.
“Judy, don’t fool yourself. The lawyers and the bright boys have control of things these days. The lesser rackets they give over to their street people, but where the heavy dough is, there they are. Industry is fleeced out of billions, tonnages of merchandise diverted into their channels of disposal, wars fought and religions invaded to suit their demands. Their needs never cease and keep on getting bigger. You think they can’t get choice personnel to pull off their stunts for them?”
“And you think Pell is one of them?” she demanded.
Hooker didn’t answer her. He simply nodded.
“You’re sure?”
“Not yet,” he told her.
“When will you know?”
“Pell is a smart one. He thinks. He knew that street mobs get knocked off by other mobs or the law itself. It didn’t take him long to see that big money on the streets is pocket change to the real bosses. One thing they know is how to spend it. The heads of families still had homes in old ethnic neighborhoods, living by old European standards, and rarely got past the capitals of their crime industry. Oh, maybe a run to Vegas or a side trip to Atlantic City, and all very hush-hush with bodyguards beside them and damn near a midnight military approach to a hotel they probably own.”
“How did Pell do it?”
Mako glanced down at her, reading the expression on her face. “You don’t believe all this, do you?”
“You’re describing a world I’ve never been part of.”
Hooker took a deep breath of the fresh sea air. For a few seconds they watched the activity in the water below, listening to the delicate splashes as a predator snapped up a surface meal, flipping its tail in a dive.
“You’ve been part of it, Judy. At least you were on the fringes of it.”
“Are you telling me Daddy was inside things like that?” Her loyalty to her father was showing in her face and she let her fingers fall away from his forearm.
“I don’t think your dad knew anything of what was really going on.”
“Mako, he was a brilliant businessman!”
“In his own field, yes.”
“If Anthony Pell was doing anything illegal he would have known about it!”
“That’s the point. Pell wasn’t doing anything illegal. He was working the best kind of con game of all... one where everybody made a pile, business expanded and the future looked great from every angle.”
“Then what’s the catch?”
“Someplace along the line somebody was really going to hit the big time. Legally.”
Hooker felt her fingers go around his arm again, then she asked, “That’s the good part?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s the bad part?”
Hooker spit down into the ocean. Even thinking about all this had given him a bad taste in his mouth. “Somebody always has to die,” he told her.
It took her the better part of a minute to see what he was driving at. Very quietly, she whispered, “Daddy?”
“He was one.”
“Mr. Becker...?”
“Yes. He was another.”
Judy clenched her lower lip in her teeth and her face looked drawn.
“Is this... just the beginning?” she asked him.
“Things this big just don’t happen suddenly. It’s a planned operation that was laid out with a lot of thought. There was money to back up every move and it wasn’t being done for a minimum return.”
“Why, Mako? Why would they go to so much trouble?”
“Simple. It’s legitimate. They could get all the money they could ever want without having cops breathing down their necks or knowing the Feds were planting listening devices in their houses or business offices.”
“And Anthony Pell is part of it.” It was a statement this time.
Hooker nodded again.
“Do you think... he’d try to kill you?”
“I think he already has.” He watched the frown form on her forehead but didn’t explain any further. Instead he said, “Don’t worry about me, Judy. I’ve been down that road more than he has and he’s not about to catch me off base.”
The tone of his voice was too light to please her at all. “What would you do, Mako?”
“You don’t want to know, Judy.”
“Yes,” she insisted, “I really do.”
“I’d kill him,” he told her.
Down below him Mako saw the sea bathed in the soft glow from the open portholes of empty staterooms. There was no movement of the surface, no fish feeding, just some gentle swells reacting to the pressure of the ocean around the area. For those few moments it seemed placid again, peaceful and quiet with no indication of death and destruction at all. A quiet, empty sea.
Unnaturally quiet.
Judy’s eyes had been following his and slowly she pointed her finger to the minor disturbance astern that was angling toward them, the rigid dorsal fin of a large, deadly shark that rolled slightly when he was beneath them, and Mako knew that black eye in the sleek body was staring straight up at him.
“Mako...,” she started to say.
“Are you talking to me or to him?”
“Do you think... could that be the one Billy Bright...”
“It’s just a fish, Judy.”
“But it was a mako shark.”
“Yes.”
“We were diving in waters with those around us!”