“Look at me, Santo,” he said in a quiet voice.
Massi was still switching his attention from Willy to Lil, both of them now standing back to either side of Joe, looking as if they were but one command away from unleashing holy mayhem.
“Look at me,” Joe repeated.
Massi’s eyes briefly settled on Joe’s face.
“You had contact with John Gregory recently. Tell me about that.”
A small crease appeared between Massi’s eyebrows. “Johnny? I haven’t talked to him in years.”
Joe hesitated. Not only had they assumed Santo Massi to have been the most reasonable conduit between John Gregory and Gino Famolare, but he’d all but admitted to seeing Gregory earlier.
Joe tried a more oblique approach, gently releasing Massi’s hands and using his voice to cut through the man’s terror. “But you know what Johnny’s been up to.”
Massi’s expression opened up hopefully. “I know he called Dante for advice.”
Joe relaxed a bit. “Dante Lagasso?”
“Yeah, yeah. Lagasso. I was in the room when Dante told Tito about how Johnny called him up a few weeks ago.”
“What was Johnny after?”
“A torch. Dante finally gave him Gino Famolare, after everybody’d agreed to terms.” Massi was speaking fast, his eyes eager to please.
“And what were those?” Joe asked, feeling the relief that accompanied a long-sought-after reward.
“Forty grand total, with twenty percent going to Dante for making the connection.”
“Isn’t that high?”
“Yeah, but it was an out-of-town job, in unfamiliar territory. It was like an eight-grand surcharge.”
Joe leaned forward on the balls of his feet, getting his face as close as possible to Massi’s and cutting off the latter’s view of the two others. Massi stared into Joe’s eyes, as riveted as if he’d been hypnotized by a snake charmer.
“Was there any explanation,” Joe asked, almost whispering, “why Johnny wanted a torch?”
But here Santo Massi proved a disappointment. “Money?” he asked hopefully.
Joe persisted. “Good guess. How many fires was this contract supposed to cover?”
Massi was clearly confused. “One… I guess. I mean, forty Gs is fat for one, like I said, but it’s cheap if you got more, and Gino isn’t cheap.”
“Do you recall the date of this conversation?”
“Are you kidding?”
Joe let that pass. “Did you meet with, or do you even know, Famolare?”
“No, but he’s kind of famous, if you’re into that kind of thing.”
“Do you know if he was paid for the job?”
“Yeah. But later, I heard Tito say somebody died in it. Tito said Gino would probably be pissed when he heard that, ’cause he’s such a perfectionist.”
“Tito is connected to Gino in some way?”
“He knows him, is all. Tito’s kind of like Dante’s secretary, not that I’d say that to his face.”
“Do you know Tito’s full name?”
Massi looked at him blankly. “No. It’s Tito.”
Joe stood back up and glanced over at Lil and Willy. “I think we’re done here.”
Without comment, they both left the room to return to the car.
Massi stared up at Joe with his eyes wide and pleading again. “What’re you going to do?”
“What we said we were,” Joe answered him, reaching into his pocket and extracting his wallet. “Pay you off and thank you for your time.”
He handed Massi a hundred-dollar bill, more by far than he normally would have paid-a surcharge to assuage his own guilt.
Massi held the money as if he might be asked to read aloud from it. “That’s it?”
Joe had already moved to the door, and now turned back. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not gonna kill me?”
Joe scowled at him, irritated at what the man’s life choices had forced Joe to do to him. “That what you want?”
Massi held up both hands, still holding the bill. “No, no. I’m sorry.”
You are that, Joe thought, wondering if he should even react. Finally, he couldn’t resist. “The way I see it, you’ll kill yourself fast enough anyway.”
Massi nodded. “Yes, sir. Sure will.” After a pause, during which Joe just stared at him, Massi added, “How’m I gonna get home?”
Joe nodded toward the hundred-dollar bill, as disappointed in himself as disgusted at Massi. “Take a cab.”
Chapter 18
With the over-sized desk hiding most of his body, Ben Silva’s head floated just above the wooden sign labeled “Director” perched on the table’s edge, at least from Joe’s slouched and bleary perspective. It made him think of the Wizard of Oz, which in turn reminded him of how little sleep he’d just had. He tried to concentrate on the conversation.
“From Lil’s report,” Silva was saying, “it looks like we have enough probable cause to rub Gino’s hair the wrong way. At least, we can access his trucking company’s logs and find out if and where he was driving on the days those fires broke out. It’s a limited search-I doubt a judge would give us more leeway than that, based on what we’ve got-but it’s a start. Plus,” he added with a tired smile, “it’ll let him know we’re looking at him.”
“He’s gotta know that by now,” Lil told her boss. “The Vermonters staked out his house and followed him to his girlfriend’s love nest Down Neck. If everybody on his block hasn’t already called him by now, I’d be very disappointed in the Brotherhood.”
Silva raised his eyebrows questioningly at Joe and Willy.
“You didn’t know about her before we did your job for you,” Willy said in his usual diplomatic mode.
“Peggy DeAngelis,” Lil intoned, reading from a sheet of paper and covering any potential awkward silences. “Aged twenty-two, a couple of years of community college, does temp work typing and some modeling. Father is Augustin DeAngelis. He works on the docks, is definitely connected, did some time years ago for extortion and assault, but has been clean ever since. Peggy’s digs are worth about four hundred grand, and they’re owned by a holding company I didn’t have the time or energy to try tracing. Suffice it to say that she is showing no financial distress.”
Lil folded the paper and looked over at Willy, adding, “And no, it doesn’t look like her name appears in any of our or anyone else’s files.”
“Well, there you have it,” Silva said brightly. “We owe you one, Agent Kunkle.”
Willy didn’t do well with this sort of reverse psychology. “Whatever,” he growled.
“I should warn you both, though,” Silva went on, “that the truck logs probably won’t do us much good. That particular company is Mobbed up enough that whatever we find will be whatever they want us to.”
“Then what’s the point?” Willy asked.
“Mostly to apply heat,” was the answer. “It’s cat-and-mouse. We get ’em when we can, but otherwise, we mostly pressure them in the hopes they’ll either quit or make a mistake. Also, just as you did in finding Santo Massi, every once in a while, you fall over someone who’ll actually tell you a few things.”
“Like the girl,” Joe said softly.
There was a momentary stillness in the room. Silva smiled. “You want to talk to the girl?”
“Why not?” Joe asked. “Seems like she would be the ultimate pressure point for Gino, at least. She may also tell us something. But talking to her would show him we know what’s up. That screws him up professionally and personally. Especially,” he added with a slight smile, “when we interview his wife and kid afterward.”
Silva laughed. “Ouch-hardball.” He nodded toward Lil. “Okay. Set it up.”
Tito Malossini came up behind Santo Massi with a stealth belying his enormous bulk. Santo was at the bar, as usual, at one of the city’s dozens of so-called social clubs, where only certain people were welcome.
Tito slipped a large hand onto Santo’s shoulder and held it there purposefully.
“Hey,” he said in greeting.
Santo looked up nervously, spilling some of the drink he had halfway to his mouth. “Hey, Tito. How’s things?”
“Good.” Tito’s voice was flat and uncompromising. “Come on back.” He tugged at Santo slightly in encouragement.