“All you gotta do is name it, Frankie. You know that.”
“How soon can you be here?”
“For you, Frankie, immediately. Seven minutes flat.”
“Use the back elevator.”
Gallardi hung up and took a moment to wonder about his own sanity, then dialed his frantic friend.
“That…that you, Frank?”
“It’s taken care of.”
“Frank. How can I—”
Gallardi answered quietly. “Now you get this: You let this ever touch me, I’ll kill you.”
Gallardi told Matty Figueriano to clean up the designated room. More specificity was not necessary, as a man of Matty’s ilk understood its full meaning. Gallardi then hurried back through his office toward the executive elevator. He was certainly in no mood for the party downstairs but he was the emcee. And if this mess ever came up it might look suspicious that he hadn’t been there. As he rounded the corner outside his office, the voice of Lenny Magliacci chilled him.
“Night, Frank.”
Gallardi stopped dead in his tracks in front of Lenny’s office, which was within earshot of Frank’s. He’d never liked his sister’s son before, but now he had contempt for him. “What the hell you doing here this late, Lenny?”
“Couple important matters to wrap up.”
Gallardi thought: Important matters? No one in the office ever gave Lenny anything important to work on. Gallardi considered the situation for a second and decided not to pursue it. Lenny was too dumb and lazy to have caught any of what happened, and Matty Fig had come in and departed through the back entrance to Frank’s office, where Lenny wouldn’t have seen him from his own space. As Gallardi hurried on, he cursed himself for ever letting his sister Molly wheedle him into hiring Lenny. He had done it more to stop her whining than out of any feeling of family obligation. As far as Gallardi was concerned, her worthless son had his chance and blew it long ago. As the elevator opened, he wondered how many times like tonight he’d regretted hiring the loser. He made a mental note to have Lenny’s office moved to another floor. Close to Maintenance, in the basement.
When Frank Gallardi reached the Quinn ballroom the din of chatter rose a notch as his guests noticed him. A few clapped. Gallardi was not a natural gladhander but made the rounds with a word or two or a body hug for these people who knew and loved him.
Three hours later, Lenny Magliacci blended himself into the casino crowd near the entrance to the Austin Quinn ballroom. The dense carpet covering the casino floor absorbed only a fraction of the noise from the slots, tables and revelers.
Seldom had he seen as much security. He was asked for I.D. by two men in black suits. President McNabb was surrounded by his Secret Service entourage. Magliacci wondered whether the mystery caller his uncle had threatened from the phone in his office earlier in the evening was here in the ballroom.
CHAPTER 2
Anyone watching would have thought Frank Gallardi was daydreaming as he sat in his office and gazed out at the crowd on the Boardwalk and the ocean beyond, but far from that, he was thinking over the call he’d received minutes earlier from Sean O’Malley, an Atlantic City police detective who had once worked weekend security for a couple of years in the Trophy Club. When O’Malley was promoted to city detective he gave up the part-time job at the casino, but Frank saw O’Malley as a pipeline to the police and invited him to drop in on him once in a while. They talked about the M.O.’s of the latest rip-off artists to hit the casinos and of other cases O’Malley had inside information on, but it was unusual for the detective to call for an appointment. “Something interesting,” he had said.
O’Malley sat across from Gallardi and pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket. “Still advertising with this kind of pen?” he asked. As Gallardi examined the pen, O’Malley told him a local house builder putting in a foundation out on the west side of town had dug up what at first appeared to be trash, but called the police when a rolled-up rug was stained with blood. Rolled up in the rug was a writing pen bearing the Golden Touch Casino & Hotel logo, and some cocktail glasses that had remained intact. Finally, there was a bloody framed photo.
“Recognize this woman, Frank?”
It was a picture of Karly sitting at a table with Gallardi in what he recognized as the small secluded bar in the Trophy Club.
“Of course, I know as well as you do! Karly Amarson.”
“Yeah, and we found a man’s gold bracelet there with the name of an underworld character we keep an eye on engraved on it.”
“What’s the name?” Gallardi asked.
“Figueriano. Matty Figueriano. Know him?”
Gallardi leaned forward in his chair. “Everybody knows Matty,” he uttered. “So where are you going with this?”
“Haven’t found a body yet! Just all the stuff I told you about. But we believe there is one. You seen Karly lately, Frank?” It was a rhetorical question.
“Yeah, yeah, she’s been gone from here a long time. Just disappeared. You think it’s her?”
“One of the blood samples matches Karly’s DNA. The amount of blood makes the M.E. sure she’s dead.”
Gallardi looked stressed but said nothing.
O’Malley continued. “Matty Fig, or whoever buried that stuff, may have been told what to do, and may not know what had happened to the body, or he may have disposed of it elsewhere to separate it from other evidence. There is a body, though. You can bet on that.”
O’Malley left and Gallardi closed his office door behind him. He was in an uncomfortable quandary. What the hell would Figueriano have done with the body? It was an unexpected, and unacceptable, loose end.
He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Washington, one that would bypass all bureaucrats, secretaries and assistants. “Yes,” a man’s voice answered.
“We need to talk.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“In person.”
“Wish I had the time, Frank. Phone’ll have to do.”
“Uh-uh.”
The man in Washington chuckled. “Hell, this is the most secure line in the world. What’s it about, anyway?”
“Not on the phone,” Gallardi asserted. “When can you meet me?”
Frank Gallardi stood at the corner window of a D.C. hotel suite taking in the White House and further away the Capitol, both gleaming in the darkness. Their symbolism was never lost on him but he didn’t need to live in Washington to appreciate them. When the door rattled, he opened it and saw his expected guest standing between two men wearing dark suits and no smiles. One of them started to enter the room, but the visitor nodded for him to wait.
Gallardi turned the dead bolt lock in the door and the two shook hands. “Ever get tired of the shadows?”
“Rest of ’em stayed down in the lobby. Guess they trust you.”
“I’m touched. Drink?” he said, gesturing toward the mini-bar.
“Glenfiddich, neat. What’s on your mind, Frank?”
Gallardi set his drink on the bar. “Some builder in Atlantic City dug up items the cops believe is from Karly’s apartment.”
The man took a moment to let it sink in. “Tell me about it.”
“This construction crew digs up something suspicious and calls the police. They come out and take a look, bring in the medical examiner, the crime scene stuff, yellow tape and all that. There was crusted blood on a rug that was rolled up. Drink glasses and other shit inside it, including a writing pen that’s got the Golden Touch logo on it. The cops had Karly’s DNA in their database. I’m sure you’ve already figured out that it matches some of the blood on the rug. They also found blood that belonged to Matty Figueriano and a gold bracelet with his name engraved on it. They figure it came off while he was burying the stuff and he didn’t notice it until afterward, when it was too risky for him to go back and dig it up. And there’s a third blood sample. No match in the database.”