Chapter 5
Nick ran his hand over the pebble-grained dashboard. “So what's this, a Honda?” At half an inch less than John's six feet two inches, but with longer, looser arms and legs, Nick had had to scrunch himself up a bit to get into the front passenger seat. Maggie and Nelson sat behind, with Rudy between them.
"Right,” John said as they moved out of the little parking lot and south onto Highway 525, which ran down the center of Whidbey's long, snaky length. He flicked on the wipers against the half-mist, half-rain that was standard November weather. “'Eighty-nine Civic."
"I'll tell you what you ought to get next. An Infiniti J30."
"Why's that, Unc?"
"Why? Because it's got the best coffee-holder in the civilized world. Out of sight until you push a button, and then it rolls out of the console right where you can reach it. That's what I drive, an Infiniti. Holds two big cups."
That was Nick for you. When you bought a new car you didn't kick the tires, you checked out the coffee-holder. He really loved the stuff, you had to say that for him. “What's the price tag?"
"In the States? Around forty thousand, I think. A lot more than that in Tahiti, I can tell you."
John laughed. “I think I'll just buy one of those stick-to-the-dashboard things for two-ninety-five and keep the Honda for a couple more years. I work for the government, remember, not Paradise Coffee."
Nick smiled and squeezed his arm. “Just say the word, kid. There's always a place for another one of Pearl's boys."
He meant it too, John thought. Nick was a genuinely nice guy, easygoing and good-natured. John had always liked him; respected him too. Nick had convictions, decent ones, and when the chips were down he put his money where his mouth was. That was what had gotten him in trouble with the West Coast Mafia to begin with. It had been a dozen years ago, before John had joined the FBI; he had just started with the Honolulu PD then and what he knew about organized crime had come mostly from the newspapers.
At that time, Nick had been in the coffee business for about five years, but on a much smaller scale. He had managed to break into the American market, which was just beginning to show signs of life, but there were no Caffe Paradiso coffee bars yet, no whopping mail-order sales. And the Whidbey Island mastery wasn't even a gleam in his eye. Like other Pacific growers who shipped to this part of the country, Nick sold his green coffee beans through a small group of West Coast coffee brokers who dealt with restaurants, grocery stores, and the big commercial roasters. Things had gone well for a while. Paradise beans were building enough of a reputation to let Nick charge the higher prices that the sky-high Tahitian wages required, and his sales had been going up for four years in a row.
And then events on the East Coast intervened. Not long before, there had been a successful crimebusting campaign in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Mafia and Mafia-connected rings that had controlled everything from booze to bagels to knife-grinding were run out of business. A few gangsters from the Gasparone crime family went to prison. Others just dropped out of the limelight, lay low for a while, and then started showing up in other places and businesses around the country.
One of the places was the Northwest, and one of the businesses was coffee-wholesaling. Suddenly, the coffee brokers were whispering to the growers that things had changed, that if they expected the chain grocery stores and big roasters to handle their beans they'd better be prepared to deliver kickbacks. These illegal payments, running anywhere from two percent to ten percent of the price of the beans, were made directly to the brokers themselves, who then (supposedly) passed them on to the roasters and retailers. Without them, the brokers were now saying, they couldn't promise that they'd have much success in moving anybody's coffee. They were sorry about it, it wasn't their doing, it was just too bad, but their hands were tied and that's the way it was.
Whether it was actually kickback money or protection money was hard to say, because if you didn't pay it you didn't merely suffer from disappointing sales; bad things happened to you. Caffe Paradiso, operating on a tiny profit margin as it was, was one of the companies that dug in its heels and resisted, and three months after their second refusal to pay ten percent they found out that two hundred bags-ten tons-of choice Blue Devil had “accidentally” been sitting in a Portland warehouse for four weeks in half a foot of filthy water from a broken drainpipe. It had had to be written off because the insurance wouldn't cover negligence. A little later, a truck with another ton was hijacked fifteen minutes after leaving the Tacoma docks. The robbers were never identified, but the trucker got a friendly warning to the effect that he'd be better off not doing business with Paradise in the future. A friendly warning and two broken hands.
Nick went to the police but nobody was able to do anything about the new racket until one of the creeps in the thick of it, a shyster-accountant named Tony “Klingo” Bozzuto, suddenly changed his spots, working with the FBI for months to gather evidence (which wasn't difficult to come by inasmuch as Bozzuto handled the gang's books) and then testifying against his cronies in court. At that time, two dozen coffee growers were asked by federal prosecutors to submit depositions about the kickbacks and to appear in court if necessary. Only three had the nerve to do it, and one of them was Nick. He'd prepared an eight-page affidavit and shown up in court in Seattle, ready and willing to testify. In the end, the prosecution hadn't had to call him, although his deposition figured strongly. Guilty verdicts came in, the racket was smashed, and a fair number of the men involved went to prison.
All of this John had known before and still he hadn't gone along with Brenda's notion that gangland retaliation was behind the incidents in Tahiti. But the computer search he'd done at her insistence had made him rest less easily. What Brenda had suggested was true: while most of the convicted mobsters had gotten out of jail a long time ago, three of the big ones-"the three G-Men,” Tony “Zorro” Gasparone, Dominick “Nutso” Guardo, and Nate “The Schlepper” Grossman-had made the mistake of appealing their convictions on technical grounds. They had won a retrial a few years later, only to wind up with stiffer sentences than they'd started with. The three of them had been released in the last couple of years and were supposed to be living in Los Angeles, Queens, and Orlando and keeping clean, but who knew?
And there was something else John hadn't known.
"Nick, I was looking through some old newspaper reports. When they hauled off Tony Gasparone at the end of the trial he turned around and pointed at you. You and some others.” John demonstrated, pointing with his right hand at Nick's temple, forefinger extended, thumb cocked.
"Did he? I don't remember."
"Yes, he did."
Nick shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “Aaahh, what can you do? The guy was a big talker, that's all."
"Nick-"
But they had pulled up to the ferry-loading dock in Clinton and were waved by the crew aboard one of the old, green-and-white ferries for the brief trip to Mukilteo and the mainland. As the engines started up and the ship slid smoothly over the ruffled gray expanse of Puget Sound, Nick looked placidly at his nephew.
"John, I know what you're driving at, and I appreciate your concern. But forget about Gasparone; the guy was showing off. Look, sometimes we go for years up at the farm without any accidents, and other times they gang up on us. Okay, we've had a string of problems lately. It's just things averaging out, that's all. Believe me, there's no vendetta going on. Even if there was, Tony Gasparone's got bigger fish to fry than me, take my word for it."