Madman's Thirst (17 page)

“Small favors,” Scarne said. “I’m
not familiar with some of these street names. Do you know what communities they
are?”

“No, but we can check.”

Chelsea brought Scarne’s list over
to the computer and called up a borough map on the Internet. None of the
addresses were anywhere near St. Stan’s in New Brighton. All appeared to be in
parishes many miles away. And none of the names, other than the old woman he’d
already checked and the doctor he was going to visit, were listed in books past
1965. If they were related to the baking Gadomskis, they had probably moved or
died before the bakery closed in 1970.

“Chelsea, you’ve been a peach,”
Scarne said as they walked back to her reception desk. “Have you eaten? Can I
buy you lunch?”

“Oh, no. Thank you. I brought a
salad. I’m getting married in two months and want to fit into my dress.”

“Congratulations. He’s a lucky
guy. I bet he’s very cute.”

She laughed at his teasing.

“He’s very good-looking.”

After a lunch that was better than
he expected, Scarne headed to Great Kills to see Dr. Jack Gadomski.    

     “You don’t have an
appointment,” the receptionist said. She was a formidable-looking older woman
wearing a brown pants suit and a lot of jade jewelry. She looked at him
suspiciously, her eyes traveling to the small souvlaki stain on his shirt. Was
he the drooler? “Did you call earlier?”

“I don’t know what you are talking
about,” Scarne said. “I’d like to see Dr. Gadomski on a business matter.”

Her mouth turned down at the
corners.

“Just leave the samples with me,
and your card. If the doctor is interested he’ll call. You must be new to the
territory.”

“I’m not a drug salesman, lady.
This is a confidential matter.”

“You still need an appointment.”

Scarne could feel the disapproval of
the four patients who were sitting in the waiting room reading out-of-date
magazines. Nobody likes a line jumper. He thought about clutching his chest and
falling to the ground, but instead took out his wallet and extracted a business
card.

“Just give this to the doc and
tell him I have a few questions about a murder I’m investigating. I’ll wait out
here and chat with his patients.”

“Just a minute,” she said and
walked quickly away. She was back almost immediately. “The doctor will see you
now.”

As Scarne walked through the door
leading to the examination rooms he heard one of the waiting room patients say,
“I’m going to try that some day.”

The receptionist offered him a
seat in a small office and Dr. Gadomski walked in a moment later holding the
business card.

“Mr. Scarne? What’s this about a
murder?”

Gadomski was a
distinguished-looking man with a full head of white hair and powerful-looking
hands. He radiated confidence and Scarne figured he probably had a low
tolerance for bullshit.

“I’m looking into a homicide and
my only real lead is that the killer’s father may have owned a Polish bakery on
Staten Island 40 odd years ago. The Gadomski name came up. You are what I would
call a long shot, doctor. I don’t suppose you moonlight as a hit man?”

“If my malpractice premiums go any
higher,” Gadomski said, laughing, “I may have to. But who was murdered?”

Scarne told him.

“I read about that. Did you really
think I had something to do with it.”

“No. The guy I’m looking for is
dying and moved from the borough 40 years ago. He’s also a Vietnam War
veteran.”

“What am I, chopped liver,”
Gadomski said, hooking a thumb at a group of framed certificates on the wall
behind him. “I was a goddamn grunt.”

Scarne got up and looked at them. Most
were diplomas and professional awards, but two of them in the center, in an
obvious place of honor, were from the military. The top one was Corporal John
G. Gadomski’s Honorable Discharge. Below it was a Bronze Star citation.  

“How did that happen?”

“There was a draft back then,
remember? Although I enlisted. Crazy, huh?”

“I did, too.”

“Army?”

“Marines.”

“Even crazier. I went in just to
keep two of my buddies happy. They’d just gotten drafted.”

“I suspect alcohol was involved.”

“You’d better believe it. We were
kind of wild. But we all came home.”

“One of your pals named Mario?”

“How the hell did you know that?”

“I met his mom getting a pedicure
in the nail salon where your dad’s bakery use to be. She said you and her son
were a handful but turned out well.”

Gadomski laughed and picked up a
picture from his desk. It showed three young men in uniform fatigues with their
arms around each other.

“That’s me and Mario and Whitey at
Fort Dix. We did our basic together. But we got split up after that. I went to
the 25
^th
Infantry, Mario became an MP in Saigon, which didn’t hurt
when he went on the cops, and Whitey eventually went to Ranger school. I still
see Mario occasionally. Whitey, we lost track of. He moved away after the
service. Girl trouble, I think.”

Gadomski was easy enough to pick
out, despite the intervening years. More out of curiosity than anything else, and
because he felt an affinity with a fellow vet, Scarne asked, “Which one is
Mario?”

“Big guy on the left,” Gadomski
said, tapping the photo. “Whitey’s the short one. But he was tough, strong as
an ox.”

“You all have dark hair in the
photo,” Scarne said. “How did Whitey get his name. I presume it’s a nickname.”

“Yeah. Name was Wit. Wit Banaszak.
His father used to help out my dad in the bakery, when he wasn’t shaping up on
the docks. He was learning the business. That’s how I met Whitey. His old man
and mine even talked about opening up another bakery in New Brighton, as
partners. It had a big Polish community back then. But Mr. Banaszak got sick
and nothing came of it. What’s the matter? What did I say?”

“Banaszak lived near St. Stan’s?”

“Sure. It was their parish. But
not any more. Whitey’s dad died, then his mother. I don’t think he had any kin
left on Staten Island. Made it easy for him to move away. Like I said, we lost
touch. I went to college, then med school. Married, kids, you know the drill.
By the time I had time for old friends, no one knew where the hell he was. I’ve
tried to Google him and check some veterans’ websites, but drew a blank. I
don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

“How do you spell his name?”

Gadomski did, and then looked at
Scarne.

“You don’t think Whitey…?

“I bet his father made a mean pączek.”

CHAPTER 20 – NAMES, PLEASE

Salvatore ‘Sallie Mae’ Lacuna made
much of his early money in a college loan scam that provided false documents to
illegals who then bilked millions in government-guaranteed education loans. The
scheme earned him both his mob nickname and a stretch in Federal prison. After
his release, he concentrated on more traditional bookmaking and loan sharking,
eventually taking over control of his small “family.”

 As a sideline, mostly to keep up
appearances and to warn the ever-encroaching Russians that the mafia still had
some teeth, he arranged muscle when there was any heavy lifting to be done. He
cultivated the fiction that his crew was the “Blackwater” of the borough;
ruthless and talented mercenaries for hire. In truth, the dregs that were left
in his gang, while certainly ruthless, were good for little more than beating
up slow payers or knocking over the occasional convenience store. Which is why
he brought in Lucas Gallo and Whitey Banaszak from outside to handle the Pearsall
job for Nathan Bimm. There was simply too much at stake to leave it to the
clumsy oafs in his local crew. Plus he suspected that his men would balk at
such an assignment. The girl’s rape and murder had certainly been an ugly
business but Lacuna’s initial objections were overcome by promises of payoffs
and jobs for his family down the line. He knew that most people thought Bimm
was his front man.  The truth was more the opposite; he needed Bimm – and his
often lucrative assignments – more than the fat bastard needed him.

The Pearsall hit had something to
do with some big real estate deal Bimm was working on. Lacuma didn’t know what
it was. Bimm had mentioned NASCAR, which seemed unlikely to Lacuna, but
whatever it was, it was worth murdering a girl. That meant big money. In his
gut, he knew there was someone else pulling the strings. Bimm was an amoral
sleazebag, but had never gotten his hands this dirty. Yeah, a lot of money was
involved. And Lacuna didn’t want the Russians to see any of it.

A contact in Atlantic City gave
him some names. He picked Banaszak because he knew his way around Staten
Island, but no longer had any ties there. Gallo had never worked anywhere in
the New York area. Who would have thought he’d be the weak link, raping the
girl and outraging the community. But Banaszak had certainly come through.
Killing Gallo and spreading him around in five states was quick thinking. The
trail was cold. Even Bimm didn’t know their names.

***

Although Lacuna derived most of
his income on Staten Island, he lived in a huge colonial on a one-acre parcel on
a quiet street in Holmdel, New Jersey. The mobster didn’t want to raise his
children in a borough being turned into a sewer by the developers like Bimm and
their pocket politicians.

Sallie Mae was a respected and
well-liked member of his community. His two boys, now away at college, had gone
to the local high school and were often in the local papers for their athletic
prowess. His wife, Theresa, was part of regular golf and bridge foursomes at
the Bamm Hollow Country Club. It was an open secret that Lacuna was
“connected,” but in that part of New Jersey, where many residents worked on
Wall Street, not much thought was given to how a man made a living. Indeed,
Lacuna had served less time as a guest of the Government than some of his
white-collar neighbors.

Golf and tireless charity work
helped Theresa Lacuna keep her figure. She was a handsome woman of 55, and
Sallie Mae truly loved her. But as befit a man of his position, he had a
‘goomah’ on Staten Island. Her name was Caitlin Connolly, and, in addition to
being 20 years younger than Theresa, she possessed the soft white Irish skin,
luxuriant red pubic hair, full breasts and rosy nipples that the capo had
lusted after since his first sexually related erection, which occurred when, as
a young boy, he watched an old Maureen O’Hara movie on television.

Mob politics had dictated Sallie
Mae’s fortunately happy marriage, but a still-robust libido and macho tradition
put him in Caitlin’s bed once a week.

***

Renzo Bucatelli, Lacuna’s
bodyguard and driver, was parked two doors down from the small brick cape where
Caitlin Connolly lived on Davis Avenue in Staten Island’s Sunset Hill section.
The woman would have been happy living in an apartment, but Sallie Mae knew a
good real estate investment when he saw it. The cape had come on the market in
an estate and a family lawyer, anxious to curry favor with Lucana, who held
$20,000 of his gambling I.O.U.’s, made sure Sallie Mae had the inside track.
The house was in her name, and would provide security for Connolly when her
days as a Radio City Music Hall Rockette ended. In the long run, Lucana told
his driver, it was less  hassle than constantly buying jewelry and clothes, and
always getting it wrong.

Bucatelli liked Caitlin, as
unpretentious a goomah as he’d come across, and was glad it had worked out for
her. Caitlin was a little long in the tooth for Bucatelli’s taste, but he
certainly understood why his boss didn’t mind driving all across the Island to
see her. Her dancer’s legs, which seemed to go up to her armpits, were worth
the price of the house alone. 

 The bodyguard shifted the down
pillow under his buttocks and simultaneously pressed the electronic control
that adjusted the lumbar support of the driver’s side seat in the Cadillac. The
nagging ache in his right hip and leg subsided. He knew it would return, and
he’d just have to resettle himself again. A couple of drinks would help, but he
was on duty. He wouldn’t take anything more than some Advil, since Aleve made
him drowsy. Bucatelli knew that in his line of business he could get any drug
he wanted, but he had seen too many addicts in his life. He could live with the
pain, at least until the inevitable arthritis complicated the damage the
bullets had inflicted.

Sometimes walking helped, and he
often strolled up and down the street during the early part of his watch,
always careful to keep the car and Caitlin Connolly’s house in plain view.
Sallie Mae never stayed less than four hours with his mistress and the walks
also helped to keep Bucatelli awake and alert. But there was a steady rain this
afternoon and Sallie Mae took the umbrella when he went into to the house.
There was a thermos of strong black coffee, but Bucatelli merely sipped it. He
had no desire to stand in the rain on a residential street and take a leak. He
wasn’t particularly worried about dozing off. In his previous occupation he had
learned how to stay awake at all hours. In a crunch, he’d hold off on the
Advils and let the ache do its thing.    

Renzo Bucatelli was the cream of
Sallie Mae Lucana’s crew. Lucana trusted him explicitly, and not because he was
the nephew of his sister’s husband. The job of bodyguard was too important to
be left to some idiot relative. But Renzo Bucatelli was sharp and knew the
streets, from both sides. He was a former cop who left the force after being
accidentally shot by fellow officers in a fusillade that also put 64 holes in a
frightened Haitian immigrant. The poor bastard had inadvisably reached for his cell
phone in a dark alley. The fact that Bucatelli’s gun hadn’t cleared its holster
before all hell broke loose went over well with the pension review board.

In Italian families of a certain
generation, there was a thin line that separated the career paths of cops and
robbers. Bucatelli easily crossed back over the line and was soon earning a
nice supplement to his disability pension. In addition to his aches and pains,
the police bullets left Bucatelli with a permanent limp. But he was still a
powerful man, made more imposing by the 30 extra pounds he now carried as a
result of the sedentary nature of his job. The fact that the former police
officer was licensed to carry a gun and knew how to use it – something that
couldn’t be taken for granted with the new breed of so-called ‘button men’ –
was a nice bonus for Salvatore Lacuna.

Neither the new heft nor the limp
slowed him down much, and Bucatelli was earning a well-deserved reputation for
selective violence. He hadn’t been in his new job long enough to earn a mob
moniker, but he did rate an index card near his boss on the bulletin board at
the Joint Organized Crime Task Force in Manhattan. Some of his former friends
in the Police Department assigned to the Task Force referred to him as Renzo
‘No Nickname’ Bucatelli and thought that there was a chance that might stick.
Others liked Renzo ‘Bulls Eye’ Bucatelli, in honor of the friendly fire
incident. There was even some talk in the Task Force about suggesting one of
the names to his mob compatriots, but that was squelched by humorless higher
ups.

Bucatelli’s iPhone chimed. It was
Sallie Mae. That was unusual. He’d only been inside the house for 30 minutes.

“Yeah, boss.”

“Renzo!”

It was Caitlin’s voice, panicked.
The line went dead.

Bucatelli slid out of the car and
ran to the house. He took the stairs to the front door two at a time, oblivious
to the pains in his leg and hip. Jesus Christ. I hope we don’t have a Nelson
Rockefeller thing going on here. How would I explain that to Theresa. Not that
she didn’t know about the Irish goomah. They always did. Still.

The door was open and Bucatelli
was halfway through the Florida room when he spotted Caitlin lying on the couch
in the living room, seemingly asleep. What the fuck?  He heard the door close
behind him and then everything went black.

***

Lacuna was the first to come
around. Once his head cleared and his eyes focused, he knew he was a dead man.
No one trusses a family capo naked to a chair and then hopes to make a deal.
The last thing he remembered was walking to the kitchen calling out Caitlin’s
name, hoping she’d put the champagne on ice. Now he was freezing his ass off in
the finished basement. He started limning the possibilities. Relations with the
families in the other boroughs and New Jersey were the best they’d been in
years. Everyone was so shell-shocked by the Feds’ successful anti-mafia crusade
that they didn’t have the time or energy for internecine feuds. It must be the
fucking Russians, although he couldn’t fathom even them being that crazy. And why?
We hated each other, but there had been no disputes worth starting a war over.
And if they just decided to take over, it would have been a bomb or some other
traditional assassination. Maybe it was just some nut job. There were certainly
enough of them running around. How ironic it would be to be killed by some
Hannibal Lecter type.

Lucana heard a screeching sound
and watched in horror as a tall man dressed in a black suit effortlessly
dragged a metal chair containing Renzo Bucatelli from the adjoining laundry
room and set it opposite him, tying it fast to a ceiling support pole with
cable wire. More cable wire went around the driver’s throat, so that his head
could only move forward slightly. The unconscious Renzo was, like his boss,
also naked and bound hand and foot by heavy tape. How could he have been taken
so easily? Suddenly he thought of Caitlin. Brutal a man as he was, Salvatore
Lacuna felt a pang of remorse. She certainly didn’t deserve anything like this.
He strained against his binding and tried to shout through the tape covering
his mouth. His exertions should have tipped him over. Then he realized he was
also tethered to another support pole, with cable wire around his throat as
well. The tall man sat down in a chair between the two helpless men.

“Will you scream or shout?”

Lacuna shook his head and the man
gently peeled the tape from his lips.

“Where’s the woman?”

“She’s upstairs,” Hagen Sobok
replied, impressed. “A bit uncomfortable, but in good health. I do not like to
hurt women.”

That part was true, he thought. He
hadn’t even liked knocking her out but that was unavoidable. Now she was bound
and gagged in an upstairs closet. Hopefully she wouldn’t hear anything. Sobok
wasn’t worried about her identifying him. He’s be long gone into the Manhattan
melting pot by the time she was found. Sobok had thought of using the woman as
leverage in the upcoming interrogation, but the mere threat to harm her might
not have been enough. I probably would have had to torture her in front of her
lover. Why put myself through that unpleasantness, when the bodyguard would
serve the purpose equally as well, if it came to that.

“Who are you? What do you want? Do
you know who I am?”

“Of course I know who you are?
That is why I am here. You are the man who contracted out the murder of
Elizabeth Pearsall. I need the names of the two men who fulfilled the
assignment. I understand that you are the only person that knows them.” Sobok
smiled benignly. “Their current locations would also be helpful.” He actually
took out a reporter’s notebook and pen from his suit jacket. First he wrote a
note to call someone later to have the woman freed. Then, pen poised, he looked
expectantly at Lacuna.

“I don’t know what the fuck you
are talking about,” Lacuna said. His mind raced. Was someone seeking revenge
for the dead girl? But if they knew he was involved, why not just go to the
cops? That’s what her father would do, not hire someone like this, an obvious
professional. It couldn’t be Bimm. If the fat bastard knew how to get such a
man, he wouldn’t have needed Lacuna in the first place. “If you are smart you
will walk out of this house and I’ll forget this ever happened.”

“Please, Mr. Lacuna. Not that I am
judging you, but you must have known that nothing good would come out of killing
a child. I myself would not accept such a commission. As a practical matter,
they are risky. They attract attention and, I must say, justifiable outrage.
The death of a criminal or crooked politician may be investigated, of course,
but the murder of an innocent can generate unforeseen consequences, as appears
to be the case in this instance.”