Tragic (28 page)

“Yes, I guess so.”

“And along with being vigilant, you’re a smart guy, right, Mr. Vitteli?”

“I ain’t a Columbia grad or nothin’,” Vitteli replied. “But I get by.”

“Yes, you do,” Karp said. “And wouldn’t a smart, vigilant union boss who knows it’s a dangerous world out there take steps to protect himself? Like Vince Carlotta tried to do?”

“Like I said, you learn to handle yourself pretty good on the docks.”

“That’s right, I remember now, if the Puerto Rican yahoo didn’t have a gun you would have decked him, right? Like Joe Louis decked Max Schmeling?”

“Yeah, just like the Brown Bomber, I might have taken a swing, only I’m Eyetie, so maybe a better example would be Rocky Graziano.”

“Good choice, tough as nails, ate punches and asked for more,” Karp said as he turned back toward the jury. “Mr. Vitteli, aren’t you forgetting someone else who was with you that night at the bar?”

Vitteli looked suddenly wary. “I don’t know who you mean.”

“Well, there’s you, Vince, Joey, Jackie, Randy McMahon and . . .” Karp broke his sentence off. “And someone else wasn’t there?”

Vitteli’s eyes widened for a moment and shifted out toward the gallery. Karp turned to see who he was looking at and saw Kowalski raise his shoulders as the intern scowled and made notes.

“Yeah, of course, my driver, Sal Amaya, was there.”

“Your driver? Isn’t Mr. Amaya your bodyguard?” Karp asked.

“He’s both.”

Karp looked from one juror’s face to another, holding their eyes for just a moment. “Why didn’t you mention him when you told the jury who was with you at the bar?”

“I guess I forgot.”

“Did you also forget that you sent Mr. Amaya ahead with Randy McMahon that night?”

“I might have. Yeah, now that I think about it, me and Vince had a couple more things to talk about in private while we walked.”

“Is that it? Or did you send him ahead so that there’d be one less witness to the murder of Vince Carlotta?”

“What? That’s crap . . . !”

“Or maybe you were worried that Mr. Amaya might do his job and take on these so-called yahoos just like Rocky Graziano, right?”

Unable to help himself, Vitteli shot a hard look at Clooney, who seemed stunned at the turn of events and only then remembered to jump up and object.

“On precisely what grounds, Mr. Clooney, might I ask?” the judge asked.

Not sure of what to say, Clooney used the old standard. “Uh, he’s badgering the witness.”

“Sit down, Mr. Clooney, overruled.”

Clooney slumped back into his seat. “So I ask you again, Mr. Vitteli,” Karp persisted, “why on a dark night in Hell’s Kitchen would a smart, vigilant man send his bodyguard away?”

“I can take care of myself. I wasn’t worried about it.”

“Then why a bodyguard at all?”

“Just in case. I ain’t as young as I used to be.”

“Isn’t it true that you don’t go anywhere without your bodyguard, Mr. Vitteli?”

“That’s right. That’s what I said.”

“So let me ask you again: at night, in Hell’s Kitchen, you sent your bodyguard away?”

“I told ya, I didn’t need him!” Vitteli snarled, a vein starting to bulge on his forehead.

“No, you didn’t,” Karp shot back. “Because you knew who was going to be murdered that night. You knew you were safe and that the target was Vince Carlotta.” His voice grew louder as he went on. “And Vince Carlotta is dead now because he was coming after you, and you were going to lose it all, weren’t you? So you hired three nobodies to do your dirty work, isn’t that right!”

“That’s bullshit!” Vitteli shouted, the vein getting bigger as his face blushed darker.

Pointing at Vitteli, Karp fired back. “Oh no, Mr. Vitteli, you gave the order to kill Vince Carlotta because that’s how you really take care of yourself.”

“You son of a bitch!” Vitteli yelled, then looked at Clooney with his eyes bugging out of his purple face. “OBJECT, YOU DUMB FUCK!”

“OBJECTION!” Clooney cried out as he shot to his feet like a puppet on strings. Then he stood there looking stunned and unsure of what to do next. The witness looked like he might climb down from the stand and attack him.

Judge See banged his gavel, something he rarely ever did. “Mr. Vitteli, be seated.”

As Vitteli turned to the judge to speak, Judge See said, “Enough, Mr. Vitteli, you’ve already said a mouthful.”

Karp said calmly and somewhat amused. “I’m done here, Your Honor, no further questions.”

“Care to redirect, Mr. Clooney?” See asked.

Visibly shaken, Clooney shook his head violently. “No, absolutely no more questions.”

“You may step down, Mr. Vitteli,” Judge See said to the witness, who was mopping his face with his silk handkerchief.

Vitteli stormed down from the stand and without looking to either side passed between the defense and prosecution tables. As he passed the pews in the gallery where T. J. Martindale, Mahlon Gorman, and the other union members were sitting, they stood, their faces angry and their jaws set, but Vitteli didn’t try to engage them or stare them down this time. He’d almost reached the doors at the back of the courtroom when he was frozen in his tracks by a voice behind him.

“Careful, my sisters, something wicked this way comes.”

Vitteli turned to see who spoke and his face grew ashen as he saw the three women in the back of the courtroom. He slammed the doors of the courtroom open and stalked out.

A
LEXEI
B
EBNEV LOWERED HIS WHITE
prison T-shirt and scratched at his chest. He was proud of the large new tattoo created by burning a shoe sole and mixing the soot with urine, which was then injected into his skin with a piece of guitar string. But he was also worried that the redness and swelling he’d been told to expect by the inmate artist was more than usual and indicated an infection.

Still, he smiled as he thought about the somewhat blurry image of a cathedral with two spires. It indicated in Russian Mafia symbolism that he’d been in two prisons: the notorious Butyrka in central Moscow and now Sing Sing, the maximum security prison thirty miles north of Manhattan on the east side of the Hudson River in Ossining, New York. Of course that wasn’t true about Butyrka. He’d been a small-time hoodlum in the working-class Kapotnya neighborhood of Moscow and had never set foot inside a Russian prison as an inmate or visitor. But he reasoned that he would have been sent to prison or worse if he’d been caught for killing the old Jew jeweler in Moscow, so he thought he deserved the second spire.

When he saved enough cigarettes, or perhaps made some money in the prison drug trade helping his new comrades in the
Malchek
bratka,
he’d also get four small teardrops tattooed next to his right eye to represent the men he’d killed.
Maybe six,
he thought.
Who’s to know?
Then the other inmates would show respect for Alexei Bebnev.

Perhaps his new friends would give him a prison nickname that he’d take back out on the streets when he was released. He thought he might suggest
“Vohlk,”
or the English translation, “Wolf.” Wolf Bebnev. The chicks would dig that.

As he prepared to leave his cell and join his comrades in the exercise yard, Bebnev idly wondered how long he would be in prison. The sentence following the trial had been life with a mandatory minimum of twenty-five years, but the Malcheks had assured him that now that he’d shown his loyalty and value, they would pay for a good new attorney, work the system, in a manner of speaking, and get him out of prison one way or the other. There would be an appeal, and in the meantime, the rat Gnat Miller would be eliminated, and without Miller, the bastard Karp would not have a case.

Except for the tattoos, Bebnev would have preferred to avoid prison. But his idiot attorney Clooney had made a mess of the case, especially the testimony of Charlie Vitteli, who’d looked like he was going to strangle Clooney after Karp got done tearing him apart.

Stunned, Clooney had then lamely rested the defense case. His summation had basically been a repeat of what he’d said at the beginning of the trial, the lies about the District Attorney’s Office and the cops trying to frame him and DiMarzo. He pointed to the bullshit defense “experts” testimony and the testimony of Corcione, Barros, and Vitteli as proof of reasonable doubt. “Those two ain’t the guys who killed Vince,” Clooney repeated the union boss’s words, but Bebnev could see that the jury wasn’t buying it. Not after what Karp had done to Vitteli.

Even as someone inexperienced with the American justice system, Bebnev wasn’t surprised when Karp made short work
of Clooney’s summation arguments, deriding them as “baseless, contemptuous, and without one scintilla of evidence to support his outrageous slanders.” And when the prosecutor urged the jury to base their decision “by looking at the People’s evidence as a whole, and using your common sense to differentiate between cheap, dime-store fantasy and the truth,” Bebnev knew then that he and DiMarzo were going down. And, in fact, it had taken the jurors less than two hours to return a verdict of guilty.

It doesn’t matter,
Bebnev thought as he maintained what he thought was a cold, impenetrable expression as he made his way past other inmates and guards.
What’s a little time in prison?
Sure, the nights could be pretty frightening, filled with screams, shouts, and curses. And though he tried not to show it, he was scared of the black, Asian, and Hispanic gangs. However, no one bothered him because of his fine new friends. And when he got out, he’d be a made man with plenty of money, admiring women, and the respect of the Russian mob.

As Bebnev wandered out into the exercise yard he looked over toward one of the weight-lifting areas that the
bratka
of the Russian Mafia had staked out as their own. Although there were several Russian gangs represented there, for the most part they maintained a truce and cooperated on dividing up their piece of the prison black market in drugs, sex, cell phones, and food.

Many of the men working out had their shirts off in the June sun, displaying a wide assortment of ornate tattoos that indicated gang affiliation and rank within their organization, separated killers from mere thieves, and, like Bebnev’s, indicated the number of times they’d been incarcerated. Most had roses on their chests, the symbol for loyalty, and he wondered if perhaps he should have done that first. But he was more interested in displaying something that would indicate he was a hard-core criminal, and he’d only had enough cigarettes for the cathedral.

As he crossed over to the dozen or so men, Bebnev stripped off his T-shirt and tried not to smile, imagining how his comrades
would react to his new art. He noted how muscular the other men were as they curled, pushed, and pulled the weights, and how the sweat made their bodies glisten and their dark tattoos darker.

He wanted muscles like that and became self-consciously aware of his pale, flaccid physique. It was enough to make him think about putting his shirt back on, especially when the other men saw him coming and began nudging each other and laughing. But then his friend Yuri looked up from the curling bench and waved him over.

The St. Petersburg native was the first inmate who’d befriended him at Sing Sing, a massive man with a face that resembled a gorilla’s who was known to be one of the Malchek gang’s chief enforcers. His chest, back, and arms were almost completely covered with tattoos, including a cathedral with five spires. No one disrespected Yuri, not even the blacks, which meant that no one had disrespected Bebnev in the week since he’d arrived at Sing Sing.

“Comrade Alexei,” the big man shouted and grinned, exposing a mouthful of gold teeth with diamonds imbedded in the incisors top and bottom. He slapped the leg of another large man lying on his back on the bench press. “Get up,” he growled, and when the man instantly complied, he gestured at the bench and said to Bebnev. “You’re next, my friend.”

Conscious of the snickering, grinning circle of men who had suddenly surrounded him and the bench press, Bebnev demurred. He rubbed a shoulder and shook his head. “I think I pulled something yesterday,” he said. “I’m going to give it a rest today.”

“Ha,” one of the other men laughed. “The only thing you’ve been pulling is your dick at night.”

The other men laughed, including Yuri, who patted Bebnev on the shoulder. “Nonsense,” he said. “It’s just the muscle rebuilding itself. A killer like you will want to stay in shape. You never know when things could turn ugly in here, and you’ll have to defend yourself.”

Bebnev didn’t like the sound of that, but he wasn’t sure what to
say to get out of lying down on the bench. He didn’t have much of a chance, as Yuri grabbed him by the arm and propelled him toward the weights. “If you’re going to run with the Malcheks, we’ll want to know that you are a man who can take care of himself.”

Run with the Malcheks.
Bebnev liked that. “Don’t worry, I can take care of myself, comrade,” he said confidently. “I put the gun in that asshole’s face and ‘bang, bang,’ asshole was dead.” He laughed and looked around the thick circle of men, who were smiling, but he couldn’t tell if they were impressed or just humoring him.

Deciding that he had no choice but to try to fit in, Bebnev lay down on the bench. As he went through the motions of warming up his arms, rubbing his “injured” shoulder, and taking deep breaths, one of the men on one side of him near the end of the bench press bar, a great bear-like man with a patch over one eye named Viktor, stepped forward to look at his tattoo.

“Two spires,” Viktor grunted. “One for Sing Sing. What is the other?”

“Butyrka,” Bebnev lied.

“Butyrka?” When was this?”

Bebnev shrugged. “About, uh, five or six years ago.”

“About five or six years ago?” Viktor replied with an incredulous look. “How is it a man does not know exactly how much time he spent in hell? I was in Butyrka for fifteen long years, and I can tell you the day I arrived and the day I was released. I lost this in Butyrka.” He lifted the eyepatch to expose an empty socket.