Tragic (30 page)

As Marlene drove, her passenger told her a little about the family. “Mom and Pops are second generation. Their parents came over on a boat from small villages in Sicily after World War Two,” she said. “They met standing in line at the Coney Island Ferris wheel and been together ever since. Dad got a job selling shoes and never stopped selling shoes until he retired at seventy
years old when they made him. It was a good life. Four girls and then long after they thought they were done, or was healthy, Frankie came along as a ‘surprise.’ I’m thirty-five and Mom had me when she was forty, so she’s getting up there. Her pregnancy with Frankie was a tough one, the doctors wanted to abort him, but Mom’s Catholic through and through and that was out of the question. Pops says she was never the same after she gave birth. ‘Frail’ he calls her. She’s got a bad ticker and the prognosis ain’t good.”

After that Liza had looked out the window without speaking for ten minutes. Marlene thought she might be crying and so let her be. But then the young woman added, “Pops don’t let on much but he’s slowed down a lot, especially since Frankie’s arrest, and I don’t think he’ll outlive her by much. He won’t know what to do with himself without her. This whole thing has taken years off their lives.”

There was a knock on the door of the interview room, which was then opened by a guard. He stepped back and Frank DiMarzo walked in.

Marlene was shocked at the change that had come over him even since the trial. He’d already looked like death warmed over, a man who’d given up hope, but now he was even more gaunt, his eyes sunken and lacking any spark.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” he said when he saw Marlene. “Jesus, I can’t trust my own sister?”

“I’ll let her explain what she’s here for in a minute,” Liza said. “But shut up and listen to me, Frankie. Mom’s dying. . . .”

In an instant, Frank’s demeanor changed from that of hostile inmate to that of worried son. “What? Can’t they do something? Maybe a transplant or something?”

Liza shook her head. “She’s just failing, Frankie. The doctors say she wouldn’t survive a transplant.”

Frank’s head fell forward and his shoulders sagged. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I put her in an early grave.”

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Frankie, this didn’t help,” Liza said. “You made some bad choices that hurt your family and destroyed your life, but you can choose to do the right thing now. Mom wants to believe you’re innocent, but if you’re not, and you don’t make it right, she won’t see you in heaven someday and that’s tearing her up inside. So I want you to hear Ms. Ciampi out.”

“It’s not as simple as coming clean, Liza,” Frank said.

“What do you mean, Frankie? You talking about the photograph of Mom?”

“Yeah, that. These guys are mixed up with the Russian mob and those fuckers don’t mess around.”

Marlene decided to interrupt. “I know someone in the Russian community who is willing to guarantee your family’s safety,” she said.

“Bullshit,” DiMarzo spat. “Who’s got that kind of muscle?”

“I’m not naming names here,” Marlene said, then lowered her voice as she looked in his eyes. “You remember who stopped Bebnev from killing you in the landfill? That’s who’s got that kind of muscle.”

A look of comprehension came over DiMarzo as he carefully regarded Marlene, but then he smiled. “So I got to make some sort of deal or my family could pay for it.”

Marlene shook her head. “No. The people who hired you to kill Vince Carlotta are like that, but I’m not holding your family hostage. My friend will look out after your family whether you decide to do the right thing or not. This is about your conscience and your soul, not playing with innocent people’s lives.”

Frank’s brown eyes filled with tears and his head dropped. “Please, Frankie,” his sister pleaded as she reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “These people don’t deserve your protection. You made a bad choice, but they’re the ones who put it in front of you. They flushed your life down the toilet, and they’re threatening your family. We want you to do the right thing, all of us, no matter what.”

“You can protect my family?” Frank asked Marlene.

“We’ll move them into a safe house,” she replied. “Around-the-clock security and medical care for your mom, just to be sure. Then, when this is all over, my friend will make sure that they can go home in peace.”

Reaching out for his sister’s other hand, Frank said to Marlene, “Tell your husband I’ll talk to him. And sis, next time you visit, bring the Bible from my room.”

Liza smiled. “I’m glad you’re doing this,” she said. “And reading your Bible will help.”

Frank smiled slightly. “Yeah, I think it will take a load off. But be careful; there’s some loose pages in it that I don’t want to fall out.”

Suddenly there was a knock on the door and Dave Whitney walked in. “Sorry, Marlene. We’re going on lockdown. I need to get the prisoner back to his cell immediately!”

“What happened?” Marlene asked.

“Goddamned Russians killed somebody out in the yard,” Whitney replied.

A warning bell went off in Marlene’s head. A bell she’d heard many times before and knew better than to ignore. “Do you know who was killed?”

“Marlene, I don’t have time—”

“Please, Dave, ask.”

Whitney frowned but spoke into a handheld radio he was carrying. “This is Assistant Warden Whitney. Do we have an ID on the victim yet?”

There was a long pause before the radio crackled and a voice said, “Inmate Alexei Bebnev. Prisoner Number 80346-A.”

“Oh, my God,” Liza Zito cried out, her hand going to her mouth.

Marlene grabbed her friend Whitney’s arm. “You can’t take DiMarzo to his cell,” she implored him. “They’ll kill him.”

Whitney thought about it and nodded. “I’ll put him in AdSeg until we get this sorted out.”

“Even trying to get there could be risky if all the inmates aren’t accounted for,” Marlene said.

“Got ya,” Whitney replied and picked up the radio again. “I want a SWAT team to Interview Room B, ASAP, full gear, and there better not be a Russian within a cell block of here when I move out.”

“Roger that,” the voice on the radio said. “SWAT on the way.”

“Thanks, Dave,” Marlene said. She turned to Frank. “You still ready to go through with this?”

The young man looked at his sister, who nodded. “Yeah. It’s time.”

Marlene took out her cell phone and punched in a number. “Hi, Butch,” she said. “Yes, me too . . . Hey, I think you and Guma might want to take a drive with Clay to Sing Sing. What? Yeah, right now.” She looked over to where Frank was hugging his tearful trembling sister in the corner of the room and turned away. “I thought I’d be the first to tell you that Alexei Bebnev just completed his life sentence. But more important, Frank DiMarzo is ready to sing.”

C
HARLIE
V
ITTELI PUFFED FURIOUSLY ON
a cigar as he paced in front of the window of his office in the dock warehouse, waiting for Joey Barros to arrive. He could have told Barros to call with the news he wanted to hear, but he didn’t trust the telephone lines, and cell phone calls were too easy to intercept. As it was, he regularly had his office, home, and cars swept by a high-priced security company, and still he didn’t feel safe.

Everybody seemed to be looking at him. Talking behind his back. People on the streets and in restaurants—the waiters at Marlon’s acted as if they were reluctant to serve him.
Or is it all in your mind, like Joey says? Screw that! I seen their eyes, the way they whisper to each other.
His wife and kids had left to visit her mother in Illinois without saying when, or if, she was coming back, and even his mistress’s ardor had cooled.

More significantly, the union was split between the old guard, whose loyalty he’d bought or coerced, and T. J. Martindale and his crew, who grumbled openly and were demanding a new election. So far he had enough support to hold off the calls, but every day the demands for his resignation grew. Or so it seemed.

And it all started when Karp publicly humiliated him in the courtroom. The media had wasted no time jumping all over it,
running up and shouting at him as he emerged from the Criminal Courts Building that afternoon.

“Vitteli, is it true you paid to have Vince Carlotta killed!”

“How does it feel to be accused of murder by the district attorney?”

“Did you do it?”

Vitteli had snarled and pushed his way through the jostling throng as Barros waited for him in a car at the curb. “Get the fuck out of my way! Move, damn you, or I’ll shove that camera up your . . .”

The pack of journalists just laughed like hyenas as they tore into him. Then his scowling face and curses, bleeped for the profanity, appeared on the evening newscasts, and again on the front page of the morning newspapers. Nor had they let up much after Bebnev and DiMarzo were convicted and sentenced to life; in fact, the story had gone national and he’d been besieged with calls from everywhere from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. His contact with the U.S. Department of Labor had called to say that Mahlon Gorman was demanding an audience with the higher-ups and might get it. He’d told the man that if he went down, he was taking him down, too. “So you better stay on board, or your ass will fry with mine!”

It didn’t matter to him that Karp was right, that he
was
guilty. He was outraged that the district attorney had convicted him in the court of public opinion, and life had been hell ever since. Just about every night in the weeks since, he’d woken up in a cold sweat from a dream of Karp shouting up at him on the witness stand. “There are three men in this courtroom who should be standing trial for the murder of Vince Carlotta! The two defendants sitting right there, and you, right, Mr. Vitteli?!”

Later, over a beer at Marlon’s, Syd Kowalski had tried to brush off the nightmare on the witness stand. “Karp did that because he ain’t got a real case,” the attorney said. “He was baiting you.”

“Can’t we sue the bastard?” Vitteli complained. “How can he get away with that crap?”

“You really don’t want to go there, Charlie,” Kowalski replied. “And look at it this way, Karp making you look bad put the nail in the coffins, so to speak, of Bebnev and DiMarzo. They’re going to Sing Sing, which is right where we want them. Those two rats would have run for whatever hole they could find if they got off. Now I suggest you forget about it and let the Malchek gang take care of those two little problems.”

Looking down at the road that ran past the docks, Vitteli saw Barros’s car turn the corner. “About fucking time,” he swore and wondered why it had taken so long. Even Joey wasn’t the loyal dog he’d always been. He’d caught him watching him with an apprising look on his face and he’d begun questioning his decisions.
Well, the dog can either come to heel, or I’ll get a new mutt.

Vitteli pasted a smile on his face when Barros knocked and walked in. “So, is our little problem taken care of? I . . .” The words died in his mouth when he saw his man’s face.

“One isn’t an issue anymore,” Barros said quietly, aware of Vitteli’s concerns about the office being bugged. “But the second . . .”

“Let’s take a walk,” Vitteli interrupted.

When they were outside, Vitteli headed for one of the docks. “Okay, what gives?”

“Bebnev is dead,” Barros said. “But DiMarzo got a visitor and wasn’t in his cell.”

“Visitor? What visitor?”

“Not sure. Family maybe, but Kowalski said there were two and it wasn’t in the visiting room.”

Vitteli furrowed his brow. “I don’t like it. This was supposed to be taken care of,” he complained angrily.

“Shit happens,” Barros replied. “Kowalski’s on his way and . . . Speak of the devil.”

Vitteli turned to look in the direction that Barros indicated and saw a sedan headed for them. It stopped and the stocky attorney pried himself out of the backseat and waddled toward them.

“Joey give you the news?” he asked Vitteli.

“So far only that Bebnev is dead but DiMarzo’s still alive?”

“Yeah, it was all set up,” Kowalski said. “The right people were paid to look the other way, but last minute, DiMarzo got a visitor and wasn’t in his cell. According to my sources, he didn’t go to the visiting room; they took him to an interview room.”

“Who’d he see?”

“One of his sisters and some attorney named Jodi Vannoy. Then when it went down with Bebnev, the SWAT team whisked him off to administrative segregation and our friends can’t get to him.”

“Fuck!”
Vitteli exclaimed. “Now what?”

“Don’t work yourself up,” Kowalski cautioned him. “DiMarzo’s family is probably just working with this lawyer to appeal his conviction.”

“Which means he may talk to get a deal.”

“I really don’t think that’s going to happen,” Kowalski said. “For one thing, Karp doesn’t make deals. And even if he did, how much of a threat is DiMarzo anyway? He didn’t meet Joey or Jackie. Anything he says he heard from Bebnev is hearsay and now it can’t be corroborated. I talked to Clooney after the trial—that transfer into his account is a done deal, by the way—and he said that DiMarzo knows shit.”

Just then, Kowalski’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and frowned as he looked at the caller ID. “Excuse me, I need to take this,” he said and then spoke into the phone. “Yeah?”

As he listened, the attorney’s frown grew deeper. He stepped away from Vitteli and Barros and when he turned back to them a minute later, he didn’t look any happier as he hung up.

“What is it?” Vitteli demanded.

“Let’s not panic,” Kowalski began ominously, “but that was our friends the Malcheks. Apparently, Karp, some guy from his office, and that black detective who’s always around him showed up at Sing Sing a few minutes ago to talk to DiMarzo. I still don’t think it’s a problem.”

“What in the hell do you mean it’s not a problem?” Vitteli cursed. “It means Karp’s asking questions and DiMarzo’s ratting!”

“So what?” Kowalski shot back. “What could DiMarzo say that changes the situation?”

“How the fuck do I know? I want him gone!” Vitteli complained. “Maybe our friend or Joey needs to pay a visit to the punk’s family?”