Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41 (30 page)

 
          
 
Levine smiled at the rebuff "Okay,"
he said.

 
          
 
Bobby turned a corner. He seemed to be driving
at random, though trending northwest, away from the hospital and in the general
direction of
Manhattan
, several miles away. "Giacomo's got a young wife," he said.
"The old Mama died, all over cancer, right? So Giacomo went to Vegas to
work out his grief, he come back with a bride. A dancer at the
Aladdin,
calls herself Terri. With
an I
."

 
          
 
"Uhhuh."

 
          
 
"My
son "

 
          
 
"Bobby."

 
          
 
"My son.
Got hooked on this Terri.
He was like a dog, there's a bitch
in the neighborhood in heat,
you
cannot keep that dog
in the house."

 
          
 
"Dangerous."

 
          
 
"She says he raped her," Bobby said.
"He didn't rap
)e
her, she was asking for
it."

 
          
 
Levine kept silent. He watched Bobby's fingers
twitch and fidget on the steering wheel.

 
          
 
"A bodyguard found them at it,"
Bobby said. **Naturally she had to cry rape. My son told his story, the
bodyguard said forget
it, my son went home. Terri with
the I
, she went to Giacomo. She talked to Giacomo, but
Giacomo didn't talk to nobody, not to me, not to my son, not to nobody. The
bodyguard got disappeared. My son got disappeared. I said, 'Giacomo, we know
one another a long time, why don't you talk to me first, ask me a question?' He
still
don't
talk. I go away, and he puts a contract on
me, he puts shadows on me to be sure I'm still here for the hit."

 
          
 
"There's a special time for the . . .
hit?"

 
          
 
"Saturday night.
Day
after tomorrow.
I still got friends to whisper me things. At BarolH's
Seafood House in Far Rockaway, upstairs in the private dining room, there's
gonna be a banquet. It's Giacomo's first wedding anniversary." Bobby spoke
the words with no apparent irony. "
That's where they're
gonna take
me out. By the time they're at the coffee and cigars, I'm at
the bottom of
Jamaica
Bay
."

 
          
 
"Pretty."

 
          
 
"Businesslike," Bobby said.

 
          
 
"If it's police protection you want
— "

 
          
 
Levine was stopped by Bobby's cold eyes
looking directly at him. "You gonna explain life to me, Mr. Levine?"

 
          
 
"Sorry."

 
          
 
"I know about police protection,"
Bobby said. He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and rubbed his
thumb back and forth over the pads of his other fingers. "With this
haftd," he said, "I have paid protective police to be blind and deaf
while the subject of their concern was falling out a window. You are an honest
cop, Mr. Levine, and that's very nice, that's why you and
me
are talking, but let me break you the sad news. There are one or two rotten
apples in your crowd."

 
          
 
"I know that."

 
          
 
"I also know about the Feds and their
witness protection plan," Bobby said. "They will give me a new name,
a new house in a
new city
, a new job, a new driver's license, a whole entire new life."

 
          
 
"That's right."

 
          
 
"All they take away is my old life,"
Bobby said. "That's what Giacomo has in mind, too. I like my old
life."

 
          
 
"So far," Levine said, "I'm not
sure why you're telling me all this."

 
          
 
"Because I have a scheme," Bobby
said, "but my scheme is taking too long. I won't be able to leave town
until the middle of next week. I'm okay until Saturday, but when I don't show
at the celebration they'll start looking for me. It'll be tougher for me to
move around town."

 
          
 
"I can see that."

 
          
 
"I need a courier," Bobby said.
"I need protection and assistance. I need an honest cop to run my errands
and see that nobody offs me."

 
          
 
"Tell me your scheme," Levine said.

 
          
 
"I am assembling information," Bobby
told him. **I am talking into a tape recorder, I am giving facts and names and
dates,
I
am nailing Giacomo to the cross. And I am
getting the physical evidence, too, the contracts and the photos and the
letters and the wiretaps and everything else."

 
          
 
"Giacomo shouldn't have killed your
son," Levine said.

 
          
 
"Not without talking to me."

 
          
 
"You'll turn over all this information
next week?"

 
          
 
"To the law?"
Bobby grinned, a kind of distorted grimace that created deep crevices in his cheeks.
"You got the wrong idea," he said.

 
          
 
"Then who do you give it all to, all
these proofs and information?"

 
          
 
"Giacomo's partners," Bobby said.
"His friends.
His fellow capi.
His business associates. What I'm putting together is what he's done to them
over the years. I have stuff Giacomo himself can't remember. I have enough to
get him offed ten times from ten different f
)eople
."

 
          
 
"I see," Levine said. "You ruin
Giacomo with the mob, and his contract on you ceases to matter."

 
          
 
"Andhc's dead.
And the
Terri with him."

 
          
 
"Why do you think I would help you?"
Levine asked.

 
          
 
Again the wrenching grin.
"Because I'm gonna give you some scraps from my table," Bobby said.
"Just a few things you'd like to know."

 
          
 
"About Giacomo."

 
          
 
"Who else?"
Under the wide-brimmed hat, under the darting, dashing anxious eyes, Bobby
smiled like a death's head. "Just enough to put Giacomo in prison,"
he said.
"Where it'll be easier for his friends to kill
him."

 
          
 
For forty minutes Levine sat at Lieutenant
Barker's desk and looked at pictures, front and side views of Caucasian mades,
page after page of tough guys behind clear plastic. The infinite variety of
human appearance became confined here to variations on one theme: the Beast,
without Beauty.

 
          
 
"Him," Levine said.

 
          
 
Inspector Santangelo leaned over Levine's
shoulder and whisded.
"You sure?"

 
          
 
"That's him, all right."

 
          
 
It was Bobby, no question. Without the hat, he
was shown to have a low broad forehead, thick pepper-and-salt hair that grew
spikily across his head, and cold eyes that seemed to slink and lurk behind
half-lowered lids. Without the hat he looked more like a snake. The name under
the photos was Ralph Banadando.

 
          
 
Inspector Santangelo was visibly impressed.
Crossing the lieutenant's office to resume his seat on the sofa, he said,
"No wonder he knows where the bodies are buried. And no wonder he called
Polito by his first name."

 
          
 
Lieutenant Barker, chief of the precinct's
detective squad, whose office this was, said, "Who is he?"

 
          
 
"Benny Banadando," the inspector
said. "He's Giacomo Polito's righthand
man,
they
came up through the ranks together. He's the number two man in that mob."
Grinning at Levine, he said, "That's no soldier. He told you he was a
soldier? That's a General." Nodding at Barker, seated in what was usually
the visitor's chair, he said, "You did right to.call me, Fred."

 
          
 
"Thanks."

 
          
 
It was Friday morning, nearly
noon
. Yesterday, saying he would get in touch
with Levine sometime today to hear his answer, whether or not he would accept
the proposition, Bobby —Ralph "Benny" Banadando, now —had let Levine
off six blocks from his home, giving Levine ten minutes to walk and think. At
home, he had at once phoned the precinct to give Lieutenant Barker a brief
recap of the conversation. Given the truth of Bobby's remark about the
"one or two rotten apples" in the Police Department, they'd agreed
not to spread the story very widely, and Barker had phoned his old friend
Inspector Santangelo, now assigned to the Organized Crime Unit. This morning
Santangelo had come down to the Forty-Third Precinct with his book of mug
shots, and now Levine had a name for Bobby. He said, "Does Banadando have
a son?"

 
          
 
"He did," Santangelo said in a dry
tone. "Fellow named Robert, not very sweet. What do you want to do, Abe?
Can I call you Abe?"

 
          
 
"Sure."

 
          
 
"And I'm Mike," Santangelo said.
"You want to turn this thing over to me, or do you want to follow through
yourself?"

 
          
 
"You mean
,
do I
want to tell Banadando yes or no."

 
          
 
"That's what I mean." Grinning at
some private thought, Santangelo sat back on the sofa, stretching his long legs
in the small office. "Before you answer," he said, "let me say
this. I don't want to bring this news back to my shop, because if I do it'll
get to Polito and he won't wait for the symbolic moment of his anniversary
dinner."

 
          
 
Levine nodded. "Thai's what we thought,
too."

 
          
 
"In addition," Santangelo said,
"you'll be marked yourself, Abe, because Polito won't be sure how much
Banadando told you."

 
          
 
Lieutenant Barker said, "He won't try to
kill a cop."

 
          
 
"Probably not," Santangelo said.
"But if he's nervous enough, it's a possibility. From our point of view,
it's better if Banadando can work his scheme in peace and quiet. But what that
means, Abe, we can't provide backup."

 
          
 
"I can," Lieutenant Barker said.
"Abe's partner, Jack Crawley, can back him up."

 
          
 
"That's not quite the same as three
busloads of TPF,"

           
 
Santangelo said. "You see what I'm
getting at, Abe? This could be dangerous for you."