CAPRIATI'S BLOOD (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 1)

CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

A Novel By

Lawrence De Maria

Capriati’s Blood, a novel by Lawrence De Maria

Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2012 (Revised 2015)

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, email
[email protected]
.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Special thanks to Nancy Kreisler, Maryellen Alvarez and Deborah Thompson.

Dedicated:

To
Patti
, without whose love, support and faith this book

– and others –

would not have been possible,

and to my two sons, Lawrence and Christopher, good men, both.

CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

PROLOGUE

“They look smaller than the last bunch.”

“You’ll get more in the box,” the elderly woman working the counter said. “Same price. You can’t beat it.”

“They taste the same?”

“If anything, they are sweeter.” She pointed to a stand a few feet away. “We have some free samples cut up over there. Try them.”

The man looked over at the table and saw that some flies hadn’t needed an invitation.

“I’ll take your word for it.” His mother probably wouldn’t know the difference. At least that was what he’d been told. The information had eased his conscience. Why risk a visit to someone who wouldn’t even recognize her own son? But perhaps the occasional – and anonymous – gifts would soon be unnecessary. But just the thought of what he was going to do sent rivulets of sweat down the man’s sides. “What do I owe you?”

“It comes to $34.95, shipping included east of the Mississippi.”

Prices were going up on everything.

“Where’s it going?”

The customer recited the address. Three times. Like everyone else in the goddamn town, the clerk was a few years past her expiration date. That was one reason he was about to take the biggest risk of his life.

“Want to include a card?”

“No.”

“What’s the return address?”

“If it doesn’t get there,” he said, smiling. “I don’t want them back.”

“I know, but we can apply a refund to your account.”

“I don’t have an account.”

“It would be credited to your card. We take them all. American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover. Debit cards, too.”

“I’m paying cash, don’t worry about it.”

“Well, if you give us your address, phone number and email, we can contact you.”

He wanted to throttle the old crone. But long ago, for safety’s sake, the man learned not to make a scene.

“No, thanks.”

“We send out emails about our specials. People love them.”

He took a deep breath and forced another smile. Then he pulled out his wallet and handed the woman $40.

“Just send the box. Keep the change.”

***

It took the man an hour and a half to drive to Fort Lauderdale and settle in at the rundown motel off Dixie Highway straight out of the 1980’s and run by a couple of Russians, which he thought was ironic considering what he was about to do. He registered using one of the many phony I.D.’s he’d collected over the years. They’d wanted a credit card at the desk “for incidentals,” which from the look of the place might include pest control, but the extra hundred bucks he gave them along with the room charge he prepaid shut the Russkies up. They assumed he just wanted to get laid and didn’t want to leave a paper trail. They were half right.

The call he planned to make on the room phone wasn’t going to cost a hundred bucks. It would be short, sweet and to the point. A previous call, made a few days earlier from a similar dump in Sarasota, had insured that the lawyer would be in at 4 P.M. to take his call. The lawyer’s secretary was a dim bulb but the mention that he had important information about the lawyer’s main client finally sealed the deal.

The man looked at his watch. An hour to go. There was a bar across the street from the motel. He walked across and had three stiff bourbons. The last one barely managed to stop the tremor in his hand. One of the rummies sitting on a nearby stool smiled in commiseration. He pegs me as an alky like him, the man thought. He doesn’t know I’m just scared shitless.

***

“It’s that call you’ve been expecting, Mr. Rosenberg.”

Samuel Rosenberg’s secretary stood in the doorway to his office and could have announced the arrival of the Messiah with less fanfare. She was all of 22 and proof to him that the New York City public education system had gone into the toilet. He had tried to get her to use his first name and the phone intercom, with no luck on either.

Rosenberg sighed. She had only recently mastered the basic legal forms he rarely produced. His previous secretary was canned for running her mouth in the wrong places and the lawyer decided that if he had to choose between stupid and indiscreet, stupid was the way to go.

“Thank you, Francine,” he said. “That’s a fetching outfit you are wearing today.”

She smiled and twirled away. Her clothes were still terrible, he knew, but at least they now covered her midriff. That was one battle won.

“This is Samuel Rosenberg,” he said into the phone. He looked at the calendar on his desk for the name. “What can I do for you, er, Mr. Wagner?”He put his feet up on his desk and rocked back in his chair. “You mentioned something about one of my clients. I have many. Can you be more specific.”

“Quit dicking around, counselor. You don’t want me to be specific. We both know who we’re talking about. I want you to be an intermediary between us. I have a proposal, a trade.”

“I’m listening.”

“I know who killed Fred Jarvis.”

Rosenberg’s feet came off the desk as he sat up. Like every attorney on Staten Island, he remembered the unsolved killing. Jarvis was a piece of crap, a crook, but a lawyer nonetheless. If crooked lawyers became targets on Staten Island, who was safe?

“If it wasn’t you,” Rosenberg said coldly, “then I suggest you contact the police. If you need representation, I can suggest someone. What does this have to do with my client?”

“You’re client was with me. He saw everything, too.”

Jesus H. Christ. He reached for a pad and noted the time, just because he felt he had to do something. He looked at the caller I.D. It said “Unknown Number.”

“I thought that might get your attention. I guess he forgot to mention it. We were young, and just along for the ride, so to speak. Even so, we might have been implicated as accessories. Not that we were inclined to say anything back then. We were all just one happy family. But things have changed. I read the papers. He’s got a shitpot of reasons why he’d want the murder solved now, capische? He would probably love to blow the whistle, but can’t, not without corroboration. So, here’s the deal.”

After the man finished speaking, Rosenberg said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“It won’t be easy, pal, there is a slight problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Your client wants to kill me.”

***

A half hour later Rosenberg pulled into the Crooke’s Point Marina in Great Kills Harbor. Not for the first time he reflected that, considering who owned many of the boats docked there, the “e” could have been dropped from the marina’s name.

Nando Carlucci was standing on the bridge of a Grady White whose engine was just then rumbling to life. Rosenberg climbed aboard clumsily. He didn’t like boats, or fishing. But it was hard to bug a boat, especially when his client belonged to a boat club that allowed him the use of dozens of crafts of varying sizes on short notice. At least the Grady White was big enough to have an interior cabin. It really was cold. Ten minutes later he and Carlucci, the grossly overweight head of Staten Island’s last remaining Italian crime family, were cruising a half mile offshore, far from any possible listening devices aimed their way. Yes, thank God for the Grady, Rosenbrg thought. Nando in anything smaller was an invitation to capsize.

“So, what the fuck is so urgent?”

The lawyer told him. Carlucci stared at him for a full minute.

“I can’t believe the balls on the guy. After what he did to me. He’s right, I’ll kill him. What did he call himself?”

“Said his name was Wagner.”

“Son of a bitch.”

When Carlucci calmed down, he said, “What does he want?”

Rosenberg braced himself for another tirade.

“One million dollars and a head start after the trial.”

Carlucci erupted again, flinging charts and ashtrays around the cabin. When he stopped, he said, “What do you think? Can you swing the deal?”

“I think so. It would be a feather in the D.A.’s cap. Can you swing the million?”

“Yeah, but tell him some of it has to be in jewelry, mostly diamonds.”

Rosenberg didn’t want to know where the jewelry was coming from. There had been a rash of burglaries in some of the borough’s most upscale neighborhoods over the past few months. The cops were stumped, since some of the homes had state-of-the-art alarm systems. But the burglars vanished before the response cars arrived on the scene.

***

Wary at first, the D.A. and his assistants had grown more interested and animated as Carlucci and his lawyer outlined his plan in more detail during several secret meetings.

“We insist on full immunity for Mr. Carlucci,” Rosenberg said, “as well as for the corroborating witness.”

That had been the sticking point during the weeks of negotiations. The D.A. and his subordinates loathed Nando Carlucci. The idea of letting the fat mobster off the hook for a murder was repugnant to them.

“But you still won’t tell us who this alleged witness is,” one of the A.D.A’s said.

“You don’t have to know that now,” Rosenberg said. “You have nothing to lose. We’re the ones who have to produce. Mr. Carlucci wants to do his civic duty and clear his conscience, even though he was but an innocent bystander in the lamentable affair.”

In the end, the D.A. went along with it.

“We’ll get Carlucci eventually,” he said after the meeting. “One big fish at a time.”

As they drove away from the D.A.’s office, Rosenberg said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Nando. This is a big risk. Opens up a can of worms. He’d better produce.”

“Don’t you worry, counselor. He’ll produce. He wants it bad.”

“It’s not just you, Nando. I’ve got my reputation to think of. My name will be anathema with the D.A. if we stiff him on this.”

Carlucci looked at his lawyer with ill-concealed contempt.

“Your fuckin’ name is an enema. You got no reputation to protect. Just do your job and wrap up the immunity thing tighter than a virgin’s pussy. I don’t have to remind you what happened to the last lawyer that fucked with my family, do I? That’s how we got here, ain’t it?”  

CHAPTER 1 – THE RED LANTERN

Two Months Later

The workmen wheeled the last of the potted plant life into my office on hand dollies.

“You sure you don’t want us to put some out in the reception area, Mr. Rhode?”

“I haven’t finished painting it and the carpet is coming next week,” I said. “I’d only have to move them all.”

He shrugged and handed me an envelope.

“Miss Robart wrote down some instructions on how to care for them. She said if you have any questions, just call.”

I’m not a plant guy. I’d keep the hardiest. The best shot at survival for the rest was my plan to donate them to other offices in the building. I called Nancy Robart at the Staten Island Botanical Garden to thank her for the foliage. She was the Executive Director and had donated the plants to give my new digs “some much needed class.” She was at a luncheon, so I left the thank you on her voice mail.

Lunch sounded good to me. I opened a drawer in my desk, dropped Nancy’s instructions in it and pulled out the holster containing my .38 Taurus Special. A lot of people in my line of work don’t carry guns. Most of them have never been shot at, in war or peace. I have, in both, and like the comforting feel of iron on my hip. Besides, with all the hoops you have to jump through to get a permit in New York City (if you fill out the paperwork wrong they send you to Guantanamo), it seems silly not to carry. The Taurus revolver has only five chambers in its cylinder, to keep the weight down. But the bullets are big. The gun is meant for close-in work. Presumably if you need more than five shots a sixth won’t matter.      

I clipped the holster on my belt and shrugged into the brown corduroy jacket that was draped on the back of my chair. The jacket felt a little tight around the shoulders. I wasn’t back to my old weight but my rehab, which included lifting iron, was redistributing muscle. I’d have to get my clothes altered soon. Or, assuming I got some clients, buy some new threads. But the jacket still fell nicely, even if it didn’t quite cover the paint smudges on my jeans, and there was no gun bulge.

I walked down the stairs to the building lobby. The docs at the V.A. hospital said it would help strengthen my leg and it seemed to be working. The limp was barely noticeable. I stopped at the security station by the elevators and told the guard that I’d left my office unlocked because the cable company was scheduled to install my high-speed Internet and phone system sometime in the afternoon.

“You’re the private eye on eight,” she said. “Rhode.” Her name tag said “H. Jones” and she was sturdily stout without being fat. Her skin color was only slightly darker than her tan uniform. “What time they give you?”

“Sometime between 1 PM and the next ice age,” I said.

“I hear you.” She wrote something in a large cloth-bound ledger, the kind that used to sit on hotel check-in counters and private eyes were able to read upside down in noir movies. I never could read upside down, so the move to hotel computers made no difference to me. “You coming back?”

“Yeah. Just running out to pick up some lunch.”

“Where you headed?”

“Red Lantern, in Rosebank. You know it?”

“Oh, man. Best eggplant hero in the borough.”

“Can I bring one back for you?”

“Sure.”

She bent to get her purse.

“Forget it. My treat. What’s the ‘H’ stand for?”

“Habika. It means ‘sweetheart,’ in some African language I have no clue about. My folks had just seen
Roots
when I was born. Coulda been worse, I guess.”

“Alton,” I said, extending my hand.

“Like I said, it coulda been worse,” she said. “You can call me ‘Abby’. Everyone else does. Abby Jones.”

“Why not sweetheart, or sweetie?”

“Cause then I hit you upside your head. Listen, my brother works at the cable company. I’ll give him a call to make sure they don’t forget about you.”

A Rhode rule: It never hurts to buy an eggplant hero for a security guard.

There was a bank branch in the lobby. It had an ATM but the daily limit was $400 and I had a bar tab to square. I was working off the cash from a dwindling home equity line of credit inexplicably approved by the same bank. I wondered if I could be nailed for trading on inside information if I shorted its stock because it lent me the money.

The branch manager came out of his cubbyhole to shake my hand, smiling effusively. He led me over to a cute little redhead teller who thanked me before, during and after the transaction. If I’d wanted a toaster, she would have gone home and taken one from her own kitchen. The banks had a lot of PR ground to make up.

I now had a grand in my pocket. Flush and hungry; a combination that always works for me. I planned to walk the mile or so along Bay Street to the Red Lantern. But it was drizzling, with the imminent promise of something heavier. With a corduroy jacket I’d weigh as much as Donald Trump’s hairdo by the time I arrived. I don’t use an umbrella unless animals are lining up two-by-two on the ark ramp. 

My three-year old light blue Chevy Malibu is distinguished only by several round indentations on its trunk and rear panels. I’d bought it at Honest Al Lambert’s Used Car Lot in Tottenville. Al had acquired six almost-pristine Malibus at auction from a rental fleet, but hadn’t counted on the car carrier transporting them from Denver running into a vicious hail storm in Indiana. The vehicles on top had their windshields smashed and their bodywork turned into the far side of the moon. Undaunted, Al tried to sell me one of those. But even the dimmest suspect might notice being followed by a car with more dimples than a golf ball. So I opted for one of the Malibus on the carrier’s first level, which sustained little damage but were still heavily discounted. It looked like every third car on the road. Still, I made a few modifications, including a passenger-side ejector seat activated by a red button hidden in the gear shift. I didn’t actually do that. 

At the Red Lantern all the parking spots, including those next to fire hydrants, bus stops and “No Parking” signs, were filled with cars that had official stickers or emblems: police, fire, sanitation, court officers, judges, Borough Hall, Coast Guard. Coast Guard? The NFL season was in full swing. It was Friday and the regular lunchtime crowd was inflated by dozens of people dropping off betting slips for Sunday’s games in the bar’s huge football pool. My glove compartment was full of phony decals and emblems that I would have used in an illegal spot if one was available, but I couldn’t chance double parking and blocking in some Supreme Court judge. I settled for a spot two blocks away.

This section of Rosebank, once almost exclusively Italian, with a sprinkling of Jewish delis and bakeries, now had businesses run by more recent immigrants. I passed a Korean nail salon flanked by an Indian restaurant and a Pakistani convenience store. Across the street was something called the Somali-American Social Club, where a tall man in a white dashiki stood outside smoking. Probably didn’t want to light up inside near the explosives. Two doors down, Gottleib’s Bakery, a local institution for 80 years, still held the fort. If World War III broke out, I was pretty certain it would start here.

Inside the Red, patrons were two-deep at the rail keeping three bartenders hopping. All the tables in the front and back rooms were occupied and I pushed my way to the bar. The front room had dimpled tin ceilings that tended to amplify and redirect noise. In fact, because of an acoustic anomaly, something said at one end of the bar might be heard clearly at the other end. Of course, most conversations were lost in the mix of babble, but people still tended to be discreet. If you wanted to ask for a quick blow job in the car, or you were a city councilman asking five large in cash from a contractor who needed a zoning variance, you might as well put it on cable. The half-oval bar ran the length of the front room and had a dark green leather border matched by the upholstery of high-back swivel stools. A large silver trophy depicting a crouching man with his hand swept back occupied a place of honor next to the register. Its nameplate read “R. Kane.” Underneath that, “1973 Tri-State Handball Championships.” A third line said “Second Place.”

Roscoe Kane, 60 pounds past his handball prime, lumbered over. I reached in my pocket, counted off $500 and put it on the bar.

“Take me off the books.”

“Business picking up?”

“I’m being optimistic.”

Reaching behind the register, Roscoe pulled out a beat-up marble notebook of the type your mother bought for your first day of school. He laid it on the bar, flipped some pages, picked up a pencil and crossed something out. He took $420 from the pile and put it in the cash drawer. At the same time he reached down into a cooler, lifted out a bottle of Sam Adams Light, twisted off the cap with one hand and slid it down to me. Ex-handball champs don’t lack for manual dexterity. He put the notebook away. I knew that dozens, maybe hundreds, of similar notebooks had served the same purpose since the Red Lantern, one of the oldest taverns in the city, opened its doors back when the Kings Rifles garrisoned Staten Island.

Roscoe put some bar nuts in front of me and said, “Glass? Lunch?”

“No, and yes,” I said through a mouthful of nuts. “Two eggplant heroes to go.”

I took a long draw on my beer. It was ice cold. Not too many people drank Sam Adams in the Red, let alone Sam Adams Light, but Roscoe kept in a stash for me. It was the only light beer I’d ever had that didn’t taste light.  

I said, “Is it true that the Algonquins ran a tab in here?”

“Never. Bastards stiffed us.”

“Yeah,” one of the regulars at the bar snorted, “and this place hasn’t bought back a drink since.”

As I sipped my beer, I turned to scan the opposite wall, which was covered floor to ceiling with tally sheets for the 1,400 people in the football pool. The alphabetically-listed entrants were a democratic cross section of the populace, including just about every elected and appointed official, several judges, a smattering of assistant district attorneys, college professors, scores of cops and half the hoods in the borough. The sheets were taken down after the Monday night games and updated by the three elderly Italian ladies who also ran the kitchen. No one questioned their cooking or their accuracy. 

I felt a blast of chilly air. The bar’s cheerful hubbub eased a bit and one of the other bartenders said “shit” under his breath. I turned as Arman Rahm and a fire hydrant entered the bar. The fire hydrant’s name was Maks Kalugin and had more bullet holes in him than Emperor Maximilian.