Darkfall (15 page)

Like now, on the telephone, after he asked if she would pick up the kids at school this afternoon, she said, “Of course, Jack, I’ll be glad to, but if they expect you to be there and then you don’t show, they’re going to be disappointed, and if this sort of thing happens too often, they’re going to feel worse than just disappointed; they’re going to feel abandoned.”

“Faye—”

“Psychologists say that when children have already lost one parent, they need—”

“Faye, I’m sorry, but I don’t really have time right now to listen to what the psychologists say. I—”

“But you should
make
time for just that sort of thing, dear.”

He sighed. “Perhaps I should.”

“Every modern parent ought to be well-versed in child psychology.”

Jack glanced at Rebecca, who was waiting impatiently by the phones. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged as Faye rattled on:

“You’re an old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants parent, dear. You think you can handle everything with love and cookies. Now, of course, love and cookies are a part of it, but there’s a whole lot more to the job than—”

“Faye, listen, nine times out of ten, I
am
there when I tell the kids I will be. But sometimes it isn’t possible. This job doesn’t have the most regular hours. A homicide detective can’t walk away in the middle of pursuing a hot lead just because it’s the end of his shift. Besides, there’s a crisis here. A big one. Now, will you pick up the kids for me?”

“Of course, dear,” she said, sounding slightly hurt.

“I appreciate it, Faye.”

“It’s nothing.”

“I’m sorry if I sounded... abrupt.”

“You didn’t at all. Don’t worry about it. Will Davey and Penny be staying for dinner?”

“If it’s all right with you—”

“Of course it is. We love having them here, Jack. You know that. And will you be eating with us?”

“I’m not sure I’ll be free by then.”

“Don’t miss too many dinners with them, dear.”

“I don’t plan to.”

“Dinnertime is an important ritual, an opportunity for the family to share the events of the day.”

“I know.”

“Children need that period of tranquility, of togetherness, at the end of each day.”

“I know. I’ll try my best to make it. I hardly ever miss.”

“Will they be sleeping over?”

“I’m sure I won’t be that late. Listen, thanks a lot, Faye. I don’t know what I’d do without you and Keith to lean on now and then; really, I don’t. But I’ve got to run now. See you later.”

Before Faye could respond with more advice, Jack hung up, feeling both guilty and relieved.

A fierce and bitter wind was stored up in the west. It poured through the cold gray city in an unrelenting flood, harrying the snow before it.

Outside the hotel, Rebecca and Jack turned up their coat collars and tucked their chins down and cautiously negotiated the slippery, snow-skinned pavement.

Just as they reached their car, a stranger stepped up to them. He was tall, dark-complexioned, well-dressed. “Lieutenant Chandler? Lieutenant Dawson? My boss wants to talk to you.”

“Who’s your boss?” Rebecca asked.

Instead of answering, the man pointed to a black Mercedes limousine that was parked farther along the hotel driveway. He started toward it, clearly expecting them to follow without further question.

After a brief hesitation, they actually did follow him, and when they reached the limousine, the heavily tinted rear window slid down. Jack instantly recognized the passenger, and he saw that Rebecca also knew who the man was: Don Gennaro Carramazza, patriarch of the most powerful Mafia family in New York.

The tall man got in the front seat with the chauffeur, and Carramazza, alone in the back, opened his door and motioned for Jack and Rebecca to join him.

“What do you want?” Rebecca asked, making no move to get into the car.

“A little conversation,” Carramazza said, with just the vaguest trace of a Sicilian accent. He had a surprisingly cultured voice.

“So talk,” she said.

“Not like this. It’s too cold,” Carramazza said. Snow blew past him, into the car. “Let’s be comfortable.”

“I am comfortable,” she said.

“Well, I’m not,” Carramazza said. He frowned. “Listen, I have some extremely valuable information for you. I chose to deliver it myself. Me. Doesn’t that tell you how important this is? But I’m not going to talk on the street, in public, for Christ’s sake.”

Jack said, “Get in, Rebecca.”

With an expression of distaste, she did as he said.

Jack got into the car after her. They sat in the two seats that flanked the built-in bar and television set, facing the rear of the limousine, where Carramazza sat facing forward.

Up front, Rudy touched a switch, and a thick Plexiglas partition rose between that part of the car and the passenger compartment.

Carramazza picked up an attache case and put it on his lap but didn’t open it. He regarded Jack and Rebecca with sly contemplation.

The old man looked like a lizard. His eyes were hooded by heavy, pebbled lids. He was almost entirely bald. His face was wizened and leathery, with sharp features and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. He moved like a lizard, too: very still for long moments, then brief flurries of activity, quick dartings and swivelings of the head.

Jack wouldn’t have been surprised if a long, forked tongue had flickered out from between Carramazza’s dry lips.

Carramazza swiveled his head to Rebecca. “There’s no reason to be afraid of me, you know.”

She looked surprised. “Afraid? But I’m not.”

“When you were reluctant to get into the car, I thought—”

“Oh, that wasn’t fear,” she said icily. “I was worried the dry cleaner might not be able to get the stink out of my clothes.”

Carramazza’s hard little eyes narrowed.

Jack groaned inwardly.

The old man said, “I see no reason why we can’t be civil with one another, especially when it’s in our mutual interest to cooperate.”

He didn’t sound like a hoodlum. He sounded like a banker.

“Really?” Rebecca said. “You really see no reason? Please allow me to explain.”

Jack said, “Uh, Rebecca—”

She let Carramazza have it: “You’re a thug, a thief, a murderer, a dope peddler, a pimp. Is that explanation enough?”

“Rebecca—”

“Don’t worry, Jack. I haven’t insulted him. You can’t insult a pig merely by calling it a pig.”

“Remember,” Jack said, “he’s lost a nephew and a brother today.”

“Both of whom were dope peddlers, thugs, and murderers,” she said.

Carramazza was startled speechless by her ferocity.

Rebecca glared at him and said, “You don’t seem particularly grief-stricken by the loss of your brother. Does he look grief-stricken to you, Jack?”

Without a trace of anger or even any excitement in his voice, Carramazza said, “In the
fratellanza,
Sicilian men don’t weep.”

Coming from a withered old man, that macho declaration was outrageously foolish.

Still without apparent animosity, continuing to employ the soothing voice of a banker, Carramazza said, “We do
feel,
however. And we do take our revenge.”

Rebecca studied him with obvious disgust.

The old man’s reptilian hands remained perfectly still on top of the attache case. He turned his cobra eyes on Jack.

“Lieutenant Dawson, perhaps I should deal with you in this matter. You don’t seem to share Lieutenant Chandler’s... prejudices.”

Jack shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. I agree with everything she said. I just wouldn’t have said it.”

He looked at Rebecca.

She smiled at him, pleased by his support.

Looking at her but speaking to Carramazza, Jack said, “Sometimes, my partner’s zeal and aggressiveness are excessive and counterproductive, a lesson she seems unable or unwilling to learn.”

Her smile faded fast.

With evident sarcasm, Carramazza said, “What do I have here—a couple of self-righteous, holier-than-thou types? I suppose you’ve never accepted a bribe, not even back when you were a uniformed cop walking a beat and earning barely enough to pay the rent.”

Jack met the old man’s hard, watchful eyes and said, “Yeah. That’s right. I never have.”

“Not even one gratuity—”

“No.”

“—like a free tumble in the hay with a hooker who was trying to stay out of jail or—”

“No.”

“—a little cocaine, maybe some grass, from a pusher who wanted you to look the other way.”

“No.”

“A bottle of liquor or a twenty-dollar bill at Christmas.”

“No.”

Carramazza regarded them in silence for a moment, while a cloud of snow swirled around the car and obscured the city. At last he said, “So I’ve got to deal with a couple of freaks.” He spat out the word “freaks” with such contempt that it was clear he was disgusted by the mere thought of an honest public official.

“No, you’re wrong,” Jack said. “There’s nothing special about us. We’re not freaks. Not all cops are corrupt. In fact, not even most of them are.”

“Most of them,” Carramazza disagreed.

“No,” Jack insisted. “There’re bad apples, sure, and weak sisters. But for the most part, I can be proud of the people I work with.”

“Most are on the take, one way or another,” Carramazza said.

“That’s just not true.”

Rebecca said, “No use arguing, Jack. He has to believe everyone else is corrupt. That’s how he justifies the things he does.”

The old man sighed. He opened the attache case on his lap, withdrew a manila envelope, handed it to Jack. “This might help you.”

Jack took it with more than a little apprehension. “What is it?”

“Relax,” Carramazza said. “It isn’t a bribe. It’s information. Everything we’ve been able to learn about this man who calls himself Baba Lavelle. His last-known address. Restaurants he frequented before he started this war and went into hiding. The names and addresses of all the pushers who’ve distributed his merchandise over the past couple of months—though you won’t be able to question some of them, any more.”

“Because you’ve had them killed?” Rebecca asked.

“Maybe they just left town.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, it’s all there,” Carramazza said. “Maybe you already have all that information; maybe you don’t; I think you don’t.”

“Why’re you giving it to us?” Jack asked.

“Isn’t that obvious?” the old man asked, opening his hooded eyes a bit wider. “I want Lavelle found. I want him stopped.”

Holding the nine-by-twelve envelope in one hand, tapping it against his knee, Jack said, “I’d have thought you’d have a much better chance of finding him than we would. He’s a drug dealer, after all. He’s part of your world. You have all the sources, all the contacts—”

“The usual sources and contacts are of little or no use in this case,” the old man said. “This Lavelle... he’s a loner. Worse than that. It’s as if... as if he’s made of ... smoke.”

“Are you sure he actually exists?” Rebecca asked. “Maybe he’s only a straw man. Maybe your
real
enemies created him in order to hide behind him.”

“He’s real,” Carramazza said emphatically. “He entered this country illegally last spring. Came here from Jamaica by way of Puerto Rico. There’s a photograph of him in the envelope there.”

Jack hastily opened it, rummaged through the contents, and extracted an eight-by-ten glossy.

Carramazza said, “It’s an enlargement of a snapshot taken in a restaurant shortly after Lavelle began operating in what has been traditionally our territory.”

Traditionally our territory.
Good God, Jack thought, he sounds as if he’s some British duke complaining about poachers invading his fox-hunting fields!

The photo was a bit fuzzy, but Lavelle’s face was sufficiently distinct so that, henceforth, Jack would be able to recognize him if he ever saw him on the street. The man was very black, handsome—indeed, striking—with a broad brow, deepset eyes, high cheekbones, and a wide mouth. In the picture he was smiling at someone who wasn’t within the camera’s field. He had an engaging smile.

Jack passed the picture to Rebecca.

Carramazza said, “Lavelle wants to take away my business, destroy my reputation within the
fratellanza,
and make me look weak and helpless.
Me.
Me, the man who has controlled the organization with an iron hand for twenty-eight years!
Me!”

Finally, emotion filled his voice: cold, hard anger. He went on, spitting out the words as if they tasted bad.

“But that isn’t the worst of it. No. You see, he doesn’t actually want the business. Once he’s got it, he’ll throw it away, let the other families move in and carve it up among themselves. He just doesn’t want me or anyone named Carramazza to have it. This isn’t merely a battle for the territory, not just a struggle for control. For Lavelle, this is strictly a matter of revenge. He wants to see me suffer in every way possible. He intends to isolate me and hopes to break my spirit by robbing me of my empire and by killing my nephews, my sons. Yes, all of them, one by one. He threatens to murder my best friends, as well, anyone who has ever meant anything to me. He promises to kill my five precious grandchildren. Can you believe such a thing? He threatens little babies! No vengeance, regardless of how justified it might be, should ever touch innocent children.”

“He’s actually told you that he’ll do all of those things?” Rebecca asked. “When? When did he tell you?”

“Several times.”

“You’ve had face-to-face meetings?”

“No. He wouldn’t survive a face-to-face meeting.”

The banker image had vanished. There was no veneer of gentility now. The old man looked more reptilian than ever. Like a snake in a thousand-dollar suit. A very poisonous snake.