Midnight Club (14 page)

44

The Midnight Club; Kyoto, London, West Berlin…

THERE HAD NEVER
been anything quite like it.

The Club.

A secret society that stretched across the world.

In Kyoto, Japan, a powerful Yakuza member dutifully sat through an exotic and beautiful ancient tea ceremony. One of the geishas gently whirled an elegant bamboo whisk through waves of murky green tea. She moved the stirrer at just the right tempo to produce the tiny bubbles whose appearance separated master from apprentice at the task.

The geisha finally bowed twice and presented a small china bowl to the tall, silver-haired Japanese man. As he lifted the crisp rice cake it contained, he once again read a note that had reached him at this private garden. On the index finger of his right hand was an expensive black onyx and diamond ring, identical to the one worn by Alexandre St.-Germain at Allure.

The powerful Yakuza leader finally rose from the table and went inside for a massage, and other ministrations from the geisha. The Midnight Club was to meet again.

In London, a respected House member was inside the mahoganied bedroom of a magnificent apartment overlooking Parliament and the Thames. He pondered the difficult times. He was recalling Alexandre St.-Germain, the several months the Grave Dancer had spent living at Number 5 Newman Passage, taking control of the rackets all through England. St.-Germain had reminded him of the most vicious American gangsters from the thirties. He had attempted to be larger than life, and had nearly succeeded.

The House member had his own idea about who was responsible for the lurid shootings in New York, and why the Club was being assembled for a rare emergency meeting. His source of information, the former number two to St.-Germain in Europe, would soon be arriving in New York on the Concorde. If all went well in the States, they would know everything by the same time tomorrow.

In West Berlin, a police commissioner read the urgent message from America a final time. He wiped his silver-rimmed spectacles on a handkerchief pulled from the lapel pocket of his dark business suit.
“Schmutzig,”
he muttered.
“Sehr schmutzig.”
It was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the wire-rimmed glasses, or the important message from the Club.

In all, twenty of the members received the news and made plans to come immediately to New York… then on to another, still undisclosed location.

None of the wealthy and powerful men understood yet, but all of them would come. All had in their possession the onyx and diamond ring that signified membership in the Club.

45

Sarah McGinniss; East Sixty-sixth Street

SARAH’S MANHATTAN APARTMENT
had seemed unbearably large and empty since Sam had gone off with his father.

She found that she missed their elaborately disorganized breakfasts together; then the chatty walks around the neighborhood each morning; and planning dinners; and movies like the
Star Wars
trilogy; and which ridiculous board game to play at the end of the day. Chutes and Ladders? Mousetrap? Monopoly? Whichever game lit up Sam’s eyes the most.

She was constantly delighted at how much she liked being a mother, at least being Sam’s mother. She had tried to deny traditional maternal feelings, but she was learning to treasure the experience.

Her heart ached for Sam whenever she had a free moment to think, so Sarah tried to have as few as possible. That was easy, with the Midnight Club investigation starting to boil over.

On the night of July 3, Sarah’s part in the investigation was further solidified. The phone in her office rang at a little past ten. She’d been expecting a call from Sam and Roger.

“Hello. Yes. Speaking. This is Sarah McGinniss…All right. Yes, I can do that… That would be fine…Would you give him this message,” she went on. “It’s simple. Everything that he wants can be taken care of.”

Sarah hung up the telephone. Almost immediately, she picked it up again.

She called Stefanovitch. It was possible he would still be working down at Police Plaza.

He finally came on the line in his office. “Stefanovitch.”

“McGinniss…I thought I might catch you. Listen, I have some good news for a change.”

“I think I’m ready for a little good news. I just had Kimberly Manion in here. She got a high-fashion commercial shoot because she worked at Allure. Great, huh?”

“Nicky Wilson wants to see me again, Stef. He wants to talk tonight, in fact. He’s called for another meeting.”

“How did that happen? When? I thought he chased you out of Connecticut.”

“He did. But now he’s apparently willing to make some kind of deal, to talk at least. I’m not exactly sure what it is yet.”

There was silence on the phone line; then Stefanovitch spoke. “Do you want some company? I’m offering, if you do.”

“I write about true crime, Marshal Dillon. I’ve been doing it for about six years now,” Sarah answered back. “I’ll be all right.”

“Listen, Sarah, Bear Kupchek had been doing this kind of thing for a lot of years, too. At least he thought so. This is different. Nobody knows the rules.”

Sarah said nothing to that. She was thinking over what Stefanovitch had said.

“Let me ride up there to Danbury with you. Humor me. We’ll sing overnight camping songs in the car.”

“Stef…I… All right. I’ll be down there in about twenty minutes.”

Half an hour later, the two of them were heading up the West Side Highway, then onto the Saw Mill. During the ride, Sarah noticed that she was incredibly jumpy. She caught herself glancing into the rearview mirror.

She was looking for headlights—for cars that might be following them.
She was watching for—pursuers.
That was how absurd and out of hand it had gotten. She had the recurring thought that they were going to find Nicky Wilson murdered at Danbury.

She had never been a big fan of melodramas, and she wasn’t keen on them now. Still… the violence surrounding the Midnight Club had been completely unpredictable so far: the grisly murders of Alexandre St.-Germain, Traficante, and Barnwell; the unfortunate killing of Bear Kupchek. Why had Nicky Wilson suddenly changed his mind about talking to her?

46

WARDEN THOMAS MET
them in the same building where Sarah had visited Wilson. Thomas looked like a gawky high school science teacher. He was too tall and thin, dressed in a brown tweed suit that was at least a size too large. The part in his grayish blond hair would have been perfect, except that most of his hair was gone.

“We’re going over to the hospital,” he informed Sarah and Stefanovitch as they exchanged handshakes.

Sarah’s breath caught. “What happened to him?” she asked.

Warden Thomas shook his head. “Nothing happened. We moved him into the hospital at his request. He claimed he was having chest pains. I think he wanted to be in a more secure area for your visit.”

The inside of the prison infirmary consisted of a few small rooms, almost like emergency room cubicles, which were evenly placed down the hallway from a nurses’ station. The station itself was encased in protective Plexiglas.

The environment was sparkling clean, and looked organized and neat. It was also surprisingly upscale. Danbury was a country club compared with most prisons. Among inmates around the federal system, it was known as “the Plaza Hotel.”

Stefanovitch was asked by Thomas to wait at the nurses’ station. Sarah and the warden then went down to a room at the end of the corridor.

A tensor reading light was the only illumination inside the infirmary room. Nicky Wilson was seated in a cone of light streaming from the lamp.

“The chest pains are real,” he said when he saw Sarah standing in the doorway.

“No pain, no gain.” Her smile was slightly forced.

“I’ll be right outside,” Warden Thomas said. He glanced at Sarah, then walked away, though only a few yards down the corridor.

“Who have you talked to about our meeting?” Wilson immediately asked her. He turned the tensor light away, and his face dropped into shadows.

“The police commissioner knows. The governor’s office.” Sarah sat in the only chair inside the tiny room.

“Don’t talk to anyone else.”

Sarah nodded. She wasn’t going to argue with Nicky Wilson about anything right now.

“You’ll understand why by the time I finish talking. Maybe you’ll understand more than you want to. You might even know why I finally decided to talk to you instead of somebody else.” It was the second time Wilson had alluded specifically to
her
coming to the prison.

For the next forty-five minutes, she listened to Wilson talk. And Nicky Wilson was absolutely right, part of her wished that she wasn’t hearing any of what the powerful underboss had to tell her.

“I am on the periphery of a group that makes up the most influential crime syndicate in the world. I don’t kid myself about that; I’m on the outside looking in. I work for them. This syndicate is sometimes called the Midnight Club,” Nicky Wilson said.

“It’s called Midnight because their meetings are always very secretive and held late at night. After midnight. The members are mostly unknown to the public, even to the underbosses. These are very private individuals. Some of the old-line bosses like their women, sometimes a little gambling, and they demand that kind of action at the meetings.

“Somehow it all works. For the past ten years, this syndicate has been responsible for running the major organized crime activity around the world. I mean the crime that is organized, not the small stuff, the wise-guy operations on the street.

“The syndicate has settled disputes and arbitrated between groups from different countries. It’s made decisions about who should get a piece of the action, particularly as the Third World is divided up. That alone could have caused gang wars all through the late nineteen seventies. It didn’t. The syndicate is the reason why.

“The profit—not the earnings—the
profit
per year is in the area of
sixty-five billion dollars.
The number has been rising steadily for the past ten years. If you think about how the world really works, about that much money at stake, you begin to understand the power of the syndicate. You also understand the paranoia operating right now. Some kind of a coup has been set in motion. A major coup that none of them understands.

“An emergency meeting was called during the past day or two. Word went out everywhere around the world. They want to talk about the killings. They’re conducting their own investigation.
They’re using police departments
around the world to investigate for them. You understand what I’m saying?”

Sarah understood, at least she thought that she did. Wilson was telling her that the syndicate had the full use of certain police forces, maybe even of governments. How was that possible, though?

“I can tell you where the emergency meeting will take place. I know the location. I can lead you to them. I’m willing to give you that, but you have to give me something in return. You have to get me out of here.
Because they won’t. They’ve refused me.”

Sarah stared back at Nicky Wilson. Neither of them spoke for several seconds. She finally told him that she could do what she’d promised at their first meeting. She could get him out of Danbury; she had assurances that this would happen. He just had to tell her everything he knew about the Midnight Club.

47

Stefanovitch; Atlantic City, New Jersey

AS HE STEERED
his van south on the Garden State, Stefanovitch had two and a half hours to be alone with his thoughts. He needed the time to sort through the information he’d been exposed to during the two-week investigation. His mind kept rebelling against the overwhelming organizational task.

Something important was happening. The Midnight Club was meeting, and he knew where. More than a dozen international crime figures had already arrived in the United States.

That afternoon was beautiful, an autumnal breeze blessing the day. Features of the rolling green scenery of southern Jersey captured his attention again and again. It made him seriously question his New York City life-style, also his life’s work.

For some reason, Atlantic City had always made Stefanovitch anxious and uncomfortable. There was something so sleazy and desperate about the New Jersey resort. He was having visions of the nervous glitz already; garish lobbies with too much Italian-restaurant red and gold; fake crystal chandeliers everywhere, including in the bathrooms; Christmas-tree-tinsel decor, even in summertime.

Flashy billboards began to float by on both sides of the Garden State. Messages tried to convince him that the odds were somehow better at Harrah’s on the Marina. No, at the Golden Nugget. No, at the Sands. Free parking was offered as an enticement to gamble away hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.

Bally’s had a sleek, continental-style restaurant, another slick poster screamed. The Golden Nugget boasted Steve Wynn and Frank Sinatra. Caesar’s had Slotbusters!

Stefanovitch knew that there were two types of players in Atlantic City and Vegas. He’d learned that much from another cop, a sad, habitual gambler himself. There was the escapist, who wandered into casinos to get away from the boardwalk, the heat, maybe a complaining spouse; and there was the recognition gambler, who actually thrived on the crowds and glamour.

The main prey of the casinos was definitely recognition gamblers, mostly self-made men and women who owned cash businesses. These folks had lots of money in their hot little hands—and were willing to lose incredible sums just to be recognized as players. The logic of the recognition gambler was mind-boggling to Stefanovitch, but it was all documented by the successful casino owners. Atlantic City existed to service the recognition gambler.

The neighborhood leading to the beachfront was desolate, a maze of empty lots, boarded-up buildings, seedy rooming houses and tenements. A chorus line of frisky if bedraggled prostitutes waited near the Atlantic City bus station on Arctic Avenue. They waved good-naturedly at Stefanovitch’s passing van. He waved back.

He was thinking that once upon a time, the state and city names on the street signs must have made tourists feel kind of comfortable and secure. I’m from the South, and here’s good old Kentucky, or Tennessee Avenue, way up north in Atlantic City, home of the Miss America contest with Bert Parks. Only now, Tennessee Avenue, Delaware Avenue, Illinois Avenue, seemed like the absolute armpit of the world. The scene was as bad as Times Square, except that Times Square couldn’t advertise itself as a beach resort.

Pacific and Atlantic avenues were a little different, definitely more upscale. Well-heeled tourists in pastel leisure and running suits dominated the street scene.

The Tropicana Hotel finally loomed on the horizon.

Then came Bally’s Park Place.

And Caesar’s, home away from home for all the lowballers in town.

Harrah’s Boardwalk.

Steve Wynn’s Golden Nugget.

Trump Plaza, which proved to Stefanovitch that Donald Trump believed in losers.

Farther down the boardwalk was Resorts International, which hosted a lot of shabby prizefights shown on ESPN and ABC’s
Wide World of Sports.

Caesar’s Boardwalk Regency.

Spade’s Boardwalk.

There were older hotels as well, and rooming houses set back a few blocks from the boardwalk. There were still a few originals, small hotels with half-block-long porches; and green wooden rocking chairs with lives of their own; and throwback families that seemed to have been there since the early 1900s.

Now the Midnight Club was in Atlantic City. The syndicate is meeting inside Trump Plaza, Stefanovitch thought as he approached the boardwalk in a slow-moving stream of late afternoon traffic.