Mafioso, page 5
part #1 of The Mafia Chronicles Series
“Take your fuckin’ hands off me,” Charlie screamed. “Don’t ever touch me, you ... bastard.”
Coakley knew Charlie was going to say “black bastard” until, even drunk, he thought about it.
Charlie was supposed to be the new boss, but they all knew the West Indian was the real leader, with Shimmy Melendez second in command. Charlie, in fact, was nothing at all. Nothing but a drunk with dead Mike’s name. Immediately after Mike’s death, Coakley thought he would keep Charlie around to insure the continued support of the Italian members of the gang. Now, he knew better. There would be problems after he got rid of Charlie; there would be bigger problems if he didn’t.
“Sorry, Charlie,” the West Indian said. “I know how you feel. If we didn’t need her, I’d kill her myself.”
Charlie wasn’t ready to be pacified. “He wasn’t your brother!”
Coakley said, “Mike was always decent to me.”
That was funny, because Coakley had intended to get rid of Mike once they started to make progress in the war against Don Corrasco.
“I’d like to cut her fuckin’ throat,” Charlie said.
“Later, Charlie—later. We’ll all get a chance to make up for Mike.”
Shimmy Melendez hadn’t seen Caterina—Kate—Daniello before. The Puerto Rican’s eyes were bright. He snorted cocaine; it was one of the other problems Coakley had to live with for the moment.
“You take the throat, Charlie,” Melendez laughed. “I’ll take the box and boobs.”
Kate Daniello heard all of this. There were pads of wet cotton over her eyes; her mouth was covered with adhesive tape.
She wouldn’t live to identify them, so Coakley told the two Negroes who were holding her to take off the blinkers and the tape. Coakley decided it was time for a little fun.
The two gunmen weren’t gentle about taking off the adhesive tape. That was how Coakley wanted it, but when the girl cried out, he said, “Hey, you don’t want to damage the crown princess.”
Kate Daniello blinked in the glare of unshaded warehouse lights. What she saw when she could see was a huge Negro, very black, good-looking, about thirty-five. The men holding her stepped back. They were young and not altogether genuine in their black radical costumes—leather jackets, beards, black cowboy hats.
Sending the two kidnapers dressed as black radicals was Coakley’s idea. “Send two blacks to Sarah Lawrence in sack suits and cordovans and they’ll be stoned to death,” Coakley said at the time. Nobody got the joke.
The other two men Kate Daniello saw were a typical Brooklyn Italian “goombah” and a wolfish Puerto Rican in a vicuna coat. She didn’t know any of them; they weren’t the sort of people she knew.
“How’s everything at Sarah?” Coakley asked. “How’s the Black Studies program going?”
Kate Daniello was scared, but some of her father’s young toughness came through. She was scared, not nervous. “Not so well,” she answered.
“Give the lady a drink,” Coakley told Melendez. Grinning, the Puerto Rican did what he was told. The drink came from Charlie’s bottle of rye and he glared at the girl.
The room was the manager’s office in a disused warehouse in Long Island City, just over the Fifty-ninth Street bridge from Manhattan. The windows were thickly coated with black paint and tar-paper was pasted over that. There were three steel cots, a few chairs, a refrigerator, a portable television set, a calendar for 1967, and a telephone.
Coakley told Kate Daniello to sit down. “Hey, the chick drinks good,” Melendez said. “Have another, doll.”
“Black Studies are a problem,” Coakley said. “How do you teach history when there’s no history to teach. Unless picking cotton and shining shoes is history.”
“What’s all this shit?” Charlie snarled.
“An Anglo-Saxon like you wouldn’t understand. Shimmy’s white, more or less. Right, Shimmy?”
Melendez got the tone but not the message. The Puerto Rican hoodlum didn’t give a shit about the race thing. History didn’t interest him much. What did interest him was the idea of slipping into this absolute fuckin’ doll with dark-blond hair and a mouth just made for sucking cocks.
“Money, is that why?” the girl asked Coakley. “My father will pay.”
“That’s right,” Coakley said. “So will you. But we were talking about black history, American history. You’re a part of American history, Miss Daniello. Your father is an illiterate immigrant gangster, a thug and a murderer, and here you are at Sarah Lawrence.” For a moment Coakley’s hate burned bright.
“You’re a wop gangster’s daughter, but you’re white and your Daddy has money. That makes you as good—nearly as good—as the other white bitches. That’s the miracle of America. But not for my two daughters. They’re beautiful and smart—I think they are—but what chance have they got?”
“You can’t blame me for America,” the girl said. “It was all made when we got here.”
“You’re white, that’s enough for me,” Coakley said. “That’s why I’m going to kill you.”
Kate Daniello knew what she had to offer besides money. “That would be a shame,” she said.
“Fuckin’ right!” Melendez agreed.
The girl looked at Charlie Esposito. She spoke in the formal foreigner’s Italian she had learned at school—they never spoke it at home. “You’re going to let them kill me?” she asked in her ancestral tongue.
Drunk or not, Charlie felt uncomfortable and afraid for the first time. He knew how far he had come from all the old rules. He knew how the Organization, local and national, would take the murder of an Italian girl—a “civilian.”
It was too late now. Mike was dead and he was tied in tight with these spics and blacks. Even if he crawled to Don Corrasco on his knees, it wouldn’t do any good. The moment the girl was snatched it was already too late. Another drink, a big one, helped to blur his brain.
“You rotten bitch,” he said. He slapped her and Coakley didn’t try to interfere.
Definitely, Coakley thought, Charlie would have to go.
“I don’t give a shit what they do with you,” Charlie yelled.
“What do you mean they, white man?” Coakley asked—the old Tonto joke.
“Fuck her,” Charley said, going back to the bottle.
Coakley knew what he was going to do. Though he ran a stable of hustlers, he never dicked even the best-looking broads, the clean ones, white or black. Coakley loved his yellow wife; this had nothing to do with that.
He had done some research on Kate Daniello. Before joining the Black Alliance she had belonged to another, less radical organization.
As if the thought had just occurred to him, Coakley said, “Of course you believe in civil rights for black people, Miss Daniello?”
He paused. “What about sexual?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“Sure you do,” Coakley said.
Shimmy Melendez let out a whoop. Charlie drank down what was in the glass and filled it again.
“Wake up, honey,” Coakley said. “Time for us to call your Daddy. First, though, you’re going to suck my big black prick. Daddy will love to hear that.”
“Think about it,” Lanzetta said into the telephone. “A hundred grand’s an awful lot of dough. Yeah, I know what you said about no money. Maybe you’re ready to change your mind. A hundred big ones clear and free. Just between you and us.” He paused, made his breathing sound heavy like a man pushed to the wall. “Look, if a hundred isn’t enough we can raise the figure. I mean, you name a price.”
Lanzetta waved at Uncle Joe to keep quiet. Harry Maione was with them in the library of Daniello’s house in Brooklyn Heights. Maione, as the son-in-law, thought he should be handling the negotiations. Maione was always trying to get Uncle Joe to like him better than he did.
“Uncle Joe’s sick—you blame him?” Lanzetta said. “I said he’s sick with the doctor. Nobody can talk with him, not even me. About the money, I mean it. You name a figure. Aw, come on, for Christ sake, you got to be kidding. A fuckin’ half a million! Okay, okay, if that’s what you want. Listen, that’s what I said. You get what you ask for. You don’t welch—we don’t. Yeah, that’s right. I’m who you think I am. So what about it? Is it a deal or not? Why can’t we wrap it up right now? Okay, okay—you’ll get back to me …” Lanzetta replaced the receiver and turned to face Daniello. “I think they’ll go for it,” he said. “That was Melendez I’m pretty sure. It was Melendez or one of his spics. Coakley’s too smart to talk himself. But he’s right there listening to every word.”
Lanzetta looked at Maione. “Did your boys get the word to Charlie?”
Maione couldn’t just answer yes or no. “It ain’t easy,” he said. “Look, Nick, it ain’t just like you walk in and deliver a message. Not to Charlie after what you done to Mike.”
“Harry,” Lanzetta warned him. “Stop cocking around. Did you get word to Charlie. We’d let him off the hook if he managed to spring the girl?”
“Not yet,” Maione answered, keeping his eyes away from his father-in-law.
Uncle Joe began to curse Lanzetta. “Jesus Christ, Nick, forget about Charlie. If the Negro wants half a mil, he gets it.”
Lanzetta gave him a look and Daniello held up his hand. Daniello was scared, but love for his daughter made him say it. “How long you been with me, Nick?” Lanzetta said twelve years.
“A long time—right,” Daniello said. “A long fuckin’ time and we been through a lot. You wouldn’t hear this, Nick, if I didn’t need a favor. Yeah—a favor. I done you a lot of favors ...”
“I know that, Uncle Joe, but you heard ...”
“Yeah, I know about that. Let me ask you something. You were just a two-time car thief when I picked you up and made a man of you. That’s what I said—a man! The books were closed and I stuck my neck out because I liked you. Your father dead, I was like a father. I taught you the business. Did I or not? Hey, how many times I tell you get the lead out, make something of yourself? I try to push you up in the Family. You like it where you was—that’s your business. But I done you favors and now I want one.”
Daniello appealed to Harry Maione. “You hear what I said. Am I wrong?”
Maione said to Lanzetta, “Uncle Joe’s done you a lot of good. You owe him, Nick.”
Lanzetta said, “Don’t you tell me, Harry. What do you know about me and Uncle Joe? Let Uncle Joe tell me himself.”
Daniello said, “I want you to help me, Nick.” The man sounded hopeful. “You help me get my Caterina back and you don’t worry about money the rest of your life.”
“No money,” Lanzetta said. “You insult me with money. But what about Don Corrasco? You heard the orders?”
“Don Corrasco is a fine man,” Daniello said. “Nobody respects him more than me.” The look on his face defied Lanzetta to say it was not so. “But, Nick, Caterina is my daughter, my flesh and blood. His family has been dead so long he can’t understand what it’s like to lose someone you love.”
Lanzetta had listened to Kate Daniello’s voice on the telephone. It was strangely without feeling—dull. She said she had just sucked “a big black prick.” There was no use in telling Uncle Joe about that, although he had promised to do so.
“Don Corrasco doesn’t have to know,” Daniello said desperately. “I’ll pay for Caterina and we’ll say they got scared and let her go. No, Don Corrasco will know that’s not true. You got her back, Nick. Don Corrasco knows your work, Nick—he’ll believe that. You were too smart for the black and you went out there and got her back. I know what you’re thinking, Nick, but you owe me.”
Lanzetta pretended to think for a while. “If it was just you and me knew about it—maybe.”
“Caterina’s my wife’s sister, Nick,” Harry Maione protested. “Me and Uncle Joe are family. What do you mean if it was just ...”
Daniello was desperate. “Look, I know you guys don’t get along—so what? We’re in this together—right? You, Nick, you’re family—in a way. I say that—you’re family. You don’t have no family of your own ...”
Lanzetta looked first at Daniello, then at Harry Maione. “All right, you win,” he said. “When the spic calls back I’ll say it’s a deal. You get the money and I’ll deliver it.”
It was an act, but Lanzetta had to say, “Unless you want Harry to do it?”
Harry got the point. Daniello didn’t. “You make the deal, Nick,” he said. “The cocksuckers are afraid of you.”
“Anything you say,” Lanzetta said. “Harry can stay home and guard the house.”
Uncle Joe was cheered up now. “Look, you bastards, you Harry and you Nick. We’re in this together. We’re friends—right? Everybody’s friends, so lay off the needle. I want you two bastards to shake hands and stop this shit.”
Maione looked at Lanzetta. “It’s Nick don’t like me. I like Nick. I’m ready to shake hands if he is.”
Lanzetta held out his hand. “Sure, Harry. What do you say? Shake hands?”
They shook hands and Daniello ran to the liquor cabinet and began to wave bottles at them. “Or imported Peroni.”
Lanzetta said he’d take a beer. Daniello and Maione had whiskey. “You better have the money ready when they want it,” Lanzetta said. “So we can get this done fast. The only problem—how can you raise that kind of money without the Don hearing about it. Don Carrasco hears everything.”
“No problem,” Daniello answered. “I got it right here in the house. Half a mil and maybe a little more.” Harry Maione looked startled.
“Even with the money there’s no guarantee,” Lanzetta said. “Another problem. Might as well face it now. To make themselves look big they’ll give out how you paid. They don’t have to be afraid of a kidnap charge. Who’s going to charge them? We’re not going to testify. Don Corrasco has to hear about it. Of course, we can always say Coakley made up the story about the pay-off. To make himself look big.”
“That’s it,” Daniello said. “If it comes to that, who’s the Don going to believe? The black or us?”
Harry Maione was thinking about the half million. It was a ballbuster to let it go out of Uncle Joe’s family just like that. Maione had been thinking about the old man’s money for a long time. Uncle Joe was getting old and in a few years he’d be dead and his money would go to the two daughters.
“Maybe we can get Caterina back and keep the money,” Maione offered. “What do you think, Nick?”
Daniello was furious. “What’s the matter with you, Harry? You want to fuck up the deal before it gets started. This is my kid you’re talking about. You think I want to give these bastards the five hundred. But we got to play it straight for openers.”
“Uncle Joe’s right,” Lanzetta said. “Naturally, if they leave the way open for a switch—sure. But they won’t do that. Coakley’s too smart. After the pay-off is different. Then we’ll hit them like a Sherman tank. This time we’ll finish the job we started on Mike.”
Daniello and Maione would have to be hit together, and after it was done he couldn’t leave them in the street. Coakley would try to take credit for the double hit. That would make the Family look bad.
“We got to keep this thing tight,” Lanzetta said. “I could use Pignataro and some of the other boys when we make the trade for Caterina. I’d like to, but somebody would talk. If not now—later. It wouldn’t matter to Don Corrasco if it was five years later. If I try to do it myself they may try to hit me and take the money. What do you think, Uncle Joe? Harry drives the car and you and Harry cover me while I make the trade.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Maione said, not wanting to get so close to Coakley’s boys. “I mean, too many guys along could queer the deal. The Negro might back out.”
“I like it, Nick,” Daniello decided. “Just the three of us—nobody else has to be in on it. If anything happens, we all go down together.”
The best place to hit them was when Harry stopped the car. Lanzetta and Daniello in the back seat, Harry up front. Daniello first, then Harry. GeeGee and another man would be waiting with the panel truck. It had worked well before. He and GeeGee would take the bodies down to the ship. The other man would take the Lincoln back to the Coffey Street garage to be cleaned and checked for any possible bullet holes. They had the equipment for just about any repair job.
Maione knew he had lost some favor with Uncle Joe. Now he had put away enough whiskey to be brave. “Nick’s right,” he said. “That’s how we’ll do it. Those bastards try anything they’ll be sorry.”
Lanzetta looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock.
“You think they’ll call back tonight?” Daniello asked.
Lanzetta shrugged. “They may try to make us sweat.”
At ten-fifteen the telephone rang. It was the same voice as before, cool and insolent. It started by saying a lot of dirty stuff about the girl. Lanzetta listened without saying anything. “Sure, I understand,” Lanzetta said finally.
“What do you mean ‘you understand?’” the voice said. “Maybe we’ll go for it, maybe not. Tell Uncle Joe his kid is an expert with the mouth. Be a shame to turn loose a piece like that. I said maybe we’ll go for it. Have the bundle in case we say yes. Be ready to move the minute we decide. Okay?”
The line went dead. “Twelve o’clock. The end of Clinton Avenue. Near the Navy Yard.” Lanzetta said quickly before he hung up.
“You heard it,” he told Daniello. “That’s where we make the trade.” He looked again at his watch. “About ninety minutes. That doesn’t give us much time to get over there. You get ready with the money. I’ll take the car and run over to Coffey Street for a Tommy gun. I’m not taking any chances with these bastards. Anybody asks—it’s for guarding the house.”
“You’re the boss tonight, Nick,” Daniello said. “Anything you say.”
Outside, Lanzetta drove Daniello’s car to a drugstore on Montague Street and called GeeGee Pignataro. A call would set up the arrangements, but he had to get the submachine gun to make it look good. GeeGee would call the watchman who looked after the old coal-burning freighter tied up permanently at a disused pier near the Brooklyn railroad yards. The old rust-bucket never went anywhere, but there was always one furnace fired up and ready.
