Angel Face, page 18
“Vitelli?” Carlyle guessed.
“One of his guys,” she said. “He wants to meet at Canarsie Cemetery in an hour. Just me.”
“Why the cemetery?” Corky wondered.
“It’ll be private,” she said. “It’s probably closed to visitors right now.”
“He’ll have one of the lads who works there on his payroll,” Carlyle said. “It’s a secluded spot where you’ll not be disturbed, and it’ll be simple to ensure you’re by yourself. But I don’t much like it.”
“He’s not going to whack a detective,” she said.
“You said yourself he was willing to take on the Marshals,” Carlyle said.
“Yeah, but they won’t gain anything by taking me out,” she said. “Gabriel will still be in jail and it’ll just piss off the NYPD. Not to mention Vic. He’d friggin’ kill them. Look, with rush hour traffic, I’d better get moving.”
“I’ll come with you,” Carlyle said.
Erin shook her head. “He said alone. If they do try anything, remember there’s a few thousand cops on Long Island. Backup’s no more than a few minutes away. Besides, this is a chance to find out what they’re thinking. Once we know what Vitelli wants, we’ll have some idea what to do about him.”
“Call me the second you’re out of the meeting,” Carlyle said.
“Sheesh,” Erin said. “You meet with mobsters all the time. You’re just mad the shoe’s on the other foot now. If I can handle it, so can you.”
“As I recall, you handled it last time by getting intoxicated and acquiring a tattoo,” Carlyle observed.
Corky grinned. “Grand times,” he said.
Traffic across the East River was awful. Erin ground her teeth and squeezed the steering wheel. She could’ve used the lights and siren, but this was supposed to be a covert meeting. The last thing she wanted was for some well-intentioned Patrol officer to follow her, thinking she might need backup. Better to be patient.
Erin O’Reilly hated being patient, particularly when something unpleasant loomed on the horizon. She knew Valentino was going to be mad. He probably wanted to either make her an offer or a threat. Maybe both. Until she knew what the offer was, it was hard to make plans. All she had was her wits, her guns, and her dog if things went bad. But those had been enough to get her out of plenty of tight spots in the past.
There was one thing she needed to do before she got to the cemetery. She fished out her spare phone, the one with only one contact in it, and placed a call.
“Everything okay?” Phil Stachowski asked, picking up on the second ring.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know I’m on my way to a meeting in Brooklyn. Canarsie Cemetery.”
“With whom?” Erin’s undercover handler asked.
“Valentino Vitelli.”
“Do you expect trouble?”
“I always expect it these days.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Right now? Nothing. We’ll talk later.”
“Okay. Let me know how it goes.”
“Will do.” She hung up, feeling a little less worried. Maybe there was a finite amount of worry in the world, she thought, and by spreading some of hers around, she lessened the burden on herself. That was a crazy theory, but an oddly comforting one.
Once she finally got across the river, the traffic eased up a little. Erin checked her clock. She still had time, but it’d be close. The cemetery was on the wrong damn side of Long Island. She went as fast as she dared. Valentino probably wouldn’t make an issue of it if she was a few minutes late, but it was better not to piss him off more than necessary.
She turned off Remsen Avenue into the cemetery parking lot, passing between a pair of brick gateposts. The lot contained three cars: a pair of nondescript sedans and a big old Lincoln Continental, lovingly maintained.
Erin parked the Charger. She unfastened her seatbelt and adjusted her blouse. In the process, she squeezed the hidden wire in her bra, activating the recorder. The tape was good for an hour. She didn’t think this meeting would take longer than that. Then she stepped out onto the pavement. She popped Rolf’s compartment and the Shepherd hopped down to join her. She glanced around, seeing the funeral parlor, doors closed, lights off. The posted hours showed the cemetery had closed at four o’clock.
“Okay,” she said. “Here we are. Where’s the party?”
A man in a black suit and tie came around the corner of the building. He might be dressed like an undertaker, but Erin knew mob muscle when she saw it. The guy had an olive complexion, slicked-back black hair, and a jailhouse tattoo poking over the top of his starched white collar.
“Evening,” she said levelly, watching his hands. Hands were the things that would hurt you. His were currently empty.
“You was supposed to come alone,” he said with a Brooklyn accent thick enough to scoop up with a spoon.
“I don’t see any other people around,” she said.
“I’m talkin’ about the dog.”
“You’re worried about the dog listening in?” She let him hear the skepticism in her voice. “I hate to disappoint you, but he only understands German, and not much of that.”
Rolf kept his eyes on his partner, awaiting instructions. He figured he could take the guy if she wanted him to.
The man took a moment to think it over, deciding whether to make an issue of it. Erin decided this goon was definitely more brawn than brains.
“Your boss is the one who wanted this meeting,” she said. “And you’re the one keeping him waiting.”
“Okay,” he said at last. “Come on.”
He motioned her to follow. They set out for a nice little evening stroll among the tombstones. The evening was cool but not chilly. A faint smell of autumn hung on the air. Erin scanned the area, looking for the other Mob guys who had to be there. With the cemetery officially closed, anybody hanging around was likely to be working for Vitelli. She felt very exposed, though the tombstones would offer decent cover if a firefight broke out. Her hand kept wanting to twitch toward her sidearm. She resisted the impulse.
The man led her toward the flagpole at the center of the cemetery. Three more men stood there. Two were obviously bodyguards, keeping a respectful distance from their mark. The third was Valentino Vitelli.
The old man was looking at a gravestone, a big statue of a weeping angel done in the old Victorian style. Vitelli was wearing a khaki trench coat and holding a fedora in one hand. In the other he held a bouquet of flowers. He didn’t look up as Erin and her escort approached.
“Hey, boss,” the goon with Erin said. He spoke in quiet, respectful tones. “She’s here.”
“Take a walk, Enzo,” Vitelli said, waving his hand without taking his eyes from the grave. “And take these other two with you. Go on, scram. Stay where you can see me, but this is a private conversation.”
“You got it, boss,” Enzo said. He cocked his head meaningfully at the bodyguards. The three men moved off, glancing frequently back at Erin and Vitelli.
This hadn’t been quite what Erin had expected. She came closer, stopping about four feet away from Vitelli. She turned and looked at the grave that so interested him.
“Rodolfo and Maria Vitelli,” she read off the inscription. “Your parents?”
“That’s right,” Vitelli said. “They came over from Sicily way before your time. Not me. I was born right here in New York. They came after the war. 1946. Wasn’t much left in Sicily after the Fascists and the US Army got done fighting over it, I gotta tell you. What my father said, the whole country looked like somebody dragged a rake over it, one end to the other. Your people came from Ireland, right?”
“Right,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”
“Yeah.” Vitelli stooped and laid the bouquet on the grave. Then he stood back, ran a hand through his thin white hair, and put his hat back on. He finally turned to face Erin. “Family’s important to me,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said.
“You got my boy.”
“I heard he was arrested,” she said carefully.
“By your people.” Vitelli thrust a finger at her, stopping just short of poking her in the chest. “On your information.”
“I work with a team of detectives,” she said. “And I’m not the ranking officer. That’s Lieutenant Webb.”
Vitelli waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t give me none of that crap. I work for another guy, too. I know what you are. You’re just like me. You’re a doer, not a planner. You see something that’s gotta be done, bam! You do it. Whether your boss tells you to or not. And now my boy’s locked up, and he’s gonna go on trial. And for what?”
“He killed Isabella Romano,” Erin said, keeping her voice as calm and neutral as possible.
“Says who?”
“Says all the evidence.”
Vitelli waved his hand again. “Evidence!” he said scornfully. “Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna find out all that evidence you’ve got don’t mean nothing. And you’re gonna let my boy go.”
“It’s not that simple, Mr. Vitelli,” she said.
“It’s exactly that simple!” he said. “I heard you’re a reasonable woman, a businesswoman. Did I hear right?”
Erin had to be very careful now. The Lucarellis were allied with the O’Malleys. If she gave the wrong answer, it would get back to Evan O’Malley. It could give the whole game away.
“What do you need?” she asked, playing for time and information.
“I know the DNA don’t mean nothing,” Vitelli said. “And the fingerprints don’t, neither. My boy was over there all the time, of course he left fingerprints. That’s all circumstantial. Your guys don’t have a case with that.”
Erin waited. She knew her recorder was humming away, taking down everything that was being said. Come on, she thought. Give yourself away.
“You had to have something big,” Vitelli said. “Something to make this a slam-dunk. And I know what it is. You got to the lady downstairs. She talked to you.”
Erin fought to keep her poker face. She reminded herself that the Marshals had gotten Teresa out of the apartment in time. If the Mafia had gotten to Teresa, they wouldn’t even be having this meeting. Teresa was safe.
“All this has to be about something that lady said she saw,” Vitelli went on. “And that’s a problem. Because you cops got all your fancy computer scans and blood tests, but everybody knows it’s the witnesses the jury listen to. It’s a human nature thing. We’re all built to pay attention to other people.”
Erin nodded, agreeing with the sentiment. That was a source of continuing frustration to prosecutors and cops alike. Witness statements carried disproportionate weight in the courtroom, even though they’d been proven to be among the least reliable types of evidence. Teresa’s testimony would weld the bars on Gabriel Vitelli’s jail cell nice and tight.
“I know she’s gone,” Vitelli went on. “I know she’s hiding somewhere. And I know you know where she is.”
A chill rippled down Erin’s spine. Was he serious? “I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” she said. “Your guys went after another guy in Witness Protection this week. They got in a gunfight with US Marshals! That was a crazy thing to do.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Vitelli said. “That was a terrible business, a real mess. It shoulda never happened. And I was real sorry to hear about that Marshal who got hurt. I sent him some flowers, anonymous of course. And I hope he gets better real soon.”
“The thing is,” Erin went on, “that incident’s got the whole Marshal Service on edge now. If you’re right about this, and if there’s a witness in protective custody, then wherever they’ve got her is going to be a damn fortress. You’d never get a hitman in there. You might as well try to rob Fort Knox.”
“I see your point,” Vitelli said. “Okay, you’re probably right. An outside guy can’t get to her. But you can.”
The chill had spread from her spine into her lower belly. Cold fingers seemed to be twisting her guts into knots. “Hold on,” she said. “You’re saying you want me to murder a witness?”
“Did I say that?” Vitelli said, holding up his hands in a gesture of surprise and horror that fooled nobody. “I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is, there’s a lady who’s telling stories about my son. She’s trying to take his life away from him, get him thrown in jail forever. And that ain’t right. So I’m doing what any good father would do, protecting his son. And I’m asking you to take care of this little problem. I was told you could handle this sort of thing. Was I told wrong?”
There it was, out in the open at last. Evan O’Malley believed Erin had killed two gangsters in cold blood: Caleb Carnahan and Mickey Connor. He’d paid her for taking down Mickey. Other mobsters had offered contracts to her, and now here was a Mafia boss explicitly telling her to kill an innocent woman.
Erin’s first impulse was to pull her gun, slap the cuffs on Vitelli, and drag his sorry old ass back to the Eightball. She could throw him in the cell across from his kid and they could have a little father-son bonding. But she couldn’t do that. For one thing, even with the recording, Vitelli was being very careful not to use exact words. His intent was clear to her, but would it be clear to a judge and jury? And for another, to do that would blow her carefully-constructed undercover role to pieces, just when they were about to win.
“You heard right,” she said grimly. “But you’re asking me to do something impossible. There’s Marshals on this lady round the clock.”
“You’ll think of something,” Vitelli said. “Like I told you, you’re a doer. Get this done. You won’t be sorry.”
“How much?” she asked, hating herself for asking it but knowing she had to get this on tape.
“I don’t wanna talk about money right now,” Vitelli said.
“You’re the one who said I’m a businesswoman,” she reminded him. “And you’re the one who wanted to talk business.”
“Okay,” Vitelli said. “If you make this problem go away, for good, you’ll find fifty large coming your way. And that’s on account of your reputation. On the street, this kinda thing goes for five, ten tops. Make it happen, Miss O’Reilly. You got forty-eight hours. We’ll be watching.”
Vitelli didn’t offer a handshake. He just turned and walked away. Erin stared at his retreating figure, a deceptively harmless-looking white-haired man ambling through a graveyard.
She looked down and saw Rolf gazing back at her with his big brown eyes. He wagged his tail uncertainly. He had no idea what was going on, but he could tell she was worried. If it would help, he was perfectly willing to chase down the guy and bite him, but Rolf had the feeling that wasn’t what was called for. So he just looked at his partner, putting all the trust and devotion he felt into his stare. She’d figure out what to do. He was absolutely sure of that.
Chapter 19
Even though she knew it wasn’t going to happen, Erin half-expected a bullet in the back of her head all the way to her car. The hairs on her neck were standing on end, as if she’d been chewing high-voltage cables. Everyone knew dogs had hackles; now she knew how they must feel. She didn’t even begin to relax until she was behind the wheel, a good three blocks from the cemetery. Then it was time to make a couple of phone calls.
“I’m okay,” she said to Phil as soon as he answered.
“Good,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, but we need to. Can we meet this evening?”
“Of course. Time and place?”
“How about the 9/11 Memorial? Say, eight o’clock?”
“I’ll be there. Erin?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure you’re all right? You sound a little funny.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. “See you there.” Then she hung up and called Carlyle.
“Evening, darling,” he said, calm on the surface. But she heard the undercurrent of relief.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m coming home.”
“What did he want?”
“We’ll talk about it when I get there.”
Carlyle didn’t press her. One of the nice things about dating a mobster was that he appreciated the occasional need for temporary secrecy. All he said was, “I’ll be upstairs. I love you, darling.”
The northbound traffic wasn’t nearly as bad. Most of the commuters went the other direction. Still, it was a little after seven by the time Erin parked in the garage opposite the Barley Corner, crossed the street, and went in. The place was full of guys eating and drinking at the end of their workday. The TVs were playing some sporting event or other; Erin didn’t even register what it was. She and Rolf went straight to the back stairs and got a heavy steel-core door between them and the outside world.
“Hello,” she called as she got to the top of the stairs.
“We’re in the living room, darling,” Carlyle replied.
We? Erin thought. She found Carlyle and Corky sitting next to each other on the couch. On Carlyle’s coffee table sat what appeared to be the entire contents of his liquor cabinet, along with some extras from the bar downstairs. Corky was mixing cocktails.
“Come in, love,” Corky said, holding up a glass filled with an orange-tinted concoction. “Sit yourself down and get this in your belly.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“That spoils the adventure,” Corky said.
“I’ve had enough adventure for one night. What is it?”
“Gin, applejack, and apricot liqueur,” he said. “It’s called an angel face.”
Erin grimaced and made no move to take it. “That’s in poor taste, don’t you think?”
He shrugged and took a sip. “Tastes grand to me. Maybe a mite sweet for you, love.”
“Do you want this to be a private conversation?” Carlyle asked her. He was looking closely at her. The man had marvelous instincts.
“Yeah,” Erin said. Then she hesitated. “On the other hand, maybe Corky needs to hear this. It’s his ass on the line, too.”
“What did Vitelli want?” Carlyle asked. His tone remained calm, but his eyes went very sharp.
