Sicilian Defense Read online

  “Yes sir, I shall.”

  “Adjourned until February ll,” said Stern. “Return then.”

  “That’s two days from now. I need more time,” Gianni said to Sandro.

  “Your Honor,” said Sandro, “I will need some additional time—”

  “Thursday the eleventh,” Stern was pleased to command. “No delays.”

  “Very well, sir,” said Sandro.

  Gianni and Sandro made their way toward the rear doors, the reporters backing from the room before them. Gianni walked out calmly, putting on his overcoat.

  “You don’t have to be in the pictures if you don’t want to, Sandro,” said Gianni. “It may be bad publicity for you.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong either,” said Sandro.

  Gianni smiled at him. They walked down the stairs amidst the flashing lights. Reporters thrust microphones in Gianni’s face; movie cameras were whirring; voices and bodies surrounded them. Gianni kept smiling, moving silently through the crowd. They reached the cold air outside. It was still raining.

  1:00 P.M.

  Tony sat in the passenger seat as the car crossed Park Avenue at 125th Street in Harlem. Louie the Animal was driving. The cold rain was still fierce as they passed the big discount stores, the furniture stores, the pawnshops, the spare-rib counters, the bars, all with their windows battened.

  “Well, at least they’ve got good weather for the splashdown,” said Tony.

  “What the hell splashdown?” said Louie the Animal. “Hey, you stupid nigger!” he shouted as a woman dodged in front of them to catch a bus.

  “The men on the moon,” said Tony. “Don’t you read the papers?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot,” said Louie. “Do you think it had anything to do with the earthquake in California this morning?”

  Tony glanced impatiently at him. “Of course not. They’ve been sliding into the ocean for years—people are crazy to live out there.”

  “You know they’ve already pinched looters cleaning out houses of people who left because of the flood,” said Louie the Animal. He turned the car onto Lenox Avenue, heading uptown.

  “Probably niggers,” Tony said, studying the street ahead. “Who else’d make a score on people running for their lives?”

  Louie pulled up to the curb near 134th Street.

  Tony opened his door. “Come on,” he said.

  Louie the Animal looked at him. “Do I bring something with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Louie the Animal slid the .38 revolver from beneath the dashboard and stuck it under his belt. They got out of the car and started across the sidewalk.

  “In all the time I’ve been coming here, this is the first time I’ve been inside with you,” said Louie the Animal.

  Tony studied the street. Overhead was a huge neon sign, unlit now in midday: THE KINGS INN—DINING-COCKTAIL-LOUNGE. Louie the Animal opened the front door; Tony followed him in.

  Inside it was almost as dark as night. The bar was long, sheathed in shiny red tufted vinyl, with mirrors behind the bottles. Toward the back was a dance floor, and many tables covered with red cloths.

  The bartender was wiping the bar before setting a drink in front of an early customer. He looked up, hesitating just long enough to show apprehension; he saw the deadly earnestness on Tony’s face. He glanced at Louie the Animal. The man the bartender was serving was very dark, almost the African blue-black, with bright piercing eyes. He examined the two white men. At the far end of the bar two other men were talking. They too stopped, studying the white men peering into the back. They resumed a subdued conversation, but were continually aware of the newcomers.

  Tony ignored them, pulling Louie’s sleeve and walking toward the back. He had learned early in life that in the street you never show fear or hesitation. Those emotions had smells all their own, and if someone caught scent of them you were already on the way down for the count.

  The very dark man with the piercing eyes got off his stool and followed them slowly. Tony, who was casing the room as he walked, caught sight of him in the mirror along the bar. He watched the mirrored image’s hands and kept walking. Big Diamond Walker was seated at his usual table with another man. The other tables were empty. He was large, rotund and dark-skinned, his graying hair neatly combed. He wore a well-fitting suit, and in the center of his tie a gold stickpin held a good-sized diamond. On the pinky of his right hand was a ring with an even bigger diamond. The man with him was medium dark and had a thin mustache. He wore a dark suit, dark gray shirt and white tie.

  “Hello, Big,” said Tony.

  “Hey, Tony,” said Big Diamond with a wide smile. “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me I shortchanged you?” He too recognized the look on Tony’s face but was playing it light.

  “I’ve got some trouble I’d like to see you about,” said Tony.

  Big Diamond looked at Louie the Animal, then again at Tony. “Say hello to Lloyd, Tony. I don’t think you’ve ever met.”

  Tony stepped forward and shook Lloyd’s hand. It was powerful and he let you know it.

  “This is Louie,” said Tony. Louie nodded.

  “Come on—sit down, sit down,” said Big Diamond. He lit a long, fat cigar, turning to the dark-skinned man who had followed them from the bar. “Junior, go up front and tell Saul to bring us a bottle of Chivas.” As Junior hesitated, he said, “Go ahead, Junior, these people are our friends.”

  “Wait outside, Louie,” said Tony.

  Louie nodded and made his way toward the door.

  Saul the bartender brought the bottle of Chivas and set down glasses with ice in them. He poured a drink into the half-full glass in front of Big Diamond and set the open bottle in the center of the table. “Come on, Saul, take care of Tony—I said friend, didn’t I?”

  Saul poured Tony a drink and freshened Lloyd’s.

  “And buy a drink for Louie at the bar,” said Big Diamond. “Good times,” he said to Tony, raising his glass.

  Tony just nodded as he sipped his drink.

  Big Diamond put down his glass and puffed his cigar. “I’m sure this isn’t a social call, Tony. What’s up? How can I help?”

  Tony studied Lloyd, then looked to Big Diamond.

  “Lloyd’s my main man, Tony. He’s my main man,” said Big Diamond, putting his arm on Lloyd’s shoulder. “You talk to me, you talk to Lloyd, it’s just the same.”

  “We got ourselves a problem downtown last night,” Tony said slowly; “some guys, colored guys—punks!” he said purposely. He wasn’t afraid and he wanted them to know it. Lloyd watched him carefully. “They grabbed my boss—snatched him. They’ve got him somewhere.”

  Big Diamond was shocked. “They grabbed Sal? I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.”

  “What makes you think they were colored?” asked Lloyd. He had a deep, bass voice.

  “I don’t think,” said Tony. “I know. They drove down the street and threw a dead man on our doorstep. Then they called us. I spoke to the guy myself. He was a—” Tony hesitated.

  “Let’s not have any of this colored, black, nigger bullshit,” Big Diamond cut in. “We’re talking serious business now. Any punk comes along and snatches one of the bosses—your bosses, my bosses—is a shiftless, rebel nigger.” Big Diamond poured a drink all around. “Then what?”

  “They said they’d call back at eight tonight. Now Gianni’s sent us out all over town to get whatever information we can.”

  “Johnny who?” asked Lloyd.

  “Gianni Aquilino.”

  Lloyd’s eyes opened wide at the name.

  Big Diamond smiled. “I knew the Old Silver Eagle’d come swooping off his perch again one day. What a man he is,” he said to Lloyd. “What times we’ve had together. I mean real times. We used to meet at the clubs downtown. That man sure knows how to live. So Gianni sent you here?”

  “Yes, to see if we can find anything—you’d have a better nose for this sort of thing than we would downtown,
if you see what I mean.”

  Big Diamond nodded, puffing his cigar. “What do you know about it, Lloyd? You hear anything around?”

  Lloyd shook his head.

  “Don’t just shake your head, Lloyd,” said Big Diamond. “These are our friends and if we can help them, we’re going to help them. We’re all in the same game. If some white guys snatched me, you bet your ass you’d go down and ask them to help us. And they’d help us. We’ve been working together hand in hand for years. We get our money down there. If some punks come along and try cutting into them, they’re cutting into all of us.”

  Lloyd looked skeptical.

  “Come on, Lloyd,” said Big Diamond. “They’ll snatch the white bosses first, sure. Then you know who’s next on the list?” He watched Lloyd, puffing his cigar. His pinky ring glistened momentarily.

  “You got it baby. Me. Or Elmo. Or Stan. Now—you know anything about it, Lloyd?”

  “I haven’t heard a thing. I doubt it’s our people, though.” He looked at Tony. “The cats with us, I mean.”

  “Maybe not. But you can get better information on colored guys than we can,” said Tony.

  “That’s for sure,” said Big Diamond. “What do you think, Lloyd?”

  “Maybe some of the militants—the Panthers,” said Lloyd.

  “Muslims?” Tony suggested.

  Big Diamond shook his head. “No, they’re not into that, it’s not their way. They’re more religious; they don’t want to snatch one guy. And if it’s the militants, they’ve got to be tough guys too,” said Big Diamond. “I mean, you’re not going to find any civil rights guys with the balls to get involved in this. They’ve got to be closer to us than just across the street.”

  “That’s what Gianni thought,” said Tony.

  “Gianni’s right. I’m right too,” Big Diamond laughed. He offered the bottle around. The other two shook their heads. “Now, the question is: who? Start thinking close to us, Lloyd, close to the other mobs. If we don’t come up with anything, then we’ll spread the circle.”

  “It just can’t be any of our people,” said Lloyd. “Things are going too smooth, everyone’s making plenty. I’d know, anyway.”

  “It’s not the close men you’ve got to worry about,” said Tony, “but the guys who hang around with them—their runners or pushers or whatever the hell they are.”

  “That’s where it is,” agreed Big Diamond. “The little guys that see the action but don’t get as much of it as they want—they’re always hungry.”

  “I’ll talk around,” said Lloyd.

  “There isn’t much time,” Tony reminded.

  “Right,” said Big Diamond. “People who can do this can kill. They already have. Lloyd, get out there and do some talking right away. It shouldn’t be long before you come up with a lead, if it’s from up here. You’ve got to think of Brooklyn and the Bronx too, Tony.”

  “We know. There’s a lot of ground and not too much time.”

  “I’ll go see Elmo and Stan,” said Lloyd.

  “That’s it, Lloyd. But take only Junior with you. If it gets around that we’re looking, they’ll go underground. Right now they must think they’re safe because the white mobs can’t get to them up here.”

  “Good thinking,” said Tony.

  “Yeah, once in a while we lift our heads out of the watermelon long enough to think a little,” said Lloyd.

  Tony stared at him.

  “Hush that trash, Lloyd. These guys are just like us and we’re like them. We’re just different colors, that’s all. The one color we all agree on is green—long, Uncle Sam green.”

  Tony nodded with as close to appreciation as was in him.

  “Let me talk to you a minute,” said Big Diamond. He rose. He just kept rising. Big Diamond was more than six-foot-four; he towered over five-foot-five Tony as he walked off to the side with him.

  “Tell that Silver Eagle I said hello. And,” Big Diamond spoke more softly now, “if he needs some bread for the ransom, tell him just to send the word to Big Diamond.” He clapped Tony on the back.

  “I sure will,” said Tony, putting out his hand. His thin mouth defrosted slightly, only for an instant.

  3:00 P.M.

  Detective First Grade John Feigin turned from Mulberry Street and walked up the steps of P.S. 21, crossing the courtyard to the main entrance. It was one of the old style New York public schools, built like a limestone castle with turrets and gabled roof. How many thousands of kids had gone to this school, he wondered—how many thousands of hoods and punks, as well as decent people who now owned the stores on Mulberry and Mott Streets and the old buildings in Little Italy.

  Feigin entered and started up the stairway. A couple of straggling kids were walking through the halls. He had just wasted an entire day in court on a collar he had made—some young punk breaking into a store and assaulting the owner, who lived in the back. All day in that lousy court, and the judge gave the lawyer a postponement on some flimsy excuse just barely veiling the fact that the lawyer hadn’t yet received his fee.

  Feigin was disgruntled, and a little out of wind, when he reached the third floor. He went right to the locked room where the tape recorder was set up. The tape was voice-activated, so it only recorded when someone was actually talking in the telephone booth at the Two Steps Down Inn. Feigin opened the door and saw that an inch of new tape had wound through the sound heads.

  Well, maybe we got something this time, he thought as he rewound the used spool and replaced it with a fresh one. They’d had the booth wired hoping to get a lead on a recent homicide. Feigin put the used tape in a small Manila envelope in his pocket. He reset the machine to Record, locked the room and made his way downstairs and back to the station house.

  “Did you get anything?” asked Quinn, Feigin’s partner. He was sitting at his desk in the squad room, two-finger typing a report.

  “Yeah—a sore ass sitting in court all day till the lawyer showed. Then he got an adjournment.” Feigin took various papers and the tape out of his pockets. “Papers and pigeons are going to take over the goddamn world,” he muttered. “I don’t know, twenty years on this job ought to be enough for anybody, but not me,” he said, moving around to his desk. “Me, I’ve got perseverance—twenty-three years here already.”

  “I know, I know,” said Lieutenant Schmidt, coming out of his office in shirtsleeves. “You’re ready to toss in your papers, right?”

  “Okay, Lou, rub it in. Just because I’d have nothing to do except drive my wife around, which is even worse than this lousy job.” Lou was police argot for lieutenant.

  Schmidt laughed and walked to the file cabinets against the far wall. The squad room was painted the familiar light green with white ceiling, a color scheme chosen about fifty years earlier because it was supposed to be easy on the eyes. From the looks of it now, the paint job must have been done then too, and not touched since. The room contained six desks, old wooden jobs, each with a typewriter and a phone. In one corner was a detention cage, and in another was a wall shelf where prisoners were fingerprinted. On the other side two partitioned cubicles served as lieutenant’s office and clerical office. Between them was a door with a two-way mirror used when witnesses had to view suspects.

  “What have you got?” Schmidt said to Feigin.

  “A new tape from the wire at the Two Steps Down Inn, on the homicide over in Crosby Alley.”

  “That body we found shot in the back of the head?”

  “That’s the one,” said Quinn, resting his two typing fingers. He lit a cigarette, blowing out a long stream of smoke that rose to the globe hanging from a chain in the center of the room.

  “What’s on the tape?”

  “I haven’t listened to it yet. Probably just some more of that garbled talk they use so we don’t know what the hell they’re saying—‘I went to see that fellow, you know who I mean’” Quinn mimicked.

  Schmidt laughed. “If there’s anything on it, let me know.”

  Feig
in went into the clerical office. On the desk was an old tape machine. Quinn came in as he was threading the tape into it.

  “You want a cup of coffee, Jack?” Quinn asked as he ran water into the pot.

  “No, thanks, Quinny. I had plenty of that poison they make in the luncheonette over in court.”

  Quinn set the pot on the hot plate and leaned his rump against the desk as Feigin started the tape rolling. Just as predicted, it recorded the conversations of various people who frequented the restaurant, all talking in vague terms intended to foil just such a tape. There was an occasional call from a patron to his home or a girlfriend, and from a couple of neighborhood people speaking in Italian to Con Edison or the telephone company.

  “Wait a minute—what the hell is that?” said Quinn, holding up his hand.

  They listened. They heard the voice of the man with the Southern accent talking to Tony, telling him they had Sal, and about a body that had been dumped.

  Feigin stopped the machine abruptly and replayed the tape.

  “It sounds like Mike speaking first, then Tony Mastropieri,” said Feigin.

  “Yeah—talking to a jig.”

  They listened intently, watching the spools wind.

  “Get the Lou,” said Feigin.

  They played it for Schmidt. His eyebrows raised. He motioned to hear it again. “That sounds like a snatch—as though someone’s got Angeletti,” he said.

  “And dumped a body,” said Quinn.

  “When was this tape made?” Schmidt asked.

  “Had to be last night or early this morning,” said Feigin. “I changed the spool yesterday afternoon.”

  “Anybody find a body near there?”

  “Fat chance,” said Quinn.

  Schmidt nodded. “They’ll get another phone call tonight.”

  “That’s right. Tonight at eight,” said Feigin. They all looked at their watches.

  “A kidnaping right here in our own safe little neighborhood,” said Quinn. “That’s unusual. I mean, I thought that sort of thing, with ransom calls and all, went out with the old Mustache Petes.”