Bad Business (3 page)

But the more Augustine pulled by himself, the more lively the magistrate became, grunting and struggling, fighting his restraints.

“Damn you, Giordano! What happened to your big dream? You told me you wanted to be a millionaire? You had it all figured out. What happened? Don't you want it anymore?”

“See?” the old man snorted. “No guts.”

The jovial fat man was frowning gravely.

Nemo's eyes were burning. “If you fuck up here, Vin, you'll never do nothin' with any family anywhere. Never
ever. Remember, I brought you here, Vin. Don't embarrass me.”

Augustine squeezed the rope, waiting for Giordano to show some sign of comprehension. The drill was screaming into his skull. His chances of becoming the next mayor were slipping away, thwarted by this spineless jellyfish. “Buck up, Giordano. It'll take one minute of your life. That's all. It's the only thing that's standing between you and all that money you told me about. Now come on.
Pull!”

Giordano seemed to wake up a bit then. He still had that stupid expression on his face, but he was wrapping the rope around his hand and bracing himself.

Augustine gripped his end and started to pull again. Unfortunately Giordano's contribution was minimal. He glanced at the others: the contorted anticipation in Nemo's face, the confident skepticism in Zucchetti's, the malevolence in Salamandra's smile. He knew he was going to have to do this by himself, the way he'd always done things. He clenched his elbows over his rib cage and forced himself not to think of this as murder. After all, who was this man? Another greasy dago as far as he was concerned. He thought of the campus at Yale, the most wonderful times of his life, rowing on the crew team, sculling on the Housatonic. He put his back into it, the way he always did in a regatta, pulling hard and long with each stroke, forcing the other lazy bastards to pick up the pace and keep up with him.

He bent his knees and dug in, yanking hard. But Giordano wasn't holding tight enough. The chair tipped over, and the hooded man fell onto his side in the foul straw, thrashing and struggling, a big fish on the deck fighting to get back into the water, fighting to escape. No. He couldn't afford to let this one get away. Just don't let go, Giordano. At least make it
look
like you're participating.

Augustine propped his foot on the man's shoulder for balance and put his back into it. To do it right, you had to do it alone. His neck muscles were straining as he pulled long and
hard and steady, no letup, none, not until the thrashing finally stopped. The masked head lolled over then, a dead weight in a black bag.

Giordano was looking at him with shocked, bulging eyes. Lou Costello.

Augustine stared down at the body. The drill was quiet, the pain subsiding. He did it. He actually did it. He smiled on one side of his face. It wasn't that hard really.

“Way to go,” Nemo said with begrudging admiration in his voice. “I didn't think yous had it in you.”

“Take off the hood,” the old boss ordered. Nemo stooped down and ripped the tape, pulling off the hood. Zucchetti stepped forward and kicked the chair over so that the dead magistrate was on his back, faceup.

“Look at him,” the old man said. “All of you, look.”

The dead man's face was blue and contorted, a bloated tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, eyes half open and slightly crossed.

The old man looked at them, one by one. “This is death,” he pronounced. “Do not disappoint me.”

Augustine took a deep breath and wiped his brow with his handkerchief as he stared at the dead man.

Don't worry. I won't.

FBI Special Agent Cuthbert Gibbons stood in the aisle with his coat over his arm, surveying the scene. The courtroom had that smell: fresh legal pads, sharp pencils, wet wool, too much cologne, dust, ammonia, a lot of arrogance, a hint of fear. Defense lawyers were seated at their long tables, heads buried in open briefcases. Defendants loitered in small groups, mumbling to each other, eyes darting, checking out what the other guys were wearing today. The prosecution team huddled at their table, crisp conservative suits and bright eyes—the varsity team. The jury box was spooky when it was empty, and everyone kept his distance, even the wiseguys.

Gibbons shifted his gaze to the expert witnesses—FBI agents, DEA agents, NYPD mob watchers, surveillance technicians—who were assembled in the first two rows of the spectator pews. They looked like a pack of restless guard dogs in church. The mangiest mutt in the kennel, hands down, was Gibbons's partner, Mike Tozzi, who was sitting at the far end of the front row, perusing the
Post
, already
looking bored. Staring at Tozzi as he walked toward him, Gibbons marveled at how much like a dog his partner really was—the stance of a shepherd, face sort of like a good-looking hound, dark deep-set eyes, but a little too close together, like a rottweiler. A gigolo mutt with intense eyes and a bad attitude.

“Shove over, Tozzi.”

Tozzi glanced up and bared his teeth. “Yeah. Good morning to you too.”

Gibbons threw his coat over the bench and sat down. “What's your problem? Where's your Christmas spirit? You better be good or Santa won't come down your chimney.”

“Fuck Santa. I wanna get outta here.”

Gibbons smiled like a crocodile. “Better watch your mouth, Toz. If I tell your cousin Lorraine you've been naughty, she won't put any goodies in your stocking.”

“She's
your
wife. Go stick the goodies in
her
stocking.”

“My, aren't we nasty today.”

“Well, your butt must be a lot harder than mine, Gib, sitting here week after week waiting to take the stand. I'd rather be back on the street, working.”

Gibbons shook his head. “See? That's what I mean about you. The attitude stinks. You think being a special agent is playing cops and robbers all day. You think you make an arrest and it's all over. That's just the beginning, my friend. You gotta try the bastards in court to put 'em away. In case you didn't know, that's the way the legal system works in this country.” Gibbons loved busting Tozzi's balls.

Tozzi folded his newspaper in half. “How can you call this a system? There's no system here. This trial is bullshit, and you know it.”

“You a lawyer now?”

“Come on, will ya? This thing is a monster. Whoever heard of putting nineteen defendants on trial together, for chrissake? They're seven months into this thing and the prosecution isn't even halfway through the evidence.”

“What're you complaining about? You've only been here two weeks.”

“I'm complaining because this whole thing is bullshit. They're trying low-level mules and hairdressers from Iowa together with Sicilian kingpins. It doesn't make any sense.”

Gibbons shook his head. “It's a RICO case, Toz. They're trying to prove conspiracy.”

“RICO schmico, the case is bullshit. The DEA had a good lead on a forty-kilo shipment coming into the country—eighty million dollars' worth of heroin!—but the U.S. attorney couldn't wait. He must've had a real hard-on, because they rushed this thing through like there was no tomorrow. And so what happens? They have to try this thing dry. No drugs in quantity to enter as evidence. No heroin at all and a few traces of coke that they vacuumed out of a car trunk. You can't even prove use with that—forget about dealing. Tapes, that's all they've got. Hundreds of hours of audiotapes and thousands of pictures of guys hanging out in barbershops. They're gonna prove a lot with that.” Tozzi looked disgusted.

“Let the prosecutors worry about that stuff. Your job is to just get up on the stand and tell them what you saw and what you heard. That's all.”

“Wrong!” Tozzi turned on him and snarled. “My job is to catch these bastards so they can be put away. I'm supposed to have enough leeway to follow an investigation all the way to the end. Not be cut off in the middle by a bunch of shit-ass lawyers who want to prove how smart they are with the law, trying to get convictions with no evidence. It's all a game for them, Gib, but not for me it's not. We do the dirty work, and they play law games. Then, when they lose, they want to blame us.”

Tozzi was giving that defense lawyer the eye again, the blonde.

“You're doing it again, Toz.”

“What?”

“You're staring at that Halloran woman again.”

“I am not.”

Gibbons grinned and shook his head. “You know, I can read you like a book, Tozzi. You've been in a foul mood for the past two weeks because Ms. Halloran won't give you the time of day.” Gibbons jerked his thumb at the woman shuffling through a sheaf of papers at one of the defense tables on the other side of the courtroom.

Lesley Halloran was a fair-haired blonde with small delicate features and huffy shoulders. You wouldn't know it to look at her now, but on cross-examinations she was a tough little bitch with a tongue like a straight razor and eyes like a hawk looking for meat. She was pretty small, but she had nice legs for a short woman. Very nice legs. And Tozzi was a leg man.

“You don't know what you're talking about, Gib. I don't give a shit about Lesley Halloran.”

Gibbons smiled. Tozzi's face gave him away. His eyes momentarily got that wounded, pathetic look when he mentioned her name. It passed quickly, but Gibbons saw it. It was there.

“I don't know why you keep harping on her, Gib. Why do you think I would like her? She's defending Ugo Salamandra, for chrissake. The fucking Barber of Seville. How could I possibly like her?”

Gibbons stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged. “So she's defending Salamandra. What's that got to do with anything?”

“Salamandra's only the biggest slime-bucket on trial here, that's all. Why should that bother me?”

Gibbons glanced over at Salamandra, who was sitting behind Lesley Halloran, leaning back in his chair and putting drops in his eyes. The Barber of Seville—that's what they were calling him in the papers because he allegedly distributed heroin through a network of barbershops and beauty parlors in nine states. He didn't look much like a mobster.
More like somebody's fat-ass brother-in-law, the kind who tells dirty jokes as soon as the women are out of the room and who snores in front of the TV after Thanksgiving dinner.

“Lawyers usually aren't pals with their clients, Toz. You know that.”

“But of all the people in New York who need defending, why did she take him? Why Salamandra?”

“You can't figure that out for yourself? Wiseguys pay top dollar.”

“But she's not a big mob lawyer. She's out of her league here.”

“And that's exactly why Salamandra hired her. Look at her. She doesn't look like any of these other greasy shysters. She's got that nice scrubbed Irish Catholic schoolgirl look, and Salamandra wants some of that to rub off on him. Besides, she doesn't come with the big price tag that the established mob lawyers have, which supports his whole contention that he's just a poor, innocent businessman who was mistaken for a drug dealer because he happens to be from Sicily.”

Tozzi looked disgusted. “You know,
you
sound like a lawyer now. You've got an answer for everything.”

“Hey, I'm just telling you how it is. A trial like this, it's like a goddamn movie. Everybody's playing a role.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever you say.”

“Hey, you don't have to be such a piss-off just because you're sexually frustrated. You can't tell me Lesley Halloran's the first woman in your life who didn't want to see your dick.”

“Will you get off it with her already? I told you, I don't like her.”

“Yeah, I know you don't like her. But that's only because she doesn't like you. If you thought she liked you, then you'd
really
like her. Am I right? This must go way back with you two. Didn't you say you went to high school with her or
something? What happened? She turn you down for the prom?”

Tozzi leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He squinted sideways at his partner. “No, we did not go to high school together. She lived down the street from me, in Vailsburg.”

“Yeah, but you knew her.”

“No, I did not know her. Not really.”

“Whattaya mean, ‘not really'?”

Tozzi exhaled through his nose. He was getting testy. “I knew who she was and she probably knew who I was, but she took the bus to this fancy girls' school in South Orange. You know, with the uniforms and all. Her old man was a captain in the Newark Police Department, so they had to live in Newark because of the residency requirement, but she thought she was something special. She was above Vailsburg.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, she acted like she was from Bernardsville or some real preppy place like that. I can remember watching her walk home from the bus stop, pennies in the loafers, nose in the air, hugging her books to her chest, her hair tied back with a thick piece of yarn the way all the preppy girls did. She was the only kid in the neighborhood who went to that school. The rest of us either went to public school or Sacred Heart. I remember she had this real snippy walk. Like her shit didn't stink.”