Final Stroke (37 page)

Valdez felt his eyes grow moist. He took out his handkerchief, wiped at his eyes, then leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and rested.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

The brightly lit ??-hour convenience store located at
one end of a newly-constructed strip mall in the far southwestern sub
urbs was busy because housing developments in the area had spread as fast as the corn once grown in these wet fields. Some customers had left their engines running and the wagging fingers of windshield wip
ers swept back and forth. The customers came out of the convenience store carrying lottery tickets, soft drinks, cigarettes, candy, and eve
ning editions of Chicago newspapers.

The strip mall was new enough that most of its promised “Prime Business Locations” were dark and vacant. In fact, the only business being transacted seemed to be at the far ends of the mall. The con venience store doing its brisk business at one end, while at the other end, a self-serve car wash not doing such a brisk business because of the weather. Only one vehicle was inside the car wash, a full-size van being sprayed by what appeared to be a legless man in a wheelchair. Some patrons of the convenience store commented on this strange sight as they drove out of the parking lot toward their split levels and
multistory homes.

From the back seat: “Daddy, that guy’s got no legs.”

From the front seat: “Yeah, no brain either.”

Also from the front seat: “Honey.”

“How come he’s got no brain, Daddy?”

“Mom’s right. I didn’t mean he doesn’t have a brain. It’s just that it’s raining and when he’s done washing his van it’ll simply get dirty again. But if it makes him happy …”

“He’s kind of roly-poly, isn’t he?”

Laughter from the front seat. “Yes, dear. But I think your father would agree we wouldn’t say that to him if we met him.”

From the back seat, head twisting to look out the back window. “No, I guess we wouldn’t, ‘cause that would be mean.”

Her thighs stung where they had been burned, the dampness of her slacks chilled her, her mouth felt raw where the tape had been, and she smelled like coffee gone stale.

Dino leaned forward in the seat beside her, his elbows resting on his knees. He stared at her with narrowed eyes, never letting a slight grin leave his face. His voice was matter-of-fact but loud enough so he could be heard above the sound of the pump and the blast of the high-pressure spray against the side of the van.

“We know all about you, Mrs. Babe. We know your husband was a private detective and before that a member of the Chicago Po
lice Department. Both you and your husband were close to Marjorie Gianetti. Although she had a stroke, she and your husband spoke of things, and your husband told you about these things.”

He paused, letting this sink in while he cleaned his teeth with his
tongue. He did not glance toward the front of the van when the spray began on the windshield.

“We have a golden opportunity for you, Mrs. Babe. The oppor
tunity to go home and, eventually, go back to visiting your husband and helping him on his road to recovery. It’s an opportunity that gives both of you a chance to have a normal life.

“You went to see Tony Gianetti today. After leaving, you didn’t follow him, yet you showed up at the bank. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t tell us everything you know. Who could it hurt? Marjorie Gianetti’s dead, so no matter what you say, she won’t be hurt. Her son was just killed in that terrible accident, so he can’t be hurt. It’s a win-win situation, Mrs. Babe. You know where we should go next because you were at the first location. Marjorie Gianetti revealed something that led you to that bank.”

He paused again, this time glancing toward the front where the driver was still spraying the windshield. When she glanced there, she could see only the distorted shape of the driver’s knit cap through the spray pounding the windshield. The driver was down low, and the imagined image of the legless man circling the van was bizarre.

“Mrs. Babe, whatever opinion you might have had of Marjorie Gianetti and her son, it must be obvious to you by now that they’ve been hiding something. Before his death some time ago, the senior Tony Gianetti misappropriated a large sum of money which did not belong to him.”

Dino gestured toward his chest with both hands. “It was our money, Mrs. Babe. Everybody has family. We’re a big family. All we’re doing is trying to get our money back.”

He reached down to the floor between him and the side of the van. He showed her a bulky manila envelope. He held the envelope by the top between two fingers and shook it. She could hear the jangle
of metal. If there were coins inside, they were large coins.

“Do you know what’s in here, Mrs. Babe?”

Keys. Steve had said Marjorie was obsessed with some kind of keys kept secret within the Gianetti family. Jan could only assume the keys had been in the safe deposit box at the bank, and that the men in knit caps—perhaps one of them had been Dino—had retrieved the keys from the wreckage of Tony Gianetti’s Prius. Perhaps the keys be
longed to other safe deposit boxes at other locations, locations pointed to by the litany of U.S. routes. She did not answer.

Dino’s pushed the envelope closer to her face. “I asked you a question.”

“I … I don’t know what’s in there.”

He pulled the envelope back, held it in his lap, and carefully emp
tied the contents into one hand. He held his hand out for her to see. “Keys, Mrs. Babe. You knew that. Your husband told you.”

“No. He never said anything. Marjorie and I talked about things sometimes, but I could never make sense of it. The only thing she did say once was that I should go to this bank.”

“She told you to go to the bank?”

“Yes.”

He returned the keys to the envelope and placed the envelope back on the floor. “Why did she tell you to go to that particular bank?”

“She said it was a good place to do business and that I …”

He slapped her hard, jolting her head to the side. The sound of the car wash sprayer went away for a moment, and when she heard it again she felt Dino’s hot breath on her face.

“You were at that bank today while Gianetti was there! With
out following him, you knew he would be there! We want to know how you knew! If we don’t get it out of you, we’ll get it out of your husband!”

He held her blouse, twisting it and shouting into her face. “Don’t fuck with this! It’s a family matter and if you fuck with it, there’s no way you or your husband will survive!”

When he let go of her blouse, he made a show of straightening it and smiling. She stared at Dino, her face stinging where he’d hit her.

“You have to understand, Mrs. Babe, we’re in business. Like any business that’s going to survive these days, we’ve become a little leaner and meaner. I’ve got a boss to answer to. That’s the down side of the business, but here’s the up side. When you tell us everything you know, which, as I said, does nothing to hurt you or your husband or anyone else, you’ll not only go back to your husband, but you’ll never have to worry about money again for the rest of your lives. Think about it, Mrs. Babe. Never worrying about money for the rest of your lives no matter how many specialists your husband needs. You’ll be able to hire private nurses. You’ll be able to bring him home. And if you’re worried about this business ever coming back and biting you, don’t. We know you have friends in the Chicago Police Department who sometimes do favors for you. But we also have friends in the De
partment. No matter what you tell us, we can guarantee it will never come back on you.”

He reached out and touched her cheek. “It’s a tough world. Some
times we do things we’d rather not do. We have the keys. We own the keys. All we need from you is where we should go with those keys.”

He held up the envelope again and shook it. “These are all keys to safe deposit boxes, Mrs. Babe. All we need now is to figure out where to go with them. What’s in those boxes belongs to us. If you help us, we’ll help you. If you don’t help us …”

He shrugged his shoulders, stared at her and waited some time before continuing.

“Perhaps I can offer some encouragement,” he said, leaning for
ward a little as he stared at her. “You don’t know the details, but you do know things we’d like to know. Perhaps if you simply start talking about your visits with Marjorie Gianetti something will come out that will help. So why not try? It won’t hurt anyone to try, will it?”

She recalled her visit to the library that might just as well have been years ago instead of earlier the same day. She recalled the news
paper articles about the Gianetti family. Tony Gianetti, the behind
the-times mobster who ended up in the trunk of his Lincoln in 1986, allegedly killed for giving organized crime a bad name. Tony Gianetti, who valued his private life with Marjorie and Tony Junior and main
tained a low profile in the years prior to his death.

Then there was Max Lamberti, who had demonstrated at Marjo
rie’s funeral he was the boss Dino referred to. Had this been Max’s plan all along? To grab her because she knew something that could help him settle a drug-bust feud he had with Gianetti? Max Lamber
ti, the “fly in the ointment.” Max Lamberti, the “black sheep” of the family. Max Lamberti, admitting in the video at the library that his Uncle Tony was in the mob.

And now there was Dino, the man sitting beside her, the man star
ing at her. The same man as the younger Dino in the video cruising out of Burnham Harbor on Lamberti’s motor yacht. Dino Justice, who had changed his name from Deveno after his encounter years earlier with Steve at the produce market. Dino Justice, whose father dropped out of organized crime after the 280-million-dollar drug bust in 1980. Were these men related to the rise in deaths Steve had told her about? An increase in deaths among Chicago detectives that took place following the drug bust?

Then she recalled another piece of information she’d come across at the library, something that just might get Dino off the track, some thing to make him think she’d been searching for information that
had nothing at all to do with Max Lamberti.

“I … I’ll try to help,” she said, doing her best to look defeated. “Before his stroke, Steve was working on a case that had to do with health care brokers. Something about people who put pressure on big companies to make deals with their own insurance companies. I never knew much about the case except that families and friends of the ones running the scam were sometimes put on the insurance rolls of the companies for nothing. Steve was looking into it for a client when he had his stroke and I was trying to help jog his memory.”

Dino continued staring at her, no sign of anger on his face, simply mild interest. So she continued.

“When I discovered who Marjorie’s husband was, I asked her a few questions. But she never seemed to know what I was talking about. The only thing she mentioned was that she didn’t like to talk about her husband’s business. Once, she mentioned her nephew Max, say
ing he was in the kind of business her husband had been in, but that was the extent of it.”

When she finished her speech, Dino stared at her a few more sec
onds, reached down to the floor and came up with the wide roll of tape. He tore off a fresh piece of tape and slapped it across her mouth, press
ing so hard the tape pushed between her lips and against her teeth.

The car wash pump shut off and the spray on the van stopped. Beyond the windshield outside the forward exit door of the car wash it was still raining, the drops slanting through the lights shining down on the puddled asphalt.