The Vulture's Game (3 page)

I’m not going to lie to you. I was impressed by the efficiency of the operation. The real estate agents were routed out every six months, sent on missions in Europe or across the country. If it was even hinted that any one of them might be inclined to do a flip or brag about his business to a friend or a lover, he was eliminated without hesitation, his body dissolved in an acid barrel that same day. Wagner, a tall, thin man with a rakish sense of humor and a passion for the theater, ran the operation out of a safe house on the East Side of Manhattan. He kept to his Mossad training—he seldom if ever spoke on the phone; held all pertinent conversations outside, usually by a construction site so the noise could drown out any possible wire pickup—and hand-picked both the assassins and those who fronted the real estate offices. He was paid $5 million a year for his services, the money deposited on a monthly basis in a nephew’s bank account in a Berlin bank.

Now you would think that between a twenty-five percent share of all the real estate action in New York City plus his rather hefty cut from the assassination bureau’s operations, my uncle would be pleased with business. But a mob boss is never satisfied with a piece of the pie. They want the whole damn thing, and if you happen to be standing between him and it—well, as they say, it might bring you some bad weather.

“Tell me what you know about Frank Scanlon,” my uncle asked me one night during dinner at one of his downtown restaurants. I was twenty-two years old, still in college, about to be engaged to a woman I was madly in love with, and unsure of my place in Uncle Carlo’s universe. Even more, as attractive as I found that world to be, I was uncertain whether I wanted to plant my flag on its soil. You don’t get to test-drive that decision, check it out for a year or two, see how it suits you. The thumb goes up or down well before that. And know one other thing about mob bosses—they all hate the sound of the word no.

I rested my knife and fork against the side of a thick plate and looked at my uncle. “Most of it is from what I’ve read in the papers,” I said. “He was born rich thanks to his father’s various investments and is now even richer thanks to his own. He seems to go out every night and never with the same woman, assuming you can believe what’s in the gossip pages.”

“You read that shit?” my uncle asked.

“Guilty,” I said. “That and the sports section.”

“Stick to the business pages,” my uncle said, “it’s time better spent.”

“You always say make it your business to know your business,” I told him. “Reading everything, even the gossip pages, helps me know my business.”

My uncle nodded. “And what do those pages tell you?”

“He’s got quite a few buildings going up, mostly in Manhattan, East side and West,” I said. “Mortgages them pretty heavily, and the monthly rates in his buildings are three, sometimes four, times as high as the other luxury apartment towers. Then again, he does offer a full-service ride. You live in one of his places, more like a hotel than a home.”

“So you
do
read the business section?”

“I got all that from
People
, truth be told,” I said.

My uncle slid a thick manila envelope from his side of the booth to mine. “What’s in there will tell you what you
don’t
know about him. Real estate is not the only place he gets his money from. He’s branching out into casinos, the tracks, some of the airport action, high-end call girls, and, rumor has it, is eager for a taste of the drug business.”

“And we’re not happy about any of that?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t be that upset about it, had he come to me and asked in,” Uncle Carlo said. “I’m not saying I would have made a deal with the guy. Truth is, he doesn’t seem my type, as I like seeing my name in the papers about as much as I like getting shot at. But I would have given him the courtesy of a fair listen.”

“Has he touched anything on your end?”

Uncle Carlo shook his head. “Just because he hasn’t yet doesn’t mean he won’t down the road,” he said. “Leaving him alone now gives him confidence, boosts his ego—and he’s got enough of both to begin with. I can’t risk letting him branch out.”

“He gets his nails done twice a week,” I said. “And has a barber come to his office every other day to deal with his hair. Guy does that regular doesn’t sound like someone that’s looking to get into deep water.”

“
People
again?” he asked.

“
Us
,” I said. “Read it the other day while me and Jimmy were at the park.”

Uncle Carlo smiled. “If you’re going to keep reading that trash, get your own subscription,” he said. “Stay away from mine. Okay?”

“Not a problem,” I said.

“Well, you’re going to feel different about the man after you read through his file,” he said. “
His
hands might stay clean but that doesn’t mean he’s shy about bringing in those that aren’t. What a guy lets the press see matched up against who he really is, picture is never the same. Take my advice, toss the magazines and bury yourself in that folder.”

I nodded. “Have you ever met him?”

Uncle Carlo shook his head. “He walks his streets, I walk mine,” he said. “Him and me, we’re not meant to touch.”

I needed to ask the question, to make clear what it was my uncle was asking me to do. “You want me to deal with this?”

“That’s why we’re here,” he said, matter-of-fact. “It’s time, Vincent. To see who you are and to find out on which side of the ledger you belong. And if you’re not up for it, not eager to get into it, now’s the time to say so. You want to go on with your life, head out into the civilian world, you’ll still be my nephew and I’ll still love you. That won’t change.”

I stayed silent for a moment, staring down at the remains of a sliced steak and roasted pepper dinner. “You think I can handle it?”

“I’d like to think so,” he said. “I watch you, you stay to yourself mostly, which nine out of ten is a good thing in my world. You and Jimmy stay close to one another, run things by each other. To me, that’s another big plus.”

“Where do I come up short?”

“You’re my brother’s son, Vincent,” Uncle Carlo said. “Don’t get me wrong. Mario was a good man. Honest, dependable, hardworking. He had a decent heart and that made him soft. He couldn’t deal with the loss of your mother. Wasn’t looking to run the company he worked for, content to put in his pockets only what other men said he had earned. That doesn’t fly on my turf. So, I don’t know how much of him is in you. Or how much of me.”

“You want me to include Jimmy on this?”

“I only wish you could,” Uncle Carlo said, his voice suddenly bearing the additional weight of sadness. “Look, in a just world, I’d be having this talk with him, not you. He’d be the one picked to go and butt heads with Scanlon. Not you. But if we’re looking for a just world, then we’re all in the wrong place. I can’t send a kid who can’t walk or talk up against a hardcase like Scanlon. Truth is, I can’t send him anywhere. That’s his weight to bear, and mine.”

“He’s not going to care all that much seeing a college kid sitting across from him, either,” I said.

“You
make
him care,” Uncle Carlo said. “You’re a Marelli, you take a step back from no one. Especially not some suntanned punk who had everything in life handed to him by a father he hated and a mother he never knew.”

“How do you want this to end?” I asked. “Best case.”

“If he stays in his buildings and away from everything else, I’ll leave it be for now,” Uncle Carlo said. “If he cuts us in on action he’s already got going, including those high-rises of his, so much the better.”

“And if he refuses to go with either one?”

“Your call, kid,” Uncle Carlo said. “By the time this is done, I’ll know a little bit more about Scanlon and all I need to know about you.”

“You want daily or weekly briefings?”

“Nope,” Uncle Carlo said. “This one is all you, Vincent. Once it’s done, we sit and talk about it. I’m looking for a resolution. How you get to it and what it takes to get there? Your call.”

“You worried?” I asked.

“About you letting me down?” he said. “Or about Scanlon being more than you can handle?”

I shrugged, meaning both.

“I worry about everything,” Uncle Carlo said. “Even in my sleep.”

11:00 A.M.

“This little bastard,” Scanlon said, his voice at its usual high volume, “comes into my office and tries to stare me down. What the hell did he expect me to do? Shit my pants? Beg for mercy? I floss my teeth with kids like him. I don’t know who the hell he’s trying to scare.”

“He might not be much,” Al Collins said, “but he didn’t walk into your office on his own and you didn’t meet with him because you had a hole in your schedule. He’s got a big shadow behind him. Be best for you not to forget that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Scanlon said. “So Uncle Mob is calling the shots, not College Boy. If that’s the case, then why was I wasting my breath on the kid? Why didn’t his uncle come see me?”

“As a rule, not how he does business,” Collins said. “He’s old school. He sees you as someone standing in his way, moving in on areas he considers off limits.”

“Listen to me,” Scanlon said, his tanned face turning red. “We’ve been together a lot of years. We built what we wanted to build and we pushed back against anyone who needed pushing. So, now we have to stop because what? Some old goomba got his shorts twisted about our business?”

“To write him off like that would be a mistake,” Collins said. “He comes off as a quiet old man, but make no mistake. That is one tiger you do not want out of his cage.”

Al Collins and Frank Scanlon had been together since they both eyed the same attractive blonde on the registration line at Harvard Business. Collins always liked to tell friends and associates over the course of many years that, “I beat Frank to the girl that day. The
only
time that’s ever happened.”

Collins was the physical opposite of Scanlon. He was short and bald, rail thin, and his suits always seemed one size too large for his slender frame. He seldom went out, and
when he did it was always in the company of his wife, Janet, a warm and kind woman whom he met at a Harvard alumni dinner ten years earlier. They had no children and doted on their three dogs, relishing the long walks through Central Park they would take together whenever Collins’s work schedule allowed.

With degree in hand, Collins went to work for Scanlon—though, in truth, they were both then employed by Frank’s father, Gerald, a hard-edged businessman with no time for anything but work. “He makes a lot of money, my dad does,” Frank told Al one time over late night drinks. “And he gets zero pleasure from it. No women that I know of, drinks only when he has to, forget about drugs. When he travels, he gets to wherever the hell it is the deal is going to be closed—on the day of closing—and heads back home that same night. Not one single ounce of pleasure. Going to be different for me when I take over, mark my words, Al. Toss my dad’s name around the clubs where the deep pockets hang out and no one there even knows the guy’s name.”

“He doesn’t seem to mind,” Al said. “All he seems to care about is the work. That’s where he gets whatever pleasure he needs.”

“Maybe,” Scanlon said. “But that won’t work for me. By the time I’m done, everybody’s going to know my name. The same holds for you as well if you stick along for the ride.”

That end of it was most certainly true. Frank took what his father left him—a string of middle-income buildings in lower Manhattan and a handful of three-star restaurants and two all-night diners—and over three decades he built an empire. He was carefree about regulations, never bothered reading the fine print on any contract, took on high-risk mortgages and tossed the extra interest on to those who clamored to live in one of his buildings.

He also held true to having his name known. He dated supermodels and movie stars, partied till all hours at any club guaranteed to publicize the fact that he had been there, was a regular in the gossip pages and on panel shows. He drank, drugged, ran afoul of the law, and was sued by so many people he had to hire someone to keep track. And always, always, Al Collins was there to pick up the pieces he’d dropped.

As hectic a roller-coaster ride as the first two decades had been, Scanlon had ratcheted up the stakes during the last ten years. He moved into casinos, ventured into a
millionaires’ club–call-girl operation, talked with drug dealers about investing in their product. A cautious man like Al Collins figured all this activity could lead to nowhere but trouble.

Now, Collins would do his all to protect his boss and friend. His years with Scanlon had made him wealthy beyond imagination. He owed Scanlon loyalty in return for the seven-figure bank account. But Collins’s strength lay in sorting out contracts, working out troubled mortgages, and managing buildings that were falling behind on their payments. Any muscle that was used came from Scanlon and the associates that he made sure steered clear of Al. But now, even with all that hidden muscle at his beck and call, Scanlon had walked into the crosshairs of Carlo Marelli, and that was a dangerous place. Frank could brush off Carlo as an out-of-touch old mobster, and even treat his nephew as if he were pledging for a fraternity, but Collins knew better.

“You want me to meet with him and see what it is he wants?” Collins asked.

“Meet with who?” Scanlon said.

“The kid,” Collins said.

“The kid? Why the hell would you want to meet with him?” Scanlon asked. “He’s a nobody.”

“That’s not what I hear, Frank,” Collins said.

“Oh yeah?” Scanlon said. “Humor me, then. Let me hear what it is you hear.”

“He’s got his uncle’s trust,” Collins said. “Marelli wouldn’t have laid this on him if that weren’t the case. And …”

“And what?”

“If the rumors are true—and that’s all they are at this point,” Collins said, “then that kid who sat across from you in this office will be the one calling the shots after the old man dies. If not before.”

“Unless the kid goes down first,” Scanlon said. “That might change the old man’s thinking, no?”