Tragic (29 page)

Another large, squat man on the other side of the bench leaned over and looked closely at Bebnev’s face. “I was in Butyrka, too. But I don’t remember you.”

“It’s a big place,” Bebnev said, swallowing hard. “I was in solitary a lot.”

“It is a big place,” the second man conceded. “But I think I would remember you, with those crazy eyes and that round head.”

“Ah, his mother was just a whore who drank too much bad
vodka before she pumped out this frog-eyed bastard,” Yuri explained to general laughter.

Bebnev sat up on the bench. This wasn’t going well at all. “Well, maybe she was,” he said meekly. “It wasn’t my fault. But I think I’ll go back to my cell now.” He made a move to get up, but Yuri, who was standing at the head of the bench hovering over the weight bar, grabbed him by his shoulders and pushed him back down.

“Wait! Where are you going so fast?” Yuri asked with a smile. “We were just kidding you, right, brothers? If you’re going to hang with the
bratka,
you’re going to have to grow a thicker skin. Come, enough of this teasing, you’re here to work out. Let’s start with something light and build up.”

Lying on his back, looking up at the upside-down face of Yuri grinning with his gold teeth shining in the sun, Bebnev managed a weak smile.
They’re just kidding,
a voice inside his head assured him. Yuri was his friend, and he needed to have such a friend in a place like Sing Sing. At least until he won his appeal and was back on the streets of Little Odessa, where women would want him and men would envy and fear him.

Bebnev licked his lips nervously as his two antagonists from Butyrka put forty-five-pound weights on each end of the forty-pound bench press bar.
One hundred thirty pounds total, I should be able to do this,
he thought as he raised his hands to grip the bar. With Yuri’s help and encouragement, he managed to press the bar five times before placing it back on the rack.

Proud of himself, Bebnev smiled and started to sit up but again Yuri pressed him back down. “Come on,” the big man exclaimed. “That was too easy for a tough guy like you; you hardly even broke a sweat. Let’s get a real workout in!”

Sighing, Bebnev lay back down as two more forty-five-pound weights were added to the bar.
Two hundred twenty pounds!
“I don’t think I can—”

“Sure you can, Alexei,” Yuri assured him. “I am here to spot for
you. What could go wrong?” He laughed and looked around the circle of a dozen other large men, who also laughed.

Again, Alexei gripped the bar and with Yuri’s help was able to lift it off the rack. The weights felt impossibly heavy, but he managed to lower it a few inches before trying to press it back up.

“No cheating! All the way down to your chest,” Yuri insisted as he pushed the bar down.

Again with Yuri’s assistance, he was able to lower the bar and raise it twice. When he placed it back on the rack, Yuri led the other men in cheering. Bebnev soaked their praise in and was beginning to feel that with this sort of support, he might someday have the big chest, wide shoulders, and bulging muscles of his friends. However, his fantasy didn’t last long.

“Okay, last set,” Yuri said, nodding at his two assistants, who each picked up another forty-five-pound weight.
Three hundred ten pounds
 . . . “I’ll never be able to do so much.”

“Nonsense,” Yuri chided. “We’ll do just one. Then you will feel like you really did something. And I’ll be right here to make sure nothing happens.”

“Okay, but this is it!”

Yuri grinned, a wolfish expression. “Yes, this will be the last one.”

Bebnev gripped the bar and focused on Yuri’s ugly face; the enforcer’s hands hovered just under the bar, ready to assist him with the lift. Summoning all of his strength, Bebnev pushed.

“Come on, you can do it, man!” Yuri shouted while the others cheered and clapped.

The bar moved up and then slowly started to sink toward Bebnev’s chest no matter how hard he pushed. “Help,” he said.

Sweating profusely so that drops fell into Bebnev’s eyes, Yuri sneered. “Come on, killer, you can do it!”

“I can’t,” Bebnev cried, panic starting to set in as the weight bar sank to his chest and began to move toward his throat.

“Oh, all right,” Yuri said. “I will relieve you of your burden.” But instead of helping the struggling man lift the weight, he
leaned over, placed his hands on top of the bar, and pressed down.

Realizing the man’s intent, Bebnev tried to roll to the side off the bench, but the men on either side of him pinned his legs and torso so that he was stuck. He struggled to keep the bar up but it was no use. “Help,” he tried to shout, but it came out as a strangled yelp.

Then the bar was on his throat, the pressure increasing until he felt the moment that the bar crushed his windpipe and he could no longer breathe. The pain and fear were unbearable, and his body bucked, stronger in his death throes than he had ever been in life. He was still alive when the capillaries in his eyes burst and the world went dark. Then there was a terrible crunching as the bar broke the vertebrae in his neck.

Bebnev’s body went limp and his hands released their death grip on the bar as his bowels voided. With a last push to make sure his victim was dead, Yuri then stood up. With the others who’d gathered around the bench press to shield it from view, he walked away, leaving the carcass of Alexei Bebnev, would-be hit man for the Russian mob lying there with his weird, pale, and now bloodshot eyes staring sightlessly up at the sun.

M
ARLENE AND THE YOUNG WOMAN
ignored the catcalls they heard from inmate trustees cleaning up the parking lot when they arrived at Sing Sing penitentiary. They were both dressed conservatively in loose clothes with their hair under scarves, but it didn’t matter in proximity to two thousand incarcerated men and very few women.

“Is it always like this?” Liza Zito shuddered as an inmate shouted a request for a quick assignation in the bushes.

“Worse sometimes,” Marlene answered. “Especially in the visiting room, except it’s usually quieter because the guards don’t put up with it if they hear it. We’re lucky we’ll be in an interview room usually reserved for attorneys and law enforcement to meet in private with inmates.”

Actually, there was more than luck involved. It so happened that the assistant warden in charge of prisoner visitations was a former NYPD detective who’d been assigned to the DAO’s sex crimes bureau when Marlene was in charge. They’d been friends for more than fifteen years, and Assistant Warden Dave Whitney, a confirmed bachelor, had often let her know that “if you should ever tire of you-know-who, I’m available.” But it was all in good fun, and he’d listened like the old friend he was when she asked for a favor.

“I’m representing inmate Frank DiMarzo’s sister Liza Zito. I think if we can get a few minutes alone with Frank, we can bust the Carlotta case wide open,” Marlene said during her telephone call.

“I thought I read where the guys who did it were doing beaucoup time, two of ’em right here in our little country club?” Whitney asked.

“Those were the nobodies who did the hit,” Marlene replied. “We want the guy who ordered it.”

“Well, it’s a little out of the ordinary,” Whitney said. “But there’s not much about Sing Sing that isn’t. So yeah, we’ll figure something out. I take it that it wouldn’t be a good idea for the general population to know that DiMarzo’s getting a visit from the wife of you-know-who.”

“No, probably not. I’d appreciate it if we can sign in as Liza Zito and attorney Jodi Vannoy,” Marlene said. “Jodi’s a friend, by the way, and we look close enough to be sisters.”

“Not a problem, as long as this doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass. Let me know when you’re coming, and I’ll make sure I’m at the visitors’ desk and we’ll slip you in.”

“Thanks, Dave.”

“No worries. Nothin’ I wouldn’t do for the girl of my dreams.”

Marlene laughed. “You’re incorrigible!”

“I think you’ve said that a few hundred times in the past.”

Assistant Warden Dave Whitney was all business when they checked in. “I’ll handle this,” he said to the guard on duty when they arrived. He went through the formality of getting them to fill in the paperwork, and then personally escorted them to an interview room. “I’ll get the prisoner,” he said and left, but not without winking at Marlene when Liza wasn’t looking.

As they took their seats at a table in the otherwise bare room, Marlene smiled at Liza, recalling the first time she’d talked to the young woman after the sentencing of her brother and Alexei Bebnev. The sentence of life had elicited screams and cries from DiMarzo’s mother and sisters, except for Liza, whose face was
covered with tears, but she’d otherwise remained calm, attending to her elderly parents.

Marlene had attended parts of the trial and been present after Gnat Miller’s testimony when Frank DiMarzo broke down as his mother was led out of the courtroom. And she’d talked to her husband quite a bit about DiMarzo’s deteriorating physical appearance and demeanor. Then, as he’d been taken away after sentencing, he’d wailed, “I’m sorry, Mom, Pops. Forget about me!” And that’s when she’d decided to play her hunch.

Seeing an opportunity in the hallway outside the courtroom following the verdict when Liza was momentarily away from the others, Marlene had walked up to her. “Could I speak to you for a minute, please?”

Liza’s eyes had widened when Marlene introduced herself. “What in the hell makes you think I want to talk to you?” she answered. “You’ve got some nerve!”

“Maybe,” Marlene conceded. “And I know this is a difficult time for you, but I’m really not the enemy. You sat every day in that courtroom and you know what the truth is. Nobody made that stuff up and nobody planted evidence to frame your brother. But I do think that he and the other two are not the only ones who deserve to pay for Vince Carlotta’s murder.”

“Go on,” the tough Brooklyn woman said.

“You do know that Bebnev intended to shoot Frank and Gnat Miller at that landfill,” Marlene said. “Where do you think he got that idea?”

“You tell me.”

“He got it from the same person, or persons, who wanted Vince Carlotta out of the way,” Marlene said. “Frank made a mistake, and it’s going to cost him dearly. But he wouldn’t have been tempted into making that mistake if somebody hadn’t dangled a bunch of money in front of him.”

Tears had appeared in Liza’s eyes as Marlene spoke and she wiped at them angrily. “Frank ain’t a bad guy. He made bad
choices, and now he’s got to pay. But I know him, and I know that in his heart he’s not a killer by nature. I didn’t know what was eating at him, but I knew all last December before he got arrested that something was tearing him apart.”

“So why didn’t he follow his friend Miller’s example? Was it the code-of-the-streets nonsense? Didn’t want to be an informant?”

Liza nodded. “That’s part of it. He’s quite a bit younger than the rest of us, and Mom and Pops had their hands full looking out for us girls. So maybe he was allowed to run a little wild, and Red Hook is a tough place to grow up on the straight and narrow if nobody’s kicking your ass every now and again to make sure you’re on track. So he picked up that crap running with the wrong crowd. . . . But that’s not all of it.”

Pausing, Liza looked up and down the hallway. “A few days after Frankie’s arrest, Pops got a photograph in the mail,” she said. “It was a picture of Mom going to one of her doctor visits. There was a black line drawn across her. We’re not stupid; we understood the message, and so did Frankie when one of my sisters told him about it.”

“Now that makes sense,” Marlene said. “We Italians are all about family, especially our mothers. But sometimes we have to do what’s right, too. I don’t give a damn about Alexei Bebnev; he was looking to make a name for himself, but your brother and his friend Gnat got used and then were cast aside by the men who used them. Unfortunately, Miller was low man on the totem pole and doesn’t know much more than he talked about at the trial. But Frank was the conduit between Gnat and Bebnev, and it’s possible he holds the keys to getting to the guys at the top.”

Standing in the institution-green hallway of the Criminal Courts Building, tears streaming down her face as her devastated family stood twenty yards away wondering what she was doing talking to the wife of the district attorney, Liza looked up at the ceiling and then back to Marlene. “I’ll talk to my family,” she said. “I ain’t promising anything. Mom still doesn’t believe that Frankie was
involved, or if he was that he knew what was going to happen. I’m not sure I do. But she’s a very religious woman, and if Frankie was in on it, his soul is going to hell if he doesn’t try to make it right.”

A week passed with no word and Marlene was beginning to think her plea was going to be ignored when Liza called. “Is this person, this asshole who paid for this to happen, Charlie Vitteli?”

“I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth,” Marlene replied.

Liza was quiet for a moment, then said, “You don’t have to; it was pretty clear the way your husband went after him. Anyway, I need to see my brother face-to-face. And if you want to come with me, you can.”

Marlene had then called her friend Dave Whitney and made arrangements for the visit. When she finished talking to him, she had another thought and placed a call to an unlisted number in Brighton Beach.

“Don’t worry, no one will touch the DiMarzo family,” Ivgeny Karchovski assured her after she explained what was going on. “The Malchek gang is vicious and arrogant. But they are also good businessmen and aren’t going to go to war over something like this. I don’t guarantee they won’t cause troubles for you in some other regard—word is they have something going with Charlie Vitteli over on the docks—but I’ll make sure the word goes out that the DiMarzo family is off-limits.”

Marlene had picked Liza up in the Red Hook, Brooklyn, neighborhood not far from the Fairway Market for the drive to the city of Ossining, about fifty miles north on the east bank of the Hudson River and since 1826 the location of the third-oldest penitentiary in New York State.