Willard Mitry and I had lunch at Terzo Piano, the antiseptic white-and-gray, sunlight-freshened restaurant located in the Art Institute.
Thanks to his stockpile of intriguing anecdotes, a lamb burger grilled to perfection and stuffed with goat cheese, and a formidable pile of hand-cut french fries, I had almost recovered from Adoree’s rejection. Not to mention her potentially perilous situation. Especially if Derek Webber was the guy who’d been talking about me.
Well, maybe I hadn’t recovered.
“You okay, Billy?” Mitry asked.
“Fine. I was just … What was it you said about Patton’s murder?”
“That it’s not even mentioned in the paper anymore. Still, when they find the killer or killers, that’s going to be one sweet story. But it probably won’t be the Trib that breaks it. Hell, it’ll probably be TMZ.”
“In researching Gangland, Illinois, have you come across the name Giovanni Polvere?”
He thought for a few seconds, then withdrew a small reporter’s notepad from his jacket pocket. He flipped through several pages filled with tiny crabbed handwriting and paused. “Yeah. He was the Outfit’s unofficial CFO during the eighties, starting with the last half of ‘Joey Doves’ Aiuppa’s stint as front boss and continuing through most of Joe Nagall’s run.”
“Know when he died?”
“Eighty-seven, according to my notes. Went up in a fire. Why?”
“Your research show any direct connection to Patton?”
“Not direct. But as I think I mentioned, the rumor was Patton and Nagall had something going and Polvere was working for Nagall. What’s your angle?”
“Suppose Nagall wanted to invest a sizable amount of the Outfit’s coin in some scheme or other,” I said. “Would he have to involve Polvere?”
“Sizable amount? Probably.” Mitry had his head cocked and was looking at me with a half-smile on his face. “What’s the story, Billy?”
I was beginning to see what might have happened back then—Paul approaching Venici with one of his cons, then, sensing an even bigger fish, expanding the con and drawing Joseph “Joe Nagall” Ferriola into the net. Ferriola takes the project to Polvere, who’s controlling the big funds. And then what? The fact that Paul was killed without the loot suggests that Polvere saw through the scam and ordered his death. Then why were Venici and his cousin killed?
Did the Outfit bump off its minions for stupidity? Wouldn’t that have depleted the ranks long before the government did?
I had the feeling I was just a few pieces shy of the jigsaw puzzle of Paul’s murder.
“You’re spooking me, Billy,” Mitry said. “Usually the food here is pretty good.”
“The food’s great, Willard. I’m sorry. Just a little distracted.”
“It’s Polvere, right? Is there something I should know? For the book?”
“Nothing right now. If anything develops, I promise to clue you in.”
“Good enough,” he said. “Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a dessert to talk about on your show, you want to try the gingerbread cake and maple-bourbon ice cream.”
“Let’s get a couple, and you can tell me why your agent doesn’t trust Derek Webber.”
The dessert was a dream.
Mitry’s agent’s report on Webber was, like everything Mantata had turned up, not terribly incriminating and only vaguely supported by fact.
“Jeb didn’t say Webber was a crook. Just a shark. The reason he wanted to meet with me was probably to pick my brain. And even if he did make an offer to purchase the film and TV rights of the book, it wouldn’t be my talent he’d be buying. It’d be insurance that a rival project wouldn’t get launched.”
“How wealthy is he?”
“I don’t know, but he and his partner, Luchek, are up there with guys like Branson and Malone.”
“If they have all this money, why are they going out of their way to court backers for their movie?”
“Because the first rule any of these moguls learn is: Never use your own money.”
If Polvere obeyed that rule, that could be the reason he closed down Paul’s scam. Or maybe he hadn’t thought of the money as his own.
“Know anything about Luchek?” I asked.
“He’s not as high-profile as Webber, but I gave them both a Google when they expressed interest in my book. Luchek’s family has money. Not as much as he has now.”
“What’s his father do?”
“He doesn’t. He’s retired. He was in banking. Mother passed about ten years ago. Alan’s got two sisters, both older. One’s unmarried, maybe divorced, living in the family home in Winnetka. The other’s married and on the East Coast. Philadelphia, maybe.”
“You got all that from Google?”
“Google and the sweat of my brow,” he said. “I’m … I was a reporter, Billy. Research is what we do.”