FIVE

This is no fucking way to treat me,” Bobby Blue Eyes complained.

“You still breathing?” Fast Lenny asked.

“Yeah, so?”

“So shut the fuck up and keep breathing. Fucking skinny marink like you, you should be happy we even take you along, all the good you can do if we get jammed up.”

“He’s got a point there, Bobby,” Jackie Keys agreed sympathetically. “What the fuck we need you for? We wanted comic fucking relief, we woulda brought Robin fucking Williams.”

There was no way of predicting how people would act on the way to a job. Even a setup like this was supposed to be. Crime is a dangerous business: If things go wrong, people could end up dead or spending years in a ten-by-twelve cage. There were probably as many ways to prepare for a job as there were people doing them. I knew people you couldn’t shut up with a lead pipe when they were on the way to do some work, while there were other people who wouldn’t make a sound. Some people always ate a big meal; other people got so nervous they couldn’t eat one bite. One man I knew quite well was a singer, so to relieve tension on the way to a job, he would sing Broadway show tunes; another guy talked sports. Just as in this particular situation humor and bravado were used to lighten the very somber mood.

Five men were squeezed into Fast Lenny’s Chevy as they headed uptown to the Garment District. Lenny was driving. Jackie Keys was in the death seat next to him. Bobby was sitting in the back, squashed between Little Eddie and Tony Cupcakes like a doughnut between two boulders. Bobby’s nose was itching, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Both his arms were pinned against his sides, and if he wrestled them free, he would have to sit uncomfortably with his arms out in front of him for the remainder of the ride.

Everybody had an assigned role in the heist. Fast Lenny was driving the backup car. If the truck got tailed, he would use this car to slow down the pursuit. Jackie Keys would open up the truck door if it was locked and get the engine started. Bobby would drive the truck. Eddie and Tony would provide whatever muscle was necessary. A job this simple could have probably been handled by a couple fewer people. The only people absolutely necessary were Lenny, Keys, and Bobby. But Lenny knew that Tony was having some trouble earning and wanted to throw something his way, and Eddie he owed for bringing him into an exotic car job right off a lot in Scarsdale six months earlier. Besides, extra muscle was never a bad thing to have along.

In those days after six o’clock in the evening the Garment District emptied faster than a bus full of geriatrics at a turnpike service area. Nobody actually lived in the area and there were no restaurants to draw a crowd. So after dark it really was possible to hijack a delivery truck right off the street without too much difficulty.

Fast Lenny Matriano, who less than a year earlier had completed a four-year stay in Dannemora for assault with a deadly weapon, the weapon being a thirty-eight-ounce Dave Winfield model Louisville Slugger—although Lenny swore in court that he’d checked his swing—parked the car on 29th just off Broadway about forty minutes before the truck was scheduled to get there. From that spot they had a nice clear view of the electronics store. The store’s outside lights were turned off, meaning it was pretty dark under the opened awning, and the interior lights were dimmed. Bobby assumed that the owner had also forgotten to put a decent tape in the exterior security camera. Lenny was conservative. He liked to take a good long look at the neighborhood before going to work. He liked to get the feel of it.

Meanwhile, Bobby was still locked between Eddie and Tony tighter than a champagne cork. He was trying to squirm free, but the more he moved, the harder Eddie and Tony pressed against him. They thought it was hysterical.

While waiting for the truck to get there they traded Garment District tales. Everybody had at least one. There isn’t a connected guy in New York who hasn’t done some work in the Garment District. Since they sewed the first schmatteh, there has always been some manufacturer who needed cash to pay for his next season or settle a gambling debt or get his pregnant girlfriend fixed and no bank would give him toilet paper. So he was willing to pay the going interest rate. Plus. Or maybe one of the union locals was having problems. Or a furrier had a walk-in box with good minks and bad locks. Or a designer who needed some arm to help him get the money he was owed. There was always something. But all Little Eddie wanted to talk about was what he was going to do to Benny Rags the next time he came around. “Ever see a guy shit velvet?” he asked rhetorically.

The truck got there about twenty minutes late. It was one of those big U-Hauls. The driver parked next to the hydrant directly in front of the store. Jackie Keys was out of the car and halfway down the block even before the driver left his cab. Bobby, Eddie, and Cupcakes were only a few steps behind him. The adrenaline was flowing. Bobby noticed that the driver didn’t bother locking the cab. As they approached the store, Bobby saw the driver knocking on the glass door, then cupping his hands and peering inside. He was looking for somebody. Ah gees, Bobby thought, now where the fuck is the owner?

The driver was a black guy, middle-aged, wearing glasses. His black leather coat was unzipped and he was wearing one of those T-shirts that boasted “I’m with Stupid,” with an arrow under it. When he heard them coming, he turned around and the arrow pointed directly at Little Eddie. Eddie reached him first. “What’s going on?” Eddie asked as friendly as he could manage.

“I’m looking for the owner here,” the driver explained. He pointed to a hand-printed sign taped on the inside of the door. “He went somewhere for a sandwich.” It was then the driver spotted Jackie Keys climbing up into the cab. “Hey,” he shouted, and ran protectively toward his truck.

Little Eddie grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him against the truck, which shielded him from the view of passing cars. Bobby knew he had about thirty seconds to get the truck rolling before the odds of being spotted increased dramatically.

Eddie lifted the driver off the ground and half shoved, half tossed him into the cab. Unfortunately Jackie Keys was in the driver’s seat, trying to get the truck started. The driver slammed into Jackie, knocking off his glasses. They landed under the brake pedal. Jackie reached for them, but they were stuck under something. “Fuck!” Jackie shouted.

The driver was too terrified to scream. Over and over he repeated, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.”

“Shut the fuck up, fuckhead,” Cupcakes snapped at him. “Nobody wants to fucking hurt you.”

The driver scrambled over Jackie and into the passenger seat and pressed up against the door, holding up his hands protectively in front of him. He glanced at the handle, clearly wondering if he could get the door open and make a break for it.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Cupcakes warned him. Before the driver could make a decision, Little Eddie had moved to the passenger side of the truck and was standing outside the door. The driver relaxed into a ball, leaning against the door. “That’s a good boy,” Tony said.

Jackie was reaching under the brake pedal, struggling to get his glasses loose. Bobby said to him evenly, without any sense of panic, “Forget it, Keys. Just get the truck started now.”

Jackie relaxed. “Yeah.” He started to pop out the ignition, then stopped abruptly, as if smacked in the face by a sudden realization.

“What?” Bobby asked.

Jackie turned to the driver. “Give me the key.” The driver handed it to him. “Thank you.” Jackie slipped the key in the ignition and the engine ka-ka-chunked into life. Jackie got out and Bobby slid behind the wheel.

On the passenger side Little Eddie opened the door and got in, squeezing the driver into the middle. “Don’t say one fucking word,” Eddie warned him. The driver nodded.

Bobby checked the rearview mirror. Lenny was right behind him. Bobby put the truck in gear and took off. He stopped at the first traffic light, hitting the brake pretty hard, and as he did, he heard Jackie Keys’ glasses crunching under his foot. He headed for the East Side Drive. He’d planned a route on which there were no tolls and little chance of traffic at that hour. He took the drive south and got off at the Williamsburg Bridge exit. Fast Lenny followed several car lengths behind until he was sure they’d gotten away clean, then he took off.

Bobby drove down through the Lower East Side, finally stopping next to a vacant lot littered with all kinds of garbage in the shadows of the bridge. Little Eddie got out of the truck first, dragging the driver with him. Holding his shirt collar with his right hand and sticking him with the pointing finger of his left hand, he told him, “I ain’t got time to fuck with you, so listen good. You say one word to the cops, I swear to God I’ll find you and cut your motherfucking balls off. Okay? Got it?”

The driver nodded. “I won’t say nothing. I swear. Just don’t hurt me,” he pleaded once again. “I got kids.” Bobby smelled something familiar, then saw the stain spreading in the driver’s crotch. That didn’t surprise him. He’d seen lots of guys pee in their pants. He’d seen guys so scared they shit themselves.

“All right,” Eddie continued, releasing the driver’s shirt and putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “But I gotta do this or they’re gonna be over you like oil on Arabs. They’re gonna think you gave up your load to us.” And with that he punched the driver in the face. It was a short but powerful blast. The driver staggered backward, blood pouring out of his smashed nose, trying desperately to maintain his balance. “Hey. Asshole,” Eddie instructed him, “fall down. Don’t be no fucking hero.” Without taking his eyes off Eddie the driver half sat, half stumbled onto the ground. “Good boy, now you just sit there for a while,” Eddie said, then got back into the truck. “Let’s get outta here,” he told Bobby, shaking his head and sighing. “Fucking guy.”

Bobby drove to a warehouse near the Fulton Fish Market, under the West Side Highway extension. Fast Lenny was waiting there with Cupcakes and Jackie. They were already laughing about the store owner. “Fucking guy goes out for fucking dinner? What the fuck was he thinking? Fucking asshole.”

The truck had a roll-up rear door, which was padlocked. The key was on the same chain as the ignition key. Bobby opened the lock and lifted the door. Then he just stood there, stunned, staring into the empty truck bed. “Holy fucking shit,” Cupcakes said with awe when he realized what had happened, “we been robbed.”

The five of them stood there staring at nothing for a few minutes. They couldn’t believe it. Somebody had had the balls to hijack the load from the hijackers. “I’m gonna fucking kill that fuck,” Little Eddie promised, deciding instantly that the thief had to be the owner of the store. “That no-good motherfucker set us up.”

Eddie figured the owner had to be double-dipping. By stealing the merchandise off the truck before it could be stolen, the owner could sell it hot for a substantial amount of money, then after the truck was hijacked, he could get the total value of the load from his insurance company. Even to Eddie it seemed like a smart plan, except for the fact that Eddie intended to personally rip out the guy’s lungs and feed them to the lions in the Bronx Zoo.

Bobby didn’t see things quite that clearly. At heart he was an optimist. He couldn’t believe that anyone could be stupid enough to believe they could get away with stealing from the mob. That just didn’t happen. And after The Godfather movies it happened even less. “Just cool it, Eddie,” he said. “We’re gonna take care of this, don’t worry ’bout it.”

There really was nothing else to be done that night except dumping the truck. After wiping it down to get rid of the fingerprints and picking out the remains of Jackie’s glasses Bobby drove it over to the big U-Haul parking lot in Hunts Point. This was the main holding lot for the entire metropolitan area. Trucks, vans, and trailers of all sizes were kept here until they were needed. There had to be at least three hundred vehicles parked there. The security guard had done business with the families for a long time, allowing trucks to come and go without keeping any records. Bobby drove the truck onto the lot, parked it somewhere in the middle, and wiped off the steering wheel one last time. This was the best possible place in the world to hide a U-Haul truck, right in the middle of three hundred other U-Haul trucks. It would be weeks before it was found.

Bobby had the hustler’s mentality: Throw a dozen balls into the air and hope you catch a couple of them when they came down. And if you didn’t, then throw up a dozen more and take another shot. So he was able to accept this fiasco—at least temporarily—better than a man like Little Eddie, who lived and died with every deal. Bobby lived his life on pretty level ground, while Eddie’s life was a series of peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. For Eddie this was one deep valley.

But because this was Fast Lenny’s deal, it was up to him to make it right. He said he’d go see the store owner first thing the next morning and, unless he got the right answers, “The fucking funeral’s gonna be in the afternoon.”

Eddie was still fuming the next morning, like a volcano cooling down after the eruption, as Bobby leaned on the buzzer marked “Gradinsky.” A few seconds later, without asking who was there, whoever was in the apartment buzzed the door open. The professor lived on the third floor of a five-story walk-up on the Upper West Side, and by the time they climbed to the third floor, Eddie was sweating worse than a poster boy for global warming. “Jesus,” he wheezed, breathing heavily as he banged a fist on the door, “they gotta air-condition this fucking world.”

A muffled woman’s voice asked from behind the locked door, “Who is it?”

“Some friends of the professor,” Eddie replied gruffly. “Just open the goddamn door.”

Bobby let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Nice manners.”

Members of organized crime don’t conduct formal interviews. Things don’t work that way. My experience has been that whenever a connected guy wants information from a civilian, all he has to do is ask the right questions. Generally. Sometimes you ask nicely, sometimes it’s necessary to ask less than nicely, but most of the time it isn’t necessary to ask more than once. And for that a great debt is owed to the motion picture, television, and publishing industries. Most often people have been so terrified by everything they’ve read about organized crime that when a real live wiseguy shows up at the door, they won’t hesitate to tell him everything they know.

The fact is that when your last name is Bonanno or Gambino or Genovese, people are intimidated before you say hello. As with just about all wiseguys, the threat is implied. It isn’t just the fear quotient either; there is also the celebrity aspect. For a lot of civilians, talking to a real live gangster is as exciting as meeting a major movie star. It gives them status: They are so important that the mob needs to talk to them. When I was active, at times I spoke with people who could hardly wait for me to leave so they could call their friends to brag, “Guess who I was just talking to.” Some of them would have been thrilled if I’d hit them. “Hey, guess who just broke my nose.”

So Bobby and Little Eddie were confident that whoever opened the door would not hesitate to speak with them. A nicely dressed older woman with a long, narrow face opened it. Looking at her, Bobby was reminded of the chess piece the horse, except with long hair.

Looking at Bobby, overdressed for the morning in a well-tailored dark gray suit, white tie on white shirt, and a Brooks Brothers camel coat, the woman was reminded of the most recent Charlie Bronson mob film. But if she had any doubt about the identity of the two men standing before her, one glance at Little Eddie, dressed as usual in a blue track suit with white piping, the zippered top half-opened to reveal a tight white T-shirt, settled it. “Come in, please,” the woman said politely, “I’ve been waiting for you.” As she led them into the living room, she told them, “The FBI was here yesterday but don’t worry, I didn’t tell them a thing. I told them he was talking to the Russians and they believed me.”

“Good,” Bobby said, then looked at Eddie and shrugged. He did not have the slightest idea what she was talking about. The fact that the FBI had already been there did not upset him; actually he sort of expected it. Bobby, who liked things orderly, was impressed by the living room. It was impeccably neat. Not even the dust was out of place. Mostly out of habit he checked the place out. The living room windows looked out onto a checkerboard of backyards, some with gardens, others paved. There was a fire escape landing out the windows, which were double-locked. As he sat down on the long sofa, Bobby said evenly, “Look, lady . . .”

“Grace,” she said pleasantly. “Okay, please, tell me. Where is he?”

Almost simultaneously Eddie asked, “Where’s who?” and Bobby wondered, “What are you talking about?”

She looked at both of them and said, as if the answer to that question were obvious, “My husband. Peter. You people are with the Mafia, aren’t you?”

It was a simple question impossible to answer. This woman was either smart, stupid, or simply naïve. And without knowing anything at all about it, it certainly was possible that the apartment was bugged. Bobby explained, “See, Grace. It’s Grace, right?” She nodded. “See, Grace, that’s not something we talk about, you know. I mean . . .” He searched for a polite way of saying it.

Little Eddie helped him. “Like who the fuck you think you are asking a question like that?”

Grace was not intimidated. “What are you trying to say?”

Eddie shot a warning finger at her. “Don’t fuck with me, lady. I’m not having a good day, okay? What I am is none of your business. You understand?”

Grace cleared her throat. “All right,” she agreed. “I do understand. I won’t ask you any more of those kind of questions. All I want to know is, where is my husband?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie blurted out in frustration, “you’re worse than my old lady. What is this bullshit about your husband? How the fuck should . . .” Eddie’s voice grew louder and louder.

“Eddie! C’mon, man, calm down. Just cool it.” Bobby knew what happened when Eddie’s volcanic temper erupted. Movie people portrayed men like Little Eddie as sort of cuddly lugs, big strong guys who weren’t too bright, but who really meant well and would never hurt a civilian. That wasn’t Little Eddie LaRocca. Eddie was a legitimate tough guy. His pride was invested in his strength and his brutality. When Eddie’s rage was let loose, there were no rules and no one could control him. People got hurt. So smart people feared him. This woman, this Grace, had absolutely no idea how close she was to that eruption. “Just relax, man, it’s okay.”

Bobby took a deep breath, and as he turned back to Grace, he forced a pleasant smile. “All right, help me out here. We just want to know one thing. Where is your husband?”

Bobby saw the fear growing in her eyes. “You mean he’s not with you? I mean, really not with you?”

Eddie responded, “What the fuck are you talking about, lady? What’s this ‘with us’ bullshit? I never met the guy in my life, and if I knew where the fuck he was, you think I’d be sitting here?”

Her head began shaking nervously as the realization settled in. “I thought . . . ,” she began. “I mean . . . sometimes he tells me that he does things. For you people, for the Mafia. He comes home and shows me a big roll of cash. They pay him in cash. That’s why I thought . . . I don’t understand. If he’s not with you, then where . . .”

Bobby grasped both her hands as if to keep her rooted to the moment. “Hey! Grace! Stay with me. What are you talking about?”

She was having trouble catching her breath. “Peter. Sometimes he just goes away for a few days. Like now. And then . . . and then . . .” And then she began losing control. “Oh God, oh dear God . . .”

“Shhh . . . ,” Bobby said softly, “it’s okay. Honest.”

Little Eddie couldn’t believe this was happening. “This is total bullshit.”

Bobby turned on him, steel in his voice. “Stop. Now.” In response Eddie settled back into the deep cushions and disdainfully waved him away, mumbling something under his breath. Although it had not been planned, Bobby and Eddie were playing their variation of the old cop game—call it good crook, bad crook. Bobby went back to Grace. “And then what? What happens?”

She began sobbing. “When he comes back, he tells me . . . I mean, he doesn’t tell me any of the details. I don’t know anything, I swear . . .” She looked to Bobby for reassurance.

“That’s okay, don’t worry about it. So? Tell me, what does he tell you?”

Grace continued. Occasionally, and always without warning, Peter Gradinsky would simply disappear for two or three days. During that period he would make no contact with her. The first time it happened she had been frantic. But a day after she had reported him missing to the police department he walked into the apartment, perfectly fine. He couldn’t tell her any of the details, she told Bobby. “He said that for my safety it was better if I didn’t know too much. And then he admitted he’d been doing secret work for the Mafia.

“When he came back, he always had a lot of money with him. Two thousand, three thousand dollars. In cash. He loved to keep it in his pocket.” When he left this time, she continued, he told her he’d be back in a couple of days. So she assumed he was working for the Mafia again. And, to be completely honest, she admitted, she was happy about it. It’d be nice to have some extra money during the holidays. That’s why she hadn’t called the police. It was only after those FBI agents showed up that she began getting nervous. And it was why she didn’t give those agents any information that might help them.

Bobby wondered aloud why the FBI would be interested in a college teacher—unless they knew considerably more about the situation than he did. “You got any idea how they found out he was gone? Who’d you talk to about this?”

“Nobody, I swear. Peter told me not to tell anybody about any of it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

Bobby pulled the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. He smiled. “Don’t worry about it, it’s clean.” When she had better composed herself, he asked, “Lemme guess. It was a guy and a girl, right? She was sort of nice-looking?” Grace nodded. Bobby took a deep breath and frowned. “Yeah, we know them. All right, now just answer me this: You’re telling me your husband never told you what kind of work he was doing? I mean, come on, Grace, you know that’s a hard thing for a guy like me to believe.”

Eddie answered, “Now, wait a minute there, Bobby. I don’t tell my wife nothing either.”

Grace shook her head. “No, he didn’t. Really.”

“But like didn’t you ever wonder? Just one time, didn’t you ever think, what the fuck do those guys want with my husband?”

“Of course I did. I just thought, you know . . . I mean, Peter’s very smart. He really is. A lot of people don’t realize how smart he is. I mean, you should hear him speak Russian. We went to Moscow four years ago and it was like he was born there. We’d be walking on the street and . . .”

And then Bobby got it. It all made sense. The guy could speak Russian. The guy could speak fucking Russian. That had to be the reason the wiseguys were looking for him. What else could it be? His good looks? Bobby was angry that he hadn’t made the connection right away. During the previous few years an entire Russian mob had come out of nowhere. The Soviet Union had emptied its prisons and allowed thousands of people to emigrate to America. Many of them had settled in Brooklyn, an area on the water called Brighton Beach. Moscow on the Hudson they began referring to it. The five families never had much of a presence in the neighborhood; nobody spoke the language or knew the traditions. So Russian wiseguys filled that need. They came to New York and established their roots. They set up their businesses and took care of anybody who got in their face. Bobby assumed there was a name for them, for the members of Russian organized crime, but he had no idea what it might be. He didn’t know the Russian word for wiseguy.

So the Russian-speaking professor had been working for the Italian wiseguys. This was truly an amazing piece of information. Bobby had heard the rumors that some of the families were starting to do business with the commies, but without any real evidence he’d figured it was just people flapping their mouths. The immigrants brought some money with them to Brighton Beach. Anybody who could grab a piece could become a wealthy man.

Bobby could feel his heart pounding like Gene Krupa was in there banging away. He cleared his throat. “Lemme ask you this, then. You ever hear your husband talk about anybody he was working with? Anybody come around here maybe?”

She thought about it for a few seconds, then started nodding. “There was one man he did mention. I know this is someone who drove him to the meetings sometimes. It used to make him laugh. He told me this man was huge, that he had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.” She was looking directly at Bobby, and the memory of Peter Gradinsky’s joke was making her smile. “And they called him Skinny Al.”

Eddie sat up. “Holy fucking shit,” he said, carefully enunciating each word.

“What?” Grace asked, alarmed at his reaction. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” Bobby said. “That’s just a guy we know is all.” Actually it was a guy they used to know, a guy who only hours earlier had had all his organs neatly put back inside his body cavity and had been sewn up by an assistant coroner in preparation for his funeral.

As Bobby and Eddie left the apartment, Bobby told Grace Gradinsky he would contact her as soon as he got any valid information. “Honest,” he lied earnestly, “you can trust me.”

Eddie started laughing out loud as they walked down the three flights. “Poor fucking guy,” he said, finding the whole situation hysterical. “All he’s trying to do is make a few bucks and next thing you know he gets himself caught up between us and the fucking commies. Now, that’s funny.”

“We don’t know for sure that they got him,” Bobby said seriously, trying to get his mind around the problem. “You know, there’s lots of other things could have happened to him.”

“Yeah? Like what? Like maybe he got eaten by one of them sewer alligators?”

Bobby thought about it for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Like a lot of things.” But even to himself Bobby had to admit that the professor’s situation didn’t look too promising. He disappeared right about the same time as the guy who usually drove him to the meetings, and then that guy turned up deader than a brick. There was a pretty good chance the professor had been with him the night he got whacked. For whoever did the work he would have been just a slight complication.

But until they found some evidence, say a body or at least part of a body, there was always hope. Stranger things had happened. Besides, the professor’s fate was not his concern. For him the thing that was most interesting was this connection between the family and the commies. The professor’s wife had said he’d worked for the mob “several times,” meaning that whatever they were doing was an ongoing arrangement. And it had to be pretty important, meaning lucrative; otherwise the Russians would never risk a confrontation with the family. Maybe the professor didn’t belong to anyone, but definitely he was working for them.

When they got outside, they found it had started raining and the wind had kicked up. By the time they got back to the car, they were soaked. “Man, give me a fucking break, huh?” Eddie complained, turning up the volume on the radio. If there was a bug planted in the car, nobody was going to be able to overhear a word he said. The theme from Ghostbusters was playing and Eddie started singing along loudly, “I ain’t afraid of no ghost, I ain’t afraid—”

“Gees, Eddie,” Bobby interrupted, “a voice like that, you should be in Vegas.”

Eddie knew he was kidding. “C’mon,” he said.

“No, I’m being serious,” Bobby said, “’cause if you were in Vegas, you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have to listen to that screeching.” Then he laughed.

“You’re some funny guy,” Eddie said seriously, adding, “I loved that picture. ’Specially the part where the girl turns into like this monster, ’member that part?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Made me think about my wife.” When Bobby didn’t respond, Eddie pointed out to him, “Get it? I was saying my wife is a monster. See, that’s funny.”

Bobby made a big deal about considering Eddie’s joke. “I don’t think it’s so funny. She’s pretty tough. Like how do you think she’s gonna react when I tell her your joke?”

Eddie chuckled. “Don’t you fucking dare. Then I’ll have to call the Ghostbusters.” Both of them laughed at the thought of Eddie’s wife responding to being compared to a monster. Finally Eddie asked, “What are we doing now?”

“Beats the hell outta me. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be finding this professor any time soon.” Bobby took off his wet hat and placed it on the backeat. “I guess we see what Franzone wants to do.”

Traffic in New York City, which was terrible under good conditions, got a lot worse when it rained. It took them more than ten minutes to go a single block. Some song Bobby had never heard was blasting from the radio. “Can’t you turn it down?” he asked.

Eddie looked at him with surprise. “I’m like you, I like it loud,” Eddie told him. “So nobody can hear us talking.”

Bobby leaned closer to the dashboard. “FUCK YOU!” he screamed. “See what those cops make me go through?”

They were not the only members of the crew trying to figure out what was going on. At just about that same time Henry Franzone was sitting in the back room of Popi’s Place, a bar on Seventh Avenue off Bleecker known mostly in the neighborhood for its greasy hamburgers and less well for the high-interest loans that actually kept the place in business. The back room at Popi’s was very popular with the crew because not too many people ever sat there. It provided the privacy necessary to conduct a lot of different types of business. Franzone was there to meet a man named Frank Weimann, whom he’d known for five years. Weimann was a recruiter at an executive placement firm, but what mattered most about him was that his wife, Lisa, worked as a secretary-stenographer at FBI headquarters in the city.

Organized crime got information in two ways. Most of the time, like Bobby Blue Eyes and Little Eddie, people just asked nicely. That, and the unstated threat of ending up in a trash compactor, was often enough. But sometimes they got it the old-fashioned way: They paid for it. Just as law enforcement has traditionally used paid informants, so has organized crime. And like law enforcement, the payoff wasn’t always in cash. It might also be a reduction in debt or the return of a favor, but it was something of real value. Weimann, however, always wanted cash, with the amount depending on the value of his information.

Organized crime is a cash business. There are not a lot of people who take checks or credit cards to settle gambling debts or loan payments or for drugs or cut-rate merchandise. It’s cash and carry. Or, as some people used to joke, cash or carry—either you pay the cash or we carry you out.

Some people make a lot of money; being able to spend it is the problem. In order to spend money, you have to be able to prove to the government that it came from a legitimate source—a job, for example, or from a legitimate business operation—and that you’ve paid taxes on it. If the government can show you’ve spent more than you’ve legally earned, they can make a case against you. That’s the main reason so many wiseguys show up on union payrolls. They get a weekly paycheck, and they pay the taxes and the Social Security. There was the story of a guy out on Long Island named Matty Glenn who came out of prison and immediately started dealing drugs. He made a fortune. In less than a year he’d bought a million-dollar house, a Cadillac, a big boat, he’d bought beautiful clothes for his wife and jewelry for his girlfriend. He paid taxes, not exactly every dollar he owed, and claimed he was a jewelry salesman. One night he pulled into his driveway and DEA agents leaped all over his car with their guns pointed at him. “What are you guys doing?” he screamed. “I’m a salesman.”

“Matty,” one of the agents told him, “you been on the street ten months and you got a million-dollar house, a big boat, an expensive car, you’ve bought clothes and jewelry. How could you afford all that?”

“Easy,” Matty replied, “I’m a good salesman.”

Most connected guys carry rolls of cash with them, and they’re not shy about flashing it. Some of them I knew would put big bills on top and make the roll thick with singles and fives. Not Franzone, though. Franzone never walked out his front door with less than $5,000 in his pocket. And, as people said about him, he rarely walked in that door without the same $5,000 in his pocket. Henry Franzone had what is known in the business as “short arms,” meaning they just couldn’t reach the bill. Every bill. Like a lot of captains, he expected his crew to provide for him. Usually they did.

“Good afternoon,” Weimann said respectfully as he joined Franzone at the table, “it’s good to see you.” Within seconds a pot of espresso and the proper cups had appeared on the table. Franzone believed completely in the old traditions. Business was done as gentlemen, with respect for each other and the world in which they lived, although it was difficult for him to respect the man sitting opposite him. There is nobody hated more by the wiseguys than a snitch, a rat, a traitor, stoolie, whatever you wanted to call him. A person who betrays his own people for personal gain.

Technically Weimann didn’t fit this description. Lisa Weimann was doing the actual work, and all he was doing was negotiating the terms. Franzone recognized the distinction but still found Weimann coarse and dull and despised him. But as long as their business interests coincided, he would be cordial to the man and treat him properly. “Salute,” he said, raising his cup and nodding. He was careful not to call Weimann by name, in case the walls were listening.

Weimann carried a leather briefcase with him, which he held on his lap. “Salute to you,” he replied, tapping the briefcase with his free hand. “I got most of those . . . um, items, I guess, that you asked me for.”

Franzone noticed that Weimann’s voice was a little higher-pitched than normal, evidence that his nerves were constricting his vocal cords. “Thank you very much. That’s a good thing. But maybe there’s something else you wanna tell me?”

Weimann sipped his espresso but never took his eyes off Franzone. Frank Weimann was absolutely thrilled to be there, sitting at the same table as a real mafioso. Weimann was a true Mafia buff. He’d seen The Godfather in the theater seven times and at just about every opportunity would imitate Brando making an offer that couldn’t be refused. He also had read all the popular crime literature. What set him apart from the many other Mafia groupies was his access to real information. Franzone owned him. No one else even knew his identity. He was a gift from a friend of the family’s at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Lisa Weimann, it turned out, loved the blackjack tables. Loved them to the ring of $21,000 more than she had. In return for forgiving her debt, in addition to cash payments, the Weimanns agreed to provide information on occasion.

Franzone used this resource sparingly. Twice a year, at most, and then only if the matter was important enough to risk blowing the connection. This seemed like one of those times. Franzone needed more information about what was really going on. A college professor didn’t come home a few nights, why was that important? Why was the FBI interested? Why was Tony Cosentino asking him for help rather than using his own crew, which was something he had never done before?

Frank Weimann leaned forward conspiratorially and said, “The bureau is real interested in this professor. They’re putting a lot of people on it.”

No shit, asshole, Franzone thought. Why the fuck you think you’re sitting here? But what he said aloud was, “Really? No fucking way.”

Weimann nodded earnestly. He glanced nervously around the room.

There was a part of Franzone that wanted to reach across the table and strangle him right there. They were the only two people in a back room only slightly larger than a storage closet. Who the fuck did he think was going to be watching, Eliot Ness?

Satisfied they were alone, Weimann slid the briefcase off his lap and passed it under the table to Franzone. He did not seem to notice that there was no tablecloth covering the table, so that if anybody was watching, they would be able to see this handoff. Obviously, in a back room with the door closed, no one was watching. “Whattya got in here?”

Weimann swallowed hard. “The names and addresses of the agents running the operation,” he said. “Plus I got a transcript of the interview they did with the wife and a couple of authorization forms.”

Franzone played the game well. He tried to be everything Weimann needed him to be. Leaning forward, he asked in a low voice, “You find out why they’re looking for this fucking guy?”

“It’s really weird. Nobody’s saying anything about it. Whatever they want him for, it’s got to be real important, because they’re keeping it supersecret.”

Franzone exhaled thoughtfully. Normally he discounted whatever Weimann said by at least a third, based on his conclusion that the guy was a major jerkoff and often exaggerated the facts to try to impress him. But this was the first time Weimann had admitted that even his wife couldn’t break through security. Whatever was going on, obviously it was real important to the bureau. That was interesting. “All right,” Franzone said, pulling out his roll and peeling off five one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here. Now, you listen to me good. You hear one word, you get in touch with me. You call the number. Capisce?”

Weimann held the money tightly in his fist and nodded in obeisance. “You can depend on me.”

Continuing to play his role to perfection, Franzone playfully tapped Weimann on his cheek just as he had seen an actor playing Meyer Lansky in some film do, then told him, “Youse a good kid. Don’t you ever fuck up with me.”

Weimann beamed.

Franzone did not return to the Freemont Avenue Social Club that afternoon, which was probably a good thing. Fast Lenny knew only one way to express his feelings: loudly. And so he was screaming angrily at everyone about everything—even Duke, who couldn’t hear a word he was screeching. First thing that morning Lenny had walked into the electronics store, grabbed the owner by the throat, and, ignoring his assistant completely, literally dragged him into the back. The owner was predictably terrified; too terrified, in fact, to scream for help. “I swear to God,” he pleaded with Lenny. “I don’t know what happened. I swear.”

“You no-good motherfucker. Where the fuck is that shit at?”

“I don’t know, I swear,” he swore. “I swear.” Tears were rolling down his face. “The truck never got here. I stayed here all night waiting for him, he never got here. I swear.”

Lenny loosened his grip. The man stumbled backward and fell. He was too scared to even try to get up. “What are you talking? You telling me you don’t know what went down?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “No.” He paused again. “I don’t know nothing, I swear. Honest to God, Lenny, the warehouse told me the driver left, but he never showed. I don’t know what the hell happened to him.”

“You want to know what fucking happened,” Lenny yelled, “I’ll fucking tell you what happened.” Lenny kicked him in his kidney as hard as he could. “The fucking truck was empty, that’s what fucking happened. What do you think, I’m stupid? That what you think? You think you can get over on me?” He reared back and kicked him again. And then again. And again. The owner desperately tried to roll away from him, but Lenny walked right after him. His rage was fueling his rage.

The owner was trying desperately to shield his head with his arms. “I don’t know, I swear. It was the driver. It had to be the driver.”

Over and over he screamed it, the driver, the driver, until Lenny finally heard him. “Don’t fuck with me,” Lenny warned him. “Whattya saying?”

Still cowering, the owner pleaded, “I ain’t crazy, Lenny. Gimme a break. I swear to God I’m not stupid enough to cheat you. I know what happens to me.”

He babbled on, and eventually he started making sense to Lenny. He knew the guy and the guy definitely wasn’t crazy. They’d done several scams together and the guy had always been honest with him. He’d always split the take fairly. But the driver? That fucking wimp cowardly bastard driver? Who would’ve guessed that guy had the balls to pull off a job like this one? That prick unloaded the merchandise somewhere between the warehouse and the store. He was going to open the back of the truck when he got to the store and be shocked, shocked, when he discovered he’d been robbed at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike.

Fast Lenny kicked the owner a couple more times for being stupid enough to leave the store rather than wait for the delivery, then helped him up. He informed the owner that there was going to be a change in the deal. Instead of the owner keeping the insurance money and Lenny keeping the merchandise, Lenny was going to get all the insurance money. Every penny. The job now was to find the driver. Allowing people to scam the mob and get away with it would only encourage more people to try it. Obviously it had to be stopped dead.

Later, at the social club, Fast Lenny was still so upset he couldn’t stay in his seat. He couldn’t sit there even to eat, which proved he was definitely upset. He was all over the place, complaining to everybody that he had been robbed, explaining in detail what he was going to do to the driver when he found him. Apparently, though, finding him wasn’t going to be that simple. The guy had disappeared. And it turned out his driver’s license was a complete fugazi. The name on it was Franklin Washington. Nobody even knew his real name.

Bobby listened to Fast Lenny screaming. He wouldn’t dare smile—he wasn’t stupid enough to provoke Lenny—but it was pretty funny.