Paradise City Page 17

  “But he said no,” she said, raising her voice above the din of a passing bus.

  “He said it was either with a partner or a ticket back to Naples,” Lo Manto said. “And I wasn’t ready to go back home.”

  “So, we’re stuck in the middle with each other,” she said. “No matter how much either of us dislikes the idea.”

  “I like you, and based on what I saw yesterday, I think you’re street solid,” Lo Manto said to her, gazing at her unlined face, taking in her sharp features, her bright eyes, her lips pursed and primed for either a smile or a pout. “And I don’t want to see you go down for something you should have no business being in. This isn’t about baby-sitting a wop cop anymore. Truth is, it never was. It’s about taking on a crime family.”

  Jennifer took a deep breath and gazed out her open window. “When do we start?” she asked, turning back to face Lo Manto.

  He pointed to a small florist sandwiched between a tanning salon and a bar. “As soon as the flower man opens for business,” he said.

  Jennifer stood in the middle of the shop, bending over to smell the buds on a potted gardenia. The man behind the counter looked up from a mound of paper and smiled at her over the crease of his glass frames. “Help you with anything?” he asked.

  “Got an old aunt just home from the hospital,” Jennifer said. “She likes plants. Lookin’ for something to cheer her up.”

  “Can she get around?” the man asked. “Or she have to stay in bed?”

  “Does it matter?” Jennifer asked, unable to completely bury the cop attitude. “It’s just a plant.”

  “A plant that needs to be watered,” the man said, his condescending tone ripe with derision. “If your aunt can’t get around to keep the dirt and leaves fresh, then you might as well buy her flowers. There, water or no water, they’ll be dead in three days.”

  Jennifer walked away from the gardenia plant and headed toward the counter. The man took off his glasses and set aside his paperwork. He was tall with a solid build and a thick head of brown hair. He had a curved scar at the base of his lower lip and two rows of teeth as white as a freshly painted kitchen wall. “I’ll take a dozen roses, then,” she said. “Yellow ones. Be nice to have something in the apartment that’s gonna die before my aunt.”

  “Now you’re using the main brain,” the man said, a smile creasing across thick skin and a thin mustache.

  “Maybe not,” Jennifer said. “Since a plant wouldn’t have put as big a dent on my credit card bill.”

  “It’s for family,” the man said. “Can’t put a price on that.”

  “You would,” she said, “if you ever met my aunt.”

  The man stepped out from behind the counter and walked toward the refrigerated glass cabinet that kept the flowers fresh. “I’ll pick the best ones I have,” he said, walking with a slight limp. “Pretty enough to bring a smile to even the meanest face.”

  Jennifer leaned her elbows on the counter, the square of her back resting against the edge, and looked around the shop. “You work here alone?” she asked, watching as the man slid open a glass door and pulled out long-stemmed yellow roses, their petals not yet ready to blossom.

  The man stopped choosing the roses and turned to look at Jennifer. There was a harder tone to his voice, a harsher glare to his eyes. “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “Just trying to make a little small talk,” she said, sensing his shift. “No need to get hormonal on me.”

  “We can talk about the weather,” the man said, his manner once again soft. “That’s always good for a few minutes.”

  “Can I get these flowers delivered?” she asked. “My aunt lives about six, seven blocks from here.”

  “She just got home from the hospital,” the man said, walking back toward the counter, stems of the dozen roses resting firmly in his right hand. “Might be nice to show her a pretty face along with these flowers.”

  “I’m starting a new job today,” she said. “And I don’t want to be late first time through the door. My aunt was a career woman. She’d understand.”

  The man nodded, resting the flowers on the countertop. He pulled out a long sheaf of clear plastic and rested it flat on the Formica surface. “The cards are over next to the frames,” he said, reaching for a pair of cutting shears. “Find one you like, write something nice, and I’ll staple it to the flowers.”

  Jennifer walked to a display case crammed with frames of various sizes, scanned a shelf of greeting cards situated just below, and picked one with the smiling face of an angel on its cover. She lifted it out of its slot, flipped it open, and grabbed a pen that was on the middle shelf. Signing her name, she slipped the card into a small envelope and walked back to the counter to hand it to the man. He took it with his right hand and with his left stapled it to the clear plastic paper now wrapped around the roses. “These should be there sometime between four and five,” he said. “So long as she lives in the neighborhood, like you said.”

  “She’s down the street from the old Wakefield Theater,” Jennifer said. “Brown brick building with all the flowers in front. Right off White Plains Road. Third floor. Under the name Rosetti.”

  “There’s an additional five-dollar delivery charge,” the man said. “I don’t do it myself. I use a Puerto Rican kid from next door whenever I need a run made, which these days isn’t too often.”

  “Not a problem,” Jennifer said. “Just add it the bill.”

  “That totals it out to forty-nine dollars with the delivery,” the man said. “Unless there’s something else you want.”

  “There is one more thing I’d like,” Jennifer said. “But it won’t cost either one of us any money.”

  The man adjusted his glasses and looked at her, his eyes still and stripped of any care or emotion. “And what would that be?” he asked.

  “I want you to get on the floor, face first, legs spread, hands folded behind your back,” she said, opening her black jacket just enough for him to see the gun jammed in her waistband. “Please.”

  The man stood with his back straight, hands resting flat on the counter surface. His dark eyes glared at Jennifer, the friendly smile replaced by a tight-lipped scowl. “There are some places you walk in, rob, and get away with, the owner happy just to make it out alive,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “This just isn’t one of them.”

  “Tough talk for a florist,” Jennifer said. “Now, get down on that floor like I told you to do.”

  “And if I don’t?” the man asked. “How nasty you going to bring it?”

  Jennifer stared at the man for several seconds and took one long deep breath. “Tell me your name,” she said.

  “Is it important?” the man asked.

  “Very,” Jennifer said.

  “George,” the man said. “George Palmero.”

  “And I figure you to be what, sixty, little past that, maybe,” Jennifer said, shifting closer to the edge of the counter. “Am I right?”

  “Close enough,” George said with a slight shrug.

  “Now I asked you to take to the floor in a nice way, George,” Jennifer said. “Like I would any man that’s around my father’s age.”

  “And if I don’t?” George asked again, his defiance not backing down in the face of the threat. “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll shoot you until you fall,” Jennifer said in the calmest of tones but with a slight hint of an edge to her soft voice. “Just like I would any man around my father’s age. Including my father.”

  George slid his hands slowly off the counter and placed them at his back. He then dropped to his knees and stared down at the splintered wooden floor. Jennifer made her way behind the counter and stood over him, a pair of cuffs in her right hand. “You won’t live long enough to spend what’s in the register,” George said to her, not turning his head, his body still as stone.

  “I don’t want your money,” Jennifer said, slapping the cuffs across his wrists with two quick moves. “Or your flowers.”

&
nbsp; “Then what?” George asked.

  Jennifer looked down and made eye contact with the older man, a wide smile crossing her face. “I’m going to take the whole damn store,” she said.

  Lo Manto scaled the red stone wall and dropped to the other side, facing the back of the flower shop, its door dead-bolted shut. He glanced around, surveying the hard ground littered with plastic garbage bags and piles of bound newspapers. The walkway was narrow and dark, while above him the windows were drawn shut and painted black. He stepped around a dozen empty cardboard boxes and glanced down the steps of a basement lit only by a small overhead light bulb. He pulled the .38 from his waistband, rested it at his side, and began a slow walk into the semidarkness below.

  He braced himself against a chipped wood wall, watching four young men gently place sealed packets of heroin inside long white boxes filled with tissue paper and fresh-cut flowers. They would then close the boxes, wrap them with different-colored ribbons, and place them inside supermarket shopping carts lined up behind them. There was a fifth man in the room, shorter and much older than the others, his body bent over a wooden butcher’s slab, a ladle in his right hand and a surgical mask wrapped tight around his mouth and nose, pouring white powder into small, clear sandwich bags. A radio was playing somewhere in the darkened room, the sultry voice of Laura Pausini filtering through the murky air.

  Lo Manto rested his head against the edge of the wall and closed his eyes for a brief moment. He had been witness to scenes like this so many times across so many years in both New York and Naples, and they never failed to leave him with feelings of sadness and anger. This dank and humid place, along with hundreds of other such spots spanning across two countries, was the feed from which the Camorra drew its power. This was the first stop on their march to riches. The legitimate end of their operations, from banks to brokerage houses to real estate agencies, all profitable enterprises that allowed their empire to grow and prosper, would not be attainable were it not for this first step. The heroin trade was at the heart of the Camorra strength and rested beneath the waves of their prosperity. In order to reduce their power, it was crucial that the steady stream of heroin income, which brought roughly $750 million a month into the criminal coffers of two cities, be decreased.

  Lo Manto moved away from the wall and stepped into the center of the room, his gun pointed at the men working at the large wooden table. They lifted their heads when they saw him, dropped the heroin packets, raised their hands, and took several steps back. With a nod and a glance from Lo Manto, the old man put down his ladle and stepped in with the other four. They were illegals, more fearful of deportation than jail time, working off the loans their families back home had taken from the Camorra in return for their sons’ entrance into a better life in a more prosperous country. He looked into the faces of the four young men and saw withered bodies and tired eyes gazing back. They fit the label of Camorra victim just as easily as the addicts in whose veins the white poison they were preparing for transport would flow. They would never know America as the vaunted land of opportunity. The only memories they would compile were of rooms such as this one, the long hours of many long days spent working the mule trade, under the orders of the unseen powers that ruled their lives.

  He spoke to them in Italian, knowing their English would, at best, be weak. He signaled them to leave by the back way and told them not to worry, they had nothing to fear from his hand. He stood to the side and waited as they stripped off their dusty white aprons and slipped off plastic gloves, tossing both to the ground and nodding a silent thanks his way as they exited. Lo Manto held up his hand and stopped the old man as he was pushing aside a shopping cart and moving toward the rear steps. He walked over to him, grabbed his right arm, and turned it over, gazing down at the thick skin just above his wrist. Lo Manto ran a finger across the small tattoo of a black crow gripping the edge of a knife with its beak. “Camorrista?” Lo Manto asked the old man.

  The old man nodded his head. “Sì,” he said, his slate blue eyes hard and defiant, his upper body rock hard despite his advancing years.

  “Which family?” Lo Manto asked in English. He figured the man to have been in the States long enough to understand the language. “And whose drugs?”

  The old man smiled, flashing a row of white teeth, newly capped and cleaned. “I say a word to you and I die,” he said. “It’s better to stay quiet and wait until they kill you. Then I come back here to work.”

  “My name is Lo Manto,” he said, letting go of the old man’s arm. “I’m a cop from Naples. I can’t arrest you. I can’t even tell you what to do.”

  “Then why are you here?” the old man asked. “Did you come all the way to America just to die? Even if you do nothing else, if you stop right now and get those boys back in here and let us finish our work, they will still make a lesson of you. Just for the interruption.”

  “Then there’s really no reason for me to stop now,” Lo Manto said. “Is there?”

  “I won’t tell them anything,” the old man said. “And I’ll make sure the boys do the same. But only if you go now.”

  “I want you to tell them,” Lo Manto said. “I want you to tell them everything you saw and everything that’s going to happen. And don’t forget my name. This way Pete Rossi will know who to hunt down.”

  “Who told you I know anybody named Pete Rossi?” the old man asked, inching his way toward the steps.

  “You just did,” Lo Manto said.

  Lo Manto walked past the pile of empty boxes and strewn wrappers and pushed open a large wooden door. He stepped into the flower shop and nodded at Jennifer, still standing over George, her gun holstered and her arms folded across her chest. “You stop for breakfast?” she asked, slightly irritated. “A kid with a box cutter and a pack of matches would have been home in bed by now.”

  “I ran into an old friend,” Lo Manto said, easing in next to her behind the counter, gazing down at George. “And I gave you some time to make a new one.”

  “I don’t think I’m his type,” Jennifer said. “He doesn’t seem to like girls who bring their own handcuffs.”

  George lifted his head and stared up at the two detectives. “Joke all you want,” he said, his lips curled in a snarl. “Enjoy yourselves now, while you still got the chance. You’ll both be dead before it’s dark out.”

  “See what I’m saying?” Jennifer asked. “Not exactly somebody you can bring home to meet the folks. Unless your folks are parole officers and even then it’s a bit of a stretch.”

  Lo Manto reached down and lifted George to his feet. He looked past the old man’s shoulder and saw thin lines of smoke creeping their way from under the back door. “I’m going to have my partner take the cuffs off,” Lo Manto told him.

  “Those are the first sensible words to leave your mouth since you got here,” George said. “It won’t save your life, but it does show me you’re not one hundred percent stupid.”

  “Let me ask you a question, genius,” Lo Manto said. “How long you think they’ll keep you alive after they hear about what happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” George said, his words lacking the confident edge they had held only seconds earlier.

  “First you let a girl take you down,” Lo Manto said. “That has to be worth two pins to the knees for sure. Then you let a wet wop like me come through the back door and torch the place. I mean we’re looking at what? I’m figuring about thirty thousand just in lost flowers.”

  George looked away from Lo Manto and Jennifer and turned a panicked eye toward the back door, plumes of smoke filtering through now, the thin lines swallowed up by the flames licking at the side panels. He looked back at Lo Manto, his forehead drenched in sweat, his lower lip trembling. “You’re right,” he said, his voice cracking. “They got no choice but to kill me. But with me they’ll do it clean and fast. You and the girl, they’re gonna make suffer.”

  “Can you blame them?” Lo Manto asked. “Half a million in heroin going up in smoke.
That’s enough to make even the calmest Camorrista’s blood bubble.”

  “Why’d you do all this?” George asked, following Lo Manto out of the flower shop, Jennifer trailing them, smoke licking at their backs. “You wanna die, it would have been easier and less painful for you to just toss yourself off a building.”

  Lo Manto turned to face the front of the store. Flames were rushing down the length of the shop, the heat melting the flowers and cracking glass and vases, George next to him, Jennifer leaning against the side of a parked car. A small crowd had gathered around the three and in the distance the squeal of fire engines could be heard. He looked over at George, the tough talker from earlier now reduced to a frightened old man, well aware of his own sealed fate. “There’s no fun in dying alone,” Lo Manto said.

  He stared at the old man, smoke engulfing them both, then nodded, turned, and walked toward the unmarked car parked farther up the street.

  Pete Rossi eased the bow of his forty-two-foot yacht into the thick foam of the oncoming wave, bracing for the bounce that always followed. He was shirtless at the wheel, on the top deck of the two-tiered vessel, fighting the squalls and the whitecaps in the middle of Long Island Sound. It had been a hot and humid day, but the winds had picked up with the setting sun, bringing with them cooler temperatures and choppier waters. Rossi shifted the directional gears into neutral, watched as the bow of the twin-engine boat dipped into the hard Atlantic, and released his grip on the wheel. He turned his chair in a half-circle and leaned back, his dark eyes on Silvestri, his body tense and coiled.

  “You ever wonder how he even knows which of our places to hit?” Rossi asked, not expecting much of an answer in return. “And when? Here, Naples, it doesn’t seem to much matter. It’s like he’s got a map in his pocket. Or better yet, a voice on the other end of a cell phone.”

  “He may have one or two of our guys locked down as informants,” Silvestri agreed. “But no matter who they are, there’s no way they’d know all our spots. We go out of our way to keep a tight lid on those. A street skel might know one, with a wild amount of luck, two, but no more than that. And no major locations. I can count on one hand the number on our side that could even come close to a guess on all the places we use.”