Pigtown Read online

  “And how am I supposeta do dat?” Marino asked.

  “Ask Paddy Irish to find out.”

  Stuart looked at Kahn. “You read this stuff?”

  “Last night.”

  Stuart picked up a handful of surveillance photos of Daniel Lupo’s wedding. It had been held in the Arches, a posh catering hall in Great Neck. The intelligence pictures showed people arriving and leaving the wedding. He looked through them and then put them down.

  Next he took up a batch of photographs of the wedding feast inside the Arches. They were table shots of the guests. A sly smile touched his lips when he realized that they had gotten hold of the official wedding pictures. He admired the ingenuity of the guys in Intelligence.

  At each table half of the guests remained seated while the other half gathered behind them, standing and smiling, posing for the camera. A number in red ink was written above the head of each guest. Labels were pasted on the backs of each photograph, identifying the guests. Andrea Russo, Beansy Rutolo, and Madeline Fine were at table eleven. Four people at that table were unidentified on the label, Fine one of them. Andrea had told him she didn’t know the name of Beansy’s squeeze. So why the lie? And how much of what she said could be relied on?

  Kahn handed him a sheet of paper. “I copied whatever Intelligence had on Mrs. Lupo and her family.”

  He read. Jacob and Sylvia Epstein had no criminal records or connection to OC. Jacob had founded the Franklin Investment Trust Corporation in 1949, then sold it to his son-in-law, Daniel, in March of 1978. Both Jacob and Sylvia were deceased. Their only child, Bonnie Epstein Lupo, had no criminal record or prior association to OC.

  “We’re going to have to take a look at this Franklin Investment Trust,” he said, watching the line of chained prisoners shuffling out of the squad room. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Do we know how the Epsteins died?”

  “No. But I’ll find out.”

  Outside in the squad room, Jerry Jordon snapped up the ringing phone and called out, “Calvin, it’s Plaintiff.”

  Jones grabbed the receiver and slammed it down.

  Borrelli stuck his head into the office. “Whitehouser’s here, Lou.”

  Stuart looked up at the wall clock: 0915. He said to Kahn, “Give me a few minutes and send Whitehouser in.”

  Kahn got up to leave. He noticed the strands of hair curling down alongside her ear.

  He dialed Andrea Russo at home. When she answered, he leaped right at her. “I need to see you, now.”

  “I’m working on my term paper, and then I have to go to work.”

  “This won’t take long. Five, ten minutes at the most.” He waited for her answer; when it didn’t come, he said, “It’s important.”

  “Awright, awright. I’ll meet you in half an hour behind the Downstate Medical Center.”

  He hung up just as Paul Whitehouser filled the doorway. Stuart pointed to the chair. Whitehouser lumbered over and sat, glancing up at the precinct map. “You’re fifteen minutes late,” Stuart said.

  “I got stuck in traffic,” he said with an air of indifference. His pumped-up biceps and pecs strained the fabric of his flashy jacket. His hair was slicked back with no part.

  This guy’s a real dickhead, Stuart thought. He’s been coddled so long, he’s forgotten why squad bosses are called “whips.” Aloud: “Next time you’re late, it’s going to cost you a vacation day.”

  Whitehouser’s moon face flushed, and anger made the veins in his neck stand out.

  I’ll let this guy stew in his juices, Stuart told himself as he reached for Whitehouser’s personnel folder; it had arrived in the department mail the day before. As he flipped through the folder, he occasionally hurled a disapproving glance at the detective. Whenever he said something he made sure his voice had a disheartening edge.

  He turned a page, said, “You’ve been dumped out of a lotta shops. You only lasted eight months in Pickpocket and Confidence.” He continued reading. He could see sweat glistening in the detective’s hairline. Either I bring him around or else I’m going to have to flop him back into the bag. “The word is you got an attitude problem with women.”

  “They don’t belong in the Job.”

  “They’re here, and they’re not going away. And this is my shop, and I’m not about to let you fuck it up.”

  Whitehouser started to say something; Stuart held up his palm. “I don’t want to hear it. Your uncle flopped you into this shithouse as a warning.” He leaned over his desk and glared at the detective, saying softly, “This is the last stop, Paul. You got no place to go from here except back into uniform or out of the Job. Your uncle is history in a year, and when he goes your protection goes. Don’t you think it’s time to consider your wife and your children?”

  He saw genuine fear in Whitehouser’s eyes and softened his tone. “Paul, you’re a good detective when you want to be. It’s up to you. I’ll work with you any way I can, but you gotta pull your weight.”

  Whitehouser gnawed his lower lip. “You’ll get no grief from me, Lou.”

  Andrea Russo jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Stuart drove off, heading east on Lenox Road.

  “Why did you lie to me about not knowing Beansy’s squeeze?”

  She stared at him defiantly. “S’pose I did know? I wasn’t about to give her up so you could bad-mouth Beansy to her. Those two were a real love story.”

  “I think Madeline knows a lot about Beansy’s business.”

  “So what? You think she’s gonna give up anything he might have told her? That’d be a betrayal of her man, and whatever he was or wasn’t, he was her man, first, last, and always.”

  “Does Madeline have any business connections with Danny L?”

  “Madeline’s not connected to them in anyway. She’s legit.”

  Stuart was getting impatient with Andrea. “So how come she was at Lupo’s wedding?”

  “She was there because she’s the bride’s aunt. Sylvia Epstein and Madeline were sisters. Beansy met her at the wedding.”

  “Do you know if Madeline inherited any of the family business when her sister died?”

  She looked at him incredulously. “You think any of those people talk any of that inheritance shit with me?”

  “You could have picked up the word on the street or in the bar.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Besides, I don’t run with any of them.”

  He braked for the red light. “What do you hear about Danny Lupo these days?”

  “The word is he’s been legit for a lotta years.”

  “You believe that?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Those guys only get honest when they get dead.” After a long silence, she looked at him and said, “Paddy asked me if I was doing you.”

  “Whatcha tell him?”

  She smiled again. “That you give great head.”

  He turned right onto Remsen Avenue. Two white memorial crosses were painted on the trunk of a maple tree.

  Andrea began brushing her fingertips over a small area of the dashboard, a thoughtful expression clouding her face. She reminded him of a desperate person attempting to summon up a genie to whisk her off to a better life in a better place.

  “I want to be free, Lieutenant,” she said. “Free of them and free of you.” She wrapped herself in her arms. “I’m scared.”

  Gino’s does not accept credit cards. The landmark Italian restaurant on the west side of Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue, between Sixtieth and Sixty-first Streets, had for many years been a favorite haunt of the city’s high and mighty.

  The small bar in front of the entrance was crowded with lunchtime drinkers when Daniel Lupo walked in. He was greeted warmly by the host, a big bald-headed man with a five-hundred-watt smile and a firm handshake, who quickly showed the investment banker to a small table against the wall. Lupo noticed Dustin Hoffman and his wife sitting at a table in the rear. Two black men, one wearing a turban and the other an African cap, were speaking French across t
he checked tablecloth. As soon as he sat down, Lupo looked around the restaurant, making sure that there were no faces that didn’t fit in with the crowd. Lately he’d been getting the uneasy feeling that bad blood from the old days was slowly walking its way toward him. As always, he sat facing the entrance.

  The host asked, “Can I get you somethin’ to drink, Mr. Lupo?”

  Lupo ordered a bottle of Antinori Chianti Classico.

  As the host walked off, Lupo stared for a moment at the restaurant’s trademark burnt sienna wallpaper patterned with tiny black-and-white zebras, then nervously shifted his attention to the bar. Where the hell was she?

  A waiter came over and offered him the bottle of wine for approval. After glancing at the label, Lupo nodded. The waiter was drawing the cork from the bottle just as Angela Albertoli walked in. She stood at the entrance, looking around. When Lupo waved to her, she nodded and came over. As she approached his table, he stood. She pulled back her chair, and they sat together. She draped her lizard shoulder bag over the back of her chair and looked at him.

  They sat staring at each other, the distant years a barrier. Finally he broke the awkward silence. “Would you like a drink?”

  She looked at the bottle of wine. “That would be fine.”

  He poured her wine and then lifted his glass in a silent toast. Her eyes moved slowly around the restaurant and then flashed back to him. “You’ve come a long way from Pigtown, Daniel.”

  “So have you, Angela.”

  She rotated the stem of her wineglass slowly. “Why did you ask me to have lunch with you?”

  “When I saw you in church yesterday, I realized how much I’ve missed you over the years.”

  Her scornful laugh turned several heads. She leaned across the table, glaring at him. “You were the one who dumped me for that rich Jew from Sands Point. Remember!”

  “That was business, you knew that.”

  “What’s your problem, Daniel? You bored with your wife and your mistress, and looking for something else on the side?”

  “The simple truth is I’ve missed you.”

  “You missed me so much that it took you over twenty years to pick up the phone.”

  He looked down at the table, trying to find the right response. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t still have the hots for me, he thought. Then he blurted out, “I didn’t feel I had the right to call you.”

  She avoided his eyes. He sipped wine, staring at her over the rim. She wasn’t the gangly tomboy he’d known as a young man. But as hard as he searched, he was unable to find the fire that used to light up her eyes. She had the hard edge of a scorned woman in charge of her own life. He felt confident that he’d be able to rekindle that flame. Slowly, tentatively, he moved his hand across the table until their fingertips touched. She allowed them to connect only for a moment before she pulled her hand back. “You’ve changed, Angela.”

  She picked up a breadstick and pointed it at him, then declared, “There are several things I don’t do anymore, Daniel. I don’t eat butter or salt, and I don’t suck uncircumcised cocks.”

  The woman at the next table looked around at her and smiled approvingly.

  Lupo covered his dismay by signaling the waiter to come over. When the waiter came they both ordered salads and pasta. He wanted linguine with red clam sauce; she wanted angelhair pasta with lobster sauce. When the waiter walked away, she asked, “What do you really want from me?”

  “I’d like to see what it would be like for us to be together again.”

  “And your wife?”

  He flicked one hand dismissively. “Bonnie and I have an arrangement.”

  “Ah, an arrangement. A lot of men have them. They lie to their wives, and the wives pretend to believe them. But this woman won’t be part of any such arrangement.”

  At that, the waiter brought their salads. Lupo was grateful for the distraction. This wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

  He attacked his salad and finished it quickly. The waiter silently put their main courses on the table and vanished.

  “How’s business?” Lupo asked her, brushing his napkin across his lips.

  Wrapping pasta around her fork, Andrea said, “Very good. We’re having an excellent third quarter.”

  “I’m wondering if you would be interested in a business proposition?”

  She put down her fork and spoon, looked at him, and said, “And I thought you were only interested in my brains.” She went back to wrapping her pasta around her fork. “I don’t deal in your kind of business. You should know that by now.”

  “I’m a legitimate businessman with a legitimate deal,” he snapped, his cheeks flushed.

  She glanced across the table at him and inclined her head to one side. “I’m listening.”

  “One of my companies is looking for a place to store milk and cheese on a short-term basis.”

  “I don’t have milk storage tanks.”

  “You don’t need them. The milk will be in a refrigerated tanker truck. All we need is a large, secure space to park it in.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because your late uncle told me that you had a large unused space behind your factory in New Jersey. And your plant would give us fast access to the city. But the main reason is that I trust you. You would never sell us out to hijackers. Liquid milk and cheese are cash commodities, as you well know. You can rip ’em off for big bucks.”

  “Why don’t you build your own storage tanks?”

  He gestured impatiently. “We’re not in the milk business. For a limited time we’re going to be able to pick up some liquid milk at a bargain price. We’ll sell it for a quick profit to the large food discount chains, who’ll put it in their own containers.”

  She seemed to find the explanation acceptable but asked, “And the cheese?”

  “From an undertaker who’s into the shys for some big bucks. We’re taking a load off his hands for forty cents on the dollar and selling them to a wholesaler in Chicago.”

  “Sounds like robbery to me.”

  He grinned at her. “It’s a cruel world.”

  She picked up her wineglass. “What are you paying?”

  “Three thousand a week, cash.”

  “What about insurance?”

  “We’ll take care of that and security.”

  “I’ll have to sleep on it, Daniel.”

  Lupo sensed that she would play, but didn’t want to be pushed farther right now. “While you’re deciding, I’d like to take a drive out and look around your plant to make sure that there’s enough room.”

  “I’m going back after lunch.”

  “I have several meetings scheduled this afternoon. Suppose I drive out around five.”

  She pushed her plate to one side. “Make it around five-thirty.”

  Kahn parked the unmarked car in the official parking lot on the Avenue of the Finest behind police headquarters. She and Stuart crossed Madison Street and walked up the wide orange brick staircase leading into One Police Plaza. People moved about the plaza, savoring the afternoon sun and the ethnic food stands.

  Stuart and Kahn walked into headquarters and were immediately funneled into the security line marked out by blue webbing supported by metal stanchions. Stuart looked at the fifteen-foot bronze memorial statue that seemed to fill the huge lobby. It depicted a proud policeman wearing the old high-collar uniform and cap with a comforting arm around the shoulders of a young boy. Eric LaGuardia, son of the late, great mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, had served as the model for the boy, the son of slain patrolman Martin J. Gillen, Jr. Attilio Piccirilli had finished the statue in 1939.

  The people moving through the cordon made their way up to eight turnstiles. Six policemen manned the consoles on the other side. As the cops came up to the gate, they inserted their identification cards in a slot on the turnstile. If the card was valid, a duplicate copy of it scrolled onto one side of the split screen. If the face on the ID matched the face waiting on the other side of the gate, a gr
een light lit up and the cop pushed his way through the barrier.

  As Stuart and Kahn moved up the line, Stuart read some of the memorial tablets that lined the lobby’s walls. James Cahill was the first NYC cop killed in the line of duty: September 29, 1854. The last was Sean McDonald: March 15, 1994. There had been others since, but their tablets had yet to be cast and hung.

  At last, Stuart and Kahn pushed through the turnstile. They moved to the right and walked down the wide staircase to C level. The corridor was lined with wooden pallets of teleprinter paper and computer spreadsheets. Old desks and file cabinets were stacked on their sides, and the ceiling was a jumble of pipes from which hung fluorescent light fixtures.

  They made their way to room A-79. Detectives stood around, shooting the breeze in the corridor to the left of room A-79, in front of a four-by-four sliding glass pass-through window cut into the cinder-block wall of the corridor. They would speak through the window to duty clericals in the Photographic Unit. This was where detectives came to order “wet” mug shots and then waited for the photographs to be developed.

  Stuart and Kahn went through a door next to the window and walked inside. The walls were covered with enlargements of color prints that had been taken by photographers assigned to the Photographic Unit: an armada of tall sailing ships coming up the Hudson River, Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf’s ticker tape parade up Broadway, the now famous July 4 fireworks display over the Statue of Liberty.

  A large sign on the wall stated the grim fact that of all the cops killed in 1993, seven had killed themselves.

  An orange leatherette sofa stood against the cinder-block wall to the left of the entrance; next to it, two hardy and seldom watered plants stuck up out of shiny metal containers. A waist-high wooden barrier with a single gate ran the width of the room. A young woman wearing pyramid-shaped nugget earrings sat on the other side of the gate, manning a telephone. She looked up at the visitors.