Pigtown Page 6

  “If the hit creates a problem, we’ll deal with it. But they gotta go. And the bottom line is we’re all businessmen. So if there’s a problem, we’ll just negotiate. I want you to leave now and take care of it. And Frankie, make sure it’s messy.”

  Frankie Bones got up off the sofa and waddled toward the door.

  Lupo took off his glasses and called after his friend, “Send in that nephew of yours, I’m going to give him a fast course in longer living.”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes, gently rubbing the lids with his forefingers, his thoughts on the screwing couple across the street. As soon as he finished here he was going to call up Terry and tell her to get ready for him. He wanted to be lashed hands and feet to the bed. He wanted pain, a lot of it. He heard Carmine come in but continued massaging his eyelids as he patted the empty space next to him on the sofa. He opened his eyes, put on his glasses, and said, “When I told you to start buying Lancaster I saw a bulb go on in your eyes, like maybe you figured you’d pick up a few shares on the sly for yourself.”

  “I’d never do anything like that, Danny, you know that.”

  “I know nothing. You realize that the SEC checks all stock transactions in the U.S., so if you did start buying up Lancaster before the deal was announced, some guys wearing black shoes with thick soles would be around to ask you where you got your information from.”

  “I swear, the thought never entered my mind.”

  Lupo dusted his palms together. “You like to go mountain climbing?”

  Carmine’s lip twitched. “Mountain climbing?”

  “Yeah. Along the mid-Atlantic Range. Know where that is?”

  He squirmed in his seat. “No.”

  “It’s east of Miami, about two and a half miles down in the Atlantic. The last guy who had your job figured he’d go into business for himself in Grand Cayman using our information, so when he arrived back in Miami, we sent him and his family mountain climbing.”

  Carmine felt a piercing sensation of terror. Beads of sweat popped out at his hairline. “Swear to God, Danny, I don’t even think about doing that kind of crazy stuff.”

  Lupo lifted a palm in his direction and said, “I’m glad we understand each other.”

  After Carmine fled the office, Lupo picked up his phone and dialed his girlfriend, Terry.

  The facade of the flat-roofed building on Rangoon Street was stucco, and the two loading bays had curtains of thick translucent plastic slats, hung like Venetian blinds, to cut down on the loss of refrigeration when trucks were being loaded and unloaded. The factory was in Jersey City, New Jersey, about one mile west of Liberty State Park and an hour’s drive from the precinct. On a clear day, Manhattan’s ragged skyline ringed the horizon.

  Detective Helen Kahn had driven the whip there in one of the Squad’s unmarked cars. They did not talk much during the fifty-minute ride from Pigtown. Both of them were lost in their own thoughts: she, thinking about Kirby and their nonrelationship; Stuart, lost in his own recriminations over his failed marriage.

  Kahn drove the car into the parking lot on the side of the building. The sign stretching across the top of the loading bays read “The Albertoli Company.” She parked the car; they walked around to the front of the building. Railroad tracks ran down the middle of the street.

  Stuart looked at the barrel-vaulted facade of the Science Center off in the distance. The double-door entrance of the Albertoli Company led into a large office, where three women sat at desks with stacks of ledgers piled in front of them. A handsome woman in her late forties, with steel gray hair wrapped in a bun in the back, looked away from her computer.

  “May I help you?” she asked the strangers.

  “I’m Lieutenant Matt Stuart, and this is Detective Helen Kahn. We’d like to speak with whoever is in charge,” Stuart said, holding up his shield and ID card.

  She picked up the telephone and said calmly to the person who answered, “They’re here.” Returning the receiver, she looked at Stuart and said, “Someone’ll be with you shortly.”

  We were expected, Stuart thought, looking around. The office was decorated tastefully with beige carpet and sofas of brown Italian leather. Oil paintings adorned the walls. Stuart walked over to admire a landscape.

  Inside an office on the other side of the aisle from the bookkeepers, a woman applied fresh lipstick. She snapped her compact closed, left the office, and walked up behind the detectives.

  “Hello, I’m Angela Albertoli,” she said. “Please follow me.”

  She led them into her office. A large oil of a park with two white swans on a glistening pond was hung on the wall behind her desk. She waved toward the sofa and sat in the chair behind her desk. She shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with her gold Gucci lighter.

  Stuart said, “We’re here because—”

  “I know damn well why you’re here, Lieutenant,” Angela said, blowing a stream of smoke into the air. “You’re here because my name ends in a vowel.”

  “We’re here because Beansy Rutolo was murdered, and we have information that he owned this company,” Stuart said.

  “Well, I’m here to tell you that you heard wrong, Lieutenant,” Angela said, and dragged deeply on her cigarette. “Albertoli was founded by my grandfather at the turn of the century. When he died, my mother and her brother inherited the business. But my uncle, Anthony Rutolo, AKA Beansy to you people, wanted nothing to do with the running of the company. He preferred being a gangster. So he sold his rights in the business for a percentage of the profits to be paid out over his lifetime.” Looking at them defiantly, she slowly stubbed out her cigarette in a large crystal ashtray. “My mother and father built Albertoli into what it is today. My uncle had nothing whatever to do with the operation of this company.”

  Kahn crossed and uncrossed her legs. “Did he ever come here?”

  She shook her head. “He respected my parents’ wishes and stayed away. He knew damn well all the trouble he caused us over the years.”

  “What trouble?” Stuart asked.

  “My uncle was a soldier in the Gambino crime family,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “The FBI and the police were always trying to connect Albertoli to organized crime. For years the IRS audited our books each year. It got so bad that our lawyers and accountants wanted us to drop Albertoli for a generic name. My parents and I refused.”

  Stuart leaned forward in his seat. “We’re not suggesting that your company is involved in anything illegal. We’re trying to solve your uncle’s murder, nothing more.”

  Angela’s expression betrayed her mounting anger. “My uncle died like he lived, a gangster, a disgrace to his family. I’m not even closing the plant because of his death, and I’m not going to the wake. I’ll go to his funeral only out of respect for my mother.”

  “Are your parents still active in the business?” Stuart asked.

  “My parents are retired,” Angela said. “My dad pops in every now and then.”

  Stuart asked, “Does the name Andrea Russo sound familiar?”

  “No, it doesn’t. My uncle wasn’t the type of man to discuss his life with anyone.” She looked at her wristwatch. “If there is nothing else, I have a business lunch and I don’t want to be late.”

  “Sure, no problem. Thank you for your time,” Stuart said, standing. “There is one thing,” he said, looking at her sheepishly. “I’m a real cheese addict, but I don’t know a thing about how it’s made. Wonder if you would be kind enough to have one of your people show us around the plant?”

  “Yeah, I’d like to see it, too,” Kahn chimed in.

  Angela looked at him, trying to decide what she was going to do. She opened her Bottega pocketbook, dropped in her cigarette lighter, closed the bag, pushed back her chair, and said, “I’ll show you around.” She led them back into the outer office and through a door that emptied into a cavernous warehouse, where the air was heavy with the earthy smell of cheese.

  Stuart inhaled deeply, savor
ing the pungent aromas. “I love that smell,” he said.

  She smiled knowingly. “Yes, it does get to you after a while.”

  Stuart watched forklifts glide up and down the stacked skids of cheese forms, carrying the molds in which, Angela explained, the cheeses were made. Other men pushed hand jacks stacked with cartons of cheese.

  Angela put her palms on her hips and said, “We have twenty thousand square feet, nine thousand of which is taken up by refrigeration. Each refrigerator has its own backup compressor. We can’t afford breakdowns.”

  “I understood that Albertoli is the sole importer in this country for Bolonia cheese,” Stuart said, looking around the plant.

  “Yes indeed.” Angela seemed pleased by his genuine interest. “Our family and the owners of Bolonia have been friends since our grandfathers were boys together.”

  They strolled among skids of cheese. Kahn walked over to a pile of cheese on the floor that appeared to have been dumped. “That stuff goes to the undertakers,” Angela said. She scooped up a package from the pile and held it up to them. The wedge had mold on it. “When we receive a shipment from Italy, we check each piece. Sometimes the cheese is bruised or molded. Everything that is shipped out of here has to be perfect, so we set the bruised stuff aside and sell it to the undertaker.” She smiled at their puzzlement. “That’s the name the trade has given to the people who buy damaged cheese.”

  “What do the undertakers do with it?” Stuart asked.

  “They cut off the blemishes and bad mold, then sell it to large cheese companies who repack it and resell it as processed cheese to supermarkets around the country. Those cheese sticks, and thin slices you see in stores, come from undertakers,” Angela said.

  Stuart noticed how relaxed and confident she was when talking about her business. He wanted to keep her talking. “Cheese is big business, I guess.”

  The cheese queen smiled broadly. “Five million pounds of it is purchased by American consumers annually. I’d call that big.”

  “Me, too,” Kahn agreed.

  Angela said, “Most of the cheese production in the States is done by independents. Most of the big-name cheese companies do not produce cheese. They buy it all at the Green Bay Exchange.”

  “In Wisconsin?” Kahn asked.

  “Yes. The Green Bay Exchange is where the independents sell their cheese to the industry,” Angela said, plucking a package off a skid and handing it to Stuart, who, holding it in his palms, inhaled its strong aroma.

  “That’s pecorino Romano. It’s very sharp,” said the cheese queen. “Pecorino means sheep, and Romano means Roman style.”

  “So it’s Roman-style cheese made from sheep milk,” Kahn said, sliding her hand inside her blouse and adjusting the shoulder strap of her bra.

  “How do they make cheese?” Stuart asked.

  “I haven’t the time to go into the fine details,” Angela said, “but basically, the better cheeses are made from sheep milk that is boiled in large vats, separating the curd from the whey. The curd falls to the bottom of the vat, leaving the whey, which is drained off, leaving the curd. A starter is then added to the curd.”

  “A starter?” Stuart asked.

  “A catalyst that turns the curd into different kinds of cheeses,” Angela told him.

  “What do they use?” Kahn asked.

  Angela shrugged. “Depends on the kind of cheese they’re making. It can be anything from the bacteria in a deer gut to potato skins. It’s the enzymes of the catalyst that reproduce, creating the different kinds of cheeses. Manufacturers continue to regrow the bacteria in the enzymes from generation to generation. Some of them last for as long as five hundred years.”

  Stuart’s brow furrowed. “Those starters must be closely guarded secrets.”

  “They are,” she said. “It’s the starters that make the tunnels in Swiss cheese and give our pecorino Romano its sharp, pungent taste.”

  “I guess there are a lot of people who’d pay big bucks to get their hands on the Bolonia starters,” Stuart said.

  “They’re closely guarded in Italy,” Angela said confidently. She looked at her wristwatch. “I really have to go to lunch now.”

  “Thank you for your time, and your help,” Stuart said, walking beside her toward the door, pretending to watch the skids of cheese being driven out of one of the refrigerators.

  Denny’s Gym occupied the entire second floor above a group of boarded-up stores on President Street, on the easternmost tip of the Seven One Precinct. The gym’s discolored green walls and peeling ceiling added to the shabbiness of the place. Four boxing rings dominating the center of the floor had sagging ropes and badly worn canvas floors. The speed bags were threadbare; old fight cards adorned the walls, along with glossy photographs of forgotten contenders. Generations of stale sweat filled the air. Despite the shabbiness, Denny’s was still the threshold place for the neighborhood boys to come to, to try to realize their dreams of escaping the neighborhood and its poverty.

  Manny Rodriguez shadowboxed in front of the faded wall mirror. Perspiration soiled his sweats and coursed down his face. Three left jabs, a right cross, all the time fantasizing he was a middleweight contender. Champion. One day he was going to be champion, he was going to have it all, money, fame, pussy. He was only nineteen, and he’d already had four professional wins with no losses. He bobbed, weaved, his curly black hair jouncing as he ducked under an imaginary right and countered with his left uppercut, his eyes all the time fixed on his own reflection.

  Suddenly he caught sight of the Hippo watching him from across the room. His eyes narrowed as their eyes met. He wondered how long he’d been there watching him work out. Manny threw two fast jabs and followed with a straight right to the face, then stepped over to the rickety chair against the wall and snapped his towel off the back. Walking across the gym toward the locker room, wiping his face and neck, he wondered what kind of job the Hippo had for him this time. The last time he was paid five hundred bucks to do some collection work for a shylock. Collection had been expedited by a bat to the welsher’s kneecap.

  As he walked into the dingy locker room, he heard the Hippo’s raspy voice call him from behind a row of lockers, “Back here, kid.”

  A short, muscular man with a thick neck, small gray eyes, and a flattened nose with enormous nostrils, the Hippo was leaning up against a locker when Manny walked into the aisle. “You looked like a real contender out there, kid,” the Hippo said, throwing a right cross that Manny slipped easily and countered with a right-hand tap on the Hippo’s thick chin.

  “You got the speed, the reflexes, the power, and you got heart. You got it all, kid, including the most important thing, the right friends.”

  “All I need now are the right fights.”

  The Hippo pretended to have hurt feelings. “Hey, ain’t we moving you along? Didn’t we fix you up with four easy ones?”

  “Yeah, and I’m really grateful, but I wanna make a big payday.”

  The Hippo moved closer, whispered, “We got a little job for you that’ll earn you big.”

  Manny picked up one end of the towel that he had slung around his neck and wiped his face. “What kinda job?”

  “We want you to whack a couple of niggers.”

  “Who are they?”

  “’It’s not important. What’s important is that it’s gotta be done now.”

  “You mean like right away?”

  “Yeah, kid, right away—like now. It’s in the neighborhood.” The Hippo slid a slip of yellow paper out of his pants pocket and opened it, spreading the crudely drawn map across a locker door. “De’re gonna be in a nigger joint named Dreamland, on Nostrand Avenue, between Union and President. We’re gonna have blocking cars here on Union, and here on President.” He moved his stubby forefinger over the blocking locations. “We got people stalking ’em now.” He looked at his heavy gold watch. “Dey should be in Dreamland in about forty minutes. We got someone across the street who’ll give you the high sign dat
de’re inside the joint. You do a drive-by, when you get the go-ahead, drive around the block, we got someone who’ll dial 911 and say a cop’s in a gunfight at the other end of the precinct. Dat’ll make all the cop cars go barrel-assin’ to the other end of the precinct, leaving you plenty of time to go in and do what ya gotta do.”

  Manny’s cool, professional eyes studied the map. The sounds of speed bags echoed off the metal lockers. “Equipment?”

  “Everything ya gonna need is in a bag under the seat of the old Buick parked across the street in front of the bodega.”

  Manny looked the Hippo straight in the eye. “Revolvers, right?”

  “Of course. Pros never use automatics. The fuckin’ things always jam when you need ’em most.”

  “Who’s the wheelman?”

  “Don’t worry about who, just know he’s the best. We got a time problem here, dat’s what you gotta worry about. Dese two guys are gonna be alone for about twenty minutes before the rest of their nigger friends show up. You gotta get in, do the job, and be outta there before the others show.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  The Hippo looked at his watch. “It’s two now. They get to Dreamland about two twenty-five each day.”

  “Who are these pescados?” Manny asked, using the Spanish word for dead fish.

  The Hippo slid his hand into his jogging suit and pulled out an envelope, which he passed to the contender.

  Manny opened the flap and took out two police department mug shots of Hollyman and Gee. “Official cop pictures; I’m impressed.” He looked up at the Hippo. “What are ya payin’?”

  “Three big ones.” The Hippo lowered his voice to a hoarse near whisper. “Our people don’t want them to look nice. You got two pieces in the bag under the seat. They’re both loaded with exploding rounds. Make ’em messy corpses.”

  Manny looked at the mug shots. “They musta pissed somebody off big time.”

  “Yeah, kid, big time.”

  The wheelman was another “Dixie cup” about the same age as Manny. His black sideburns had been razor cut above his ears, and he was wearing an expensive black leather coat. As soon as the contender slid into the car, the wheelman drove out of the space. The early afternoon traffic was light. The two men didn’t say a word to each other. The driver kept his eyes on the road while Manny pulled the bag out from under the seat and opened it: two Colt .38s and a brown baseball cap.