“Dick tells me the feds were asking him questions about me,” said Charlie. “Why, after so many years, would they be doing that?”
Lee Tucker. What the hell was he doing? They interviewed Baroni after I gave him the name? They might as well have painted a target on my chest. It had been a plant. Charlie had thrown out the name to see if it would spawn any interest from law enforcement. If it did, that meant the person he told—yours truly—was working with them.
“Okay,” I said, like I was awaiting the punch line. “And who the hell is Dick Baroni?”
Charlie watched me for a long time. He hadn’t expected that answer. “You know who he is.”
“I have no idea who he is.”
“I told you about him.”
“When did you do that?”
“You’re lying to me.”
“When, Charlie?” I shook my head, exasperated. “Just answer me that. When did you ever tell me about him?”
He paused. “First time we talked. Really talked. At my club.”
“Like, three months ago? I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.”
I thought it was a plausible enough position to take.
“Three months ago,” I said, “when—”
I cut off the sentence. I tried to summon emotion that I’d tried hard so hard to suppress. It wasn’t all that hard. It was never very far from the surface.
“When I was just getting back—when I was just getting over what happened. I mean, I was a fucking mess when I met you. And you think—what—I remember that conversation so well that some name you dropped would stick in my mind?”
I had a head of steam now, and I let the anger release.
“And by the way, why would I do any of this, Charlie? Why the hell would I team up with the feds? Do I have some reason that I don’t know about? I just woke up one day and decided that I wanted to work undercover for the feds to help nail somebody I’d never
met
?”
I had Charlie thinking. It was working. Maybe Tucker was right. Maybe I was a natural.
Charlie walked over to me. He put his hands on his knees and looked into my eyes.
“Tell me you’re not working for them,” he whispered. “Look me in the eye and—”
“I’m not working for those assholes,” I said.
He slapped me hard across the face. “Again.”
“I’m not a snitch,” I said.
He reached around and grabbed the back of my hair, showed me his teeth. “Again.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I’m not a fucking rat.”
The adrenaline was racing through me. He was buying it. I could taste freedom. I realized, only then, how much I’d expected this whole thing to go south.
“I put you on the map,” he said, his face twisted into a snarl. He was still gripping the shorthairs on my neck. “I pulled your head out of your ass. And this is the thanks you give me?”
He opened his other hand. Resting on his palm was an F-Bird.
Charlie tossed the F-Bird to Leather Jacket. “Your turn,” he said.
57
“WHAT IS THIS?” LEATHER JACKET ASKED, DISPLAYING
the F-Bird right before my eyes.
“I don’t know. What
is
that? A pager? A battery pack?”
“We
found
this, asshole. You can’t lie your way out of this. You think we’re fucking stupid?”
“I have no—”
“It’s a fucking
recording device
!” he shouted into my face. “When did you start working for them?”
Stay in role. No matter what.
I had no other options. I only had one bet left. It was a long shot, but it was all I had, and I was staking my life on it.
Vito hit me with the brunt of his hand, slamming against my temple again.
“When?” Leather Jacket asked.
“When?”
“I’m not working for anybody but myself,” I said. “I’m not a snitch. I’ve never seen that pager before.”
Leather Jacket slammed his fist into my chest, just below my windpipe. I wasn’t a moving target, so he was able to put a lot behind it. It drove the wind from me. It hurt a lot, too.
These guys were going to a lot of trouble to beat the shit out of me without leaving a lot of visible bruises. That had to mean something, but I wasn’t sure what. I was having a little trouble with critical reasoning at the moment.
Stay . . . in . . . role.
“Paulie,” Leather Jacket said, looking to his left, to Vito.
Vito—Paulie, apparently—walked behind me and grabbed hold of one of my hands through the handcuffs. I felt the edge of a sharp blade against the little finger on my right hand.
“Every time I have to ask the question without getting an answer, you lose another finger,” Leather Jacket said. “So, that gives us ten tries. Here’s try number one.”
“I’m not a snitch!” I spit.
“When did you start working for them?”
“You can ask me ten
thousand
times,” I said. “You might as well cut off my entire hand right now, you lousy piece of shit, because
I’m not a fucking rat
.”
Leather Jacket watched me a long time, my heaving, quivering self. “Hey, tough guy? If I was you, I’d give me a straight answer. You’re not gonna get that finger back once we slice it off.”
“Stop,” said Charlie. “That’s enough.”
“Nah.” Leather Jacket shook his head. “It’s not enough yet. After a few fingers are gone—he still denies it then, maybe I’ll believe him. Go ahead, Paulie. Let’s see how tough he is with nine fingers.”
I closed my eyes and braced myself. I couldn’t protest any longer. I’d done everything I could. I felt the blade’s edge wedge into the skin of my smallest finger at the base. I held my breath and gritted my teeth.
The knife didn’t move any farther. Then it came off my skin. Paulie released the hand. I wiggled my hand, all five glorious fingers in tandem.
“Give him your coat, for Christ’s sake,” said Charlie.
A coat fell over my shoulders.
I froze, catching my breath. Paulie walked out of the room, without the long coat that was now over my shoulders. Leather Jacket left, too. It took me a moment to catch up with the turn of events. Unless I was hallucinating, I had just passed the test.
Neither Charlie nor I was in the mood to speak right away. Certainly not me. Fear and stress and, ultimately, disbelief had converged to render me speechless. And my mind wasn’t working much better than my mouth. I wasn’t sure I trusted what I might say.
I’d stayed in role until the bitter end and it had paid off. He’d confronted me with the F-Bird and I’d done the only thing I could do, short of confessing: I’d feigned complete and total ignorance. I’d been prepared to elaborate if necessary, to explain that I had no idea what the thing was or how it got wherever it was they found it.
But I didn’t have to elaborate. They had accepted my denial. They were willing to bluff, just to make sure, but in the end, they didn’t do any permanent damage to me. They believed me. That could only mean one thing.
They hadn’t found my F-Bird.
They’d searched my clothes and come up empty. They’d searched the Porsche, thinking I might have tried to dispose of it before getting out, and struck out again. Part of me was sure they would find it, but it was clear to me now that they hadn’t.
They had an F-Bird, but it hadn’t come from me. They’d taken it off someone else.
“So, I’m sorry about all that,” Charlie said, as if he’d accidentally spilled some coffee on my pants or something. “They had to be sure. We just—had to make sure. You understand.”
I needed time to gather myself here, but I probably didn’t have that luxury. Staying in role was as important now as before.
“Say something, kid,” he said.
“Fuck . . . you,” I managed.
He liked that. “Say something else.”
“Is that thing,” I said between breaths, “really a recording device?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Someone’s . . . wearing a wire?”
“Someone
was
,” he said. “Not anymore.”
“Great. That’s . . . just great.”
“I think we’re okay, kid. I’m gonna uncuff you now.” He showed me the key. Under the circumstances, he probably figured I would be reticent about anyone approaching me.
He came around behind me with the key. He took the coat—Paulie’s coat—off my shoulders.
“Don’t take the coat,” I snapped. “I’m freezing. Put it back on.”
I wasn’t freezing, actually. The events of the last half-hour had elevated my temperature considerably.
“Okay, take it easy.” He unlocked my handcuffs and then threw Paulie’s coat over my shoulders again.
My hands were free again. I savored it. I rubbed my wrists.
“So, listen. I’ve got a few things I gotta take care of. My guy here, he’s going to drive you home. Don’t talk to anyone about anything until I get back in touch with you. You hear me, kid? Not a fucking word to anybody.”
“Charlie . . . whatever you do . . . whoever it is . . . don’t kill anybody. Keeping someone quiet . . . isn’t worth . . . a murder charge. Trust me.”
I thought it made sense to cast my appeal in terms of attorney-client advice as opposed to a plea to his morality.
“I’m going to get you your clothes,” he said.
“You don’t just . . . kill a federal witness, Charlie.”
“I’m not going to kill anybody.” He walked out, leaving me alone. He came back only a few moments later with my clothes, a little worse for wear but all there, in the laundry basket.
“Paulie’s gonna need his coat back,” said Charlie. “You know his buddy Sal had to go to the hospital? You shattered the guy’s nose.” He thought that was funny.
I handed Paulie’s coat to Charlie. I didn’t need it any longer. I just needed that brief interval of time, while Charlie left the room, to fetch my F-Bird out of Paulie’s front coat pocket.
58
I SAT SILENT IN THE BACKSEAT OF LEATHER JACKET’S
SUV. I didn’t know what Charlie had in store for the snitch he’d caught with the F-Bird. I assumed the penalty for betrayal would be death, Charlie’s denial notwithstanding. Either way, everything had changed now. The G had targeted Charlie Cimino, and now he knew it.
My F-Bird was once again resting comfortably in the pocket of my suit jacket. I’d removed it during the drive to this place with Charlie, once the warning bells went off with his questions about Starlight Catering. I’d faked a sneeze and removed my handkerchief from my pants pocket. Charlie hadn’t noticed that I then placed the handkerchief in the inner pocket of my suit coat, which allowed me to snag the F-Bird and palm it for the remainder of the ride in my right hand. I’d thought about dumping it somewhere in the Porsche, but I figured if they were going to search me, they’d be bright enough to search the car, too. Lucky for me, the F-Bird was light as a feather, so Paulie didn’t feel it when I dropped it in his coat pocket while we were squaring off in the garage.
It was a gamble, sure. Paulie could have discovered it, and I would have been toast. But I didn’t have a better idea. And it didn’t seem likely these guys would ever think to search each other for the device.
I got lucky when Paulie threw his coat over me at the end of the interrogation, allowing me to retrieve it. Otherwise, I’d have had a problem. Sooner or later, Paulie would have found it in the bottom of his pocket. I would have had to intervene before that time. But it would have been a bridge to cross later; the more immediate problem was surviving that room. And now, thanks to sweet Irish luck, I had survived and retrieved the F-Bird in the same sitting.
I paid attention to the route Leather Jacket was taking back to my house. I’d had some vague notion that his job might be to drive me to a remote location and put a bullet between my eyes. But if they wanted me dead, I would have died in that room.
I got out of the SUV without a word to Leather Jacket. When I got inside my townhouse and saw that the SUV had driven away, I pulled out my cell phone. It had been turned off. I powered it up. My plan was to call Lee Tucker. But my phone was already ringing. The caller ID showed “David Hamlin,” meaning Tucker.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’re okay?”
“In one piece.”
“Thank God.” He took a breath. “Okay, listen—”
“You better find Greg Connolly,” I said. “Because Cimino has him and he’s going to kill him. If he hasn’t already.”
Silence on the other end of the phone.
“There’s another CI,” I said.
“Jason—”
“Charlie knows that. He showed me his F-Bird—”
“Jason.”
“I assume it was Greg Connolly—”