Find Her a Grave
Authors: Collin Wilcox
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Private Investigators
An Alan Bernhardt Mystery
Collin Wilcox
This book is dedicated to Tottie and Gardie
All those years …
1985
TUESDAY, JULY 9th
3:15 P.M., EDT
B
ACARDO LEANED FORWARD, TAPPED
the driver on the shoulder. “Switch on the radio, Eddie. Remember, no rock and roll.” Bacardo waited until the music came up, then turned to the man beside him. Both men wore dark suits, white shirts, ties, and black loafers. Bacardo’s loafers were brass-buckled; Caproni’s were tasseled.
“You’ve never done this before, right?” Even though music now filled the Lincoln’s interior, Bacardo spoke quietly, discreetly.
Caproni shook his head. “Never.”
“The way it goes,” Bacardo said, “we leave the car in the parking lot. Eddie’s done this before, he knows how it goes. When we’re parked, Eddie gives you the car keys. You take the keys, open the trunk, take out the suitcase. Then—this is important—you keep the keys in your pocket. If Eddie has to move the car, which he won’t, he’s got a duplicate set of keys. Got it?”
Caproni nodded. His dark eyes were fixed on Bacardo’s face. Waiting avidly for the rest of it:
“At the gate, you give up the suitcase. There’ll be two guards—flunkies—and a lieutenant. Harrison, that’s the lieutenant’s name. A guy about fifty, about two-twenty-five, reddish hair, bald, with a pot that’s just starting. If there’s any question, give me a look. Harrison’s the one that gets the suitcase. He also gets the keys. The way it works, we take everything out of our pockets, for the scanner. Harrison knows the keys he wants. He picks up the keys off the conveyor belt.”
“So Harrison gets the suitcase and the keys, both.”
Bacardo nodded. “Right. And then he disappears. That’s the last we see of him. While we’re inside, Harrison unlocks the suitcase and empties it out, checks off everything. It’ll take him maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, no more. Meanwhile, we do our business, me and the don. While we’re doing business, Harrison takes the suitcase out to the car, puts it in the trunk, gives Eddie the keys. And that’s that.” Bacardo smiled, spread his large, knob-knuckled hands. He was tall, gaunt, loosely made. Like his hands, his face was large and rough-cut. It was a peasant’s face: heavy brow ridges, an outsize jaw, an amorphous mouth. The body, too, was peasant-bred, defying the efforts of even the most skillful tailor. Bacardo’s complexion was mahogany brown, his ancient Sicilian heritage. His unruly hair was dark and coarse and thick. His eyebrows, too, were spiky-thick, and his jowls were dark with underlying stubble. His black eyes revealed nothing. Like all mafiosi, Bacardo was clean-shaven.
“After we’re through the scanner,” Bacardo said, “a guard’ll take us to the administration building in a golf cart. The don’ll be waiting for me in the warden’s office. You’ll be in a conference room right down the hallway. You’ll probably talk to Gerald Farley. He’s captain of the guard, maybe the number-four man in the prison. Maybe he’ll have someone with him, maybe not. Maybe you’ll be patted down for a wire, maybe not. This is your first time, so they probably
will
pat you down. Anyhow, you’ve got to figure that Farley’ll be wearing a wire. Right?”
On cue, Caproni nodded. “Right.”
“Mostly,” Bacardo said, “what Farley’ll give you is just a lot of shit to make him feel important. He’s a windbag, but he’s no dummy, so you’ve got to watch yourself. One thing you’ve got to remember, and that’s not to talk about the suitcase.”
Caproni nodded again. “Got it.”
“What you’ll get from Farley, the only thing you have to pay attention to, is how it’s going with our guys. Usually there’s no complaints. Our guys, the capos, they’re all in one cellblock. Which, naturally, everyone calls ‘Mafia Row.’ There’s eleven guys there now, including the don. In the rest of the prison, there’s maybe twenty-five soldiers and button men. They’re also our responsibility. If one of them fucks up, we take care of it. Us, not the guards. That’s the deal. The guards don’t fuck with us, we don’t give them any problems. Our guys do their time, behave, get out, go back to work. You know all this.”
Caproni nodded. The Lincoln was slowing, stopping for a red light. Even though there was no traffic in either direction, the driver came to a full stop, turned, then smoothly accelerated to a conservative forty-five. Looking at the sign on the light pole, Caproni saw
FREDRICKSVILLE, 5 MILES
. And, yes, in the distance the beige buildings of the prison were dimly materializing, built along the top of a bluff that was the landscape’s only distinguishing feature; the rest was marshlands. Caproni glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard; the time was 3:25
P.M.
The radio was playing something from the forties: a love song with mournful lyrics. Was it Sinatra?
“The way it works,” Bacardo said, “just so you’ll know, the don only talks to the warden or the captain of the guards. Nobody else—no guards, no inmates. And nobody talks to the don directly. Anything that’s important enough for the don to make a decision, it goes to Augie first. He’s the don’s cellmate.”
Caproni nodded, then decided to say, “Can I ask you something?”
Bacardo shrugged. “Ask.”
“The don’s been in for—what—five years?”
“Right.”
“Out of—what—a fifteen-year sentence?”
“Right.”
“So how come? I mean—” Perplexed, Caproni shook his head, spread his hands. “I mean, Christ, that was a frame-up, the don’s trial. It was like Luciano and Genovese all over again. I went to the don’s trial a few times. And those two guys the DA dug up, they could hardly remember their lines. The don, it looked like ten to one he’d walk on appeal.”
Grimly, Bacardo looked straight ahead as he said, “In the first place, it wasn’t the DA. It was the state’s attorney. And the feds, if they want you bad enough, they’ll get you. Christ, you talk about Luciano and Genovese. Those two, between them, who knows how many guys they had whacked. So the feds got Luciano for pimping, for God’s sake—fixing Frederico up with a seventeen-year-old girl so stupid she didn’t know enough to keep her mouth shut. And Genovese, Christ, convicted on a nickel-and-dime drug deal—street-corner stuff.”
“And now Don Carlo.”
Still staring straight ahead, Bacardo made no reply. The subject was closed.
T
HE WALL BEHIND THE
warden’s desk was covered with pictures, most of them photographs in narrow black frames. Advancing a step, Bacardo looked closely at a snapshot of a cabin cruiser with—yes—Warden Donovan at the helm, one hand resting on the traditional oaken ship’s wheel. Wearing, yes, a yachtsman’s cap, Donovan was smiling, squinting into the sun. Two men and three women shared the cockpit with him. The men were bare-chested, rolls of middle-aged fat overhanging their belts. The three women matched the men: overweight, cheerful-looking, settled. Donovan and one of the men clutched cans of beer, raised in a salute. From the design of the cockpit and the lines of the woodwork, the boat appeared to be a Ranger.
How many suitcases full of money and dope had it taken to buy the Ranger? Donovan, they said, was only a few years from retirement. How much had he—?
From behind him Bacardo heard the click of a latch, the metal-on-metal sound of a door swinging on its hinges. He smiled as he turned to face Carlo Venezzio. The smile was genuine; more than anyone’s, Venezzio’s life was part of his own.
As always, Venezzio wore neatly pressed, dark-colored slacks, burnished loafers, and a white silk shirt, open at the neck. The feel of silk on his skin, Venezzio had once said, was half as good as sex.
As he pushed the door closed, he greeted Bacardo, gestured to the long leather sofa where they always sat, one at either end. A man of medium weight and height, sixty-five years old, Venezzio lowered himself slowly to the couch, bracing himself with both hands, one hand on the back of the sofa, one hand on the cushion. Watching the other man, Bacardo was aware of differences: a pallor of the face, an uncertainty of gesture, a tightening of the mouth, an underlying grimace about the eyes.
It had been two weeks since Bacardo’s last visit. In those two weeks something had changed. Something significant.
But the voice, thin and reedy, was the same: “So. Caproni. How’s he working out?”
Bacardo shrugged. “So far, so good.”
“He’s ambitious. Too ambitious, maybe.”
“Sure. But he’s smart. And he listens. He pays attention. I give him something to do, I know it’ll get done.”