Frame-Up (15 page)

“Yeah. What?”

“Morning, Benny. Guess who?”

“What the h—”

“Benny, get a grip. I want you to walk straight out to Tremont Street.”

I could see him look around to spot what must have seemed like my ghostly presence. He had a grip on the cell phone that must have had its little diodes spinning.

“Listen, Knight—”

“Benny, you always call me Mikey. Are we drifting apart?”

The silence told me he was losing his sense of humor.

“Do it, Benny. Straight to Tremont.”

I watched him stand and walk his little crab walk in the right direction. He kept looking back toward the benches around our supposed meeting spot. I thought at one point he made some kind of hand gesture that seemed more than just Benny talking with his hands, but he was so spastic at that point that it could have been nerves — his or mine. When he reached the sidewalk on Tremont, he still had the cell phone to his ear.

“Now what, smart-ass?”

“Be nice, Benny. Let's not let this affect our relationship. Flag down the next cab that comes along.”

I saw him look back into the Common again before he waved at the cab that was cruising down his side of Tremont Street. The cab pulled to the curb beside him.

He said into the phone, “Now what?”

“Get in the cab, Benny.”

He grabbed open the door and stuffed his little sausage form into the passenger compartment. He was still looking back at the Common and jerking his head at something. When he turned around and saw me sitting in the seat beside him, he bounced about three inches off the seat, smacking his head on the door frame.

“You son of a—!”

I let the stream of curses roll over me. What was cracking me up in spite of it all was that he was still saying it into the cell phone.

“Benny, nice language, and you, a member of the bar. You can close the phone now.”

He snapped the phone and his mouth shut simultaneously.

“Don't put the phone away. You'll be needing it.”

I gave the driver directions to turn right on Boylston and again right on Charles toward Beacon Hill. I needed a quiet stretch out of traffic to bring off the next piece.

As we pulled away from the curb, I caught out of the corner of my eye what to my legitimately paranoid mind looked like two bulked-up forms that could have been of the Sicilian persuasion flagging down a cab behind us. I did my best to convince myself that I
was letting the demons get a grip on my imagination. At that moment, I needed full focus on the proceedings at hand.

I asked the driver to get the sports-talk station on the radio and turn the volume up to eight. Once done, I slid over closer to Benny and spoke in his ear.

“You're going to make a phone call, Benny.”

His eyes were like half-dollars and his mouth was half open at this point. I knew I had his attention.

“The boys in the North End let you play lawyer to keep their scum on the street. But basically, don't take this personally, Benny, to them you're an errand boy. Open up your cell phone. You're about to deliver the message of the week.”

He hesitated for a few seconds of indecision, but then opened the phone and looked over for the next order.

“Dial up Tony Aiello.”

He stared at me as if I had just asked for a direct connection with the Wizard of Oz. A second later he snapped the phone shut.

“I used to give you credit for smarts, Knight. Not no more. You're a dead man, and you run around givin' orders like you're the king of Sweden.”

His mouth was closed now, and taking on the definite shape of a smirk. I was afraid of losing momentum. I knew that without Benny on a string, I had no access to the one I needed to contact.

I noticed that Benny looked back through the window at the cab that was still behind us. I checked it out too, and the sight of the two goons in the cab made everything inside of me freeze. I did my best to keep the confident look on my face, but I was dead certain that the only good news was that I was not suffering from paranoia.

We were cruising down Charles Street when the driver slowed for the stop light at Beacon Street. I saw Benny blanch. I turned around to see what he was gaping at. A black Lincoln with shaded windows pulled around the cab in back of us. It nearly sliced off the rear bumper of our cab while cutting in between us and the cab carrying the two Cro-Magnons behind us. I couldn't help noticing the coincidence of another shaded Lincoln pulling in behind that cab.

The four cars pulled to a stop at the light in tight formation. I couldn't see what was going on in the cab that had been following us, and neither could Benny. But when the light changed and we pulled away, the two Lincolns never moved. The cab was boxed in.

I told the driver to make a quick right onto Beacon and step on it. Once we were out of sight of the trio of cars standing like rocks in a row, we backed off to a slow cruise. I had the driver just drive around the labyrinth of streets that crisscross Beacon Hill.

Benny took it all in with a look of disbelief, and while I gave thanks to the Lord and whoever was riding to my rescue, Benny just stared at me like an abandoned puppy. I was back in control. I had no idea how I got there. I knew that when I left the office, I stupidly opted to go with the bluff instead of calling Tom Burns for protection. I was beginning to wonder if Tom had waves of mental telepathy. For the moment, that had to do for an explanation.

I turned back to Benny.

“Let me lay it out for you, Benny. You screwed up. My presence makes that clear. Forget the denial. For once we're going to talk straight to each other. Now picture this scene. I send a message to Fat Tony Aiello that you and I worked out a deal. More than a few bucks changed hands, and you tipped me off to what Aiello was planning for me. I could even say you did it as a matter of professional courtesy, if you can imagine that. Either way, you wind up pleading for Fat Tony's tender mercies. Are we in agreement that that's the worse of two evils no matter what the other one is?”

He just looked at me.

“This is a conversation, Benny. You get to speak next.”

He blinked, and I welcomed the beads of sweat that stood out from his neck to his forehead. To his credit, he went one more round. “What the hell makes you think he'll believe you?” “I'm alive, Benny. If you did your job, you and Respa, I'd be otherwise. Respa's dead, and you and I are not. You don't think I can make Tony wonder about that?”

He took about ten seconds to factor that in before testing the waters.

“What do ya want?”

“Open your cell phone.”

He froze in position.

“The first alternative is still on the front burner. I'm running out of time. Open your cell phone.”

He opened the phone slowly as if he was afraid to let something out of it.

“Good. Here's the plan. You call Fat Tony. Tell him you heard from me. Apparently Vespa missed the mark. But that's good news. You tell him I said I had information about the number you found in the locker. The number you delivered to him was the wrong one. I've got the right one. I'm ready to make a deal. It's pure business, and there's no other way he's going to get to the goods. Are you taking this in, Benny?”

I put a slight emphasis on “the goods” to imply that I knew what the goods were. I figured I was on safe ground there, since the odds were a hundred to one against the insiders letting Benny know what the goods were either. I also figured that Tony Aiello was under pressure to get whatever that number led to. Otherwise, why risk killing a member of the Boston Bar with no connections to the mob — to wit, me? They say in hockey that when a goon fights a goon, it's crowd entertainment. When a goon attacks a clean player, there's hell to pay.

Benny looked down at his knees and the beads of sweat became drops that fell on his pants. I knew he had a deathly fear of Tony Aiello. From what I'd heard, Aiello would kill in a flash, at times with his own hands. I'd also heard that the one thing that could rein in his taste for violence was his own sense of what was good for business. Benny was even more aware of that than I was.

“That's the deal, Benny. When we reach the next corner, either you're making the call or I bounce you out of this cab and do some cell phoning myself.”

He turned to me with a look somewhere between anger and desperation. “Listen, Mike—”

“Two choices. Pick one.”

We slowed down at the stop sign at the end of the street. I told the driver to pull over to the curb. When he pulled in, I reached over Benny and threw open the cab door.

“Out of the cab, Benny. Poor choice.”

Benny reached frantically for the swinging door and pulled it shut.

“All right, all right. What do you want me to say?”

I went through it again.

“All right. I'll tell him you'll meet him at his office.”

I looked at him with a grin that asked him how dimwitted he thought I was.

“All right, then where?”

I'd actually been giving that some thought, and I was getting the first amusement of the day out of my choice.

Just before Benny made the call to Fat Tony Aiello, we were on Beacon Street, crossing Charles Street. Both of us took in the scene to the left on Charles. The cab that had been following us was pulled into the right curb at a peculiar angle. The cabbie was sitting on the sidewalk yelling into a cell phone. Two police cars were pulled up in front of the cab, and one beside it. An ambulance was screaming up Charles Street from the direction of Mass. General Hospital. There were two figures in the back of the cab, heads cocked at an odd angle, neither of them moving. The final touch was that neither of the black Lincolns was in sight.

I was close to vomiting. Two more men had just lost their lives, and in some odd way, I felt responsible. This was not what I bought into when I applied for law school.

While Benny gaped at the scene, I pulled it together enough to give him an elbow.

“Make the call, Benny. You might mention that the score looks like three to nothing, my favor. It's getting expensive. We can end it with one ten-minute business conversation.”

Benny hit the last number and I could hear the ring.

“Mr. Aiello, it's Benny.”

Whatever was said blanched Benny's olive complexion to a new shade of white.

“Something happened, Mr. Aiello. Michael Knight—”

“Yeah, I know, Mr. Aiello. Well listen, here's the thing. Knight's here with me. He wants a meeting with you.”

I didn't need the phone to hear Fat Tony's response. The words reverberated. “What the hell? You tell that son of a bitch—”

I had nothing to lose, so I took the phone away from Benny.

“Mr. Aiello, this is Michael Knight.”

After a slight catch, the voice on the other end went from tear-his-head-off wild to what sounded like an almost bemused smirk.

“You got big ones kid. I'll give you that.”

“Thank you, Mr. Aiello. I've heard the same about you.”

Again a catch followed by a roaring laugh. I heard him say to someone there with him, “This little creep breaks me up.”

Then to me. “So you got me on the phone, kid. What do you want?”

“I want you to take me seriously enough to talk business.”

“Why should I take you seriously enough for anything? You got nothin' I need, kid.”

“You apparently think you need me dead. You've made two tries so far. By my count, it's cost you three men. I don't think you want to keep this up. You need what I've got more than you know. And I need something from you. It's time we did business.”

“Listen you little—”

I'll omit the flavorful string of allegations about my parentage and sexual orientation that was flowing half in English, half in Italian. It ended with “— You got nothin'!”

“Mr. Aiello, the numbers on that card that Benny brought back from the locker in South Station—”

That brought him back to earth.

“Take a look at the card, Mr. Aiello.”

There was a cautious pause.

“What about it?”

“Look at the top right. See the little mk up there in pencil?”

“So what?”

“It stands for Michael Knight. I made up those numbers and put the card in the locker. They're all wrong. I have the right ones. You need them. Can we cut through the macho crap and get down to business?”

I could hear him cuff his hand over the phone. I couldn't make out the words, but he was talking to whomever was with him. It took a minute, but he came back. “Put Ignola back on the line.”

I put the phone back in Benny's shaking hand. He put it to his ear but he was looking at me. I heard what sounded like a question over the line. Benny spoke into the phone in a hush, for whatever good that would do. “We're in a cab. Heading down—”

I grabbed the phone out of his hand. It was no time to be mousy. “To hell with that. You've had two chances. You don't get a third. If you want those numbers, we do it my way. Yes or no?”

There was a calm on the other end that could have been encouraging or terrifying.

“You know who you're dealing with, kid?”

“Yes. Do you? You're dealing with the only one in this world who can give you that code. Maybe you don't need it. I think you do. I'm ready to deal. On my terms. What's it going to be?”

I heard a discussion going on behind a hand-muffled phone on the other end. I didn't think they were planning for my welfare.

“Mr. Aiello. Are you there?”

“Yeah, what?”

“I can save the strain on that brain trust you're talking to. I have insurance that runs directly to Dominic Santangelo and beyond. So far I haven't tipped your name. If any ten minutes passes that I don't give the right signal, that will change. On the other hand, one ten-minute meeting — my way — and we both get what we want.”