Frame-Up (3 page)

“Dominic, are you aware that Michael was involved in that car bombing?”

Mr. Santangelo looked at me with pale, tired eyes. I tried to see in them all the power and the evil I had always associated with the don of a major cell of La Cosa Nostra. All I could find was a gentle compassion.

“I'm sorry for your pain, Michael. If I could have foreseen it, I would have prevented it if at all possible. As it is, I have no idea who's responsible.”

It's hard to convey in words the sincerity that caused me to want to believe that to be true. Mr. Santangelo turned in his chair to face me directly.

“Michael, if Lex agrees to represent my son, I know you'll be working on the defense. I want to know that you have no reservations. I can only give you my word that neither Peter nor I were involved, directly or indirectly. Do you believe that?”

I knew that Mr. Devlin was watching me. I didn't look at him. I knew he'd rather I handle it on my own. Like it or not, it was my turn at bat.

“Mr. Santangelo, I'll admit that you confuse me.”

He cocked his head. I knew I had his attention.

“John McKedrick worked for you, didn't he?”

He looked directly into my eyes and answered softly, “Mr. McKedrick worked for an attorney who has represented people I'm associated with. That's true. Actually, I never met Mr. McKedrick. Please ask your questions. I want you to be satisfied.”

I knew his interest in me was minimal. I got the clear sense that I had fallen into a useful, if uncomfortable, role that served his
purpose. I could ask the questions that would have been awkward between himself and Mr. Devlin. I accepted the invitation. “In fact, Mr. Santangelo, practically everything John did was in connection with people in your business.”

“I'm not aware of that, but you'd know better than I.”

“Yes, I would. John and I were very close friends. Mr. Santangelo, I can ask this delicately and be left with doubts. Or, we can speak plainly and maybe resolve something.”

I had an idea where I was going, but not at the expense of another car bomb. To my relief, Mr. Santangelo smiled and turned to Mr. Devlin.

“He's cut from your cloth, Lex.”

He turned back to me.

“I'm in your hands, Michael. By all means, take off the gloves.”

“This is the hurdle, Mr. Santangelo. You're the head of an organization that uses murder as a business tool. Word has it that you have Benny Ignola on retainer. That means John was part of that business, legal niceties aside. John must have known enough about the inner workings of your business to make him a security risk. John called me the day he was killed with a dinner invitation. It sounded to me as if he was working up to a major announcement. I had a feeling he was about to take my advice and leave Benny Ignola and all that went with him. Am I striking any chords?”

Mr. Santangelo never moved or changed his expression. “Please continue, Michael.”

“Before he could make that announcement, he was murdered. Forgive me, but car bombing is not unknown in Sicilian circles. The implication is somewhat overwhelming.”

“That's not a question, Michael. Take off the gloves, and ask the question.”

The softness was gone from his eyes. I was looking into two cauldrons of steel, but I was too far into it to waiver.

“Mr. Santangelo, did you give the order?”

“I did not. Nor did my son. Nor did any member of my organization
so far as I'm aware. I'll swear on everything I hold sacred.”

“Mr. Santangelo, I have no idea of what you hold sacred.”

I could hear the nervous shuffling of Monsignor Ryan as he tried to decide when to cut off this juvenile interloper. Even Mr. Devlin was tense as a fiddle, but both held their ground. Mr. Santangelo was intent, but calmly in control. It was clearly between the two of us.

“You have my word, Michael. I have nothing else to give.”

“There is something else you can give, Mr. Santangelo. I can't speak for Mr. Devlin, but for myself, I wouldn't consider representing your son without it.”

He looked at Mr. Devlin, and in that fraction of a second, Mr. Devlin nearly burst my heart with swelling. Without hesitation he gave a deep nod of the head that meant that whatever in the world I was about to say would bind him, too.

“Mr. Santangelo, John McKedrick was the closest friend I ever had. If I ever learn that you or your son was responsible for his death, I'll come after you with everything the law allows. There'll be no legal wall for you to hide behind. I want not only your word. I want a full waiver of any right of lawyer-client privilege for any information that comes out of our defense of your son. You have my word that I'll use it only in that circumstance.”

The air grew stone still. I thought the clock on the wall stopped. I was frozen by the thought that I was eye-to-eye with a man with more immediate power over life and death than the whole state government. Where did I get the gall to put this man to a decision on the spot? Every voice inside of me was screaming, Get the hell out of there. You are so far over your head, you'll never see daylight.

Only one tiny voice was whispering, Hold your ground. I didn't hear it. I sensed it. It was coming from Mr. Devlin. That was all the starch I needed to stay on my end of the seesaw.

I set my mental timer for ten seconds. I resolved that if he hesitated longer than that, we'd never trust anything he said anyway.

He turned his eyes to Mr. Devlin. The look he found in Mr. Devlin's eyes only confirmed the terms of the deal. Mr. Santangelo
did me the honor of looking back at me with a gentle smile that was not condescending.

“Please draft the agreement, Michael. My son and I will both sign it.”

Eight seconds flat.

I knew the ride back to the office was going to be tense. There were a lot of ghosts in that car, crowding the front seat. Mr. Devlin was in another world, struggling with all of them. I let him keep his silence.

When we reached the Bunker Hill Monument on Monument Avenue, he pulled over and put the car in park. I think he wanted to look at me when he spoke.

“Michael, I pulled you into this, and I'm sorry. It's not your cup of tea. We agreed when we started this partnership we'd never go to bat for a mobster.”

“The only agreement I care to remember, Mr. Devlin, is that whatever came along, we'd handle it together.”

He looked at me as if he was about to say something, but he just nodded. All indecision was gone. The game was on. He was about to put the car in gear to propel us into a chain of events that would test the steel of that agreement when I stopped him.

“Before we go on, Mr. Devlin, that trio back there was as bizarre as anything Stephen King ever dreamed up. I don't like to ask. I know it's personal. But under the circumstances—”

He rubbed the two o'clock growth on his chin, either to decide where to begin or whether to begin at all. He finally motioned with his head up toward the window in the two-family where he had pointed out the room in which he was born.

“I told you about that one. Look at the house to the right of it. The Right Reverend Monsignor Matthew Ryan was born up there. We came up together through a lot of neighborhood skirmishes. It was different for kids in a neighborhood like this in those days. No
weapons. Just bare fists. That's how this nose took on its wandering ways. I think it did more to prepare me for the courtroom than law school.

“But Matt Ryan. Matt was a natural. He took it to the ring. When he was eighteen, he turned pro. I was his cornerman. He had twenty-four fights. Twenty-three wins by eighteen knockouts. The Lord only knows how far he might have gone.”

He took a second to remember the past.

“That explains you and the monsignor. You're not going to tell me little Mr. Santangelo, all five feet four of him, survived on bare fists around here.”

He laughed at the thought, but then he was on me.

“Listen, don't let the suit and the chauffeur fool you. In a fair fight in those days, I'd give odds on Dominic against any two Irishmen in Charlestown, except Matt.”

“So how did Mr. Santangelo get into the trio?”

“Ah, that goes back to the good days. I guess we were early twenties. Matt was fighting about every other Friday night on the card at the Boston Arena. It was a tough section down around St. Botolph Street. It's all class and reconstruction now, but in those days—” He waved his hand in a way that said “dicey.”

“One night Matt fought a Puerto Rican kid from the South End. This kid had a lot of backing in the crowd. Some of them looked tougher than the fighter. Matt took him in three rounds. The kid was game. Matt had to give him a hell of a licking before the ref stopped the fight. The crowd didn't like the ref's decision. Matt dressed in a hurry to get us out of there alive.

“There was a fighter's exit in the back of the arena that led to an alley. When we came out, we could see eight of them up ahead coming for us. They filled the alley two deep. We couldn't get back into the arena because the door locked behind us. They had us, and we knew it.”

He started to grin in the telling of it.

“All of a sudden comes this bat out of hell. From behind these bozos this pint-sized bowling ball comes into them like a row of ten
pins. The arms are swinging. He's yelling like a banshee in Italian. Matt and I dove into them from the front. Four of them went down, and the other four didn't know whether to run or pray. From the sound of it, they did both.

“We chased them out of the alley and kept on running in the opposite direction before the cops came. That was our introduction to little Dominic Santangelo.”

“Why'd he do it?”

“Who knows? I guess he didn't like the odds. Anyway, he became Matt's second cornerman. We were the three musketeers. ‘One for all, and all for one.' One never moved without the others. Three years we were together while Matt climbed the ladder in the ring.”

He stopped talking long enough for one last look around the old Charlestown streets. Then he put the car in gear, and we were back to silence. He slowed down as we passed through the narrow streets of the North End — the almost exclusively Italian neighborhood. He took a sharp right and cruised down Prince Street. Half way down, he pulled over in front of DeMeo's Pastry Shop.

“You better know it all, Michael. December eighteenth, the week before Christmas. Matt had fought his way up to a shot at the number-three contender. That's up there, Michael. This one was at Boston Garden. He wins this one, and he's two fights from the world heavyweight championship. He was going against a good fighter, Angie DeMarco from Brooklyn. The odds on the fight were about even.

“Dominic came into the dressing room while Matt was getting taped up. He was jumpy as a cat. When the trainers left the room, he got down to business.”

Mr. D. went silent again. Suddenly he got out of the car, and I followed. We walked to the end of the block where a small alley with three houses opens onto Prince Street.

“That's where Dominic lived. He still lives around here somewhere.”

I looked at the vowel-filled names on the shops, the old men sitting, smoking, speaking in Italian in groups on chairs on the
sidewalk. You could almost taste the aromas of fresh sausage and tomato gravy cooking in the kitchens. We could have been on a street in Rome.

“Matt and I didn't know it, but this tough kid, this Dominic that we took as a brother, had other brothers. He was working his way up through the lower ranks of the Cosa Nostra. He thought he could keep his two lives separate.”

Mr. D. stopped again. I was too far into it not to prime the pump.

“And?”

“They had a piece of him, but they wanted all of him. He had an assignment. Get Matt to take a dive. They knew about us three. They thought he could deliver Matt. They thought wrong. It tore the hell out of us when Dominic even suggested it. Matt and I just looked at each other. We knew nothing would ever be the same again. We gave him a message he could take back to his North End buddies. I think a piece of both of us went out of that room with him.”

Mr. Devlin started back to the car.

“So what happened in the fight?”

“The first round was typical big-fight tactics. Both fighters jabbed and ducked and danced. Then in the second round, Matt was ready. He exploded out of the corner, throwing lefts until DeMarco was against the ropes in his own corner. Matt caught him with a right that glanced off his jaw. It wasn't enough to take him down, but it opened up a cut in his mouth that spouted blood like a geyser. Matt backed off. I could see by the look on his face, he knew what was happening. Since they couldn't buy Matt, they got to Demarco. He was wearing a wire.”

“What kind of wire?”

“Barbed wire. DeMarco was taking a dive the easy way. He put a piece of barbed wire inside his lower lip. Any punch would open up cuts inside the mouth that looked like a major hemorrhage. The fight would be stopped because of the loss of blood. He'd get a rematch, and the boys in the North End would collect whatever they bet on Matt. Probably a lot.

“Matt knew it right away. I saw him back into his corner. He looked like everything he fought for was turning sour. The ref's hand started to go up to stop the fight. Matt grabbed the towel from around the trainer's neck and threw it into the ring in front of the ref. He conceded the fight to DeMarco before the ref could call the fight. The whole Garden went crazy.

“I pulled Matt out of the ring into the dressing room. I knew the bozos behind the fix did not suffer losses gladly. Matt dressed, and we got out of there. Neither one of us knew how this would play with the boxing commission. It turned out it didn't matter.”

We reached the car, and Mr. Devlin leaned back against the hood.

“It all seemed so long ago. Then today in Matt's church it was like yesterday.”