Authors: Marc Olden
Alphonse Giulia, called Allie Boy, was fortyish, muscular and balding with a greased widow’s peak and a face partially discolored by explosives used years ago in a labor dispute. He handled the Molise narcotics interests, expertly walking a tightrope between Colombians, who controlled New York’s cocaine trade; Harlem blacks, who needed the Italians’ overseas narcotics connections; and the “Westies,” Manhattan’s West Side Irish thugs, often used for contract killings and hijackings. The “Westies,” in their Roaring Twenties slouch hats, striped suits and spats, were quick to torture and kill. Even the Italians were scared of them.
Sparrowhawk found Allie Boy to be a surly bugger, tactless in speech and manner and perennially suspicious. For tax purposes, he owned a bakery in Astoria, where he was said to keep over a half million dollars in cash stashed in the closet guarded by a vicious Doberman. An avowed miser, he saved string and tin foil and forced his wife to make her own dresses.
The wogs, never strong on diplomacy, made it clear that they were in charge. Sparrowhawk had better go along with it or he was out.
Gran Sasso looked out through a car window at Shea Stadium. “You got one thing to do for us and that’s to help find out who killed Paulie. Don’t bother telling me how you don’t get involved in certain things, how you want to keep your hands clean. Forget your company’s image. What you got to worry about is Paulie. He’s dead.”
“Paulie was a good kid,” Allie Boy said in a high-pitched voice. “Nobody fuckin’ breathes till we get the guy who burned him. Get out there and learn what you should learn, then turn it over to us. We’ll make him wish he’d never been born.”
Sparrowhawk smoothed the creases on his mourning suit. “I’m sure. You realize, of course, that there is absolutely nothing to go on. Not a clue.”
Michelle Asama eased into his thoughts. It would, of course, be sheer madness to mention her to the wogs. They would want to know why they hadn’t been alerted about her before. Given the present mood in the car this lapse on Sparrowhawk’s part could well mean his own demise. Sparrowhawk had his suspicions about the lady, but they had to be verified first.
Suppose, for example, that Miss Asama was related to the late, unlamented George Chihara. Her presence in New York could thus bode ill for those responsible for Mr. Chihara’s death. That would be Sparrowhawk, Robbie, Dorian. And Paul Molise. Could any woman be that dangerous?
The idea of losing his life did not exactly fill Sparrowhawk with great tranquillity. The elephantine Gran Sasso pressed a button on the armrest that elevated a plastic shield between them and the driver, and leaning forward, said casually, “You want somewhere to start, I give you somewhere. Saigon. Start in Saigon.”
As he scratched his great stomach, Sparrowhawk felt the certainty of reaching old age grow dim.
Now Sparrowhawk watched the doe lift her head from the cardboard box, ears flat against her skull, nose pointed toward a clear sky. Listening. Then she nudged the fawn, pushing it away from the food, and the two animals galloped off into the forest. It was a full two minutes before the car appeared. Sparrowhawk was impressed. This was an early warning system to be reckoned with. Maybe he would need one. And very soon.
Sparrowhawk walked across his book-lined study and opened the door. “Unity, love, they’re here. Bring the cheese and biscuits to my study. Coffee for Dorian. Robbie will have his usual.”
“Straightaway, love.”
The house Sparrowhawk lived in with his wife and daughter was a converted seventeenth-century English barn. A small fortune had been spent to make the house livable and, located now on property just outside of Waterbury, Connecticut, it included a swimming pool, guest house, tennis court and an outdoor patio.
Inside, the house had been made fit for a Victorian gentleman of the nineteenth century. There were paneled rooms and long hallways of dark, polished wood, and walls hung with tapestries. Persian rugs and medieval weapons, and elaborate stained glass windows. But Sparrowhawk’s pride was his collection of rare books, first editions of Byron, Tennyson, Carlyle. They were all English. By choice. Sparrowhawk loved England and he vowed he would one day return there to live.
A wireless perimeter burglar alarm guarded these riches, with a backup battery power system in case of electrical failure, and a motion-detector alarm sensitive enough to signal the presence of an intruder. A telephone, with a prerecorded message of alarm, had been programed to automatically dial local police in case of a break-in. The phone also contained a “line seizure,” sounding an alarm when the lines had been cut and opening the lines, even when busy, to incoming calls. Sparrowhawk’s relationship with the local police was excellent, thanks to his generosity in finding well-paying security industry jobs for anyone leaving the force. If he was away from the house for any length of time police either telephoned his wife or looked in on the house twice a day.
Roaming the property were three trained Alsatian guard dogs. Of the loaded guns hidden in strategic locations throughout the house, the most devastating was the American 180 laser submachine gun, which fired thirty .22 caliber bullets per second, with enough firepower to knock holes in a brick wall or chop down a tree.
Should all else fail there was a safe room in the cellar, separated by a steel door. A security procedure that Sparrowhawk had recommended for many of his clients, this one-room stronghold contained food, two-way radios or a telephone, weapons, water. If necessary, a handful of people could survive in such a room for days.
At twenty-one, Sparrowhawk’s daughter, Valerie, was a beautiful woman, intelligent and disciplined, with a sense of humor and a mind of her own. She was tall, though not as tall as her mother, with blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. She was ambidextrous, a brilliant scholar, and in her final year at Yale.
What pleased Sparrowhawk most was her lack of self-consciousness about her beauty. She expected from life only what she was capable of earning. To Sparrowhawk, there was no higher compliment.
“Daddy?”
She stood in the doorway of his study, barefoot in cutoff jeans and a university sweat shirt, cradling an armful of schoolbooks. Boadicea, a pet spider monkey, rested on her shoulder. The monkey lived on cocoa, packets of bugs and orange slices and was not a favorite of Sparrowhawk’s.
“Must study for midterms,” Valerie said in a voice with only the remnants of a British accent after six years in America. “I’ll leave you here with your cohorts to decide the fate of Western civilization.”
She didn’t care for Dorian or Robbie. To her, Dorian was a nerd. Of Robbie she said little, admitting only that she found him creepy but didn’t exactly know why. Sparrowhawk had once hoped the two would come to love each other and perhaps marry, but Val would have none of it. Other than hello and good-bye, the two had nothing to say to each other. Unity had been the one to finally tell her husband, “She doesn’t fancy him; she never will. Some women have a need to love that leads them into just any relationship; that’s not Val. She’ll love when she finds the man who deserves her and not before. Robbie’s not that man, Trevor, and I think we both know it.”
Unity was correct, of course. Not that Val lacked her share of suitors. There were a few local university boys with perfect-teeth, overdeveloped bodies and underdeveloped brains; certain university professors had more than a scholarly regard for her; and the richest man in Waterbury, a codger in his seventies sporting a pacemaker, offered Val fifty acres of prime Connecticut real estate if she would marry him. But Sparrowhawk’s daughter had no interest in any of them.
Now she fluttered her fingers at Sparrowhawk in farewell as she left the study. Shame Robbie’s not the one, thought Sparrowhawk. Still, you couldn’t force these things, especially with such an independent-minded young lady. Sparrowhawk wondered who the man would be. Because Valerie Lesley Judith Sparrowhawk was quite a young lady.
Sparrowhawk leaned against an English oak desk facing Dorian and Robbie, who sat on a black leather couch. “Our Italian friends have gone absolutely bonkers over Paul’s murder, as you well know. What you don’t know is that Gran Sasso and Alphonse, in their infinite wisdom, have decreed that MSC play a major role in locating the guilty party.”
Dorian stopped sipping his coffee. “Dumb. I mean we’re meeting here in your place because it’s safe, because at the moment the cops and the task force are both sniffing around Molise’s people, and anybody who goes near them. When they learn you’re digging into Paulie’s background, that’s as good as saying MSC is mob.”
Sparrowhawk took a pack of Turkish cigarettes from the pocket of his smoking jacket. “I couldn’t agree with you more. It does negate what I’ve tried to do with MSC. But, short of demanding a recount and having myself elected head of the Molise crime family, there’s little else I can do. Bear in mind that we are, all of us, most certainly being watched. The forces of law and order will want to know if young Paul’s demise signals a takeover attempt of some sort. They’ll want to know who’s filling Paul’s shoes. More than likely that information is already on the street.”
“Alley Boy and Johnny Sass,” Robbie said. He finished his mixture of spinach and carrot juice, then placed the empty glass on an end table. “That Allie Boy is really off the wall. Has a Cuban girl friend in Long Island City. Won’t come to her place, won’t take her to a motel. Afraid of being bugged or something. He’s so paranoid about being under surveillance, he screws her in the back of a station wagon. Every time Allie Boy leaves his bakery in his station wagon instead of his Ford, whoever’s watching knows he’s off to get laid.”
Sparrowhawk blew smoke at a desk lamp and stroked one end of his waxed mustache with a thumbnail. “Well, who said romance is dead? But anyway, Dorian’s correct about surveillance for the rest of us. Still, I am to proceed with a probe of young Paul’s Saigon days. Alphonse and Mr. Gran Sasso want a detailed picture of his dealings there.”
Dorian shrugged. “Why not Saigon. Got to start somewhere, right? Any leads?”
Sparrowhawk watched him through a spiral of rising cigarette smoke. “Nothing specific at the moment. MSC’s working on it. Saigon, Hong Kong, Macao, Cambodia, Thailand.” He turned to screw his cigarette into an ashtray on the desk. “Tokyo.”
He looked at Dorian. “The places where Paul did business, you see. And, of course, the people there with whom he did business.”
“What about the Caymans?” Dorian asked. “Paul had companies registered there and in Delaware. New Jersey, too. You know, the straight people who were taking his money and probably thought he was nothing more than a greasy ginzo hood.”
Sparrowhawk raised both eyebrows. “Point well taken, dear boy. By the way, we do have our own sources within the police department, but I would appreciate your keeping me informed of anything you hear, whether at your precinct or elsewhere.”
“You got it, Birdman.”
“Good. One more thing. The wogs believe that Pangalos and Quarrels will probably have to be given the chop. Sent to join Jimmy Hoffa, as it were.”
“Double hit?” said Dorian.
Sparrowhawk poured himself more tea. “Gran Sasso feels neither man is willing to face prison. Certain truth in that, I suppose. Pangalos has already had two sessions with LeClair regarding the seating plan. I’m sure LeClair’s threatened him good and proper. Either of you have any idea of what life behind bars would be like for a former prosecuting attorney, a federal one at that?”
The Englishman sipped his tea, then added more milk. “The inmates would tear him apart. Kill him, most likely. As for Quarrels, the man’s a competent attorney but his spine is made of whipped cream. Paul’s death, sad to say, has left both without a protector. Gran Sasso has never liked Pangalos. He only tolerated him because of Paul and Paul’s influence with Don Molise. Quarrels is another write-off as well. And all because of that seating plan, I’m afraid.”
Robbie said, “Blame Decker.”
“Yes and no. Oh, he did snatch the plan. He most certainly did. But has it occurred to either of you to inquire how Decker came to know about it?”
Dorian and Robbie fell silent.
It was Dorian who finally said, “Plan or no plan, I don’t think it’s cool to go around blowing away people right now. Not with Paulie still in the news.”
“Agreed. But you see, in this world might makes right Gran Sasso and Alphonse must establish their authority in the absence of any other authority. What better way to do it than to see that our two attorneys turn up their toes. Paul would have handled it differently, but Paul is no longer with us.”
Dorian snorted. “So we grease them.”
“That seems to be the plan. I understand your reluctance, but that will have little effect on Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Simply stand ready to perform as ordered. I’ll tell you when.”
Dorian said, “Make sure the two of them are in the same place at the same time. I don’t want to have to come back for seconds. Shit, I still don’t think it’s a smart thing to do.”
Sparrowhawk held up a forefinger. “Forgot to mention. Another reason Gran Sasso is thinking about disposing of Pangalos and Quarrels is to protect the esteemed Senator Terence Dent Mr. Sasso does not want our senator dragged into the mess over this seating plan—which could happen, since Dent does have a hidden financial interest in the project. Dent is important to Molise interests. After all, one doesn’t get to own a United States senator every day.”
Dorian pointed to Sparrowhawk. “You tell fucking Johnny Sass I want top dollar for this hit. He wants me to whack out these two guys, it’s gonna cost him big bucks. Jesus, just thinking about it is eating away my stomach lining. Where’s the John?”
“Where it’s always been. End of the hall and to your left. And do try not to get soap on the mirror, will you please? That mirror cost me a bloody fortune and I’d prefer it to remain in its present condition, without any of your artistic additions.”
When Dorian had left, Sparrowhawk closed the door behind him and stood near it facing Robbie. He held up a hand in warning.