Rude Boy USA (20 page)

T
he Ambrosino family sent people to the Chimera offices with chain cutters and tools to pick locks if necessary. They went to see about their investment. They attempted to contact Edina to no avail, and no one answered their calls to the office after the conversation between John and Enzo. When they broke in, they discovered the place nearly empty, and no one was there. They went into each office, ransacking whatever was left. When they went to Celia’s room, they discovered that many of the papers had been replaced with blanks and others had had acid poured on them to dissolve the paper or compromise the ink, making them unreadable. Bernie and John’s old office had been cleared of all photos, documents, contacts, and any items of monetary or sentimental value. The Ambrosino family got nothing from the search. John saw Chimera the same way that he viewed
religion. He felt that Chimera was a group, not a building. They could have the building, but they could not have its soul. They reported their findings back to Enzo Ambrosino, and he flew into a rage. He felt that he had just been duped into giving up millions, and he wanted his money back immediately. The deal was off. He ordered his associates to find Edina and bring her to him. He needed to have a word with her.

Edina spoke to the authorities and reported that a large sum of money had been taken out of her apartment. She said she knew who the person was. She gave the police a description of Ben and threw on an account of a couple of members of the Ambrosino family. She did this just in case they were after her. She wanted the police to keep an eye out for them. She needed to do this for her survival. She had no one else to go to for protection. She contemplated going to her parents’ house upstate, but she was afraid to involve them in her situation. Edina was not sure if she was more afraid for her safety or of hearing the constant nag of her parents telling her that they told her so. She packed the basics, took enough cash to get by, and went to the Drake Hotel in Manhattan. She planned to remain incognito there until she could fly out of the area.

John and Jerome stayed at the safe house with some members of the Jet Mafia and Mariana. Mariana cooked for them to make sure that they kept up their energy, as their spirits were down. John’s mind had been in a blur for the past week as he struggled with the possible demise of Chimera and Celia’s unknown location. Jerome was still trying not only to track her down but to locate Ben. It appeared that Ben had fallen completely off the radar, but they knew he had the ability to fend for himself. It was not like Celia to disappear and not inform anyone, even her family, of her whereabouts. John kept thinking about the last words he spoke to her. He had not meant to insult her; the words had come out of a place of frustration and pain. His mind was full of regrets. He knew he should have addressed all of the issues with Edina and their marriage, and he was mad at himself for using Bernie as an excuse for being indolent.

John grew up in a family that went to church, but he never considered himself a religious person. After he left home, he only ever stepped foot in a church to attend someone’s funeral. He thought that religion was for sheep and for those who did not have the ability to make choices for themselves. John needed hard-core technical facts in front of him to believe that something was true. He would hear stories from the Bible as a kid and would question them to his mother, which would get him into a lot of troubles. John would think, why would a man sacrifice his son to turn him into a goat, just because he heard voices in his head? That’s stupid. John looked for proof of whether one could split
water or turn it into wine. He did not live his life on faith. He thought that faith left you vulnerable, and he did not like being vulnerable to the unknown.

John had taken a couple of bottles of his favorite wine with him when he cleared his apartment. He opened one and began drinking it. He finished the entire bottle in ten minutes, guzzling glass after glass. He leaned back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He contemplated praying, but he knew he had done a lot of things in his lifetime that religions considered wrong, and he thought God would pay him with dust. He felt he had no other options at that moment. The situation was out of his control. For the first time since he had been required to pray as a kid, he asked God to help him find Bunny and to do whatever it took to have her return safely and to make things right again.

Edina spent the evening at the Drake Hotel planning her escape from New York. She decided to go to the West Coast, where she could start over and get away from anything associated with the mob. She figured she could complete a divorce there and move on with her life while she still had a few her looks left. Edina made travel arrangements with Pan American Airways, where she had connections. Edina retired for the night after she laid out her outfit for the early morning departure and arranged for a car service to pick her up.

Edina was four hours into her sleep when a noise suddenly awakened her. Before she could react, someone covered her mouth to muzzle any screaming. She did not have a visual to tell her who was in the room. It was completely dark, with only the light from outside peeking through the curtains. Three men tied her hands and feet together and picked her up from the bed. Other men looked around the hotel room to see if they could find anything of value. The found her Chanel tote with cash, identification, and a plane ticket for a morning departure. They took the purse. They proceeded to take her down the hall and into the back stairway. Edina attempted to wiggle out of their grip, but one of the men dropped her tied legs. Angry with her, another man dragged her by her arms down eight flights of stairs. Her bound feet dragged and hit each step on the way down until they got to the waiting car outside and threw her in.

Edina and the men arrived at a location she did not recognize. They threw ice water on her to wake her up. She had passed out on the ride over due to shock. She could not identify the place. It looked like an empty room in someone’s home, just without windows. She was lying on a cot. Her wrists and ankles were still tied together. She looked down and noticed that her ankles were swollen and sore; therefore, she could not attempt to stand. She could hardly bend her knees. As three men stood by her, Enzo Ambrosino walked in. What Edina did not know was that the Ambrosino family had connections at the Drake Hotel. In fact, they had connections in hotels all over the city, as well as in Atlantic City
and Philadelphia. One of those connections spotted her and alerted the associates.

Enzo wanted his money back in full, and he intended to use her as an incentive to dangle over John and the rest of them to get them to cooperate. Enzo did not know the extent of her relationship to any of them. If he did not have his four million returned to him very soon, she and the others would learn the consequences. He had the men remove the tape from her mouth. Enzo knelt down to her.

“You are a delicate woman, I can tell, but not very smart,” he said. She stared at him with frightened eyes. “Where’s my money, dear?” he asked her.

“I have some of it. Just take it,” she said with a shaken voice.

“I did not give you some of what you asked for. In my estimate, if this had worked out, it would have been a good deal for me. You’d save me tens of millions. But now, it will be free. Every cent comes back to me. Until then, you lay here,” he said. “Where are the rest of them?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “If you let me go, I can help you find them. We can work together.”

“I don’t work with people who steal from me, I demolish them,” He said. He motioned for the men to cover her mouth again.

Enzo sent his associates over to the Chimera offices in the middle of the night. They tossed multiple Molotov cocktails into the building, causing it to go up in flames. The fire was extensive, so hot that the Chimera symbol that hung out
front, the steel sign that Bernie had taken so much pride in creating and displaying, melted. The building was gutted, and everything left inside was destroyed.

Ben and the money he took from Edina ended up back in the Bronx. He had abandoned the thought of hooking up with John and Jerome. He had also paid a visit to Celia’s, but he could not locate her either. He wanted to take the money and run away with her, to no avail. He and his dealer, Jose Jimenez, split the cash. They considered it payback for all the drug debts Ben owed to dealers in the area. Ben suggested to Jose that they join forces. Ben would share his contacts from working at Chimera, and they could expand beyond the Bronx and Harlem. Ben knew that some of the high-powered clients they had also used drugs on the low. Those users included homemakers and, shockingly, those who worked in religious sectors. He knew many of their secrets, and he told Jose he could use that information against them if they ever got out of line. Inexpensive heroin had a large addict chunk in the city courtesy of Italians and the mob, and Ben had many connections. Many of them had served in Vietnam, from where the CIA, through Air America, had heroin smuggled back in body bags.

Smugglers would hide heroin in cars being shipped into the United States, stashing it in every crevice of the vehicle. They did this through their connections to the warlords in
Thailand, who were American allies. Heroin entered New York City directly through the Port Authority, which made it the main destination for narcotic-bureau investigators who worked with customs agents. Getting the narcotics in this way made the selling price on the street much greater because the odds of it being redirected and destroyed were much higher. Despite efforts to curtail heroin’s use and sale, two tons made it to the United States every year.