Simple Intent (22 page)

They nodded, four pale white heads bobbing.

“The Man says Bentley stuck his nose where it don’t belong. He needs someone to teach him a lesson, show him where his black-ass nose do belong. Alright?”

The CO knocked to signal someone was coming.

Ace raised his fist in a powerful salute, and the others raised their fists in kind. 

Sailor answered on the first knock. If Reilly hadn’t known better, he would have sworn she was wasted, the way she was smiling, the way her eyes glittered.

“Check this out.” 

Reilly followed her to the dining room. The blank spaces under the photos had been filled in and there were more lines connecting more people.

“The email?”

She pointed to a new card, “Shanahan.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “Early’s positive. He’s been sending me stuff from the encrypted disc. Emails about meetings and cases, and all of the files. I haven’t even looked at these yet.” She pulled a stack of papers from the printer and handed them to Reilly.

He scanned a few pages. “Mostly business documents. Here’s one Deluca filed for Angelina Imports. He lists the owner and CEO as Maria Chetta, AKA Maria Rosarita Conchetta,” Reilly looked at Sailor. “Ring any bells?”

“That’s not the same girl who lied on the stand in Ray’s case? Is it?”

“Let’s run a search.” Reilly sat at the computer and keyed in ‘Chetta’, then waited.

A list of files popped up. He opened the first one. It was a divorce decree between Maria Chetta and Louis Michael Gallo.”

“Wait a minute. I thought Gina was married to Gallo.” 

Reilly said, “Don’t look at me. Maybe he was married twice.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe he just marries people he does business with.”

“What?”

Reilly passed her a paper. “Look at the stockholders.”

Sailor ran her eyes down the list, Gina Chamblee, Maria Chetta, Edward Deluca, LMG Enterprises, Paris Kendrick, Alice and Company. She looked at Reilly, her finger on LMG Enterprises. “That’s a Gallo Family business, right?”

“Oh yeah.”

“But, Deluca and Kendrick? And who’s Alice and Company?”

“Might be something you’ll want to ask Paris about in the morning.” He checked the clock. “Or should I say later this morning? I’ve got a meeting with Harry in New York. So, you’re on your own.”

Sailor stared at the wall lost in thought, her thumb stroking her lip. Her voice was soft and dreamy when she said, “Ry, What does Angelina’s import?”

Reilly read, “Celadon and carved jade...from China.”

Sailor smiled. “Bingo.”

“I think it was more like, Blam-o!”

Sailor’s laptop dinged.

Reilly said, “You’ve got mail.”

Sailor clicked on the new message. “Looks like Early’s retrieval program worked.”

Reilly leaned in as they read together, “quickE to LMG. Yellow Pages need recycling. Details at CC meet.”

Reilly looked at Sailor. “What’s Fast Eddie up to now?” 

THEY'D spent a sleepless night at Gina’s. She’d wanted to bring Hi home after the library, had wanted to be done with this whole mess. But when she’d driven down his street, he’d freaked out about a big blue van and kept going on and on about ‘them’. 

Gina had patted him down like a teenager and found his meds. She was pissed when she found the bottles almost empty. She tossed them into her purse, then brought him back to her place and set him up on the couch and told him to stay there. 

She wasn’t sure how much of his story to believe. Gallo hiding drugs in Chinese shipments. A million bucks in cash gone missing. The dock explosion and some guy named Four Eyes taking him for a ride. 

She knew he was in trouble when an early morning knock on the door was accompanied by a stranger’s voice.

They scooted out the back way to the neighbors, leaving Gina’s car in plain view on the street. Right in front of the stranger’s black sedan. Maybe Hi wasn’t paranoid after all. If anyone knew what Lou could be like, and what both these men were capable of, it was Gina. 

“Jesus, Hi, why didn’t you tell me that you were low on meds?” She spoke over her shoulder.

Berger caught the look, like he smelled as bad as the back of the fucking car. He lay on the floor between the seats, wounded leg propped up on a few towels, pint of Jack Daniels in his hand. From here all he could see clearly was blue sky and a little tan air freshener someone had stuck to the underside of the driver’s seat. 

“Smells like shit back here.” He snorted, “Who the hell still drives a station wagon, anyway?”

“Hi, you know what they say about beggars. My friend was nice enough to lend me her car, what was I going to say, ‘No thank you, I’d prefer a Cadillac?’” She shook her head. 

“I’m just saying, it smells back here, like a fucking farm.”

“Must be the compost. She hauls it for the community garden. Stop distracting me. What about the meds, Hi?’ This time she tweaked the rear view mirror so she could see him.

Berger said, “I’m fine, Gina. Really. I’ll be fine. Besides, I’ve got you.” He smiled at her reflection in the mirror, tears welling in his eyes.

It broke her heart. He could be such a softie at times. Not all the time, she reminded herself, and flicked her eyes back on the road, squinting against the glare. 

Gina’s family kept a hunting cabin in Dauphin County. It was a simple place in the woods and seldom used anymore, as there was no electricity or running water, which meant no Nintendo for the boys, no showers or flushing toilets for the girls and no football or pizza delivery for the men. It was time to either renovate the place and bring it into the current century or sell the land to the cult across the water and let them expand their organic mushroom gardens.

She hadn’t been there in years. Gina hoped the road was still clear and the key still in the coffee can. And she hoped the bears had left the outhouse standing. Being stuck in the woods with her bi-polar boyfriend who’d started a one-man war with her ex-husband, Philly’s favorite mobster, Lou Gallo, and having to pee in the bushes. Great.

Sailor left Reilly sleeping in her bed. Last night, they had discovered a few things and not all of them had to do with the case. 

She showered, dressed, brewed coffee then peeked in on him, wondered what the hell she was doing and where she thought this was going. But things didn’t always have to go somewhere, did they? She put her extra key on the counter with a note then locked the door behind her. She’d never been good at the morning-after talk and was glad Reilly had a meeting in New York and that she’d be at MDB&S. 

Sailor needed to talk to Paris before the meeting with Banning and Judge Shanahan. Reilly said that if Shanahan was crooked with Deluca, he’d be crooked with Banning and that might be good for Ray. Sailor wasn’t so sure. All she wanted was help getting to Berger and a few answers. Reilly told her, things don’t work that way. This wasn’t Connecticut.

She slid behind the wheel, all business until she remembered how Reilly had kissed her. That wasn’t like Connecticut, either. It had felt like a magnet. She knew if she closed her eyes—was even half a room away, her lips would still find his without a bumped tooth or an embarrassing last minute tilt of the head. Reilly kissed her as if he had been doing it for years. She smiled and drove a little faster.

Sailor stepped off the elevator into the cold, empty foyer of MDB&S and headed straight for Paris on her pedestal. Nothing like stepping into the lion’s den. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

Paris looked at Sailor like she was a bug to be squashed. “What is it?”

“It’s about Angelina Imports.”

“I don’t know anything about that. Perhaps you should ask Mr. Deluca.”

“Oh, I intend to. I just thought you’d like to get a word in first, as a stockholder.”

“I’m not a stockholder. Not anymore.”

Sailor waited.

“Check your data. I sold my shares to new investors.”

“Who are these new investors?”

Paris shrugged. “No one I know, I can assure you.” Her eyes flitted away, then back. “The others had different plans for the business. Let’s just say, I’m not like them.” 

Sailor let that go and asked, “How well do you know Maria Chetta?”

Paris sniffed. “Not well. I mean we’re not friendly.”

No. I don’t imagine you are, thought Sailor. She waited.

Paris said, “She came here a lot in the beginning. When she was Maria Conchetta. The firm handled her inheritance.”

Sailor looked lost. Paris explained. “We were smaller then, just Montgomery and Banning. Maria had made some sort of deal with King. Her name was on everything. And when King was murdered in 1977, she got it all. Houses, land, stocks, cash. Later, she made millions when the city bought the waterfront property. Ted, Mr. Montgomery, said they should have named the firm’s yacht, The Maria.” Paris met Sailor’s eyes. “I don’t know who she thought she was kidding when she changed her name and moved to the Cape. You know what they say, you can take the girl out of the projects, but you can’t take the projects out of the girl.” Paris laughed.

Sailor remembered what she’d read last night. “The girl from the projects seems to be doing pretty well for herself.”

Paris looked like she wanted to say something else, but two lines buzzed and the elevator doors opened. The meeting was over. 

Sailor walked away, putting the pieces together. A small puzzle of a man wrongly convicted now covered a large table, pieces strewn from end to end, and somewhere a bottle of glue that would hold even the mismatched pieces together forever. 

Banning assured Sailor there was nothing to worry about. He’d handle it from here. They made plans to meet in his office after he’d spoken to the Judge and made some calls. Of course they’d need Berger’s deposition and there were some questions for Deluca, but things had to be handled a certain way. 

Sailor conceded. What choice did she have? Reilly was on his way out of town, her father was unavailable, and frankly she didn’t think she should involve him anyway, and Jeremy, well, she hadn’t talked to him lately and he did work for Deluca.

Banning closed the door to his office and placed the call to Maria Chetta. She sounded as if she’d been expecting him, though they hadn’t said more than ten words to each other in twenty-some odd years. And when he asked her to come to Philadelphia, she agreed. He arranged for a suite at the Rittenhouse, no expenses spared.

The high hollow sounds of a Chinese pipa played on the small stereo. A fountain bubbled and trickled next to the chair where his clothes lay. The stub of incense still burned, coiling its exotic scent to the low ceiling. 

“No, Mai, no happy ending today. Mr. Eddie has important meeting.” 

Deluca sat up and the sheet fell away from his lower body. The naked girl stood there like she was waiting for him to change his mind, or waiting for a bus. He had no idea. He didn’t even know her name. He called them all Mai. Damn. She looks really sad, maybe I should let her give me the happy ending. 

Then he glanced at the clock, his decision made for him. The people he was meeting wouldn’t wait. 

She dropped her head.

“But, I’ll pay you for it anyway,” he said and pulled on his boxers and pants. 

Smiling broadly now, she came up behind him and held his shirt. They were so agreeable, thought Deluca. No wonder all those army boys brought home their overseas cooch. They’d never get an American broad to treat them this well. Got to have Mimi book me a vacation to Vietnam or Thailand this fall. 

Deluca tossed two bills onto the table by the fountain. He watched the girl wrap her robe around her slight body, her eyes never leaving the money.

He exited the building through the back, found his car and opened the trunk to lay his suit coat out, and then saw the gym bag. He folded it so Berger was hidden then slipped it under the metal lip of the dumpster in the alley. 

Deluca pulled into traffic. Of course there was traffic. He switched on the radio and waited for news, a report, anything that could tell him why he was sitting here in a line of cars going nowhere. He had just spent a hundred bucks getting rid of the knot in his lower back, and could feel it balling up again. 

He reached for a CD, selected track four and started the slow, deep, yoga breathing he’d learned from Mariel. 

In the first week of their courtship, she’d dragged him to yoga at the gym. The class wasn’t so difficult that he couldn’t enjoy it, or so easy that it didn’t challenge him. The exercises were really pretty good, but it was the looks he got from the guys when they saw him come out of the candle-lit room. He tried to tell them he was only there for the babes. Hey, you haven’t seen nothing till you’ve seen a roomful of beautiful women with their asses in the air doing Down Dog. 

They joked about that for a while, until a few of the guys actually started going on a regular basis, quoting some bullshit about increased blood flow and rejuvenation which ruined it for him. Deluca didn’t care about any of that. He’d never admit it, but he liked the feeling in that room, and the candles and the whispery breath and the sound of OM.