Authors: Joseph Badal
O’Neil eyed David and Peter. “Good job. How’s Gino?”
David said, “Sleeping. He seems to—”
Just then a nurse came around the corner. “What are you people doing here?” she rasped. Before anyone could answer her, she apparently noticed the knife and gun O’Neil held and the unconscious man on the floor. She gasped, “Oh my Lord!” She wheeled around and ran back down the hall, just as John Spellina turned into the corridor.
David looked at Spellina. “John, where’s Tiny?”
He pointed at the unconscious man in the white smock. “I think that guy killed Tiny. Cut his throat. He’s back in the elevator.”
“We have to get this guy out of here,” David said. He turned to O’Neil. “Have you got a car?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay! Help John carry this guy out to your car. Take him out to the Cataldo place.”
David took a roll of surgical tape from a medical cart in the hall and tossed it to Spellina who taped the assassin’s hands, feet, and mouth, and then hoisted the man onto his shoulder.
Just as Spellina walked away, O’Neil heard the wail of sirens. “When the police get here, don’t tell them a thing about Tiny or the little guy. Just say you chased off some guy who you saw in the hall. Tell them you have no idea what the nurse saw.”
“Why?” David asked.
“You tell the police an assassin murdered Tiny and tried to kill Gino, and you’ll be tied up for days in interrogation and the police will invade the Cataldo estate.”
CHAPTER 43
After two of Cataldo’s men replaced David and Peter at the hospital, the Hoods returned to the estate. They found their host in the library in conference with Detectives O’Neil and Ramsey, Paulie Rizzo, and two other men, introduced only as Vince and Sylvio.
Cataldo shook David and Peter’s hands. “You guys did good,” he said. He smiled at Peter as though he remembered Peter’s earlier comment. “Paulie’s got something to tell you.” Cataldo nodded at Paulie.
Paulie tapped a side pocket in his jacket and said, “I’ve got Don Bartolucci’s cellphone. He got a call from a Philly cop who’s on his payroll. Said the S.W.A.T. team that attacked the Chestnut Hill estate found a note addressed to Rolf Bishop taped to a door there.”
“I saw Gino tape something to the basement door,” David said, “but I didn’t see what was on it.”
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” Paulie said. “But get this. A DEA guy named Morton came to Philadelphia and met with the mayor, the police commissioner, and the S.W.A.T. commander. Morton claimed one of their undercover agents had infiltrated Bartolucci’s organization, had been compromised, and was Bartolucci’s captive. Morton also said there was an enormous amount of heroin on the estate. It was the dope that got the mayor and the police commissioner excited. They had visions of juicy, vote-getting headlines.”
“That old man in the cardiac wing at St. Joseph’s has never gone near the drug business,” Cataldo said, disgusted. “That’s one of the reasons he walked away from the . . . his position. He wanted nothing to do with drugs and he realized there was too much money in narcotics for the business to be ignored.” Cataldo stood and waved at Vince and Sylvio. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“The police did find heroin stacked on a table in Bartolucci’s house,” Paulie said, after Cataldo and his two men left the room. “But they didn’t find any DEA undercover agent.”
“You said this DEA guy told the police there was an ‘enormous amount’ of dope at the Bartolucci estate,” Dennis O’Neil said to Paulie. “Did he say how much?”
“He said ‘enough to fill a panel truck.’ That would mean about six, seven thousand kilos. Maybe 15,000 pounds.”
“And how much did they find?” O’Neil asked.
“Hell, a lot less than that,” Paulie answered. “About 200 pounds.”
“We ran right through the dining room on our way to the basement,” O’Neil said. “There wasn’t a damn thing on that table.”
“Anyone check on this DEA guy. Morton?” Ramsey asked.
“Yeah,” Paulie said. “Our guy on the Philly police said the S.W.A.T. commander called Morton at DEA headquarters and was told he’d retired. Left instructions where he wanted his retirement checks deposited, but left no forwarding address or contact information.”
Peter said, “What was in the note the police found?”
Paulie smiled. “The note read ‘When you play ball with the wrong people, you get the bat shoved up your ass. Bend over, Rolfie Baby, your time has come.’ ”
For a few seconds, no one said a word. Then Jennifer Ramsey laughed. In a few seconds, they all joined in. They had just begun to quiet down when Peter said, “That Gino! That old man’s got rhinoceros balls.”
Ramsey asked, “What the hell is going on? Why a DEA connection?”
“I don’t think there’s a DEA connection,” David said. “I’d bet anything Morton was a rogue agent on Bishop’s payroll.”
Ten minutes later, Cataldo came back into the room. “Well, people,” he said, “we just had a conversation with the little guy from the hospital. He became really quite cooperative after Vinny had a talk with him. His name is Manny Segal. But his professional name is Paladin. He’s an artist at what he does—he kills people. I’ve heard about this guy for years but I never met him before. Actually, no one I know has ever met him before. And get this, Rolf Bishop agreed to pay the bastard two hundred thousand dollars up front, with a promise of another two hundred thousand when he killed Gino, David, Peter, and Detective Ramsey.”
“Hell,” O’Neil said, “there are at least ten million people in this country alone who’d kill someone for way less than that.” He laughed, but no one joined in.
David paced and said, “Why would Detective Ramsey be on Bishop’s hit list. How would Bishop even know she was here?”
After a long silence, Ramsey said, “There’s only two ways I can think of how Bishop learned I was here. One, someone in this room talked. Two, someone with the Bethesda Police Department talked. If it was someone in Bethesda, I would put my money on a guy named Cromwell.”
“The cop who was your partner?” David said.
Ramsey nodded.
“So, what do we do now?” David asked.
“I got a couple ideas,” Cataldo said. “We’re gonna make the message in Gino’s note to Bishop come true. Especially the part about the bat and his ass.”
CHAPTER 44
One of the benefits of the Cataldo Family’s relationship with the Hospitality Workers of America Union was the ability to get jobs for the Family’s sons and daughters, nephews and nieces. Some of the beneficiaries of the Family’s influence got paid even if they didn’t show up for work. Others, however, worked diligently and advanced up the hotel organization charts. Lois Carbone, the niece of Tomasino Portello, the
caporegime
of the Cataldo Family, had graduated from New York University with a Hotel Management degree, and had received a number of attractive offers from some of the better hotels in the city. But she wanted to work at the most famous of all the hotels in the country—The Plaza. Lois wanted to get her foot in the door there. Given the opportunity, she was determined to make the most of it. So, Lois spoke to her Uncle Tomasino, who then talked to the head of the union. Lois started at The Plaza Hotel two days later.
She’d worked first as a night clerk, then moved to the Catering Department. After only three years with the hotel, she became Director of Special Events, in which role she was now the hotel’s liaison with the White House to make certain the President of the United States’s dinner was a success. Her normal duties were aggravated by the involvement of the security people and White House staffers. But she’d been through that before. It was now all fairly routine to her. She was on her way to a staff meeting when her cellphone rang.
“Hi, Lois,” Tomasino Portello said. “You doin’ okay?”
“Sure, Uncle Tommy,” she replied. Why is he calling me at work? she wondered. This was a first. She sighed as she thought about all she had to do. She didn’t have time for personal matters.
“Sweetheart, I need to sit down with you . . . as soon as possible. You think you could find time for your favorite uncle this morning?”
Oh shit, Lois thought to herself. Any day but today. She wanted to say, I’m awfully busy, Uncle Tommy. But instead, she agreed to meet him. After all, she owed her uncle.
“Let’s see. I got eight now. How about we meet in that little coffee shop down the street from the hotel in about fifteen minutes?”
Lois made a couple quick phone calls, doled out assignments to underlings, postponed her staff meeting, and then hurried from her mezzanine level office, down the stairs to the hotel lobby, and out the front door. She was at the coffee shop when her Uncle Tomasino strolled in. She stood and they hugged affectionately. Lois truly loved her uncle and she knew he thought the world of her. He once told her, “You got bigger balls and more brains than most of the boys in the family.”
After their coffees were served, Tomasino looked intently at Lois. “I need to know something,” he said. “This is very important or I wouldn’t ask. You understand?”
“Sure, Uncle Tommy.”
“You workin’ on this big dinner tomorrow night with all the hotshots from England, Germany, France . . . whatever?”
Lois smiled. “That’s right. I’m in charge of the whole thing.”
“Tell me what the program will be at this
stravaganza
.”
Lois hesitated.
Tomasino reached across the table and put his hand on her cheek. He looked into her eyes and said, “Don’t you worry about a thing,
mio bambola piccola
. You got nothing to worry about.”
Lois took a big breath. “Well, you know, there will be a lot of boring speeches and all of the bigwigs will be introduced. A small orchestra will play at the dinner. And at the end of the dinner there will be a presentation.”
“That’s when the video will be shown?” Tomasino asked.
“How do you know about the video?” Lois tensed.
“Sometimes I hear things,
Bambina
. Tell me about this video.”
She hesitated a beat and then said, “The President has declared this the Year of the Child. So the White House put together a bunch of clips of some of the heads of state and senior members of the administration that show those people today and also back when they were kids. I think it will be fun to see what the most powerful men and women in the world looked like when they were small.”
“What do they got, some guy from the White House to show the video?”
“No, Uncle Tommy,” Lois responded. “The tape’s been given to Hal Norris, the head of the hotel’s Audio/Visual office. He’s the one who will set up all the equipment and play the tape. Why?”
“It’s better you don’t know why. And don’t tell anyone we met this morning. Before I go, I gotta ask you one more question. Where does this Hal keep the video and when could someone maybe take a peek at it?”
CHAPTER 45
Scott Dundee had always had a look of authority about him. His six-foot, three-inch, two hundred-pound frame and military bearing had served him well for his seventeen years with the New York Police Department.
He might have made it to the top floor of One Police Plaza if a drunk driver hadn’t plowed into his car one night. The collision left him with a chronic back problem which was still bad enough that he spent half-a-dozen days a month in bed. Surgery might fix the problem, but Dundee had a pathological fear of the operating table.
After he took early retirement, Dundee opened his own private-detective agency. The business had barely survived until a night when he was in a bar in lower Manhattan. It had been kind of a slow night so Leo Brill, the bar’s owner, took the stool next to Dundee’s and struck up a conversation.
Just before midnight, two cokeheads entered the bar. The taller one aimed a pistol at the kid behind the bar and ordered him to empty the cash register. The kid froze. The other cokehead waved his pistol at Dundee and Brill.
“Take it easy, guys,” Leo Brill said. “You can have the money. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
The shorter cokehead screamed, “Who you calling stupid, asshole?” and hit Brill on the side of the head with his pistol.
The blow opened a gash from above Brill’s hairline down to his cheekbone, and knocked him to the floor. The guy pointed his pistol at Brill and, purple with rage, seemed about to shoot the dazed and bloodied bar owner. With both the robbers’ attentions now on Brill, Dundee pulled a .45 caliber pistol from a shoulder holster under his jacket and blew a hole in the center of the shorter robber’s forehead. The impact of the bullet sprayed blood and brain matter all over the other cokehead, who shrieked as though he’d been shot and dropped to the floor. The guy screamed and begged for mercy.
Dundee walked over to the man and calmly took the pistol out of his hand. Then he kicked him under the chin, which broke his jaw and most of his teeth, and knocked him out.
Brill, a “made man” in the Cataldo Family, saw to it from then on that the one-man Dundee Detective Agency had as much business as Dundee could handle. The latest in the family’s long string of jobs was for Dundee to “borrow” a flash drive from The Plaza Hotel’s Audio/Visual Department Manager’s desk.
Dressed in a dark suit, Dundee arrived at the hotel at 9 a.m. The lobby was packed with employees, guests, and a large number of men and women with Secret Service pins on their lapels and radio buds in their ears. Dundee crossed the lobby as though he belonged there and went to a bank of house phones. He looked like a Secret Service agent, even down to the radio bud stuck in his ear and the fake pin on his lapel. Besides, he carried himself with unquestionable authority, albeit with a slight limp.
He used one of the house phones and asked the hotel operator to connect him to Hal Norris in the Audio/Visual Department. When Norris came on the line, Dundee introduced himself as Lyle Mason, a member of the Secret Service detail.
“Can you and your assistant attend a security briefing for hotel staff in ten minutes? In the grand ballroom?”
“Of course,” Norris said. “How long will it last?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes.”
After he hung up the phone, Dundee walked across the lobby and entered one of the elevators. He got off at the mezzanine level and walked along a row of offices until he found a door marked Audio/Visual Department. Hal Norris’s name was painted on the door. He waited twenty yards down the hall until a man and a woman walked out of the office, hustled down the hallway, and took the stairs to the lobby. Dundee moved to the Audio/Visual Department door. He knocked. No answer. He tried the doorknob. Locked. He pulled a shim from an inside jacket pocket, slid the tool between the doorjamb and the lock, and popped the lock. Then he cautiously opened the door and peeked inside to make certain the office was vacant. He quickly moved past a desk to an inner office. Hal Norris’s nameplate was on the desk there. Dundee opened the center drawer, but found nothing of interest. He tried the top side drawer, then the second drawer. Still nothing. In the third drawer he found a black flash drive in a Ziploc bag labeled “State Dinner-April 28.” He removed the flash drive from the bag and slipped it into a side pocket of his jacket. Then he took a handful of blank flash drives from a pocket, found one that best matched the one he’d removed, placed it inside the bag, and put the bag back in the desk drawer.