Blank stares.
“You don’t understand it, huh? Okay, try to understand this. The guys who went in there spoke only Spanish. No English. Only Spanish, you got that?”
The men looked from one to the other.
The one in the brown jacket said, “No entiendo. No hablo inglés.”
“You don’t entiendo, huh?” Reardon said. “Here’s what I’m telling you, so you better start entiende-ing fast. If you speak English, you got nothing to worry about. Otherwise, we’re gonna think you were the punks went in there shooting.”
Silence. Puzzled frowns.
“Okay? I’ll give you thirty seconds.”
“Que quiere el?” the one in the brown jacket asked Ruiz.
“He’s not gonna give you any help,” Reardon said. “The only thing’ll help you is to start talking English.”
One of the men in the cloth coats said, “Nosotros no sabemos que dice usted.”
“Twenty seconds,” Reardon said. “You guys have a possible murder rap hanging over your heads, never mind a two-bit holdup.” He looked at his watch. “Ten seconds,” he said.
The telephone rang. Gianelli picked up the receiver.
“Fifth Squad, Gianelli,” he said.
“Time’s up,” Reardon said, and turned to Hoffman. “They’re either clean or they’re stupid,” he said.
“For you, Bry,” Gianelli said. “On four. It’s Mark D’Annunzio.”
“Get Sadie in here,” Farmer said. “Run a private little lineup for her.” The one in the brown leather jacket said, “Usted tiene que decirnos nuestras leyes en espaňol.”
“Cállate, pendejo!” Ruiz said.
Reardon picked up the receiver.
“Hello. Mr. D’Annunzio,” he said.
“He wants us to read him his rights in Spanish,” Ruiz said to Farmer. He turned to the three men sitting on the bench, and said, “Yo les voy a dar sus leyes, pendejos!”
“When was this?” Reardon said into the phone, and listened. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Where are you? Uh-huh. Wait for me, I’ll be right there.”
He hung up.
“Bobby Nardelli was just there to see the D’Annunzio kid,” he said. “Told him he wants the interest on the loan they made to his father.”
Robert Alfred Nardelli was a small-time hood with three priors, two for burglary and one for assault. He was a sometimes enforcer for the mob’s loan-sharking operation, and this bothered Reardon a lot. He had hoped the Monday night murder had nothing to do with the boys. Mark D’Annunzio had told him he couldn’t see any connection between his father’s death and the mob. “They used to come eat in the restaurant all the time,” he’d said. So now he’d been visited by Bobby Nardelli, and Bobby wanted the interest on the loan they’d made. It looked shitty.
He found Bobby in the back room of a furniture store on Baxter Street. The store was the target of a Narcotics Squad stakeout that had been in effect since early August. Reardon supposed the unmarked truck out front had a narc in it, listening on a court-ordered wire. He also supposed Bobby knew the truck was NYPD issue. Nothing much slipped by the thieves in this city. You could bet your ass that the only words going in and out of the store on that telephone were between Bobby and the legion of girls who allegedly swooned everytime he swaggered into sight, God knew why.
Bobby was a man in his late twenties, some six-feet four-inches tall and weighing at least two hundred and twenty pounds. If you were going to have an enforcer, you could do worse than to pick a man like Bobby. His hands on the desk in front of him were huge, with the oversized knuckles of a streetfighter. A small scar ran from the tip of his right eyebrow to a point on the temple. He had eyes that could freeze a desert.
“He owed money,” he said, and shrugged. “I went to collect it. Is that against the law? A man going to collect money that’s owed him?”
“Did you know he was dead?” Reardon asked.
“No. What difference does it make?” Bobby said. “Man borrows money, he don’t pay it, then his family pays it. Somebody pays it, Reardon. We don’t get stuck holding the bag.”
“Who’s we?” Reardon asked.
Bobby shrugged.
“How much did he borrow?”
“Seven K. And some change.”
“When?”
“Couple of weeks before he opened his joint. I’m cooperating, right, Reardon?”
“Sure,” Reardon said.
“He was short, the bank wouldn’t let him have another nickel. They’re charging interest almost as high as us these days, the banks. Can you believe it?”
“Who’s us?” Reardon said.
Bobby shrugged again.
“This is a homicide we’re talking here,” Reardon said.
“So what do you want from me, your homicide?” Bobby said. “I’m a businessman. We lent the guy some bread, he knew what the interest rate was, he knew when the payments were due.”
“What was the interest rate?”
“Does Macy’s tell Gimbels?”
“When were the payments due?”
“Every Thursday. Today’s Thursday.”
“When did he make the last payment?”
“Last Thursday. When it was due.”
“You’re sure he paid you, huh?”
“I’m sure.”
“You’re sure you didn’t go in there with a little muscle Monday night...”
“Positive.”
“Who did?”
“You got me, pal.”
Reardon sighed. “Okay,” he said, “stay away from the D’Annunzio family. Your interest’ll wait.”
“No, it won’t,” Bobby said. “This ain’t in my hands.”
“Whose hands is it in?”
Bobby shrugged.
“You still working for Sallie Fortunato?”
“Who says I ever worked for him?” Bobby said.
“Come on, Bobby, cut the shit.”
“That’s news to me. my working for Sallie.”
“Next time you talk to him,” Reardon said, “which should be about three minutes after I walk out of here, tell him I’ll be stopping by.”
“I don’t even know his number,” Bobby said.
“Send a carrier pigeon.”
“Besides,” Bobby said, smiling, “who wants your truck outside listening?”
Salvatore Luigi Fortunato’s B-sheet gave his age as sixty-four years old, his place of birth as Palermo, Sicily, and his various aliases as “Sallie,” “Salvie,” “Big Lou,” and “The Accountant.” He had done time only once, shortly after arriving in America, for Second-Degree Arson, presently defined as “intentionally damaging a building by starting a fire or causing an explosion,” a Class-C felony for which he’d been sentenced to three years in prison, a year of which he’d served at Ossining before being paroled. He had managed to escape confinement since, presumably because he was connected with the mob, and could freely call upon their legal talent. Paunchy and graying, wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, black shoes, a dark blue tie, and rimless eyeglasses — which indeed made him resemble an accountant — he sat behind his desk in the small office at the rear of the Angela Cara pastry shop on Grand Street, and said, “Yes, I okayed the loan. So what?”
Two of his goons were in attendance. One of them was cleaning his nails with a toothpick. Reardon figured he’d seen this in a movie someplace. The other one was reading a copy of Penthouse magazine. Both of them feigned enormous indifference to the conversation.
“He came to you personally?” Reardon asked.
“No, no, he went to Bobby. Bobby called me, I said okay. It was peanuts, what’s the big deal?”