“I don’t know, Pop.”
“Give me some grandchildren?”
“You’ve got grandchildren already, Pop.”
“Not yours. Not my son’s kids.”
“Well, someday.”
“You seeing somebody?”
“Few girls.”
“Who?”
“Few girls, you don’t know them, Pop.”
“Anybody serious?”
“No,” Andrew said. “Nobody serious.”
The assigned coordinator of the detective team on the Faviola wiretap had duplicated Wednesday’s audiotapes, line sheets, and pen register tapes, and had them delivered to Michael’s office by eleven o’clock that Thursday morning. At four that afternoon, Michael called Georgie Giardino in his office down the hall and asked him to come by. Over coffee in cardboard containers, the two men tried once again to find a pattern to the calls coming in and going out of Faviola’s office-apartment complex.
It had not surprised Michael that most of the calls Faviola made on Tuesday, the morning after his uncle died, were to known gangsters, informing them of the untimely demise and making certain they knew where the body could be viewed and where flowers should be sent. Georgie told Michael that at an Italian wake, it was usual for friends and relatives to drop little envelopes containing money into a box with a slot on its top, this presumably to defray the cost of funeral expenses. He did not think a multimillion-dollar enterprise like the Faviola family would either seek or accept such contributions, but who the hell knew?
“These guys are the cheapest bastards in the world,” Georgie said. “Freddie Coulter told me the lock on that door leading upstairs from the tailor shop is the crummiest piece of shit he ever saw. What these guys do, they need a lock, they need an alarm, they remember that Joey Gabagootz’s son went to a vocational high school and learned to be a mechanic or an electrician, so they’ll call Joey and he’ll send his kid over to rig an alarm or install a lock and they’ll hand him twenty bucks, and tell him thanks, kid. What Freddie likes to do, whenever he finds one of these cheap alarms, he deliberately sets it off every time he leaves the premises. He goes in four, five times to do whatever he has to do, he sets it off as he’s leaving each and every time. The target thinks Hey, what kind of job did Joey Gabagootz’s son do here, the alarm’s broken already? So he says the hell with it, and he doesn’t turn it on anymore.”
“Freddie does the same thing with a Medeco lock,” Michael said.
“What do you mean? How can he set off a Medeco?”
“No, no, he gums it up. No one on earth can pick a Medeco and anyone who tells you he can is lying. When Freddie finds one, he squirts Krazy Glue in it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Georgie said, and burst out laughing.
“The wiseguy sticks his key in, the lock won’t work, he thinks it’s because some other wiseguy’s son installed it for ten bucks. So he figures the hell with it, it’s broken, and he uses the other locks on the door instead.”
“I love the way Freddie jerks these cheap bastards around,” Georgie said, still laughing. “I’ll bet they did expect those little cash envelopes in the box. And I’ll bet Rudy’s daughter didn’t refuse them, either.”
The original pen register tapes were about the same width as an adding machine tape, the printing on them a sort of violet blue. The Xerox copies were in black and white. The format was slightly different for a number dialed out of the apartment than it was for a caller dialing in. On any outgoing call, the tape showed the number of the phone being dialed, and then the time the call began, and the time the call ended, and the duration of the call. On an incoming call, the tape did not record the phone number of the caller, but in addition to the other information, it listed the number of rings before the target phone was picked up. On any wiretap surveillance, the detectives sitting the wire transferred the pen register information to their line sheets, and the phone company later supplied names and addresses for any outgoing call numbers appearing on the tape. Most of the numbers Faviola called were familiar to Michael and Georgie by now, but they spot-checked the line sheets, anyway, to make sure they agreed with the pen register tapes and then, together, they listened to the audiotapes.
None of the wiseguys had called on Tuesday, the first day of the wake. Too busy kneeling before Rudy’s coffin, Michael guessed. There was a call that day from a man named William Isetti, who said he was calling from St. Thomas. Whoever he was, he left a number with an 809 area code and asked that he be called back. He made no mention of Rudy Faviola’s death.
Only one of Andy Boy’s lady friends seemed to know.
The pen register and line sheet showed a call from a woman who identified herself as “Angela in Great Neck” at four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, long after Faviola had left his office and turned on his machine. The audiotapes had her leaving a message saying she’d just heard about his uncle and wanted to tell him how sorry she was.
“The local talent,” Georgie said.
“Mmm,” Michael said.
There were several other calls from Faviola’s parade of bimbos that Tuesday afternoon, all of them from familiar voices, all of them calling just to say hello and to wonder when they could get together again.
On Wednesday, “Hi, It’s Me” called four times, never once leaving a return number. Her voice sounded breathy on the tapes. The last time, she sounded virtually frantic. That same day, Oona Halligan called three times from her new job in the Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue, leaving a number and asking him to call when he got back to the office. Same message each time. “It’s Oona, call me when you’re back in the office.” Oona sounded younger than “Hi, It’s Me.” Her voice was somewhat breathy, too. Maybe women automatically affected the same sexy voice when they were on the phone with Andy Boy.
“Or maybe they’re sisters,” Georgie said.
“Be funny if he was banging sisters and neither of them knew about it,” Michael said.
“Brooklyn girl,” Georgie said. “Oona.”
“I wonder where the other one lives,” Michael said.
“Mystery woman.”
“Calls from phone booths on the street.”
“Never leaves a return number.”
“Never.”
“Got to be married.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe to one of the paisans,” Georgie said: “What was the name of that broad they all wanted to bang? On the trial tapes?”
“Teresa Danielli.”
“Terry, yeah. Maybe it’s her.”
“Maybe.”
“Who do you suppose Isetti is?”
“No idea.”
“The Virgin Islands.”
“Mmm.”
“What’s down there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who do you think’ll fill Rudy’s spot?”
“Triani.”
“You think so?”
“I feel positive.”
“Bardo’s in line.”
“I still think it’ll go to Triani. My guess is there’ll be another meeting in Faviola’s conference room sometime next week.”
“Not Wednesday, though,” Georgie said. “That’s the blonde’s day.”
“Not Wednesday, no. But whenever, we’d better be listening hard.”
“You think these line sheets are straight?” Georgie asked suddenly.
Michael, was silent for a moment.
“No,” he said at last.
“Me, neither,” Georgie said. “I think Regan and Lowndes are listening longer than they need to.”
“I think all three shifts are listening.”
“Mike, that can...”
“I know. Time for another little talk. I’ll tell you, Georgie, this better be strictly ABC, or they’re off the case.”