John said, “Meantime, Willie Mays hit his six hundred sixtieth home run Friday. How come you don’t talk about that?”
“Because they lost,” Berg said.
“What?”
“They lost. Mets lost.”
“Yeah, and? The man hit number six-sixty. Who cares they lost?”
“You bet them you care.”
“Excuse me?”
“Put it this way,” Berg said. “Next time Mays homers in a game I bet, I hope there’re runners on base.”
“I gotta go,” John said. “See if you can’t find some new blood for this movie.”
“There are only so many guys live in Massapequa, John. I can’t manufacture them.”
“That’s what they tell me to tell you. Find new blood instead of pissing and moaning.”
“Do I piss and moan?”
John didn’t answer. He was already thinking about having to deal with the asshole at the bar that took the receipts and recounted the money extra slow and now was calling him Johnny Porno behind his back. The guy had given him grief the first day John started collecting and hadn’t stopped since.
“My brother is working on the guys at the UPS depot,” Berg said. “That might turn into something. Another guy’s been coming says he knows some bus drivers are interested.”
“Now you’re thinking,” John said. “I’ll give you a call if I hear who they’re sending to watch you.”
“Hopefully you don’t make the call.”
“They could send somebody anyway. They could’ve done that this weekend. You’re skimming and they know it, it’s a headache neither of us needs.”
John picked up the film case and brought it to his car. He opened the trunk and laid it down faceup. A strip of adhesive tape ran across the center. It read: “Peter Rabit.” John saw “Rabbit” was spelled wrong. He slammed the trunk shut, lit a cigarette and got in the car. He pulled the wad of cash from his pants pocket, stashed it in the small gym bag he had stuffed under his seat, then pushed the bag back and started the engine. He turned up the volume on the radio to listen for traffic.
He had two stops to make on the east shore, the drop-off in Brooklyn that would be annoying and take at least two hours, and then he needed to get some sleep. He was scheduled to drive an early-afternoon shift the next day. He also needed to find time for his son, not to mention pay the kid’s mother the two weeks child support he still owed.
At thirty-five years of age, with no job prospects on the immediate horizon, he wondered if he’d made a mistake when he listened to his mother’s pleas for him not to join the army like his brother. Paul Albano had planned on a military career but was killed in Vietnam eight years ago. John still felt guilty for not enlisting.
His brother was on his mind as John pulled away from the curb. He had to stop at the corner for a red light, at which point the radio station gave the traffic report. He turned up the volume and learned of a three-car accident on the Southern State Parkway.
It was going to be a much longer night than he had anticipated.
Captain Edward Kaprowski, in his second month as captain of the newly formed NYPD Organized Crime Unit of a statewide task force, met with Lieutenant Detective Neil Levin outside the Cadillac dealership on Hillside Avenue. Kaprowski, at thirty-one, was a short, squat man with blonde hair and beady eyes. He tossed the cigarette he’d been smoking at a sewer grating and waited to see if it dropped down. When it did, Kaprowski pointed at a construction dumpster cordoned off with crime scene tape at the end of a long driveway.
“Body was dumped there,” he said. “Dead at least five weeks, ripe as the day is long and missing both hands. That said, the guy’s wallet with everything in it, minus any money, was in his back pants pocket; driver’s license, Social Security card, a few other forms of identification. Thomas Nicholas DeLuca, a.k.a. Tommy Porno. An associate with Eddie Vento’s crew. Forensics says the body was dumped there within the last week, which makes no sense they held it so long someplace else.”
Levin, working undercover for both Internal Affairs and Kaprowski’s Organized Crime task force, was forty-one years old and a twelve-year veteran. He looked at the construction dumpster and said, “His hands were missing?”
“Chopped off,” Kaprowski said. “Probably soon’s they grabbed him and before they put two behind his ear, the official cause of death.”
“Because of a porn film?”
“Because of the money the dopey bastard stole from the mob over a porn film.”
“How much?”
“God knows. Didn’t have to be much, though. Soon’s this hits the papers it’ll go a long way to keeping the dummies run that film around for the wiseguys honest.”
“The deceased was an example.”
“They whack a guy, leave the body so it’ll be found, it’s the only explanation. The missing hands were obvious enough.”
Levin pointed to the construction container. “Why there?”
“Eddie Vento bought his Cadillac there. Coincidence you think? DeLuca had a no-show construction job with somebody close to Vento. Started off as a head-counter, graduated to collecting and probably couldn’t resist skimming. Early word is he left markers all over the city. Bookies, mostly. A couple card games the boys sanction, probably a few they don’t.”
“Forensics gives him a week in the dumpster?”
“Five to six days. Inside a week, they said. You get close enough you can smell it. Some of what they found inside had liquefied. In this heat, the humidity, I’m surprised it wasn’t called in sooner, the stink.”
Kaprowski led Levin back around the corner. “You live over in Bayside, right?” he asked.
“Off Bell Boulevard, yeah,” Levin said. “The only thing left from a short marriage, that house, but I had to take a second mortgage to buy her out.”
“How long you married?”
“Two years, six months, ten days, and her lawyer made me pay for every minute.”
“Any kids?”
Levin seemed confused. “None. Why?”
“Living with anybody now?”
They had walked past the dealership on Hillside Avenue. Levin suddenly stopped. “No,” he said. “You already know my story. What’s up?”
“It’s called small talk,” Kaprowski said. “Most people have something to hide, they give it up in small talk.”
“You brought me into this three weeks ago,” Levin said. “You’re having doubts, feel free to cut me loose. I have better things to do my day off.”
Kaprowski started walking again. He waved Levin on.
“Except for me, what they read about inna papers, this unit, we’re still virgin,” Kaprowski said. “Least as far as corruption goes. That won’t last, but for now, at least until the wiseguys figure us out, we’re operating free of common knowledge. We’re as undercover as undercover gets, which is why I make bullshit small talk, to try and gauge your commitment. I don’t want or need people aren’t committed to this operation.”
“All due respect, Captain, I’m the one in the field of fire on this. Bad enough I’m with Internal Affairs. I turn up dirty cops and I lose the few friends I had. I turn up cops in bed with the mob, those cops can reach out in ways regular cops can’t. You want more of a commitment than that I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I can appreciate your situation, Detective. I do appreciate it. Which is why you can’t blow it with IA. You do your job there same as you always do, except now you’ll come to me before you go to them. I can’t afford there’s somebody in IA already on the mob payroll.”
“You gonna filter it, that what you’re saying?”
“If I feel it needs to be filtered, yeah.”
“What about the feds? My understanding of task force is a joint operation.”