The Good Guys Page 10
Bobby didn’t see things quite that clearly. At heart he was an optimist. He couldn’t believe that anyone could be stupid enough to believe they could get away with stealing from the mob. That just didn’t happen. And after The Godfather movies it happened even less. “Just cool it, Eddie,” he said. “We’re gonna take care of this, don’t worry ’bout it.”
There really was nothing else to be done that night except dumping the truck. After wiping it down to get rid of the fingerprints and picking out the remains of Jackie’s glasses Bobby drove it over to the big U-Haul parking lot in Hunts Point. This was the main holding lot for the entire metropolitan area. Trucks, vans, and trailers of all sizes were kept here until they were needed. There had to be at least three hundred vehicles parked there. The security guard had done business with the families for a long time, allowing trucks to come and go without keeping any records. Bobby drove the truck onto the lot, parked it somewhere in the middle, and wiped off the steering wheel one last time. This was the best possible place in the world to hide a U-Haul truck, right in the middle of three hundred other U-Haul trucks. It would be weeks before it was found.
Bobby had the hustler’s mentality: Throw a dozen balls into the air and hope you catch a couple of them when they came down. And if you didn’t, then throw up a dozen more and take another shot. So he was able to accept this fiasco—at least temporarily—better than a man like Little Eddie, who lived and died with every deal. Bobby lived his life on pretty level ground, while Eddie’s life was a series of peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. For Eddie this was one deep valley.
But because this was Fast Lenny’s deal, it was up to him to make it right. He said he’d go see the store owner first thing the next morning and, unless he got the right answers, “The fucking funeral’s gonna be in the afternoon.”
Eddie was still fuming the next morning, like a volcano cooling down after the eruption, as Bobby leaned on the buzzer marked “Gradinsky.” A few seconds later, without asking who was there, whoever was in the apartment buzzed the door open. The professor lived on the third floor of a five-story walk-up on the Upper West Side, and by the time they climbed to the third floor, Eddie was sweating worse than a poster boy for global warming. “Jesus,” he wheezed, breathing heavily as he banged a fist on the door, “they gotta air-condition this fucking world.”
A muffled woman’s voice asked from behind the locked door, “Who is it?”
“Some friends of the professor,” Eddie replied gruffly. “Just open the goddamn door.”
Bobby let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Nice manners.”
Members of organized crime don’t conduct formal interviews. Things don’t work that way. My experience has been that whenever a connected guy wants information from a civilian, all he has to do is ask the right questions. Generally. Sometimes you ask nicely, sometimes it’s necessary to ask less than nicely, but most of the time it isn’t necessary to ask more than once. And for that a great debt is owed to the motion picture, television, and publishing industries. Most often people have been so terrified by everything they’ve read about organized crime that when a real live wiseguy shows up at the door, they won’t hesitate to tell him everything they know.
The fact is that when your last name is Bonanno or Gambino or Genovese, people are intimidated before you say hello. As with just about all wiseguys, the threat is implied. It isn’t just the fear quotient either; there is also the celebrity aspect. For a lot of civilians, talking to a real live gangster is as exciting as meeting a major movie star. It gives them status: They are so important that the mob needs to talk to them. When I was active, at times I spoke with people who could hardly wait for me to leave so they could call their friends to brag, “Guess who I was just talking to.” Some of them would have been thrilled if I’d hit them. “Hey, guess who just broke my nose.”
So Bobby and Little Eddie were confident that whoever opened the door would not hesitate to speak with them. A nicely dressed older woman with a long, narrow face opened it. Looking at her, Bobby was reminded of the chess piece the horse, except with long hair.
Looking at Bobby, overdressed for the morning in a well-tailored dark gray suit, white tie on white shirt, and a Brooks Brothers camel coat, the woman was reminded of the most recent Charlie Bronson mob film. But if she had any doubt about the identity of the two men standing before her, one glance at Little Eddie, dressed as usual in a blue track suit with white piping, the zippered top half-opened to reveal a tight white T-shirt, settled it. “Come in, please,” the woman said politely, “I’ve been waiting for you.” As she led them into the living room, she told them, “The FBI was here yesterday but don’t worry, I didn’t tell them a thing. I told them he was talking to the Russians and they believed me.”
“Good,” Bobby said, then looked at Eddie and shrugged. He did not have the slightest idea what she was talking about. The fact that the FBI had already been there did not upset him; actually he sort of expected it. Bobby, who liked things orderly, was impressed by the living room. It was impeccably neat. Not even the dust was out of place. Mostly out of habit he checked the place out. The living room windows looked out onto a checkerboard of backyards, some with gardens, others paved. There was a fire escape landing out the windows, which were double-locked. As he sat down on the long sofa, Bobby said evenly, “Look, lady . . .”
“Grace,” she said pleasantly. “Okay, please, tell me. Where is he?”
Almost simultaneously Eddie asked, “Where’s who?” and Bobby wondered, “What are you talking about?”
She looked at both of them and said, as if the answer to that question were obvious, “My husband. Peter. You people are with the Mafia, aren’t you?”
It was a simple question impossible to answer. This woman was either smart, stupid, or simply naïve. And without knowing anything at all about it, it certainly was possible that the apartment was bugged. Bobby explained, “See, Grace. It’s Grace, right?” She nodded. “See, Grace, that’s not something we talk about, you know. I mean . . .” He searched for a polite way of saying it.
Little Eddie helped him. “Like who the fuck you think you are asking a question like that?”
Grace was not intimidated. “What are you trying to say?”
Eddie shot a warning finger at her. “Don’t fuck with me, lady. I’m not having a good day, okay? What I am is none of your business. You understand?”
Grace cleared her throat. “All right,” she agreed. “I do understand. I won’t ask you any more of those kind of questions. All I want to know is, where is my husband?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie blurted out in frustration, “you’re worse than my old lady. What is this bullshit about your husband? How the fuck should . . .” Eddie’s voice grew louder and louder.
“Eddie! C’mon, man, calm down. Just cool it.” Bobby knew what happened when Eddie’s volcanic temper erupted. Movie people portrayed men like Little Eddie as sort of cuddly lugs, big strong guys who weren’t too bright, but who really meant well and would never hurt a civilian. That wasn’t Little Eddie LaRocca. Eddie was a legitimate tough guy. His pride was invested in his strength and his brutality. When Eddie’s rage was let loose, there were no rules and no one could control him. People got hurt. So smart people feared him. This woman, this Grace, had absolutely no idea how close she was to that eruption. “Just relax, man, it’s okay.”
Bobby took a deep breath, and as he turned back to Grace, he forced a pleasant smile. “All right, help me out here. We just want to know one thing. Where is your husband?”
Bobby saw the fear growing in her eyes. “You mean he’s not with you? I mean, really not with you?”
Eddie responded, “What the fuck are you talking about, lady? What’s this ‘with us’ bullshit? I never met the guy in my life, and if I knew where the fuck he was, you think I’d be sitting here?”
Her head began shaking nervously as the realization settled in. “I thought . . . ,” she began. “I mean . .
. sometimes he tells me that he does things. For you people, for the Mafia. He comes home and shows me a big roll of cash. They pay him in cash. That’s why I thought . . . I don’t understand. If he’s not with you, then where . . .”
Bobby grasped both her hands as if to keep her rooted to the moment. “Hey! Grace! Stay with me. What are you talking about?”
She was having trouble catching her breath. “Peter. Sometimes he just goes away for a few days. Like now. And then . . . and then . . .” And then she began losing control. “Oh God, oh dear God . . .”
“Shhh . . . ,” Bobby said softly, “it’s okay. Honest.”
Little Eddie couldn’t believe this was happening. “This is total bullshit.”
Bobby turned on him, steel in his voice. “Stop. Now.” In response Eddie settled back into the deep cushions and disdainfully waved him away, mumbling something under his breath. Although it had not been planned, Bobby and Eddie were playing their variation of the old cop game—call it good crook, bad crook. Bobby went back to Grace. “And then what? What happens?”
She began sobbing. “When he comes back, he tells me . . . I mean, he doesn’t tell me any of the details. I don’t know anything, I swear . . .” She looked to Bobby for reassurance.
“That’s okay, don’t worry about it. So? Tell me, what does he tell you?”
Grace continued. Occasionally, and always without warning, Peter Gradinsky would simply disappear for two or three days. During that period he would make no contact with her. The first time it happened she had been frantic. But a day after she had reported him missing to the police department he walked into the apartment, perfectly fine. He couldn’t tell her any of the details, she told Bobby. “He said that for my safety it was better if I didn’t know too much. And then he admitted he’d been doing secret work for the Mafia.
“When he came back, he always had a lot of money with him. Two thousand, three thousand dollars. In cash. He loved to keep it in his pocket.” When he left this time, she continued, he told her he’d be back in a couple of days. So she assumed he was working for the Mafia again. And, to be completely honest, she admitted, she was happy about it. It’d be nice to have some extra money during the holidays. That’s why she hadn’t called the police. It was only after those FBI agents showed up that she began getting nervous. And it was why she didn’t give those agents any information that might help them.
Bobby wondered aloud why the FBI would be interested in a college teacher—unless they knew considerably more about the situation than he did. “You got any idea how they found out he was gone? Who’d you talk to about this?”
“Nobody, I swear. Peter told me not to tell anybody about any of it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
Bobby pulled the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. He smiled. “Don’t worry about it, it’s clean.” When she had better composed herself, he asked, “Lemme guess. It was a guy and a girl, right? She was sort of nice-looking?” Grace nodded. Bobby took a deep breath and frowned. “Yeah, we know them. All right, now just answer me this: You’re telling me your husband never told you what kind of work he was doing? I mean, come on, Grace, you know that’s a hard thing for a guy like me to believe.”
Eddie answered, “Now, wait a minute there, Bobby. I don’t tell my wife nothing either.”
Grace shook her head. “No, he didn’t. Really.”
“But like didn’t you ever wonder? Just one time, didn’t you ever think, what the fuck do those guys want with my husband?”
“Of course I did. I just thought, you know . . . I mean, Peter’s very smart. He really is. A lot of people don’t realize how smart he is. I mean, you should hear him speak Russian. We went to Moscow four years ago and it was like he was born there. We’d be walking on the street and . . .”
And then Bobby got it. It all made sense. The guy could speak Russian. The guy could speak fucking Russian. That had to be the reason the wiseguys were looking for him. What else could it be? His good looks? Bobby was angry that he hadn’t made the connection right away. During the previous few years an entire Russian mob had come out of nowhere. The Soviet Union had emptied its prisons and allowed thousands of people to emigrate to America. Many of them had settled in Brooklyn, an area on the water called Brighton Beach. Moscow on the Hudson they began referring to it. The five families never had much of a presence in the neighborhood; nobody spoke the language or knew the traditions. So Russian wiseguys filled that need. They came to New York and established their roots. They set up their businesses and took care of anybody who got in their face. Bobby assumed there was a name for them, for the members of Russian organized crime, but he had no idea what it might be. He didn’t know the Russian word for wiseguy.
So the Russian-speaking professor had been working for the Italian wiseguys. This was truly an amazing piece of information. Bobby had heard the rumors that some of the families were starting to do business with the commies, but without any real evidence he’d figured it was just people flapping their mouths. The immigrants brought some money with them to Brighton Beach. Anybody who could grab a piece could become a wealthy man.
Bobby could feel his heart pounding like Gene Krupa was in there banging away. He cleared his throat. “Lemme ask you this, then. You ever hear your husband talk about anybody he was working with? Anybody come around here maybe?”
She thought about it for a few seconds, then started nodding. “There was one man he did mention. I know this is someone who drove him to the meetings sometimes. It used to make him laugh. He told me this man was huge, that he had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.” She was looking directly at Bobby, and the memory of Peter Gradinsky’s joke was making her smile. “And they called him Skinny Al.”
Eddie sat up. “Holy fucking shit,” he said, carefully enunciating each word.
“What?” Grace asked, alarmed at his reaction. “What?”
“It’s nothing,” Bobby said. “That’s just a guy we know is all.” Actually it was a guy they used to know, a guy who only hours earlier had had all his organs neatly put back inside his body cavity and had been sewn up by an assistant coroner in preparation for his funeral.
As Bobby and Eddie left the apartment, Bobby told Grace Gradinsky he would contact her as soon as he got any valid information. “Honest,” he lied earnestly, “you can trust me.”
Eddie started laughing out loud as they walked down the three flights. “Poor fucking guy,” he said, finding the whole situation hysterical. “All he’s trying to do is make a few bucks and next thing you know he gets himself caught up between us and the fucking commies. Now, that’s funny.”
“We don’t know for sure that they got him,” Bobby said seriously, trying to get his mind around the problem. “You know, there’s lots of other things could have happened to him.”
“Yeah? Like what? Like maybe he got eaten by one of them sewer alligators?”
Bobby thought about it for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Like a lot of things.” But even to himself Bobby had to admit that the professor’s situation didn’t look too promising. He disappeared right about the same time as the guy who usually drove him to the meetings, and then that guy turned up deader than a brick. There was a pretty good chance the professor had been with him the night he got whacked. For whoever did the work he would have been just a slight complication.
But until they found some evidence, say a body or at least part of a body, there was always hope. Stranger things had happened. Besides, the professor’s fate was not his concern. For him the thing that was most interesting was this connection between the family and the commies. The professor’s wife had said he’d worked for the mob “several times,” meaning that whatever they were doing was an ongoing arrangement. And it had to be pretty important, meaning lucrative; otherwise the Russians would never risk a confrontation with the family. Maybe the professor didn’t belong to anyone, but definitely he was working for them.
“Gees, Eddie,” Bobby interrupted, “a voice like that, you should be in Vegas.”
Eddie knew he was kidding. “C’mon,” he said.
“No, I’m being serious,” Bobby said, “’cause if you were in Vegas, you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have to listen to that screeching.” Then he laughed.
“You’re some funny guy,” Eddie said seriously, adding, “I loved that picture. ’Specially the part where the girl turns into like this monster, ’member that part?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Made me think about my wife.” When Bobby didn’t respond, Eddie pointed out to him, “Get it? I was saying my wife is a monster. See, that’s funny.”
Bobby made a big deal about considering Eddie’s joke. “I don’t think it’s so funny. She’s pretty tough. Like how do you think she’s gonna react when I tell her your joke?”
Eddie chuckled. “Don’t you fucking dare. Then I’ll have to call the Ghostbusters.” Both of them laughed at the thought of Eddie’s wife responding to being compared to a monster. Finally Eddie asked, “What are we doing now?”
“Beats the hell outta me. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be finding this professor any time soon.” Bobby took off his wet hat and placed it on the backeat. “I guess we see what Franzone wants to do.”
Traffic in New York City, which was terrible under good conditions, got a lot worse when it rained. It took them more than ten minutes to go a single block. Some song Bobby had never heard was blasting from the radio. “Can’t you turn it down?” he asked.