track down anyone, anywhere. Like they’re fuckin’ invisible.’
‘Then why am I still walkin’ around, Marco? How come I’m not sittin’ in the morgue, waitin’ to be sliced and diced?’
‘All I know for sure is that he said he was comin’ for you.’
‘But when? What’s he waitin’ for? Think for a minute. Carter shoots Ricky. Then he takes the whore away from you and Ruby. Then he whacks Ruby right on the street, takes out Paulie in his bed, and most likely the Chink’s gone, too.’ Bobby lifts the weights to his chest, lies down and starts another set of flys. ‘I don’t get the timing, Marco. I don’t get the timing at all.’
The Blade’s thoughts come together before Bobby completes the set. First, his boss is right. If Carter wanted Bobby dead, he would’ve made an attempt by now. Yeah, they’ve been careful, but they’re not exactly hiding. ‘I’m thinkin’ that he wants somethin’.’
‘But he’s not tellin’ me what it is.’
‘No, and he has Ruby’s cellphone. The number for the warehouse is on it. He could’ve called any time.’
‘So, then what?’
Once the Blade’s mind begins to move in the right direction, his logic follows the same path taken by Solly Epstein. Outside of Bobby Ditto’s life, there’s only one thing he and his boss have that anybody
‘What we gotta do, like right away, is bring the money into the bunker.’
‘The money?’ Bobby drops the weights to the deck and sits up. The basic question – why am I still alive? – was as far as he’d gotten, that and the fact that the payments to Chin were wasted money. Now he’s thinking he could be ruined forever. ‘Where do ya get that from?’
The Blade takes a deep breath. ‘Follow the connections, Bobby. Carter connects to the whore. The whore connects to your brother. Your brother – who had a big mouth, which everybody knows – connects to the money.’
‘Fuckin’ Ricky.’ Bobby stops at the approach of a small boat. He walks over to the rail and waves to Vince Capporelli, who lives two houses away. Vince holds up a bluefish that must weigh fifteen pounds.
‘You need to get out in the bay,’ Vince calls. ‘The blues are feeding close to shore. The water’s boiling.’
Bobby can remember a time when he would have packed his fishing gear, filled a cooler with beer and sandwiches, and been out the door fifteen minutes later. Now he spends his days in a bunker.
‘OK,’ he tells the Blade, ‘get the boys together, pick up the money and bring it to the bunker. I want you to use at least three men and make sure one of ’em is Donny Thorn. I’m gonna put him in charge.’
Donny Thorn is Donald Thornton, an Irish kid who grew up with Bobby and his brother. He’s quick, tough and gets the job done, the perfect choice to replace Ruby.
‘A harp? The boys ain’t gonna like that.’
This is not something Bobby needs to be told. The rest of his men are Italian. Taking orders from an Irishman won’t come easy. So what? Bobby returns to the weight bench and lies down. All this bullshit, it’s ruining his workout.
‘Just get it done, Marco. And tell the boys to bring a change of clothes and a toothbrush. They won’t be leavin’ that basement any time soon.’
TWENTY-ONE
When the Blade steps on to the sidewalk, Carter and Epstein both respond with a muttered ‘Fuck.’ More ladylike, Angel settles for, ‘Oh, shit.’ The Blade went into the building unburdened. Now he’s carrying a small, hard- sided suitcase. And that’s not the worst of it. No, the Blade’s accompanied by three younger men whose heads swivel back and forth as they hustle over to a Ford Expedition with appropriately darkened windows. A minute later, they take off.
‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ Put off by Solly Epstein’s sudden appearance, Angel’s been sulking all day. She wants to know why she wasn’t consulted before Carter added a full partner to their little enterprise. Of course, Carter may very well be planning to eliminate the cop and his share of the loot, all in one fell swoop. As he might be planning to eliminate Angel Tamanaka. There’s no way to know.
Carter ignores Angel’s question. ‘They’re spooked about something. If I follow them, we’ll be spotted.’
‘I think I know where they’re going,’ Epstein says. ‘I think they’ll take the money to the bunker. Work your way back to Harlem River Drive and head south.’
Angel bristles again when Carter meekly complies. ‘What’s the bunker?’ she asks.
‘Bobby owns a rug warehouse in Brooklyn,’ Epstein replies. ‘He’s got a room in the basement, soundproofed, no windows. It’s where he does business.’
‘A bunker?’
‘That’s what he calls it.’
‘And you think the money’s in the suitcase?’
‘I can’t see another reason why he’d send four men to get it.’
Earlier in the morning, before they set up the surveillance, they’d begun to comb through the hundreds of items in OCCB’s file on Roberto Benedetti. A quick review of known associates yielded immediate results. Bobby Ditto’s godfather, Vincent Pugliese, rents an apartment, 5B, in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. In poor health at age seventy-four, Pugliese lives alone, his wife long deceased, his children scattered. He walks with the aid of a cane and is said, by an NYPD registered informant, to be uniformly polite to his neighbors.
Armed with that bit of information, all three had driven to Kingsbridge. That was four hours ago. Now they’re on the road again.
‘Why would he move the money?’ Angel’s watching her elaborately constructed fantasy, the one that has her opening a little art gallery on Tobago just in time for the winter season, dissolve before her eyes. ‘Is he on to us?’
But there are any number of possibilities out there and Angel barely listens to Epstein as he dissects each of them. She’s wondering exactly what she’s going to do if there’s no money to steal, no goal to achieve. A return to normalcy seems unlikely, given that Bobby Ditto now believes her partially responsible for two murders.
Angel starts to speak, but then looks over at Carter. His features are composed, his expression almost serene, this despite Bobby Ditto’s knowing his name. Angel’s annoyed at first, but then skips to an obvious bottom line. No matter what happens to the money, Bobby’s fate has already been determined. No need to worry.
The drive to the Red Hook section of Brooklyn takes more than an hour. They’re plagued by heavy traffic on FDR Drive along the East River, on the Brooklyn Bridge with its perpetual renovations, most of all on the notorious Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The delays cost them nothing, nothing that hasn’t already been lost. The SUV’s sitting in front of Benedetti Wholesale Carpeting, a long, two-story building located a few blocks from the waterfront.
‘The bunker’s in the basement,’ Epstein explains. ‘To get there, you have to come down a narrow flight of stairs.’
‘How do you know so much about the set-up?’ Angel asks.
‘An informant.’ Epstein’s crouched in the cargo space behind the van’s rear seat. He’s thinking that it’s someone else’s turn to bounce up and down on the plywood floor. Somebody with a bigger ass. ‘The informant’s name, a major source, by the way, was Ruby Amaroso. Unfortunately, someone put a knife in Ruby’s back last week. I’m not sayin’ I know who that somebody was, but I got my suspicions.’
Angel laughs, but Carter’s expression doesn’t change. Finally, she says, ‘The good thing is that we know exactly where the money is. If we can’t get to it right now, they have to bring it out, sooner or later.’
‘That won’t necessarily help us, even if we happen to be watching at the time,’ Carter responds. ‘The Ford’s armored.’
‘Seriously?’
‘First, the vehicle didn’t settle on its springs when four men got inside. Second, the guard on the front passenger’s side of the SUV let the window down. It was two inches thick. Third, even though the driver turned slowly, the truck still pulled away from the turn. That’s because of the weight. Armored vehicles stop bullets – some
